It's The Guns

 Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, a friend of mine's son was wounded by what appears to be just another angry, random shooting. 

It's the guns, it's the guns, it's the guns. Their ubiquity and the psychology that gives you the power of death in your hands. That this psychopath was shooting off a weapon of war in his yard should be enough. That he then went into the house and executed the people there no longer surprises.

We aren't a sicker society because these people exist. They exist everywhere. We are a sicker society because we don't do a damned thing about it.

The Normal Guy

 Inside this post is a Tweet by Kilgore Trout that I think captures something essential about Biden's electability. While I think Biden would've beaten Trump in 2016, I really think he beats him in 2024, because he's boring and normal. After four years of Trump racist uncle who ruined Thanksgiving, Biden is just a goofy granddad who likes goofy granddad things. 

The unspoken subtext of the Biden (and Trump years in some ways) is that the president himself is not essential to the day-to-day running of the government. Probably the most "hands on" presidents in recent memory were Nixon and Carter. Maybe Clinton and Johnson. Being a micromanager is probably not the best way to be president. Trump and Biden both demonstrate that in important ways the key to a presidency is character and Congress. If you have working majorities, you can accomplish tangible results, but otherwise, it's your character that matters.

Trump is a criminal, a sexist, a racist, a narcissist and an moron. Biden is not a brilliant guy like Obama and Clinton, but he's not a criminal, a sexist, a racist or a narcissist. 

Most people are more than OK with that.

Race To The Bottom

 The anti-abortion victories in America's reddest states are having predictably awful results. If this trend continues - and why wouldn't it - then women in America's reddest and poorest states are going to start dying in childbirth, as are their kids. This was entirely predictable. Abortions are health care in many if not most cases. If OBGYNs face legal punishment for practicing medicine, they will simply move. Unlike other jobs, being a doctor likely provides you with decent mobility. 

We saw extreme GOP governance recently lead to some actual electoral backlash in places like Kansas and Louisiana, and the potential purpling of states like Georgia and (hopefully) North Carolina. However, much of this backlash is muted by the gerrymandering of state legislatures. The thing about gerrymanders, though, is that they are vulnerable to massive wave elections. 

If we start to get a body count of women and newborns as the fallout from Dobbs, then maybe, just maybe, we can force some of these states back into the 20th century (I have no illusions about the 21st).

We Could Use A Leak Right Now

 We need to see what is in the redacted portion of Tucker Carlson's texts. I'm curious to know what is too racist and sexist for Fox News.

Trump, The Sexual Predator

 E. Jean Carroll's case against Trump is going to trial. As Paul Campos notes, this is a civil trial, not a criminal trial, which means a preponderance of the evidence and not "beyond a reasonable doubt."

Unlike with the Dominion case against Fox, Carroll is not looking for a huge payout. She's looking for vindication, so I don't see her settling. Trump should certainly be found guilty based on the preponderance of the evidence, which is basically a backdoor way of establishing - in court - that he is a sexual predator.

Once again, and I will say this clearly for those invested in abstract and obsolete ideas about the American Body Politic: It will not matter to his primary campaign. Donald Trump being de facto found guilty of sexual assault will not disqualify him in anyway from becoming the GOP nominee again. There is no shame he can endure that will make him drop out, and there is no evidence that can be revealed that will cause Cult 45 to abandon him.

Stop it. Stop thinking your rules apply to him or that normal political behavior is part of the modern GOP electorate.

Buh-Bye

 Jon Chait does a nice job summarizing the unique - though not unprecedented - evil that Tucker Carlson represents. I remember when Carlson came to our campus when his kids were looking to enroll here. It was clear that he was simply playing a part of the angry populist, as he yukked it up with our resident British Labour Party Christian Socialist.

However, a few years later, conservative students - rightly - complained about the lack of ideological diversity among our outside speakers and we tried to get Carlson to speak on campus as a "reasonable conservative." This was prior to 2016, but the decision never came together. Before it could, Carlson degenerated into the racist swamp thing that Trump enabled to crawl out into the light.

