Murc's Law

 Paul Campos and Andrew Gelman take on the philosophy behind Murc's Law. Basically, why do people ignore the other side or give them not agency. This is a variation of people saying that "NATO expansion" led to the war in Ukraine. No. Putin's decisions led to the invasion of Ukraine. Full stop. And the GOP is not actually "good at politics" there are just a bunch of crazy people in this country.

Nothing Matters

 Donald Trump publicly calls on Putin to dig up smears on Biden.

Ginni Thomas was an active member of the coup attempt.

The Trump White House did a Nixon.

And that's in the last 4-5 days.

Will any of it matter in elections? Presumably, hopefully, at some point there will be actual prosecutions of central players, not just Q-Shaman lunatics. 

Or just as likely we continue to see the sort of elite impunity that creates a separate standard for those who are powerful, like Mick Mulvaney. 

Let Them Fight

 A Trump vs DeSantis primary would be a descent into a sort of madness that would've shocked the sensibilities six years ago. DeSantis - as Chait notes - has none of Trump's brio and bluster. He's a pale imitation. But he's also "competent." DeSantis scares the shit out of me, because he could solidify Trumpists within the broader GOP. He's also young, which compares favorably to Biden.

This makes the Florida gubernatorial race critical. Defeat DeSantis this November, and maybe he goes away.

I Got No Problem

 When Joe Biden ended his speech in Warsaw with an ad libbed plea that Vladimir Putin could not remain in power, the usual suspects immediately clutched their pearls and decried Biden's off the cuff rhetorical escalation. The fact that Emmanuel Macron still believes there's a negotiated settlement to this situation is the real gaffe, in my mind.

Max Boot has said that this is actually good, but I'm not sure I would go that far. That tends to presume that speeches move policy especially in other countries. It's the BS legend that Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall" speech actually convinced Gorbachev to rescind the Brezhnev Doctrine.

Instead, I see it this way. Putin has been escalating rhetoric since Day One. He's threatened to use nuclear weapons. He's had Medvedev threaten Poland with invasion. He's compared the Ukrainian government to Nazis. Throughout this crisis he's consistently escalated his rhetoric.

Biden - whether intentionally or not - responded in kind. Frankly, I wish they hadn't backtracked. Biden should have "clarified" that he meant as long as Putin was in power, Russia would never be a trusted nation on the global stage. 

We have already demonstrated that we are aware of what Putin is discussing with his inner circle. Make him wonder about everyone around him. 

George Bush Was Not A Good President

 Paul Campos lays out the similarities and differences between the US invasion of Iraq and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Internet punditry can quickly degenerate into "hot takes" and "clickbait" and Campos does a good job pointing out that the US invasion of Iraq does not rise to the level of rank criminality that Putin's invasion does. 

Still, the invasion of Iraq remains arguably the worst foreign policy blunder in American history. There are really on two other contenders, so let's dismiss them.

First, America rejects the League of Nations. There is a revisionist history where American joins the League and this somehow prevents World War II. This seems highly unlikely, as the League wasn't really strong enough to prevent wars, even small wars. The UN has been much more successful, but the rise of superpowers like the US and USSR seem to be much more important. It's more a Pax Americana than a Pax UN.

Second, Vietnam. There is little doubt that Vietnam was a worse catastrophe - in terms of human lives butchered and ended - than Iraq. In all metrics - US lives lost, indigenous lives lost, war crimes committed, treasure sunk - Vietnam outstrips Iraq by miles. However, Vietnam was the trap of containment. While containment largely worked to prevent Soviet adventurism in Europe, applying it to nationalistic, anti-imperial struggles was flawed to say the least. While the "domino theory" was wrong, to someone looking at the recent histories of the People's Republic of China, the Korean War and the defiance of Taiwan, there was at least a plausible case that the US could hold the line in Vietnam. It was wrong, but plausible.

The casus belli for Iraq was utter, transparent bullshit. The clearest articulation was Tom Friedman's loathsome comment about taking a small country and throwing it up against a wall. This was the panicked thrashing of a wounded animal after 9/11. More so that Vietnam, Iraq was a war of pure choice. 

So, while Vietnam remains a more tragic and damaging event in American and world history, Iraq was a bigger blunder, because it was such a transparent "own goal."

(There is case to be made to add America's true "forgotten war" against the Philippines to the list of blunders, but I'll let it pass.)

