tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39109251023474980272024-03-18T22:15:07.273-04:00The Rectification of Names"It's a question of which is to be master, that's all." Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.comBlogger4612125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-62954997725984499732024-03-15T12:01:00.001-04:002024-03-15T12:18:45.378-04:00Word and Deed<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1D8XYRhDeUAIsY3hoNm20DOF2qw5PNWkI6MrDNh-QsVjM4wDA8hcNk6qFo86CimfX8qaOqyLa7b9ySLAClSXlOrCAqVm1EMOB86JW5dbMmjRnu6-gTR6JJ598Jc6UcpwuBZxPmN_nyOwlhj8cAVxgOI2I-0EuhBWOFLz9MXvVSZnjKKuKtTeErVJV0duF/s1049/Gaza-75890.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="774" data-original-width="1049" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1D8XYRhDeUAIsY3hoNm20DOF2qw5PNWkI6MrDNh-QsVjM4wDA8hcNk6qFo86CimfX8qaOqyLa7b9ySLAClSXlOrCAqVm1EMOB86JW5dbMmjRnu6-gTR6JJ598Jc6UcpwuBZxPmN_nyOwlhj8cAVxgOI2I-0EuhBWOFLz9MXvVSZnjKKuKtTeErVJV0duF/w400-h295/Gaza-75890.webp" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gaza around the turn of the 20th century, via <a href="https://www.palestineremembered.com/GeoPoints/Gaza_526/Picture_75890.html">Palestine Remembered</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Jonathan Capehart was
<a href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/thursday-morning-politics-march-14-24">on my radio yesterday morning</a>, talking about his
<a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/state-of-the-union-joe-biden-interview-rev">NBC interview</a>
last week of President Biden, and they came to this exceptionally fraught
moment:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #171717; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0.3px; line-height: 32px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
Jonathan Capehart (<a data-wpel-link="exclude" href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/ay9qqXm4Ll4fmOMQh87vBPmwdWr0qRUqZhBdXZe09DgX8ifHLUcc23-9nl8ObbBhLuP13EjHUZyGy1Pn46WYtBn10G8?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&ts=382.47" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #171717; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;" target="_blank">06:22</a>):
</p>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #171717; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0.3px;">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 32px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
Some have suggested you should go back to Israel and address the Knesset,
the Israeli parliament. Is that something you would do?
</p>
</div>
<p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #171717; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0.3px; line-height: 32px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
President Joe Biden (<a data-wpel-link="exclude" href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/ay9qqXm4Ll4fmOMQh87vBPmwdWr0qRUqZhBdXZe09DgX8ifHLUcc23-9nl8ObbBhLuP13EjHUZyGy1Pn46WYtBn10G8?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&ts=391.68" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #171717; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;" target="_blank">06:31</a>):
</p>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #171717; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0.3px;">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 32px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
Yes.
</p>
</div>
<p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #171717; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0.3px; line-height: 32px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
Jonathan Capehart (<a data-wpel-link="exclude" href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/ay9qqXm4Ll4fmOMQh87vBPmwdWr0qRUqZhBdXZe09DgX8ifHLUcc23-9nl8ObbBhLuP13EjHUZyGy1Pn46WYtBn10G8?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&ts=395.4" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #171717; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;" target="_blank">06:35</a>):
</p>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #171717; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0.3px;">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 32px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
Would that have to be at the invitation of the Prime Minister or could
that be at the invitation of the President?
</p>
</div>
<p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #171717; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0.3px; line-height: 32px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
President Joe Biden (<a data-wpel-link="exclude" href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/ay9qqXm4Ll4fmOMQh87vBPmwdWr0qRUqZhBdXZe09DgX8ifHLUcc23-9nl8ObbBhLuP13EjHUZyGy1Pn46WYtBn10G8?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&ts=402.45" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #171717; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;" target="_blank">06:42</a> [after a pretty substantial pause]):
</p>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #171717; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0.3px;">
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 32px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
I’d rather not discuss it more.
</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>
Biden didn't mind saying he might address the Knesset, but he didn't want to
say who might be inviting him. Or rather, since you wouldn't expect it to
happen other than by an invitation from Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is by
definition the head of the government in the Knesset, and runs the things that
happen there, he didn't want to say that it might be from somebody else, such
as President Herzog, the head of state (whose only direct interaction with the
Knesset is when he's accepting the resignation of a prime minister, or
inviting a politician to try to form a new government). Or he couldn't or at
least didn't want to <i>deny</i> that he might have an invitation
from President Herzog, let's say, so he preferred to drop the subject and let
Capehart make of it what he would.
</p>
<p>
Brian Lehrer, the host of the radio show, was suitably gobsmacked, and
expressed himself, as people so often do, with a "can you imagine" scenario,
like "Can you imagine if some foreign leader came to Washington and addressed
Congress over the head of President Biden?"<span></span></p><a name='more'></a>
<p></p>
<p>
I was screaming at the radio, but Capehart remembered perfectly what I was
remembering: "You don't have to imagine it, because it happened," and retold
the story of how Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session
of Congress on March 3, 2015, without any authorization from President Obama
(who was, as Biden is, both head of government <i>and</i> head of state,
in the American system), to lobby against the deal Obama was then finalizing,
in which Iran would agree not to develop a nuclear weapon in return for relief
from some sanctions, and I guess Brian remembered at that point and they moved
on to another topic.
</p>
<p>
But how fitting it would be, given that history of Netanyahu going to Congress
(with an invitation from Speaker John Boehner) with the express purpose of
undermining a keystone of Obama's foreign policy, to turn the tables and do
the same thing to him!
</p>
<p>
That's not exactly what I think is going on, though. For one thing, the White
House has already done something very like that turnabout, a little over a
week ago, when they summoned Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz to
Washington for meetings with national security adviser Jake Sullivan, vice
president Kamala Harris, and White House Middle East adviser Brett McGurk,
without asking his boss, Prime Minister Netanyahu. Followed by a meeting in
London with the UK's new foreign secretary, David Cameron. Netanyahu was
reported to be "furious" and to have ordered the Israeli embassy in Washington
not to provide Gantz with any of the usual assistance. We know a good deal about what the Americans said (involving the need for Israel to act with more restraint, help relieve the suffering and starvation in Gaza, and get the hostages home), but not so much about what Gantz was there to accomplish.</p>
<p>
And then there are other voices, like the
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/11/politics/us-intelligence-report-netanyahu?cid=ios_app">US intelligence community</a>, reporting on Monday:
</p>
<p class="paragraph inline-placeholder" data-analytics-observe="off" data-article-gutter="true" data-component-name="paragraph" data-editable="text" data-uri="cms.cnn.com/_components/paragraph/instances/cltng4cg2000j2ap61e7k2192@published" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: cnn_sans_display, helveticaneue, Helvetica, Arial, Utkal, sans-serif; left: 30px; letter-spacing: 0.4px; line-height: var(--theme-paragraph__line-height--from-small); margin: 0px 0px 16px; overflow-wrap: break-word; position: relative; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">
The US intelligence community assesses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s “viability as a leader” to be “in jeopardy,” according to
its <a href="https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2024/3789-odni-releases-2024-annual-threat-assessment-of-the-u-s-intelligence-community" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; font-size: var(--theme-paragraph__font-size--from-small); line-height: var(--theme-paragraph__line-height--from-small); text-decoration-color: var(--theme-paragraph__link-decoration-color); text-decoration-line: var(--theme-paragraph__link-decoration); text-decoration-skip-ink: var(--theme-underline-skip-ink); text-decoration-thickness: var(--theme-paragraph__link-decoration-thickness); text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-underline-offset: var(--theme-paragraph__hover-link-offset);" target="_blank">annual report on the national security threats</a> facing the United States that was presented to Congress on Monday.
</p>
<p class="paragraph inline-placeholder" data-analytics-observe="off" data-article-gutter="true" data-component-name="paragraph" data-editable="text" data-uri="cms.cnn.com/_components/paragraph/instances/cltng6i0500023b6h3z3f1uqc@published" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: cnn_sans_display, helveticaneue, Helvetica, Arial, Utkal, sans-serif; left: 30px; letter-spacing: 0.4px; line-height: var(--theme-paragraph__line-height--from-small); margin: 0px 0px 16px; overflow-wrap: break-word; position: relative; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">
“Distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to rule has deepened and broadened across the
public from its already high levels before the war, and we expect large
protests demanding his resignation and new elections,” according to the
report. “A different, more moderate government is a possibility.”
</p>
<div>And finally, at the same time as my radio program, came the news of <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-of-senator-chuck-schumers-speech-israeli-elections-are-the-only-way/">Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer</a>, planning to call, in the extraordinary Senate speech he delivered that afternoon, for elections in Israel to replace the deeply unpopular and corrupt government:</div>
<blockquote><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #121212; font-family: "pt serif", serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I have known Prime Minister Netanyahu for a long time. While we have vehemently disagreed on many occasions, I will always respect his extraordinary bravery for Israel on the battlefield as a younger man. I believe in his heart his highest priority is the security of Israel.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #121212; font-family: "pt serif", serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, I also believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #121212; font-family: "pt serif", serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He has put himself in coalition with far-right extremists like Ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir, and as a result, he has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #121212; font-family: "pt serif", serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Prime Minister Netanyahu has also weakened Israel’s political and moral fabric through his attempts to co-opt the judiciary. And he has shown zero interest in doing the courageous and visionary work required to pave the way for peace, even before this present conflict.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #121212; font-family: "pt serif", serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me:</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #121212; font-family: "pt serif", serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7. The world has changed — radically — since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.</p></blockquote>
<p>Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the US government, as he pointed out, is known for his protective attitude toward Israeli governments left and right; he was one of the very few congressional Democrats who declined to denounce Netanyahu for his attempt to undermine Obama and manipulate Congress in 2015. That he should be the one to come out now with this message signals enormous changes in the US political establishment and the American Jewish community, brought on by Israel's frantically disproportionate response to the horrors of October 7—in turn to shut down criticism of its own military and intelligence failures which made those horrors possible, like the <a href="https://newlinesinstitute.org/state-resilience-fragility/west-bank-settler-violence-spiraling-with-tacit-government-support/">large-scale movement of IDF troops</a> from the southwest to the West Bank, to "protect" the violent and heavily armed residents of the illegal Jewish settlements there:</p><blockquote><p style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background-color: #f1f0ec; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1b1725; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;">Civilians in kibbutzes and towns across southern Israel <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/11/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-hamas-attack-timeline.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); box-sizing: inherit; color: #1b1725; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;" target="_blank">waited </a>upwards of eight hours – and in some cases nearly a full day – for rescue following Hamas’ surprise attack on the morning of Oct. 7. The long delay highlighted the vulnerabilities in Israel’s current security posture, which requires it to not only defend against hostile state and non-state armed groups in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria but also to protect an ever-increasing sprawl of settlements across the West Bank. Military bases in southern Israel were operating <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-israel-was-duped-hamas-planned-devastating-assault-2023-10-08/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); box-sizing: inherit; color: #1b1725; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;" target="_blank">below </a>full strength in the leadup to the attack, with many soldiers redeployed to the West Bank. As one anonymous IDF official <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/epvqzm/israel-hezbollah-gaza-wider-war" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); box-sizing: inherit; color: #1b1725; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;" target="_blank">told </a>a reporter following the attack, “Soldiers that were supposed to be outside Gaza were in the West Bank protecting settlements and chasing rock-throwing kids in Jenin.”</p></blockquote>
<p>It's an enormous change, anyhow. I haven't changed my mind about anything, but I keep waking up to find <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/opinion/israel-hamas-war-netanyahu.html">Thomas L. Friedman</a> kind of agrees with me now. And Aaron David Miller ("<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/opinion/biden-israel-gaza-policy.html">Words Over Deeds: Why Biden Isn't Pressuring Israel</a>") complaining that Biden isn't radical enough:</p><blockquote><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">The president has been reportedly privately </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___https:/www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/biden-disparages-netanyahu-private-hasnt-changed-us-policy-israel-rcna138282___.YzJ1OmNhcm5lZ2llZW5kb3dtZW50Zm9yaW50ZXJuYXRpb25hbHBlYWNlOmM6bzozZWRmMjA0OTIxZmI4MzcyOTJhZTQ2MjEwZmRlZjQ1MTo2Ojc0YzI6ZTU4Y2U3MWJlYmU0OGRmZjlmYTE2N2RiYjA0Yjc3YjMwOGIxZjVjMTRhNjMyMjE5ZTg0M2VmMDBmMGYyNGVlOTpwOlQ" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">disparaging</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;"> of the prime minister. It may well be that Mr. Biden now understands that Mr. Netanyahu is desperate to cling to power and, if necessary, will do so at the expense of American interests, regardless of Mr. Biden’s extraordinary support and an ever climbing casualty count. Still, by many accounts, Mr. Biden is not yet ready to stop or condition military assistance to Israel or vote for a United Nations Security Council Resolution critical of Israel, let alone call for a permanent cease-fire unless it is linked to the return of the hostages.</span></blockquote>
<p>To me this is another confusion between what constitutes words and what constitutes deeds, talk vs. action, <a href="https://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2024/03/joe-did-what-welcome-welcome-welcome.html">as I was sayin</a>g the other day. Conditioning military assistance might have sent a clearer message than Biden's original <a href="https://yastreblyansky.substack.com/p/joe-did-what">warnings in November</a>, but it wouldn't have saved a single life in the first weeks after October 7: IDF has plenty of munitions and would have used them to kill the same number of people and destroy the same number of buildings, and Netanyahu had announced that he'd ignore any unfavorable Security Council resolutions, just as he's ignored the admonitions of the International Court of Justice. Instead of "calling for a permanent cease-fire", which would have made exactly nothing happen, Biden decided to work to bring one about, which would require a lot of activity outside the public view, and a peace settlement on the grandest possible scale, which he had already been working on long before October 7 (it's widely thought that Hamas moved out of fear of an imminent deal bringing Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority in and leaving Hamas out), centered on the establishment of the long-desired Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. </p><p>But the necessary precondition (necessary though not sufficient) is, as should now be completely clear, getting rid of Netanyahu and his repulsive allies, who are unalterably opposed to a Palestinian state. Which is obviously not for the US to do, it's for Israeli politicians, such as Benny Gantz (most recently the choice of 48% of poll respondents as opposed to 15% for Netanyahu). That's where the significance of Gantz's visit to the US and of Schumer's speech lies, in the plans for an election—I assume Gantz has been counting votes for a confidence measure in the Knesset to dissolve the government and call for a general election, and telling Sullivan and Harris and McGurk that he's there, or almost there. Schumer's speech would be preparing the US public, and the Jewish community worldwide, for the event, and promising US support for a new government, and the US intelligence committee as well. Biden's readiness to address the Knesset (whether with an invitation from Herzog or perhaps a new prime minister) would be part of it too. (It's been a central part of his own maneuvers, as I've been saying, that he must retain his own popularity among Israelis even as he detaches himself from Netanyahu.)</p><p>It's coming, if it's coming, at an unspeakable cost of suffering for the people of Gaza, and, let's face it, for the people of southern Israel as well. Bringing peace—not just "calling" for it—is the only thing that could possibly make it worth while.</p><p>Cross-posted at the <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/yastreblyansky/p/word-and-deed?r=ip7r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true">Substack</a>.</p>
Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-48187634769892577262024-03-12T23:18:00.000-04:002024-03-12T23:19:23.488-04:00News From Bob-Bob<p> </p>
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<p></p>
<p>
This is just maddening. I don't know about Rodgers, but there's no way WWE
wrestling great and former politician Jesse Ventura is signing on to Bob-Bob's
campaign. He's been a fervent advocate of <a href="https://www.fox9.com/news/hitler-would-have-won-jesse-ventura-slams-lack-of-sacrifice-from-anti-maskers">masking</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p data-v-7dd7fde0="" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 28px; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="dateline" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">WHITE BEAR LAKE, Minn. (FOX 9)</span> - </span>Former Minnesota governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura shared
harsh words for non-mask wearers amid the pandemic, saying had Americans
refused to make similar sacrifices during World War II that Adolf Hitler
would have won the war.
</p>
<p data-v-7dd7fde0="" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 28px; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
"The country sacrificed in WWII. Do you think there would have been any
argument over wearing a mask for the people of WWII? I’ll tell you if we
behaved like we are right now, Hitler would have won," said Ventura. "He’d a
won because this country won’t face any type of – they don't want to
sacrifice."
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and of COVID vaccine</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghFEyLjIyEHOhyphenhyphen0VpgwaYUGjNXxlYv6yiTyrWnka356a8fLdot5IlvQ16zTncUsUxlXdDXOnPf2cwtl3VEXtaTiVhoP8mDi8G_UKru9ZOR7KsAKmAVMKtlGmOXqj8bLH9y-wLEX4gSWZkllUada9GVSM3Od9SZiLGGR0uKcBTBvIBaYP5AyX-W_OSZE38C/s1196/Screenshot%202024-03-12%20at%2010.11.30%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1196" height="365" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghFEyLjIyEHOhyphenhyphen0VpgwaYUGjNXxlYv6yiTyrWnka356a8fLdot5IlvQ16zTncUsUxlXdDXOnPf2cwtl3VEXtaTiVhoP8mDi8G_UKru9ZOR7KsAKmAVMKtlGmOXqj8bLH9y-wLEX4gSWZkllUada9GVSM3Od9SZiLGGR0uKcBTBvIBaYP5AyX-W_OSZE38C/w400-h365/Screenshot%202024-03-12%20at%2010.11.30%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a>
</div>
<br />
<p>
It seems as if Bob-Bob may have been misled by SOMETHING ON THE INTERNET like
the thing where some fool showed up on <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/old-video-on-a-compulsory-vaccination-program-going-viral-social-media-users-establish-covid-link/articleshow/99555926.cms">one of Ventura's TV shows</a> in 2009—</p>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px;">An old video, from a TV show aired in 2009 named “Conspiracy Theory with
Jesse Ventura” is doing rounds on social media. The video is getting
attention on social media as several users are linking it to the
COVID </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px;">vaccination</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px;"> drive that was started in 2021.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; content: ""; display: flex; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px;">In the show Jesse Ventura and his team of investigators examined mysterious
conspiracy allegations of recent times.</span>
<p>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px;">In the video we see a woman, </span><a frmappuse="1" href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/world-health-organisation" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0, 18, 255); box-sizing: border-box; color: #0012ff; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none;" styleobj="[object Object]" target="">who</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px;"> is said to be Dr Lima Raibow, speaking about how the World Health
Organisation (WHO) has been working on vaccines since 1974 to cause
permanent </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px;">sterility</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px;"> worldwide. In the video Dr Lima says that the WHO is concerned about
the “90% too many people in the world” hinting that the UN agency is
planning to depopulate the world on a large scale under an inoculation
program.</span>
</p></blockquote>
<p>—and decided that this piece of (irresponsible and irritating) showbiz represented his kind of people, without bothering to ask Jesse what he actually thought about the matter.</p><p>In this, Jesse is in the same position as Martin Sheen, Dionne Warwick, Mike Tyson, and Andrea Boccelli, artists that Bob-Bob <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/martin-sheen-dionne-warwick-andrea-bocelli-rfk-jr-birthday-fundraiser/">announced </a>would be coming to his birthday party before they had RSVP'd. </p>
<blockquote><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #101010; font-family: "Publico Text", serif; font-size: 21.12px; margin-top: 25px;">American Values promoted the event last week <a href="https://x.com/AmValues2024/status/1740471468541214975?s=20" rel="nofollow noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #101010;" target="_blank">by sharing it on X</a>, previously known as Twitter, and the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12906581/andrea-bocelli-performance-presidential-candidate-robert-f-kennedy-jr-fundraiser-superstar-guests-mike-tyson-martin-sheen-dionne-warwick.html" rel="nofollow noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #101010;" target="_blank">Daily Mail</a> reported the appearance of all four stars at the gala. CBS News obtained a copy of the invitation, and although it didn't include the names of the artists, the super PAC confirmed the report.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #101010; font-family: "Publico Text", serif; font-size: 21.12px; margin-top: 25px;">But soon after the PAC's social media post appeared, Sheen said in an <a href="https://x.com/cristina_corujo/status/1743074840188264758?s=20" rel="nofollow noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #101010;" target="_blank">Instagram story</a>, "I do not endorse RFK Jr. nor I will I be attending his party." Sheen, who played fictional President and former New Hampshire Gov. Josiah Bartlett in the award-winning show, added that he's "whole heartedly supporting Joe Biden and the Democratic ticket for 2024."</p></blockquote>
<p>And Warwick and Boccelli followed up soon after saying the same thing. Last I heard we didn't know about Killer Mike. And Bob-Bob followed up by <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4398472-rfk-jr-birthday-party-fundraiser-celebrity-2024/">announcing</a> he wasn't going to the party either.</p>
<p>This announcement is just more of the same. Bob-Bob is a completely unserious person, and if you take him seriously you're being a fool. Don't do it.</p>
Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-47940274813670028522024-03-11T15:47:00.004-04:002024-03-11T18:40:44.937-04:00But Look, Clearly<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGBf7likVEcTkrd1ao0O7K_XoPgjpwodNd7-4RW0Yu9jO4uHLDbKJh2Ezwek5D2rK7xzs_Je-3R_K3PwxrfjlVnLNv1D0XvHNvHFrMxnPBz00fSidaIImnv1pCVxU7RRKa9-trnYd5VRmOioGPjWpjRwtD_6VPujhGBFvA9kwZLGYbY22OZvONU_NR-wW8/s2560/65eb32b5c43664.86948513.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1440" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGBf7likVEcTkrd1ao0O7K_XoPgjpwodNd7-4RW0Yu9jO4uHLDbKJh2Ezwek5D2rK7xzs_Je-3R_K3PwxrfjlVnLNv1D0XvHNvHFrMxnPBz00fSidaIImnv1pCVxU7RRKa9-trnYd5VRmOioGPjWpjRwtD_6VPujhGBFvA9kwZLGYbY22OZvONU_NR-wW8/s320/65eb32b5c43664.86948513.webp" width="180" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture via <a href="https://fox5sandiego.com/news/world-news/ap-international/ap-killing-of-laken-riley-is-now-front-and-center-of-us-immigration-debate-and-2024-presidential-race/">Fox 5 San Diego</a>. Rep. Greene looking a little like Spike Lee at a Knicks game, if the Knicks wore red, except Spike knows the difference between a basketball game and a joint session of Congress.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />
<p>
I'm just not ready to stop talking about the
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/us/politics/state-of-the-union-transcript-biden.html">SOTU</a>, because there are still more ways in which it was totally unique that I
haven't gotten to, in the laundry list body of the speech as well, like when
he warned the attendant justices of the Supreme Court that overturning
<i>Roe v. Wade</i> had been a serious political mistake, throwing their
own words in their faces:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
Look, in its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court majority
wrote the following, and with all due respect, justices, “Women are not
without electoral, electoral power” — excuse me — “electoral or political
power.” You’re about to realize just how much you got right about that.
