Treason

 Elon Musk and Donald Trump conspired to deprive Ukraine of their access to Starshield/Starlink, which they use both for self-defense and for drone attacks. Starshield - as I understand it - is run through the Pentagon, and Ukraine uses it to coordinate attacks on Russian targets. Starlink is a commericial network that use to coordinate defense; Starlink cannot be used for offensive military operations. Slowing both of them down has led to preventable deaths. What's more, it's a clear expression of where Musk/Trump's loyalties lie.

If that wasn't glaringly obvious, Trump decided he was just going to break the law and get money to Putin. This latter thing is a certifiably impeachable offense. Congress explicitly levied increased sanctions on Russia and Trump has decided he's going to do the opposite. That's just textbook lawbreaking.

Most guess that Putin has helped Trump win elections in the past, and Trump thinks Putin can help him again with enough blandishments. Or maybe he really thinks the diesel will somehow, I dunno, reverse the widespread anger over his Iran war and price spikes? 

Of course, the most likely explanation is that Trump admires Putin and hate Zelenskyy, because Zelenskyy is more popular than he is and doesn't bend the knee sufficiently.

Let's hope that Blue Tsunami arrives in a few weeks. Even if it does, it's going to be tricky for Congress to exert control over Trump in this area. Sadly.

Which Punches Will Land?

 Elliott Morris pisses on everyone's cornflakes this morning by noting - correctly - that a "normal" polling error could mean that Democrats only come out of the election with 47 Senate seats. Of course, a similar error in the other direction could mean 56 Democratic Senate seats. His point being that polling errors are routine and a lot of races are very close. If we wind up with an underperformance on election day, the question will obviously be: why?

Let me begin by saying that I don't think that will happen, but I remain chagrined by how wrong I got it in 2024. Trump, though, routinely overperforms his polling. Republicans since 2016 have underperformed a bit when he's not on the ballot. What's more, the fundamentals and the things voters overwhelmingly say that they care about all run against Trump and the GOP.

The two main things that people tell pollsters that they're upset about a prices and corruption. These numbers are not within any margins of error either.

Corruption stories are coming faster and faster from an administration that is staffed by people who are either corrupt by nature or look around themselves and realize that the old rules don't apply anymore.  Meanwhile, inflation is getting worse, shows no signs of getting better and are entirely a byproduct of two of Trump's two signature policies: tariffs and the Iran war.

This environment should spell a Blue Tsunami. What's more, you have really terrible individual candidates in places like Texas and Kansas. Even in red districts in blue or purple states, you have bad candidates that can drag down the whole ticket. What is the motivation for a Republican leaning voter to go out and vote for Ken Paxton? The GOP candidate for governor in Colorado is literally insane, but will that impact down ballot races like Lauren Boebert - herself a weak candidate?

Trump has always benefited from Steve Bannon's firehose strategy. If there is a different outrage happening every day, the media can't focus on one. Trump gets away with all sorts of shit using this dynamic. However, people still get the sense that everything has gone to shit. They see what's happening with prices. They see what's happening with the East Wing and the Reflecting Pool. They may not say that they are upset about any one specific thing, but the accumulated weight of all this is beginning to tell.

But hell, we've been so bitterly disappointed by the basic intelligence and comprehension of the average American voter over the past decade, I hate to think we have to rely on them again. Hopefully, the sheer tonnage of issues - issues that they say that they care deeply about - will finally tip things over. That Republican partisans will just stay home in disgust, that independents flood the ballot box on behalf of Democrats, and - the one thing I'm sure of - Democrats will crawl over broken glass to vote these fuckers out. 

Drip, Drip, Drip

 Josh Marshall notes that we have defenestrated two corrupt Trump officials recently, and he warrants that more are to come. Trump is obviously the center of a massive amount of corruption himself. Do we think that Trump's latest betrayal of Ukraine is motivated by spite or perhaps corruption? Yes.

This all gives off vibes that Trump and the gangsters around him know that at least a Democratic House is coming, and that the good times of unbridled grift will give way to the times of slightly restrained grift. Trump himself knows that the Supreme Court has largely rendered him immune to prosecution, but the recent catapulting of various creatures around him suggests that either Trump is pissed that these goombahs got in on his action or that he doesn't want the headlines. He has to know that Capone went down for tax evasion.

One has to assume that the skittering grifters that circulate around Trump assumed that his immunity would transfer to them. However, Trump is absolutely and completely disloyal to anyone and everyone. He will stab you in the back and then complain that you got his knife all bloody. What happens when the pardons that they assumed would come don't come? When Kimberly Gargoyle gets called before prosecutors and discovers that there is no pardon coming, what tales could she tell?

Finally, there are quarters of the internet that consider the possibility of Democrats taking control of Congress as an impossibility. Trump will simply do another January 6th on steroids.

When you look at his actions, though, he doesn't look like he's got a plan for that? He looks like he's scared.

What Comes Next?

 Let's assume that every indicator is right and Democrats win control of both Houses of Congress - and that the new Congress is seated. I think that happens, but I can't say with 100% certainty of anything anymore.

We have a Trump Administration that has been engaged in a smash-and-grab campaign of thuggishness and graft. What's more is that Trump is already crashing out. What will he do if faced with a hostile Congress? 

Trump is mentally unwell. Yes, he is not intelligent AND suffering age-related cognitive decline. Yes, he's an example of what happens to the emperor when no one says, "no." However, the narcissistic wound that he might be about to receive is potentially mortifying.

Trump was not greatly restrained during his first term, but he was mostly constrained. Now, he's surrounded by so many toadies and creatures feeding his id, that the potential for intentional harm is very real.

Not Sending Their Best

 Today, we have two stories of incompetence rising and crashing down among the grifters, clowns and incompetents that populate Trumpistan.

We have Kimberly Guilfoyle - shape shifting gargoyle that dated both Gavin Newsom and Don Junior - resigning as Ambassador to Greece because she got caught soliciting bribes. Was Guilfoyle qualified to be ambassador to Greece? Of course not. Was she corrupt? Naturally. Was she more corrupt than Trump? Heavens no. What was her sin? Getting caught.

Meanwhile we have a truly WTF moment featuring new Blonde Chatbot Katie Zacharia. Marshall's piece digs into her likely false claims about being a lawyer in China (China?) but the real story is that she gives off the Ms South Carolina vibes of someone whose personality comes from her hair dye. This is the official press secretary of the fucking White House. She seems largely incapable of reading her cue cards. Saturday Night Live should just quit, if this is the reality we live in.

We have levels of incompetence riddling our governing institutions. I have no idea what a Democratic House and Senate can do to stem the dismal tide of so much stupidity and greed.

Boutique, Concierge Treason

 Both Richardson and Krugman take aim at Elon Musk's efforts to prevent massive GOP losses by pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into dark money and other forms of campaign spending. I've been generally more skeptical of the idea that big money can save a bad candidate, especially in a bad political environment. However, there are two issues.

The first is that Democrats have greatly expanded the map in terms of competitive races. They seem to be leading in Alaska and Kansas, not to mention Texas. There are some vibes and data that places like South Carolina or Nebraska might be razor close. If Musk and other billionaires can make a 1-3% difference in the vote by spreading lies about transgender communists coming to make you wear a mask, then that might be the difference in those races. 

The second is that this represents the deeper pathologies of the hyper-rich of Silicon Valley. While the folks working at those companies are likely as liberal as most people with college degrees in the STEM areas, the Tech Lords are a weird-assed bunch of freaks. What's more is that they don't seem to understand the wheel of history. They are acting as if they will be immune from blowback from supporting Trump. 

The Gulf emirs, Netanyahu, various normie Republicans who all thought that they could deal with Trump have learned that he destroys everyone who comes into contact with him. He chews you up and spits you out, uses you and discards you. If that weren't enough, Democrats - I hope - will remember their perfidy when we have a trifecta again. These techbros are deeply unpopular, and like the earlier iteration of Robber Barons, they have so tightly aligned themselves with the Republican Party, that a broad progressive movement should keep the receipts and take them down.

It's similar to the Trump-Netanyahu axis of evil. As long as Likud rules Israel, I don't think a Democratic Administration can treat it as anything less than a hostile power. Same goes for Musk and the other cretins who were swept along with the tide of technological advancement but believed they were the moon itself.

Treason On The Cheap

 Trump's "deal" with Putin to buy Russian diesel so he can look like he's saving truckers and farmers does not, in fact, save truckers and farmers. The 300,000 tons number that Trump negotiated is about half a day's worth of US diesel consumption. As Krugman notes, it SOUNDS like a big number that he can boast about at his self-soothing rallies, but it's not really a big enough number to bring prices down.

So, Trump has broken the law and engaged in light treason for no substantive benefit to the US economy.  ART OF THE DEAL!!!!!

Will It All Come Out?

 It is unclear exactly why Donald Trump is so slavishly devoted to the political, economic and military well being of Vladimir Putin. The evidence that he is devoted is overwhelming at this point. As others have noted, if Trump wasn't a Russian asset what would he be doing differently. There is his contempt for the US-led post World War II order that largely relegated interstate war to the margins of world politics. Prior to 2016, wars between states were rare, and the deadliest conflicts were intrastate wars and the collapse of fragile states into civil war. The deadliest war of the 21st century - the Second Congo War - is unknown to most Americans, because it did not involve countries that we typically pay attention to. 