George Bush was not the evil figure that Vladimir Putin is. There is a glimmer of hope that Iraq may one day become a relatively stable democracy. In fact, Iraq's Freedom House score is among the highest in Southwest Asia. (Iraq's score is 29, which is not good, but only Jordan, Kuwait and Lebanon score higher in the Arab world until you go far enough west to hit Tunisia. In fact, Iraq's score is higher than...Vietnam's.) 

However, the rank stupidity of the Iraq war remains a glaring example of myopic American foreign policy. If there is one comment that unifies both the US invasion of Iraq and the Russian invasion of Ukraine it would be "It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake."

The Latest In A Long Line

 The two most depressing aspects of Life in Trumpistan are as follows:

1) Way too many Americans voted for Donald Trump.

2) There have been way too few consequences for rampant law breaking associated with Trump and his minions.

Trump's unique awfulness as a human being - associates have noted that Trump really doesn't have a best friend, because of course he doesn't - is NOT the worst part of Trumpistan, it is the fact that tens of millions of Americans would vote for him, because they hate their fellow countrymen that much.

The second aspect is what I want to talk about though.

First, we had the resignation letter of Mark Pomerantz from the NY County District Attorney's office. Alvin Bragg pulled the plug on the investigation for reasons that are as yet unclear. True, it would be very difficult to get a conviction on white collar crimes by a former president, but that's a piss poor reason for not prosecuting if you think he's guilty. Pomerantz makes clear that the team investigating him thinks he's guilty.

Could there be a central office in the DOJ or state's AG office that is consolidating all of Trump's crimes for prosecution? Sure, it's possible. But the history of Trumpistan is that Trump never seems to have the level of comeuppance that he deserves. The only real exception was the election of Joe Biden in 2020.

Which brings me to Ginni Thomas. Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was an active co-conspirator in the January 6th autogolpe attempt. We have written evidence that she was pushing Mark Meadows to embrace the most lunatic, OANN-type positions. There's this passage:

She also quoted language circulating on pro-Trump sites that said, “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.” She added: “I hope this is true.”

Now, Clarence Thomas is not the same person as Ginni Thomas. However, Thomas appears to have voted against enforcing the subpoenas on Meadows that exposed his wife's insurrectionist activity. He should have recused himself, and not for the first time. Thomas has routinely failed to recuse himself on cases where his wife is tangentially or directly involved.

The usual suspects on Twitter are calling on Clarence Thomas to resign, because both his wife is an insurrectionist and he failed to recuse himself. Of course, Thomas is not going to resign. And you're not finding 17 GOP Senators who will vote to convict him. Yes, they are hypocrites. Yes, they went apeshit because Bill Clinton met Loretta Lynch in an airport that one time. It doesn't matter.

At some point we need to write ethics rules for the Supreme Court, but for now, we are stuck with a deeply reactionary court with a member who is married to a QAnon activist.

At some point, Merrick Garland needs to get off his ass and do something about all this.

A Rising Tide

 My recent travels have freed me from having to read some of Yglesias's tired contrarianism every day, but he takes on an interesting topic today: wealth inequality.

In particular, he takes aim at the idea of economic transfers based on historical racial injustice - something like reparations, though he doesn't mention them by name - and focuses instead on the fact that America needs a broad based attack on poverty.

He rightly notes that America isn't THAT poor, the way Rose Twitters assume it is when they can't understand why their podcast isn't making them enough money to live comfortably in Brooklyn. What's more, there are more poor White people than poor Black people, even though the rate of poverty among Black people is disproportionately high. Historical legacies of racism have disadvantaged Black people and many Hispanics for centuries. While that it true, crafting a program that narrowly improves their lives at the exclusion of poor Whites is a political loser.

Yglesias has been beating the drum for something like Mitt Romney's child allowance. The idea would be to address childhood poverty by simply giving families money if they have kids. Kids are incredible cash sinkholes, with day care alone being a major, major expense. Food, clothing, additional rooms in your home...kids cost a lot. If we directly subsidize child rearing, we are able to address so many other issues. A lot of the negative educational outcomes are a byproduct of poverty. Remove the worst deprivations of poverty and you give school kids (as opposed to the institutions of the school) the resources to succeed.

