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.

The Politics of Surrender

 Yglesias makes sort of a good point, but in his usual polemical style that robs it of its merit. He says Democrats should "surrender" in the trade war with Canada. That's just aggressively stupid rhetoric from a guy who prides himself of his language, but also his edginess. Democrats shouldn't "surrender" on anything. They should END the trade wars, the should END the Iran war - though that gets tricky.

Ending the trade wars is easy, because they are almost all certainly illegal. Trump's bizarre obsession with tariffs is politically unpopular, and - as Yglesias notes - it is unpopular across just about every interest group you could think of. So you just end them. There's no "surrender" involved and using that term would be political malpractice.

This becomes clearer when you look at the Iran situation. The US and Iran are launching shit at each other again. Why? Because Trump cannot extricate himself from this colossal mistake. There is no clean exit and Iran knows it. Iran's victory exists in enduring the sort of pain that is unimaginable in the US, because this is a war of regime survival for them and it's a fucking video game for Hegseth and Trump. 

I don't even know if there IS a solution to this ongoing disaster, unless China and Russia want to jump in and pressure Iran to come to the table. Why would China want to extricate the US from this quagmire? I suppose the economic cost of continued restrictions on oil supply will bite them, too, but again, they might be willing to suffer through that, because the Iran War is just an ongoing disaster for the US. Combine it with the incessant attacking of our allies, and Trump is working overtime to isolate the US from everyone in the world.

However, as we saw in Afghanistan, simply declaring defeat and withdrawing isn't popular either. Americans are not necessarily smart when it comes to foreign policy, and they would prefer a perfect outcome every time. They want to end the war in Iran without using ground troops and without losing. That's more or less impossible. 

The struggle for Democrats is that someone has to pull the plug and it won't be the GOP. They may have to force the US to come to grips with its defeat and that won't be popular.

Tax The Rich

 Krugman's weekend explainers are always pretty good, but today he looks at the decline in tax enforcement under the GOP going back to the 1980s. The story - unsurprisingly - has been that whenever possible, when Republicans have the trifecta, they slash enforcement measures by the IRS. The people most likely to avoid or evade taxes are the very rich. They have both the motive and means to create tax shelters or pass-through corporations or offshore accounts to avoid paying their share of tax. The tax code itself is legally crafted to preference capital over wages, and when you add various legal and illegal measures, the very rich pay a much smaller share of their yearly income or wealth than do people who earn most of their money through wages and salary.

When you hear various left wing populists talk about Medicare for All or expanding program X, they typically don't talk too much about where the money will come from, as they have learned from Republicans not to care about the national debt. However, we really are starting to get to a place where government borrowing to finance the debt is crowding out private borrowing, which is one reason why interest rates remain high. 

Closing the tax avoidance gap will by itself will not fund the progressive wish list. Particularly Medicare for All will require broad-based taxes to fund a broad-based program. You also likely need some version of a wealth tax to target the multi-billionaires, but again, this likely won't fund everything you want to do.

The thing is the billionaires have largely chosen their side. They are lining up behind Trump, because his own lawlessness and disregard for the public weal mirrors their own. Google just changed Lake Ontario to Lake America on Google Maps, which strikes me as a terribly short-sighted decision on the part of a company that is ripe for anti-trust prosecution under a Democratic administration. You could squint and see an argument that Democrats should go too hard after billionaires to prevent them from giving all their money to the GOP - most corporations balance their campaign contributions to preserve access to both sides. The billionaires have chosen their side, and like Trump himself, they aren't likely to be challenged on this by the murmuring minions who surround them.

Writing tax enforcement into law will help a lot. I would think you should also craft a treaty with the EU to standardize tax enforcement, because there will absolutely be efforts to hide wealth offshore. The Panama Papers were proof of that. Creating a universal enforcement regime and a universal suite of consequences would go a long way to stopping the descent into oligarchy. If Sergei Brin decides to avoid paying his taxes, and Google pays the price along side him, would he still avoid taxes?

Unravelling the corruption of Trumpistan will not be easy, and the Supreme Court will try and stand in the way. However, that has to be a major focus of the next Democratic trifecta. 

