Thursday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy.

Eulogy Flashback

From Osita Nwanevu:

The trouble with this is that people aren’t sent to Washington to have giving hearts for their colleagues, or to charm reporters, as McCain did. They are sent to craft and enact policies that have concrete consequences for ordinary people. It has never been clear whether Obama’s and McCain’s shared civic vision—that preserving civility matters more than achieving ideologically desired outcomes—allows for any point at which the American people should assess the character of political leaders on the basis of the policies they support. Whether, for instance, it was incumbent on Bush to acknowledge on Saturday that his and McCain’s advocacy for, in his words, “the true peace that comes only with freedom” led the United States into a war that brought neither peace nor real freedom to the Iraqi people. Or whether it was appropriate for McCain to select Henry Kissinger as one of his eulogists—a man who remains in Washington’s good graces despite a career that has likely killed millions. (Kissinger’s assistance with Richard Nixon’s sabotage of Lyndon B. Johnson’s peace talks with North Vietnam may have helped extend the torment and suffering of the war not just for McCain, then a prisoner of war, but for thousands of American soldiers and the people of Vietnam.) Much has been made of the fact that President Trump did not attend Saturday’s service. But any doubts that the keepers of American political norms stand ready to fully embrace more rule-bound, polite, and magnanimous representatives of Trump’s bigotry should have been quelled by élite indifference to the presence of John Kelly, one of the architects of the still unresolved family-separation crisis.

It is true, as Obama said in his eulogy, that political discourse can tend toward the “small and mean and petty” and “phony controversies and manufactured outrage.” But, for all the coruscating idiocies that the Trump years have brought us, they have also made clear that our most heated and significant fights are the product of a substantive divide between the values animating the left and the right in this country. The hope that Obama and McCain seemed to share was that we might ultimately come to find these values compatible—that we might commit to a politics uncurdled by wildly different and competing notions about what it means to be an American and which classes of people in our society are truly deserving of wealth, security, and power.

But the rise of Trump should raise doubts about whether that hope can or ought to be realized. It may instead be the case that there are political decisions about which one has a moral responsibility to be mean and unforgiving—that it shouldn’t, for instance, be considered churlish or unsporting to insist that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi or Vietnamese civilians or the traumas inflicted on children needlessly separated from their families should forever stain the legacies of the leaders who caused them. On Tuesday, protesters loudly interrupted the hearings for the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, on the grounds that a conservative majority will have grave implications for women’s health and corporate power, among other issues, for decades to come. The restive and unruly voices on the rise in our politics may not live up to the shining example set by our fables about the Maverick. But, then again, not many people ever have. Not even John McCain.

WHAT CAN BIDEN DOOOOOO

Absolutely nothing, you fools, you imbeciles.

WASHINGTON (AP) — National security adviser Jake Sullivan told lawmakers this week that the White House is not seeking to place conditions on U.S. military assistance to Israel, days after President Joe Biden signaled openness to the notion that was being pushed by some Democrats as the civilian death toll in Gaza from Israel’s war against Hamas climbed.

With A Spoon

And if he violates it...

Donald Trump is once again prohibited from attacking the law clerk at his ongoing bank fraud trial in New York, now that a four-judge appellate panel has reinstated a gag order that was briefly lifted this month.

The two-page appeals court decision on Thursday wiped out Trump’s lone victory—albeit a minor one—during the trial that threatens to destroy the business tycoon’s real estate empire.

Lunch

eat

Village Royalty

The problem with Henry Kissinger isn't just all the people he killed, it's that he killed all those people - joyfully unapologetically - and was still treated as a Wise Old Man of Washington. A fancy friend to parade at dinner parties to show you were somebody who mattered. A man whose council and praise was sought, treasured, and boasted about.

Rumsfeld died in obscurity as a mostly unlamented clown, as you would expect for a man like him. He wasn’t publicly feted for his genius for fifty years by the world’s most prominent bastards, who got pissy if anyone complained. pic.twitter.com/b44KCOHz8d

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) November 30, 2023

And the Village is - and certainly it was - the place of the "bipartisan consensus." Henry wasn't a Democrat or Republican, really, he was establishment. He was the inner circle. He lived at the head table of the permanent floating dinner party.

So when you wonder how things are as they are, how so many fucked up things are tolerated and cheered, how it's the people who object who are painted as deviant or even as The Real Racists, it's because this is a deeply fucked up culture filled with deeply fucked up people who fucking loved Henry Kissinger.

Jolly Good Pals

That Fucking Newspaper (the New York Times) has its problems, but the Washington Post, at least the bits originating from the various spook-and-Pentagon-adjacent "foreign policy" lifers, is written by and for people who have been to dozens of parties with Kissinger.

 #3 story when I typed this:

Finally Got Him, Satan

The important thing to understand about Henry Kissinger is that people in Washington do not understand what anyone has against him.

Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies The infamy of Nixon's foreign-policy architect sits, eternally, beside that of history's worst mass murderers. A deeper shame attaches to the country that celebrates him

Like all true human rights advocates, Samantha Power goes to baseball games with Henry Kissinger pic.twitter.com/sWAhMpNU70

— 🦕 Jon Schwarz 🦕 (@schwarz) April 12, 2014

Birds of a feather, and all that.

It’s always valuable to hear the reverent tones with which American elites speak of their monsters. When the Kissingers of the world pass, their humanity, their purpose, their sacrifices are foremost in the minds of the respectable. American elites recoiled in disgust when Iranians in great numbers took to the streets to honor one of their monsters, Qassem Soleimani, after a U.S. drone strike executed the Iranian external security chief in January 2020. Soleimani, whom the United States declared to be a terrorist and killed as such, killed far more people than Timothy McVeigh. But even if we attribute to him all the deaths in the Syrian Civil War, never in Soleimani’s wildest dreams could he kill as many people as Henry Kissinger. Nor did Soleimani get to date Jill St. John, who played Bond girl Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever.

Morning

Almost forgot the morning thread. Distracted by the sound of champagne corks popping.