It would be great if this could be a byproduct of Democratic midterm gains. Maybe the rank embrace of Putin by so many GQP media stars, some level of Trump fatigue or the way that Republicans have embraced ideas like overturning Roe or even Griswold will create enough momentum to get us to 53-55 Senators and retaining the House so we can pass this. Aside from climate change legislation, it could be the most important bill Congress would pass since ACA.

They Are Who They Say They Are

 This brief expose of "Putin's Brain" shows the roots of Putin's ultranationalist Russian orthodoxy. It's crackpot history and political science and the limits of it are being exposed in Ukraine. Russia was a superpower because they successfully stole nuclear secrets from Britain. Historically, Russia was at best a great power among other great powers, but usually a second tier power. It remains to this day a second tier power with a brief period of brutal regional hegemony from 1945-1989. 

We know Putin's vision of the world is a twisted vision. What is being laid bare time and time again is the degree to which Putin and his world view sees the West.

After World War II, Stalin was not terribly aggressive in confronting the West, at least in terms of expanding his area of dominance. When Yugoslavia broke with Moscow, he did nothing. When Kim Il Sung's army was pressed to the Yalu, he did nothing - ceding the initiative to Mao. The reason was simple. As a naïve Marxist-Leninist (Stalin wasn't a deep thinker) he took it as an article of faith that the West would eventually collapse in a proletarian revolution.

Putin's "Brain" sees things slightly different. For him, the West is decadent and corrupt (Corrupt? From a Russian?!) Here is the salient piece from the profile:

In his magnum opus, “The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia,” published in 1997, Dugin mapped out the game plan in detail. Russian agents should foment racial, religious and sectional divisions within the United States while promoting the United States’ isolationist factions. (Sound familiar?) In Great Britain, the psy-ops effort should focus on exacerbating historic rifts with Continental Europe and separatist movements in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Western Europe, meanwhile, should be drawn in Russia’s direction by the lure of natural resources: oil, gas and food. NATO would collapse from within.

The plan was clear all along. Putin helped Trump. Putin helped the Brexiteers. Putin helped Catalonian separatists. The degree to which we have a smoking gun is less clear. Is there a file in the CIA somewhere with all of Trump's financial ties to Russia? Does MI-6 have Nigel Farage's bank statements?

The most extreme anti-Putin voices like Anne Applebaum have chastised NATO for not striking at Russia's military. Yeah, no. That's a terrible idea that threatens all life on earth. Pass.

However, we are at war with Russia. It's somewhere between a Cold War and a Tepid War at the moment. The history of anti-communism in America in the 1920s and 1950s is not pretty. There was a wholesale assault on American civil rights and liberties.

But...

If we have credible information that Donald Trump or Madison Cawthorn or Marjorie Traitor Greene or any of those odious shitbirds in the GQP are receiving active assistance from Russia, we need to act on that.

One thing we can't do is rely on the voters of western North Carolina or northwest Georgia to rid of us of Russian assets in the halls of Congress. The Putinesque vision of a revanchist nationalism built on a cultural conservatism that even many Republicans have walked away from is still very much the position of the majority of Republican voters. If Greene and Cawthorn win their primaries, they are going to win the general election. We saw this with William Barr, who laid out how Trump was working to destroy American democracy, which appalled Barr...but he'll probably vote for him anyway if he gets the nomination.

That excessive partisan zeal that would put people who are actively and repeatedly demonstrating their contempt for American democracy back in charge of our government demonstrates that we need to do more than rely on public shaming and the judgments of history.

Fuckers need to be in jail.

Vladimir Putin, Supergenius

 There are reports that a Russian website accidentally published a count of Russian combat fatalities at 9,861. 

This is both a shocking number and yet perhaps not so.

I read a Twitter thread by General Mark Hertling (ret) where he examines this potential number of dead Russian soldiers. 

From 2003 until today, coalition forces in Iraq have a recorded 4,800 deaths. In Afghanistan, the number is around 2,400. So decades of accumulated combat in Iraq and Afghanistan killed around 7,200 American military personnel. Russia blew past that number in a month. (Again, if the number is accurate. Given the recorded deaths of high profile Russian officers, it looks like it might be. It also gibes with Western analysis.)

Hertling, in his thread, notes that the US spends a great deal more resources on combat survivability. An American or coalition serviceman wounded in battle is much more likely to survive than at any other time in recorded human military history. Russia did not develop those capabilities. A wounded Russian solider is likelier to be a dead Russian soldier.