Masks Or Rather Hoods Off

 The decision to end TPS status for Haitians is tightly linked to the increasingly obvious racism of the Trump Administration, especially the imagery they are using. Haitians in this country have been offered the protection from danger that they would face at home, because that used to be what America offered the world. 

Of course, that wasn't always true. In the 1920s, the US - really for the first and only time - deeply restricted immigration. They set quotas designed to dramatically decrease the number of immigrants from "undesirable" places like Italy, Greece and Eastern Europe. Under the apartheid-like delineation of race under "scientific racism" those people were considered different races than more Nordic, Northern European races. 

The engine backing this legislation was the "Second Klan" which drew on anti-Catholic, antisemitic and anti-Black prejudices to become briefly very powerful across the nation, not just in the South. Donald Trump's father was arrested at a Second Klan rally in NYC.

The dynamic seems to be this: Trump is losing his juice. He's unpopular across broad swaths of the public. His supporters are upset with him. He has backed himself into a losing war with Iran and a stupid trade war with Canada. The alarm bells are going off among Congressional Republicans, as a Blue Wave seems to be building across America. Democrats are slightly favored to win statewide races in places like Texas, Iowa and Alaska.

In response, all he has left is the racism that exists deep within his DNA (The Central Park Five anyone?) and to unleash the foulest creatures in his administration. Just as the Adults In The Room, who prevented him from disastrous and illegal policies in his first term, are gone, they have been replaced with just the absolute dregs of society: racists, Nazis, and an army of trolls and sycophants.

Look, this November shouldn't be close. Democrats should win in places like Kansas and Kentucky if the American people had a shred of sense and decency about them. Trump isn't telling you who is, he's screaming it. If we don't course correct, that's the end of America as we know it.

Lying Liars

 Richardson's run down today focuses on the rampant lying of the Trump Administration. One of Trump's political insights going back to 2016 is that people have such low opinions of politicians that they will assume the worst about them, so he can behave terribly and more importantly openly terribly and lots of people will just shrug it off.

"All politicians are liars" is a popular trope, that up until Trump was largely untrue. Politicians have always promised things that they would struggle to deliver once in office, though if a politician ran on a specific platform, often they would try to pass that platform. Given the nature of our political system, if you ran on ending legal abortions or universal healthcare, you would not be able to achieve that if you won. That's not exactly lying, but you can see why people return to "All politicians are liars."

Even more so, this is true if "All politicians are corrupt." This builds on the above idea, if Senator Smith runs on slashing the defense budget to pay for better schools, and then is unable to achieve this, the lazy assumption is that Smith was paid off by defense contractors. 

What Trump has done is to take these ideas - which are far more prevalent the further you move down the education pyramid - and supercharge them. In 2016, he famously said, "I alone can fix it." Much of his evangelical support began with the idea that this deeply flawed man was their champion precisely because he was deeply flawed. His own corruption would allow him to fight the corruption in DC.

Obviously, that was some weapons grade bullshit.

It is reasonable to wonder how much longer his naked greed and mendacity will be tolerated by even his supporters. People would rather chew their own foot off than admit they were wrong about something like that, so there's a real good chance that he continues to hold onto a fair amount of the electorate. Still, what is that fair amount? 35%? 27%? Can he go lower than the Crazification Factor?

This doesn't mean that his voters will vote for Democrats. However, if millions of them stay home....

RFK, Jr Can Go Straight To Hell

 I lost my dad to melanoma. I lost my mom to pancreatic cancer.

RFK is trying to destroy incredibly promising research that might have saved or extended their lives.

Also, he's a liar.

Losing Wars

 Trump and Hegseth lost the Iran War, because they don't understand war properly. They think the expensiveness of a weapon's system is what matters. It's like the old Spinal Tap joke ("But this one goes to eleven."), where you can't even see the stupidity of the metrics that you're using. With Hegseth's hard-on for "lethality" he completely missed that wars are inherently political acts and leading a democracy to war requires public suasion first and foremost. Sometimes (Pearl Harbor, Fort Sumter, 9/11) that suasion is handled by your enemy. Trump/Hegseth never made a case for the war, they just did it, trusting that the disparity in military budgets would carry the day. It has been the political will and the ability to leverage cheap drones that has led to an Iranian victory (and it leading to a Ukrainian one, as well).

