We Need To Normalize That Biden Is Good

 Joe Biden has had an excellent year by just about any standard you care to measure. He's signed 65 pieces of bipartisan legislation. Did you know that? He actually gained Senate seats for his party. You probably knew that. Inflation is coming under control and we are exceeding our goals to decarbonize our economy. 

Yeah... he's boring. He has a stutter. He's old. I get it. You want someone with Bill Clinton's charisma and Obama's brains, but instead the Old Irish Pol turns out to know a thing or two about how to run a government.

Pretty Good Year

 Jonathan Alter explains why 2022 was a pretty good year. This is a reasonable position to take, but as I and others have noted, we are addicted to doom.

Things could be getting better, but we won't "feel" like they are getting better, because we have wired ourselves not to feel good news.

Not Just A Weird Story

 It seems pretty clear that serial liar, George Santos, probably committed multiple financial crimes in his life. There's the open criminal charge from Brazil, but his entire American resume is so replete with falsehoods and unexplained sources of money that it would strain credulity to believe that he wasn't involved in financial crimes.

In some ways, this mirrors Trump, who committed multiple financial crimes over the decades, from tax evasion to outright fraud. If Santos had lost his election - or if Trump had in 2016 - they could have coasted on their increased profile to grift even more. 

What's striking, of course, is that it took the scrutiny of running for public office to expose their criminality, and yet they decided to run for office. 

Narcissism, amirite?

Blue States

 Democrats showed increasing strength at the state level in 2022. They will control the "trifecta" in states that have 140 million Americans, which is more than the number of Americans living in states with a Republican trifecta. Importantly, Democrats won the trifecta in Michigan, a state that famously barely flipped for Trump in 2016. They also control the trifecta in New York, California, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado and the usual assortment of New England and Pacific Coast states.

Republicans control the trifectas in Texas, Florida, Georgia and Ohio. Significant larger states that have split control include Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona. Meanwhile, North Carolina and Wisconsin have been gerrymandered so extensively that Democratic control of state legislatures is basically impossible under current conditions.

States during the Progressive Era were called the Laboratories of Democracy, but conservative strength at the state level - from natural and artificial gerrymanders - often led to terrible laws written by ALEX like "Stand Your Ground" laws. Now, we have the potential reverse of this dynamic. 

These new Democratic trifectas will allow for legislation surrounding choice, marijuana and criminal justice reform and other important issues. Hell, in Connecticut, we got a major tax cut!

As the video above notes, we are not going to see any significant legislation at the federal level for the next two years, but there could be some important work being done at the state level.

Off To The Great American Carnage In NYC

 I hope to see at least one drag queen MS-13 member kill a cop with airborne fentanyl while teaching critical race theory.

Reality Had A Well-Known Liberal Bias

 Arizona courts have thrown out Distaff Trump's lawsuit to overturn the gubernatorial election. Lake will, of course, appeal, because denying reality is pretty much a bedrock Republican position in the Age of Trump.

The consistent failure of Republicans in front of judges demonstrates how wedded the GOP has become to the alternate universe of Fox/OANN/Newsmax. Those organizations have moved so far from objective reality that they have created a cocoon of disinformation that is as hard as diamonds. The more information contradicts their beliefs, the deeper that must mean the conspiracy goes.

Judges and courts, however, do not give a shit whether you "feel" like something is true or not. Whether you are Alex Jones, Kari Lake or Donald Trump, courts do not care about what you suspect, only what you can prove.

This is important to keep in mind as the Department of Justice considers charges against Trump related to January 6th. I think we all "know" that Trump was at the heart of the insurrection, but the ability of the DOJ to prove that will be tricky, given that you will need a paper trail and to establish Trump's motivations in the moment.

Still, the courts HAVE worked in large part to keep the excesses of Trumpism at bay.

What's The Equivalent?

 Read this nice story about a Congresswoman from New Mexico who made it her mission to replace a dangerous school on Navajo lands. She said that this was the reason she came to Congress: to make sure some of her most vulnerable constituents had a safe, new school.

Can you imagine a similar agenda or sense of achievement from a Republican member of Congress? Aside from defunding critical race drag shows or cutting Elon Musk's taxes, what exactly do Republican members come to Washington to do? Not complain about...do?

