Putin's sputtering, rage-filled speech and actions are incoherent, in the sense that they don't hold together.
He is trying to threaten the West with vague statements of nuclear threats and blowing up pipelines, so that the West will force Ukraine to the negotiating table.
Meanwhile, the illegal annexation of Ukrainian oblasts makes negotiating impossible.
As his military faces collapse, he needs a negotiated settlement. But his annexation makes a negotiated settlement impossible.
Madness.
Keep an eye on the Ukrainian advance in Lyman. They have apparently cut off a sizable Russian force that Putin wouldn't let retreat in good order. Now, the Russians will either have to surrender, be destroyed or retreat under Ukrainian artillery fire. If the Russian unit in Lyman are eliminated, it leaves a gaping hole in an already tattered Russian line and eliminates important front line units and their military equipment.
Putin will announce the annexation of the Ukrainian lands at precisely the moment the war could pivot against him again. Lincoln famously waited for a victory before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, because he didn't want to make a political statement in a moment of military weakness. Putin seems intent on making that mistake.
A collapse in Lyman could set off another round of rapid Ukrainian advances. Let's hope so. Russia is a terrorist state at this point.
Since the outbreak of civil unrest across Iran, one person has been notably absent: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Khamenei is 83 years old and has been suffering from kidney disease for years. There is some whispering that he's dying, but it should be cautioned that Iran is a country especially ripe for conspiracy theories.
If Khamenei dies, the Assembly of Religious Experts will select a new Supreme Leader. The Assembly is elected every seven years, with candidates vetted by the Guardian Council and then voted on by the population. The current hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi also sits on the Assembly and was presumed to be Khamenei's heir apparent.
There are additional whispers that Raisi is reaching out to important figures in the Revolutionary Guard - the militant Islamist wing of the security state. Whether he's doing that because he feels confident that he's about to become Supreme Leader or worried about winning the election and needing to resort to coercion to take the post is an open question.
Moderate groups, led by former presidents Hassan Rouhani and the late Akbar Rafsanjani, have a majority of the seats. The current civil unrest erupting all over Iran is a direct result of Raisi's policies as president. It was Raisi who reinvigorated the "modesty rules" around women's dress. For moderates - and that term is relative when talking about Iranian clerics - the question is: Do you want an extremely unpopular figure like Raisi to be elevated to Supreme Leader? Would that further imperil the regime? Or are you confident that the Revolutionary Guard can kill enough protestors to insure the regime's survival? For those who are old enough, do you want to rule like the Shah?
The death of Khamenei would take an already volatile situation in Iran and crank it up to full volume. It could also be an accident of timing that it happens at a time when the entire population of the country is restive and enraged at hardline policies. Khamenei's death was always going to be a critical moment for the regime and the direction of Iran for the next generation. Hopefully that malevolent asshole shuffles off his mortal coil soon and Iran is able to chart a new course.
Jon Chait points out that the House GOP is already threatening to wreck America's credit rating if they win control of that chamber in November. The debt ceiling hostage crisis has become a staple of GOP control of Congress in a Democratic administration. It is, frankly, bullshit and professional malpractice. It's a radical act by a radical faction.
The rationale is twofold. First, they are natural hostage takers and nihilists who deny the ability of the Federal government to do anything important (that doesn't involve arming them). Rather than pose solutions to things, they simply want to destroy, and debt ceiling hostage taking is an easy way to do this.
Secondly, if they crater the national economy, that presumably increases the odds that Trump becomes president again in 2024, so...yay?
If - and I pray to Dog it doesn't happen - the GOP wins the House and/or the Senate, Congressional Democrats need to raise the debt ceiling to infinity trillion dollars plus $1, as Chait suggests. The debt ceiling, to me, is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, but rather than risk that, just boost it to levels so high, we never think of it again. The idea that this will constitute an attack ad in 2024 is just ridiculous.
However, the usual idiots like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will likely balk at taking this measure and hand a loaded gun to the radicalized faction of nihilists that constitutes the majority of the House GOP.
The Person Who Writes Joe Biden's Tweets just said what Josh Marshall has been saying: Give Democrats two more Senators and control of the House and they will codify Roe. Biden is not the type of pol to get out over his skis when making promises, so presumably he's gotten guys like Angus King on board.
With consumer confidence picking up, this election will be played out on social issues and the GOP keeps nominating people like Doug Mastriano. There are GOP politicians right now arguing to put women in prison for murder if they get an abortion. That is simply a toxic position to take with the electorate. Now I know there are GOP politicians who may have a more nuanced position on this, but the GOP has run reasonably successful campaigns saying all Democrats want to defund the police and put a drag queen in every classroom.
Democrats need to stake out the position that every single Republican wants to put women in jail for having an abortion. Let Glenn Kessler fact check them all the live-long day.
The Republican strategy for November can be distilled to this: Biden wants to let dirty immigrant come in and put fentanyl in your kid's Halloween candy and then murder your car in its sleep. It's is "post-factual" and fear-based, because that's all they have. They certainly don't have a positive agenda to implement.
Run, not just on Dobbs, but as the defenders of American freedoms.
But for Chrissake, start doing this soon.
Josh Marshall lays out how disastrous an "own goal" Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been from a policy standpoint. He doesn't even address how Finland and Sweden joined NATO or Russia's growing isolation. (Even Kazakhstan thinks it's terrible.)
Own issue that hasn't been addressed in anything I've seen is Russia's ongoing and pre-existing demographic problems. Russia has had a terrible death rate among men going back decades. Alcohol and other drugs and violent, stupid behavior kills a huge number of Russian men.
Now, if we are to believe the estimates, Russia has lost around 50,000 men in less than a year - roughly the number of Americans who died in over a decade in Vietnam. Now, they are about to send tens of thousands of raw, untrained recruits into a meatgrinder. Additionally, tens of thousands of young men are fleeing the country. I also can't imagine a ton of immigrants feeling like Russia is a place to move to.
Even if Ukraine wins a relatively quick victory by next spring, the demographic catastrophe will echo over generations.
Sweden and Italy have turned to fascist and fascist-adjacent governments in recent weeks. Americans - unbelievably - are still considering whether or not to vote for Donald Fucking Trump in 2024. At the root of this movement is an insufficient policy agenda, both nationally and internationally, to deal with immigration.