The key factor seems to be the prevalence of US-made Javelin anti-tank weapons. Hertling tells a story of climbing into a Russian T-80 tank and being astounded at how cramped and unsafe it was. It's especially lightly armored on top, where the Javelin missile hits. There is exposed munitions in the tank, so if a Javelin makes a solid hit on a Russian tank, the crew is dead. Russian armored personnel carriers are arguably worse.

Ukraine has been able to stall Russian convoys on roads and ambush them with Javelins, which leaves the infantry vulnerable to ambush as well.

The increased use of drones against a moderately advanced force like the Russian Army, would seem to alter the balance of power in military engagements. Iraqis and Afghans did not have access to sophisticated drone systems, Ukraine will be getting more and more drones as the weeks progress.

Russia is losing this war.

House Of Fraud

 Josh Marshall asks why we continue to support the House of Saud. It's a really good question and somewhat borne of the tragic decision to invade Iraq.

A militant Iraq under Saddam Hussein made a natural alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia. We protected the kingdom, they provided us with an energy buffer against rising gas prices. With the defeat of Hussein, the competition moved to Saudi Arabia vs Iran, which took and continues to take the form of proxy wars, like the ones in Syria and Yemen. If you think Ukraine is bad, take a long look at Yemen and see what true ethnic cleansing looks like.

Mohammad bin Salman's leverage over us is that we hate Iran and now Saudi Arabia is a bulwark against Iran.

Frankly, I would love to take advantage of MBS's middle finger to the US and his generally egregious behavior and see if we could pivot towards Iran. Let's get the nuclear deal done, then open up large parts of the Iranian economy, especially oil exports. 

Iran is a brutal regime. 

So is Saudi Arabia, though, and we have locked ourselves into 1979 for decades. This gives real leverage to Saudi Arabia that they have decided to force upon us at this terrible moment. And for all the awfulness of the Iranian regime, it's really not that worse than Saudi Arabia, except for the pro forma "Death to America" chants at Khomeini's grave.

There are not great options here, but there's no reason to lock ourselves into a reciprocal relationship with Saudi Arabia when it's clearly no longer reciprocal. 

Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Nonsense

 Just returned from a combination spring break/college tour.

Should get back to blogging today or tomorrow.

Energy Independence Is National Security

 Yglesias does a deeper dive into some of the issues surrounding oil. One idea I love is utilizing the Defense Production Act to semi-nationalize the oil industry in the United States and prevent them from price gouging. 

You know the cynical game the Republicans are playing:

- Sanction Russia's oil industry
- Watch oil prices skyrocket
- Blame Biden for oil prices

If Biden were to use the Defense Production Act to drive down prices, it would put the GOP in the position of defending the price gougers. 

I doubt they would do it, but it would be hilarious and just desserts for the oil companies.

Petro-Despots

 This news is at least a little bit surprising. Generally speaking, Saudi Arabia has tried to stay on good terms with the United States. When we have an oil crunch, they have typically responded by boosting output. They aren't going to do that this time.

As Marshall notes, Crown Prince bin Salman is a bad guy who does bad things like murdering a US resident. He wants immunity for that and for his war crimes in Yemen. The UAE are on board with Saudi Arabia, and in fact, both countries have refused to take calls from the President of the United States. Both countries greatly preferred doing business with the Trump Administration, because of its cartoonish levels of corruption. 

One of the side effects of the Ukraine war has been to refocus energy policy as a national security issue. The US actually is a net exporter of oil at the moment. The problem is that oil is a fungible commodity and while we can probably be self-sufficient in the near run, over time prices will rise because market demand for oil from countries that DO import oil will spike.

The need to move off hydrocarbons is an environmental necessity. If America could also move more quickly towards electric vehicles - or at least hybrids - and wean itself off fossil fuels in electrical generation, then we are looking at a world where Putin, bin Salman, Khamenei and Maduro are much less powerful internationally and deprived of the money to prop up their autocratic rule at home.

Ukraine For Ukrainians

 Good Yglesias runs down the history of Ukraine and Russia. Only at the end does I think he really hit on the proper historical analogy of the relationship between Britain and Ireland. Ireland was a bastion of "civilization" during the Early Middle Ages (Dark Ages). Similar to how Kievan Rus was the outpost of "civilization" is what is now Russia.  Eventually Russia came to dominate Ukraine the way Britain came to dominate Ireland. Yglesias has a nice rundown of the linguistic imperialism of Russia, and that was largely true of Ireland as well.