Of course, the Iran War isn't Trump's only ongoing war. His trade war with Canada is now accelerating. Like the previous example, Trump's fundamental stupidity means that he doesn't understand the basic dynamics of the situation. The US and Canadian economies are mixed together; trade wars make zero sense. Like with Iran, it's a question of political will. Canada is united, the US is not. What's more this will have its biggest impact in states close to Canada. Are their important elections in Maine, Michigan, Alaska and Wisconsin, I wonder? Are farmers' votes important in Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas?

I know I've beaten this dead horse to a bloody pulp, but Trump doesn't understand the process of creating a policy, because he spent his entire adult life running a company of about 10 people, bullying other people and then going bankrupt. He never had to do real horse trading or compromising; in fact, he finds those things contemptibly weak. 

When Trump looks at the smoldering mess he's making, he blames it on Biden. This isn't just his malignant narcissism. This is his entire way of doing business over the past 50 years. Nothing his fault; attack, attack, attack; deflect, deflect, deflect; never admit weakness. Character really is destiny. Ignorance really isn't bliss.

If Democrats and independents wind up sweeping through elections in the Great Plains and along the Canadian border, it will be because Donald Trump has dragged us into wars that we did not have to fight, with goals that were unrealistic in the most optimistic projections and have been waged with a fecklessness that would shame a toddler.

The Wrong 80 Year Old

 Dolly Parton's death rather unexpectedly floored me. I was not a huge fan of her music, but enjoyed it. Rather I was a massive fan of Parton the human being. As many have noted, Parton was perhaps the last universally loved American. She was authentic and authentically kind. Her charity work is legendary and her sense of humor sublime. She was the best of us.

That obviously stands in rank contrast with the man who is trying to tear down the country in, as Krugman suggests, a rage against a people that have moved against him. Trump's depredations are increasing precisely because he can read the polls. His threat to tear down the Kennedy Center, because the Courts won't let him put his name on it is a prime example of his narcissistic rage in action.

This is also the "logic" of a domestic abuser: if he can't have you, no one can. He would destroy the country rather than let it pass into someone's hands. Trump's tidal wave of bullshit swept him back into the Oval Office, but he never had a plan or even really a motivation to actually improve people's lives. He never has. He ran for president to stay out of jail and millions of Americans were stupid enough to believe him over the legion of people who told them - straight out - who he was. 

There are two big, huge, massive differences between Hitler and Trump. The first, obviously, is age. Hitler's death was...sudden. Trump, however, is old and looking older every day. The second difference is that Hitler was popular. His early actions and even his actions in the first half of the war were designed to shield the German people from his worst policies. He pulled Germany out of an economic spiral - he did not start one. Right now, Trump is manifestly unpopular with the American people and becoming more so. He's lost the Iran war, which people didn't want him to fight in the first place. 

He's not Hitler, he's Mussolini but with a more powerful country at his feet. 

We are a lesser country and a lesser world with Dolly Parton gone. Her goodness and decency, her ability to laugh at herself, her grace and even her tackiness were all so wonderful and the world is dimmer without her around. Do better next time, Reaper.

Go, Canada

 Trump has launched a trade war against arguably our closest ally, Canada. We have multiple trade agreements with Canada, but Trump's lawlessness and Congress's complete submission have rendered those laws moot. These trade wars make zero sense from any rational perspective. They have to be viewed through the ongoing psychodrama of Trump 2.0.

During the first maladministration, there was a lot of talk about the "adults in the room." Given the dysfunction of Trump 1.0, those assertions seemed absurd. We are now seeing that they were largely correct. There is no one to rein in Trump's erratic "policies." Of course, they aren't really policy, but rather the extension of his NY real estate tactics. You open a negotiation, seem close to a deal, then you fuck it all up to get more leverage. You "assert dominance" in a way to get the other side to submit to your demands. His routine stiffing of contractors was a prime example of that. They thought they had a contract, but he sued and blustered and reneged on agreements to exhaust the other side.

That doesn't work with sovereign countries with their own power dynamics. 

This recent falling out with Canada seems hard to divorce from Trump's other impotent crises. The failure in Iran, the cratering approval ratings, even the defeat of his endorsed candidates in primaries...all of these are expressions of weakness for a man who cannot ever, ever admit weakness. (see the above about NY real estate.)