</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
Clearly, clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue
about the power of women. But they found out when reproductive freedom was
on the ballot. We won in 2022 and 2023, and we will win again in 2024.
</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
If you, the American people, send me a Congress that supports the right to
choose, I promise you, I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land
again.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Some nominal supporters of abortion rights were stomping on this because
<i>Roe v. Wade</i> wasn't, in fact, all that radical, allowing states to
set whatever restrictions they wanted on terminating pregnancy after 24 weeks,
but those critics might not be aware of what "codifying <i>Roe</i>" has come
to mean since <i>Dobbs</i>. It's not your grandfather's <i>Roe</i>, as
evidenced by the
<a href="https://spanberger.house.gov/posts/spanberger-helps-reintroduce-bill-to-codify-roe-v-wade-protect-rights-of-virginia-women">formula</a>
advanced by Abigail Spanberger (D-VA, not known as a wild-eyed leftist):
</p>
<p>
<span style="font-family: Roboto; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.24px;"></span>
</p>
<blockquote>
The Spanberger-backed legislation would create a
<b>statutory right for providers to provide and patients to receive</b> an
abortion — without facing medically unnecessary restrictions. The bill would
also block the government from requiring providers to provide inaccurate
information to patients, remove the ability to require that patients make
medically unnecessary in-person visits before receiving an abortion, and
restrict the government from forcing patients to disclose their reasons for
seeking an abortion before receiving care.
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p>
Proponents are now rejecting the ahistorical idea that fetuses have rights
that compete with those of the pregnant person, regardless of Justice Alito's
bogus arguments. The new version is an unqualified right for the person with
the womb.
</p>
<p>
He's also taken heat for referring to the man who has been charged with
murdering a University of Georgia nursing student last month as "an illegal"
in the speech, during his back-and-forth with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene,
although the way he used the word suggested he wan't entirely familiar with it
(I think he picked it up from whatever Greene howled at him, but I'm not
finding a report of her exact words):
</p>
<blockquote>
<span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">Lincoln [<i>recte</i> Laken] Riley, an innocent young woman who
was killed by an illegal, that’s right. But how many thousands of people are
being killed by legals?</span>
</blockquote>
<p>
What are "legals"? Sounds like he means legal immigrants, who are of course
the least likely people in the United States to commit a violent crime, or any
crime at all. The most likely are those who are citizens by birth, with the
undocumented being somewhere between. (The
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/29/truth-about-illegal-immigration-crime/">best-confirmed example</a>
is homicide convictions: 2.8 per 100,000 US-born residents, 2.4 per 100,000
undocumented foreign residents, and 1.1 per 100,000 for the documented
foreign-born.) Given that there are maybe 13 million undocumented
migrants and 30 million documented ones vs. about 285 million US-born, that
certainly adds up to thousands of killings by the last group for each one by
the first.
</p>
<p>
José Antonio Ibarra, the alleged murderer, is a
<a href="https://nypost.com/2024/02/24/us-news/migrant-suspect-in-laken-reilly-murder-was-busted-in-nyc-for-child-endangerment/">Venezuelan asylum seeker</a>, and thus not exactly "illegal" anyway. He and his then wife and her child
crossed the border at an unlawful spot near El Paso in September 2022 and
surrendered to CBP, which paroled them, and then somebody, presumably Governor Greg Abbott, had them bused to New York, where they were given court dates, and where he
found work delivering meals and maybe got busted in Queens for endangering the
welfare of a child, riding his moped with the wife's kid on his back, with no
helmet (but NYPD has <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/laken-riley-jose-ibarra-murder-georgia-b2502740.html">no record</a> of the arrest). He eventually left New York to join his brother, who was living with a
fake green card in Athens, Georgia, and found work there, but made his immigration court appearance in New York in December, and then apparently did this horrible thing,
killing Laken Riley with a blunt instrument and dragging her body into the
woods, though the wife continues to doubt he was the one who did it:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
“We got married so we could join our asylum cases,” she told The Post. “He
was the person I thought I could see through. We’ve known each other our
entire lives. <span color="var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g)" style="letter-spacing: -0.01em;">He wasn’t aggressive, none of that,” she said. “We had problems as a
couple but our problems weren’t physical. We wouldn’t punch but we’d raise
our voices."</span>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Completely lost in the discussion is the thing Biden actually said to Greene
after that, his important comment on the case, improvised away from the
written text, which a lot of listeners may not have understood, though the congressmembers definitely should have:
</p>
<blockquote><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
To her parents, I say, my heart goes out to you having lost children myself. I
understand.
</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
But look, if we change the dynamic at the border — people pay these smugglers
8,000 bucks to get across the border because they know if they get by, if they
get by and let into the country, it’s six to eight years before they have a
hearing. And it’s worth the taking a chance for the $8,000.
</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
But if it’s only six weeks, the idea is it’s highly unlikely that people will
pay that money and come all that way knowing that they’ll be able to be kicked
out quickly.
</p></blockquote>
<p>Most asylum applicants are going to lose their cases, even in New York, where immigration judges tend to be a lot friendlier than in Texas, and in many or most of those instances they probably don't really deserve to win, at least in terms of the law as it's written. But the law as written also demands that the cases be heard. </p><p>Biden is saying that the incredible bottleneck that has existed for some time in the system, while Congress fails to pass a comprehensive reform, actually encourages people without credible fears to come to Mexico and cross into the waiting arms of a CBP agent, because they know that, while they will eventually lose and get deported, they'll have six or eight years to make and save some money before that happens, enough perhaps to turn into landlords when they get home. If José Antonio Ibarra's asylum case had been heard in El Paso a few weeks after his arrival, in October 2022, Abbott wouldn't have had an opportunity to bus him to New York, and Ibarra wouldn't have had an opportunity to commit any crimes there or in Athens. More than that, as Biden suggests, if he knew he'd be sent back to Venezuela that soon, he'd likely never have left.</p>
<p>That's a major part of the reason Biden's proposals for "fixing the border" always depend so much on beefing up the resources of the system, the CBP agents and immigration judges, along with trying to get people to apply for asylum without coming to the US, from consulates in their home countries, or from the Mexico side of border using the phone app. And (the legally and morally questionable aspect) making it easier for CPB to deport them straight away. It's because our immigration system is broken, as they say, and when they say it's broken they don't mean it's evil, though its consequences often are evil, hurting innocent people for no good reason; they mean it doesn't work any more—it's in need of major repairs that Congress has been putting off for many years, mostly because Republican members are afraid their voters won't like it.</p><p>Though there are Republicans, often in Great Plains states like Oklahoma that have been bleeding population <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_the_Great_Plains">for a century</a>, who realize that we need more immigration, not less, which is why James Lankford worked so hard on the bill currently languishing in the House because Trump ordered Mikey Johnson not to put it on the floor.</p><p>I could wish Biden wouldn't work so hard insisting that Lankford's bill is "conservative"</p><blockquote><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">In November, my team began serious negotiations with a bipartisan group of senators. The result was a bipartisan bill with the toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen. Oh, you don’t think so? Oh, you don’t like that bill, huh? That conservatives got together and said was a good bill? I’ll be darned, that’s amazing.</span></blockquote><p>but I understand why he does it: to highlight the perversity of the Republicans rejecting it, after wailing all year about the situation at the border, out of nothing but Trump's fear of giving Biden a W.</p><p>But it would be better to highlight the way these "bipartisan" feats of legislation always require Democrats to make all the sacrifices—while Republicans demand to be bribed, as they have been in all these matters involving immigration and foreign policy this year, to do the things they claim to want. It would be better to handle this the way he handled the abortion rights issue, asking voters to send him a better Congress so he can do a better job.</p><p>Somewhat edited version at the <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/yastreblyansky/p/but-look-clearly?r=ip7r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true">Substack</a>.</p>
<p></p><p></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-84872832249528484862024-03-09T21:39:00.003-05:002024-03-09T22:34:48.859-05:00It's Not Hyperbole, Man!<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5SQRc7EqxnmYXMg8jgK4zl23LGyk_TYtuqm2aNyd0uKgXtx7FSzAFKYBGwL1WmU3tMdB6wMS6ABnnWsAZNvuNdlv-yg-Kr02E09DFfLCt7emOASaDnLnriPdyAW5NEcksiP1GMQ6c2-ZYnhWu1MswfKztnsClfrw2UMFS5FLEa3MYUPfidzJ2_MuJp77p/s750/65eba3ae069e5.image.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="750" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5SQRc7EqxnmYXMg8jgK4zl23LGyk_TYtuqm2aNyd0uKgXtx7FSzAFKYBGwL1WmU3tMdB6wMS6ABnnWsAZNvuNdlv-yg-Kr02E09DFfLCt7emOASaDnLnriPdyAW5NEcksiP1GMQ6c2-ZYnhWu1MswfKztnsClfrw2UMFS5FLEa3MYUPfidzJ2_MuJp77p/w400-h266/65eba3ae069e5.image.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Holding babies in Rose Valley, PA. Photo by Andrew Harnik/AP via <a href="https://www.chronicleonline.com/news/national/biden-visiting-battleground-states-and-expanding-staff-as-his-campaign-tries-to-seize-the-offensive/article_208c8480-9757-575d-919d-afac662d2e0f.html">Citrus County Chronicle</a>. </td></tr></tbody></table><br />
<p>
<a href="https://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2024/03/joe-did-what-welcome-welcome-welcome.html">As I was saying</a>, the last SOTU of Biden's first term was an extraordinary departure from the
SOTU norm, which I've been observing off and on since I was a teenager in the
Johnson administration (likely for the first time in 1964, when LBJ announced
an "unconditional war on poverty in America"), but I don't think I got all the
way to what made it so extraordinary.
</p>
<p>
Of course one of the reasons it's different is that there's an overriding
purpose to this particular speech tied directly to the presidential campaign,
as Josh Marshall explains in his <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/how-did-biden-do-in-the-sotu/sharetoken/6Fem0W01HMRJ?utm_source=brevo&utm_campaign=Backchannel%20NEW%20TEMPLATE%20278&utm_medium=email">Backchannel</a>:
</p>
<p>
<span style="background-color: #f8f6f1; color: #111111; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 17px;"></span>
</p>
<blockquote>
<span style="background-color: #f8f6f1; color: #111111; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 17px;">there was one overwhelming sina qua non objective and that was to
demonstrate that Biden is vigorous, up to the fight and can deliver on the
key requirements of running a national campaign.</span>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p>
Biden clearly did as well with that as you could have hoped for, showing
himself to be sharp, energetic, and a master of the detail, displaying
passion, humor, and a very good memory. he's absolutely on top of it, as staff
has claimed. Nobody who watched it could say he was frail, out of it, or
suffering dementia, and we can be confident as he puts himself out to the
public in the coming weeks and months that he'll be able to sustain that and
an increasing number of voters will get it. He's plainly capable of doing both
jobs, of presidential candidate and president; if there's a problem, whether
it's bias against the elderly or Fox News or New York Times propaganda, it
won't be because of anything actually wrong with him.
</p>
<p>
So that had been a huge worry among all kinds of Democrats, and I thought it
should be a big point in the reaction to the speech, which it has been, and
that's great.
</p>
<p>But it's not the only point that deserves to be talked about.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p>
<p>
It was radically different from the committee-driven laundry list of issues
and programs for sale that we've become familiar with in the maturity of the
age of television: more like the
<a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-franklin-roosevelts-annual-message-to-congress">SOTU of January 1941</a> he evoked in his first words, in which Franklin Roosevelt warned his
audience that the United States would not be able to avoid involvement in the
ongoing war in Europe, saying, "this Annual Message is unique in our history."
FDR used that fact as an organizing principle for his own speech, expounding
the ways in which the nation was already prepared, the ways it needed to
prepare materially, the ways it needed to prepare legislatively (assigning
Congress its tasks in the war effort), and the ways it needed to prepare
spiritually, in what would be a struggle for freedom, introducing his own
theory of the Four Freedoms. Biden, in his words—
</p>
<blockquote>
<span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">Tonight, I come to the same chamber to address the nation. Now, it’s we who
face [an] unprecedented moment in the history of the union. And yes, my
purpose tonight is to wake up the Congress and alert the American people
that this is no ordinary moment either.</span>
</blockquote>
<p>
—acknowledges a very explicit debt to the 1941 speech, but takes on two
different tasks at once, in contrast to Roosevelt's one. Congress needs to be
"awakened" to the danger it's unable as a body to recognize coming from where
authoritarian powers plot against democracy on the outside, the American
people must be "alerted" to the danger on the inside, where venal
representatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matthew Gaetz plot against
democracy right there in the chamber.
</p>
<p>
That's what the speech is about. It has all the obligatory elements of the
standard Democratic SOTU, the recitation of the administration's
accomplishments and the enumeration of programs, some of them pretty new, that
mostly won't get enacted unless we elect a better-quality Congress, but the
central subject is a list of specific <i>threats</i> laid out in the
opening paragraphs:
</p>
<p></p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>
Putin, for his attacks on Ukraine, who will go on to attack elsewhere if he
isn't stopped there;
</li>
<li>Trump, for his invitation to Putin to do whatever the hell he wants</li>
<li>Trump, implicitly for his attacks on NATO</li>
<li>
insurrectionists of January 6, for attack on democracy (in Trump's name)
</li>
<li>Trump, for his lies about the 2020 election</li>
<li>Trump, for his plots to steal power</li>
<li>
Republicans, for their attacks on IVF following on their successful defeat
of <i>Roe v. Wade</i> (engineered by Trump's judicial nominations) and
</li>
<li>COVID-19, </li>
</ul>
<p></p>
<blockquote>
<p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
Remember the fear, record losses. Remember the spikes in crime and the
murder rate, raging virus that took more than one million American lives of
loved ones, millions left behind, a mental health crisis of isolation and
loneliness.
</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
A president, my predecessor, failed the most basic presidential duty that he
owes to American people: the duty to care. I think that’s unforgivable.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
and that's where Biden moves into the recitation of accomplishments, but not
as the conventional laundry list: in the form of a <i>comeback</i> narrative,
</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
I came to office determined to get us through one of the toughest periods in
the nation’s history. We have. It doesn’t make new, news — in a thousand
cities and towns, the American people are writing the greatest comeback
story never told.
</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
So let’s tell the story here. Tell it here and now.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
the story more or less of how Biden has worked to <i>save</i> us
from the consequences of the predecessor's misdeeds, starting with the
pandemic and its ravages on public health, on education, on the economy, which
the Biden administration has done so much to fix, and the speech begins to
turn gradually into something much more like a normal SOTU.
</p>
<p>
But that first 15 minutes is something else, with its litany of accusations
against Trump and his friends foreign and domestic. And they're all true, of
course, and all things most voters hate, and we never thought he was going to
come out and talk about it. . Trump and his movement are the crisis he's warning of, they have to be stopped, and Biden has the experience of doing something about it. That's why he's running.</p><p>It was electrifying to me to hear it, and it looks
as if he's carrying on now as he hits the campaign trail:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">While Biden had referred only to his “predecessor” during Thursday’s speech
before Congress, on Friday it was a different story on the campaign trail,
as Biden and his wife laid into Trump for raising the deficit, rolling back
abortion access and fomenting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the
Capitol.</p>
<p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">
He also blamed Trump for the coarsening of the country’s political discourse.
</p>
<p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">
“When you ride down the street and there’s a Trump banner with an F-U on it
and a little 6-year-old kid putting up his middle finger,” Biden said. “Did
you ever think you’d hear people talk the way they do? It demeans who we are.
That’s not America.”
</p>
<p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">
Biden highlighted threats to in vitro fertilization in Alabama after a recent
state Supreme Court ruling. “You know why it happened? I’ll tell you why. One
reason: Donald Trump,” Biden said. (<a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-campaign-strategy-state-of-union-trump-36731990165e47bd451235d6b5ff31ab">AP</a>)</p></blockquote>
<p>We're on.<br /></p><p>Cross-posted at <a href="https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2024/03/its-not-hyperbole-man.html">No More Mister Nice Blog</a>.</p>
<p></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-80069201237657288862024-03-08T18:53:00.006-05:002024-03-08T19:05:53.267-05:00Joe Did What? Welcome, Welcome, Welcome<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-1zgQOoVFjpb7bcgFtzrYWAVemIPCHmitzGxO7jw2lB2YsvCKxW6Y8q7O1JCBY_zzbhwM4w0tfMF-sJy_0LXvbQpNylCOQVBQbeQUIMR8ELB_E9JfYzxov-J2p34-Two_mWh6W8N9CnA3Ag8f_Ipm2snQ18y2v7XViT_w_0gnSdu9JSGbbB5a8sTKt7so/s1024/GettyImages-2067154625-1024x744.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="744" data-original-width="1024" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-1zgQOoVFjpb7bcgFtzrYWAVemIPCHmitzGxO7jw2lB2YsvCKxW6Y8q7O1JCBY_zzbhwM4w0tfMF-sJy_0LXvbQpNylCOQVBQbeQUIMR8ELB_E9JfYzxov-J2p34-Two_mWh6W8N9CnA3Ag8f_Ipm2snQ18y2v7XViT_w_0gnSdu9JSGbbB5a8sTKt7so/w400-h291/GettyImages-2067154625-1024x744.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images via <a href="https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2024/03/07/state-of-the-union-address-by-president-joe-biden-march-7-2024/">Wisconsin Examiner</a>. <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/8/2228286/-Over-75-posts-later-Trump-is-still-fuming-about-Biden-s-State-of-the-Union">Rumor</a> has it that when Donald Trump sent out a post "WHAT HAPPENED TO NANCY?" last night it's because he'd forgotten why the guy in glasses was sitting in Speaker Pelosi's chair.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />
<p>
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were—are, I suppose—masters of oratory, in their
different ways, artists of the art of public speaking, Clinton charming you
into his vision, Obama rousing you to fervency, but their State of the Union
addresses were never their best speeches, weighed down with all the exhausting
details they felt compelled to include.
</p>
<p>
Joe Biden's art is not oratory but the art of governance, of which the State
of the Union is a (sort of) constitutional part (of course the Constitution
only requires him to send Congress a letter, of which he made a tremendous
pantomime last night, passing the Vice President and Speaker their
leather-bound copies before bringing his own to the lectern, I've never
watched that happening before, but the camera loved it as he was doing it),
and that maybe accounts for why they're paradoxically his best speeches, even
though they may be his longest; he's so deeply aware that he's not just
talking about governance, he's doing it, and democratically drawing us into
the process, and the details are a fundamental part of that (and not just the
part where, as the pundits like to say, the Devil is). The pleasure he takes
in it is so evident that we can't help sharing it, and it rarely gets boring.
</p>
<p>
I dwell on it because it's something people often make a mistake about when
they're observing Biden: so many times in the course of the Gaza war they've
complained that words are not enough, actions are needed, when words are what
they're really asking for (the oratorical call for a ceasefire), and actions
are what we're getting (the political work of making a ceasefire happen, going
on mostly behind closed doors).<span></span></p><a name='more'></a>
<p></p>
<p>
Action was the enveloping theme of last night's speech, surrounded as it was
on both ends by scenes of Joe making his way through the crowd of legislators
of whom he was one for such a long time, with a joke or a bit of gossip to
share with everybody, working that crowd as the expression has it, and action
was an important part of the content—instead of saying, "We must fight!" he
spent a lot of time landing punches, against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,
against "my predecessor", the otherwise unnamed 45th president of the US,
against the radical-right majority on the Supreme Court, and against the House
Republican Caucus, and leaping right into debate with congressional hecklers,
breaking from his prepared text to engage them. It's startling to see such pugnacity on display from a Democrat, and welcome, especially from one who gives as much space to the clichés of "finding common ground" and "working across the aisle" as he has always done.</p>
<p>
Instead of the traditional opening on the economic state of the Union, he
opened with an analogy to Franklin Roosevelt's SOTU of 1941, as a perilous situation comparable to the set of threats foreign, as represented
by Putin, and domestic as represented by Biden's predecessor
</p>
<blockquote><div class="css-53u6y8" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px calc(50% - 300px); max-width: 600px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
<p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
Now, now my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote,
do whatever the hell you want. That’s a quote. A former president actually
said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. I think it’s outrageous, it’s
dangerous, and it’s unacceptable.
</p>
<p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
America is a founding member of NATO, the military alliance of democratic
nations created after World War II to prevent, to prevent war and keep the
peace. And today, we’ve made NATO stronger than ever. We welcomed Finland to
the alliance last year, and just this morning, Sweden officially joined, and
their minister is here tonight. Stand up. Welcome. Welcome, welcome,
welcome. And they know how to fight.
</p>
</div></blockquote>
<p>
and by the insurrectionists who came out to support the predecessor on January
6, "stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger to the throat of American
democracy." As well as by the House Freedom Caucus blocking aid to
Ukraine. Speaker Mikey Johnson, sitting behind the president in the
traditional position next to the vice president, rose to his feet to applaud
the Ukrainians, forgetting that he himself was responsible for bringing the
aid bill to the House for a vote, which it would certainly win, if he
disobeyed Trump's orders and did it, and quickly sat down again, confused, as
he remained for the rest of the hour, though he was sometimes observed with
his hands clapping under the table, where his Freedom members wouldn't see.
</p>
<p>
The first takeaway from all this has to be, I think, that Biden is in very
good physical and mental shape and can show it. The event may have been
"heavily staged", as
<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/swin24.bsky.social/post/3kn6vkkywrs26">some</a>
caviled on social media, but Biden played a very complex and rangy role, and
one that took a lot of improv, and he couldn't have done it if he didn't have
the capacity. Tim Franks on BBC asked a Democrat, "But will one speech be
enough to convince people?" Really, it ought to be, given how well it was done, but it's clear in any case that from Biden's point of view the campaign just
began, after the Tuesday primaries, and there will obviously be more.
</p>
<p>
<a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-142422372">David Kurtz/TPM</a>
writes,
</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #363737; font-family: -apple-system-ui-serif, ui-serif, Spectral, Georgia, serif; font-size: 19px; letter-spacing: -0.228px; line-height: 1.6em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--page-width);">
Republicans who have turned Joseph R. Biden into a caricature of
falling-down dementia and drooling incontinence have set the bar so low that
anything above a flatline EKG from the president knocks them back on their
heels.