Wednesday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy.

Car Brain On Fox

What is wrong with these people

Fox News is telling its viewers that speeding is a constitutional right: pic.twitter.com/wS93dBamtl

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) November 29, 2023

Putting speed limiters in car would be great, though if people thought "defund the police" was bad politically...

Sure Why Not

 

"Boring Company" Is Just A Really Dumb Idea

Doesn't require much more explanation than that. The initial promise of it, really, was that Musk had somehow improved tunneling speeds/costs. He did this by (essentially) writing on a napkin, "make tunnel machine faster," and then got a bunch of writeups about it from the usual sycophants in the press.

A reasonable innovation, if true, but it wasn't true and tunneling speed/costs, at least the simple act of running the machines, aren't really the issue with any of these projects. 

As for what would go THROUGH the tunnels, he settled on "somebody driving a Tesla." The self-driving car man still hasn't made them self-driving, even in this tiny controlled environment! Amazing stuff.

On the financial front, Boring has since put its self-driving vehicle plans on the back burner—meaning it’s racking up costs to pay a driver for every one to three people it moves underground at relatively mild speeds of under 40 miles per hour in Vegas.

Lunch

eat

Hunter Biden's Hog

The Republicans know it's too powerful, and are scared to let the rest of the world see it.

Trust Us

A lot of "foreign policy" is behind the veil. Sure we all know there are sordid "compromises" made, that the US can't, actually, get anything it wants from everybody all the time. Even assuming maximum idealism (do not assume that), the details are messy.

We put up with bad actors for a variety of reasons, many generally left unsaid. 

Still when things in the world go to shit, when those bad actors who we actively propped up for years commit unfathomable crimes, it is the time to point fingers and say - you guys fucked up! You said you got this, that you were busy managing the world, and it was all above our pretty little heads. You didn't!

Or, really, we fucked up! We trusted them!

Tom and Tom

Can't give him his second mustache this week. Today:

Pay particular attention to that last point: a revamped Palestinian Authority is the keystone for the forces of moderation, coexistence and decency triumphing in all three wars. It is the keystone for reviving a two-state solution.

Less than a year ago.

A week of reporting from Israel and the West Bank has left me feeling that the prospect for a two-state solution has all but vanished. But no one wants to formally declare it dead and buried — because categorically ruling it out would have enormous ramifications. So, diplomats, politicians and liberal Jewish organizations pretend that it still has a faint heartbeat. I do as well. But we all know that the two-state option is not in a hospital. It’s in hospice. Only a miracle cure could save it now.

I suppose they don't strictly contradict each other, but earlier Tom was much more clear about what was happening. As much as it pains me to say it, the ghouls in the Biden administration should've read Tom's column a year ago.

Tuesday Night

Rock on

Happy Hour

Get happy

War Is Bad

It's the job of the self-appointed guardians of the rules-based international order to prevent things like the slaughter of thousands of innocents under their watch.  The mentality of the people who think Israel needs to be allowed some slaughter, as a treat, in response to the Hamas massacre and hostage taking, is the same as the mentality that led to our post-9/11 forever war.  

And if they don't? Where exactly are the red lines that previously didn't exist?

They let the situation persist for decades, pretending there was a peace process and that a two-state solution was possible, as a way of avoiding dealing with the situation.  The US isn't omnipotent, but it is actively involved in various ways and can't pretend otherwise.

Biden's people pursued the fucking Kushner-Netanyahu Middle East Peace plan, and when it blew up, instead of working for de-escalation, signaled plainly that it was time for some retaliation without limit.

They fucked up.  They've been fucking up for years.

"They" isn't always the Biden administration in this telling, but The Blob persists across administrations.

Treating Them Like Number 2

It is "funny" that they're just betting on him dying.

Vermin

One can never denigrate Real Americans, but the other half of the country is fair game.

Lunch

Eat

Regular Reminder

Thinking the Orange Man is bad is not actually a high enough bar to admit someone into the "good" column.

Sounds Crazy, No?

Can't believe Trump wishes to gently violate our noble traditions.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Campaigning in Iowa this year, Donald Trump said he was prevented during his presidency from using the military to quell violence in primarily Democratic cities and states.

...



Trump has not spelled out precisely how he might use the military during a second term, although he and his advisers have suggested they would have wide latitude to call up units. While deploying the military regularly within the country’s borders would be a departure from tradition, the former president already has signaled an aggressive agenda if he wins, from mass deportations to travel bans imposed on certain Muslim-majority countries.

What violence was that, precisely?

LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU

Israeli leaders at all levels have been releasing the most absolutely psycopathic genocidal statements for a month now, which most US politicians pretend not to hear, and Bibi's just like "Hahaha that stupid Joe does whatever I want and there will never be a two state solution."

#Scoop (Israel's @kann_news): #Netanyahu to fellow Likud members:
▪️ "I'm the only one who'll prevent a Palest state in Gaza, Judea and Samaria
▪️ "I'm the only one who can withstand U.S. pressure;
▪️ "I know Biden for 40 years.
▪️ "I know how to manage American public opinion." pic.twitter.com/7xxNgRU48k

— Yonatan Touval (@Yonatan_Touval) November 27, 2023

Have some self respect, maaaaaan!

Morning

Begin again.

Monday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Even More Amazing Scenes

Rich white guy class solidarity is a frightening thing.

Michael [Lewis] thought the packed courtroom and the overflow rooms, filled with some of the 175 journalists who couldn’t get into the main courtroom, rendered the whole trial a spectacle, with attendees acting like theater critics. Or worse. “It reminded me of accounts I’ve read of families packing up their picnic baskets and going to see the lynching,” he told me. He recalled a description he read about the phenomenon. “It was describing the crowd gathering for the lynching like they’re going to watch a play,” he said, “Their spirits are high, they’re enjoying everything, and then the body is dangling from the end of the rope. And then there’s a brief moment when the crowd realizes this was something other than just spectacle. And I assume that moment occurred when they announced the verdict [for Sam]. But I didn’t see that moment. I saw people just being—journalists, especially—just kind of enjoying the show. I felt like this is what it would feel like to go back to the day when people did that, to go for entertainment to a public lynching.”