Trump's contempt for the "rules based order" has reopened the box of wars between states. His support for Putin and contempt for Zelensky could have many explanations. People love Zelensky and hate Trump, and he's a simple minded creature who operates on the emotional level of a maladjusted 3rd grader. He admires power, but his definition of power is simply more similar to the ways that Putin and Xi Xinping exercise it than democratic leaders do. He wants the adulation of the crowds, but he doesn't want them to exert any control over him. He wants the parades of Kim Jong Un, not the plaudits of an electorate.

Still, it's hard to escape the evidence that Russia has some sort of grip over him. After the fall of the Soviet Union, we learned exactly where the KGB had infiltrated American society. I hope we have that reckoning for Trump.

Corruption

 There have been more and more stories of the overwhelming corruption of the Trump Administration coming out recently. The problem is and always has been a polluted information ecosystem where most Americans simply don't interact with the news. In some ways, who can blame them? Why would you subject yourself to the firehose of misery and trauma that constitutes the daily news? In fact, learning about how corrupt the Trumpists are would just make people more miserable. The farrago of outrage is how Trump survives. First, it means no story really develops legs and penetrates the veil of ignorance that most Americans cocoon themselves in. Second, it helps weave that veil, because "the news is just so horrible." Then, when you have a Democrat like Bob Menendez, it allows the media to run with a Man Bites Dog story and deepens the cynicism of the electorate.

There was an interview in the Times about our postliterate society. People CAN read and read all the time, but in short snippets that don't require much cognitive effort. The torrent of short-form video also degrades the ability of people - especially but not exclusively kids - to actually read for meaning. I'm certainly discovering that my students struggle to understand the actual meaning of what they are reading. They tend to glance across the surface of it. I ask how many read more than one book for pleasure over the summer and one kid in each class raised their hand. 

When the Whigs spoke of "corruption" they meant a rot in the entire system. I fear that we now have that form of corruption in our entire society. Trump's graft is corruption that is enabled by the corrupted nature of our shared discourse, reduced to Trump's trolling videos and misleading social media posts.

Democracy only works with an informed populace and we are both angrier and more ignorant than we have been in a long, long time. 

Barbarism

 I don't even know what to say about Pete Hegseth's plan to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan. Even if you support the death penalty, this is a level of performative barbarism that is appalling. The botched execution of Krysta Pike might give normal human beings some pause in broadcasting the killing of a human being - even one as malevolent as Hasan.

Not Whiskey Pete! I think it was David Roth at Defector who described this administration as an "Influencer Occupied Government." Hegseth is exactly that, someone with a craving and craven need to create content - no matter how he looks. This is why we have had 20 times more videos of him doing fucking calisthenics than press conferences. He is a small man in a big job who has initiated an absolutely disastrous war with Iran. In his flailing attempts to justify his withered masculinity, he's going to reduce the United States to the savagery of the Taliban or North Korea.

France As Harbinger

 Krugman lays out the dynamics in France, where student protests have roiled the country. Students protesting in France is a "dog bites man" problem; students in France protest. French people, in general, protest.

The deeper problem, as Krugman points out, is that France is facing the same problems that most post-industrial countries are starting to face, which is the collision between retirees and students. The reason students are protesting is because their schools are cheap and falling apart and their classes are too big, because there is no money to hire teachers. 

France has clung stubbornly to a low retirement age (62) as compared to nations as diverse as the US and Denmark (both 67). As someone rapidly hobbling towards retirement, I do not want to see that retirement age creep upwards. However, generous public benefits to retirees are increasingly coming at the expense of benefits for children and working age people. We are robbing the future to pay the past. 

Krugman also points out that France is a bit of an outlier here, and certainly the protests that are France's national pastime are contributing to a lack of political will to make the necessary changes. The bigger problem is that Marine Le Pen's fascist party is always lurking around the edges of winning a national election, and it is unlikely that she suddenly becomes a relatively responsible head of government like Georgia Meloni kind of has. It seems more likely that she will govern like Trump or Milei, which is to say poorly.

France has problems that were created by France being France, but the problem of a greying population is not unique to France.

Madness

 Richardson runs through Trump's deranged spewings on social media and at one of his rallies. It's really unhinged stuff, even for him. Some of this - obviously inviting Iran to nuke LA and San Diego - are his febrile mind doing his outrage schtick. However, we have some evidence that some of his social media posts are by Stephen Cheung and Natalie Harp. The White House support staff might be mimicking Trump's outrages, because they, too, are trapped in the downward spiral of Trump's unpopularity. 

In order to serve Trump, you have to serve his festering id. You warp yourself into his image. That's true of his staff, his Cabinet and the Republican Party writ large. As he decompresses, the GOP will decompress with him. They will echo his outrageous claims. They will double down on his absurd allegations. Unless someone finally breaks with him (and survives politically) the feverish madness within the GOP will not break. 

For this reason, I am optimistic that this "charisma" of Trump's will not be transferable to any of his heirs. Trump is no longer the insult king of 2016. His insults are cruder both in dignity and structure. He doesn't have the same juice. He's a tired old man, and he has to rely on the memories of the more agile (if still crude and cruel) man of his run in 2016. 

Let's say - hypothetically - that Trump has a health issue before Election Day. He's in the hospital. There is no reason to think that his minions won't try and continue his efforts to sabotage and destroy electoral democracy in this country. The question is: Is the entire GOP so far gone as to support that?

The Emerging World

Josh Marshall highlights a story that is more important than the attention I've seen attached to it. Turkey and Pakistan seem to be committing troops to help protect Saudi Arabia. Turkey and Pakistan have...complicated relationships with Iran. In both cases there are minority ethnic groups (Kurds and Baluchis) that cross the respective borders with Turkey and Pakistan. There's a universe where those countries work with Iran to suppress separatists sentiments. Yet, they are likely following Saudi money to be effectively hired mercenaries to defend the House of Saud.

Now, I think Houthi control of the Bab al-Mandab is a global red line. Iran and it's proxies cannot control both straits. That simply cannot be allowed to happen. Having Turkey and Pakistan step up is promising from that perspective. 

The subtext of this is that the US cannot be relied upon. After all the bribes and emoluments that the Gulf States have poured into Trump's sweaty palms, the US under Trump is simply not a reliable security partner. We have fully embraced the Putin-esque theory of Great Power autonomy. We will act in our interests and no one else's. We will sabotage alliances for short term - very short term - gains.

Historically, when a country hires foreign nationals to underpin their domestic security, it doesn't always go the way they planned. People will fight and die for their own people, but not necessarily for others. Also, if you've proven you can't defend yourself, what's to stop the mercenaries from deposing you? I am not saying that will happen, but there is a history of it happening. 

The central theory underpinning the Pax Americana has been the idea of interlocking relationships - usually but not always with the US at the hub. NATO and SEATO are two concrete examples, but so it the World Bank, the IMF and even the UN, despite the US's complicated role there. We developed relationships through USAID, the CDC and a host of NGOs. We helped create the institutions that would lead to the European Union. At every step until Trump, the US had at least acknowledged the benefit of having more friends than enemies and trying to bring enemies to the table to become friends. 

Take admitting China to the WTO. It may not have worked, but it was an honest effort to shape China into a responsible member of the world community. If anything it worked too well, as China is now surpassing us as the "essential country" even if they have not embraced political liberalism.

The situation with the Mecca Pact is a stark example of how the US is no longer at the center of a defensive architecture to prevent war. What's most worrisome is that this emerging multi-polar world is likely to be less stable than what preceded it. Iran and Ukraine's successful drone warfare has tipped the balance away from traditional militaries and traditional military strengths.(Lord knows colossal fuck up, Pete Hegseth, isn't going to fix that.) 

Without drones, Iran could not hope to control the Straits of Hormuz against the US Navy, but now they can. How many other aspiring regional powers will make the same calculations? Will Argentina build drones to try and seize the Falklands again? What simmering dispute in sub-Saharan Africa will come to boil because one side has just enough money to create a drone force? 

Great Power conflicts are unlikely - primarily because of nuclear weapons. However, Middle Power conflicts can eventually draw in Great Powers against their will. An unstable world is a dangerous world, and the fact that the US has withdrawn from its stabilizing role is deeply concerning.

Follow The Money

 As we try and get a sense of the size of the blue wave that appears to be headed our way, one way to gauge this is to follow where the party campaigns are spending money. For instance, Republicans have given up on North Carolina and Georgia's Senate races, but are rushing money to Texas and Kansas. As we get closer to election day in a month, the way party's express their priorities will let you know the landscape.

Secretary of Defenestration

 This is a pretty good summary of the worst Secretary of Defense the nation has ever had. 

Now, there were - ironically, not ironically - a number of Secretaries of War back in the 19th century were pretty terrible. William Belknap was among the most corrupt people who were hangers on of the Grant presidency. He quit before he was impeached, but the House impeached him anyway. The Senate fell short, because of course it fucking did.