So, he lashes out in febrile, unpredictable ways. Picking this fight with Canada is just fundamentally stupid. What's more, this is a lifeline to Democratic hopes in Maine, Michigan and other states that do a lot of business with Canada. For someone like El Sayed, this offers an opportunity to change the subject from his association with odious troll Hasan Piker. 

It's also worth noting that Trump is ALSO cutting tariffs to import more grounded beef to reduce prices. Trump has lied (shocker!) about the role that tariffs play in inflating prices, but his own plan to lower prices is to...lower tariffs. Basically he's driving prices up with one policy and trying to reduce it in focused ways to help him in November. All he's accomplishing is to piss off farmers, drive home the inflationary nature of his tariffs and probably import tainted beef. Anyone want to gamble on the rigor of the FDA's inspections these days? I guess people still eat at Taco Bell, so maybe they are.

The "adults in the room" really did turn out to be important. 

You Take The Meeting

 The Online Mob was out for Hakeem Jeffries yesterday, when a story came out that he met with Jared Kushner. Jeffries statement was:

In a statement, Mr. Jeffries did not acknowledge the meeting, but suggested that the only way Democrats would cut deals with the administration would be if Republicans were willing to come their way on cost-of-living issues, his party’s top priority.

“Throughout this Congress, Republicans have adopted a my-way-or-the-highway approach to governing that has failed the American people,” he said.

He added: “In every conversation that we have with the Trump administration, we will continue to make it explicitly clear that the affordability crisis is not a hoax, and nothing short of transformational policy change is acceptable. We are fighting for an affordable America. The question is whether Republicans will join us.”

The anger was that Jeffries met with Kushner at all, because...well, I was never really given a compelling reason why. There was one weird argument that Kushner wasn't really part of the administration, which is a prima facie absurdity. Kushner is Trump's Son in Law, married to the only kid he really cares about. Kushner runs around as a shadow Secretary of State. He may not have an official government title, but as someone noted, DOGE wasn't "real" either and they've still killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Maybe it was just meeting with Kushner, because Jeffries should be "fighting" more. So, I posted the picture of Trump meeting with Mayor Mamdani - not to dunk on Mamdani, but because you take the meeting.

This was met with real anger and name calling from accounts that I've had positive interactions with previously. I was called a "dumbfuck" and the like, because I really don't think this is a big deal. 

What's more, as I thought about for more than one hot second, this is a really bad story...for Jared Kushner. This is a member of Trump's inner circle looking for the lifeboats. Kushner is a little weasel, but he isn't a complete moron, and understands that Jeffries will be the next Speaker. He wasn't meeting with Mike Johnson to stop it; he's trying to get ahead of the coming Blue Wave.

There has been a lot of doomer-casting about the coming midterms. "Trump will cancel the elections." 
"Johnson won't certify the election." That sort of stuff. And after January 6th, nothing should be considered off the table. Still, the Republicans in the room seem to accept that Jeffries will be the next Speaker. That's pretty remarkable.

The seething anger against Trump, though, was transmogrified online to be directed at Jeffries. 

The anger is the problem. I hate Donald Trump more than I've hated anything in my life. However, if I were being asked what to DO about Donald Trump, I would take my anger and my hatred and put it in a box. You cannot make your best decisions when you are enraged. You cannot strategize if all you feel is hate. You have to separate the two.

Of course, the algorithm rewards anger, it rewards hate, it rewards impulse. The Very Online people are being mad just to be mad, because that is what the internet is for. 

Politicians meet with people they disagree with or don't like all the time. Mamdani doesn't agree with Trump, but he met with him. People tried to be upset that it was a meeting two months before the midterms, but again, that just shows that Trump's inner circle knows they are about to take a beating. 

I can take my anger and hatred out of that box without losing the ability to put it back in when needed. Maybe that's what allows me not to be mad at Jeffries, since Jeffries isn't the enemy. Unless enemies is what keeps your blood flowing, in which case, assemble the circular firing squad. 

UPDATE: At the end of this piece on the Canadian trade war, Josh Marshall notes the same dynamic when discussing the issue with Canadians. It's simply impossible to have a reasoned discussion with an enraged person.