There are a lot of differences between the two parties, but that one strikes me as fundamental. If you are not in Washington to solve actual problems - not the outrage de jour on Fox - why are you there? 

You are there, because it beats working, because it's prestigious. So, winning means more than doing anything concrete, because, hell, you aren't there to do anything concrete to begin with. So, if winning is more important than anything else, then it's very easy to avoid having principles. It's very easy to embrace Donald Trump.

Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Animals

 Hope the next year brings at least a little more peace on earth.

The Don

 Reading this account of Cassidy Hutchinson's lawyer is like reading a draft of a really crappy Godfather knock off. Donald Trump wanted to be Don Corleane, not Don Trump. That's been clear since his relationship with Roy Cohn. 

So...yes...we should prosecute the Don.

The Omnibus

 The House has passed and Biden will sign the last budget we will likely see until 2024. The primary objection from Republicans seemed to be that it was - wait for it - too long. Sure, too big, too much money, but they objected to it being too long. It's $1.7 trillion, did they expect it to fit in a Tweet?

The Post notes its past includes many objectives.

With it, lawmakers appended a wide array of other long-stalled legislative proposals — banning TikTok on government devices, helping Americans save for retirement, protecting pregnant workers from discrimination and rethinking the way the country counts electoral votes in the presidential election.

It was noteworthy that AOC and Rashida Tlaib voted against it or abstained respectively. Probably because of the size of the military budget, but that's obviously bloated by the massive amount of material we have and will send to Ukraine. Since we are sending surplus munitions to Ukraine, the bill not only provides direct aid, but it also allows for replenishing what we've shipped overseas. 

The bill also changes the Electoral Vote Count Act to bypass Trump's theories on how to overturn the election. There are also interesting benefits for pregnant women that passed with bipartisan votes in the Senate. In fact, quite a lot of this got votes in the Senate.

Back when he was elected, Biden was criticized for believing he could get Republicans to do anything with Democrats. But the so-called "Silent Congress" has passed quite a lot of legislation. Some of this might be McConnell's realization that breaking the Senate has been part of what created Trump, but I also think there are people, at least in the Senate, who might want to govern a little. I think they take their lead from Romney, frankly, but there are a handful of GOP Senators (only a handful) who want to try and make life better for Americans.

The House GOP?  Eh, not so much.

However, nine Republicans voted for the Omnibus in the House. At first, I was hopeful that this could be a moderating caucus between the Insane Clown Posse Caucus and the Democrats, but looking at the roster of Republicans who actually wanted to govern is sobering.

Here's the list: Liz Cheney, Rodney Davis, Brian Fitzpatrick, Jaime Herrera Butler, Chris Jacobs, John Katko, Adam Kinzinger, Fred Upton, Steven Womack. 

The bolded members will not be returning to Congress in January. Only Fitzpatrick and Womack voted for the Omnibus and will be seated in the next session. Any Republican with even a semblance of a desire to actually govern is dead meat when it comes to the GOP caucus.

The question is how many of the new members will want to vote for budgets or even continuing resolutions in the coming years? You need five members to cross party lines, so let's assume - perhaps rashly - that Fitzpatrick and Womack will continue to keep the lights on. Now you need three. There are seven members who were elected by under 3% of the vote, presumably making them look at a tougher re-election landscape in 2024. The three from NY alone should worry about a backlash to the backlash that swept them into office. Who knows what Santos will do.

While it is empirically good that this bill passed and we will keep the government open and fund important programs, we need to understand that we are headed for more "government by tantrum" in the next two years, because the NY Democratic Party doesn't understand how to play hardball politics anymore.

It's Not A CANDIDATE Quality Problem

 The GOP's relatively poor showing in the midterm elections has been blamed on "candidate quality" which is meant to refer to the latter day freak shows of Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and Blake Masters. (Apparently it doesn't refer to George Santos, because no one paid attention to what a colossal freak he is.)

It is therefore considered a worrying sign for Democrats in 2024, when the Senate map is terrible and presumably the GOP won't make the mistake of nominating people like Kari Lake or Walker.

There's a reason why I'm skeptical of this.

The GOP is not a party with a lunatic fringe. It's a party with a lunatic center. 