All of which is to say that if Britain tried to re-invade Ireland, I don't anyone would call that sound thinking. Yet that is basically Putin's argument for re-invading Ukraine. As Yglesias notes, we should take Putin at his word that he really believes his own bullshit about Ukraine being a "fake country." Of course, he also believed his own bullshit about the power of the Russian military and that's not going so well.

If you want to know why Ukraine might win this war outright, I offer the Netflix documentary Winter on Fire. Unbelievable bravery.

Death Is Bad

 And we should try to have less of it. 

I think that makes me a Utilitarian, but I'm not sure. At any rate, we should minimize death. Ukraine has put out a somewhat ridiculous assessment of Russian deaths at over 11,000. Let's cut that in half and presume some equal level of Ukrainian deaths. So let's say that 11,000 - Ukrainian and Russian, civilian and military - have died in the war. The war has been going on since February 24th, that's 12 days. So let's ballpark the deaths at 1,000 a day. The seven-day rolling average of Covid deaths in America is still 1,500 at a time when we've declared the pandemic is over.

"Good Yglesias" made a reappearance today. He was speaking about how "Defund the Police" is a bad slogan - it is - and bad policy. He also noted that more police means less crime, and less crime mean fewer dead Black people. He crunched the numbers and if we defunded police to the point where we got rid of 99.9% of all police killings of unarmed people, but that also generated a 0.75% increase in the murder rate (it's a very low probability that the increase would be that low) would mean a net loss of Black lives.

Now, obviously war and the killing of unarmed people by the police are worse from a societal and psychological view than dying of Covid or from some awful act of murder, but only a little bit. War is worse, because it disproportionately kills young people, including children. Especially the way Russia wages war. Losing trust in the idea that police are there to protect you has deep societal impacts.

If we are simply talking about people not dying, then we should properly evaluate policies to make fewer people die. The retreat from masking is basically giving up on getting America's stupidest people to get a damned shot. I get that. Focusing on the war in Ukraine because it could lead to a broader war in Eastern Europe is absolutely right.\

But all the sloganeering in the world can't cover up what really kills people.

Odessa

 I have a wrestler and advisee from Odessa. His family is still there, as his mother didn't want to abandon her husband. His two younger sisters are with them.

This makes me heartsick.

Russia is caught between trying to pretend that they are welcome in Ukraine and simply burning the whole place down. If they do elect to raze the entire country, will the Russian military follow through?

The Lag

 Paul Krugman looks at the startling disconnect between America's economic performance and American's view of the economy. Two things are factually true: the economy is doing great, albeit with inflationary pressures (that are largely a product of "doing great") and yet Americans clearly feel the economy is in trouble. He even digs down further to note that Americans admit that their own economic situation has improved in the past year.

He walks away from blaming the news media, but I think that's a "I come to bury Caesar not to praise him" moment. 

The media is not interested in good news. What's more, social media is actively allergic to good news. Given the algorithmic imperative to get "clicks," everyone runs angry headlines to feed increasing anger. 

There is another reason why and it's that there is a lag between an improving economy and the perception that the economy is actually doing better. My clearest memory of this was in 1994. The economy started to rebound from the 1992 recession by 1993, yet perceptions that the economy was still trash hurt Democrats in the midterms. 

The other issue is, of course, Covid. Restrictions due to Covid have been pretty mild (wear a fucking mask) but they "feel" like the economy is lagging. The lived experience of March 2020-March 2021 hasn't really receded in public imagination. That's another "lag" that will take a bit to catch up to reality.

Ultimately, the fate of Biden and the Democrats in the midterms seem tied to viral mutation. As long as there are no Covid mutations that evade the vaccines, we should see a continued return to normal behavior and an increasing perception that things are "getting better" even if they already have.

Disruption in Russian oil supplies is the only warning sign I see on the near horizon, but then again no one saw that coming either.

Two Important Points

 Ezra Klein interviews Fareed Zakaria and there are two important points that Zakaria makes.

The first is that we don't properly appreciate the value and unusual nature of the Pax Americana since 1945.

The second is that America needs to face its own hypocrisy, especially towards China.