Carlson is - in so many - a perfect avatar of the modern GOP. He's a wealthy scion, a prep schooled bow-tied nebbish pretending to be a Populist. But the line between fake racist and real racist is effectively non existent.

Fuck that guy.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall thinks 92 year old Rupert Murdoch might be losing his shit.

Learned Helplessness

 There's a line in this report on Sudan that stuck with me.

“You put us in this mess and now you’re swooping in to take your kinfolk (the ones that matter) and leaving us behind to these two murdering psychopaths,” Dallia Mohamed Abdelmoniem, a Sudanese former journalist and commentator, said on Twitter.

Now, we've all said dumb shit on Twitter, but this is a revealing quote. Yes, absolutely, the Global North has created conditions that have hurt the Global South. However, the idea that the US/EU has created the conditions in Sudan is ridiculous. There are problems endemic to Africa that are not actually anyone's fault. Desertification of the Sahel preceded climate change, for instance. The tropics make for poor agriculture. African countries are unusually deprived of deep water ports. And on and on.

And, I fully admit that post-imperial and neo-imperial policies have been bad for Africa, as long as we understand that the Global North has poured billions into aid for Africa. PEPFAR alone will spend almost $7B this year in Africa. 

The Sudan? That's a problem created by the Sudanese. Did the rest of the world make it worse at the margins? Sure, that could be true. But ultimately this is a creation of the Sudanese - especially the two individual warlords.

But as long as the attitude is that America "put us in this mess" then the Sudanese will never be able to solve their own problems.

What Elon Musk Tells Us About Men

 How'd you like to be Elon Musk right now? I mean, the Scrooge McDuck swimming around in all your money must be fun, I guess, but what a year he's had.

Musk's reputation was built on batteries specifically and Tesla more generally. Somehow the idea was created that Musk was an engineering genius over there, building next generation lithium batteries. All this guy ever was was a dork with money who made more money. The dork part is important because he represents this generation's "tech bro uber tech bro". While not actual a tech guy that anyone can tell, he used his first position with Tesla - a company he did not start - to seize the imagination of those who see electrification and batteries as the future.

However, I have some real doubts about Tesla's profitability - which is claimed to be around $6bill. 

The idea that Musk can be the richest man in the world seems odd to me. There just aren't THAT many Teslas on the road and SpaceX isn't exactly raking in good headlines either. Finally, we have his absolutely disastrous takeover of Twitter.

I still poke around on Twitter a bit, but the whole "fun" of Twitter - like TikTok for that matter - are the people there creating interesting posts. There is no nothing special about Twitter itself - in fact its ability to produce trolls always made it pretty terrible even when it was good. Musk never seemed to understand that and proceeded to alienate much of the customer base.

Except for a certain cadre of young men.

When SpaceX announced an "unscheduled vehicle disassembly" most of us rolled our eyes and this description of a rocket blowing up. But man, those Musky Boys just couldn't accept that their chosen avatar of success saw failure. Sure, they can learn from the failure, but it was still a failure. 

I've argued before that motivated reasoning is one of the most powerful forces in the universe, and it's interesting to see people lock themselves into personalities then bend time and space to protect those personas from criticism or condemnation. Trump, Musk...it's the same dynamic.

I like Joe Biden. I don't love him. I think he's actually a pretty sound politician with a penchant for saying dumb stuff off the cuff. I'm not invested in Joe Biden or Dark Brandon or whatever. He's a politician I helped hire to run the country. My identity isn't tied to his. 

For so many young men, it sure seems like they desperately need someone to invest their own hopes and dreams into. Like the kids who want to be Darth Vader for Halloween, because Vader is powerful - never mind that he's the bad guy. He's powerful! Most kids - even most boys - outgrow this stage. 

Some don't. Fragile themselves, they attach themselves to the reputations of charlatans who make them feel big vicariously.

It's a damned shame.

Temporary Reprieve

 The Assembly of Religious Experts blocked Matthew Kacsmaryk's gonzo ruling that banned the distribution of mifepristone in most cases. Kacsmaryk's ruling was the clearest case of legislating from the bench I can think of. This zealot basically overruled two decades of FDA approval and medical practice because, well, he's a religious zealot and a thinks women should be vessels for men's sperm, I guess.