This article on Charlie Kirk is a great example. Kirk is one of the young idiots like Ben Shapiro, Lara Loomer and James O'Keefe who have become stars within the Right Wing firmament for reasons that no one outside of that closed information system can explain. Kirk is famous and influential, because he is famous and influential. While there are certainly figure like that on the left, they have marginal influence on actual policy and politics in the Democratic Party. Instead, the center of gravity in Rightist politics is represented by these pod-people who exist entirely within a universe of Fox News' making.

It is worth noting that we are continually being reminded that the people at Fox themselves don't believe this bullshit. While Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have enough life experience to know that Roger Stone is a liar and con artist, but then turn around and use those lies and cons to entertain and enrage their audience, idiots like Kirk or Lake really don't seem to get that it's all lies. Apparently, Kari Lake really believes that the 2020 election was stolen. Because she's an idiot, and being an idiot is a critical way to relate to the brain-worm infested GOP electorate. Ask Herschel Walker's voters.

So, even if there were a bunch of great GOP candidates waiting in the wings, the reality is that the GOP base will continue to cough up hairballs like Mehmet Oz and lose elections that they should win.

The Real War On Christmas

 The Orthodox Church of Ukraine is moving its celebration of Christmas to December 25th.  As we have a Ukrainian student staying with us, he has explained that January 7th is when Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendars celebrate Christmas. By moving the date, Ukraine is signaling a further break with Russia and a closer commitment to Europe.

But tell me again how insulted you are when someone says Happy Holidays.

Crazier And Crazier

 The George Santos story just keeps getting weirder and weirder. The "openly gay Republican" is now, perhaps, not even that. (Also, apparently I owe a partial apology to Santos' Democratic opponent. I said, his opponent didn't bother to find out this crap before the election. Evidently, they did, but they couldn't interest the press and never tied all the fabulist bullshit together. My criticism of the media and the NY Democratic Party still stands.)

A lifetime ago, my wife and I worked with a young woman who was a similar compulsive liar. One my groomsmen in my wedding fell for it and nearly had his life destroyed by her architecture of lies. The fact that she was very pretty no doubt helped her, but also, no one really bothers to check this crap out. We trust people not to lie ALL THE TIME. White lies, lies of expediency...sure, we've all fudged and trimmed the truth to our needs at some point. 

Santos is clearly pathological, as Laura Wickberg was. I'm not sure how you even combat it.

UPDATE: Nope, the media - at least the local media - gets a pass, too.

UPDATE 2: Seriously, FUCK THE NY STATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

Addicted To Doom

 Yglesias talks about the accomplishments of the Secret Congress. Basically, Congress has done some great stuff, but it flies under the radar for two reasons. First, the more publicity it gets, the harder it is to make a deal. Partisanship means no one will sign off on any deals that are public. So, Congress writes a really good bill for clean water - in Yglesias' example - and the water gets cleaner. But if you make a big deal about it, Republicans won't do the next deal.

The bigger reason he notes - and this is true and more important - is that we are driven by negativity. We consume news stories that are negative. No one wants positive news, I guess. It's partly a function of the 24 hour news cycle and being terminally online. People click through negative headlines, even if the stories are neutral, so outlets write negative headlines. 

I just spoke to an old family friend who felt the world was falling apart. It really isn't, but it feels that way. We are so addicted to bad news that we can't even see the good news. Anyone notice the price of gasoline these days? As Yglesias notes, the story of "Gas Prices Return To Normal Levels" is not a story any major outlet will run, unless they can spin it around to a negative: "Cheaper Gas Prices Imperil Climate."

With Twitter falling apart, I've been wasting time on Tik Tok instead, and I found a feed of heartwarming stories. Just tweets and posts about really, really nice things. It was great! And yet when Jim Krasinski did his "Good News" YouTube thing, people shit all over it.

We are incapable of accepting the fact that in most ways, the world is much better off than it was 50 or even 20 years ago...which actually kinda makes us worse off. The air and water are cleaner, we've stamped out public smoking, we don't stand on the Cold War nuclear precipice, miracle drugs and technological advances proceed apace.

And yet the internet and mobile devices are robbing us of our happiness. If we combine the pervasive emotional impact of being online with the frankly terrifying advances in AI, it's time we stopped letting technology grow without some sort of master plan. We need to control the machines, because they are, to a large extent, controlling us. 