As Martin Longman points out, immigration actually declines when a country is experiencing hard economic times. Immigration to the US fell off after 2008. This time, however, we are seeing global instability create migrant flows all around the world. Wars, famines and oppressive regimes have people on the move.
One of the stupidest own goals of the Democratic primary cycle in 2020 was "open borders." It was only held by a few candidates, but no one wanted to tell Julian Castro what a stupid idea it was. The usual sort of "Hate has no home here" lawn sign people sort of jumped on open borders as an anti-Trump position, without realizing that they were energizing exactly the sort of backlash to immigration that gave Trump power in the first place.
Immigrants are a net good for a developed country. We can not only absorb immigrants, we actively need them. But the idea of an unregulated influx of migrants alienates a substantial portion of the population. Countries - by literal definition - have borders and have the right to determine rules of citizenship.
I'm not for one minute suggesting that the GOP is right about immigration or that they have anything approaching a plan. Plainly, they are depending on racist demagoguery to rescue a floundering midterm strategy. They don't want a solution.
Still, Democrats need to come up with one that they can place before voters. Obama tried enforcement first, with the hopes that Republicans would then come to the table to normalize other issues. That's not going to happen.
The vicious cycle is that Democrats need a larger majority to pass legislation but not having legislation will prevent them from having a larger majority.
One the one hand, we have brave people in Ukraine and Iran laying their literal lives on the line for the right to rule themselves.
On the other hand, in this country, we have one of two political parties basically give up on the idea of governing. We've seen this over time, but the 2020 GOP decision to not have a platform beyond "Trump iz gud" was a turning point. We see this carry over into the midterm strategy from the GOP. Taking a cue from Trump himself, the GOP platform is basically a lazy series of trolling spasms. That the video extolling their plan consisted of images from Russia is...I mean Jeebus.
But the reality is that they have no plan anyway. You can not get a single specific plan out of the GOP that does not involve the following:
- A nationwide abortion ban
- Putting Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block
- Cutting taxes on the rich
That's it. That's not what they are running on, because that shit is toxic. Instead they are running on, more often than not, a series of blatant lies and substance-free attacks.
Our immigration system is, indeed, broken. The use of asylum claims has overwhelmed the immigration system - though the people claiming asylum might have a pretty good claim. The GOP has no plan to fix it, they just want you to be afraid of some carpenter named Jesus.
Crime is a bit up from before the pandemic, but it's down since last year. Doesn't matter. The GOP is going to run on crime being out of control. American Carnage 2.0.
Inflation is still a thing, but with gas prices coming down, consumer confidence is picking up. It is not, however, where Biden and Democrats would like it to be.
So, there are real issues on the table. We need to fix our immigration system; we need to reduce crime; the economy needs a soft landing. The GOP has advanced exactly zero plans for dealing with this. Why should they? Fear-based politicking has worked for them before and it will work for them again.
Also, while I think Biden's political instincts are routinely underrated, he is not a great spokesman for the party, because he's just not a great speaker. There really isn't a "Holy Shit" orator out there like Obama or Bill Clinton...except those guys are still around.
Democrats - when they are in power - are inevitably cleaning up the mess made by GOP misgovernance. Since it takes years to clean that up, the midterms usually strip them of at least one house of Congress, making it harder to truly reform things. The GOP doesn't need an agenda, it just needs people angry and afraid.
My hope is that Dobbs is enough of a jolt when combined with January 6th to buck this trend and allow the Democrats to have a good midterm, hold the House and build enough of a majority in the Senate to codify Roe. Like Josh Marshall, I'm a little concerned that we don't have a clear message on this yet.
October is coming. There's no time to lose or else a party that has no positive governing agenda will be able to further erode this country's ability to rule itself.
Joe Biden said - more or less accurately - that the pandemic is over. This led to the usual bad faith caterwauling on the Right about vaccine mandates and other emergency measures which are the death of freedom, doncha know.
It's important to differentiate the pandemic disease and the endemic disease. Coronaviruses are common, so common, in fact, that the common cold is a coronavirus. Covid-19 was a "novel" coronavirus, which meant the human immune system didn't quite know what to do with it. This led to various lethal problems with the body's immune system launching the cytokine storm that attempts to kill the virus but kills your internal organs instead. It leads to the lungs filling up with fluid as the lungs don't know how to fight off a novel virus.
Over time, people have acquired two forms of immunological defenses: vaccines and acquired immunity. In my case, I've got both. I've had two Pfizer shots, two Moderna boosters, a severe case of Covid and I'm going in for the new Omicron booster next week (I think).
Idiots on the Right (but I repeat myself) whine about having to take Covid shots for the rest of their life.
Well, in October, I'm getting my annual flu shot, just like I have since I started teaching. Flu won't (likely) kill me, but I don't want to get it. It's awful. Flu is also endemic (though it can become an epidemic if it's severe enough).
Last night, I ran a study hall for maybe 10 students. It sounded like a kennel, with students barking out course coughs. The same thing is happening in my classes. Most, if not all of them, had been tested for Covid and come up negative. While we have had some kids with Covid, we've had a lot more students miss time with a different cold that's circulating through a teenaged population whose immune systems are still learning.
We are reaching a point with Covid where it's just going to be a flu-like illness that you really don't want to get, but shouldn't be life threatening (unless you have underlying conditions).
On the question of masks, most people have stopped wearing them, but we do have some students - mostly Asian - who continue to wear them. Despite my severe case of Covid, I don't wear one, because I want my immune system to be "active" and "learn" the various strains of colds going around.
But I certainly don't think it's my business to tell anyone what they should do.
This disease was always going to become endemic. It seems like we have reached that point. It doesn't mean that Covid is "over" but rather that it has moved from pandemic to endemic.
Strong "Hitler in the bunker" vibes here.
This is precisely why dictatorships lose wars with peer powers. The need for control leads the dictator into exercising more and more command of the decision making process, which he is inevitably poorly suited for.
Two things are true. The Court system has been unusually able to check some of the Trumpist Right's worst abuses of the truth, and Republicans have made a fairly successful effort to pack the courts with unqualified ideologues who will undermine that ability.