Amazing Scenes

"Try to be a bit less horrible" would've been pretty good "how to appeal to the ladies" advice when I was a lad, and I suspect it's even more true now.

But, are the horrible men to blame? No it's the women who are wrong.

Lunch

 Eat

People You Can Trust

Guys of Biden's generation grew up with version of the state of Israel in their heads. I'm not going to argue with the past, but I will say that version should have been updated, at the earliest, right around the time of this. 

Other countries might love the America of President Bartlet/Obama, or whatever. I'm no going to argue with that version, either, whatever its flaws, but I don't think it's crazy to suggest they should not have dealt with President Trump's America in precisely the same way.

The Worst Economy In Generations

It isn't, of course, in many ways, and I'm certainly one who has criticized your favorite media sources for hyping "bad economy" stories in ways that weren't warranted. Still there are ways in which the economy is genuinely bad - and one way, in particular, official inflation numbers actually underestimate effective price increases - and that's the effective cost of housing for new home buyers (monthly mortage pyament).

The narrative of life has a "success sequence" - get educated, get a job, get married, buy a house, have kids.  If any of those things get interrupted, life gets thrown off a bit (I know not everyone does all these things or wants to, but...). 

"Getting an adult job" derailed everybody in their 20s during the Great Financial Crisis.  Now it's "buying a house."  Not, perhaps, as acute, but still a problem!

That's for  people of a certain age range, mostly, but people are also trapped in their current living situations due to the high cost of moving.  Have to trade that 3% mortgage for a 6% one.

And, generally, cheap and easy credit is what smooths over the bumps of an unforgiving society.  Without those...

But You Did

Maybe Biden means this, but no one has been working towards this unattainable goal for 20 years.

A two-state solution is the only way to guarantee the long-term security of both the Israeli and the Palestinian people.

To make sure Israelis and Palestinians alike can live in equal measures of freedom and dignity.

We will not give up on working toward this goal.

— President Biden (@POTUS) November 26, 2023

There's a range of possible opinions given the facts, but accepting a fantasy version of Netanyahu's Israel - and the US's role in it - has to stop before any progress can begin.

Morning

December is almost here. The traditional "giving Atrios presents" season is nigh.

Sunday Night

 Rock on.

Why Not All Of Them

The WaPo editorial board is concerned that Ozempic/etc. are too expensive and is struggling to figure out how to force our Rube Goldberg health care system to make them affordable for more people.

Insurers can lower their prices by buying the medicines in bulk, guaranteeing drugmakers large markets. This strategy could also work for state Medicaid programs, only a limited number of which now pay for the drugs.

For Medicare specifically, Congress needs to grant Part D the authority to not only cover the medicines but also include them among the medicines for which the program can negotiate prices.

Why aren't insurers doing that already, with all drugs? Why doesn't the WaPo's giant floating head advocate for Medicaid/Medicare to negotiate the prices of all drugs? Mysteries left unanswered.

Sunday Funday Afternoon

Haven't even had a chance to watch the new Doctor Who yet.

World's Easiest Marks

A piece I would read would be from a journalist at a mainstream publication explaining why they regularly extol the virtues and intelligence of obvious dumbasses like Elon and SBF. Are they really impressed with these people or do they face pressure from editors/etc to do these? If so, why?

Lots of "a dumb guy's idea of a smart guy" guys get this treatment, and what does this say about elite journalists? 

#Notalljournalists, of course. I'm happy for one of the actual smart ones to dish on why his/her colleagues can't wait to be impressed by the next guy who uses sciencey sounding words and misappropriates basic philosophic concepts.

"Mistakes"

Several passports later this shouldn't even be a possibility.

As he tells it, when he sent in an application for a new passport in February, he had no reason to expect he’d face any difficulties. He had renewed his passport several times previously without problems. This time, it was set to expire in June, and he wanted to make sure he had a valid one in hand before his family took a trip in July.

But he did not receive a new passport. Instead, at the age of 61, he lost what he had held since he was an infant: U.S. citizenship.

The entire concept of revoking citizenship - or its equivalent, claiming it was never really granted - needs to be banished.

Maybe Joe the Biden can get on this.

Morning

Sunday funday.

I am slacking a bit this weekend. In part because it's a holiday weekend! In part because I find the current Discourse to be a bit draining.

Saturday Night

Rock on.

World's Greatest Brain Genius

He is also one of those guys who thinks he needs to create as many children as possible in order to improve the gene pool.

Slacker Saturday Afternoon Thread

Keep on slackin'

Notable

Both the facts and that the NYT is reporting it this way.

Sure, Bro

I don't know if this is the story they're telling themselves, the story they're telling us, or both.

A reporter asked Biden his thoughts on calls to condition U.S. aid to Israel as a way to halt Israel's invasion of Gaza.

"I think that's a worthwhile thought, but I don't think if I started off with that we would have gotten where we are today." pic.twitter.com/Ur8pwN0qjX

— Daniel Marans (@danielmarans) November 24, 2023

Morning

Slacker Saturday

Friday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

On the blackest of Fridays

Afternoon Thread

I got nothin'

Lunch

Black Friday! Last chance to buy Xmas presents!!! (Ad, I get a commission)

"Alleged Clients"

I suspect we will never learn who they are.

The US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts said at the time of their arrests that the “commercial sex buyers allegedly included elected officials, high tech and pharmaceutical executives, doctors, military officers, government contractors that possess security clearances, professors, attorneys, scientists, and accountants, among others.”

Keeps These Guys Distracted, I Guess

AI will destroy the world not because it's a malevolent sentient supervillain, but because dumb guys like this will be like 'what if we put it in charge of our logistics systems.'