Ultimately, all I want for my sons is for them to be happy. Certain things - a modicum of wealth and comfort, health, love - are required for this, but I fear we will squander our happiness in pursuit of dopamine hits from Instagram and Tik Tok.

There's A There There

 If the House Ways and Means Committee votes to release Trump's tax returns, it means that there is something in them worth exposing. I don't think they will release them out of spite. They aren't Republicans.

Remember Covid? Crazy Times...

 So Covid revisited our house this past week. Luckily only one of us was Covid positive so that I could take my son and our team to a wrestling tournament last Saturday. (He took second, but he absolutely could have and arguably should have won the final. We are still bitter.)

Anyway, Covid positive, but we had tests and tested a lot. She went on Paxlovid and was pretty miserable for about 4-5 days but is testing negative and is on the mend. No pneumonia, thank Dog. 

China has finally relaxed its Zero Covid policy of lockdowns and quarantines. Super happy for the people of China who can do normal stuff again. Here's the problem: China's vaccine sucks and their vaccination rates ain't great. Which means we have over a billion people who are going to see Covid race through their population and then the virus will mutate. 

As this weekly collection of Covid stories points out, we have dismantled much of the surveillance architecture surrounding Covid and now we won't know what will hit us until it hits us. We are still seeing a couple of thousand people a week die from Covid and if we see another January spike (we will) that number will go up. People aren't getting boosters or variant specific boosters.

TL;DR: we are headed for another Covid surge, but we will shrug as a few tens of thousands of Americans die. If they were all Trumpist QAnon types, that would be...interesting.

Nice Job Everyone, Nice Job

 The Times has an expose on freshman GOP Congressman George Santos.

First, the context. Republicans gained 10 seats in the midterms. If that number had been 5 seats, Democrats would've held on to the House. Democrats lost five swing seats in NY state. Democrats had tried to gerrymander their state, in response to GOP gerrymanders in places like Florida, Ohio and Texas, but the state Supreme Court struck down the map. Right there, that was probably enough to swing those seats towards the GOP.

However, in NY-3, the incumbent did not run, opting instead for a failed bid to become governor. What had been a Lean-D district was suddenly open...and no one checked on who George Santos was.

Now that he's been elected, the Times decided to look into the claims of his personal biography and Hoooolyyyyy Shit.

Basically, the Times looked into his claims about his employment, his education, his charity work...all bullshit. He fabricated companies, said he went to schools he didn't go to...it's amazing. He was arrested in Brazil for stealing a checkbook from someone his mother - a nurse - was caring for. He looks to be - though the Times won't say it - involved in several scams and Ponzi schemes.

He claimed to have worked for a company called Devolder and you get 'graphs like this one:

In the disclosure, Mr. Santos said that he was the Devolder Organization’s sole owner and managing member. He reported that the company, which is based in New York but was registered in Florida, paid him a $750,000 salary. He also earned dividends from Devolder totaling somewhere between $1 million and $5 million — even though Devolder’s estimated value was listed in the same range.

The Devolder Organization has no public-facing assets or other property that The Times could locate. Mr. Santos’s disclosure form did not provide information about clients that would have contributed to such a haul — a seeming violation of the requirement to disclose any compensation in excess of $5,000 from a single source.

Where did THAT money come from? The follow up is even more amazing:

“This report raises red flags because no clients are reported for a multimillion-dollar client services company,” Mr. Payne said, adding: “The congressman-elect should explain what’s going on.”

The Times attempted to interview Mr. Santos at the address where he is registered to vote and that was associated with a campaign donation he made in October, but a person at that address said on Sunday that she was not familiar with him.

How the hell did this not get discovered? He was clearly using his campaign as a personal slush fund:

Campaign disclosures show that Mr. Santos lived large as a candidate, buying shirts for his staff from Brooks Brothers and charging the campaign for meals at the restaurant inside Bergdorf Goodman.

Mr. Santos also spent a considerable amount of money traveling — charging his campaign roughly $40,000 in flights to places that included California, Texas and Florida. All told, Mr. Santos spent more than $17,000 in Florida, mostly on restaurants and hotels, including at least one evening at the Breakers, a five-star hotel and resort in Palm Beach, three miles up the road from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence.