At the root of the Trumpist's problem is the idea of perjury and contempt of court. You can't behave in court the way you behave at your rallies or on your radio show, as Alex Jones is finding out. During Trump's unsuccessful effort to undermine the results of the 2020 election, the things Rudy Giuliani and the Krakken "legal" team could say in a landscaping company's parking lot are very different than what they can say in front of a judge. Trump has successfully used the expense of legal proceedings throughout his life to bully business partners with the threat of lawsuits, but that won't work when he's up against a government - whether state or national - who has the resources to counter.
We also saw this dynamic is the way Trump was beaten about the head and neck by both the special master and the 11th circuit. His claims of executive privilege or the ability to declassify documents just by thinking about it are patently absurd. They have zero legal merit. It might work on Fox News, but it's not going to work in front of a judge.
However, the Dobbs ruling (and others) has people legitimately worried about whether we can trust the continued impartiality of the Courts. Right now, the median justice on the Supreme Court is Brett Kavanaugh. If it were John Roberts, I might be a little less worried, but overturning Roe was just brazen manufacturing of a decision for partisan gain. Courts already skew in favor of those with material resources - that's how Trump has avoided prosecution for so long - and if they just start making shit up, we are in deep trouble.
A bellwether case is the Independent State Legislature theory. Taken to its illogical extreme, it would end democracy in certain states and sow chaos in our elections.
Biden has done a very good job of adding judges to the bench, but if Democrats retain control of the House and get to over 52 seats in the Senate, there needs to be some sort of reform of the judiciary. The Trump years have proven both how valuable the Courts are when the act as servants of the law and how fragile that construct really is.
That line above is attributed in some form to a Hemingway character talking about going bankrupt. It can also be a model for how dictatorships fall. Protests have started in Russia over Putin's mobilization - precisely the reason why he resisted mobilizing until it became clear how badly he was losing in Ukraine.
The model of the Arab Spring isn't a great one, as we can really only point to Tunisia, it's starting point, as a place that has made real strides towards a democratic future. Coinciding with the Arab Spring was the Green Movement protests in Iran, which shook but did not dislodge the clerical regime.
Iran has been restive for years. It's a terribly poorly run country with rampant corruption that oscillates between engaging with and pissing off the rest of the world. The economy had been terrible and widespread protests grew quite violent in 2019.
Now, Iran is seething again. Reformists sat out the presidential campaign after the Guardian Council banned reformist candidates from running for president. As a result, a hardliner - Ebrahim Raisi - was elected and reinvigorated the Morality Police, a paramilitary police force whose job is to enforce dress codes and religious piety in public. Or basically Samuel Alito's wet dream.
Anyway, they took a young woman into custody for wearing her hijab improperly, and she died from a head trauma. She was 22.
Iranian women are renowned for their fierceness, and Iranian men are largely fed up with the constant mismanagement of the economy. Together, they create a real powder keg and the Morality Police lit the fuse.
Authoritarian regimes have access to levels of brute force that are largely unacceptable in democratic regimes. I'm under no illusion that these protests will become a full scale revolution.
But authoritarianism is brittle - hard but fragile. Certainly the Iranian people deserve better than they get, and if the topple the mullahs it would be an amazing day for the world. Maybe not as great as Putin falling down some stairs, but pretty great.
So, Donald Trump has not had a very fun day in court.
The New York Attorney General has filed suit against Trump for various forms of fraud and tax evasion. The outlines of these charges have been known since the fall of 2019 when the NY Times published an in-depth report - using Mary Trump as its main source - that the Trump family had evaded taxes and engaged in various forms of fraud for decades. It is of course ridiculous that it has taken this long to file this suit and we can only hope that AG James' criminal referral to the IRS will be expedited and not buried under a façade of "well, we might upset some people.."
If that wasn't bad enough, the 11th Circuit just slapped around Trump and his hand-picked judge, Federalist Society hack Aileen Cannon, in allowing the DOJ to continue to examine the classified materials they took from Mar A Lago. Not only are those documents now removed from the Special Master's purview, they pretty much ripped to shreds Trump's "argument" that he had somehow magically declassified the documents or even whether it mattered if he did. That two of the judges who ruled against him were appointed by him is just delicious.
Now, the usual idiots on Twitter are claiming that this is "Biden's DOJ conducting a witch hunt." The reality is that Trump is just a guy who has done a shitload of crimes and gotten away with it because he's "rich" and famous. Now, he's coming face to face with his worst nightmares. The House has gotten its hands on his tax returns. The January 6th Committee has Alex Jones' phone records and lord knows what else. Now, his fraudulent business empire is under direct assault and his national security fiasco is going to proceed.
Trump has to be freaked out and furious.
I'm torn about how I want this to end up. I've always worried about finding an impartial jury for Trump that doesn't consist of 12 morons. How do you not have an opinion on this guy?
His base will never abandon him, we know that. And clearly the GOP knows how closely linked his base is to their own. They can't win without Cult 45. Ask Mitt Romney.
I sort of hope he flees the country. It's an admission of guilt and presumably he could be tried in absentia.
Then again, it's going to get worse, not better for him. If he runs in 2024... I mean, he'd have to lose, right? And DeSantis scares the shit out of me.
Whatever, I just hope tonight he's throwing ketchup against the walls of whichever of his tacky-assed hellholes he's currently squatting in.
Buried in the nightly analysis from Adam Silverman is this nugget:
And I think that’s a good entry point to a brief attempt to satisfy your curiosity regarding how to counter information warfare. The entire point of information warfare is to influence the targets. Sometimes that is to try to mobilize that audience to do something they might want to do, but ordinarily wouldn’t. In social learning we’d call this the promotion of definitions that neutralize prohibitions against certain behaviors. A good chunk of the Russian information warfare directed at Americans over the past eight years or so has been intended to create a permissive environment for some Americans to act on their most extreme, negative, and destructive impulses. Other messaging is intended to demoralize and thereby demobilize the audience from taking action. This would be the equivalent to what is referred to in social learning as creating definitions unfavorable that then prevent action.
Bolding mine.
The defense of Ukraine is - in and of itself - an absolute good. Allowing Russia to seize Ukrainian territory and otherwise violate the post-war order would be a horrible precedent and lead to other wars elsewhere. Some of the subtext of Russia's invasion has been China observing how the world reacts.