</p>
<p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #363737; font-family: -apple-system-ui-serif, ui-serif, Spectral, Georgia, serif; font-size: 19px; letter-spacing: -0.228px; line-height: 1.6em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--page-width);">
They were left spluttering that Biden’s State of the Union was too loud and
too campaign-y.
</p></blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM4JZabIqqSGLjkDEMVG6V8BeDOAPlrVla7YOnTV_gnoUPHQGUQ6es7qW0oqWiaDLHTHZ2UezZIZFTjv9ZpSxTaqlzzIhSV_b_4ERCe_fbeGL3-UaRaUq8wIVqVVYQrdjQ73UzKCtZVoWmlenUk9SjpCWFzgL99KQb9O7ziUy4KMUKQk35NIpnD5mK97m8/s2000/bafkreie3s7uoy6rf3bus6nd4mwbxnqj6rgn7cakxtvckub7bedh2ffvf6q.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="707" data-original-width="2000" height="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM4JZabIqqSGLjkDEMVG6V8BeDOAPlrVla7YOnTV_gnoUPHQGUQ6es7qW0oqWiaDLHTHZ2UezZIZFTjv9ZpSxTaqlzzIhSV_b_4ERCe_fbeGL3-UaRaUq8wIVqVVYQrdjQ73UzKCtZVoWmlenUk9SjpCWFzgL99KQb9O7ziUy4KMUKQk35NIpnD5mK97m8/s320/bafkreie3s7uoy6rf3bus6nd4mwbxnqj6rgn7cakxtvckub7bedh2ffvf6q.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>And the White House team at The New York Times seems to have felt the same</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-_R9Tgml9McDHSSqPF1knaY5fU70nl0_Uh9tfYrsGcXkPpw4ugcdN9uxDSN_tuXB6dGmSowgBOTcsc691oCn1Jkk839HrHkPWqbh_2XOKGgtQWIU9hQYnEQ-gjNOYZl9-9YO1d8Fv9mx25ZoQTSUtgqx7zBmlAxKNaQWKQ_StHFvpK4Lcy1QRhcXCsoR0/s1204/Screenshot%202024-03-08%20at%204.13.59%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1092" data-original-width="1204" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-_R9Tgml9McDHSSqPF1knaY5fU70nl0_Uh9tfYrsGcXkPpw4ugcdN9uxDSN_tuXB6dGmSowgBOTcsc691oCn1Jkk839HrHkPWqbh_2XOKGgtQWIU9hQYnEQ-gjNOYZl9-9YO1d8Fv9mx25ZoQTSUtgqx7zBmlAxKNaQWKQ_StHFvpK4Lcy1QRhcXCsoR0/s320/Screenshot%202024-03-08%20at%204.13.59%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="320" /></a></div></blockquote><p>Though he wasn't just loud, but made a brilliant use of stage whispers too.<br /></p><p>While the rebuttal presented by Senator Katie Britt (R-AL), set in a soundstage kitchen apparently built in 1992 and never used to cook anything, looked like an audition for a high school production of <i>The Crucible</i>, designed to show her emotional range from very smily to deeply concerned, and not showing it well<i>. </i></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX-KAFOnZfPF4o4d_Nea7tS6Rih_c-lvuIGPjaMZLOegCD_k8OfJAgUTI7otyjfZadZKIr5h6xzhUHxUTt6yomGo6o64usC-5XKJzar24DbZAgYmyi0lEy-2u-RlfQ9k6a0BdeaCmB8s1M_gfG48QiV01hutl8_5Y4JNjVVChy-jwo7Tb4qE1LTAESZWWq/s620/Screenshot%202024-03-08%20at%202.04.10%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="538" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX-KAFOnZfPF4o4d_Nea7tS6Rih_c-lvuIGPjaMZLOegCD_k8OfJAgUTI7otyjfZadZKIr5h6xzhUHxUTt6yomGo6o64usC-5XKJzar24DbZAgYmyi0lEy-2u-RlfQ9k6a0BdeaCmB8s1M_gfG48QiV01hutl8_5Y4JNjVVChy-jwo7Tb4qE1LTAESZWWq/w348-h400/Screenshot%202024-03-08%20at%202.04.10%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="348" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Katie sez you can't trust those hardworking parents any further than you can throw them.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>So much for the theater criticism. I'll try to get on to the substantive issues later.</p><p>Cross-posted at <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/3856837">No More Mister Nice Blog</a>.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p><p></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-42659393802687243912024-03-07T00:30:00.001-05:002024-03-07T00:30:54.297-05:00Martin Luther King on Steroids<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgTfg2YGVyN6KXDwiiXzdQJGibCXBSRGYEdDxznqOG2vS4ikuSnKV7zwfQYjPCvWP6pDK1FoNbxVyBr-jy3fwW4gyPlQZJiNzhgTM6UpxcXcJZj32y6cJky2z6LawLVoZC24yqkrH1btQra1Pv4xC2IN9vPIYvALJqnwZCX2kYreMOZpHKBzunj4VikFD_/s980/mark-robinson-lieutenant-governor-north-carolina-campaign-trail.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="551" data-original-width="980" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgTfg2YGVyN6KXDwiiXzdQJGibCXBSRGYEdDxznqOG2vS4ikuSnKV7zwfQYjPCvWP6pDK1FoNbxVyBr-jy3fwW4gyPlQZJiNzhgTM6UpxcXcJZj32y6cJky2z6LawLVoZC24yqkrH1btQra1Pv4xC2IN9vPIYvALJqnwZCX2kYreMOZpHKBzunj4VikFD_/w387-h218/mark-robinson-lieutenant-governor-north-carolina-campaign-trail.webp" width="387" /></a>
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Photo by Madeline Gray/Washington Post for Getty Images via
<a href="https://www.advocate.com/news/mark-robinson-transphobic-primary-election">Advocate</a>.
</div>
<p><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: PublicoText, Georgia, "Publico Text", "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 6rem 1.5rem; text-align: right;">
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Former President Donald Trump likened North Carolina Lt.
Gov. Mark Robinson to Martin Luther King Jr. in an endorsement Saturday,
despite the gubernatorial candidate’s long history of controversial comments
about homosexuality, religion and victims of sexual abuse.
</p>
<p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: PublicoText, Georgia, "Publico Text", "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 6rem 1.5rem; text-align: right;">
“This is Martin Luther King on steroids,” Trump said of Robinson at a
pre-Super Tuesday rally in North Carolina.
</p>
<div id="taboolaReadMoreBelow" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: PublicoText, Georgia, "Publico Text", "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville; font-size: 18px;"></div>
<p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: PublicoText, Georgia, "Publico Text", "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 6rem 1.5rem; text-align: right;">
“I told that to Mark. I said, I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I
think you are Martin Luther King times two.” (<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-compares-north-carolina-lt-gov-mark-robinson-martin-luther-king-rcna141523">NBC News</a>)
</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">
In my alternative history novel, <i>Martin Luther King on Steroids</i>, I
grapple with one of the big questions: What if Dr. King, instead of getting a
Ph.D. in theology and following his father into the ministry and civil rights
activism, had gone into pro wrestling, hooked up with the young Vince McMahon
and medical genius Dr. Zahorian, and crafted himself a fantastic body with the
help of drugs?
</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">
What kind of dreams would that young man have had? What kind of amazing job
would he have done, getting himself recognized more and more? How different
would our world be today? Let's just say there's a good chance he wouldn't
have thought of organizing a nonviolent civil rights movement based on the
principles of Tolstoy and Gandhi, successfully pressured the US government
into passing the Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and Fair Housing Acts, or lost
his life to an assassin's bullet during a campaign for fairness to Memphis
garbage collectors.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a>
<p></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">
On the other hand, he probably wouldn't have become North Carolina's first
Black lieutenant governor, either. Not because of the steroid use, which never
harmed the political careers of Jesse "The Body" Ventura (governor of
Minnesota 1999-2003) or bodybuilder and film star Arnold Schwarzenegger
(governor of California 2003–11), meaning no disrespect to either of those
gentlemen—Ventura wasn't even a Republican, and got into trouble with Mr.
McMahon for trying to start up a wrestlers' union, something I never heard
about until tonight (on the other hand I have been keeping one eye on
McMahon's current difficulties under a Trump-style pincer attack between a
federal investigation and lawsuits for sexual abuse including rape, not
forgetting that McMahon is the all-time top donor to the now closed Trump
Foundation, having laundered a $5 million payment to Trump through it so Trump
wouldn't have to pay tax on it, even as Trump gave Mrs. McMahon a plum job as
head of the Small Business Administration).
</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">
No, Martin-on-steroids couldn't have become lieutenant governor of NC because
he was Black. It would take 57 years from the passage of the Civil Rights Act
before that would happen, and who knows how much longer if the real Martin
hadn't been on the case but instead on TV trading trash talk with Haystacks
Calhoun and Gorgeous George, although come to think of it he probably wouldn't
have done that either, given that the first Black wrestler to make a challenge
to the title,
<a href="https://www.advocate.com/news/mark-robinson-transphobic-primary-election">Luther Lindsay</a>, in 1953–56, never achieved the stardom many felt he deserved before he
suffered a fatal heart attack, on top of a pinned opponent, in 1972, at the
age of 47.
</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">
As to the man who did become the first African American lieutenant governor of
North Carolina (the state where Luther Lindsay died, in Charlotte), and is now
the Republican candidate for governor of the state, Mark Robinson, I have no
evidence that he has ever used steroids, but I also don't know that he
hasn't.
</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">
Though it's a known
<a href="https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Steroids-2020_0.pdf">fact</a>
that
</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: left;">
<span face=""Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #1f1f1f; color: #e8e8e8; font-size: 20px;">In some individuals, anabolic steroid use can cause dramatic mood swings,
increased feelings of hostility, </span><span face=""Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #3a3f50; color: #e2eeff; font-size: 20px;">impaired judgment</span><span face=""Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #1f1f1f; color: #e8e8e8; font-size: 20px;">, and increased levels of aggression (often referred to as “roid
rage”). </span>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and Robinson has been known to complain that</p>
<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Studios" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Marvel Studios">Marvel</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> movie </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_(film)" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Black Panther (film)"><i>Black Panther</i></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> was "created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanism" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Satanism">satanic</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Marxism">Marxists</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">" that was "only created to pull the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shekel" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Shekel">shekels</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> out of your </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schvartze" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Schvartze">Schvartze</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> pockets" </span></p>
<p></p></blockquote><p>and</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> "this foolishness about </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Adolf Hitler">Hitler</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Nazi concentration camps">concentration camps</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> is a bunch of hogwash,"</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-:1_2-1" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Robinson_(American_politician)#cite_note-:1-2" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> and "There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the '6 million Jews' they murdered."</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Kassel2023_34-2" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Robinson_(American_politician)#cite_note-Kassel2023-34" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[</a></sup></blockquote><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Kassel2023_34-2" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Robinson_(American_politician)#cite_note-Kassel2023-34" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;"></a></sup><p></p>
<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">"There's no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth. And yes I called it filth. And if you don't like that I called it filth, come see me and I'll explain it to you." </span></p>
<p></p></blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">that the </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cosby_sexual_assault_allegations" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Bill Cosby sexual assault allegations">sexual assault allegations</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> against </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cosby" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Bill Cosby">Bill Cosby</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> were orchestrated by "the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Illuminati">Illuminati</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">"; that Barack Obama was a "top ranking demon" and that </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_DeGeneres" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Ellen DeGeneres">Ellen DeGeneres</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> was "proudly serving in Satan's army"</span></blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"></span><p></p>
<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">called the </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Movement" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Civil Rights Movement">Civil Rights Movement</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> a communist plot to "subvert capitalism" and "to subvert free choice".</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-46" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Robinson_(American_politician)#cite_note-46" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[46]</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> He has also called </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr." style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Martin Luther King Jr.">Martin Luther King Jr.</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> a "communist" and "ersatz pastor"</span></p>
<p></p></blockquote><p>Which is definitely not something a Martin Luther King who was not on steroids would be likely to say. So all in all I guess it's possible Trump had this right. Why that would have inspired him to endorse Robinson is another question.</p>
Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-2179323870225734882024-03-05T18:36:00.001-05:002024-03-05T18:36:49.933-05:00Chicken Supremes<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc0ek6sxDMOqqEJRVs2k9ImwoFwyZc4KGs9p0IM5BhcC3MBkLEF4RfZLhGZEpeq5ZDDmSaMn1SOeKSJ-iH2WfNka2d6w69ew3jTFwZOvt3gxCSurcLEp4B3rmD3XLyC7D1bkxdBLNdoSID6cENWoyKVGaeYYimQzszfLzCc14JHW1xdpYLLl0mRpG7J7Yy/s2560/65c4b6d0e4d099.19715533.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="2560" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc0ek6sxDMOqqEJRVs2k9ImwoFwyZc4KGs9p0IM5BhcC3MBkLEF4RfZLhGZEpeq5ZDDmSaMn1SOeKSJ-iH2WfNka2d6w69ew3jTFwZOvt3gxCSurcLEp4B3rmD3XLyC7D1bkxdBLNdoSID6cENWoyKVGaeYYimQzszfLzCc14JHW1xdpYLLl0mRpG7J7Yy/w400-h225/65c4b6d0e4d099.19715533.webp" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cop with James Earle Fraser's statue of The Contemplation of Justice, waiting for the outcome of Trump vs. Anderson. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, via <a href="https://www.wjtv.com/news/ap-oyez-oyez-oyez-a-listeners-guide-to-supreme-court-arguments-over-trump-and-the-ballot/">WJTV</a>, Jackson, MS. </td></tr></tbody></table><p>I <a href="https://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2024/02/court-and-snark.html">told you</a> the main purpose of the Supreme Court in the Colorado case would be to avoid getting within 500 feet of an opinion on whether the adjudicated rapist and bank fraud Donald Trump ever violated his presidential oath by engaging in insurrection after he took the oath in 2017, and sure enough, they avoided it, though the three liberals, in their dissent-concurrence, did manage to use the phrase "oathbreaking insurrectionist" four times, which is all to the good.</p><p>The majority even avoided making the case about the questions of standing and venue—whether the plaintiffs (Colorado Republicans) had standing to sue to keep Trump off the ballot and whether the Colorado judiciary was the place to do it. Instead they argued, effectively, that there was nobody with standing and noplace for them to go anyway, and blaming that on Congress, I mean the Congress of the late 19th century, which had never passed any legislation telling people how it's supposed to get done, so it's useless: it's illegal for an oathbreaking insurrectionist to hold federal office, but impossible to stop him from doing it, because the technique is a lost secret of the ancients.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Which is <i>similar</i> to a good argument, because I think such legislation really ought to exist, except the way they do it is historically wrong: people had perfectly clear ideas of how to disqualify federal <i>or</i> state office holders for being oathbreaking insurrectionists, the proof being, as everybody knows, that they did it sometimes, though not often; as <a href="https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/past-14th-amendment-disqualifications/">CREW</a>, my source here, points out, they didn't have to, because oathbreaking insurrectionists of the time mostly understood from the amendment itself that they wouldn't get away with it, and instead sent Congress thousands of petitions to remove the disqualification in 1868, to which Congress responded in 1872 by passing the Amnesty Act for all of them, except some 500 high Confederate officers including ex-president Jefferson Davis.</p><p>CREW found only five disqualification cases involving federal officials in US history, and only three in which the disqualification ended up happening:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Representative John H. Christy of Georgia, who seems to have served in the Confederate Army; when he won a House seat in the 1868 election, the Georgia governor refused to issue him a certificate on Section 3 grounds and the House refused to seat him, though it also refused to seat his opponent, John Wimpy, who had also served in the Confederate Army</li><li>Rep. John M. Rice of Kentucky, also elected in 1868, whose seating was challenged by his electoral rival; the House Committee on Elections swore him in temporarily while trying to ascertain whether he had assisted the Confederacy or not and eventually determined he was eligible; </li><li>Rep. Alfred M. Waddell of North Carolina, elected in 1870, who had taken an oath before the war to support the Constitution as clerk and master of chancery in North
Carolina and later served as a Confederate officer, and was judged disqualified by the North Carolina Supreme Court; the House decided it was not bound by the decisions of the North Carolina Supreme Court, and seated him </li><li>Senator Zebulon Vance of North Carolina, who had taken the oath as a member of the House before the war, and served as governor of the state under the Confederacy; after he was elected senator in 1872, the Senate refused to seat him under Section 3, also refusing his opponent, but he regained the seat in 1878</li><li>Rep. Victor Berger of Wisconsin, who was convicted of espionage (for giving comfort to the enemy by writing anti-war editorials) after being re-elected to the House in 1918; the House refused to seat him, he won a special election and they refused again, his conviction was vacated (on grounds of bias shown by the judge, Kenesaw Mountain Landis) and they finally gave up trying to get rid of him</li></ul><p></p><p>These cases have a good deal in common: they all involved people who had been elected members of Congress, not candidates being struck from ballots, and they were all decided inside their respective chambers, House and Senate, according to the chamber's ordinary rules, as they could have done if Section 3 had not existed.</p><p>Neither the House nor the Senate has power to expel a president, let alone a presidential candidate, but both together can remove a president, or any other officer in the executive or judicial branches, by the constitutional provisions for impeachment in the House and trial in the Senate, where a the consequences of conviction include permanent disqualification from public office.</p><p>I'm afraid that tells you what the position is: if Jefferson Davis had somehow gotten elected to the presidency in 1872, he would have been impeached, and the articles of impeachment would have mentioned Section 3 (indeed, this seems to have been anticipated in the exceptions to the 1872 Amnesty Act). The means for putting Amendment 14 Section 3 into effect already exist!</p><p>Similarly, the correct response to Trump's engagement in the January 2020 insurrection was pretty much exactly what Congress did, impeaching and trying him on the basis of Section 3, as the <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/articles-impeachment-trump-xml/b0422e292cebafda/full.pdf">First Article</a> of the impeachment plainly put it</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4OZJiIKK5AdvZoGspYS8r5OUP9CRX1zERvwJY0awfeF9QbJJut-TGjwbJmDg4XXk3Hagu7sFgyu2ihe5FVSY35smfkxmqSLLMZEh0JviBOI7eQPnSDqT7RBQ7NjjEwQwO7vyQzWRqI5sMyaWBod5WNn-syQlorc0CWoahVHVznV6FswCTOjPsctRmDpxq/s1028/Screenshot%202024-03-05%20at%204.50.38%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="966" data-original-width="1028" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4OZJiIKK5AdvZoGspYS8r5OUP9CRX1zERvwJY0awfeF9QbJJut-TGjwbJmDg4XXk3Hagu7sFgyu2ihe5FVSY35smfkxmqSLLMZEh0JviBOI7eQPnSDqT7RBQ7NjjEwQwO7vyQzWRqI5sMyaWBod5WNn-syQlorc0CWoahVHVznV6FswCTOjPsctRmDpxq/w400-h376/Screenshot%202024-03-05%20at%204.50.38%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_of_Donald_Trump#Considered_scenarios">Wikipedia</a> suggests the idea came from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, but I don't know if that's totally true—I kind of hope so.)<br /><p>Only it didn't work, as you'll no doubt recall. The Senate voted to convict Trump on Article I, 57 to 43, disqualifying him forever from the presidency on grounds of his being an oathbreaking insurrectionist, except by the stupid Senate supermajority rules the majority lost, as it usually does.</p><p>Everything else—the "self-executing" theory that a law should just come true of itself without anybody doing anything, and the idea that whether somebody engaged in an insurrection is just as simple a question as whether they're 35 years old, etc.— is silly TV lawyer talk. The real story, from beginning to end, is just another story of constitutional failure: as <a href="https://williamhogeland.substack.com/p/happy-to-be-wrong">William Hogeland</a> writes today,</p><blockquote><span face="Spectral, serif, system-ui, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #404040; font-size: 19px;">Section Three is so messy in application, so poorly constructed as a long-term fix for anything, so passively written, that there’s no way to look at </span><a href="https://williamhogeland.substack.com/p/disqualifying-trump-via-section-three" rel="" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; font-family: Spectral, serif, system-ui, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">the history of its origins and progress</a><span face="Spectral, serif, system-ui, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #404040; font-size: 19px;"> and feel good about it. And when it comes to the past, the majority likes to feel good.</span></blockquote><p>So they just wished it away.</p><p>Cross-posted at the <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/yastreblyansky/p/chicken-supremes?r=ip7r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true">Substack</a>.</p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-50578289562059092522024-03-03T15:55:00.003-05:002024-03-03T17:07:57.367-05:00Immigration and Caesarism<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi84wTy_LwDa9E7wFQuZZQ1IW4lAsGpqbOtK8eXWs66zaq_iOSPBKiJaKPmQ2DWm2DCuJZaFKkguxUJJ5stEFsrpz32ZcPPoWgAdtJezDDYeOXH_U0pU7P2lEdVEj6whyphenhyphen9EqgCGHW3mTGvJhHk6MtcPAauARettlhHpgQusrxb9wakxIoLXtrHF_3adDC7t/s1200/jessie_fuentes.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi84wTy_LwDa9E7wFQuZZQ1IW4lAsGpqbOtK8eXWs66zaq_iOSPBKiJaKPmQ2DWm2DCuJZaFKkguxUJJ5stEFsrpz32ZcPPoWgAdtJezDDYeOXH_U0pU7P2lEdVEj6whyphenhyphen9EqgCGHW3mTGvJhHk6MtcPAauARettlhHpgQusrxb9wakxIoLXtrHF_3adDC7t/w400-h266/jessie_fuentes.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, "system-ui", -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">Jessie Fuentes stands during an August 7 vigil organized by residents of Eagle Pass to protest Gov. Greg Abbot’s policies and to remember migrants who died crossing the Rio Grande. Fuentes is the owner of a kayak business in Eagle Pass, which he started after he retired in order to offer tours of the river. According to Manuel Ortiz, Fuentes is a deeply spiritual man and a lover of nature. He sees Abbot’s barriers as a violation of life, both of the people and of the natural world. “What the government is doing here is killing the river… They are destroying our community.”</em><span face="Verdana, "system-ui", -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;"> </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, "system-ui", -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">(Photo by Manuel Ortiz, via <a href="https://ethnicmediaservices.org/photo-essay/eagle-pass-has-been-invaded-and-not-by-migrants/">Ethnic Media Services</a>)</em></td></tr></tbody></table><p> </p>
<p>I was enjoying this rightwinger response to the Senate's immigration bill, from Carl Goldman of the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce, at the <a href="https://www.hometownstation.com/santa-clarita-news/editorial-opinion/five-big-lies-senates-immigration-bill-498061">Santa Clarita News</a>—</p>
<blockquote><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">
<span style="border: 0px none; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Fact #1: The proposed bill will legalize up to 5,000 adults to cross the
border DAILY. Children are unlimited. That’s over 1.8 million per year, plus
kids. Under the legislation the border never closes.</span>
</p>
<p style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">
<span style="border: 0px none; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Fact #2: All future legal disputes will be taken away from the states and
controlled by the US Federal DC District Court. This court is perhaps our
most lenient court in the land. It would prohibit any Governor and any state
Attorney General from effectively challenging any Federal immigration
policy, such as the current “open border” crisis that saw 8.5 unvetted
illegal immigrants enter the country under the Biden administration, an
amount greater than the current population in 36 states.</span>
</p>
<div class="teads-adCall" style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"></div>
<p style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">
<span style="border: 0px none; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Fact #3: The bill calls for 3,275 new border personnel. This sounds like a
good thing, assisting the already overloaded border patrol. Read the fine
print. These new employees won’t stop the flow. Their roll will be to speed
up the processing.</span>
</p>
<p style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">
<span style="border: 0px none; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Fact #4: Once this law is put into place, it will be extremely difficult to
pass a new law tightening policies. It would tie the hand of future
administrations from implementing a closure or partial closure of the
border.</span>
</p>
<p style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">
<span style="border: 0px none; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Fact #5: The Republican led House of Representatives passed HR 2 last May.