The biggest coup was convincing everyone to call it "AI" when it's just fancy Alexa.  If Amazon had been behind it, and stupidly called it SuperAlexa or ALEXAPRIME, people would say "neato" but we wouldn't be pretending it's going to alter the world.

Morning

Black Friday - America's holiday export.

Thursday Night

Rock on.

Thursday Happy Hour

Learning

I don't worry about Skynet being activated. I do worry about "what if we took what computers were good at - precision - and took that away and decided that made them better." But this is funny.

Given vast computing resources, the new model was able to solve certain mathematical problems, the person said on condition of anonymity because the individual was not authorized to speak on behalf of the company. Though only performing math on the level of grade-school students, acing such tests made researchers very optimistic about Q*’s future success, the source said.

They taught their large language models how to do sums.

I think this highlights what a lot of people don't undertand: the spicy autocomplete can tell you that 2+2=4 and then in the next sentence tell you 3+3=7 because all it is doing is imitating text it read on the internet. Now it's imitating text plus someone taught it the times tables.

Can probably fuck up the world this way, just not in the way they think. More like unleashing malware on the world than creating an ominpotent supervillain.  Just GIGO at world scale.

Median Blob

Completely filled with guys like this.

Police have held an ex-US state department aide who allegedly spewed anti-Muslim abuse at a New York City food vendor.

Stuart Seldowitz has acknowledged in media interviews that he is the man seen in viral video calling the vendor a "terrorist".

Don't rise up in State/Defense because you're a snuggly bunny who wants to help people, and certainly not Muslims/non-rich Arabs.

We Are Aware Of All Internet Traditions

 Happy Turkee Day!

Morning

Don't forget to start defrosting the turkey.

Wednesday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy.

Sure Why Not

Unresolvable conflicts everywhere.

Hall & Oates are embroiled in a confidential legal battle that has led to Daryl Hall getting a restraining order against his former music partner John Oates.

The Israel Of The Mind

Related to this, US journalists often even ignore what Haaretz is saying about what is happening in the country. When I say that I don't just mean factual reporting (though that too), I mean the overall picture painted of the various divisions within the country. I don't claim to know much about anything, but I can see how "Israel" is portrayed in the US media has little to do with the actual country as portrayed by Israeli media (both the more balanced Haaretz and the more psycopathic outlets), and I'm not even talking about the current conflict.

Words

The US Has A Lot Of Extreme Weather

I regularly point out that, in some sense, much of the US has the worst weather in the world (I am sure pedants can find worse places), in that many of our most populated areas regularly have both extremely hot summers AND extremely cold/snowy winters. There are hot places, and there are cold places, but not everywhere has regular 95 degree days in the summer AND regular below freezing days in the winter.

Having both extremes isn't that common!

Also the US has places that are even hotter and even colder. I think, due to this, extreme temperatures sound fairly "normal" because we hear about them all the time. It's -18 in North Dakota! It's 113 in Phoenix!

I was surprised that 112 was a record in Brazil. Brazil seems like a place that gets hot a lot! (I understand Brazil is a very large place, but SOMEWHERE in Brazil!)

Also air conditioning is pretty standard almost everywhere in the US (exceptions, I know), while for various reasons (including shorter seasons when it's "necessary") adoption rates have been lower elsewhere.

How Does This Keep Happening

I dunno, boss, we keep giving them the coordinates down to the centimeter of where NOT to bomb and then they do a big whoopsie and bomb precisely there! Well we'll try again tomorrow.

The Biden administration has been providing Israel with the location of humanitarian groups in Gaza for weeks to prevent strikes against their facilities. But Israel has continued to hit such sites.

The information included GPS coordinates of a number of medical facilities and information on movements of aid groups in Gaza to the Israeli government for at least a month, according to three people familiar with the communications. All were granted anonymity because they feared speaking publicly would make it more difficult for aid groups to operate in Gaza.

Maybe they should stop sending Israel their target list.

Assuming good faith on the part of the administration (I am not saying this assumption is correct), you have people who have this idea of "Israel" that cannot be reconciled with the reality of "Netanyahu's Israel" and they refuse to update.

I suspect there are people in the administration who understand this and think it's bad, and they are silent so as not to lose their jobs.

There are people in the administration who understand it fully well and think it is very good, very good indeed. The Blob is not filled with good faith advocates of Palestinian interests.

And then there are people who will not update their beliefs about the country (I suspect this is Biden himself), no matter what the reality.

Concerns

Well then.

And there was some concern in the administration about an unintended consequence of the pause: that it would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel.

Fortunately American journalists won't complain.

It goes on to explain that Israel will shortly resume the slaughter, and I can see why it's best not to have too many pictures.

Morning

go

Tuesday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Musky

Least surprising thing ever.

His ordeal isn’t over. Tesla Insurance, launched in 2019 by the electric-car company, has promised policyholders “vastly better” service than rivals, as Tesla chief Elon Musk put it in April 2022. Musk also said he aimed to offer “same-day” collision repairs. But Bova says he has been battling the insurer ever since the crash.

He said he waited seven months for payment on the totaled vehicle and still hasn’t been compensated for about $50,000 in medical expenses. That required a call to the automaker’s product liability department because the crash involved Autopilot, he was told. He waited on hold for hours and got hung up on four times, he said. When someone finally answered, the person promised another callback in two weeks. Four months later, he’s still waiting.

America's Worst Newspapers

 The New York Times and Washington Post.

Lunch

 Eat

Maximum Belligerence

My simple hippie dippie view of things is that violence is bad, not killing people is good, and for any conflict to end, short of genocide, there must be some sort of peace settlement. That settlement might be relatively just, or not, but that must be balanced not against an ideal outcome, but against the cost (the lives of other people, for example) of not coming to that settlement. 

And my view of the people who tend run our foreign policy, broadly defined, is they see anything less than maximum belligerence as cowardice.  They think what is most important is that the world sees that America has a big swinging dick, and achieving that takes priority over everything.

The Bushies said it a bit more out loud, but they weren't really offering anything new.  To the extent that they were, they won the "argument" despite everything.