William Eustis and John Armstrong over saw the absolute military shambles that was the War of 1812. Eustis quit in the first months and Armstrong quit after Washington DC was burned to the ground.

So, that's the company Hegseth is keeping.

The difference is that the 19th century Secretary of War was largely unimportant unless there was an actual war going on, which was fairly infrequently back then. They pretty much killed Indians and distributed some patronage. Hegseth sits astride a colossal organization with trillions of dollars in resources and he's managed to murder some small boat operators in the Caribbean and mire the US and the world in a pointless, drawn out, expensive and perhaps economically ruinous war with Iran. In response to his manifest incompetence, he's laser focused on rooting out beards among the troops and doing pushups.

Among the central truths of Trump 2.0 is how the government has been turned over to toxic internet fuckwads who should not be given authority over the carpool schedule.

FWIW, if the House had remained in session, I think Hegseth gets impeached, and I think there's a decent chance he gets removed by the Senate as Republicans try to save their hides before the midterms. With Speaker Moses sending everyone home, there is no way for Republicans running for re-election to distance themselves from this absolute dumpster fire, because it might enrage the collapsing narcissist who gorges himself on social media trolling and culture war grievances.

The Autumn

 As fall begins and the days shorten and the air becomes crisp, it can only mean one thing: The misery of being an Atlanta sports fan. The Braves never addressed their starting pitching deficit and are now staring down the mighty Dodgers with only two credible starters. The Falcons remain resolutely the Falcons. Who knows what fresh hell they will unleash upon my emotional health.

I've often wondered why I have been on these accelerating train of emotionally fraught fandom. It was always kind of there, but I think the advent of the internet and social media once again makes things worse. During the Wildcard Series with the Phillies, there was a contingent of people who I talk baseball with online who seemed almost triumphant that the Braves were going to lose the elimination game by relying on a "bullpen" game. It would have vindicated their position about the Braves not adequately addressing their starting pitching woes. They seemed more eager to be proven right than to have their team win and advance. 

The worst thing that happens is that people take a stance in public and then refuse to abandon it or admit they got this one wrong. And, yes, this is about Senator Schmitt and his inept and hilarious attempt to take down Jack Smith, but it's really a culture-wide pathology.

You're allowed to be wrong.

The Popular Medium

 The Times published a list of the best TV shows of the 21st century. The first controversy was leaving off The Sopranos because it first aired in 1999. Still, it was a decent list, but also clearly a list designed to piss you off a little by leaving off your favorite show or by taking somewhat obscure show like the British version of The Office or Atlanta and placing in the top-15.

They then asked their readers to come up with their own rankings and honestly, it's just a much better list.

For instance, Better Call Saul vaults up 21 spots to number 6. Andor jumps up 10 spots to number 22 (still too low). What's more, they added animated shows like Avatar and Bob's Burgers. They added sci-fi shows like Dark. I do think a little bit of recency bias informed  the reader's poll as a classic sitcom like 30 Rock dropped too far and shows like Widow's Bay and Pluribus - who haven't shown that they can stick the landing - are on there. Still they are great shows so far.

I think it obviously shows the disconnect between the more critical and artistic based perspectives from the mass perspectives - though, hey, it's still the Times' readers, but it also shows that great TV is popular.

It's also interesting to me that this Golden Age of TV comes along at a time when we are increasingly staying home and maybe can't sit still for a 2 1/2 hour movie.

Time

 Donald Trump have an interview with Time. It is unhinged. As he gallops full speed ahead with his dismantling of the Constitutional order and the  Pax Americana, his cognitive and psychological collapse is not just a story that the media isn't covering, but a grave threat to the future of the country and the world.

The Baltics are trying to prepare to hold off a potential Russian invasion without knowing for sure if the US will show up. AI is inflating into a bubble - a bubble that seems to be the only thing sustaining what meager economic growth we still have. 

The real issues though remain Trump's malignant narcissism that prevents him from admitting any defeat or setback and the fact that he's clearly slipping into senility. Read his interviews from 2016. They ain't Cicero, but they are coherent. The shit he vomits out today is just rank nonsense. He can't sustain an idea for more than a moment, unless it's his stupid fucking vanity projects.

This is what the 25th Amendment is for, but it's actually harder to pull off than impeachment and removal. Especially with the sycophants that cloister around Trump's fantasy world.

Erratic and deranged, what will this malevolent force do to America before the election in a month?

Journalism: Not Dead Yet

 This is awesome.

Project For A New Chinese Century

 Richardson uses the withdrawal of the last troops from Iraq to summarize the thinking that led us into that disastrous conflict. The invasion of Iraq was not only devastating to that country, but also to Afghanistan which was conquered on the cheap and starved of resources that were diverted to Iraq. With the US trying to stabilize two countries, they stabilized neither. The loss of lives, money and prestige made the Iraq War arguably the greatest foreign policy mistake in US history. At least Vietnam made a certain logical sense within the Cold War and the US rejection of Versailles was in keeping with previous US foreign policy. 

Iraq was unnecessary and flawed from the start. It squandered the international goodwill that accrued to the US after 9/11 and exposed the flaws of even the world's most powerful military. 

It was the biggest foreign policy disaster until Donald Trump launched a war of choice against Iran with the increasingly archaic military doctrines of Pete Hegseth. I do believe that if the House returned to session, Hegseth gets impeached and the vote wouldn't be close. In fact, I think he gets removed in the Senate.

The primary geopolitical benefactor of Donald Trump's election has been China, then Europe, then Israel then Russia. The primary loser has been the United States.

Derp State

 Yesterday, we had a really comical turn of events in the Senate. Eric Schmitt - who I think used to be a DA - was grilling Jack Smith about his work in trying to prosecute Trump for a few of his many crimes. He sprung a "gotcha" moment on him about attending an Atlanta Hawks game and conspiring with Atlanta DA, Fani Willis. Smith was perplexed, while Schmitt railed and called him a dirtbag.

Amy Klobuchar - and I LOVE that it was a woman who had to explain sports to this huffy He-Man - noted that Smith was at an Iowa HAWKEYES game, not an Atlanta Hawks game. I mean the HBO series Veep was not intended to be a documentary.

This is in some ways a failure of staff. Schmitt absolutely should apologize (but won't), but his staff likely put this Goat Rodeo together. The two goombahs holding up the visual aid for Schmitt's attack certainly look like freaking morons.

However, this isn't just an issue with Schmitt's staff. Among the many aspects of Trump's attack on his own country is the evisceration of competent people who simply work for the government. Forget the rank incompetence of RFK or Hegseth, government runs on staffing and bureaucrats and having good ones really does matter. Trump, being an idiot, has elevated idiocy as a prerequisite for working in the GOP. Sure, there are a bunch of stupid GOP Senators - Ron Johnson, Tommy Tuberville, Mike Lee and now Eric Schmitt - but their staffs are also apparently a bunch of morons, too.

Some of this isn't unique to the GOP. Mary Peltola's staff was apparently full of Gen Z whiners. But the stupidity? That's a hallmark of Trumpistan. 

Hey, Is This Sustainable?

 Anthropic's IPO has been leaked. Apparently, they ran a $42,000,000,000 loss last year and wants to take on $518,000,000,000 in cloud computing capacity. Those are billions of dollars.

But certainly they will make that back, right? Revenue has to be expanding?

It is! Revenue increased 12 fold last year!

To $4,600,000,000. 

That debt to revenue ratio is bonkers, but that IPO could cover all that debt, because nothing is real anymore or something. The important thing to note is that data center and AI build-out is the only thing sustaining economic growth right now and it's definitely, definitely not a bubble. Nope, not all. Having almost ten times more debt than revenue is completely normal.

The Blue Wave

 Josh Marshall suggests that one reason why we may see a massive blue wave this November is that the increasingly bad environment for Republicans is making previously deep red areas competitive, and the candidates from those areas have no real political chops. The one case he keeps pointing to is Kansas, where Adam Hamilton is running a strong campaign against Roger Marshall. Marshall recently decided to fight back against Hamilton's ad that suggests that Marshall - an OB/GYN - had a woman arrested for a $50 unpaid bill. By suing to stop the ad, Marshall draws MORE attention to the claim. 

An even better example is Ken Paxton in Texas. Talarico is a very strong candidate, but Paxton is clownishly bad. Aside from the rank criminality and lack of an demonstrable ethics, Paxton has recently committed some egregious own goals. First, he defended himself against charges that he let a child predator off the hook with a one day sentence by noting that the judge actually imposed a 60 day sentence. For a guy who repeatedly raped a child. Next up, he wants to build data centers all over rural Texas. Few things unite Republicans and Democrats these days, but everyone hates data centers.

As Marshall noted originally, these guys usually only have to win the primary in a deep red state and the general election takes care of itself. Now that they are facing actual electoral competition, they don't know what to do.

The Economics of AI

 Josh Marshall has a summary of how AI is likely unsustainable economically, especially as no one really WANTS it enough to pay the prices that can justify the massive expenditures. Yes, I have colleagues who overly rely on AI (and that mildly infuriates me - do your job), but most of us are forced to imbibe the torrent of AI shit whether we want to or not.