So, we have someone who is telling apparent lies about his life story, running a campaign as a grift to make money, probably has a litany of financial crimes in his background...I mean, he's the perfect Trumpist candidate!

Here's the kicker, though.

Where was this investigation BEFORE the election? Where was the Times, which is the only news organization with the resources to do this sort of reporting?

And most of all, where was the NY Democratic Party? I don't have all the patience in the world with left and left of center critics who slam the Democrats for, I dunno, allowing Joe Manchin to live or not somehow getting 10 Republican Senators to codify Roe.

But the NY Democratic Party is an absolute disgrace from top to bottom. Their failure to "properly" gerrymander their state, Cuomo's disastrous picks for the State Supreme Court and the fact that they had the guy in charge of retaining the House majority lose his own seat...AND THEY LET THIS YEGG WIN AN ELECTION WITHOUT VETTING...Sweet Baby Jesus...

GOAT

 Yesterday saw perhaps the greatest single game in the history of any sport, by one of the greatest athletes of all time. The debate between Pele, Maradona and Messi can never be settled, since they played in three different eras. But the Messi-Ronaldo debate is done and dusted. Ronaldo's peevishness certainly diminished his luster, too.

To have  World Cup final - with the compelling narrative of the greatest player of his era versus the defending champs and the greatest player of the next era - would have been enough. Argentina's second goal was such a piece of brilliance, the parade seemed on in Buenos Aires. But Argentina struggles to finish games and France had a brilliant 90 seconds to tie it. 

When Messi put them back ahead in extra time...and then France tied it again...and then Martinez made one of the greatest saves in World Cup history...and then penalties...Holy crap.

It certainly helped my blood pressure that I wanted Messi to finally etch his name in the pantheons of greats to lift the World Cup, but I wasn't Argentinian.

Is Trump Done?

 Josh Marshall looks at the latest spasmodic grift from Trumpistan and wonders if maybe Trump has finally lost his grip on the Trumpenproletariat. My skepticism is based on the following:

- Establishment GOP leaders want Trump gone, so they will conduct push poll after push poll to convince people that Trump is a loser and DeSantis is a winner. We know Trump voters don't answer polls, so any softness in his poll numbers feels suspect to me.

- The stink of losing certainly does hold to Trump, but Cult 45 doesn't believe he lost. Evangelicals - almost by definition - are impervious to reason and facts. They have faith and faith alone, and right now that faith is invested in Trump. If the GOP forces him aside against his wishes, he will burn the place down.

So maybe DeSantis gets a clean kill shot and eliminates Hair Furor. More likely we get a series of primary wins and losses and a brutal, drawn out bloodbath. Or - if DeSantis gets his kill shot - Trump bolts the party and forms his own, based on the sort of grift that Marshall notes and Paul Campos laments.

The single best thing for America is a massive schism on the right in 2024. Two rightist parties fighting it out for every House and Senate seat and the White House itself. Dark Brandon wins 45 states if that happens.

This F-ing Guy Again

 Yglesias has one of his better pieces about Elon Musk, online anger and the conservative mind.  He cited this golden line:

“Twitter is 90% someone imagining a guy, tricking themselves into believing that guy exists and then getting mad about it.”

This is about as accurate a description of Twitter and general online behavior as I can think of. It wasn't ALL about getting outraged over imaginary crap, but a lot of it really is. As Twitter dies, I certainly notice I've been spending less and less time there. I have a few curated feeds about Ukraine and Iran that I check in on periodically, but I don't just scroll through it. It's just boring now. Maybe Musk should rebrand Twitter as the Boring Company.

It's telling that as Twitter gets boring, it loses engagement and that's because anger drives engagement. The negative engagement model is making us all pretty miserable. This isn't to say that I didn't really enjoy the witty and insightful takes on that hellscape. I did. But there was also the pervasive "someone on the Internet is wrong" dynamic. I don't miss that.

That the World's Formerly Richest Man is making himself angry and miserable about made-up bullshit does complete his journey to the conservative side of the cultural divide. Yglesias does some Bothsides crap about angry leftists, but it is clear that anger drives extremism, and social media makes us angrier.

Being outraged by imaginary stuff is now the primary focus and even the goal of conservative politics. There is no policy, no governing philosophy. It is simply endless iterations of people getting outraged by pronouns and someone who chooses to wear a mask to the grocery store. It is - in that sense - fundamentally indecent, fundamentally bullying and cruel.