However, it's worth noting that Russia just plain old sucks.
A somewhat unknowable variable in our descent into Trumpistan has been the impact of Russian trolls on social media. Part of the horror of Trump's past and present has been the wretched cruelty that has become standard operating procedure for the GOP. Ron DeSantis's human trafficking scheme is cruel and needless, but it really, really plays with a segment of the GOP electorate. Trump's barrage of insults during the GOP primary was what endeared him to this segment of the populace.
However, we have to consider that there is a permission effect that occurs when norms are violated. Norms exist because we tacitly agree they exist. The n-word is not OK to use because we have sort of evolved into a place where you can't use it if you're White. It's ubiquitous in rap music, but it's really not OK for White people to casually drop the n-word. As Ta-nehisi Coates put it, the word doesn't belong to White people any more.
What the Russian troll operation set out to do we create a permission space for people who just don't "get" that to start dropping the n-word again.
Twitter is full of terrible takes. It's sort of the métier of the site. And terrible takes on how to make tacos with Velveeta cheese are...whatever. But being Twitter's "main character" for the day when you say something like "Women over 30 who don't have kids aren't truly women" is not something normal people aspire to. I would never want to be dragged for a horrible take that inflamed people's anger.
And yet.
What we don't really know, but we have some hints about, is that the Russians have been systemically trolling the rest of the world, and it's not just for shits and giggles. Russia's only hope for global relevance is if the western world fractures, so they make it a priority to keep us yelling at each other.
Putin's recent decision to push bogus referenda in occupied territories to annex them so that he can threaten NATO and mobilize Russian troops in defense of "Russia" is pretty desperate. Dictatorships are brittle, and both mobilization and defeat in Ukraine could imperil his grip on power. (And sadly, what comes after could be worse.)
But if there was a way to oust Putin from power while denying the even worse elements in Russia from taking over, and therefore neuter the Russian trolls...That would be an amazing development for the world.
The Russian Duma has passed a law that will allow for a partial mobilization. It sounds like a mirror of America's "ready reserve" of veterans who have recently been discharged. It also gives more power to the state to oppress dissent and prosecute soldiers who refuse to fight. It speeds up bogus referenda in occupied Ukraine, allows Russia to recruit non-citizens into the military and tries to ramp up weapons production.
This will not win the war for them, but it could prolong it.
First of all, there is no evidence that ANY Russian troops have the professionalism and morale to win against Ukraine. However, adding more bodies to the field of combat will make it harder for Ukraine to defend in depth and mount the sort of offensives we saw this past month.
Secondly, who wants the carrot of "Russian citizenship" in return for joining the Russian army? There is a path for non-citizens to join the US military in return for citizenship, but people actually want to move to America.
Finally, the limits on Russian war production are very real and combine rampant corruption, but now include sanctions, especially on critical components like computer chips. They can buy from China (or Iran) but there is not some latent ability to create advanced weaponry on their own.
The perception was that Putin would avoid a full-scale mobilization, because it would be delegitimizing to his "special military operation" and entire regime. Now, they are going to prosecute the most popular pop star in Russia. If widespread resistance to the war breaks out, Putin is running out of cards to play.
Biden's recent (popular) decision to cancel some student debt seemed to dance around a bigger question: what is college for?
Obviously, one answer is to provide some sort of vetting and training for professions and professional schools. You want to be a doctor? Pass organic chemistry and do well on your MCATs. You'll need a good undergraduate program for that.
"Job training" however would seem to be a low priority. You hear all the time that people responsible for hiring people directly out of college want generalists and people who did well in school, almost regardless of their major. Sure, a STEM major...blah blah blah. But investment banks hire English majors who they think can...think.
There are excellent vocational colleges and community colleges, where you go to learn a craft or job skill, and we should support them. We should also support the X-ray technicians and IT support personnel with decent societal benefits like universal single payer health insurance, but whatever. Different post.
All of this is what I thought should be the proper role of college in society, but I was wrong.
It was to pay a handful of football coaches an obscene amount of money.
After reports of mass graves near Izium, it's really hard to countenance the so-called "realists" who call for some sort of negotiated ending to Russia's invasion that does not include a return to 2013 borders. Russia should be properly understood as a terrorist state.
After the remarkably successful operations to clear Kharkiv Oblast (region) of Russian invaders, it was inevitable that Ukraine would have to pause and reset. The question is - Are they capable of pulling off another "blitz" style offensive any time soon? This crowdsourced map shows some of the obstacles, namely the Oskil River, that would prevent a continuation of the Kharkiv offensive. Another option is to reinforce the slow attritive campaign around Kherson and hope to push the Russians over the Dnipro River.
The reality is that Russia has neither the manpower, the equipment nor the tactical flexibility to react quickly to Ukrainian advances. They are recruiting mercenaries from prisons. That won't end well. A Ukrainian strike at Mariupol would unwind much of the gains that Russia has made since February and force them to consider their position in Kherson regardless of the success of the Ukrainian advance there.
The frankly unbelievable saga involving what appears to be the legal definition of human trafficking by Florida caudillo Ron DeSantis is so deeply sad and illuminating of what has become of the Republican Party.
I see what DeSantis is doing. It's not subtle. He wants to out-Trump Trump. People have noted that he's even borrowing Trump's body language and hand gestures. Trump's salient position in 2016 was that migrants coming to this country were allying with existing minorities to create "American Carnage." As inflation recedes from everyday life for most people (or they simply become used to it) and Dobbs dominates headlines, GOP attacks have faltered. They need a new wedge and "scary immigrant caravans" are their Greatest Hit. In fact, they've been screaming about seizures at the border (of people and drugs) as evidence that there's a border crisis, when seizing drugs actually shows they are enforcing the border.
It's illogical, but it's all they've got.
They don't even have a policy solution to this make-believe crisis beyond building a wall, which is - again - just recycled Trumpism. So DeSantis gets his lapdog legislature to write a bill allowing him to ship undocumented migrants to "blue states" so that Abbott doesn't get the credit for being crueler than DeSantis. However, DeSantis has a problem: there aren't enough undocumented migrants in Florida to pull off his stunt. So he sends someone - we aren't exactly sure who - to Texas to lie to asylum seekers from Venezuela to get them on a plane to dump them on Martha's Vineyard.