I'm not sure why they waited until Friday, but I wonder if Alito's dissent gives us a clue. He railed against the "shadow docket" (which is ironic given how the conservatives have used it in the past). I wonder if there isn't a majority who was willing to throw the whole thing out on standing. 

The standing argument is a good one. The people who brought this suit have no reasonable claim that they were harmed by the FDA's ruling 20 years ago. They should not have been allowed to even bring the suit in the first place and overturning Kacsmaryk's ruling on those grounds would've allowed them to dodge the "moral" implications of allowing the drug to remain on the market.

Perhaps Roberts was trying to get a majority to throw it out using the shadow docket but he needed an extra day to convince Comey Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Instead, we got the narrower ruling.

Needless to say Clarence Thomas ruled against preserving access to the drug and didn't even deign to explain why. If it wasn't for Donald Trump, I think Thomas has a strong argument to be among the worst people this country has coughed up.

The GOP Is A Failed State

 Josh Marshall has famously said that "the GOP is a failed state and Donald Trump is it's warlord."

However, it extends beyond a pithy punchline about the modern GOP. America has some aspects of state failure. The most obvious is the inability of the state to keep people from being killed. Mass shootings dominate the headlines for obvious reasons, but Americans simply die at higher rates than they should and many of the reasons - especially the lack of access to healthcare - are a direct result of GOP policies.

What is terrifying is that - in the ungodly event of a GOP takeover of the Executive Branch in 2025 - they are prepared to launch America further into state failure. The overwhelming hostility of the current "conservative" movement in America to the basic functions of government is more important that Donald Trump's uniquely odious and criminal person. A Republican victory - ANY Republican victory would create a void in the heart of civil government that could engender the separation of the country into different parts. There is simply no future for parts of the country that value basic governance with the death cult that constitutes the GOP.

Exactly Who You Expect It To Be

 Please imagine what the Tennessee GrOPer who just resigned over sexual harassment claims looks like.

Now realize that this is exactly what he looks like.

Yeah, yeah, book by it's cover and so on, but...c'mon. This guy is Smug Arrogant Bully from central casting.

Depressing, But We Should Be Used To It By Now

 Look, Clarence Thomas is corrupt. He's a generally awful human being. 

He is not going to resign over the first part because of the second part. The fact that Abe Fortas resigned over something more trivial does not inform Thomas' behavior.

The GOP - in their rearguard fight to preserve unpopular theocratic and plutocratic policies - will not ever voluntarily relinquish any power they have anywhere. So stop framing the story as if that's going to happen. 

I'm Going To Hell

 I can't help but find this objectively hilarious. I feel bad for the team of engineers trying to make SpaceX happen, but for the life of me, I can't understand why this isn't NASA's task. Since SpaceX is an example of why Elon Musk is a supergenius, though, I'm chuckled.

At What Point Do They Accept It?

 Ron DeSantis is toast. We are seeing the GOP establishment - the very force that was supposed to neuter Trump and move to a "Trump without the baggage" candidate - abandon DeSantis.

There have been media voices on the Right and Left fluffing this guy's profile because they seem to want to believe that the GOP is not actually a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Steaks. It is. Again, the invaluable Josh Marshall: "The GOP is a failed state and Trump is its warlord."

When someone like Glenn Youngkin looks at what happened to DeSantis, is he going to see this as an opportunity or a warning? I think the later. 

Trump will be the nominee. The election - if Democrats know what they are doing - will be a referendum on Dobbs and January 6th. If it is, Biden wins.

If you're Youngkin, you have to figure that Trump will be dead or in prison by 2028. Why self-immolate?

Josh Marshall Is Right, Part A Million

 Marshall's takes on the media landscape are usually among the best and that's true about the Fox-Dominion lawsuit.

This is likely the largest actual settlement in history. Dominion is making a ton of money off this. However, if you wanted the case to somehow "takedown" Fox or create some sort of emotional catharsis, you were never going to get that. In fact, you might get justice from the courts, but you are unlikely to get some grand, emotionally rewarding payoff.