It created a much more effective set of tighter immigration policies. To
date, it has remained untouched for over nine months on US Senator House
Majority leader, Chuck Schumer’s desk [except, as reader <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/foghorn453.bsky.social/post/3kmt2uuhu5n2w">Foghorn Leghorn</a> points out, when Ted Cruz added the text of HR2 as an amendment and the vote failed, 32-58].</span>
</p>
<p style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">
<span style="border: 0px none; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">These five facts alone should be enough to convince any rational individual
questioning our current open border policy to run as far away from the
Senate bill as possible. How any Republican or Democrat Senator could
support this is creating insurmountable challenges for our country. Perhaps
they skipped over a few of the 400 pages.</span>
</p></blockquote>
<p>—when I started realizing he was right, in a way. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>I mean, not about the 8.5 unvetted illegal immigrants, which would have hit the headlines with the one who struggled over after getting cut in half on the Mexico side; or the more conventional figure he probably meant to use of <a href="https://www.11alive.com/article/news/verify/8-million-illegal-border-crossings-fact-check/85-76ee2d69-cc81-4657-a178-a5cdf305d960">8.5 million</a> (between February 2021 and January 2023), which is the number of <i>encounters</i> tallied by the the Customs and Border Patrol with people crossing the Canadian and Mexican borders, about 7.3 million in the south, of whom some <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2024/01/06/biden-migrants-us-mexico-border/">4 million</a> were turned away, so it was more like 3 million and change; or about the ones who were admitted being "unvetted", since slightly over a million of them had passed through "credible fear interviews" establishing that their fear of persecution or torture in their home countries might make them eligible for asylum in the US (most of them in the last couple of years victims of brutal "socialism" in Venezuela, Nicaragua, or Cuba, remember when the rightwing used to pretend to be concerned about them?), and given court dates for hearings in which they could attempt to prove it, which they are allowed to wait for in the United States, as was always true before the Stephen Miller presidency in 2017-21 (rightwingers used to call it "catch and release"), and well over two million more, families traveling with children, had failed, and were awaiting deportation hearings instead, because the system is now working so badly that many people have to get in line for months or years before it can deport them, a practice that began when the system reached "a breaking point" under Trump in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/us-has-hit-breaking-point-at-border-amid-immigration-surge-customs-and-border-protection-commissioner-says/2019/03/27/d2014068-5093-11e9-af35-1fb9615010d7_story.html">2019</a>, which has gotten worse as Congress has consistently ducked the issue since former presidential candidate Marco Rubio ran away from it in a panic in 2013. Which the Senate bill would in fact take care of (by making the deportation process a lot more efficient, which is why immigrant advocates object to it), while the Mikey Johnson bill Mr. Goldman prefers, HR2, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4390204-5-things-to-know-about-border-bill-hr2-gop-shutdown-threats/">would not</a>, suggesting that it's not "much more effective".</p><p>Also, they weren't "illegal immigrants", if they'd applied for asylum (the illegal immigrants are the "gotaways" who run instead of surrendering to the CPB, on whom CPB doesn't offer numbers, since they don't actually have encounters with them), though they may have been illegal border crossers—but illegal border crossers are entitled to apply for asylum, as the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1158">statute</a> makes clear:</p><blockquote><p></p>
<p><span class="num bold" face=""Open Sans", "Sohne Buch", Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold;" value="1">(1) </span><span class="heading bold" face=""Open Sans", "Sohne Buch", Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-size: 16px; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: bold;">In general</span><span face=""Open Sans", "Sohne Buch", Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"></span></p><div class="content" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Sohne Buch", Verdana, sans-serif;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Any <a aria-label="Definitions - alien" class="colorbox-load definedterm" href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840&height=800&iframe=true&def_id=8-USC-92903111-1485256781&term_occur=999&term_src=title:8:chapter:12:subchapter:II:part:I:section:1158" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(0, 28, 114); box-sizing: border-box; color: #001c72; cursor: pointer; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;">alien</a> who is physically present in the <a aria-label="Definitions - United States" class="colorbox-load definedterm" href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840&height=800&iframe=true&def_id=8-USC-2032517217-1201680101&term_occur=999&term_src=title:8:chapter:12:subchapter:II:part:I:section:1158" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(0, 28, 114); box-sizing: border-box; color: #001c72; cursor: pointer; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;">United States</a> or who arrives in the <a aria-label="Definitions - United States" class="colorbox-load definedterm" href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840&height=800&iframe=true&def_id=8-USC-2032517217-1201680101&term_occur=999&term_src=title:8:chapter:12:subchapter:II:part:I:section:1158" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(0, 28, 114); box-sizing: border-box; color: #001c72; cursor: pointer; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;">United States</a> (<b><span style="font-size: medium;">whether or not at a designated port of arrival</span></b> and including an<a aria-label="Definitions - alien " class="colorbox-load definedterm" href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840&height=800&iframe=true&def_id=8-USC-92903111-1485256781&term_occur=999&term_src=" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(0, 28, 114); box-sizing: border-box; color: #001c72; cursor: pointer; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;"> alien </a>who is brought to the <a aria-label="Definitions - United States" class="colorbox-load definedterm" href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840&height=800&iframe=true&def_id=8-USC-2032517217-1201680101&term_occur=999&term_src=title:8:chapter:12:subchapter:II:part:I:section:1158" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(0, 28, 114); box-sizing: border-box; color: #001c72; cursor: pointer; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;">United States</a> after having been interdicted in international or <a aria-label="Definitions - United States" class="colorbox-load definedterm" href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840&height=800&iframe=true&def_id=8-USC-2032517217-1201680101&term_occur=999&term_src=title:8:chapter:12:subchapter:II:part:I:section:1158" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(0, 28, 114); box-sizing: border-box; color: #001c72; cursor: pointer; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;">United States</a> waters), irrespective of such<a aria-label="Definitions - alien’" class="colorbox-load definedterm" href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840&height=800&iframe=true&def_id=8-USC-92903111-1485256781&term_occur=999&term_src=title:8:chapter:12:subchapter:II:part:I:section:1158" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(0, 28, 114); box-sizing: border-box; color: #001c72; cursor: pointer; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;"> alien’</a>s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1225#b" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(0, 28, 114); box-sizing: border-box; color: #001c72; cursor: pointer; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;">section 1225(b) of this title</a>.</p></div></blockquote>
<p>It was written at a time when the law against crossing the border at non-designated places was hardly enforced, a situation that ended in 2005, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/trump-administration-family-separation-policy-immigration/670604/">when</a></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: #fbf4ea; font-family: AGaramondPro, "Adobe Garamond Pro", garamond, Times, serif; font-size: 22px;">an enterprising Border Patrol chief in Del Rio, Texas, named Randy Hill came up with an idea for how to eliminate unauthorized border crossings for good: He would make the process so unpleasant that no one would want to do it. He looked to a legal provision added into federal immigration law in the 1950s that had only rarely been enforced; it made any unauthorized border crossing a misdemeanor crime, and any repeat offense a felony. Before 2005, federal judges and prosecutors had tacitly agreed to leave migrants alone, except in high-profile cases. People picking crops for under-the-table wages were not a principal concern for most Americans; overworked U.S. attorneys preoccupied with major drug- and weapons-smuggling cases viewed border crossing as a minor infraction not worth their time.</span></blockquote><p>The proof that it doesn't apply to asylum applicants is that President Stephen Miller kept trying to do that, starting October 2018 ("<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/trump-administration-family-separation-policy-immigration/670604/">Asylum Ban 1</a>"), but the courts would not let him, not without an act of Congress. The Senate bill would do something similar, refusing to hear asylum claims from claimants who crossed at the wrong places, which could be a really good thing, if matched by the beefing up of CPB and immigration courts at the designated points, which would make the system not only much more efficient but also much safer for the migrants. And of course Mikey Johnson's HR2 doesn't do that either.</p><p>No, the thing Mr. Goldman was right about on the legislation was that it wouldn't, if passed, calm his fears, as he notes in #3:</p><blockquote><span face="Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;">These new employees won’t stop the flow. Their roll [<i>sic</i>] will be to speed up the processing.</span></blockquote>
<p>And later</p><blockquote><span face="Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;">In California, illegals get handed a cell phone, monthly stipend (welfare), free food, housing, education, and healthcare (and recently, thanks to Governor Newsom, free sex change operations and a lifetime of hormonal medication). We’re paying for this.</span></blockquote>
<p>He wants the nightmares to stop! And no legislation is going to do that.</p><p>What I realized is that the declinist and suicidal conservatives, like Stephen Bannon and Michael Anton, are actually right. "We won't have a country any more," as Trump says. They won't! The white Christians (for some unclear value of "Christian") are going to have to share it with the rest of us.</p><p>Demography is destiny, <i>and</i> politics is downstream from culture, as they like to say. The population is becoming more and more diverse, on every parameter, by no means just through immigration. The culture is changing, from taco trucks on the corner to Drag Queen Story Hour in the public library, and the politics is following at a discrete distance. White kids listen to rap music. Sounds from South Korea through Punjab to Jamaica are everywhere too, and the Korean Wave fandom is kind of leftwing. Nobody under 60 thinks "socialism" is a bad word. Nobody under 60 opposes same-sex marriage. Rural states hold referendums on abortion and abortion always wins. States are changing the way they do their legislative redistricting. The number of states refusing Medicaid expansion keeps shrinking in the face of overwhelming popular support (see <a href="https://www.wlox.com/2024/03/03/lawmakers-pass-bill-expand-medicaid-mississippi-residents/">this week's story</a>).</p><p>You have to understand, these guys have never been committed to democracy. They're OK with voting, as long as it doesn't get too diverse, equitable, and inclusive, but they don't like too much of it, and they've always put any brakes on it they could, starting with the Senate and the Electoral College and the gerrymander, and the Jim Crow vote suppression after Amendments 13-15, and the systematic attacks on the Voting Rights Act we've been seeing since Shelby County. They don't see what higher democratic purpose is defeated when you cheat, or, worse, they do know (they know the meanings of the words "diversity, equity, and inclusion") and they're simply against it.</p><p>They'd prefer dictatorship to a truly representative democracy, given the choice, and this is the choice they feel is being forced on them by ongoing demographic change: what the Claremont Institute calls "Caesarism" versus permanently losing their old majorities to the brown and black and otherwise divergent. That's why the American tradition of openness to immigration enrages them so much and why it's so central to their mobilization.</p><p>Cross-posted at the <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/yastreblyansky/p/immigration-and-caesarism?r=ip7r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true">Substack</a>.</p>
Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-91986208780273659432024-02-28T14:49:00.004-05:002024-02-28T17:58:47.935-05:00The Social Construction of Babies<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQeg3ZPWMnEah0Aq0ZYldXhFiwUisfpMhJp11vmC9tuM0KFrVpd5WCOrvsVyHM4E1ekzu7XBbdffmXezkvHajF4N0ACO-2i21xoHkZvpnTM-npY0cmH00Ze22vyna2UmdVOoz9MNbUiqJJi5-pshRd4ZS3-Gv410sBIUbFJzI2lA3N_yyBkENuvh6bVILR/s1920/Follower_of_Jheronimus_Bosch_Christ_in_Limbo.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1568" data-original-width="1920" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQeg3ZPWMnEah0Aq0ZYldXhFiwUisfpMhJp11vmC9tuM0KFrVpd5WCOrvsVyHM4E1ekzu7XBbdffmXezkvHajF4N0ACO-2i21xoHkZvpnTM-npY0cmH00Ze22vyna2UmdVOoz9MNbUiqJJi5-pshRd4ZS3-Gv410sBIUbFJzI2lA3N_yyBkENuvh6bVILR/w400-h326/Follower_of_Jheronimus_Bosch_Christ_in_Limbo.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Christ in Limbo, by an unnamed follower of Hieronymus Bosch, ca. 1575. Via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo#/media/File:Follower_of_Jheronimus_Bosch_Christ_in_Limbo.jpg">Wikipedia</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>I think the really important thing about the "frozen embryos are babies" fiasco is the way it revealed that everybody actually knows they are not, right down to Nikki Haley and Donald J. Trump. This is something I've been thinking about for quite a while, not really reducing it to writing beyond the occasional Twitter thread, and I thought I might make it an occasion for laying my argument out at some length.</p><p>I mean, the Alabama case makes it especially clear. Haley and Trump really aren't aware that they know it, and if you ask the Republicans in a given sample straight out, "Are frozen embryos babies?", they may well give you the pious, but senseless, answer that Haley and Trump initially did, but if you make them think a bit about it instead, they'll realize easily enough that there's nothing morally wrong with throwing unneeded embryos in the garbage (if probably not getting that it's really better to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/dec/06/call-to-help-ivf-patients-donate-unused-embryos-after-shortage-hinders-research">donate them to scientific research</a>). They'll just have an awfully hard time explaining why.</p><p>Because practically everybody <i>knows</i> that blastocysts are not children, and for that matter (in my opinion) that embryos and fetuses are not in and of themselves persons in anything like the legal sense either, though we may not realize we know it, or be able, if we do, to give it a philosophical explanation. Almost everybody sees one contradiction or another in the idea that every abortion is a murder. Almost nobody thinks a ten-year-old girl should be forced to carry a child begotten by a rapist uncle or father, almost nobody thinks a woman with a tubal pregnancy should have to let it kill her, and it's forbidden by Jewish law as well.</p><p>It's only maniacs like that Alabama chief justice who will stick to the original story; Trump got an adviser to come up with an alternative cliché, while Haley had to grasp at the straw of her own personal reality, even if it meant quietly acknowledging that Major Haley has in the course of his life jerked off for medical purposes into a plastic cup, probably at least twice, first testing the sperm count, then supplying the sperm (reader, there's no shame in that—I've done the test myself, though in our case IVF turned out not to be necessary):<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><blockquote><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-family: "Georgia Pro", Georgia, "Droid Serif", serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 14px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">"We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder!" Trump said on his Truth Social website, commenting on <a class="gnt_ar_b_a" data-t-l=":b|e|k|${u}" href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/02/20/alabama-supreme-court-frozen-embryos-ruling-ivf/72662533007/" style="color: #303030; text-decoration-color: rgb(0, 152, 254); text-decoration-thickness: 2px; text-underline-offset: 2px;">an Alabama Supreme Court decision</a> that ruled frozen embryos are children.</p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-family: "Georgia Pro", Georgia, "Droid Serif", serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 14px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Speaking a day before the South Carolina primary, Trump said "that includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every State in America." ...</p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-family: "Georgia Pro", Georgia, "Droid Serif", serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 14px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">on CNN on Thursday, Haley said she disagreed with the ruling's impact on IVF, noting that “I had artificial insemination. That’s how I had my son."</p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-family: "Georgia Pro", Georgia, "Droid Serif", serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 14px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">She added: “I think that the court was doing it based on the law, and I think Alabama needs to go back and look at the law." (<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/02/23/donald-trump-alabama-ivf-embryos/72703105007/">USA Today</a>)</p></blockquote><p>Logically, though, it's a real dilemma for conservatives: "pro-life" dogma holds that "life begins at conception", i.e., with the fertilization of the egg turning it into a blastocyst, but the in vitro fertilization process creates more blastocysts than most people could really want—typically 5 to 10 embryos out of 15 eggs collected, of which the doctor will advise you not to try to implant more than one or two at a time. It needs to be that many for backup, because the process isn't perfect, and some of the embryos may not be usable. In the old days they used to implant them all, under the assumption that most would probably abort themselves, which didn't really disturb anybody, though it led to a lot of triplets and the occasional Octomom. But nowadays, thanks to the freezing technique, that's not done, and you'll probably end up with around five or six embryos that you don't especially want; you can freeze them in the hope of implanting them later on, and some absolutely do, but even then you don't want <i>all</i> of them, and you're most likely to satisfy yourself with the one kid, like Governor Haley, and most of them are almost certainly going to be left over, and getting rid of them (throwing them out or donating them for research) is going to be, for the "pro-life" dogmatist, a taking of life, an act of murder, an abortion to all intents and purposes—if you're really "pro-life", you can't accept it.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/23/1233023637/ivf-alabama-frozen-embryo-personhood-abortion-supreme-court">case</a> that went to the Alabama Supreme Court wasn't about that; it was about an accident in which a bunch of embryos that were supposed to be implanted were destroyed instead, and the people hoping to turn them into babies sued, understandably (it's a lot of work getting IVF treatment, and possibly more important for most of us, it costs a lot of money, $12,000 to $24,000, for which your insurance almost certainly doesn't pay, cut to $2,500 to $6,000 if you already have a frozen embryo available). The court could have awarded the plaintiffs damages for loss of property, but instead they made it a case of wrongful death, on the grounds that the lost embryos were actually children—"extrauterine children". I'm sure it never occurred to them what kind of havoc they were creating for the custodians of tens of thousands of frozen "children"—I'm thinking of hospital administrators more than would-be parents—who could now be charged with mass manslaughter for following the simple and unquestionable protocol they've been following for years. </p><p>***</p><p>What we're talking about when we're arguing about abortion rights (and by "we" I mean basically white North Americans) is generally the idea that there's a key moment in the development from fertilized egg to born child at which it stops being a thing and becomes a human person, with human rights, including the right to life; at the instant of fertilization, at the first measurable "cardiac activity" around six weeks at the site where the heart will eventually form, at the ill-defined moment of "quickening" (usually somewhere between 16 and 20 weeks) when the fetus begins to move, or a legally defined point ("viability" around 20 weeks in <i>Casey</i>, arbitrary 24 weeks in <i>Roe</i>), or the emergence from the dark aquatic environment of the womb into the visible world outside, exchanging the oxygen borrowed from its mother for the oxygen it can breathe for itself, the "breath of life", which is how the actual King James Bible puts it (Genesis 2:7):</p><p><strong id="yui_3_17_2_1_1708980880056_210" style="background-color: white; color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.7); font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; font-size: 18px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></strong></p><blockquote><strong id="yui_3_17_2_1_1708980880056_210" style="background-color: white; color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.7); font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; font-size: 18px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.</strong> </blockquote><p></p><p>and you'd think that would have answered the question for adherents of the Abrahamic religions: breath <i>through the nostrils</i> is the moment of transition between dead dust and ensouled personhood. But it's not the answer they're looking for.</p><p>Anthropologists Beth A. Conklin and Lynn M. Morgan, however, in their "Babies, Bodies and the Production of Personhood in North America and a Native Amazonian Society" (Ethos XXIV/4, December 1996) (<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/640518">JSTOR link</a>), note that there's nothing openly religious about the debate, which pictures the appearance of personhood in purely material terms, as a single moment in an almost entirely mechanical process, in which the fetus acquires these individual rights that may be in conflict with those of another individual, its mother:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQJ2mXRt3IKN44TQAE4zE6gGTQwj2urRu8AIqw95o1KQCWQqb5THlo4ZSneJYcUkEJimxZDq3Uhht7xXFUetD2-9Hn5vuznTdZoLuGRAMoyCX2fH67lq1o_NyUD1qVHTlSg4JlSGpYWc1DMAiCplp462PFFZtDzZOlopWAUtGqnetQ_BXjXha2MxkDAwEK/s1234/Screenshot%202024-02-24%20at%201.14.12%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="1234" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQJ2mXRt3IKN44TQAE4zE6gGTQwj2urRu8AIqw95o1KQCWQqb5THlo4ZSneJYcUkEJimxZDq3Uhht7xXFUetD2-9Hn5vuznTdZoLuGRAMoyCX2fH67lq1o_NyUD1qVHTlSg4JlSGpYWc1DMAiCplp462PFFZtDzZOlopWAUtGqnetQ_BXjXha2MxkDAwEK/w400-h193/Screenshot%202024-02-24%20at%201.14.12%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeuVfkogXxyAnId-IKdpXviUJGNZeD7GsFXuA7glE8vtVLzRi1U1NGD9roKUlwFDBFnJ4i14sPqfxQIxkdZ-aHU1B-LhJ7nKpANHmMZVJ2vFRf_XHElJ8u4exfzGPXWTXiDcCgkogxkW0WRR6YN3ujcUGFaDVMqWDNR1szRuwfOguCanszJeT5KYBsv5DQ/s1250/Screenshot%202024-02-24%20at%201.14.42%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1250" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeuVfkogXxyAnId-IKdpXviUJGNZeD7GsFXuA7glE8vtVLzRi1U1NGD9roKUlwFDBFnJ4i14sPqfxQIxkdZ-aHU1B-LhJ7nKpANHmMZVJ2vFRf_XHElJ8u4exfzGPXWTXiDcCgkogxkW0WRR6YN3ujcUGFaDVMqWDNR1szRuwfOguCanszJeT5KYBsv5DQ/w400-h201/Screenshot%202024-02-24%20at%201.14.42%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>In contrast, for the Wari' (or Pakaas Novas) people of the Amazon rainforest in Rondônia state, personhood is seen as a product of sociality, specifically of the sociality of the body, acquired as a "<i>processual</i> quality that is constructed and reconstructed on an ongoing basis among individuals and groups of people," in which "social identities are physiologically constituted"—</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlB-sTPCse_gha8yYcXsp3RRNa2Wdz8XYbTm_l2jdcDM95uED8LyiQjEkW8PX3jzdqAzgOBOJ0v3BUaGZk4_K0dqO1m30IB3VTLUKk4bOvI7hLexNBsgKiDydN-rfCThrWMKyXE-8FK-W6P12seH8iiuxrYR9roC6djltKz64FGOCoISma_eZ8I10yRGgX/s1208/Screenshot%202024-02-26%20at%205.37.53%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="794" data-original-width="1208" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlB-sTPCse_gha8yYcXsp3RRNa2Wdz8XYbTm_l2jdcDM95uED8LyiQjEkW8PX3jzdqAzgOBOJ0v3BUaGZk4_K0dqO1m30IB3VTLUKk4bOvI7hLexNBsgKiDydN-rfCThrWMKyXE-8FK-W6P12seH8iiuxrYR9roC6djltKz64FGOCoISma_eZ8I10yRGgX/w400-h263/Screenshot%202024-02-26%20at%205.37.53%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<p>Thus, the Wari' fetus is created in the first place by the social interaction between the mother, contributing her blood to its making, and the father, contributing semen. The parents are encouraged to have sex often during the pregnancy, to contribute to the future child's strength, as a token of the continuously building relationship between the two and their respective kin groups—they think it would be odd for pregnancy to result from a single sexual encounter (some of their biological ideas are not sound). The processuality extends beyond the birth, to a six-week period of seclusion for mother and child when the child, not yet named, is known as "Arawet", literally "still being made", while the father hunts for a particular indigenous bird to provide the mother with food (blood) that will help her produce plenty of breastmilk.