Gerontocracy

This isn't about Biden or Trump, really, though they are part of it. It's certainly good that people with access to good health care (should be everyone, of course) have a chance of living  long relatively healthy lives, but it isn't entirely good that people over 70 cling to power everywhere in society.
 
That this was odd and less than desirable didn't require much justification, once upon a time.

As the Brezhnev era ended, the average age of the 13 Politburo members was a few months under 70, the oldest group ever to rule in the Kremlin. Few of them had anything like a rounded modern education or had seen much of the world outside Eastern Europe. Most were like Mr. Brezhnev himself, bureaucrats who made their careers during the years just before or after the war, profiting by Stalin's purges to clamber up the party ladder. Faced with pervasive evidence of the country's malaise, they seemed too immured in power and privilege to be capable of challenging the system that had nurtured them. he potential successors were all in their late 60's and early 70's, and none had been allowed to emerge as an assured heir. Yet a close reader of Pravda could tell toward the end that it was likely to be either Mr. Andropov or the doyen of the Brezhnev loyalists in the Politburo, 71-year-old Konstantin U. Chernenko, an apparatchik in the classic mold whose instincts seemed to run unerringly toward the status quo. Whatever slim hope there was of reform after the transition, it appeared to rest with Mr. Andropov.

My very general take is that I hope people live long and productive lives and stay in work as long as they wish (though ideally they wouldn't have to!), but people in positions of power - everywhere - should be pulling back from asserting their authority over time. Give the Kids (people under 60) a chance.
 
Again, I'm not talking about Biden, or even politics, specifically.

The unwillingness to cede power also accompanies an unwillingness to mentor their successors.

Musky

Rich guys abusing civil courts is normal, if not good, but the corrupt Texas AG threatening criminal prosecution is an exciting new level.

Meanwhile, Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Monday that he had opened an investigation into Media Matters "for potential fraudulent activity" over its allegations about X.

His office released a statement calling the liberal group a "radical anti-free speech organization".

Monday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Where's Elmo?

No thermonuclear lawsuit filed, as he had promised, as far as I am aware.

What's Going On Here

I haven't had a lot to say about Ukraine, as there was an obvious bad guy, and we weren't getting TOO involved, so I didn't think there was much to complain about.

BUT there was some of the usual shutting down of discussion about just what we intend to do—probably more of this in the UK/Europe than the US—and some rumors that Boris Johnson, specifically, loudly shot down any talk of an early negotiated settlement.

All of this is way above my pay grade, but, obviously, eventually peace is declared, and an agreement is made. The question is on what terms and what would lead there. Were all the events that happened in the meantime worthwhile and done with the right motives?

I have no answers, but even—or perhaps especially—a Good War provides an opportunity for assholes to make mischief. A very belligerent Boris Johnson was not an encouraging sign.

Anyone who raises this gets yelled at by people saying they're willing to sacrifice Ukraine to Putin, or whatever. And, no, the point is that for a long time it's been likely that at some moment the US and Europe would lose interest and would be sacrificing some of Ukraine. There likely will be a peace deal that doesn't include Putin's severed head on a plate. Eventually.

America's Worst Economist

Larry Summers.

Lunch Thread

Lunch. Shop while you eat! (Ad, I get a commission).

But The Bad Orange Man Might Come Back

It is valid to see that as a catastrophic possibility, but one year out from an election I don't think people expressing discontent - even to pollsters! - about the Biden administration are collaborating with MAGA to make that happen. 

One consequence of social media has been the establishment of the bizarre belief that everyone is an unpaid spokesperson for a political campaign.

Campaigns have a lot of money. If there is some dastardly Tiktoker causing problems maybe they should be put on the payroll.

And as has been the case for a long time now, yelling at people on the internet, however fun it might be, is generally not productive voter outreach.

Can disapprove of what's happening AND not want the bad orange man to return.

Can recognize that what's happening is both wrong and electorally unwise in a way that can't be fixed by yelling at imaginary young people.

Approval polls aren't even voting intention polls, but guys like Republican Tom Nichols sure are MAD at young people and NOT because he's a stupid shithead.

The focus on young voters is always hilarious, given the way old people vote.  Young people - the cause of, and solution to, all of our problems!

Also, since they don't vote, they don't matter and should shut the fuck up!  

This is always how the "young voter" conversation goes. 

I'd tell a pollster I disapproved, too. You can ask me in ten months or so how I'll be voting

Oh They Have A Plan

A lifetime of on corporate boards, as Think Tank "fellows," visiting scholars at the Harvard Institute of Politics.

My colleagues write: "After two days of talking to officials about the plan for post-war Gaza, the inescapable conclusion is that there is no plan...no one—not Israel, not America, not Arab states or Palestinian leaders—wants to take responsibility for it" https://t.co/VhZjstNDQF

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) November 20, 2023

Barely-show jobs and a comfortable life on the Aspen Ideas circuit.

Redemption

There are too many people - including David "Axis of Evil" Frum - who only had to say "the bad orange man is bad" and then everyone forgave them for their past horrors.

Anyway, it is the message of the day.  There is no bottom.  Imagine someone is briefing Biden of this now.

Sunday Night

Rock on.

Meathead

For no particular reason (ok A Few Good Men was on for the 12 millionth time and I caught a bit of it), I was thinking about Rob Reiner's director career. Don't think he managed a decent one after that for whatever reason, but wow he had a good initial run.

Afternoon Thread

It's all a bit depressing, really.

Musky

 I suspect he won't file, but hilarious if he does.

Elon Musk has said he will be filing a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters and others, after major US companies paused their adverts on his social media site over concerns about antisemitism.

Journalists

It's normal, during conflicts, for journalists to express solidarity with other journalists - on "all sides" - and to condemn military targeting of them, or even just insufficient concern for their safety.

US journalists can't do that now for Palestinian journalists or they'll be fired. Plenty of them aren't interested in doing that, of course.