First of...that's human trafficking. Deceiving someone and transporting them over state lines is a federal crime. Second, they picked asylum seekers, because there is a legal process for them to be in the country until their hearing. So the person who lied to them - some woman named Perla - knew where to find them. Third, picking Martha's Vineyard is where Obama and Clinton used to vacation, so they presumed it was where ultra powerful liberal coastal elites congregate. Fourth, they presumed that residents would freak out.
The first and second points sure seem like crimes. They lied to the migrants, wrote down false addresses that could complicate their showing up for asylum hearings and sent them far away from the hearings that were already scheduled. There's some evidence DHS agents contributed to this, and maybe they did. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if there were just people impersonating federal agents...also a crime.
They also counted on people freaking out. And people did, because this is cruel and dehumanizing. The Right Wing Wurlitzer was suspiciously in tune, offering up a chorus of rebukes to liberals who now had to come face to face with this imaginary crisis on the border. This was a deliberate misreading of why people were outraged. It deliberately ignores the outpouring of kindness and support these migrants received in Martha's Vineyard.
"Wow, this is incredibly cruel and dehumanizing."
"See, rich liberals are racist, too."
That's just a nuts interpretation, but in so many ways this ties itself back to the closure of Rightist media in this country. It doesn't have to make sense, if you repeat it enough. "Why can't we question the election?" Dude, you did, repeatedly. No fraud was found (except occasionally by Republicans). But they will still raise questions, because they don't want to hear the answers. "If the facts do not confirm with the theory, they must be disposed of."
Now, here's the critical question for the United States as a country: Is DeSantis right? Are we likely to "get off" on immiserating these asylum seekers? Is cruelty really the point?
Ideally, Charlie Crist can turn this stunt on DeSantis and create a wedge between Republicans and Cuban and Venezuelan Americans. Ideally, DeSantis goes down to defeat and demonstrates that Trumpism is a long term loser in American politics. But that requires Florida voters to do the right thing.
We may be fucked.
Ron DeSantis is in many ways even worse than Trump. Trump is a broken, stupid man; a narcissist cocooned from consequences his whole life by celebrity and wealth.
DeSantis looked at Trump and learned the lesson that cruelty is the way to the heart of the GOP primary voter. His decision to go to Texas, find legal asylum seekers and then ship them to Martha's Vineyard is simply an extension of Adam Serwer's famous dictum: "The cruelty is the point." What Greg Abbott is doing is awful, what DeSantis is doing is awful, but also forced and artificial.
Broadly speaking, the GOP is suddenly facing some headwinds in the midterms. Gas prices are dropping, Ukraine is winning, and then there's Dobbs. They desperately want to change the topic to something they think will motivate the amygdala of their cranky old voters: immigration. It was anti-immigrant rhetoric as much as anything that propelled Trump to power, and I think they are desperate to make that the focus of the midterms.
The DeSantis plan was to ship a bunch of asylum seekers to a liberal enclave to embarrass the libs. Instead, so many residents of the Vineyard came out to support these migrants that the police had to urge them to stay away. That won't make a bit of difference in the closed ecosystem of conservative media, though, and that is what DeSantis and Abbott are counting on.
I think there's some real question as to just how legal these stunts are. Is it kidnapping? Human trafficking? It would certainly be consistent if the Q-Anon party turned out to be actually trafficking people. (Every accusation is a confession.)
It is just fundamentally depressing that the Republican Party has gone from likeable idiots like Bush to unlikeable to smart people like Romney to unlikeable idiots like DeSantis and Trump.
I realize you don't want to get hooked on hopium, but I also think that it's going to be tough to capture the impact of Dobbs until we count all the votes in November. Josh Marshall has been collecting stories from women whose anger is palpable on the page.
Lindsay Graham's legislation is also a great example of just how tone deaf Republicans are politically on this issue. In all, I can see what he thinks he's doing. It does NOT ban abortion during the first trimester and there is some nod towards rape, incest and life of the mother, but it's very poorly constructed to continue to empower Talibangelicals at the state level. Secondly, it does NOT overturn Dobbs, which is the critical factor, giving Dobbs the feeling of permanence. Graham, who last came in contact with a vagina on the day he was born, simply cannot grok why women are so incredibly pissed.
Also, let's be clear that polling is deeply problematic these days. My own theory is that Trump motivates a certain segment of the population that is just really hard to reach, so you get results like 2016 and 2020 where the GOP significantly outperforms the polls. In 2018, the polls were their usual mixed bag - some leaned D, some leaned R - in part because Trump wasn't on the ballot. I also know from the behavior of partisan insiders, their internal polling is much more favorable to Democrats.
The people who do polls skew male, as well. They want to get their numbers right, and they don't want to have another 2016 (or even 2020) on their hands. As we get closer to the midterms, it will be interesting to dive into the polling data to see what their gender and age ratios are. I've never been a fan of relying on young people voting, but maybe Dobbs scrambles that.
At the very least, midterm elections are disproportionately skewed towards college educated professionals. This is why I'm OK with the Democratic party shifting towards that demographic. Dobbs, again, should motivate that group to move left.
TPM points out that a bunch of election deniers are running to take charge of electoral machinery in a shockingly large number of states.
In some of those states, the candidates will lose regardless, but in some, they will win regardless. Hopefully, the combination of Dobbs and January 6th will continue to cost the GQP winnable races.
Destroying his regime and him personally would be a huge step forward for the world as a whole.
Lindsay Graham just went out of his way to shoot the GOP midterm messaging in the face, like he was Dick Cheney's hunting partner. His proposal would ban abortions after 15 weeks, which is actually the first trimester or thereabouts. It's couched in "late term abortion" language that's been successful in the past.
The problem for Graham and the rest of the GOP is that the time frame is irrelevant if the word "ban" is in there. This is also explicitly contrary to GOP claims to want to "leave it to the states."
The inflation news was bad today, though I'm not seeing it as much in my daily life. It's mostly present in rent, medical costs and restaurant meals (the latter likely catching up to the curve). Gas is the source of real anxiety and that's coming down. I'm guessing they will revise this number downwards in a few weeks, but this is NOT the news Democrats want to hear.