The GOP is basically the personification of the worst parts of social media.

Fusion Won't Save Us

 The announcement that we finally got "more" energy out of a fusion reaction than we put into it is...great? But it does not mean we are anywhere close to having fusion power plants. This is mostly a "raw science" breakthrough. It's important on the road to getting fusion...someday.

But we should still be building fission power plants today. Insane that we aren't. Climate change is very real and very scary. The fact that we won't use the single best tool in our arsenal to make abundant electricity to de-carbonize the world is just baffling to me.

Serious Question

 What - exactly - do conservatives think the electoral appeal of Hunter Biden's penis is? I suppose they think they were so successful with Benghazi that they are eager to run the same playbook on Joe Biden.

This negates the fact that Hillary Clinton came with a baked in disadvantage: she's a woman, and we have unconscious biases against women asking for leadership positions. She was also the ultimate "insider" in an election that tilted towards an outsider...AND SHE WON MORE VOTES.

Exam Week

 Ugh

Global Crazy

 Reading this BBC piece about basically a sovereign citizen movement in Germany (linked to those folks they arrested earlier this week) makes me realize how universal the civic craziness is. For all the profoundly dysfunctional aspects of American civic life, it's not uniquely American. I mean, from a purely economic point of view, Brexit was crazier and more damaging than even the election of Trump. 

By civic life, I mean the shared space we live in and agree to manage by certain rules, and I'm not sure how you repair civic life. I'm at least a little skeptical that we ever had some golden age of civic life, and even when it was better, it often excluded minority groups. How do we create a shared sense of community? 

For conservatives, civic life is centered around a faith tradition, but those faith traditions are often exclusionary and rarely universal. For liberals, the concept of tolerance is central to community. Those two visions are diametrically opposed. It's difficult to say "There is no god but God and Muhammad is his profit, but I'm cool with atheists, too." Faith often leads to certainty, whereas tolerance is rooted in questioning and doubt about your own perspective. "I might be wrong, so I won't judge" is very different from faith.

Max Weber (I think) referred to the Enlightenment as the "disenchantment of the world," but that was only true for a slice of educated elites. Increasingly today, we are divided along lines of faith and no faith, as opposed to between faiths. Faith-based community was a strong community and tolerance-based community are more atomistic.

The challenge for liberals is to create a universalist and connective theory of community to bind people to a common civic project.

Fuck - And I Cannot Stress This Enough - Her

 Kristen...Christine...Kyrsten Sinema's latest Drama Queen PAY ATTENTION TO ME stunt is deeply damaging to Democratic slim hopes to hold on to the Senate in 2024. With the 51st Senate seat being captured, Sinema's incessant need to be the center of attention has been degraded. Additionally, the swerve of the Arizona GOP into QAnon-land has rendered the possibility of Ruben Gallego winning the primary and the general election pretty solid. Sinema is increasingly toxic within the Arizona Democratic Party, and I think even someone as obtuse as she is knows this.

If - as she claims, which who the fuck knows what her claims are worth - she does not change how she votes, this has very few implications for the next two years. Democrats will have a solid if thin majority that will allow them to hold majority positions on committees. 

No, this is about ratfucking the 2024 Senate election. If she runs as an independent and Gallego runs as the Democrat, then this dramatically increases the odds of Senator Kari Lake or Senator Paul Gosar for six nightmarish years.

Biden needs a plan to offer her a plum job somewhere - Ambassador to Monaco - just to get her toxic need to be the center of attention out of the Senate. Arizona has a Democratic governor who can appoint Gallego to an interim appointment. Sinema can then transition to what she really wants to be: a K-Street prostitute.

Joe Manchin I always understood. Sinema is just a toxic narcissist and needs to be treated as the closest thing to Trump the Democratic Party has produced.

UPDATE: Paul Campos thinks this might be prelude to a No Labels third party run. She has to know she's deadmeat in Arizona.

Good, I Guess?

 Congress has passed a law to protect same sex and interracial marriages, Yay!

Because you can no longer trust the Supreme Court to have an expansive view of personal rights. Boo!

So Much Losing

 Let's recap Trump's Tuesday.