Lots of bullshit which will become difficult to unsee, ever.

... here's an example:

The Los Angeles Times is prohibiting staff from covering the Gaza war for at least three months if they signed a strongly-worded open letter criticizing Israel’s military operations in the region.

Earlier this month, nearly a dozen staffers at the LA Times signed the open letter condemning the Israeli government’s bombing of Gaza, and saying the military operations were harming journalists and threatening newsgathering. The letter also called on newsrooms to use language including “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “genocide” when referring to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

Two people with knowledge of the situation told Semafor that staffers who signed the letter have been told by the paper’s management that they will not be allowed to cover the conflict in any way for at least three months.

They weren't fired, but the lines have been drawn and other journalists have not been sticking up for them. I have not seen (show me if I have missed it!) any of the "bigs" suggest shooting Palestinian journalists is bad.

Morning

Sunday funday.

Saturday Night

 Rock on.

Saturday Evening

Enjoy

Serial Killer Going For His Alibi

This is revisionism. At no point before Oct. 7 was the Palestinian issue central to US-KSA-Israel talks. Those revolved around Saudi Arabia’s demand for a mutual defense treaty with the US, as well as US civil nuclear cooperation & arms. We reported that: https://t.co/JD9ujEQCUW https://t.co/NfQlbJWbUY

— Edward Wong (@ewong) November 18, 2023

Revisionism is a polite word for "lie."

We Meant To Do That

Every time SpaceX has some sort of fuckup, everyone involved pretends that it was supposed to happen and they got great data and shut up. Journalists often shift their stories very quickly.

This second test flight went further and higher than its maiden launch in April, but with some technical problems persisting, including the booster exploding and contact being lost eight minutes in.

Some technical problems (blowing up).

There’s no doubt that SpaceX will consider this a great day. The major problems that beset April’s maiden flight were overcome.

SpaceX would consider it a great day if it annihilated a small city, and journalists would type that up too.
I get that it isn't weird for rockets to blow up. What's weird is pretending it's 100% awesome no matter what!!!

Lunch

All the mysteries are explained in the comments.

Serial Killers

In the way that pedophiles are attracted to careers which give them access to children, our boy Brett has spent a life getting to a position where he can oversee the deaths of millions.

Nobody who lived through the post-9/11 bloodlust should doubt these people exist.  Nobody paying attention should doubt that all the noise since 10/7 has been just that, noise, to give time to foam the runway.

Morning

Slacker Saturday.

Friday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy

America's Worst President

Joe Biden.

RIP A.S. Byatt

I read most of her novels - I guess not the first two or the last one.  Most people know Possession, but I really enjoyed the "Frederica Potter" series starting with The Virgin in the Garden.

One of those authors whose books generally lingered in thought long after I read them.

The Hamas Command Center Is East, West, South and North Somewhat

 Anywhere there are ICUs.

President Biden put his support behind Israel’s incursion into al-Shifa hospital in Gaza on Wednesday, saying Hamas had committed the “first war crime” by making the health facility a command center of its military operations.

Is Biden going to bless this one, too?

The Pronouncements Of Larry

One thing about Summers is that he is slippery. He almost always includes little caveats in his writing even though his prescriptions are made with 100% certainty. The piece which kicked off the war on expansionary fiscal policy contained this line:

He gave 1/3 odds to each of 3 scenarios, and precisely none of them actually happened.  Still everyone decided Larry Was Right and he got what he wanted - a curtailing of the nice things the country briefly had.

The Man's Never Wrong

"Inflation is mostly due to the complications of turning the world economy off and then on again" was obviously true and Larry took the opposite view to make sure the expanded child tax credit didn't continue.

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that “transitory factors” have been one element in a faster slowdown in US inflation than he anticipated.

“Given how strong the economy has been, there’s still a surprise in what’s happened to inflation,” Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin. That has in part to do with “transitory factors that were pushing inflation up from bottlenecks that are now mean reverting and are pushing inflation down,” he said.

Oh so now it's all about the bottlenecks.

Christ what an asshole.

Musky

The New York Times (both news and opinion) devotes a massive amount of time to chastizing college students, with a current focus on how protesting the slaughter in Gaza is antisemitic (I am sure there have been antisemitic incidents, but there also been a lot of crybullying about how any expression of Palestinian solidarity is intrinsically antisemitic). 

But, hey, when the richest man in the world is a genuine anti-Semite, make him an honored guest at the party.

Nudge

 See if  disqus comes back to life.

...is a general disqus problem so nothing i can do.

...it seems like you can keep it open and chat as new comments appear but if you load/reload it starts out empty.  The Disqus people are like "yes we know but we aren't at work yet" so...

Morning

Friday follies.

Thursday Night

 Rock on.

Happy Hour

 Get happy.

Headlines

 

Anyway are we going to revisit all this?

A former senior official at Shin Bet, Israeli’s internal security service, said both Hamas and Israeli intelligence referred to the network as “the Metro” and compared the compound under Al Shifa to a major station of the New York subway system.

The former Shin Bet official and two other Israeli officials said the compound included several floors with designated spaces for meetings, living quarters and storage facilities. It can hold at least several hundred people, they said.

Israeli military intelligence said in a statement provided to The New York Times that “there are several underground complexes used by the leaders of the terrorist organization Hamas to direct their activities.” The complex relies in part on electricity diverted from Al Shifa, the statement said, and there are multiple entrances to it in and around the hospital.

Senior Israeli intelligence officials allowed The Times to review photographs that purported to show secret entrances to the compound from inside the hospital. Signs identifying the location as Al Shifa were clearly visible in the photographs, though their authenticity could not be independently verified.

American officials, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose sensitive intelligence, said they are confident that Hamas has used tunnel networks under hospitals, in particular Al Shifa, for command and control areas as well as for weapons storage.

The practice by Hamas has been longstanding, they said, adding that the United States and Israel have independently developed intelligence about Hamas’ use of the tunnel network under Al Shifa Hospital.