I concede that it's a remarkable search engine, but I was fine with Google and a little bit of extra work. I;m not especially interested in paying for something I don't want.

While I may be an outlier (I'm almost certainly an outlier) I'm not THAT much of an outlier. The question is not whether the AI bubble bursts, but when.

Gen La-Z

 I hesitate to indulge in generational nonsense where one story becomes an indictment of an entire cohort of people who number in the tens of millions.

Yet...

The story about Mary Peltola that was published recently is ridiculous. Even worse, it makes me agree with Yglesias, and I hate to do that. Basically, Peltola could lose her temper and shout at people. She also had staffers help with personal chores like feeding her pet chameleon. Some of the things she said were what can be termed "problematic" like using the words retard and fag. You can understand why young staffers fresh from college would find that off-putting and troublesome. 

What I can't understand is why the fuck they went to the press. 

If you have a boss that uses language that you don't like, you can confront them, consult someone else in the organization or quit. House members have chiefs of staff; talk to them if you're afraid of your representative. Tattling to the press over something as fundamentally meaningless - in an election year, where Peltola might hold the key to a critical Senate majority - represents a sense of entitlement that is inexcusable.

There's a lot of memes that circulate along the lines of: "I wake up and work 40 hours a week so that I can afford basic goods like food and shelter. Isn't that fucked up?" There's a sense that somehow our jobs should cater to us. Some of this likely comes from remote work during Covid and the realization that a lot of that 40 (or 60) hour work week feels like wasted time. I get it. We are all the main characters in our own story and it sucks to discover that we are background players - NPCs - in the grand scheme of things.

I do wonder if there isn't at least a little merit in the criticism of education - and college education in particular - that we basically coddle these kids and make them feel like oh so special wonderchildren. Then - when they confront the demands of adulthood - they crumble. I suppose that's why, despite the degraded commercialization of many college and even high school sports - there's still a place for sports. Sometimes you lose and it sucks, even when you prepared hard and did everything right.

The whole bonkers Boston Globe story about the lesbian bar that got backlash for ending their mask mandates on Saturday night is an example of people who cannot brook anything that doesn't cater to their personal whims. The world does not bend to your personal preferences - yet many colleges actually do create these sort of country club experiences with luxury dorms and decked out student unions and health clubs that kids come to expect as their due. That's just unrealistic.

I remember seeing a t-shirt that said "Bring Back Reasonable Bullying." Obviously, no, don't bully. However, we have to end the tripwire sense of "harm" that makes every single inconvenience a hate crime - especially those around language - if we want to have people who can actually live in the world and not their fantasy version. 

Escalation

 The details of what appears to be a plot to use truck bombs against RAF Fairford airbase in Britain are still coming into focus. We know that that base has been used by the US Air Force to strike Iran, but we also know that Russia has been testing the tolerance of NATO countries for provocative attacks. Still, best guess is that this is either the Iranian government or someone allied with them, Maybe Tehran didn't know, and these were people acting of their own accord. 

If Iran is behind it, that's a major escalation, but it does seem to fit into a pattern of escalation. The advances of Houthi militias to the Red Sea, the attacks on Saudi Arabia and the general unwillingness to negotiate a deal suggest that Iran simply does not worry about a major escalation at this point. It suggests that they have taken the measure of Donald Trump and realize that he has surrendered in all but name. Bored with the distraction that his war has caused to his ballroom project, Trump has waddled off the scene and left the region grappling with how to deal with the mess he made.

Again, if this is Iran, they feel perfectly comfortable targeting a British airbase, because they feel that NATO will not bail Trump out of his mess. They know the alliance is fractured. This might suggest that the Iranians had help from Russia to achieve the same result. Again, entirely speculative at this point. Maybe it was some dipshit leftists cosplaying at revolution.

Trump is both a moral and physical cowards, so there is a scenario where we find out who did it and do nothing, because the midterms are already looking ugly for Trump's GOP. While I certainly want the war with Iran to end, at some point, the US will need to respond to Iran's increasingly bold moves and stop rolling over and showing its belly after being kicked by the mullahs of Tehran.

Debtor's Prison

 David Frum - a conservative conservative, not a Republican/Trump conservative - make the case that among the myriad crisis brought by Trump and the GOP, the looming issue of debt is perhaps the most critical. Trump - who made a living off declaring bankruptcy - seems to want to do the same with the United States. The result would be catastrophic, but hey, why should we worry that Trump would do something stupid and self-destructive.

The rise in interest rates are going to hit everyone. This is...bad, and the next Democratic President will have to be a Bill Clinton-type who can extricate us from this disaster and then reap no goodwill for doing so until his presidency is over.

Fundamentally Wrong

 I think Yglesias is way off base here with regards to Iran, but then again, this is an area where he usually is wrong. He thinks that Democrats will struggle to find a way out of the Iranian morass, should it linger until 2029. His argument is that while Democrats will want to resolve the issue, Iranians won't trust the American public not to elect another mouth breathing moron to scuttle any deal that Dems strike.

This is such a perfect example of Murc's Law, where only Democrats have agency or responsibility.

As it stands, Iran is mighty big pissed at the US for bombing their cities and killing their leadership. As bad as oil prices are, the Iranian economy is in the shitter. The primary reasons that they are holding out are that the fundamentally distrust Donald Trump for legitimate reasons, and they are willing to make their populace endure really tough times in order to drag him down.

If this situation is still smoldering in 2029, the Iranians will be looking for an exit, too. They can't keep going on this route indefinitely either. What's more, Democrats will be able to draw on international partners and institutions in ways that Trump can't. 

Framing the problem as "Iranians can't trust Democrat, because Republicans" misses Iran's motivations to punish Trump. He's the guy that opened this disaster. They may have qualms about a future Republican administration, but they will have strong incentives to come to the table, once Trump - who cannot be trusted at all - is no longer on the other side of it.

Life Expectancy

 Paul Campos gives us an update on Trump's actuarial odds. Basically, as a rich guy with long-lived parents, Trump can expect many more years. Of course, actuarial tables are just statistical approximations of predictions. Trump certainly doesn't look or sound healthy. Being president is the most stressful job on earth. One commentator said that while it's stressful, Trump doesn't actually DO the job. I don't think that's quite right. Trump doesn't engage with policy or it's effects - his diesel export ban is just pure Trumpist stupidity - but the stress of the job is the demands it put on you that cannot anticipate. In fact, all his little building projects are just a way for him to manage the stress; his ballroom is just an act of self-soothing. That doesn't mean it will work to reduce his stress/

The other stark reality is that Trump is in obvious cognitive decline from a pretty low pre-existing baseline. That does not mean he's about to die. There is certainly a likely future of Trump having the sort of health incident that an 80 year old man who eats fast food, is morbidly obese, who gobbles aspirin like they're candy and does have a stressful job where he suffers accumulating narcissistic wounds would be expected to have. A post-stroke or heart attack Trump should be removed via the 25th Amendment, but that would requite a GOP Congress that isn't in the thrall of the man.

When Woodrow Wilson had his stroke, his wife and staff basically took over the running of the government for weeks. I am not confident in the nest of snakes in the Executive Branch pulling off something similar. Instead, I think we might be in for something akin to the morbid puppetry of Mitch McConnell's "return" to the Senate. 

Deranged Trump Syndrome

 Krugman was famously called "shrill" for his warnings about - I believe - the Iraq war. Today, I'm sure there are still people who think he's shrill, and apparently that includes the editors of the NY Times who fired him.

Today, I'm sure there are those who have found him shrill and alarmist when he talks about Trump. Yglesias is an example of someone who will concede that Trump is really bad, but not that he is dangerously bad, even insane. Krugman isn't afraid to call Trump deranged, because he's not afraid of being "shrill."

There are two problems with treating Trump as a normal political phenomenon. The first is that Trump has always been a dictatorial dick. He was somewhat restrained in those impulses his first time through, but now he has the GOP so cowed that he has been able to shit all over the Constitution. 

The second is that he is so surrounded by sycophants that he's unable to relate to reality in a meaningful way. The more bad news he gets about his personal status, the more unhinged he becomes. 

Democracy v Oligarchy

 There is a clear sense that the mass of voters would prefer different policies than the self inflicted harm of Trump's erratic "policies." The Downballot notes that the historical trends of primary turnout suggest a 13 point advantage for Democrats this fall. Some of that advantage comes from disgust with Trump, which is running quite high. An autocrat unwilling to listen to criticism isn't likely to make popular choices or correct course.

The question really at this point is about money. In the olden times of "normal" politics, industries would lean one way or another in their contributions, because they wanted certain outcomes that aligned with one of the two parties. They would not, however, go all in on one party, because if that party gets locked out of power, then they can get hosed. (You see a similar dynamic with Netanyahu's bear hug of the GOP, which - along with his war crimes - has alienated Democrats to the point where supporting Israel is now a net negative in the Democratic Party.)