- The Trump Organization was convicted on all 17 counts of tax fraud and other criming. 

- The January 6th Commission has made criminal referrals. 

- Jack Smith, the Special Counsel, has subpoenaed Trump's minions trying to overturn the election.

- Trump's ritual humiliation in the midterm elections were capped by Walker's defeat in Georgia.

Trump's entire (false) public persona is that of the billionaire "winner" who wins by always winning. It's a self-fulfilling cycle whereby his wealth and illusions of wealth and his celebrity within the febrile world of NY tabloids created a sense of power where little real power existed. Trump would bully his vendors and others with lawsuits and threats, and because he was "Donald Trump" he got away with it more often than not.

All of that is unraveling in slow motion. 

It's Good! It's Bad!

 The results of the Georgia Senate run-off are simultaneously encouraging and discouraging. Warnock won!  Walker - who's legitimately dain bramaged - got over 48% of the vote! Your opinion on this result is almost a Rorschach test for how you feel about American politics. What has been made crystal clear for the millionth time is just how divided our politics are depending on where you live. The Great Sorting continues to define so much of our political life.

In rural Georgia, as defined by the Washington Post, Walker won by 319,000 votes. There are a fair number of Black voters in rural Georgia, but we are still seeing the prevalence of WWC voters in those rural areas. These are folks who think that cities are combat zones of crime and depravity, because they simply never go there.

In Atlanta proper, Warnock won by 193,000 votes and over 75% of the vote. This is in keeping with normal historical patterns.

What is potentially good news is the continued movement of suburbs towards Democrats. Warnock won by 222,000 votes there, not only in Atlanta's ring suburbs but smaller cities like Augusta, Athens, Savannah and Columbus. The possible qualifying issue is that Atlanta's suburbs are remarkably diverse. Dekalb is substantially African American, for instance. 

If the continued presence of Trump Mimics - people whose primary appeal is "celebrity" as opposed to competence - forces college educated suburban voters to become firmly established Democrats, then that is good news long term.

The Mill Of Justice Grinds Slow...

 ...but it grinds exceedingly fine. Of course, there is no guarantee that guilty verdicts will be returned or even that the DOJ will act on these criminal referrals. However, everyone who wanted results yesterday misunderstands how this process works. It took two years to bring Nixon to resign, and we are looking at a similar timeline for Trump and January 6th. We've already seen Stewart Rhodes and other co-conspirators convicted.

Ideally, we get "quick" convictions for people like Roger Stone, but that eel of a human being seems to slither out of everything. Even getting someone like Mulvaney to sweat a little bit would be worth it.

There is no way to divorce Trump from the Trumpists. They believe in him, not some set of abstract ideas. The problem is that one of the most important beliefs in Trump is the belief - accurate! - that Trump uniquely annoys/enrages/pwns the libtards. So running a presidential candidate under indictment for sedition and criminal conspiracy likely won't bother them.

As the midterms demonstrated, though, the shelf life for Trump's grievance-based politics is waning. Trump has never been the "People's Choice." Increasing alienation of America's younger voters will only increase. Trump running will bring some Trumpists to the polls who might have sat this one out, but it will motivate normal people even more.

Keep grinding.

Like An Anvil Around Their Necks

 Once again, Josh Marshall is correct. Trump's most recent statements are beyond the Pale. Saying that the Constitution should be suspended so that he can take power is straight up Krazy Town. Those statements need to be hung around the neck of every Republican in the country. Trumpism has had its moment and it is the past, but unless the GOP fully rejects it, it will remains on the periphery and ready to make a comeback.

Kill it with fire.

Cracks

 Alexis de Tocqueville once said that the most dangerous moment for a bad regime was the moment it tried to reform itself. Corrupt authoritarian regimes don't adapt well, and when they begin to loosen their grip or accommodate popular unrest, those early cracks can crumble the foundations of their rule. We saw this with glasnost and perestroika in the old USSR.

We may be seeing it in Iran today. The Attorney General of Iran has said that they are abolishing the "Morality Police" who enforced the hijab and other aspects of the dress code. The problem is that the Judicial ministry does not control the Morality Police, the Interior Ministry does. This is potentially the precise form of inter-regime schism that often leads to regime collapse. As a segment of the Iranian government begins to accede to the the protests, if the government as a whole does not agree, then those schisms create pressures that the continuing protest movement can exploit. 