Indiscriminate

 So that's what you were supporting.

Someone showed Biden the picture of the stack of boxes with big English words "MEDICAL SUPPLIES" on them.

Sleepy Joe

Biden's an old guy who has difficulty letting reality intrude upon what he knows for sure, but he is also obviously surrounded by the ghouls who though the Kushner-Netanyahu peace plan was excellent.  The judgment and honesty of those people is, to put it mildly, questionable 

Lunch

eat

Do You Want Them To Vote For You?

There was a protest at the DNC last night. The protesters did block the entrances, but despite claims by Congressman Brad Sherman, they did not go in.

Also the cops pepper sprayed protesters, experienced pepper spray blowback as always happens, and claimed the protesters pepper sprayed them. Good enough for CNN! 

Block some doorways and you're probably going to get arrested, but that's not the same as trying to invade the place or attacking the cops.

But leaving aside the details of the protest, this was Sherman's tweet about the protesters.

I have been thinking about this for hours.  What brain convolutions led to this?  What is the point?  Are the supposed pro-Hamas demonstrators supposed to vote for Democrats? I don't understand anything.

Anyway going to war with your likely voters, calling them violent terrorist supporters, is likely not great politicking but what do I know.

Perhaps it's popularism!

It is! This is popularism!

Elmo

I'll admit that I didn't predict "he's going to be a massive public racist and antisemite" (though it doesn't surprise me at all!!!), but Musk was an invited guest of Schumer just two months ago and I don't really understand what we're doing here. Any of it.

I Can't Anymore

After being promised a massive SciFi command center, I saw a video of 10 guns - smaller than the armory of a typical Texas nursery school  - found behind an MRI machine (lol) and a box of dates. And here's our man:

Biden said he was absolutely confident that what U.S. and Israeli officials have described as a command center around and underneath the hospital was true, even as he declined to detail that intelligence and evidence that he had.

 "The first war crimes." And the second?

Morning

 Go

Wednesday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Would Rather Burn Down The World Than Admit Error

What was several years of the Iraq war if not that?

Great Moments In Bullshitting

Gotta get better at this, oh lords of the rules based international order.

Doubt It

I know I'm a bit of a technology skeptic even though I *like* technology. Hype skeptic is perhaps a better term, though I've made a few dumb calls because of it. Still what the hell is this:

Silicon Valley’s Big, Bold Sci-Fi Bet on the Device That Comes After the Smartphone Humane, a company started by two former Apple employees, says its new artificial intelligence pin can stop all the scrolling. Can it live up to the hype?

It's a "phone" you pin to your chest and operates mostly on voice commands.

The one thing I've long believed - and I have so far been right about this! - is that voice interaction with your machines is neato and has some niche uses but otherwise is mostly annoying and inefficient. And this:

Humane’s goal was to replicate the usefulness of the iPhone without any of the components that make us all addicted — the dopamine hit of dragging to refresh a Facebook feed or swiping to see a new TikTok video.

Not against the idea that the little dopamine dispensers are a problem but, also, people like the dopamine!

Getting reporters to call the type of interactions people have been having with Alexa for years, even if marginally improved, "AI," has been a neat trick.

Lunch

Shop while you eat! (ad, I get a commission)

Popularism!

Gotta obey the polls, except when you don't have to for a revolving set of reasons.

Some 68% of respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said they agreed with a statement that "Israel should call a ceasefire and try to negotiate."

Electric Cars Won't Save Us

Hopefully Norway realizing it will make others.

So I flew across the Atlantic to see what the fuss was about. I discovered a Norwegian EV bonanza that has indeed reduced emissions — but at the expense of compromising vital societal goals. Eye-popping EV subsidies have flowed largely to the affluent, contributing to the gap between rich and poor in a country proud of its egalitarian social policies.

Worse, the EV boom has hobbled Norwegian cities’ efforts to untether themselves from the automobile and enable residents to instead travel by transit or bicycle, decisions that do more to reduce emissions, enhance road safety, and enliven urban life than swapping a gas-powered car for an electric one.

Gotta reduce car dependency. This doesn't mean no one owns a car, but it does mean increasing the number of places where one car (or zero) households are the norm, not one car per driving age adult.

It really doesn't require some unfathomble wizardry to reconfigure things a bit so a lot more people are within a 10 minute walk of some shops.

The MAGA Cinematic Universe

A question that people - journalists, Professional Democrats, opnionators, etc. - should think about is why, exactly, there's this massive cast of B- and C- list MAGA characters without there being any equivalent on The Left. You probably have to be a little bit online to be aware of most of them, but most people are at least a little online now. Like why is Laura Loomer?

There isn't a simple answer to this question, but it's part of the issue of general asymmetries in how politics is covered.

This pre-dates and transcends Trump, of course. An equivalent cast of characters existed during the Bush years, during the Obama years, and now (some the same, some newish!).

Morning

Middle of November.

Tuesday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Fail, Governor!

Just let the highway stay closed forever.

Kidding but I do resent that public transit failures are not usually treated as emergencies.

Disturbances In The Discourse

I keep telling about how much of The Discourse was really fucked for a couple of years due (in part) to some FTX money floating around and well one of them is baaaaaaccck!!!

The polling, conducted by YouGov and overseen by the political consulting firm Slingshot Strategies, definitely presented the frame you would expect from something bankrolled by the moderate Hoffman, arguing that Biden is too ideologically focused and isn’t highlighting his most centrist actions, in particular fostering more oil and gas exploration and supporting Republican-led efforts to block changes to the criminal code in D.C. Essentially, the poll results counseled Biden to vocally break from the left, which isn’t exactly rocket science given the usual trajectory of general elections. You could argue that with respect to Israel’s war with Hamas, it’s already happening.

But the poll, and Blueprint’s rollout, is interesting for another reason. Sean McElwee, the former rising star in Democratic politics who was fired late last year from Data for Progress, the polling firm and think tank he founded, was an unpaid consultant on the Blueprint poll. Slingshot partner Alyssa Cass confirmed that “Sean is one of a number of people we’ve talked to when putting together this project.” Cass added that McElwee “had no role in the fielding of this poll” and that only Slingshot was paid by Blueprint for the project.