The problems that Democrats currently face is that Trump is vindicative prick who uses the powers of his office to punish his foes. If you give to Democrats, you could wind up seeing licenses yanked or meritless prosecutions initiated against you. That is usually reserved for Trump's public antagonists though. If you quietly give to the DNC, I don't think Trump will come after you.

The second issue is more problematic. The combination of Crypto Bros and Tech Lords who have moved decisively behind Trump and who have mountains of cash and a desire to be protected. Interestingly, this is less true of AI companies, who seem to be asking for regulation. Crypto, though, is a fundamentally bullshit industry whose main purpose sure seems to be criminal. The idea that Iran is using crypto to evade sanctions and fund their war industries, while Trump acts to insure no oversight of crypto is just a perfect distillation of the corruption and incompetence of Trump 2.0. 

It seems pretty clear that the broligarchy will spend heavily in behalf of the GOP this October. The question will be whether that makes a dent in the roiling anger of the American electorate.

Wow

 Broadcast news networks are suing Trump over the expulsion of outlets he doesn't like. Sure, yeah.

Five broadcast networks have agreed to suspend pooled coverage of the White House: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and...

...FOX.

That's going to sting and congratulations to Fox for finally becoming a journalistic outfit, even at the most basic level. 

Russia, Russia, Russia

 Things are looking dicey in the increasingly hot war between Russia and Europe. When Putin invaded Ukraine for the second time in 2022, I did a primer for the school, and I confessed that I couldn't understand what Putin was doing. Invading a sovereign country is not acceptable behavior and Russia was not strong enough to act as a global hegemon. The US and China can possibly survive international condemnation, but Russia is not the Soviet Union. Whatever Putin hoped to achieve would be counterbalanced by the global response.

We are now over four years into Putin's "special military operation" and there are no signs of Putin bending to the geopolitical reality of his situation. Some of this is because of the aid he's received from China, North Korea and Iran, but undoubtably, Putin is banking on having a friend in the White House.

The links between Trump and Putin are similar to so many other Trump scandals. It's all out there in the open, like Don Junior having his wedding parties paid for by a Putin-aligned oligarch. The brazenness of it - and the pure volume of shit like this - make it hard to really generate public outrage over the naked corruption and the aligned agendas of Trump and Putin. 

That's the situation today, with Trump both mired in his dumbass war with Iran and naturally sympathetic to Vladimir Fucking Putin. 

Now, for whatever reason, Putin sure looks like he's threatening war with NATO. Trying to figure out what he's thinking is difficult. First of all, he's largely losing in Ukraine. While there's a decent argument that the Ukrainian Army is the best in Europe at the moment, it's still relatively small compared to the rest of Europe. Why would Putin add to the forces arrayed against him? Even without the US support, NATO would seem primed to add to the defeats that the Russian military is currently experiencing.

The other reason that this is mystifying is that Putin's real successes have come in the grey spaces of informational warfare. He's boosted right wing parties and candidates from Trump to Brexit to Marine Le Pen to Alternative for Deutschland. He actively worked to help Trump get elected in 2016 (and we have to assume did so again in 2024), and that is his greatest strategic victory ever. Trump has done more to degrade Russia's (and China's) most powerful geopolitical rival than any other measure Russia could have taken.

Why attack Europe if you will cut the legs out of that effort within Europe? Especially given the weakened state of your armed forces?

I suppose he could think that an attack on the Baltic States could fracture NATO, but I don't think it will - with the exception of the United States. Then again, there are still enough "national security Republicans" left to be a bulwark against that - not to mention how Trump's capitulation to Putin would play in the midterms. I suppose he could look at the coming midterm and think he's squeezed everything he can out of Trump, but again, why would throw away his greatest achievement to expand a war that he's already losing?

Attacking the Baltic States in order to link up to Kaliningrad and "restore" the old Soviet borders would seem deeply flawed strategic thinking, but so was invading Ukraine - or attacking Iran. He could blunder into World War III because he fundamentally doesn't understand that state of play right now, and by "he" I mean both Putin and Trump. 

The Miser of The Attention Economy

 This John Dickerson piece examines how Trump has dominated the attention economy since he came on the scene. He does it by trolling and blustering and shattered norms - norms, by the way, that were really pretty solid. You really shouldn't shit on a Gold Star family. You really shouldn't say we are no better than Russia (though that is now accurate in some ways). Trump's political power stems from his utter shamelessness to say and do things that no other occupant of the White House would dream of.

Ultimately, the question will become "Can someone else harness that power of shameless attention-grabbing behavior?"

I think the answer is most likely no. 

The first and most obvious reason is that people are largely sick of Trump's shit. One of the appeals of Joe Biden was his basic decency. I do think that a fundamentally decent candidate will have a lot of appeal in 2028. I do not think the GOP will be able to nominate someone like that, because increasingly, Trump creates the reality within the GOP electorate. Sure, some Republicans are creating distance, like I noted yesterday, but that distance isn't from Trump, but rather the "bad boyars."

So, I think some preening jackass like Ron DeSantis or some other creature will emerge from the Republican side. In fact, if I were an ambitious but relatively decent Republican, I would sit 2028 out. If this backlash grows, Republicans will be toxic by 2028. On the Democratic side, I think the aggressiveness of a Gavin Newsome will not be as appealing as the sort of earnest decency of a Jon Ossoff or a Pete Buttigieg. 

Meanwhile, Trump - I believe - is finding himself starved of attention and adulation. That's why he wants to make the midterms about himself and have rallies. It's also why he's banning news organizations from the White House Press pool. Frankly, the only proper response from every legitimate news outlet is to boycott the White House pool. Trump is "making headlines" by banning CNN, but if the Times and Post and Journal and ABC and NBC all boycott his press briefings, then it will be HIM who is starved of oxygen.

The press has been abysmal during the Trump years - as a broad institution. They insist on analyzing his vomitous utterances as policy or as coherent statements of presidential intent. This guy is incapable of being forthright and honest, but the press treats him as if he were a normal politician who bends the truth and occasionally bends it too far. That's...incompetent.

So, they should just boycott the lie-filled hatefest from the briefing room. They can cover what is being said but what does their presence there add? If they ask a legitimate probing question, they will be lied to and called names. Why are they there? Nothing of value comes from their presence.

Instead, they should strike back by denying Trump the one thing he truly craves and which they conspire to give him: attention.

The proper way to deal with a misbehaving toddler is to place them in time-out. They want attention, even negative attention, so you deny it to redirect their behavior. 

Toddler-in-chief Trump needs a time out. 

Breaking Ranks?

 Richardson notes how many Republicans are starting to break with MAGA. She doesn't front this point, but this is a variation of the the "scheming vizier" or "bad boyars, good tsar" idea. This is a meme, really, from centuries ago, where anything good that happens is because of dear leader, but anything bad is because of the advisers around him. 

The Republicans who are endorsing Democrats aren't breaking with Trump. They are breaking with some policies - like mass, indiscriminate deportations or the Iran war - that poll poorly, and blame them on misguided advisers. They realize that they cannot attack Trump directly, or they will lose their office like Thomas Massie and others who have stood up to Trump. "Gosh, whomever decided that we needed to wage trade wars sure was misguided, and Trump should stop them from advising him anymore." This is so self-evidently stupid, I don't know what to say.

The thing is, Trump isn't exactly on the ballot. The embattled GOP reps who are trying to distance themselves from Trump's catastrophic reign of error are having to tie themselves in knots. I do wonder if anyone will buy it. MAGA will be pissed for calling out the obvious racism and misogyny in their ranks, but I don't know if doing that will win the dissenters any votes.

Still, 35% approval is too high for these vicious clowns.

How Big Is The Wave?

 There is emerging understanding that - even with the gerrymandering - the Democrats seem in great shape to take the House and maybe the Senate. Morris looks at how the big prognosticators tend to skew against the "out party" in the midterms. Basically, if you're the party out of power, the big raters like Cook and Sabato tend to underestimate the gains that you're going to make. In his analysis, "Toss Ups" aren't really toss ups at all, but lean to the out party by a lot. This could be important - if it holds - if these raters move more races into the toss-up category.

The other thing that seems to be happening is that Democrats tend to better when their actual candidates are polled as opposed to the generic ballot. Some of this is enthusiasm, but I think it also represents the fact that "Democrats" are an unpopular party, whose unpopularity is only exceeded (by a lot) by the Republicans. So, you have a lot of people saying that they don't necessarily support Democrats, that doesn't mean that they won't vote for Talarico. Democrats in red states are not a strong "brand" but individual candidates like Mary Peltola matter.

I don't want to suck on the hopium pipe like I did two years ago. Still, you have a rising confluence of events and a president who is weaker than he seems and historically unpopular. 

UPDATE: Martin Longman takes a victory lap on this.

Proroguing The House

 Thomas Massie (Gadfly-KY) introduced articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth. There is no rational reason why anyone would support this colossal failure's continued tenure in the War Defense Department. Mike Johnson would have been forced to have a vote on those articles, because they are "privileged." 

Instead, he sent the House home until after the election.

Of course, the Republican Caucus itself is in a state of apparent open civil war. Johnson was likely faced with internecine fights and ugly roll call defeats and on and on. Republican House members can read the polls; they have to be looking for an exit.