</p>Of course, the contrast is a bit artificial; what Conklin and Morgan have to say about the Wari' is based on Conklin's own extensive anthropological fieldwork in Brazil, and what they report on North Americans is from what Morgan refers to, in another context ("<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-law-medicine-and-ethics/article/abs/life-begins-when-they-steal-your-bicycle-crosscultural-practices-of-personhood-at-the-beginnings-and-ends-of-life/B980675230C28B95D48E969D4EB3CCFA">Life Begins When They Steal Your Bicycle: Cross-Cultural Practices of Personhood at the Beginnings and Ends of Life</a>", 2021), as coming "from the fields of philosophy, bioethics, theology, law, and biology, but rarely from the social sciences" and belongs to the realm of ideology. The latter doesn't represent a system of cultural meanings in which the rules were written long ago by the ancestors so much as the terms of a political conflict over how the rules should be written right now, and it's worth asking whether, if we sought an understanding of what we really believe in the rhythms and rituals of our everyday behavior, the way Conklin asked it of the Wari', we might find more of a dialogue between bodies and sociality than you get from that bleak ideological picture of conflict between woman and fetus, and a real alternative kind of answer to the personhood question and its implications.<div><p>Namely, and this is what I wanted to get at, that in our culture as well, the attainment of personhood is a process of social construction, not a biological instant you can specify in a piece of legislation or a Supreme Court opinion; rather, something that can begin well before a pair of potential parents have thought of it—at an older cousin's wedding, for instance, not in your mind but your mom's, or (in a case familiar to a lot of men of my generation, I think) in a girlfriend's late period, when it turns out to be a false alarm but opens up a discourse: what if we had a kid? what if we got married? Imagining yourselves with a child is the beginning of constructing personhood for a fetus that doesn't yet exist.</p><p>Or the case that leads to IVF or other expedients, of a failure to conceive, which can make the couple's imagination of the nonexistent child so especially vivid and poignant that it drives them to spend astounding amounts of money to make it happen.</p><p>The story of a happy pregnancy is a story of social construction shared by a community, from the couple (thinking of names, buying a crib, and so on) outwards to family and friends, doctors and doulas, with the shower or nowadays the gender reveal party, in which the social person in the parents' imagination and the biological fetus in the womb are growing in tandem—she tells all her friends when it starts kicking in the quickening; he listens contentedly when she's singing to it—until at last the birth takes place and brings the two together, in the person of the baby, social person and lively animal at the same time, getting fully socialized and growing physically.</p><p>While an unwanted pregnancy is another matter, whether for a very young woman who's not ready or a mother under financial stress trying to care for the ones she already has—59% of the abortion patients in a 2005 <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/2005/reasons-us-women-have-abortions-quantitative-and-qualitative-perspectives">study by the Guttmacher Institute</a> had at least one child, and the forms of their unhappiness were pretty clear for almost all of them:</p><blockquote><span face=""Gotham Narrow SSm A", "Gotham Narrow SSm B", "Lucinda Grande", sans-serif" style="background-color: #f1f1f1; color: #444444; font-size: 18px;">The reasons most frequently cited were that having a child would interfere with a woman's education, work or ability to care for dependents (74%); that she could not afford a baby now (73%); and that she did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship problems (48%). Nearly four in 10 women said they had completed their childbearing, and almost one-third were not ready to have a child. Fewer than 1% said their parents' or partners' desire for them to have an abortion was the most important reason. Younger women often reported that they were unprepared for the transition to motherhood, while older women regularly cited their responsibility to dependents.</span></blockquote><p>Here the woman's goal will be to <i>prevent</i> the construction of a social person along with the development of a biological fetus, through de-socializing the pregnancy by keeping it private, telling as few people about it as she can, hiding her nausea and any weight gain, possibly getting rid of social bonds by breaking up with the partner, and as soon as possible terminating the pregnancy before she forms an emotional attachment either to the idea <i>or</i> to the fetus (usually successfully, I think, which is why <a href="https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/01/416421/five-years-after-abortion-nearly-all-women-say-it-was-right-decision-study">research shows</a> that women almost never regret their abortions). From her standpoint, it doesn't <i>have</i> to be a person until it's born, just as in the language of Genesis 2:7, and also as in the common experience, because once it's brought alive out of the birth canal, it's <i>in</i> society, and society has to deal with it, like it or not. Everyone born is a social person, happily or otherwise. Before that, it doesn't have to be a person if you don't want it to be.</p><p>(In the case of pregnancies that directly threaten the mother's life, or with a fetus so defective it could not survive out side, it's probably a wanted pregnancy, and the decision to terminate may be experienced as a tragedy, just as a stillbirth often is—the social person did exist, and has to be grieved. The helpmeet and I lost a baby at around 24 weeks and I know what I'm talking about.)</p><p>Anyway, that's why everybody including Donald Trump and Nikki Haley knows that the frozen embryos left over from the IVF process are not babies, though they not know how to say it—nobody's really invested in them until they're implanted in the place from which they will be launched into the social world. It was bad to accidentally lose those embryos in the Alabama case, but it's a case of destruction of property, not "wrongful death" of children.</p><p>It's weird that ostensibly religious people should insist so hard that the creation of a soul is a purely biological event, but they show by their conduct (<a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2020/10/people-all-religions-use-birth-control-and-have-abortions">Guttmacher 2020</a>) that they know it's not true:</p><ul style="border-color: var(--color-border); box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: "Gotham Narrow SSm A", "Gotham Narrow SSm B", "Lucinda Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: var(--space-y); padding-left: 0px;"><li style="border-color: var(--color-border); box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-text); list-style: none; margin-top: 0px; padding-left: 20px; position: relative;">17% of abortion patients identified as mainline Protestant;</li><li style="border-color: var(--color-border); box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-text); list-style: none; margin-top: 12px; padding-left: 20px; position: relative;">13% as evangelical Protestant;</li><li style="border-color: var(--color-border); box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-text); list-style: none; margin-top: 12px; padding-left: 20px; position: relative;">24% as Catholic;</li><li style="border-color: var(--color-border); box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-text); list-style: none; margin-top: 12px; padding-left: 20px; position: relative;">38% reported no religious affiliation; and</li><li style="border-color: var(--color-border); box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-text); list-style: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 12px; padding-left: 20px; position: relative;">8% reported some other affiliation. </li></ul><p>Someday our laws will reflect our real understanding rather than misogynistic sloganeering, and we'll be able to stop working so hard to explain it.</p><p>By the way, this is a good example of how calling something (gender or race, for example) a "social construct" works: a lot of conservatives react very angrily when you say "race is a social construct" because they think you're claiming it doesn't exist, but this is not at all the case; race is real, it just isn't the kind of thing Charles Murray stupidly thinks it is, because society is real, <i>pace</i> Mrs. Thatcher, and absolutely creates things (out of biological material, no doubt; bodies and their genetic endowments are real too, and undoubtedly an important part of the story). The same goes for the stuff discussed here, which is, when you come down to it, the human soul. Calling it "socially constructed" doesn't deny it; it just tells you what it's made of, human interaction around the eventual body, and that's scientific progress.</p><p><br /></p><p>Cross-posted at the <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/yastreblyansky/p/the-social-construction-of-babies">Substack</a>.</p></div><p></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-82047558804872659652024-02-27T09:53:00.004-05:002024-02-27T10:37:38.776-05:00Joe Did What? Signs of Spring<p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uQn6jDRS2_A?si=mW_Fp1Pnc9BHBNNK" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
</p>
<p>
I can't fault the movement in Michigan's Democratic primary tomorrow, mostly I
think of Arab Americans but also of other Muslim and/or Black and/or young
people, to vote for uncommitted delegates instead of the Biden slate, in
protest against Biden's perceived lean toward Israel in the Gaza conflict—I
mean, I can and will complain that they're reading Biden wrong, but I think
it's right for them to communicate the distress on behalf of the Palestinians
in Palestine as well as the Palestinians in Dearborn.
</p>
<p>
We've been told repeatedly, and rightly, about how traumatized Israelis have
been by the horrible events of October 7, but I'm not sure how much the
broader US public is getting on what's been happening to Arabs in Gaza and the
Occupied Territories of the West Bank since October 8, but the number of
killed in Gaza is now approaching 30,000, that's well over one out of every
100 people, not to mention those starving and killed by the lack of medical
care and polluted drinking water.
</p>
<p>
The 1200 dead of October 7 were killed in unspeakably disgusting ways. I don't
usually use the term "barbaric" because I think it's unfair to barbarians to
suggest they are somehow similar to Colonel Chivington's force at the
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Creek_massacre">Sand Creek Massacre</a>
of around 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho people in 1864<span></span></p><a name='more'></a>
<p></p>
<p>
<span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;"></span>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">Before Chivington and his men left the area, they plundered the teepees
and took the horses. After the smoke cleared, Chivington's men came back
and killed many of the wounded. They also scalped many of the dead,
regardless of whether they were women, children, or infants. Chivington
and his men dressed their weapons, hats, and gear with </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Scalping">scalps</a><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;"> and other body parts, including human fetuses and male and female
genitalia.</span>
</p>
<p></p>
</blockquote>
<p>
but I understand why it's being used. At the same time, the
ultra-sophisticated high-tech murder inflicted on Gazans by the Israel Defense
Force, AI targeting and pushbutton bombing, deals out incalculably greater
quantities of destruction and death—who's better?—while
<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/israel-west-bank-settlers-attacks-palestinians">in the West Bank</a>, IDF troops accompany the inhabitants of illegal settlements in pretty
barbaric missions of destruction against the farmers whose families have lived
there for centuries:
</p>
<p>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: TNYAdobeCaslonPro, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px;"></span>
</p>
<blockquote>
Since October 7th, when Hamas-led fighters broke through the fence on Gaza’s
border with Israel and killed some twelve hundred people and took some two
hundred and fifty hostages, attacks near Qaryut have become routine. Settlers
have burned cars and houses, blockaded roads, damaged electricity networks,
seized farmland, severed irrigation lines, attacked people in their fields and
olive groves, and killed, all without repercussion. Ma’amar told me that a
thousand acres had been cut off from Qaryut. The U.N. has recorded five
hundred and seventy-three attacks by settlers in the West Bank since the war
began, with Israeli forces accompanying them half the time. At least nine
people have been killed by settlers, and three hundred and eighty-two have
been killed by Israeli forces. Five Israelis have been killed in the West
Bank, at least one of whom was a civilian.
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p>
Americans need to understand that the Palestinians are traumatized too! Ask
any Palestinian or Lebanese or Syrian in Dearborn and they can tell you the
names of some of the victims—they know the families.
</p>
<p>
And Americans need to understand that this isn't the only way or the best way
for Israel to "protect itself", which it has an unquestioned right to do; the
October 7 massacres couldn't have taken place if IDF had been monitoring
the Gaza fence properly, and they could have protected Israel against future
attacks by bringing the monitoring back to standard on October 8. Instead they
embarked on this project of killing Gazans for the crime of being "civilian
shields". Israel could justly have treated the Hamas organization as a
criminal gang. Instead they chose to treat the gang as a legitimate government
and went to war (raising the Hamas approval rating in Gaza overnight from
<a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion-poll-wartime-views-a0baade915619cd070b5393844bc4514">38%</a>
to something in the 90s). </p><p>We'll see how big the protest vote in Michigan is. I kind of hope it's significant, showing a broader swell of anger at the war than just among Muslims, but I don't know (NPR interviewing young Michiganders this morning on the primary, including students at Wayne State in Detroit, asked zero questions about Gaza, and none of the repondents seem to have volunteered anything either).</p>
<p>
Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68410226">President Biden took an interview</a> on Late Night With Seth Myers,
and he and Myers went out for ice cream after the taping, and told reporters
in the ice cream shop that he thinks he's arranged for a 40-day ceasefire:
</p>
<blockquote>
<span face=""BBC Reith Serif", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202224; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: -0.36px;">"We're close," President Biden told reporters in New York on Monday. "We're
not done yet. My hope is by next Monday we'll have a ceasefire."</span>
</blockquote>
<p>The agreement, if there is one, would involve improved supplies of aid to Gaza, release of some prisoners held in Israeli jails and some hostages held in Gaza, at a ratio of ten to one and cessation of military operations by the IDF during the holy month of Ramadan, which begins when the new moon is sighted on March 9 or 10. Which would explain why Biden's dating is so specific: Monday, March 4, giving exactly a week to put everything into place before the fast starts. </p><blockquote><span style="color: #202224; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: -0.36px;">"Ramadan's coming up and there has been an agreement by the Israelis that they would not engage in activities during Ramadan as well, in order to give us time to get all the hostages out," Mr Biden said [on the Myers show].</span></blockquote><p>"Us"? Would the US be taking an active role?</p><p>The agreement is drafted by France, we're told, and Reuters reports that Hamas is studying it; Hamas denies to BBC that it has signed on to any agreement, and even that it has received the current proposal.</p>
<p>
Weird but significant detail from Washington Post: the
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/26/palestinian-authority-resign-gaza-israel-rafah/">Palestinian government has resigned</a>, en masse. That's the prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, and the whole
cabinet, people of whose existence I don't recall ever having read, though
it's obvious they must exist, now I think about it.
</p>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px;">“The next phase and its challenges require a new government and political
arrangements that take into account the new reality in the </span><a class="contextual_link" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/09/gaza-strip-israel-hamas-explained/?itid=lk_inline_manual_9" style="border-bottom: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; text-decoration-color: rgb(42, 42, 42); text-decoration-thickness: 0.0625em; text-underline-offset: 0.125em;" target="_blank">Gaza Strip</a><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px;">, national unity and the urgent need for achieving inter-Palestinian
consensus,” Shtayyeh said.</span>
</blockquote>
<p>If you put it together with the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel (who could include politicians captured during the Second Intifada, like Marwan Barghouti), the implication would be that the resignation is making room for the appointment of a new government in which some released prisoners could be serving as ministers. That would be the reason for the Hamas spokesman to sound spiteful ("The priority for us in Hamas is not the exchange of detainees, but the cessation of the war").</p><p>This could really be happening this spring: an impetus to peace that the Netanyahu government and the Hamas leadership are unable to resist!</p>
<p>Cross-posted at the <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/yastreblyansky/p/signs-of-spring?r=ip7r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true">Substack</a>.</p>
Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-8642202047080761332024-02-21T15:57:00.003-05:002024-02-21T17:51:38.466-05:00A Little Night Narratology<p> </p><p>Got fixated on a peculiar detail of the government case against Alexander Smirnov, the main witness in the Republican complaint according to which Hunter Biden and Joe Biden took $5 million each in bribes from Hunter's Ukrainian employer, Mykola Zlochevsky, and nobody else seems to be paying attention to it. </p><p>Smirnov, a double agent working for Russian intelligence services and the FBI, gave the latter the story of the bribery, with advice as to how they could go about gathering evidence to back it up, and the Bureau gave it to Rep. James Comer and Senator Charles Grassley, who hoped to use it as a gigantic and appalling climax to their attempt to impeach the president, except, as we now know, when the special prosecutor found a moment to check the story out (34 months after receiving it), it turned out to be completely bogus, Smirnov's invention or that of his Russian handlers, and the Republicans' impeachment case, such as it was, is smashed to pieces, Smirnov is now under indictment for his deceit, and the prosecutor is trying to have him detained before trial, as a flight risk. </p><p>It's in that document, special counsel David Weiss's <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nvd.167064/gov.uscourts.nvd.167064.15.0.pdf">request to deny bail to Smirnov</a>, that the story of his collaboration with Russians emerged publicly for the first time, in the context of Weiss's long-delayed investigation of Smirnov's allegation—a story of Russian intelligence services promulgating disinformation to help elect Donald Trump to the presidency, which is, as you know, one of my favorite kinds of stories to tell, and the first big one of the 2024 campaign—so of course I was looking at it, and noticed this narrativium-packed paragraph (where Public Official 1 is the president and Businessperson 1 is his son):</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSi7k8ZFW9VufZLXrJevOOFp8jltRwpHkIQxAU7ZEJsbY4DKRxsVKhoqpimQqPic4hKE37ZUVScGDC5HgFp-mnldkfeD_FypWOVEluppsQZYij-awXwkAX0ulWJ3bDgXqh2QgtGu2-OK5NFxKwWJvJ54PXMpj04Th4PmZ4TB359NyRUmUzETGALCI0XMGn/s1334/Screenshot%202024-02-21%20at%2012.52.29%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="758" data-original-width="1334" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSi7k8ZFW9VufZLXrJevOOFp8jltRwpHkIQxAU7ZEJsbY4DKRxsVKhoqpimQqPic4hKE37ZUVScGDC5HgFp-mnldkfeD_FypWOVEluppsQZYij-awXwkAX0ulWJ3bDgXqh2QgtGu2-OK5NFxKwWJvJ54PXMpj04Th4PmZ4TB359NyRUmUzETGALCI0XMGn/w400-h228/Screenshot%202024-02-21%20at%2012.52.29%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><span><a name='more'></a></span>Did you realize that Hunter Biden has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1WX1P6/">never been to Ukraine</a>? I didn't at all, but it's not really shocking, if you think about it for a minute. It's not like his job with Burisma required him to sit around in an office in Kyiv, ordering in lunch and flirting with secretaries. The only time his physical presence was required was twice a year at the board meetings, and there was no particular reason to hold those in Ukraine; they could be anywhere Zlochevsky could travel, which ruled out the UK (where he was under criminal investigation), the US, and Mexico, but there's Europe (he's got Cyprus citizenship). I'm thinking Vienna would suit them all best.<div><p>In fact, one of Hunter's main tasks was to <a href="https://theamericandossier.com/articles/hunter-biden-worked-to-secure-us-visa-for-ukrainian-oligarch-allegedly-involved-in-suspected-bribery-scheme">get Zlochevsky a US visa</a>, or at least a <a href="https://www.grantcountybeat.com/columns/informational/unabridged-and-unvarnished/81301-rosemont-richardson-burrell-and-burisma-part-two">Mexican one</a> (for a meeting that may have been a Burisma board meeting in February 2015), neither of which he ever succeeded in doing, in spite of his father being the vice president of the first country. Zlochensky was already paying Hunter a very generous salary to get him a visa; it's not likely he'd give him and his father an additional $10 million until <i>after</i> the visa came through.</p><p>So much, then, for Smirnov's story about the video footage of Hunter going to the Premier Palace "many times". He hadn't been there even once, and this is what convinced Weiss that Smirnov was lying in the bribe allegation, some <i>41</i> months after the allegation reached his desk.</p><p>But that wasn't the thing that particularly grabbed me. There's yet another reference to a hotel infested by Russian spies in the document, which "mirrors" that story, but takes place in 2023 in "COUNTRY C", and doesn't claim to involve Hunter Biden:</p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLO2FKwSFwc6Tg1y6cMCumHC-xG3Skk0kp3jf-DAQ2OQpJVfmc-8rwae1Sq3jYAhZBs6TixM7jog1G2Sk9Y5Wt6I1zt_qwfy2qp63g16jL6_6jgINoAzAR3jIM7wMEnsIzAn3kHQ00-v7CGfjMwQoD_MLve77wb_jR7hdIuSSqUIj84G4FyyfUzBzuEofo/s1354/Screenshot%202024-02-21%20at%203.15.13%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="968" data-original-width="1354" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLO2FKwSFwc6Tg1y6cMCumHC-xG3Skk0kp3jf-DAQ2OQpJVfmc-8rwae1Sq3jYAhZBs6TixM7jog1G2Sk9Y5Wt6I1zt_qwfy2qp63g16jL6_6jgINoAzAR3jIM7wMEnsIzAn3kHQ00-v7CGfjMwQoD_MLve77wb_jR7hdIuSSqUIj84G4FyyfUzBzuEofo/w400-h286/Screenshot%202024-02-21%20at%203.15.13%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div>As a matter of fact, COUNTRY C appears pretty clearly to be an ineptly disguised Ukraine (which was frightening Russian civilian officials with their daring drone attacks on Moscow at the end of August, while Russia was planning a winter offensive in Donetsk Oblast)</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinKmBKw_PGjYDC-nHciScpnNq0QcNKnSr9jhz_gLPvfpCivZsWiX0W7VeFgyHXpLDjCy6maBgfDJfm8F-ykM4zREKjArIjKptveRsZv2QhehOIRVBBhfDzXpt6509tEQnCTPn3XBbfjuO8diAM4BRNbL0cXWUwV2633-KHU5aHCPHVAc9ElcmFTxK21izM/s1358/Screenshot%202024-02-21%20at%203.20.44%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="1358" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinKmBKw_PGjYDC-nHciScpnNq0QcNKnSr9jhz_gLPvfpCivZsWiX0W7VeFgyHXpLDjCy6maBgfDJfm8F-ykM4zREKjArIjKptveRsZv2QhehOIRVBBhfDzXpt6509tEQnCTPn3XBbfjuO8diAM4BRNbL0cXWUwV2633-KHU5aHCPHVAc9ElcmFTxK21izM/w400-h100/Screenshot%202024-02-21%20at%203.20.44%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuldoLlLYd-DHV2TyyQRB8DoPEXteZK27iDRLch-hSmfmwIQ4tWrgHbchg19BA55jCBFNbjEuGLMnILBsSdAaICLH5rnAeUvZvgWUZwxq3jsffSvvIsBACgZ87XeuLN50oSqxIW2zqQYvI8HkmrRImtEQfDIkEWRuymO-q7oRpTou8Nalg5VEQyl-zg11u/s1332/Screenshot%202024-02-21%20at%203.20.58%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1332" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuldoLlLYd-DHV2TyyQRB8DoPEXteZK27iDRLch-hSmfmwIQ4tWrgHbchg19BA55jCBFNbjEuGLMnILBsSdAaICLH5rnAeUvZvgWUZwxq3jsffSvvIsBACgZ87XeuLN50oSqxIW2zqQYvI8HkmrRImtEQfDIkEWRuymO-q7oRpTou8Nalg5VEQyl-zg11u/w400-h135/Screenshot%202024-02-21%20at%203.20.58%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>and it's hard to see how HOTEL 1 would be anyplace other than the Premier Palace in Kyiv. But what about those "prominent US persons" whose intercepted phone calls might be used for kompromat material?</p><p>Dr. Google quickly identified four American politicians visiting Kyiv in August 2023, presidential candidate Christopher Christie at the beginning of the month and Senators Richard Blumenthal, Elizabeth Warren, and Lindsey Graham, who met with President Zelenskyy on the 23rd.</p><p>It's Graham, obviously, that interests me here. At the time, he was a fervent proponent of US aid to Ukraine in the war. Now, he still denounces Putin, but he voted against the Senate's $90 billion bill, for reasons he hasn't made clear—<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4476241-grahams-u-turns-have-senate-colleagues-fed-up-annoying-tiresome/">some say</a> it's fear of Trump, some say fear of his own voters. Then again, could it be fear of RUSSIAN OFFICIAL 4? WTAF?</p><p>Cross-posted at the <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/yastreblyansky/p/whats-up-with-this?r=ip7r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true">Substack</a>.</p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-30855853816953916022024-02-19T23:15:00.001-05:002024-02-19T23:42:33.675-05:00Carpe Narrativium<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCQZ1Qg9oeb5Da-GJc5CO4oPo7YH9_VlyQFcD83fZG4HPelYjv8SL8MMrk0rM4jRM7ASqvtbn3nmv4up6ZosSDXVWgAh18-naMdLxijCxAuEAP-4XOdvVrknl8AzWqyU9imsNbht78pav7hSqMAfrnycflbUSQ7c93xt_ZS_Vb1-_BFUgyyE-rX8WsS3OU/s754/s-l1200.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="754" data-original-width="726" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCQZ1Qg9oeb5Da-GJc5CO4oPo7YH9_VlyQFcD83fZG4HPelYjv8SL8MMrk0rM4jRM7ASqvtbn3nmv4up6ZosSDXVWgAh18-naMdLxijCxAuEAP-4XOdvVrknl8AzWqyU9imsNbht78pav7hSqMAfrnycflbUSQ7c93xt_ZS_Vb1-_BFUgyyE-rX8WsS3OU/w385-h400/s-l1200.webp" width="385" /></a></div><br /><p>President Lincoln with a serving of Salmon P. Chase. "Tod" is a reference to Ohio governor David Tod, who declined Lincoln's invitation to take over from Chase as treasury secretary. Not finding a decent credit or even a damned date, but guessing 1864. </p><p>Happy Presidents Day (Benjamin Dreyer says no apostrophe) to those who observe it, which <a href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/monday-morning-politics-rise-global-national-conservatism-new-yorks-unfulfilled-legal-cannabis-rollout-call-limits-wealth-your-favorite-presi">my radio station</a> did this morning by asking listeners to report whether they'd ever voted enthusiastically for rather than against a candidate in a presidential election, with a sense of excitement and hope. The response was overwhelmingly Democratic, which is a bit unusual on this show for this kind of topic, I thought, and mostly oriented to charisma, as you might expect, with references to John (and Robert Sr.) Kennedy and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, with a McGovern here and a Sanders there, and even a sweet warm tribute to Biden from a woman with Irish affiliations. But no McCain on the one hand or Trump on the other representing the love languages of Republicans. Perhaps it was hard for the Trumpies to make sense of the question, since what they love about their candidate is so tightly tied to the hatreds they believe he shares with them.