Enter Lindsay Graham and his abortion ban (again, the time frame is irrelevant).
There's a ton of evidence that young women are registering to vote in disproportionate numbers. I have little doubt how this shit is playing in suburbs among college educated women.
What a tremendous fuck up.
Also, it's kinda funny to do this on the day that odious troll Ken Starr was delisted from the Federalist Society rolls.
There has been some effort to quash Democratic enthusiasm for a solid set of midterm elections by noting that the polls were really wrong in 2020 and 2016. Josh Marshall collects the arguments here.
As Marshall notes, the pundits urging caution tend to leave out 2018, which was a very good year for Democrats in congressional races. Some pundits note that 2018 was slightly overstated for Democrats in polls, too.
Maybe.
To me, it's pretty clear that pollsters cannot find or measure a segment of Trump voters. In 2018, Trump wasn't on the ballot, so Democrats performed much closer to the polling numbers, because Trump wasn't on the ballot.
It remains to be seen whether the GOP can motivate the Trump Coalition to get back to the polls, when the news surrounding Trump is terrible, the GOP have terrible candidates and then there's Dobbs. And the thing about Dobbs is that we can actively measure various special elections since the decision was reached and Democratic strength has been understated. Then you have the GOP seemingly intent on scoring own goals.
Certainly, yes, you should be skeptical of polls. But there has been real, measurable movement recently, too.
Get out to vote, people.
There is a rumor - and it should be made clear that it's only a rumor - that Russia is not sending reinforcements to its collapsing front in northeastern Ukraine. Some of this may be a fact that Russia has significant manpower issues. They are prioritizing stabilizing things where they can, and that list is pretty short.
There might also be a sense among Russian military command that this is a lost cause, and they don't want to throw what's left of their battered army into a losing cause. It could also be that Ukraine really HAS killed or captured significant number of Russians and there are simply no more troops to send.
Finally, it seems that even Ukraine has been surprised at the complete collapse of Russian forces. They may be primed for another assault towards Mariupol, but their successes have put that on the backburner for now. But Russia might be holding what few troops they have in reserve for prong three of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
In 1950, when North Korean forces collapsed after Inchon, Stalin was said to be resigned to a US/UN/ROK victory. "Fine, let the Americans be our neighbors." Then Mao stepped in and altered the trajectory of the war, but Russia is - in George Kennan's word "opportunistic" in its foreign policy. They push and if the world pushes back, they will retreat. If that remains true for Putin, we could see a complete collapse of Russian forces into pre-February boundaries.
I doubt Ukraine stops there.
Last night on Twitter, there were pictures of Donald Trump arriving in DC wearing golf clothes. Now, it's Twitter. There are no corroborating reports in vetted news media, except for the Daily Beast, which...ya know.
The idea that Donald Trump flew to DC to testify before a grand jury or perhaps even be indicted is just so juicy, it's amazing no other media outlet is filing a story on it. Reckless speculation surrounding this C-list mobster who became president is SOP for the media, so why are they being quiet now?
Or maybe Trump is just there to play golf. Who the hell knows?
While it is unclear what the Ukrainian War will look like in a month, it is abundantly clear that the terms of engagement have shifted. The early month of the war was about Russian initiative, then Ukrainian resistance and Russian withdrawal, followed by stalemate. We have now entered a potentially critical period as Russian troops are apparently abandoning both their positions and their equipment in a mad dash for safety. Offensive operations are more difficult than defensive ones and it remains to be seen how far Ukraine can exploit their amazing successes of the past week.
All of this once again returns the conversation to Vladimir Putin, a uniquely bad actor in the world today. Russia's inherent weakness was compensated for by screwing around in Brexit, the 2016 presidential election and less successfully in Catalan. It has supported the sort of Far Right authoritarianism we see in Brazil and Hungary and to a lesser extent in places like Poland and the United States.
Theda Skocpol has a thesis about revolutions: they occur when a country has been humiliated internationally. We are already seeing challenges from Putin's Right in response to the collapse near Kharkiv. Central Moscow was shutdown, presumably to ward of protests.
If you cast your gaze back to the late '90s, Putin was considered an acceptable Russian leader because he wasn't Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Zhirinovsky was an outright fascist, Putin is simply an opportunistic kleptocratic strong man.
A wounded Putin has always been a scary thing, as he does command nuclear weapons. If forces further to the Right seize power...yikes.
All of this, though, demonstrates that authoritarian regimes are fundamentally flawed because they lack transparency and flexibility. What we are seeing from Ukrainian forces - initiative, adaptation, creativity - is a hallmark of Western, democratic militaries. Russia is hobbled by endemic corruption (as Ukraine was under it's pro-Moscow regime) and can't muster the flexibility needed to respond to crises.
America has been through a shitstorm the last six years. However, America IS able to adapt and change. It is also - slowly - showing that it can hold corrupt figures accountable.
As Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried from time to time."
I and every other armchair, online general knew that Ukraine would launch a counteroffensive around Kherson in south-central Ukraine. About ten days ago, it appeared that this counteroffensive had started, and was going well, if slowly. There were real questions about whether Ukraine had the armor and manpower to exploit holes in the Russian lines.
Ukraine has, in fact, launched its more meaningful counterattack in the northeast area east of Kharkiv. They nearly encircled a large number of Russian troops who had to withdraw from Izium, which itself had been a major focus of the Russian offensive in the spring and early summer.
While Ukrainian forces have made meaningful gains around Kherson, the collapse of Russian resistance in the northeast is amazing. Because "everyone knew" that Ukraine was shaping the battlefield around Kherson, Russia must've denuded its frontlines near Kharkiv to reinforce its southwest flank.
One the worst/best things about the internet is how everyone is an expert after reading a few Wikipedia pages. What we are seeing here is a reminder that the hot-take industrial complex is just so much digital hot air. Back in February, "everyone knew" that Ukraine would fall to the Russian army and perhaps they would be able to launch a guerilla warfare campaign that might oust the invaders after several years of fighting. Instead, we got tremendous moral leadership from someone no one expected it from (Zelenskyy) and remarkable tactical and strategic leadership throughout a Ukrainian armed forces that had clearly learned a great deal since Russia invaded in 2014.