What is interesting is that there was an avenue for the GOP to put the squeeze on Democrats. They could have arranged a bunch of show votes on things like "Give every American a puppy" or "castrate child rapists (who aren't in the GOP)" or "repeal all taxes because affordability." 

Instead, they have to go home and "face" a furious electorate and explain why A) they deserve another two years in office and B) why they haven't even worked during the last two years.

Tantrums

 If there is a theme to Richardson this morning, it is the extraordinary tantrums that Donald Trump (and by extension, Mike Johnson) are throwing daily. Trump's idiocy has come face to face with reality and the feedback he is getting is bad. Sycophantic minions like Natalie Harp have cocooned him from reality for a while, but feedback on the Kennedy Center, interest rates and the Iran War have forced him to confront his own putrid record.

Mike Johnson basically prorogued the House rather than let Thomas Massie's articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth come to a vote. That means that they would certainly pass. What's interesting is whether it would have acquired the 67 votes in the Senate. If you were a vulnerable Senator running for reelection, why wouldn't you create some distance between you and the toxic war that is sending gas prices spiraling. 

So, yeah, all Trump is offering is the whining, petulant cries of a toddler who has been told, no.

The Saga Of Bo French

 Bo French is a Texas Republican. He once seemed to model himself on George Bush's "compassionate conservatism." Now, he's a Trump-style racist and xenophobe. 

Here's the question that is going to be really important to the immediate future of this country: Was French always this racist? Or did Trump show him that being really racist could win you elections?

It sure seems like the Texas GOP has taken Trump's racism as a roadmap. Adam Serwer famously said that not all Trumpists were racists, but that racism wasn't a dealbreaker. French and many in the Texas GOP seem to think that, no, we are racists and we need to front that message.

The position French is running for is...whatever. However, a complete rejection of Asian immigrants or second and third generation Asian-Americans is going to be litmus test for the future of the GOP. If he wins...there's no penalty on the Right for this vile hatred. If he loses, maybe there's hope for the country yet. 

Russia, Russia, Russia

 One of Trump's uncountable lies is that the Mueller Report exonerated him. Mueller found widespread efforts by Russia to influence the 2016 election and that Trump and others around him tried to obstruct the investigation. Russia wanted Trump in the White House, and though no one appears to have directly coordinated with Russia, they welcomed the help. I would hardly be shocked if Paul Manafort coordinated with Moscow, but they couldn't find the evidence of that.

Yesterday brought the totally unsurprising report that a Russian oligarch close to Putin threw lavish parties for Donald Trump, Jr. at his recent wedding. It was Don Junior who famously said years before Trump polluted our civic life that Russian lenders kept Trump afloat when credible banks stopped loaning to them. Meanwhile, Trump's son-in-law - who for some reason has been given responsibility to resolve the Ukraine war - says that all that's need for peace between Ukraine and Russia is for Ukraine to accept defeat and cede territory to Russia.

Oh, and Trump is blaming high oil prices on Ukrainian strikes at Russian refineries, not his ill conceived war against Iran. 

The crazy thing is, we know that Trump is Putin's puppet. The evidence of his treachery is simply overwhelming. Yet - as with so many Trump scandals - we come up against two barriers. The first is obviously that his cult will never abandon him. The second is that the sheer brazenness of his outright perfidy sort of boggles the mind. It's so obvious and so substantial that it's hard for normal people to get their heads around it.

Interesting

 Apparently the attacks that were launched by Iran in early July were launched by a hardline faction within state security without the approval or even knowledge of the president. 

Iran's current president is not, I think, a crazed ideologue. Iran IS suffering in this war, even if it's not exactly going great for the US. I am deeply, deeply concerned about Houthis trying to shut off the Bab al Mandeb; global oil production and refining capacity is in the shitter; inflation is going to get worse.

Iran, however, is really suffering, but if the hardline faction are in charge, then they simply don't want peace. They don't care if the Iranian people suffer immensely; this war is what they want.

Also, the Supreme Leader hasn't been seen since the war began and his father was killed. Rumor has it that he's badly disfigured, if he's even alive. This, too, gives the hardliners leeway to do whatever they want, as the only figure with the authority to stop them is either dead, incapacitated or unable to fully exercise his office.

This is a well sourced story from within the Iranian government, so they want the word out. The US isn't winning this war, but we shouldn't assume Iran is winning it either.

You Can't Spell "Hair on Fire" Without AI

 Lots of people talking about AI today. Yglesias, Krugman and Richardson all talk about the groundswell of voices within the AI companies themselves - even among the top leaders - for some form of regulatory oversight. The problem is that each company pursuing AI doesn't want to "lose" to their competitors. So each company rushes headlong towards faster and faster development and more and more powerful models. 

When people like Jacob Coxon quit and go public with their concerns, it creates a moment when everyone takes a deep breath and looks around and ponders is maybe it's time to take a step back. The problem is that no single company wants to be the one to give up progress to a more heedless rival. Even these techbros are asking for a regulatory framework. 

Back when the Food and Drug Administration and food inspections were created, lots of the bigger meat packers were supportive of it, because smaller operators were selling tainted meat and making everyone skeptical of processed meat. Same dynamic today. The main AI companies want an international regulatory framework to make sure AI doesn't get out of control.

As an aside, I don't think AI will "wipe out humanity." I heard a helpful distinction. AI is unlikely to produce an extinction event, but it will very likely create a catastrophic event. If a rogue AI took over air traffic control, hundreds of planes could crash, thousands would die and the global economy would take a Covid-level body blow. That would be really bad, but not the end of humanity. Just please keep fucking Grok away from the nuclear weapons.

This is a moment, though, where Trump's malevolent ignorance becomes potentially lethal on a large scale. His contempt for anything he didn't think of, his avarice to make a quick buck off AI stocks, his antipathy towards sharing power with other institutions means that Trump will actively thwart the steps that AI companies themselves want the government to take. 

I remain amazed that he has a 37% approval rating. Seems high.

UPDATE: The last of my essential writers, Josh Marshall, weighs in. He looks at how digital companies have largely avoided paying the negative externalities that come with their products. An AI "event" could crash everything. 

Armageddon

 HCR summarizes Michael Luttig's argument that the GOP will simply try to end American democracy rather than let a Democratic Congress be seated. It's important to realize that the GOP will need near unanimity in both Houses to pull this off. It's not a question of Trump just leaning on Mike Johnson - he will need to have the complete House GOP caucus behind him.

The language used at last week's Snooze-apalooza where Trump got his fragile ego coddled was certainly alarming. However, it really is the case where he says a bunch of shit, and you can't tell if he's planning January 6th or threatening to invade Greenland. He's insane, and his public ramblings are most likely quite different from what the mass of Republicans are prepared to execute in his name. 

When it comes to things like Luttig's dooming, I am also of two minds. We probably should be bulletproofing everything we can for not just November, but January, when the new Congress will be seated. On the other hand, I really don't like the idea of doom being in the background of people's minds when it comes to exercising their franchise.

I know, for instance, that I've been very reluctant to contribute to Democrats, because I'm sick to fucking death of the apocalyptic text messages. More than happy to give what I can, when I can. But STOP FUCKING TEXTING ME ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING IS GOING TO SHIT UNLESS I PITCH IN $20, $50 or $100 TODAY.

Someone needs to sit down with Johnson and a host of these other Weak Creatures and lay out an alternative. If Trump tries to stop this election from occurring or from being certified, then we need to talk about secession. The Northeast and Pacific Coasts can break off and - in an ironic twist - join Canada.

UPDATE: Martin Longman points out that Trump is doing everything he can to antagonize voters. Pundits will seek the deeper strategy that Trump is pursuing, but I think he's just big mad and angry at the voters and telling them to fuck off. There's no one around him capable of telling him just how poor his instincts are. 

The Legacy of 9/11

 I'm usually a fan of Paul Campos, but this discussion between him and Robert Farley feel way wide of the mark. Their argument is that 9/11 really didn't have a cultural impact on par with the Kennedy Assassination. The assassination certainly did exert of vise grip on the imaginations of Boomers, to the point where Trump routinely flatulates some nonsense about releasing the files. Certainly, the Kennedy assassination birthed many conspiracy theories.

However, the argument that 9/11 had a greater political and policy impact on the US is undeniable. Kennedy's death did not lead to Vietnam - sorry, Oliver Stone, that's bullshit. What it did do was unleash America's longest war and perhaps its most pointless defeat. I'm willing to argue that Vietnam was the price for winning the Cold War. It was a terrible mistake, but it was a mistake borne of a policy - containment - that won the conflict. Iraq was just completely bullshit from the start. So, if we are analyzing the cultural impact of 9/11, we have to look at the two wars (three if you want to include the GWOT) that arose from it.

Yes, the Vietnam War spawned a ton of films, but so did the cycle of wars after 9/11. What's more, a lot of tangential media like the Jason Bourne movies seem directly related to the period of fear and anxiety that came after the attacks. If anything, I think Farley and Campos are simply confusing the media that they consumed as young people with the media landscape today.

