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.