</p><p>I kind of would have wanted to call in myself, or at least send in a text, just to illustrate for the public how it's possible to get emotional over an idea as opposed to an aura, and might well have tried, but I was in the shower. I was particularly stimulated because of the show's previous segment, an interview with the Belgian philosopher Ingrid Robeyns, on her newly published book, <i><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734828/limitarianism-by-ingrid-robeyns/">Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth</a></i>, which is just what it sounds like, an argument in favor of capping the amount of money an individual can control, like no billionaires, or <a href="https://thegallerist.art/plato-on-equality">Plato's proposal</a> in <i>The Laws</i> that no citizen should be more than four times as wealthy as the poorest ones, although that turns out to be a bit spoiled in the details, as in his plan for a Cretan city to be called Magnesia, where every family will be granted an equal plot of land:</p><p><span face=""Alegreya Sans", "SF Pro Text", Frutiger, "Frutiger Linotype", Univers, Calibri, "Gill Sans", "Gill Sans MT", "Myriad Pro", Myriad, "DejaVu Sans Condensed", "Liberation Sans", "Nimbus Sans L", Tahoma, Geneva, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 20.25px;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span face=""Alegreya Sans", "SF Pro Text", Frutiger, "Frutiger Linotype", Univers, Calibri, "Gill Sans", "Gill Sans MT", "Myriad Pro", Myriad, "DejaVu Sans Condensed", "Liberation Sans", "Nimbus Sans L", Tahoma, Geneva, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 20.25px;">Two-thirds of the annual harvest of the land lot will be reserved for the members of the family and their slaves, and one-third is subject to compulsory sale to alien residents, that is, the metics, and foreign visitors. The reason for this regulation of distribution of the annual harvest is the fact that in Plato’s Cretan city the citizens are not allowed to work in any kind of profession of paid labour, which has to be done by metics. And as by the principle of ideopragy [<i>sic</i>: should be "<a href="https://philosophy-science-humanities-controversies.com/listview-details.php?id=869724&a=t&first_name=&author=Plato&concept=Justice">idiopragy</a>" meaning an extremely restrictive version of everybody sticking to their own thing] the citizens of Magnesia are not allowed to have more than one profession, that is, as farmers on their lots, they cannot become craftsmen or traders on the markets at the same time.</span></p><p></p></blockquote><p>Yes, they've got non-citizens—slaves, and migrants (<i>metoiki</i>) as well—to whom the inequality rules don't apply. (By way of comparison, in the equally idealized Hebrew communities of Deuteronomy, migrants will be subsidized along with widows and orphans out of the taxes collected from landowners by the Levite priesthood/bureaucracy.)</p><p>Anyway, that, in point of fact, is what I'd have liked to have talked to old Brian about, as a bit of a limitarian myself, ever since the Occupy movement of 2011 followed by the appearance of Thomas Piketty's <i>Capital in the Twenty-First Century</i> in 2013-14. That was a big deal, though hardly anybody seems to want to talk about it any more except for a few economists. </p><p>Nobody mentioned Piketty's name or the Occupy protests on the radio today (though Piketty has written a very nice blurb for Robeyns's book, as has our Substack friend John Quiggin, to whose blog Crooked Timber Robeyns has contributed), but the moment was colossal for me, and I waited a long time for a politician to start addressing it. That was Elizabeth Warren, who I voted for in the 2020 primary. <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/joe-biden-tax-plan-2020/">Biden's plans</a> in the campaign didn't talk much about the theory, but matched it in practical terms: he was calling for hikes in income, capital gains, and payroll taxes on individuals with incomes over $400,000, plus increases in corporate tax, to raise $3.3 trillion over the coming decade; and increases in the generosity of the Child Tax Credit and Dependent Tax Credit, at least for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic, as a way of directly redistributing income from high to low. The latter would see incomes rise by 10.8% for the bottom fifth and 3.6% for the next fifth in 2021, while incomes for the top 99th percentile would <i>fall</i> by 11.3%. That's what I'm talking about! And that's why I was excited about voting for Biden. </p><p>And of course other things, like his <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/02/george-floyd-protests-biden-slams-trump-over-st-johns-church-photo-op.html">straightforward condemnation</a> of the Trump administration's handling of the George Floyd protests—<br /></p><p><span face="Lyon, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 18px;"></span></p><blockquote>“Look, the presidency is a big job. Nobody will get everything right. And I won’t either. But I promise you this. I won’t traffic in fear and division,” Biden said. “I won’t fan the flames of hate. I will seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued this country – not use them for political gain.”</blockquote><p></p><p>and of their catastrophic mistakes on the <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/biden-campaign-press-release-fact-sheet-donald-trumps-utter-botching-the-covid-19-response">Covid crisis</a></p><p><span face=""Open Sans", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 14px;"></span></p><blockquote><span face=""Open Sans", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 14px;">As COVID-19 swept across our country, Trump bungled testing, leaving us with persistent shortages and delays even now. And, Trump inexcusably failed to get protective equipment to the heroes on the front lines of this fight, opting to side with corporate lobbyists instead of heeding Vice President Biden's call to fully invoke the Defense Production Act to mobilize our economy to fight the virus.</span><span face=""Open Sans", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 14px;">... </span><span face=""Open Sans", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 14px;">Even after months of abject failure on COVID-19, Trump still refuses to take the threat seriously, repeatedly claiming that it will simply "disappear" even as he and his allies attack public health officials and undermine the basic measures we need to control the virus.</span></blockquote><span face=""Open Sans", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 14px;"></span><p></p><ul style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: "Open Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 0px;"></ul><p>But every decent Democrat would have managed those things; it was the tax ideas that really got to me. I thought he was by far the most radical presidential candidate I'd ever seen with a chance of winning.</p><p>And they weren't just campaign promises, either; after the election, as the incoming administration began preparing its 2021 agenda, they <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/warren-biden-tax-agenda/2021/10/25/452f9aaa-35aa-11ec-9bc4-86107e7b0ab1_story.html">worked closely with Warren</a> and her Pikettyan advisers Emanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman to craft a plan of even greater scope, the original "Build Back Better". Not that Biden could have brought it to reality, with the obdurate senators Sinema and Manchin determined to prevent it, but it was such an inspiring list of ideas, and he really did get a good deal of it done, as I've been arguing all over the place. </p><p>And just today, surfacing at <a href="https://braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-noted-for-2024-02-19-mo">Brad DeLong's site</a>, some extremely convincing evidence of how it's been working so far to decrease economic inequality:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Fs7kgwSofd8U4ohSMzKzDxg3kjkvEdEyLOqIl9a68ld_Ni4A-puLg2JJf3PYyzhyphenhyphen7GwVMwrAd9NU3DcOz7cBS5TvHTjM2MuosbLrlgCkEM1LcOwWUYlPXWJHHRoafk9l6nWS17K-Hr7bFL5U082G42SOiOxMl0U-QWLovHdqJWWTqeovNrtTfD3omV0u/s1322/5e852f02-3e99-47eb-a5b0-300501a01d01_1322x881.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="881" data-original-width="1322" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Fs7kgwSofd8U4ohSMzKzDxg3kjkvEdEyLOqIl9a68ld_Ni4A-puLg2JJf3PYyzhyphenhyphen7GwVMwrAd9NU3DcOz7cBS5TvHTjM2MuosbLrlgCkEM1LcOwWUYlPXWJHHRoafk9l6nWS17K-Hr7bFL5U082G42SOiOxMl0U-QWLovHdqJWWTqeovNrtTfD3omV0u/w400-h266/5e852f02-3e99-47eb-a5b0-300501a01d01_1322x881.webp" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>The chart from a recent post by Arindrajat Dube at Project Syndicate, "<a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/us-tight-labor-market-result-of-worker-friendly-policies-by-arindrajit-dube-2024-02">Credit Bidenomics For Rising US Wages</a>".</p><p>It's not a lot, but it's <i>real</i>. The first time since the 1960s that real wage inequality in the US has declined over a substantial period. And that's why I'm eager to vote for him again, too.</p><p>Which is in turn why I keep harping, if you'll forgive me, on the Biden-is-old frenzy. I'm just this side of seeing it as a conspiracy:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjopilC2JRHN7MXLBO_DdiBsvrOf4oVHvHEMZx4qlgD5VXUMu2T6P8kVuT61LCfKEJ8BLiZKE8bA-CsDDkl-psBlClrCFcKb8LhwySKf552JXC4Z8d0AtQcp8pEoRGOv6ULP3RdUX8xi_hl3H_mrLd8jvniIEHxAvugSUWI0c5qP_JGkqtR70r6eqJsdzo4/s1186/Screenshot%202024-02-19%20at%208.11.32%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="712" data-original-width="1186" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjopilC2JRHN7MXLBO_DdiBsvrOf4oVHvHEMZx4qlgD5VXUMu2T6P8kVuT61LCfKEJ8BLiZKE8bA-CsDDkl-psBlClrCFcKb8LhwySKf552JXC4Z8d0AtQcp8pEoRGOv6ULP3RdUX8xi_hl3H_mrLd8jvniIEHxAvugSUWI0c5qP_JGkqtR70r6eqJsdzo4/w400-h240/Screenshot%202024-02-19%20at%208.11.32%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC0xBpiZfqC6sxXud2nSIHt3nRdfmGGImoIEQ39e5FSaA4CL6lOWpwU1_YUqN8VAVk2yh4VMLo_I0NR5NwqWIPN1UaafqYKGiHr44txXN51jl26Bqd7d7DcIn3QpeUMbX-Eq1xkEHTjSbhu76rs8f1oFAL0GJ_VdQacibiX2V6O-a83ESkUBHALvXDyUBb/s1212/Screenshot%202024-02-19%20at%208.11.52%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="1212" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC0xBpiZfqC6sxXud2nSIHt3nRdfmGGImoIEQ39e5FSaA4CL6lOWpwU1_YUqN8VAVk2yh4VMLo_I0NR5NwqWIPN1UaafqYKGiHr44txXN51jl26Bqd7d7DcIn3QpeUMbX-Eq1xkEHTjSbhu76rs8f1oFAL0GJ_VdQacibiX2V6O-a83ESkUBHALvXDyUBb/w400-h225/Screenshot%202024-02-19%20at%208.11.52%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></div>Shitheads like Cenk Uygur too, for that matter. Is this whole thing a trick to replace Biden with an attractive, well-spoken, otherwise unimpeachably liberal tax-hater?<br /><p><a href="https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-18-2024">Heather Cox Richardson</a>, as it happens, celebrated Presidents Day with a piece on Abraham Lincoln in the presidential election year 1864, when he looked like he was in real trouble—no polling in those days, but there was a wide belief he was going to lose, not because he was too old, but because the war was going very badly, and the party's radical wing felt he was moving too cautiously, both on the prosecution of the war effort and the were plotting to replace him with the treasury secretary, Salmon P. Chase. He fought that challenge off in June, but another one was rising from those who thought Lincoln was too radical himself:</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;"></p><blockquote>Thurlow Weed, New York’s kingmaker, thought Lincoln was far too radical. Weed cared deeply about putting his own people into the well-paying customs positions available in New York City, and he was frequently angry that Lincoln appointed nominees favored by the more radical faction.</blockquote><p></p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;"></p><blockquote>That frustration went hand in hand with anger about policy. Weed was upset that the Republicans were remaking the government for ordinary Americans. The 1862 Homestead Act, which provided western land for a nominal fee to any American willing to settle it, was a thorn in his side. Until Congress passed that law, such land, taken from Indigenous tribes, would be sold to speculators for cash that went directly to the Treasury. Republicans believed that putting farmers on the land would enable them to pay the new national taxes Congress imposed, thus bringing in far more money to the Treasury for far longer than would selling to speculators, but Weed foresaw national bankruptcy. </blockquote><p></p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;"></p><blockquote>Even more than financial policy, though, Weed was unhappy with Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, which moved toward an end of human enslavement far too quickly for Weed.</blockquote><p></p><p>While the Union Democrats were converging on a still more conservative candidate, General George McLellan, whose supporters</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;"></p><blockquote>rejected the new, popular measures the national government had undertaken since 1861—the establishment of state colleges, the transcontinental railroad, the new national money, and the Homestead Act—insisting on “State rights.”</blockquote><p></p><p>Needless to say, Lincoln did win that election (partly by pulling in a Democrat as vice presidential candidate, Andrew Johnson, which now looks maybe like not such a great move), as the war finally turned around (people loved the state colleges and the railroad and the Homestead Act—the inflationary Greenback was not so popular). </p><p>Cox Richardson's apparent insinuation, that maybe Joe Biden might still pull it off, isn't outlandish. Inflation is under control, in spite of last week's blip. Russia is terrifying, with their murders and space nukes, and Trump can't stop offering them "whatever the hell they want". The threat of a national abortion ban at 16 weeks is real. There's a Do-Nothing Congress that makes the 1948 Republicans look normal. Infrastructure is nevertheless getting built, good jobs are still plentiful. There's been real reform on assault weapons and drug prices. Biden's conduct in Israel will look infinitely less awful if his bet pays off and his alliance with the hostage families defeats Netanyahu. Forgiven student loans add up to $37.7 billion and there's more to come. Trump will have at least one criminal conviction, hopefully two, before November. Kamala Harris gets more and more visible and she's looking great.</p><p>Obviously it's not a sure thing, and obviously it's scary. Trumpism informed by the lessons they learned since the last round is a horrible danger. Maybe we should start organizing against the threat, to the civil service and the Justice Department. What Democrats should <i>stop</i> doing is pinning our hopes on a deus ex machina, or a miracle constitutional provision, or a savior out of the blue; we have to learn how to live with the situation that exists, and enjoy whatever advantages it offers. Biden's qualities as president, whatever the polls are saying, are among the advantages; he's <i>really good</i> at it. If voters aren't clear about that, <i>tell</i> them. Biden should tell them too, no doubt, and media should report it when he does. If they refuse because they'd rather concern troll, call them out! This garbage from Nate Silver shouldn't pass without criticism:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjta3SqV1RKOfkv_vd-OGa4G3GAXcGixa2PR-__zT8IuZaDRfkX6EhX_bTBSao_0Iduox2ap2LqwcRgnQ3li9RhbmuIHCdFdH6PGGmEArPA0C1iTlDaguyx_hpFBgqjp1S7np0mVhsynVcX-RsOa-q1J8PqwsnD0FrIjVX1OQ9xXPdBt3dYiUj3dlFeiXMi/s1330/Screenshot%202024-02-19%20at%2010.37.13%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1330" data-original-width="1166" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjta3SqV1RKOfkv_vd-OGa4G3GAXcGixa2PR-__zT8IuZaDRfkX6EhX_bTBSao_0Iduox2ap2LqwcRgnQ3li9RhbmuIHCdFdH6PGGmEArPA0C1iTlDaguyx_hpFBgqjp1S7np0mVhsynVcX-RsOa-q1J8PqwsnD0FrIjVX1OQ9xXPdBt3dYiUj3dlFeiXMi/w351-h400/Screenshot%202024-02-19%20at%2010.37.13%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="351" /></a></div><br /><p>Biden is doing whatever he can to seize the narrative, maybe it's not good enough, though I think the press ghosting him is a bigger problem than that. Don't throw up your hands in despair. Do whatever <i>you</i> can. Thus spake the poaster.</p><p>Cross-posted at the <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/yastreblyansky/p/carpe-narrativium?r=ip7r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true">Substack</a>.</p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-29426373852810734882024-02-15T23:24:00.006-05:002024-02-16T09:56:48.068-05:00Late Style in Biden<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-at6lvZqjOgxkMtn4Xfl7h0uXxDniVKljtncXSy8sHjqQLAMBkN-iTKGxSMG4UVpjAb-n577by2wqrC3OEusu0dBAE_nueLj8x8zFmysXwJhEZvVzme1bFqPBGT5g8BhBPK_7DurU9gCZHg7zPXkt_jl0Ros8pYkaijx33JY1UpUt8eI6oxe0OCG6_cc_/s1500/cj88q96.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-at6lvZqjOgxkMtn4Xfl7h0uXxDniVKljtncXSy8sHjqQLAMBkN-iTKGxSMG4UVpjAb-n577by2wqrC3OEusu0dBAE_nueLj8x8zFmysXwJhEZvVzme1bFqPBGT5g8BhBPK_7DurU9gCZHg7zPXkt_jl0Ros8pYkaijx33JY1UpUt8eI6oxe0OCG6_cc_/w400-h320/cj88q96.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adlai Stevenson and Mayor Richard J. Daley at the podium in the 1956 Democratic convention, via <a href="https://explore.chicagocollections.org/image/uic/107/cj88q96/">Chicago Collections</a>. </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Heard Mr. Damon Linker on the radio this morning plugging a post he'd sold to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/joe-biden-democratic-party-age-nomination/677434/">The Atlantic</a>, recycled from his Substack ("<a href="https://damonlinker.substack.com/p/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-the-democrats">Notes From the Middleground</a>"), where he argues that the only way to defeat psychopath Donald Trump is for President Biden to drop out of the race to reelect himself, right away. Apparently (he's a little light on the procedural details), we'll just carry through all the primaries electing an insuperable majority of Biden delegates, except when they get to Chicago on August 19 they'll be able to vote for anybody they want.</p><p>Except the one they're pledged to, of course, who won't be running. It'll be just like that other Chicago convention, in 1968! Good times! And not at all guaranteed to elect the Republican, the way the other one elected Richard Nixon. Linker kept saying on the radio "But Nixon barely won!"—which is formally true, he had to split the racist vote with the independent candidacy of George Wallace; I guess he thinks Trump will really get beat in the way Nixon almost did, by his fellow anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., though I don't know which states he thinks Kennedy will win (Wallace's were five in the Deep South; AR, LA, MS, AL, and GA).</p><p>Or not exactly. When Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the race at the end of March (not the middle of February), it was a pretty different kind of race from this year's. For one thing, only 13 states had presidential primary contests of the kind that dominate today, two of them owned by "favorite sons" who would hold the delegates in reserve until the convention, and Johnson's designated successor, Vice President Humphrey, was able to accumulate enough delegates to win without personally entering any primaries, with LBJ's expert help in the traditional smoke-filled rooms of states conventions and caucuses, and "delegate primaries" where Uncommitted had an excellent chance of winning.</p><p>Johnson had had just one serious opponent, Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, at the time of the New Hampshire primary, but McCarthy's extraordinary second place finish there, 50-42, was the thing that persuaded LBJ's former attorney general Senator Robert Kennedy to enter the race (too late to enter any of the April primaries), and that was the thing that persuaded Johnson to make his extraordinary decision to withdraw in Humphrey's favor. </p><p>Then came the trauma of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, while McCarthy and Kennedy were battling it out in Indiana. And then, of course, on June 5, while he was celebrating his victories in California and South Dakota, Robert Kennedy was murdered too, with the consequence, which seemed almost like a secondary matter, that Humphrey would certainly win the nomination—there would be no "brokered convention" like the good old days going back to as recently as 1960, but there would be a deeply distressed and alienated community of the young and the Black (12% of the people dying in Vietnam were African American, but nearly all of them were young men of every race), whose rages and fears would not be represented on the convention floor but rather in the street theater and accompanying police riot (and more "unrest" for the northeastern and western Republicans to focus their racism on as an alternative to the Southern-style version, as "law and order" voters for Nixon and Agnew, following the urban riots of 1967).</p><p>I don't know exactly how Linker is imagining what's going to happen now if the party decides to obey him: he mentions half a dozen plausible candidates including obligatory diversity representatives (Whitmer's a woman, Warnock is Black, Shapiro is Jewish, Polis is gay, it's like an updated World War II combat movie) plus the white male multimillionaires he's most interested in (Pritzker and Newsom)—not gonna lie, I like them all fine myself, even the rich ones, but what are they going to <i>do</i>? Hold a series of 12 debates? How will it connect to the ongoing selection of Biden delegates in the primaries from March through June? Will there be a poll race in lieu of primaries going on at the same time, maybe eliminating a candidate every couple of weeks? It's a little too reminiscent, for my money, of this year's parade of Republican candidates not-named-Trump, an occasion for the press to keep changing its mind every so often about who's hot and who's not, not an occasion for somebody to democratically emerge, as Biden himself emerged four years ago in the South Carolina primary. I don't know what it is, but among the Republicans this year it was an occasion for people to notice that Trump wasn't there and the press was just being fools.</p><p>And what will happen in the convention itself, in the system designed by George McGovern for his own 1972 campaign that has endured until now, where it's a TV spectacle of unity? Are we going back to yet a third Chicago convention, in 1956? (Adlai Stevenson, the 1952 nominee, won by a mile over his rivals in the first ballot, but it took three ballots to nominate a vice presidential candidate, with an unexpectedly fierce competition between Estes Kefauver and the very young senator John F. Kennedy.) Will the state delegations be marking their space with those tall signs? What if they haven't got a decision? Will there be a real contest? Could it last 103 ballots like the 1924 convention? (They lost too, as did Stevenson.) What will the backroom dealing be like, and will we ever know? Will we feel a nostalgia of our own for the thing we've lost, the primary process in which democracy is made a part of the selection? (Primaries were invented in the Progressive era, in a reaction against the corruption of the 19th-century process; Linker thinks they yield the wrong answer.)</p><p>I'll tell you one thing: if it's a movie, and it might as well be, and you want it to end with a bang, you couldn't do better than having the convention deadlocked, and winding up dragging Biden onto the floor, because he's the character who brings the coalition together, male and female, Black and white, union members and wage slaves, woodchucks and immigrants, Boomers and Zoomers. In spite of the way some of us may be feeling at the moment on a specific issue here and there (I'm betting the migration question and the Gaza question will look somewhat different to us in August, I'll get into that in later posts). </p><p>One of the biggest things Biden exemplifies is what's <i>good</i> about being old; he's got what the late Edward Said described as a "<a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v26/n15/edward-said/thoughts-on-late-style">late style</a>" (Said was thinking especially of Beethoven) completely different from his maturity 30-odd years ago: spare and cantankerous, gnarly, with too many ideas to finish any of them, with</p><p><span style="background-color: #fafaf7; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-size: 20px;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="background-color: #fafaf7; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-size: 20px;">the power to render disenchantment and pleasure without resolving the contradiction between them</span> </p><p></p></blockquote><p>I'm not even kidding, that's why his policy prescriptions are so good. We'll start recognizing it, I hope, the way the Viennese public recognized Beethoven at the premiere of the ninth symphony, when he insisted on conducting though he was too deaf to know what was going on, and the concertmaster had to push him to turn around and take his bow when it was over—the tempo in his mind was slower than the tempo the musicians were using—but the audience understood the extraordinary character of the music they were hearing, and roared with applause he couldn't hear. I’m even drawing an analogy between Beethoven’s deafness and Biden’s stutter, as part of an explanation.</p><p>Cross-posted at the <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/yastreblyansky/p/late-style-in-biden?r=ip7r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true">Substack</a>.</p><p></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-91317809854992561432024-02-14T15:43:00.002-05:002024-02-14T16:09:51.135-05:00Literary Corner: NATO as Protection Racket<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUQWajAelOgQIFDrE-rib3l0mHADP6G88sWgwxM2t9d2XqptgYevJC1fwBWr7iw0Ta9xoHqDTy6LidS7OlhdAMt3FSTfGAfO4KVUw_zAgN5i5hQR2Hz3-MVZBK37gcnKtZZFYxkbXY1QmGRNrGCT88L6PEVuChxq3iIvr8up3btu31OpA9xENiCI-bJLrE/s640/nato-member-map-7.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUQWajAelOgQIFDrE-rib3l0mHADP6G88sWgwxM2t9d2XqptgYevJC1fwBWr7iw0Ta9xoHqDTy6LidS7OlhdAMt3FSTfGAfO4KVUw_zAgN5i5hQR2Hz3-MVZBK37gcnKtZZFYxkbXY1QmGRNrGCT88L6PEVuChxq3iIvr8up3btu31OpA9xENiCI-bJLrE/w400-h225/nato-member-map-7.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NATO map by <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nato-countries-maps-list-membership-requirements/">CBS News</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><b>Until I Came Along</b></p><p style="text-align: center;">by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America</p>
<p></p><div style="text-align: left;"></div><p></p><blockquote><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">NATO was busted until I came along.</div>You don't pay your bills, you get no protection.