What I also think that they get wrong is not seeing how 9/11 in many ways led to Trump. There's the obvious xenophobia, sure. There's the obvious Islamophobia, sure. However, Trump's primary message was one of American decline or American Carnage. In his telling, 9/11 happened because America was "weak" (in fact, it happened because America was strong). The "forever wars" were bad not because we shouldn't have fought them, but because we weren't ruthless enough. America was a feeble nation that lost to Iraqi and Afghan insurgents. 

That message was married not only to 9/11 and it's impact, but also the 2008 financial crisis, but I don't think Trump win in 2016 without tapping into the sense that America was a declining nation. Clinton represented the status quo and he was the wrecking ball.

That latter part was true, I guess. 

UPDATE: Chait documents the link between 9/11 and Trump.

The Stay-At-Home Voter

 Elliott Morris has been running polls that show something that makes visceral sense. Trump was returned to power in 2024 by low information voters who were broadly unhappy with the state of the economy (and were likely unhappy with a liberal Californian woman of color, but that's my own slant). Those low information voters - Paul Campos calls them Ariana Grande Voters - felt that Trump could magically return us to the economy of 2019. The fact that this was always utter bullshit ties into the fact that these are low information and low engagement voters. I would wager very few of them understood the inflationary pressures that tariffs and deportations would create. 

The Trump-apalooza random rally in Dallas the last two days was designed to motivate those low information voters to get out and vote. I would guess that Republicans are seeing polling that shows the shape of the electorate moving against them. Democrats and unhappy Independents are going to vote; they are extremely motivated. Whereas they are likely seeing that some of their 2024 voters aren't planning to vote.

What Morris is saying is that getting those people to the polls - by centering Trump of all people - is likely to backfire. I certainly hope that's true. I would love it if the GOP did a robust Get Out The Vote effort that wound up turning out voters who vote for Democrats and Independents. 

Still, I really do think that a large factor in the November election will be voters who voted Republican in the last few cycles, but feel (justifiably) betrayed and decide to skip the election entirely. I think that's what the GOP is seeing and why they gambled on using Trump to rally their support. Vulnerable people running for actual office have shunned the event in Texas. Unsurprisingly. Only Trump seems not to understand how unpopular he is.

Utterly Loathsome

 It's so hard to keep track of all the horrible things that that orange motherfucker does, day in and day out. However, his latest lie that he was some sort of hero on 9/11 really burns my ass for some reason. Is it the rank narcissism? The mewling, craving need to be the center of attention? The obvious falseness of it? 

I think it might be just how much he degrades everything he touches. I have never fetishized 9/11 the way some people have. "Never forget" and all that. Still, it's a solemn day and I'm even teaching an elective this fall called "The World That 9/11 Made." The central thesis of that course is how people can make disastrous decisions for what they feel are the right reasons. Bin Laden thought he would topple America. Bush thought we could create democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If I try to force that frame on Trump, I founder on this point: Bush thought he was acting in the nation's best interest, but he was wrong because he wasn't very bright and couldn't see the obvious complications that his actions would create. Trump simply acts in his OWN interest and is wrong because he isn't very bright and can't see the obvious complications that his actions will create. Trump is simply incapable of acting in anyone's interest but his own. 

This is why he needs 9/11 to be about himself. This is why he needs everything to be about himself. It's why he's trying to make the midterms about himself, when he has a 35% job approval rating. 

Just a completely loathsome human being.

UPDATE: Trump is gutting health measures for 9/11 responders.

GOP Healthcare Plan

 Apparently, it's "sue patients who can't pay, and then arrest them." 

I've been wondering just how far and where the backlash to Trump will manifest in November, and a place like Kansas is an interesting test case. Democrats have a strong candidate, but more than that, Trump's policies have been very damaging to farmers. The trade wars have shut off foreign markets, the deportations have crushed the agricultural work force, the Iran War has exploded the cost of diesel and fertilizer and the healthcare policies will shutter rural hospitals and clinics.

In Kansas, where you have the incumbent wrapped up both in the cuts to healthcare AND the draconian debt collection that accompanies our system, you have a real possibility to flipping a seat. Kansas has elected Democratic governors recently, often in the face of ideological incompetence. Iowa, too, could be ripe for a double-barreled message to the GOP.

Power Doesn't Panic, Part II: Electric Boogaloo

 How is Trump responding to cratering approval polls? He's launching a troll offensive. How is he responding to rising costs? He's admitting potentially tainted beef from Brazil.

As Krugman notes in the second link, Trump and the contemporary GOP has no use for expertise. This goes back to things like the response to Hurricane Katrina, when Bush had a rankly unqualified person as the head of FEMA. This is why educational status is increasingly a predictor of voting behavior. The end result of populism is contempt for expertise and a hollowing out of state capacity.

The broader theme of Trump lashing out is still valid though. His torrent of AI slop - including a video of him attacking Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (who was an actually good hockey player) - reeks of flop sweat desperation. Consider the following:

- Voters are pissed at him.
- He has surrounded himself with sycophants.
- He has absolutely nothing to offer voters, because he has no policy chops.
- His lizard brain goes straight to the only thing he knows how to do: attack and insult.
- He doubles and triples down on the same frantic insults, since there is literally nothing else.

Again, I don't want to imply that this isn't dangerous. Trump is a cornered rat, and we saw what that looked like on January 6th. Still, this doesn't seem like someone who is confident that he has the election fixed. 

Recently, he attacked Bombardier - a small airplane manufacturer with plants in Canada and Kansas. Senator Moran of Kansas actually pushed back against this. As we get closer to the election and Trump insists on centering his insults as the midterm message, Republican politicians are going to be cross pressured to get him to shut up, while needing his support to fire up the base.

Let's say the trends are accurate and Democrats win control of both Houses of Congress. The next crisis will be seating the new Congress with Democratic majorities. Trump will try and stop it, but are there enough Republican Members to basically tell him to fuck off? I think there might be, and I think that's especially true the further he sinks into his ranting madness.

"Economic Anxiety"

 Krugman looks at the recent local election in Germany that put AfD in power in Saxony-Anholt. He hits on something that has been noted before, but needs to be constantly recalled. There is a LOT of overlap between people who feel economically disadvantaged and people who rely on racism to explain why. In Europe, Orban in Hungary, Le Pen in France and AfD in Germany all rely on anti-immigrant politics to try and win elections. In fact, you can go back to the pre-World War II United States and see a ton of overlap between people who were upset by what they perceived as declining status and a hatred of immigrants.

There is a superficial logic to this, as you can imagine adding workers to a workforce would mean fewer jobs for people who already were in the workforce. Except economics is pretty clear that immigration leads to economic growth. This - not tax cuts for the rich - is the rising tide that lifts all boats. 

What I find interesting is that there have been some clips going around from some Socialist convention held in the US recently, and it's a bunch of weirdo positions on things like "weight loss is health genocide" or "criticizing me is basically slavery." The original criticism of "socialists" like Bernie Sanders was that Democrats had stopped putting the needs of working class voters at the top of their priorities. Now, the DSA has disappeared down the rabbit hole of what James Carville calls "faculty room politics." Basically, if you don't want to put your gender pronouns in your email signature, you're Adolf Hitler.

It would be nice if there really was some sort of magic button we could push that unified everyone against the oligarchs who have enshittified the world. In fact, fear makes people hateful and we shouldn't be surprised that Saxony-Anholt voted for Nazis than we should that the dying small towns of America vote for Trump.

Power Doesn't Panic

 I read Richardson, as I do every morning, but then didn't find anything to add. However, thinking about it, it occurs to me that many of the actions of Trump and his minions give off a reek of panic. The efforts to stop mail-in voting, the floundering around in Iran, the chaotic building spree that winds up going off the rails like the Reflecting Pool fiasco...there seems to be a mad thrashing about.

Trump has started musing in that unfiltered way of his that he's mortal. Maybe all the vibes and rumors of health problems are real; he certainly looks like shit. 

However, while we know he's a malevolent force in our country and the world, there is something panicky about his actions. He's rushing shit like the Arch de Trump and the ballroom, because he knows he's running out of time. Maybe it's health, maybe it's November.

Power doesn't panic. Power controls. Trump is spinning out of control.

That comes with risks - huge risks - but it also suggests that even his Swiss Cheese mind is aware that things are unraveling and he's scared.

Labor And Capital

 Richardson runs through the founding of Labor Day in the United States (and the backlash to a worker's political movement). One of the enduring mysteries in some quarters is why America never had a "Labour Party" (aside from the weird spelling). The best explanation is that workers had the vote far earlier than their counterparts in Europe and the Anglophone world. As a result, they joined existing parties rather than invest themselves in union movements that then merged with a political party once property restrictions on suffrage were removed.  In fact, the reluctance of Britain to extend the suffrage was likely a fear of the number of working class voters and what their votes might do to Britain. Mostly the result was that everyone get health care.

HCR has a quote from the Times in the 1880s arguing that everyone who works is a worker:

The New York Times denied that workers were any special class in the United States, saying that “[e]very one who works with his brain, who applies accumulated capital to industry, who directs or facilitates the operations of industry and the exchange of its products, is just as truly a laboring man as he who toils with his hands…and each contributes to the creation of wealth and the payment of taxes and is entitled to a share in the fruits of labor in proportion to the value of his service in the production of net results.”