While the wearing of the hijab is the spark, the kindling that turned these protests into an inferno is years of economic mismanagement and corruption. There was also a poor Covid response and Iran's isolation from global society. Cosmetic changes in how the hijab law is enforced are unlikely to end the protests; in fact a taste of success could accelerate them.

Inshallah.

Good Luck With That

 The GOP dramatically underperformed in the midterms, with the exception perhaps of NY state. Naturally, a well functioning party would want to examine WHY they squandered a chance to win the Senate in times of economic turmoil. The GQP is not exactly a well functioning party. They are going to have their decennial "autopsy" to determine why people hate them and what they can do to actually win. 

They did this in 2012 and decided that they need to appeal to Hispanic voters and soften some of their culture warrior tropes to win younger voters. In 2016, they nominated Trump. Now, the GOP could be "led" by Mike Lindell going into the next presidential election and that will be great for the GOP, I'm sure.

If I could describe the midterm dynamic, it would be this: While Americans have some concerns about the general state of things, they are generally willing to give Democrats a chance to fix things, because the Republicans have gone around the bend. Whether on abortion or January 6th, the bulk of the American electorate does not feel confident handing the reins to Trumpists again.

Ideally, the razor thin margin in the House make a debt default unlikely. The House will screech and flail about like chimps on meth and remind people how insane Trumpistan was. The economy levels out; Ukraine wins and Biden - or another Democrat - romps in 2024.

Ideally.

Immigration Reform Now

 The primary economic priority right now is the state of play when it comes to inflation. Some of this is unavoidable, as energy costs continue to be volatile and likely will remain volatile until Russia is expelled from Ukraine.

However, there are other inflationary pressures on the economy, and they seem to be linked to employment. Fundamentally, there are not enough workers to fill job openings. This is good for workers, because employers need to raise wages to staff their businesses. It's bad news for consumers, when businesses pass those increased costs on to customers.

The conventional way to fight inflation is to raise interest rates, which makes money for borrowing harder to come by. This reduces economic activity as a whole and cools off inflation. The problem is that the "heat" in this economy is either from oil prices - which aren't really linked to monetary policy - or a tight labor market. So we are seeing a downturn in sectors like construction and manufacturing, because they are more dependent on easy credit. We are punishing certain sectors, while other sectors see robust job creation, even with high interest rates.

If you wanted to douse the inflationary fire, the easiest way economically would be immigration reform that allowed more people into the country either as Green Card holders or temporary worker status. Instead, we have a patchwork asylum system that's overloaded with migrants from places like Nicaragua or Venezuela who are here for bot legitimate asylum reasons and just a desire for a better life.

How much better would America be with more Nigerians or South Africans? More Indians? With almost no language barrier, incredible work ethics and perhaps even some needed skills, migrants from these countries could improve their personal circumstances and create downward pressure on wages that would ease inflation without the Federal Reserve having to force a recession on the country.

It's very important to note that inflation is not an American problem. Inflation in the EU is running at 10%, compared to the 7.7% we are seeing in the US. There's a pretty simple reason why we are seeing this, even above and beyond rising energy costs: Covid killed a lot of people. Lots of them are older, but there are also people who stayed home and changed their employment status. Plus, in most "post-industrial" countries the populations are, in fact, older. There are still quite a few workers in their 50s and even 60s. And some of them died and they weren't replaced by younger workers.

The US birthrate is 12.4 births per 1000 people. The global average is 18.5. India and Mexico's are over 18. Japan's economic stagnation since 1990 is tied to it's birthrate of around 8 per 1000. America isn't quite in that demographic death spiral, but if the American economy is going to grow, we need to start letting more immigrants into this country.

Sadly, there is an entire political movement oriented around destroying American economic growth. Ironically, they say they want to Make America Great Again, when really they are insuring its long term collapse.

The Post-Governance Party

 Fascinating take on the battle for the Speakership of the House. There's a weird quirk whereby Hakeem Jeffries could become Speaker, if enough of the Loony Tunes Caucus abstains or votes for Donald Trump or Marjorie Traitor Green. McCarthy is such a spineless tool, it's actually kinda fun to watch him twist in the wind.