<br /> It's very simple. I said,<br />
‘Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well,<br />
if we don’t pay, are you still
<br /> going to protect us?’
<br />I said, ‘Absolutely not.’
<br />
<br />
They couldn’t believe the answer.<br />
One of the presidents of a big country<br />
stood up and said, 'Well, sir,<br />
if we don't pay and we're attacked<br />
by Russia, will you protect us?'<br />
'No, I would not protect you.<br />
In fact, I would encourage them<br />
to do whatever the hell they want.<br />You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.'</blockquote><p></p></blockquote><p>NATO actually <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm">does have bills</a>, for its political headquarters and command structure in Brussels, which belong not to any specific country but to the organization as a whole, and various programs it runs, for a some €3.3 billion in 2023, or 0.3% of the members' total defense spending, and these are paid for with member contributions, on a sliding scale according to the wealth of the particular country: the two biggest being the US and Germany, at just over 16% each, with Britain and France coming next at 11% and 10% respectively, and so on, down to Montenegro, paying a bit under 0.03% of the budget.</p><p>It's not a whole lot of money, in reality, and NATO has never been busted, as Trump puts it. It's also not what Trump is talking about. But Trump <i>does not know that</i>. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Trump has it confused with a different thing: the amount of money each member spends on its own armed forces, which is regarded as indirect funding of NATO operations, keeping the forces in a state of readiness and deploying them when the time comes (as in the ongoing <a href="https://www.act.nato.int/article/steadfast-defender-2024-signals-alliance-unity-and-preparedness/">Steadfast Defender</a> exercise, the largest since the end of the Cold War). That's far bigger money than what it takes to keep them in business in Brussels.</p><p>In 2006 the alliance's defense ministers agreed that each country ought to be spending a minimum of 2% of its GDP (US spends 3.5%) on its military (except for Iceland, which doesn't have one), and it didn't happen, partly because of the world financial crisis in 2008, and in 2014, that's the Obama administration, all the countries joined a Defense Investment Pledge in which they formally promised to do it, and those countries spending less than 2% adopted NATO Capability Target plans to get them there in a 10-year period, which brings us to now, when a majority of them haven't yet made it, as you see, though nearly all of them are closer, and some very close.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkvJ8WyTF36LXrGPGl6Uod8uh8lg0SQFbZ5SIszbgdArdhG8xZ_-56qHRKf9rx0dhEIQOMWfOaEJPGO-AnYTxTZGz4d1x0GXZ28oFBbS9FPlYS9qqF4xhqkeZtjvuMliNhLGJ9GoIJ6jaSeuQXJVtbWK8f_bezuasa3LWRDxZWlZvQFAbN3zpGxmy_bvgA/s1542/Screenshot%202024-02-14%20at%2012.38.46%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1298" data-original-width="1542" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkvJ8WyTF36LXrGPGl6Uod8uh8lg0SQFbZ5SIszbgdArdhG8xZ_-56qHRKf9rx0dhEIQOMWfOaEJPGO-AnYTxTZGz4d1x0GXZ28oFBbS9FPlYS9qqF4xhqkeZtjvuMliNhLGJ9GoIJ6jaSeuQXJVtbWK8f_bezuasa3LWRDxZWlZvQFAbN3zpGxmy_bvgA/w400-h336/Screenshot%202024-02-14%20at%2012.38.46%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chart by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ELECTION/TRUMP-NATO/movalqxlzpa/index.html">Reuters</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>These are the figures for what Trump calls the "bills" the members are supposed to pay, expressed as a percentage of GDP, for 2021 (light gray), 2022 (dark gray), and 2023 (yellow). What he doesn't get is that they're not paying it <i>to</i> anybody: they're spending it on themselves, buying weapons and matériel and paying soldiers and administrators and so on. That's why it's called a "defense" budget; they're not paying somebody, as Trump supposes, to protect them, they're taking a share of the responsibility for protecting themselves, as well as prepared to come to one another's aid if called upon under Article V (which has been invoked only once in the alliance's history, as you'll remember, on behalf of the US in September 2001).</p><p>The thing that jumps out for me that I haven't seen anybody else noticing in the charts, and this multi-year chart in particular, is which countries are across the 2% threshold: other than the US and UK (which has actually cut defense spending over the last three years) and Greece, they are all the ones bordering on Russia (Finland, Estonia, Latvia) and/or Belarus (Lithuania, Poland), Ukraine (Slovakia, Hungary), and Moldova (Romania); the countries Russia could invade directly, or through a neighbor it has already reintegrated into the Empire, or is trying mightily to conquer right now, or the poor little country it is likeliest to invade next if it succeeds in conquering Ukraine. And also mostly countries over which the Russian Empire exerted some kind of violent dominance at some point in its long history, as Vladimir Putin could tell you about at some length.</p><p>And their meeting the targets had nothing to do with when Trump "came along"; they were largely responding to Putin's moves on Ukraine, originally the territorial seizures of 2014, and then the all-out war of February 2022 (which also inspired Finland and Sweden to break with decades of policy and join NATO in the first place). </p><p>So the countries that actually might get invaded by Russia are the ones working hardest to protect themselves, as you might expect, and Trump would have no excuse for turning them down, if he became president again. Not that that would necessarily make any difference: I imagine what he'd be doing is just what it sounds like, gangsterism looking for some kind of personal payoff, as he was with North Korea in 2017 and Ukraine in 2019.</p><p>It's pretty clear that his inability to comprehend the NATO contribution issue is what Macron and Trudeau and others were laughing about, in the inaudible bit of the tape that hurt Trump's feelings so much in December 2019, when he learned how his NATO peers really felt about him. (Made explicit in a way it wasn't in the US press, in the somewhat extended Sky News report <a href="https://youtu.be/4U6j9qcJUyw?si=mK3XLuuDHaBsaaAj">here</a>.)</p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BGmcy03pj7I?si=kUaCz5aA9WgX9lNz" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><br /></p><p></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-53981071267736703972024-02-14T00:27:00.002-05:002024-02-14T00:27:29.961-05:00Ah but I was so much older then<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdpG-k05K9SNJuzYxvRhNoJkCWrh8kdOiu_2aJlIyevxz-9aJ403tV4xduTFKQmJDwNws0Qm8-eq1awnRVy8DMYfo64c0ectG4WXdih7AfdKh4tVXUgAOQJ-yTu91wEjOFPkEHohpPG6acN1UfzL0Lwvf4Ip_ThHW_dpfPIthJO9lXrIEV_MtM3LOfwxnd/s1500/bidens-2-77402e6d79a74725bda3029967eb7bce.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdpG-k05K9SNJuzYxvRhNoJkCWrh8kdOiu_2aJlIyevxz-9aJ403tV4xduTFKQmJDwNws0Qm8-eq1awnRVy8DMYfo64c0ectG4WXdih7AfdKh4tVXUgAOQJ-yTu91wEjOFPkEHohpPG6acN1UfzL0Lwvf4Ip_ThHW_dpfPIthJO9lXrIEV_MtM3LOfwxnd/s320/bidens-2-77402e6d79a74725bda3029967eb7bce.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dr. Jill Biden celebrating her 70th birthday at Rehoboth Beach. Smiler on the right evidently not ex-president Donald J. Trump, who probably hasn’t climbed on a bike since his political views were fixed around 1977. Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty, from Peop</td></tr></tbody></table><p><br /></p><p>To some commentators, President Joe Biden is an ostensibly nice old guy you couldn’t easily get a jury to convict of the crime of holding on to documents he wasn’t supposed to have, partly because there isn’t any evidence he was doing it on purpose, but also because even if he was guilty he’d probably be able to convince them he was just forgetful.</p>
<p>To others, he’s the most radical leftist president since at least Harry S. Truman, who refuses to let up on his determination to boost labor union membership, tax the wealthy, lift children out of poverty, protect minority voting rights, declare jubilees on student debt and medical debt, rework the immigration system so those empty counties in the Great Plains can pick up some of the population they so desperately need from among the homeless and tempest-tossed, put an end to the use of carbon fuels, and establish a Palestinian state in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Don’t @ me on any of those examples unless you want a sandbag heaved at your head. I am aware that Biden has not accomplished all his presidential aims.</p>
<p>The first set of more-or-less facts (no doubt pretty frustrating to Republican prosecutors) is now being served up as evidence for a different and unrelated case, medical rather than legal according to which he’s suffering from advanced dementia, and it’s time to send him to a farm upstate and turn the executive responsibilities over to somebody more popular among the nonpartisan or unlabeled.</p>
<p>I went through some of the second set of facts back in early September, toward the conclusion that if that’s what octogenarian presidents do, maybe we need more octogenarian presidents, if only because of the three big bills, as I wrote then:<br /></p><ul><li>the American Rescue Plan, which not only spent billions on bringing COVID under control with vaccine distribution and school reopening (people somehow can’t remember that it was under the Trump administration that all the school closings took place) but devoted much of its $2 trillion to those $1400 stimulus checks and the (unfortunately temporary) expansion of the Child Tax Credit that cut child poverty in our country by 50%;</li>
<li>the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act bringing $550 billion in new spending on everything from the nation’s waterways and transit systems to its airports and electric grid, electric vehicle charging stations, and zero- and low-emissions buses and ferries (far from the original proposal of $3.4 trillion, but try finding something to compare it to that actually did happen over the last generation or two); the first serious gun control legislation in decades (toughening requirements for the youngest gun buyers, keeping firearms out of the hands of more domestic abusers and helping states implement “red flag” laws, along with funding for mental health and violence intervention programs and school safety initiatives);</li>
<li>the Chips & Science Act spending $280 billion to fund expanding the nation’s semiconductor industry to help keep pace with Chinese competition and scientific research in areas like artificial intelligence, biotechnology and quantum computing, with “regional innovation and technology hubs” bringing jobs and economic growth to the most distressed parts of the country (that’s the bit that so amazed David Brooks, who’s always moaning about the Rust Belt but never thought of anything that could be done about it);</li>
<li>and the “Inflation Reduction Act” making our largest ever investment in combating climate change—putting the US on track to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade, together with investments in environmental justice, conservation and resiliency programs, plus allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices for seniors on Medicare, something we’ve been screaming for forever, extending federal health insurance subsidies, and capping out-of-pocket costs for insulin at no more than $35 per month for Medicare beneficiaries, which is even contributing to the reduction of inflation! and</li><li>
</li><li>TAXING THE RICH with new taxes on big corporations, setting a minimum corporate tax of 15%, and new funding for the Internal Revenue Service in an effort to crack down on tax evasion, reducing the federal budget deficit by about $300 billion over 10 years.</li></ul><p>
</p><p>That last number is now estimated at $561 billion—$851 billion if the IRS funding is renewed, which Republicans in Congress will stop if they can. And it’s only a down payment on what could be achieved in inequality reduction with a cooperative legislature (which I realize we’re not too likely to get out of the 2024 elections—on the other hand we should also be thinking about what we’ve got to defend out of the current term, and what we have to lose if the Democratic candidate loses, and the threats of the Republican candidate who claims he only aims to be dictator for a day).</p>
<p>When I was worried about Biden’s age, back in early 2020, it was more about his brain habits than the physiology; the habits of a lifetime as senator from the banking industry that is such a dominant part of Delaware’s economy, the eager befriender of unreconstructed Southern Democrats trying to knit the party back together after the McGovern debacle in the 1970s, the opponent of busing, the crusader for incarceration and against “welfare as we know it” in the 1990s, the Cold Warrior who didn’t necessarily understand what had happened to the Cold War, and so on. I was also among those who really liked Biden as vice president, for the thing he brought to Obama’s campaigns and governing style, as epitomized in the apparent “gaffe” (carefully calculated, IMO) where he pushed the administration to move in favor of same-sex marriage, but I wasn’t sorry he decided not to run in 2016. (In terms of “progressive” cred, I thought Hillary Clinton had more; Biden had more in common with triangulating Bill than she did.)</p><p>But watching Biden work his way through the 2020 campaign convinced me that he was well adapted to the present: his deep attention to the Black vote (as we moved into the George Floyd summer), and the policy collaboration he gradually moved into with Sanders and Warren (and, I can’t ever say this enough, Warren’s pro-equality economists, Saez and Zucman, who were key designers of the Build Back Better program). I really began to think of him as the candidate who was young enough, next to stodgy young Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Yang.
And others have noticed—like Thomas Zimmer—the people crying about Biden’s age are pretty old, or at least pretty tired, themselves:
<br /></p><p><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: #f2f2e3; color: #58584a; font-size: 19px;">in recent days, spurred by the Hur report, it has come in a particularly forceful, aggressive fashion from a political spectrum that I would describe as the center to as far right as you can go within the – ostensibly – anti-MAGA camp: From establishment conservatives, the center-right and people who self-identify as liberals, but with a distinctly anti-left/anti-“woke” bend, which plausibly puts them, labels aside, at the center of the political discourse. Specifically, I want to dissect the “Biden too old” arguments that have come out in the </span><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: #f2f2e3; color: #58584a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">New York Times</em><span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: #f2f2e3; color: #58584a; font-size: 19px;"> – from the already mentioned stable of opinionists (Douthat, Stephens, Dowd) and the paper’s editorial board, plus a reaction from Damon Linker, who is prominently holding down that liberal centrism space, titled </span><a href="https://damonlinker.substack.com/p/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-the-democrats?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2" rel="" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: #f2f2e3; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px;">“What the Hell is Wrong with the Democrats?</a></p><p>You know right? There are points where some of us might want to criticize Biden, as with his willingness to sacrifice asylum seekers by making the initial “credible fear interview” somewhat harder to pass, and he’s definitely taking too long to tell Binyamin Netanyahu to go fuck himself while tens of thousands (including dozens of hostages captured from Israel) die under Israeli bombs as part of his plan to force Netanyahu into allowing the establishment of a Palestinian state. That’s not what’s driving this.