I've seen this argument recently from - of all people - DSA types who want to make sure that their main demographic - college and post-college educated white people - don't feel threatened. "No, no, no, we aren't talking ACTUAL socialism. Just Vibe Socialism." I suppose that's a nice "big tent" approach, but I think it misses the actual issue.

There is a clear schism between people who work for wages and people who work for a salary. A lot of salaried jobs require a college degree, and that salary comes with benefits, usually. Even if you are "only" making a $55,000 a year salary, chances are you get health care and other perks. The whole compensation package is, just that, a package. If you work for $25 an hour, your pay is roughly the same, but you might not get the same benefits package.

Fair enough.

The real divide today though is not between wage earners and salaried employees. It is between wealth and income. You can earn $150,000 a year but not own enough stuff to be truly wealthy, especially if you are young. 

What Richardson did not talk about in her piece was that during the unrest from the laboring classes, one proposal from both Populists and Progressives was a graduated income tax. You earn more, you pay more. This was supposed to retard the growing accumulation of wealth from income.

In 2026, we have abandoned the idea that taxation can address inequality. We still mostly support some spending to address poverty (not most Republicans, but most Americans), but while we have a graduated income tax, we do not tax capital gains in the same aggressively progressive way. 

I don't know if Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax will work. I feel confident the Supreme Court will strike it down, but I also don't know precisely how it will work mechanically. How do you really assess wealth?  How can you tax a home the same as a stock portfolio?

Still, if we are going to arrest and rebuke the slide into oligarchy, we have to start somewhere. Encouragingly, we did it before.

November

 I don't think - within the context of January 6th - that it is an exaggeration to say that the future of the American Republic is on the line this midterm election. Given that context, it's tricky to brush aside the threat that Trump could pose at any step of the election process. We are already seeing him attack voting by mail. We hear dark whispers of ICE at polling places. We've obviously seen the mid-decade gerrymandering.

My take is that there are legitimate threats, but that we need to take a deep breath. Republicans can see the polls, but there is a real question as to whether Trump actually sees unfavorable polls of whether Natalie Harp prevents him from getting bad news. The behavior from a lot of Republicans is that they know they are going to get pummeled and they are preparing themselves for that. Even Trump seems to be aware of that. We don't see the behavior of people who have it fixed so that they can't lose.

The two biggest threats are overall voters suppression and efforts to void the election after the fact. The first is very real, I fear, as Republicans will use the bullshit excuse of voter fraud to justify targeting Democratic constituencies. They won't and can't cancel elections, but closing polling stations and setting up ICE checkpoints near those polling stations could depress voter turnout. However, anti-Trump voters are INCREDIBLY fired up, and I hope there will be an effort to circumvent those measures. For instance, if you vote by mail, you better turn your ballot in in person.

Efforts to void the election after the fact - January 6th Part II - seem less likely to succeed. The idea will be to caterwaul about voter fraud and delegitimize the election in order to placate the cultists surrounding Trump. Hardcore Trumpists are already predisposed to distrust objective reality, so that will work as an effort to keep Cult 45 happy. 

However, are there enough Republicans in Congress to actively take measures to end American democracy? The number isn't zero, which is appalling, but I don't think it's more that dozens in the House and fewer in the Senate. As we saw with the pre-riot January 6th actions, only a handful of Republicans supported Trump's fabulist claims. Also, given the nature of cults, the loyalty of MAGA lies with Trump, not the GOP. Having a Democratic Congress isn't going to provide the same motivation that existed with "Stop the Steal." 

It's objectively not great. We shouldn't be having these discussions. However, I do think that Democrats will take the House and probably the Senate. I think there is a groundswell of anger out there over Trump's naked corruption and manifest incompetence. I think his supporters are dispirited and many will stay home. 

Hopefully that will be enough.

In 1951, as American troops moved largely unopposed up the Korean peninsula after the Inchon landings, Stalin reportedly sighed and said, "I guess the Americans will be on our borders." (Korea shares a small border with Russia.) Even Stalin bent to reality, though Mao decided to throw hundreds of thousands of troops into the conflict. My point is simply that even dictators surrounded by sycophants often bend to reality.

More AI

 Josh Marshall has been ruminating on the backlash to data centers.

I can't help but feel it comes from three main concerns. The first is simply that energy costs are rising and data centers consume a lot of energy.

The second is that we are being forced to use AI for non-AI purposes. When I Google something on my phone, I don't have a choice about the fact that it's going to give me an AI bot - one that is often hard to click out of.

The final reason is simply that people are fed up with Tech Bros coming in, altering our lives without our consent (see above), hooking us on algorithmic dopamine and then jacking up prices and throwing up paywalls to things that we have been using for free for years.

The fact that people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and even Jeff Bezos seem like actual Bond villains doesn't help, but in a growing climate of "eat the rich" it's not nothing.

AI's Brave New World

 We are spending the day working with AI within an educational setting. It is profoundly worrying in two ways.

The first is obvious (at least to me). This is a very easy way to avoid "doing the work" that education requires for minds to grow and improve. Education is an active cognitive process and AI allows students to skip the hard part and arrive at the answer. I was there already, and nothing I've heard so far alleviates those concerns.

The second was related to the first, in that I am very much anti-AI. I am inherently skeptical of new technology, because I find that it ultimately curdles into something bad. Remember when the Internet was going to democratize knowledge and expertise and instead we got new ways to distribute porn? Social media was supposed to keep us in contact with distant friends, and instead it has become a way to isolate ourselves and degrade interpersonal actions within those spaces.

So, I'm anti-AI. I've read and watched science fiction; this is how the world ends.

When I started using it though, I could immediately see the appeal. To be clear, I didn't shift my opinion of AI, but I can see how beguiling it can be. It's not that what it provided me was wrong, but it was shallow. (Some was at best confusing if not wrong, but generally it's just a really robust, interactive search and creation function.) The consultant said it's best to think of Claude or Gemini as an intern, and I totally get that.

But...

As we have seen with social media, once you get hooked on the ease of getting one more video after another, it's really hard to kick that habit. The stories about people developing unhealthy relationships with AI seem very, very real to me, and that will get worse as we go further down this road.

The idea that AI can help with cognitive offloading - taking on tasks to free our minds to be better - seems appealing at first, but take GPS navigation. Who can read a map anymore? Who can drive to a new place without a screen? We used to be able to do that, but that skill has largely atrophied. What skills will AI atrophy?

I just asked Gemini what are the dystopian elements of Huxley's A Brave New World. I then asked it how that is reflected in social media. I got a good answer and one that doesn't surprise me (I asked the question), but it did allow me to recall a novel I read 40 years ago. AI feels very much like it will not walk down the road that social media took, but sprint without tiring. It did also tell me how Huxley's nightmare is reflected in generative AI. 

That doesn't mean I read the book, lived with the book, felt the book. I got the Cliff's Notes. 

We already lived in a superficial world, and it's going to get much, much worse.

What Does Defeat Look Like?

 The ongoing destruction of American military preparedness is very much the fault of Pete Hegseth and therefore Donald Trump. When the rogue's roll of Cabinet appointees came out in the winter of 2025, Hegseth's CV was the thinnest and obviously Defense is a critical Cabinet position. He has lived down to the worst assumptions about what his tenure would be. RFK, Jr may be currently responsible for more American deaths though. Still, the fact that Hegseth still has a job is inconceivable in a normal political environment.

There are obviously short and long term consequences for this disastrous fustercluck in the Persian Gulf. In the short term, the US military does not have enough of certain important types of missiles and interceptors to be at peak military readiness. The individual crews of ships in the region are being worked beyond endurance. For what? We aren't invading Iran and we can't bomb them out of their strategic position.

In the medium term, one has to worry about Trump's decision to keep Hegseth, because he wants a lackey at Defense. Trump has zero loyalty, so he's not sticking with this idiot out of principle. 

In the longer term - and let's presume we retain American democracy - what will the Iran War mean for the US military. Some of this is wrapped up in the short term; Hegseth's evisceration of brain power in favor of physical fitness is driving away the sort of smart officers who will be required to rebuild the American military for the 21st century battlefield. 

I am fairly confident that in the corners of the Pentagon and the War College, serious officers are looking at the Persian Gulf (and Ukraine) and seeing what the future of warfare looks like. They will not be able to realize these institutional changes, which puts the US behind China in the race for drone dominance. In fact, in a lot of ways, we already trail Ukraine when it comes to the sort of drones that seem likely to be the dominant battlefield weapon of the immediate future.

After Vietnam, junior officers like Colin Powell rose through the ranks determined that there would not be a disastrous war like that again. Then Powell himself helped engineer the Iraq War disaster. Yet, the US military had the capacity to retool and rearm fairly quickly. We likely retain that capacity.

The question is whether we will get a civilian leadership in the Pentagon to move us towards that future or whether Trump will keep Hegseth around doing push up photo ops and ignoring the reality staring him in the face.