"Polling approaches."

The Prospect asked Slingshot why McElwee’s perspective was important to hear during the polling process, given the various scandals with which he was associated. Smith responded that the discussions with McElwee were mainly about workshopping best strategies for this type of polling. “When I have these kinds of conversations, I’m mostly just hoping to sponge up some professional benefit and I set aside what they may have done/worked on,” Smith said. “There are pollsters who have done anti-union work (which I do not do) but have good insights on corporate research that I can benefit from. There are pollsters who have worked directly against some of my progressive candidates who are nevertheless talented researchers who have given me great ideas for polling approaches.”

You said too much, my man, you just admitted it's all about getting the answer you want!!!

I won't say any names, but there are some people who should be indicted for being straw donors who haven't been!!!

Horny Old Losers

Our tech overlords are not ageing well. Someone of importance once suggested I get him to make an investment in this humble blog. Not saying he would've, but it was the type of thing he did once upon a time.

Lunch

eat

Sounds Bad

I've seen how political journalists treat political figures they hate, and they still don't hate Donald Trump!

A former attorney for Donald Trump has told Georgia prosecutors that a top presidential aide said to her in December 2020 that “the boss” did not plan to leave the White House “under any circumstances,” according to a video recording obtained by The Washington Post.

Have Some Self-Respect, Man

Don't agree with the moustache of understanding about everything, but he at least gets that this is not heading anywhere good.  If the slaughter isn't enough for our Alden Pyles this line should be:

Biden needs to make clear that America is not going to be Netanyahu’s useful idiot.

I know it isn't the most important thing - or even close - but watching the leaders of the most powerful country in the world just get pantsed and humiliated daily only to do it again the next day is embarassing! What are we even doing here, man???

Urge

Smol bean president says pretty please, but no worries you'll get your money and weapons and military support anyway.

The Gaza Strip’s hospitals “must be protected,” President Biden said on Monday as Israeli troops battled to seize control of what Israel says is a Hamas command complex that lies below the enclave’s main medical facility, Al-Shifa Hospital.

I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of refereeing which specific claims by Israel are true or false, but the amount of hilariously false stuff official Israeli accounts are putting on Twitter is amazing and would be embarassing if anyone was capable of embarrassment which obviously they aren't

Morning

 Looks like the ctrl-v didn't get clicked last night.

Monday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Once again.

Paywalls

Everything - except this fine blog, of course - is behind a paywall now. I try to link to the few sites that aren't paywalled when linking to basic generic news, but obviously that doesn't work for everything.

I try to be aware, but sites are mysteriously unblocked for me (cough bypass paywalls clean cough) so I don't even always know.

Brand Safety

Some advertisers stay, but I do believe Elmo had no idea that the reason social media sites engage in CENSORSHIP is mostly about pleasing advertisers and not because they're WOKE.

Racetracks

Roads aren't built for safety, they're built for speed. Signal to drivers that they can "safely" drive faster and more recklessly, and they will.

Lunch

Shop while you eat! (ad, I get a commission) Time to buy some holiday presents for all the ungrateful people in your lives!

How's That Going

Courier had a few years to build an audience and reputation before going all in on this kind of thing. 

An emerging partisan news organization on the left is seriously gearing up to impact the 2024 election.

On Monday, Courier Newsroom, a network of liberal news sites, will announce a new slate of national contributors and newsletters, video series, op-eds and podcasts that largely focus on “explaining, exposing, and fighting back against threats to our freedoms and democracy.”

They didn't succeed but there's always money in the banana stand for "new media" that donors like run by people donors like that is absolutely useless.

Who knows, maybe it'll work, but they failed the (extremely well-funded) audition and got the job anyway.

Nothing wrong with supporting new outlets, but when existing influential outlets like Jezebel are being shuttered it's a bit off to support Tara McGowan's latest grift.

They are good at getting insider publications like semafor and axios to write about them. Donors read those.

Trump Is Not A Fascist, And He'll Put You In A Death Camp If You Say He Is

Reasonable coverage by the Post. 

"The language is the language that dictators use to instill fear,” said Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “When you dehumanize an opponent, you strip them of their constitutional rights to participate securely in a democracy because you’re saying they’re not human. That’s what dictators do.”

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University, said in an email to The Washington Post that “calling people 'vermin’ was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.”

...

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, told The Post “those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

But We Just Met The Girlfriend

Oh well.

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has suspended his presidential campaign, conceding that he does not see any path to the Republican nomination as Donald Trump maintains a significant lead in primary polling.

Morning

Another exciting week.

Sunday Night

Rock on.

Great Moments In The International Rules-Based Order

Biden's assembled a team of murderous clowns.

JAKE SULLIVAN, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Well, first, Dana, every loss of innocent life, Palestinian, Israeli, anyone, is a tragedy, every single one. And we grieve for those who have been lost, those innocent lives who have been lost. At the same time, what Israel is facing is a terrorist enemy who hides among civilians, who uses civilians as human shields. And so it has an added burden of trying to prosecute this campaign against that terrorist group while distinguishing between terrorists and innocent civilians. That doesn't lessen its responsibility to operate according to the rules of war, and we have continued to make that point both publicly and privately, and we will continue to do so as we go forward. BASH: Is Israel operating according to the rules of war? SULLIVAN: Well, Dana, I'm not going to sit here and play judge or jury on that question.

Flashback:

CNN — The US government has formally declared that members of the Russian armed forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Wednesday.

This isn't a defense of Russia. It just isn't my job to pretend these people don't just make up whatever happens to be convenient at the moment, and pretend it's operating according to some noble moral and legal framework.

Not the important thing, but there's this thing about these overcredentialed eggheads genuinely thinking people can't see what they're doing. And, since they own the microphones, will misrepresent your criticisms and get away with it.