These two points are linked in a defense of the "liberal international order" that America has promulgated since 1945, and in fact has been talking about in some sense since 1776. America believes in a rules-based international order with some function of international law that avoids interstate conflict.

However, we have not always followed our own model on this. The worst offense is, of course, Iraq.

The invasion of Ukraine has dredged up a lot of feelings I had about Iraq that have not mellowed with time. I started this thing in 2010 after Iraq had largely played itself out, but those feelings have not abated. Iraq was both wrong and a mistake. It was wrong towards Iraqis, which footage from Ukraine helps drive home. We don't target residential areas the way Russia does, but residential areas still got pummeled that war. Unleashing war is awful, whatever your goals and motivations are. Let's say that establishing a democracy in Iraq was the actual goal - I doubt it, but let's say that anyway. The bloodshed unleashed on that country was terribly, terribly wrong.

What's more, it represented a betrayal of the sort of world order that Bush's father had so successfully defended in Kuwait a decade or so earlier. 

Some idiot in Twitter was whinging about NATO's campaign in the '90s against Serbia, as if that was somehow the same as the invasion of Ukraine. In the Balkans, NATO and the US was preventing an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing. It was trying to establish limits on the use of violence by a government against its citizens. Similarly, the invasion of Afghanistan was a direct response to a catastrophic attack on the US.

Iraq was neither of those things. We are seeing - I hope - how fragile the order we built after World War II is, and we helped degrade that order when we invaded Iraq.

Zakaria believes - and I mostly concur - that America's current stance towards China is stupid and shortsighted. China is unquestionably a rival power, but it need not be an opponent. China is a country that also wants an international system based on rules, and making it a pariah state undermines their own commitment to that order. China has not endorsed Russia's invasion, but neither has it condemned it as strongly as we would like, because we have more or less aggressively pushed Russia and China together. 

Zakaria is part of a growing chorus that does not see a potential "exit ramp" for this crisis. He notes that dictators in Venezuela, Iran and North Korea have survived economic isolation, and Putin will, too. I'm still hopeful. Theda Skocpol noted the role that international humiliation is a good leading indicator for revolution. The other model is relative deprivation. If things are worse that you think they should be you will revolt, rather than any absolute measure of deprivation. Both apply to Russia.

Finding a way out seems hopeless at the moment. I worry that Putin will finish conquering the Black Sea coast, linking up with Russia nationalists in Transnistria (a breakaway region of Moldova) and then declare victory. Ukraine would exist, but as a rump state. Would we continue sanctions that will cause some pain in our societies as well?

Allowing Putin to annex a sovereign country's territory is an invitation to unravel the Pax Americana, which would be a very bad thing.

Take A Deep Breath, Everybody

 Last night, Twitter was abuzz with the Russian assault on Ukraine's (very large) nuclear power plant. There was similar freaking out when Russian troops passed through the Chernobyl site in the first days of the war. Some of this is the reflexive fear of nuclear power that sprung from Chernobyl, but really is misplaced. That move to panic has been typical of the knee-jerk reactions over Ukraine, which would include irresponsible calls for a no-fly zone.

Was it great that Russia attacked a nuclear power plant? Absolutely not. Was it worse than the shelling of residential neighborhoods? Also no. 

The people who are simultaneously calling for a no-fly zone AND freaking out over a stupid but not especially dire assault on a commercial power reactor are being wildly irrational in terms of their risk assessment. I continue to echo Josh Marshall's mantra on this war: The only thing worse than the war going well for Putin is if it goes poorly. I'm just not convinced he won't talk himself into a disastrous decision with regards to nuclear weapons, especially Russia's small "battlefield" nukes.

The Throne Is Empty, But There Are Many Contenders

 The "Stupidest Person In Congress" failed in his bid to become Texas Attorney General. Louie Gohmert will no longer be in Congress after the midterms. Gohmert has long been considered the stupidest guy in Congress, and his retirement opens up the competition a bit.

It's worth noting that Gohmert was already in danger of losing that title, as the recent House has three incredibly stupid people in it and the Senate added Tommy Tuberville, who in normal times we would point at and laugh.

Anyway, on to the new contenders:

Madison Cawthorn, aka Dollar General Tom Brady. 

Marjorie Traitor Greene, aka Unfrozen Geico Caveman Congressperson.

Lauren Boebert, aka Ptomaine Sarah Palin.