It seemed apparent to me that if Russia lost, it would lose slowly then very quickly. That's what looks to be happening now.
But then again...what do I know?
Yglesias actually interviews someone important, Janet Yellin, who has some interesting things to say about Biden's economic policy.
What's interesting about Yellin's frame of "modern supply side" economics is how it acknowledges that the supply side of the equation is important, but also that the "invisible hand" is just very clumsy.
The long running falsehood that markets are always efficient has underpinned some really bad and damaging policy choices, especially among Republicans who tend to believe it as an article of faith. It's tempting for someone like Yglesias and others to blame skyrocketing housing costs on public policy (NIMBY) but in many ways, all that's happening is the market is making places like San Francisco and NYC exorbitantly expensive. It's not that policy created this dynamic, but rather that it didn't shape it better.
According to long time Republican lawyer, Geoffrey Berman, Trump and the Trump White House pushed DOJ prosecutors to bring political cases and protect Trump's interests. You can read the Times' write up, but they pressed a BS prosecution of Obama's White House Counsel, Greg Craig, they tried to get Michael Cohen's case dismissed and wanted a prosecution of John Kerry.
Politicizing the DOJ is bad. Really bad. This is why Biden and Garland's DOJ has moved very, very slowly in their investigations against Trump. It is why they will only bring charges when they have a slam dunk case.
Tellingly, it is also why Trumpist mouthpieces on social media are claiming that Biden is using the DOJ as a partisan tool.
It's exactly what they did and what they will do again if they have a chance.
This bit about Ron Johnson is interesting. The idea of democracy is that if you pick an unpopular position, you will be punished by voters for doing so. This - and not Democrats being mean - is why Mitt Romney lost in 2012. He stood by Paul Ryan's cruel austerity program while people were still digging out from 2008.
Johnson was open to codifying Obergfell in the wake of Dobbs. Now, he's retreated. Why? Because he fears his base more than the general electorate. Now, Ron Johnson is a deeply stupid man and may be misreading the room on this one.
More concerning is how gerrymandering at the House level makes this dynamic worse. Odious morons like Louie Goehmert, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Traitor Green and Gym Jordan are simply not held accountable for taking awful positions, because all they have to do is win their primary and they win their seat. (I have some hope Boebert gets bounced this November.)
This isn't how it's supposed to work.
The WaPo has a... well, it would've been a bombshell before Trump waddled on to the public stage. Basically, the lede is this:
A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about classified material stashed in the Florida property.
Hey, that's not good.
Josh Marshall thinks it's a "friendly" country, since we would have the most insight into their defenses. If it is, the odds are that it's Israel, and it wouldn't shock me if that intelligence found its way into Saudi hands. The problem with that theory is that Trump and Jared actually did bring some reconciliation between Israel and various Gulf States. Selling Israel out doesn't feel like Trump's MO, simply because he had a pretty good relationship with Israeli leadership.
One especially bonkers theory is that it is intelligence on France, because Trump hated Macron, because Melania smiled at him.
In my mind, the nuclear and defense secrets are almost certainly Russian or Chinese. Understanding their defense capabilities is obviously the first priority of US intelligence. So this would appease Trump's raging narcissism to have the "really good stuff" in his personal possession. This shows how powerful and "in charge" he is, because, "Look Mar A Lago Hanger-on, I have intel on Russia/China." None of his cronies and lickspittles are going to care about France's nuclear posture or defenses.
If he was monetizing the secrets, then Russia makes the most sense, as Russia would be keenly interested in what we know about their defenses. This could go back to whatever leverage Putin has on Trump, as well. If it was just about appearing powerful and plugged in, then China would make sense, since he cast them as the "villain" after Covid struck.
Ultimately, if the documents were there to feed his narcissism, then it would make sense that he would keep our most classified assessments of our two greatest geopolitical rivals.
Everything I'm hearing from legal sources that I trust has this to say about the appointment of a Special Master in the seizure of classified documents:
- It is, at best, just a delay in proceedings
- It is a terrible decision unbound by precedent or common sense.
- It is an example of how corrupted the judiciary is becoming.
Special Masters are supposed to be neutral lawyers who assess whether evidence is covered by attorney-client privilege. None of the documents fall under attorney-client privilege. The judge seems to suggest that the Special Master assess whether the documents are covered by Executive Privilege, except Trump does not get to claim Executive Privilege as a former president.
Ultimately, the most important decision in the short term is WHO gets appointed Special Master. If it's another Trumpist legal figure, we will have a true case of corruption on our hands. If it's an impartial legal figure, frankly the matter should be resolved in a few days, because it's all bullshit.
The precedent that this could establish would wreck criminal law and/or establish that ex-presidents are above the law. Awful as an idea, hopefully just a nuisance in practice.
This little blurb about (are you kidding me?) Tudor Dixon, the GOP candidate for governor of Michigan, is revealing and typical. We can also trace this to the unbelievable (yet believable) behavior of Rick Scott as chair of the RSCC.
As the Republican Party enters the midterms hoping to capitalize on public unrest about inflation and perhaps crime, they have been hamstrung by Trump's preference for sycophants and toadies who suck up to the Big Lie. The thing is, Trump's influence goes deeper than demanding fealty to his lies about losing the election. It has to do with the basics of Trumpism.
I've been reticent to call Trumpism "fascism" in its purest form. To me, Trumpism resembles the patrimonial authoritarianism we see in Putin's Russia and parts of post-colonial Africa. A "Big Man" figure who appeals to populist feelings to national grievance and then loots the state of money - usually money derived from resources, but not in Trump's case - and tramples civil rights and liberties. It is usually linked to a form of religious conservatism that amplifies the attacks on rights and liberties.
In other words, Trumpism is a political movement to loot the state for the benefit of a cadre of supporters close to the Big Man.
Which leads us back to Dixon and Scott - and frankly I would be surprised if they were the only ones.
There has always been a level of self-dealing in modern politics - the hiring of firms to run your campaigns that likely kickback a little cash or hire family members to do work. The thing is, a reputation for doing that used to be political suicide. Just like nakedly racist and sexist remarks used to be political suicide. Trump's corruption was so brazen, so obvious - and so obviously unpunished - that the restraints on naked corruption were removed, just as the restraints on naked racist and sexist comments was removed.
Modern Republican politicians are in it for the grift.
Here are two pieces of supporting evidence. The first is that - having "won" the abortion fight with Dobbs - Republican candidates are trying to soften their previously held stances on abortion, because there is a clear backlash coming. Meanwhile, they will not soften, at all, their firmly held beliefs about regressive tax cuts. In other words, they will fight for abortion just as long as it is politically expedient to rile up the Talibangelicals, but they will only really go to the mattresses for tax cuts that enrich them and their friends and funders. It's money, not culture war shit that they care about. Because it's always about money.
The second is their absolute fealty to Trump, because Trump is the wellspring of the grift. Rather than call Trump out for his horrid behavior and myriad crimes, they have to stick with him, because he is the source of their money. This is why they didn't issue a party platform in 2020, because the grift is the platform.
There are two hilarious outcomes to this. The first is that you have people like Scott and candidates up and down the ballot who are "raising money" but that money isn't going in to necessary campaign activities. The second is that Trump is outraising all of them, and he's not spending that money to elect Republican candidates (for any number of reasons, but his inherent greed has to top the list).
Of course, from the point of view of the grift, losing in November isn't necessarily a downside. In fact, let's say Democrats hold the House and get to 54 Senate seats. Democrats repeal the filibuster, pass Voting Rights legislation, codify Roe, restructure entities like the EPA to better fight Climate Change, pass common sense criminal justice reform, immigration reform and gun control measures.
All of that would be a fundraising boon to the grifters. They are milking their marks outrage for money, and being in the perpetual minority would actually work just fine.
So here's to hoping that all sides are happy in November.
UPDATE: Anne Laurie highlights how even some of the big money donors are drying up.
The phrase "institutional racism" draws snide looks and smirks from the Trumpist Right, but if you want a clear picture of what it looks like, look at Jackson, Mississippi.
Biden's speech was not nearly as divisive as Republicans are caterwauling about it. It outlined clearly a set of values that - until recently - were so boringly anodyne and cliched that no one would really challenge them. He then - correctly - pointed out that "MAGA Republicans" have abandoned fealty to those basic American principles. Focusing on Trump, he obviously launched an attack on the Capitol and tried to suborn electoral fraud in Georgia, Arizona and elsewhere.
Headlines like this do not help at all. It suggests that "both side" have "differing views." The actual article eventually points out that the canon of Trumpism is false. His claims of electoral fraud are false, he actively fomented violence and the Republican Party has toed the line about 2020 that he has demanded.
But it's buried deep in the article. People react to headlines and images, not the part of the article inside the fold. Social media, though, has prioritized an information economy that runs on "clicks" and controversy rather than trying to enlighten people.
Plus, legacy media practices are designed to be scrupulously fair and impartial. Trump has exposed the fundamental bankruptcy of that approach when dealing with a dangerous, corrupt demagogue. There is no "impartial" way to cover Trump. Yes, it is unprecedented for the FBI to execute a search warrant on a former president. Yes, it is unprecedented for there to be multiple on-going investigations of corrupt practices by a former president. But Trump is criminally corrupt. Outlets like the NY Times and now CNN are ill-equipped to handle someone like Trump.
Interestingly, the article does note that this new rhetorical tack is coming from strategists who have studied the language and people's attitudes. Hopefully, they've done their job well. The article notes - correctly, as far as it goes - that the "Left" and "Right" see reality in fundamentally different ways. Anyone to Joe Manchin's left believes that free and fair elections are central to American politics. Trumpists believe that only when Republicans win, can those elections have been free and fair.
How the fuck to you bothsides that?
Biden's speech the other night was - on substance - fairly anodyne. Conceding electoral losses is a function of democratic competition. Political violence designed to overturn those elections is un-American. He specifically calls out people like Lindsay Graham who were predicting violence if Trump was indicted.
A certain segment of Republican Twitter freaked out so hard that you could smell the flopsweat through the internet. They basically accused Biden of dividing the country by pointing out how Trump had divided the country. Biden very clearly divided the Republican Party between the "mainstream" and "MAGA" Republicans. He very clearly intended to force the GOP to reckon with their fealty to Trump in the wake of January 6th and the recent seizure of classified documents at Mar A Lago.
Legitimate criticism has been raised about the awful lighting scheme behind him. Less legitimately, I think, but still somewhat valid, about having Marines standing in the background.
Almost none of them will engage with the text of the speech as actually written. Biden wants America to truly reckon with what supporting Trump means in 2022. Whatever excuses one might make in 2016 for voting for him then, those evaporate in face of six years of brazen criminality, two impeachments. a failed autogolpe and finally the dreadful behavior surrounding reams of classified documents.
My guess - or perhaps my hope - is that the Biden team has another smoking gun, specifically around those documents. He has dared the MAGA crowd to tether themselves even closer to Trump before revealing exactly who he gave some of those documents to. If - say - Trump gave Saudi Arabia nuclear secrets, and the CIA/NSA/FBI have the receipts on that, then this speech is a masterpiece of political strategy. If Biden thinks that the existing evidence is enough to finally cause Republicans to break with the worst person to ever hold the presidency, I fear he may have overestimated where many Americans are.
Of course, in no way does that mean the text of that speech was wrong. Still could've done without the glaring red lighting.
The results of the special election in Alaska should not mean much in predicting the midterms, except for two issues.
The first is the relative quality of the candidates. Mary Peltola is a remarkable woman with deep connections and a resonant message for Alaskans. Sarah Palin is the Ur-Trump: an ignorant culture warrior and reality TV star. The fact is that there are a lot of mini-Trumps running and a lot of people like Elise Stefanik who have tied themselves tightly to him.
The second is yet again the salience of Dobbs. Peltola did not run exclusively on abortion rights, but the contrast was clear.
Reading the Twitter feeds of Republicans and GOP organization, there is a sort of culture war flopsweat going on as the desperately try to gin up outrage over the border and crime. They desperately want to change the conversation from Dobbs, but I don't see it working beyond their base.
Maybe, just maybe, Democrats keep the House.