I remain every so slightly hopeful that Boebert loses outright in November. Her district is red-tinged, but not as crimson as Greene's. She is uniquely awful, given the tilt of her district, and she has to be an embarrassment for many of the people of Colorado. Her district if R+6%

Cawthorn's current district if R+9, which makes him a little more secure than Boebert. He's also just "real person" dumb as opposed to the aggressive idiocy of Boebert and Greene. 

Greene, however comes from a district that's R+28. Perhaps she's become an embarrassment for the people of northwest Georgia, but - like Cawthorn - she comes from a district in Appalachia that is overwhelming white and lacks college degrees. Cawthorn, however, has Asheville in his district. 

The only way Greene loses is if there is a strong third party challenge from the Libertarian Party, or perhaps someone running as a "National Republican." Georgia has a weird majority law, where if no candidate wins 50%+1, it goes to a runoff. If you divide the vote three ways, maybe it comes down to Greene versus a Bog Standard Republican. In that case, Democrats could ally with normal Republicans to oust Greene in the runoff.

All this seems pretty unlikely.

So, I am hopeful that the new 3rd district in Colorado bounces Boebert from her seat.

Cawthorn is dumb, but within normal parameters of dumb.

That leaves Marjorie Traitor Greene as the most likely successor to Louis Gohmert for the title of Dumbest Congressperson.

Merrick Garland Is Losing The Benefit Of The Doubt

 Yesterday, we got a picture of what the January 6th Committee has discovered. We have also gotten glimpses of other crimes committed by Trump and his cronies. The question has been: Where is the Department of Justice?

I've been sympathetic to two facts. First, the DOJ should not try their cases in the open. Second, you need to be very careful when indicting a former president of the opposing party.

However, at some point, those concerns melt away, when we look at the available evidence. We have evidence that Trump has broken the law. These are not technicalities, although a few are largely tricky to prosecute, like his abuse of official records. 

Financial crimes, in general, are hard to prosecute, but there will need to be some movement on holding Trump accountable before the midterm elections. It's dispiriting to think Trump could continue to get away with major financial crimes because he's "rich and powerful." The whole point of the rule of law is that the laws bind him, too.

Fund The Police

 I do not watch State of the Union Addresses. I prefer to read them, the way Thomas Jefferson intended. 

However, Biden made the call to properly fund the police. This is obviously not actually a federal issue, but moving the Democratic Party away from Twitter sloganeering was important. Overwhelming majorities of Black Americans want a professional police force properly funded and working to safeguard their lives and property. That is not incompatible for wanting police held accountable for their malevolent deeds.

I was half listening to my wife's insipid podcast with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy, two old political hacks. Their analysis of the speech was whether it would salvage Democratic hopes to avoid a midterm bloodbath. This is in keeping with the political hacks way of viewing politics, which is messaging around policy. That's what they desperately need to believe is the way politics works.

If by September, Covid is finally gone, inflation is OK and Russia has abandoned Ukraine, then it really won't matter about the messaging around a trimmed down Build Back Better bill. That very little of this is under Biden's (or the political hacks working for him) control unnerves them. It makes their jobs irrelevant. 

No, NATO Should Not Try And Create A No-Fly Zone In Ukraine

 There are the inevitable "Do Something" posters on social media and on TV advocating that NATO establish a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine. Josh Marshall lays out why this is a terrible idea here, but let me summarize.

A NFZ would need to be enforced by NATO pilots flying from bases in Poland, Romania and Western Ukraine. Those pilots will be engaged with Russian pilots in the skies of Ukraine. NATO and Russian pilots will die. This is an act of war.

In order to stop NATO pilots from dying, NATO would need to strike Russian airbases and air defenses IN RUSSIA. This is also an act of war and it would immediately legitimize Putin among the Russian people at precisely the moment we are trying (and I think succeeding) in isolating him from the broader populace. If there is one thing Putin needs right now, it's an active war against NATO. It validates all his bullshit.

Giving Ukraine old MiGs from Polish and other former Warsaw Pact countries arsenals is great. Giving them drones? Great. Give them everything they need.

But if you try and introduce NATO units into Ukraine - whether on the air or on the ground - you reset the war among Russia's populace and elite. You immediately ratchet up the pressure on Russia to start using nuclear weapons and you greatly increase the chance of a nuclear war that would wipe out most if not all life on earth, including the people of Ukraine.