</p>
<p>Something tells me the crying about Biden’s age is coming from people who think he’s too effective on these economic issues, is all I’m saying.</p><p>Cross-posted from <a href="https://yastreblyansky.substack.com/p/ah-but-i-was-so-much-older-then">the Substack</a>.</p><p><br /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-5996563424148677972024-02-11T11:11:00.003-05:002024-02-11T11:12:18.875-05:00It's the Literacy<p> <a href="https://yastreblyansky.substack.com/p/its-the-literacy">New Substack post</a> (not so new for long-time readers here but with a new intro):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn5uAnqOoziVr6zzGTV5r33r25DswSMP_vy3QlZ5KPg8zK7FbScChsVXZaGJF_5csP6ry4iFObOpgJ9MIKXJUd27vA2cQppeTam29edbR-prmDOf5gqJvJMjbpagZD7X08k8w8iedTyh7o37tjz9t4t1h82rrMGVhCh6QNXfzZiK3T4y10seZPaClw4uqY/s1422/unnamed%20(20).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1422" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn5uAnqOoziVr6zzGTV5r33r25DswSMP_vy3QlZ5KPg8zK7FbScChsVXZaGJF_5csP6ry4iFObOpgJ9MIKXJUd27vA2cQppeTam29edbR-prmDOf5gqJvJMjbpagZD7X08k8w8iedTyh7o37tjz9t4t1h82rrMGVhCh6QNXfzZiK3T4y10seZPaClw4uqY/w225-h400/unnamed%20(20).jpg" width="225" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-14387827387242418662024-02-09T16:47:00.003-05:002024-02-10T09:18:53.424-05:00Court and Snark<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvZ3MWMvaC8FABqCTaP2uY2wGr_CEytPA-TQYZWwT6vCabdF-7f0jqXF5zJaukNAZWw2DfH4M_Zv0kcXEMlgd7vgEn-Ik8a1L-9GJAVvcMi__mUJvafKuX1WgDJ81XK27uMgVd_Z9U8NjDOpAjX_6xIIBMSdwzVEGAmFLACiOJYmSGKWKbB8-JcpyC76mv/s1920/107370834-1707404681268-gettyimages-1987674066-dcjn01.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvZ3MWMvaC8FABqCTaP2uY2wGr_CEytPA-TQYZWwT6vCabdF-7f0jqXF5zJaukNAZWw2DfH4M_Zv0kcXEMlgd7vgEn-Ik8a1L-9GJAVvcMi__mUJvafKuX1WgDJ81XK27uMgVd_Z9U8NjDOpAjX_6xIIBMSdwzVEGAmFLACiOJYmSGKWKbB8-JcpyC76mv/s320/107370834-1707404681268-gettyimages-1987674066-dcjn01.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Julia Nikhinson/Getty Images, via <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/08/supreme-court-trump-challenge-to-colorado-ballot-ban.html">CNBC</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>It's looking pretty clear from this morning's oral arguments in the Supreme Court, and falling out pretty much as I expected: Trump's appeal against his disqualification in the Colorado primary election will succeed, and I'm predicting that the appeal he's supposed to submit Monday against the DC ruling on his presidential immunity will be denied, without arguments, by May 12, for trial to begin no later than June 1 (per the flow chart created by <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/91837/how-long-will-trumps-immunity-appeal-take-analyzing-the-alternative-timelines/">Just Security</a>). </p><p>In fact the fix appears to be a little bit in, not exactly in a bad way, not on Trump's behalf but on those of the nine Justices, united as we've never seen them in their desire to avoid deciding whether Trump had "engaged in" an insurrection or not. Roberts practically wailed: "Counselor, you're saying that somebody, presumably us, would have to develop <i>rules</i> for what constitutes an insurrection?"</p><p>Oh noes, not more <i>work</i>!</p><p>One of the most remarked features of the arguments was how little interest anybody, attorneys on both sides or Justices, showed in talking about that. They were openly avoiding talking about it in favor of just about anything else, mostly the technicalities the Constitution doesn't mention at all, of how Amendment 14 Section 3 is supposed to be administered.</p><p>I think a lot of people are missing how this is a problem for the three "liberal" Justices as well. To keep it short, they have a likely choice between a 6-3 decision suggesting Amendment 14 Section 3 really doesn't mean anything at all and a 9-0 decision leaving the question open—where I think they're going, which is to lay the burden on the Amendment's neglected Section 5,<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p></p><div class="field field-name-field-resources field-type-text-long field-label-hidden" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Sohne Buch", Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", "Sohne Buch", Verdana, sans-serif;"><div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", "Sohne Buch", Verdana, sans-serif;"></div></div></div><p></p><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Sohne Buch", Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", "Sohne Buch", Verdana, sans-serif;"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", "Sohne Buch", Verdana, sans-serif;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", "Sohne Buch", Verdana, sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"></p><blockquote>The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article</blockquote><p></p></div></div></div><p>the origin of all our civil rights legislation. Congress also originated most of the actions under Section 3 in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and now they are going to have to come up with some guidelines as to who determines what an insurrection is and who has engaged in one, or else we all have to assume the thing is as dead as the 3rd Amendment. It's a really bad time to ask SCOTUS to do it, in the middle of a presidential campaign, and especially shortly before the opening of a major trial which one of the candidate stands accused of doing something very like that, though the special prosecutor has elected not to call it "insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution" though what the charges do call it, participating in a sometimes extremely violent conspiracy to block the certification of the 2020 election in an effort to keep the incumbent president unconstitutionally in power, certainly sounds hostile, and directed against the Constitution. </p><p>The finding in Judge Chutkan's court on the January 6 case will either contradict the Colorado finding, if Trump is found not guilty, or nationalize it, if he is convicted, and in this way considerably raise the stakes (Colorado wasn't going to give Trump any electoral votes anyway). If he is guilty, we instantly face the question of whether he should be struck from the ballot in all 50 states, and SCOTUS will be delighted to be on the record as having said only Congress can do that, knowing there's not a chance Congress will. (Encouraging this outcome could be a reason for the energy <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/feb/09/leonard-leo-federalist-society-trump-ballot-supreme-court">Leonard Leo</a> is said to have been putting into defeating the Colorado court.)</p><p>And the January 6 case is the other end of the stick here: the decision on the Colorado case is the ostensibly pro-Trump decision that will balance out the anti-Trump decision when the Court denies cert to Trump's stupid immunity petition, allowing the Justices to rid themselves of that case too without putting anything in writing, and permitting the trial to go forward at a reasonable date and finish well before the presidential election.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWTWP3kZFXSz39pte2xCUWK8h5kjaFzJIw7qqQlq2ZTk1mGhc8vg-hWwtQD42brrZQWXLQ8-_PPp-QBEUzPF0vf1g_BPQTo8vtGsA5aA9Adh1gsiYtiULZmhhl2KnBTtlN8AOrkdR0M3j-8TYtspOvmSggn1hd3-9Ans9Y3QfNSWOmuG3L6QHzsqLOztPz/s1208/Screenshot%202024-02-09%20at%202.42.57%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="1208" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWTWP3kZFXSz39pte2xCUWK8h5kjaFzJIw7qqQlq2ZTk1mGhc8vg-hWwtQD42brrZQWXLQ8-_PPp-QBEUzPF0vf1g_BPQTo8vtGsA5aA9Adh1gsiYtiULZmhhl2KnBTtlN8AOrkdR0M3j-8TYtspOvmSggn1hd3-9Ans9Y3QfNSWOmuG3L6QHzsqLOztPz/w400-h164/Screenshot%202024-02-09%20at%202.42.57%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>(quoted material there from <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/02/supreme-court-trump-john-roberts-bargain.html">Richard L. Hasen/Slate</a>)</p><p>Because they really have to deny Trump's appeal, one way or another: the one where he claims as president he could have a Seal team assassinate his enemies and couldn't be charged with a crime (unless <i>after</i> he was impeached and convicted in the Senate for the same crime). It's just too dumb. And the <a href="https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/not-so-immune-the-d.c.-circuit-s-forceful-rejection-of-trump-s-claim-of-absolute-presidential-immunity">unanimous opinion</a> from the DC Circuit rejecting it, which came out a couple of days ago, is too good. Calling it into question in oral arguments would be humiliating for them. So the conservatives have exacted this rejection of the Colorado disqualification to make themselves feel better.</p><p>Thus, it really looks good for a verdict in the case, which could have a seriously damping effect on Trump's electability (that's what <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4422147-trump-federal-jan-6-conviction-impact-poll/">the polls</a> are saying, anyway). No chance of seeing Trump in prison, of course—he'll appeal—but damping nevertheless. I'm also excited with the hope we'll soon learn the money damages in the New York fraud case, which will be up to $370 million in addition to the nearly $90 million he owes E. Jean Carroll, and require him to dismantle his business interest in the state, though I don't know how that will affect his standing with the public at all (they seem to have been largely indifferent to the news that he's a court-certified rapist). But if he has to sell the triplex where's he going to stay when he comes to New York?</p><p>I'm sure there are other tricks up his, and the Supreme Court's, sleeves that might rescue him. One I actually know about is <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/12/court-to-weigh-in-on-scope-of-law-used-in-jan-6-prosecutions/">an appeal</a> from one lower-level January 6 defendant, a Pennsylvania ex-cop called Joseph Fischer, who was convicted of assaulting a police officer and disorderly conduct in the Capitol, and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. His attorneys claim that the law on the last count is meant only to apply to evidence tampering, not to efforts to stop election certification. A finding in his favor, which we should hear about before June, could <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-agrees-hear-jan-6-cases-affect-trump-prosecution-rcna128202">definitely affect</a> the case against Trump along with dozens or hundreds of other criminals.</p><p>But on balance I still think the tone of yesterday's arguments is generally better news than you might think.</p><p></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-2769416904203983272024-02-03T23:36:00.001-05:002024-02-03T23:36:42.223-05:00Pundits Get Over Yourselves<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0oKITAY1zDeQUSrovAi-54XK2MvRoEeSTuXZ-_gPsQ6hYbjw5_On2SdZzsKqXe18hGiNV79kAFQekhYDl_fBjP8gsk_X0KfsMhSrYTEVUmPODbniKVoFFOe22pASBpplraakWeiKBNx8urj3Q5tL_EJ-Cb1ZgxyOkbg40NPTxqtul5z2KZx54yiGCtgQE/s552/Donerail_1913.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="552" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0oKITAY1zDeQUSrovAi-54XK2MvRoEeSTuXZ-_gPsQ6hYbjw5_On2SdZzsKqXe18hGiNV79kAFQekhYDl_fBjP8gsk_X0KfsMhSrYTEVUmPODbniKVoFFOe22pASBpplraakWeiKBNx8urj3Q5tL_EJ-Cb1ZgxyOkbg40NPTxqtul5z2KZx54yiGCtgQE/w400-h319/Donerail_1913.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Donerail, by McGee out of Algie M., after winning the 1913 Kentucky Derby, with jockey Roscoe Goose. There weren't enough tables at Churchill Downs that year, so he had to walk three miles to get to the course before the race. That was one big reason why the owner, Thomas P. Hayes, did not bet on him, but he paid off 91-1. That was news. Via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donerail">Wikipedia</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><p>I can't believe the fatuity of the horserace coverage of the South Carolina Democratic primary, which Joe Biden appears to have won with a comfortable 96.2 percent on a 2 percent turnout. It's moderately fun that that grifter Marianne Williamson appears to have beaten out Minnesota "problem solver" Dean Phillips for second place by almost 500 votes (giving her a big 2.1% to Phillips's 1.7), but even that doesn't actually mean anything. It certainly doesn't mean that people like Williamson better than Phillips, any more than the other way around. Nobody cares even slightly about either of them and the difference is pure statistical noise.</p><p>It's not good news for Joe Biden. It's not bad news for Joe Biden. It's <i>not news at all</i>. It's not news that Joe Biden has won, he doesn't have any actual competition (in 2020 it was Sanders, Steyer, Buttigieg, and Warren, candidates with some kind of real identity and interests and <i>constituencies</i>). It's not news that only 2 percent of the Democratic voters managed to come out, there was little reason to bother given the predetermined outcome. It says absolutely nothing about how they will feel in November when Biden has an opponent with a chance of winning. I mean, as a Biden supporter I'm not at all sorry that 125,000 people managed to come out in spite of the fact that there was virtually nothing at stake, but I'm not excited or gratified or relieved either. The incredibly unlikely did not occur. It rarely does. Also the sun set at 5:15, as predicted. I'm not sorry about that either, I'm <i>really</i> glad, in fact. If it hadn't, that would have been news. But that's as far as it goes.</p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-57772852061218437732024-02-02T15:45:00.003-05:002024-02-02T16:00:47.075-05:00Declaration<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPpGlQBbk2SIdPOszd0BbNIBJLXmi420y3k8FEXCwgwLLjdu1Ed0TXZWjbOj7SLwztOL7hAZuup3tsVl39TB6I-SMkj-DZOcEubsXknprEN5Z4WeeopEe2Q6_nqEYimp9IcrZ4eDiEKQubZCQ3jz74m3tksyAyIruzXhCv4400l8hQ1CO5n-troahYOYU8/s1600/1617087288752-alab-oalaam.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1037" data-original-width="1600" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPpGlQBbk2SIdPOszd0BbNIBJLXmi420y3k8FEXCwgwLLjdu1Ed0TXZWjbOj7SLwztOL7hAZuup3tsVl39TB6I-SMkj-DZOcEubsXknprEN5Z4WeeopEe2Q6_nqEYimp9IcrZ4eDiEKQubZCQ3jz74m3tksyAyIruzXhCv4400l8hQ1CO5n-troahYOYU8/w400-h259/1617087288752-alab-oalaam.webp" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Son and daughter of Gaza's first professional photographer, Kegham Djeghalian (whose shadow is in the foreground), on the beach sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s, via <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjp7y7/unseen-gaza-photos-1940s">Vice</a>. </td></tr></tbody></table><br />
<p>
This morning, an international group of 800 civil servants, mostly working in
foreign ministries, coordinated by participants in the Netherlands, European
Union federal institutions, and the United States and joined by individuals
from those governments plus 10 other EU countries and the United Kingdom,
released a
<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTbqPLjpzDpGdamN2LWL1a-lLCkgs0nDOmgBN3MT-U-3-t5D1gIgrc5KORsHfO9nEIuOBdCnD-5tDKX/pub">formal declaration</a>
of concerns and to their countries' and institutions' policies on the
ongoing horror in the Gaza Strip.
</p>
<p>
I heard about it on BBC; it's also reported in The New York Times (gift link
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/us/politics/protest-letter-israel-gaza.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SU0.LtpL.p7BgKdBgETGd&bgrp=a&smid=url-share">here</a>), though not in my view very well. The signers are anonymous, out of fear of
retaliation (as one State Department veteran told The Times). They are not
resigning in protest, but rather doing what they regard as their proper work
in public, as they have been doing internally up to now:<span></span></p><a name='more'></a>
<p></p>
<ul class="c9 lst-kix_ghk42z3ywg8k-0 start" style="font-family: Roboto, arial, sans, sans-serif; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<li class="c1 li-bullet-0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin-left: 36pt; padding-bottom: 12pt; padding-left: 0pt; padding-top: 12pt; text-align: left;">
<span class="c7 c2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt; vertical-align: baseline;">We have been hired to serve, inform and advise our
governments/institutions and we have demonstrated professionalism,
expertise, and experience that our governments have relied on over the
past decades of our service;</span>
</li>
<li class="c1 li-bullet-0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin-left: 36pt; padding-bottom: 12pt; padding-left: 0pt; padding-top: 12pt; text-align: left;">
<span class="c7 c2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt; vertical-align: baseline;">We have internally expressed our concerns that the policies of our
governments/institutions do not serve our interests and called for
alternatives that would better serve national and international security,
democracy and freedom; reflect the core principles of western foreign
policy; and incorporate lessons learned;</span>
</li>
<li class="c1 li-bullet-0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin-left: 36pt; padding-bottom: 12pt; padding-left: 0pt; padding-top: 12pt; text-align: left;">
<span class="c7 c2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Our professional concerns were overruled by political and ideological
considerations;</span>
</li>
<li class="c1 li-bullet-0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin-left: 36pt; padding-bottom: 12pt; padding-left: 0pt; padding-top: 12pt; text-align: left;">
<span class="c7 c2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt; vertical-align: baseline;">We are obliged to do everything in our power on behalf of our countries
and ourselves to not be complicit in one of the worst human catastrophes
of this century...</span>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
Their concerns include the obvious: the unboundedness of the killing of
civilians perpetrated by the Israeli Defense Forces, both by weaponry leading
to tens of thousands of deaths and by the deliberate blocking of aid,
condemning thousands more to starvation and disease; and the risk run by the
European, UK, and US governments of being accomplices in grave violations of
international law, war crimes, and possible ethnic cleansing or genocide. But
I'd also want to single out the following points, which I've been emphasizing
in my own writing since Israel's initial response to the terrible massacres of
October 7, and which get less attention:
</p>
<ul class="c9 lst-kix_ghk42z3ywg8k-0 start" style="font-family: Roboto, arial, sans, sans-serif; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<li class="c1 li-bullet-0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin-left: 36pt; padding-bottom: 12pt; padding-left: 0pt; padding-top: 12pt; text-align: left;">
<span class="c7 c2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Israel's military operations have not contributed to its goal of
releasing all hostages and is putting their well-being, lives and release
at risk;</span>
</li>
<li class="c1 li-bullet-0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin-left: 36pt; padding-bottom: 12pt; padding-left: 0pt; padding-top: 12pt; text-align: left;">
<span class="c7 c2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Israel's military operations have disregarded all important
counterterrorism expertise gained since 9/11; and that the operation has
not contributed to Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas and instead has
strengthened the appeal of Hamas, Hezbollah and other negative
actors;</span>
</li>
<li class="c1 li-bullet-0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin-left: 36pt; padding-bottom: 12pt; padding-left: 0pt; padding-top: 12pt; text-align: left;">
<span class="c7 c2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt; vertical-align: baseline;">The ongoing military operation will be detrimental not just for Israel’s
own security but also regional stability; the risk of wider wars is also
negatively impacting stated security objectives of our
governments...</span>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
The Israeli prime minister and IDF continue to assert that they aim to bring
all the hostages home, clearly a legitimate and desirable aim, but they
continue to conduct operations in a way that ensures that this will not
happen. It's obvious that the more successful they are in bombarding Hamas
hiding places, the greater the likelihood that they will kill Israeli hostages
themselves. Indeed a good number have already been
<a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/families-of-hostages-held-in-gaza-storm-israels-parliament-demanding-deal-for-release">confirmed</a>
killed in IDF bombardments along with the three escaping hostages shot dead in
spite of their white flag, though I don't know what the number is, since it's
not public. It's equally obvious that their Hamas captors won't surrender them
unless they're given an incentive to do so; you can't just say, "Give them
back now, and we'll kill you all afterwards." It's understandable that Israel
would not want to let any of the Hamas fighters go, but it's what they'll have
to do if they want all the hostages back, just as they let the PLO leadership
flee to Tunisia in 1982. If they've decided to sacrifice the hostages in the
name of total victory, they should stop pretending they haven't.
</p>
<p>
Some people seem to believe the only important lesson we needed to learn from
9/11 was the one of the Iraq fiasco—don't stage your war in the wrong
country—which is clearly irrelevant to Israel (though I sometimes think their
fixation on Iran as the origin of all evil is pretty similar to the PNAC
obsession with Saddam Hussein), but the US and its allies were making terrible
mistakes long before the buildup to the Iraq war. The first was the mass
surveillance and oppression unleashed <i>in</i> the United States on Arab
Americans and Arab immigrants and eventually anybody wearing a turban, without
regard to religion or origin, amounting to the criminalization of an entire
faith group in defiance of the 14th Amendment right to equal protection. The
invasion of Afghanistan soon afterwards was a doubling down in this ethos of
collective punishment—failing to target the actual Qa'eda perpretrators in
their mountain redoubt and attacking an entire country, bringing down its
government, instead, and launching a completely unnecessary 20-year war.
</p>
<p>
Israel denies having any idea of collective punishment (as did the W. Bush
administration), but the extreme violence and cruelty of their behavior belies
this, as does
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/09/netanyahu-rejected-ceasefire-for-hostages-deal-in-gaza-sources-say">Netanyahu's refusal</a>
to entertain Hamas proposals for hostage release in the weeks before the
ground invasion began on October 27. The intransigence displayed by the prime
minister and IDF has indeed made Israel less secure. The corrupt and
reactionary Hamas organization, which had a public approval rating of 36% in
Gaza in polling released October 6, now has majority support in Gaza and the
West Bank, where serious fighting is taking place, abetted by armed Jewish
settlers in the West Bank who are no less terrorist than the Muslim terrorists
are. Israel is losing such friends as it has in the neighborhood, notably in
Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and of course among Democrats in the United States,
where a genuine revolution has been taking place. And EU, US, and UK are becoming less secure too:</p>
<ul class="c9 lst-kix_n3kur2x5mqxx-0 start" style="font-family: Roboto, arial, sans, sans-serif; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><li class="c1 li-bullet-0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin-left: 36pt; padding-bottom: 12pt; padding-left: 0pt; padding-top: 12pt; text-align: left;"><span class="c2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine
their ability to stand up for freedom, justice, and human rights globally
and weaken our efforts to rally international support for Ukraine and to
counter malign actions by Russia, China and Iran...</span></li></ul>
<p>Shoutout, on that point, to President Joe Biden, who has consistently articulated most of these points, most recently in his welcome executive order placing sanctions on the terroristic behavior of some West Bank settlers, as <a href="https://theracket.news/p/biden-good-thing-re-israel">Jonathan Katz</a> writes</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Lora, Palatino, "Book Antiqua", Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Lora, Palatino, "Book Antiqua", Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px;">behavior that sounds like the stories my grandparents told about the Cossacks who attacked their family </span><a class="link" href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/shtetl-in-jewish-history-and-memory/?utm_source=theracket.news&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=biden-does-a-good-thing-re-israel" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; color: #bf1e2d; font-family: Lora, Palatino, "Book Antiqua", Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">shtetls</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Lora, Palatino, "Book Antiqua", Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px;"> in the Russian Pale of Settlement: driving into the Palestinian hamlet of Susiya on a tractor and, according to the </span><i style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Lora, Palatino, "Book Antiqua", Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px;">New York Times, “</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Lora, Palatino, "Book Antiqua", Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px;">participated in the destruction of olive trees, crops and water wells, prompting residents to flee the village.”</span> </blockquote><p></p><p>He continues to believe nothing can be gained by his threatening to cut off Israel's access to US weaponry unless he has the means to carry it out, using the word "genocide", or publicly attacking Netanyahu, but continues to work assiduously for the things that might do some good to the situation: the cessation of hostilities (he won't call it a "cease-fire"), the delivery of fuel, water, food, and medicine to the Gazan population, the freeing of hostages, and the establishment at long last of the long-promised Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, goals largely shared by the international authors of today's Declaration:</p><ul class="c9 lst-kix_n3kur2x5mqxx-0 start" style="font-family: Roboto, arial, sans, sans-serif; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><li class="c1 li-bullet-0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin-left: 36pt; padding-bottom: 12pt; padding-left: 0pt; padding-top: 12pt; text-align: left;"><span class="c2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">Hold Israel, like all actors, accountable to international humanitarian and human rights standards applied elsewhere and to forcefully respond to attacks against civilians, as we are doing in our support to the Ukrainian people; this includes demanding immediate and full implementation of the recent </span><span class="c2 c14" style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none;"><a class="c8" href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1706889096444273&usg=AOvVaw1YgvMTGDoYjbMZoDgotj0X" style="text-decoration: inherit;">order of the International Court of Justice</a></span><span class="c11" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: 700;">;</span></li><li class="c1 li-bullet-0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin-left: 36pt; padding-bottom: 12pt; padding-left: 0pt; padding-top: 12pt; text-align: left;"><span class="c7 c2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Use all leverage available - including a halt to military support - to secure a lasting ceasefire and full humanitarian access in Gaza and a safe release of all hostages; and</span></li><li class="c1 li-bullet-0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin-left: 36pt; padding-bottom: 12pt; padding-left: 0pt; padding-top: 12pt; text-align: left;"><span class="c7 c2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Develop a strategy for lasting peace that includes a secure Palestinian state and guarantees for Israel’s security, so that an attack like 7 October and an offensive on Gaza never happen again.</span></li></ul>
<p>Stress on the "international", it's not something Biden can do by himself.</p>
<p><br /></p>
<p></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-27896553412677318082024-01-26T19:43:00.001-05:002024-01-26T19:43:23.555-05:00Bidenomics Works<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ew6i1AVfQvXppOBHGw0WX4X4XpuAap5SzUAS5g6MZXVAeYYyZ-Q_5xa_qZ59t_8-_cby5L-ShQkLMswpz32bvPKW03nZALYT96ssuInArvVLkcPV8dvZo6YVN7pUbGnJXiGL4GzQzRq_X1UasXiibIPd3pDI76JmRYf5hPgO3NDIDAiI2t-NMxYOk2m2/s630/e22ce306d3df9877649e152ba39d52dc.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="630" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ew6i1AVfQvXppOBHGw0WX4X4XpuAap5SzUAS5g6MZXVAeYYyZ-Q_5xa_qZ59t_8-_cby5L-ShQkLMswpz32bvPKW03nZALYT96ssuInArvVLkcPV8dvZo6YVN7pUbGnJXiGL4GzQzRq_X1UasXiibIPd3pDI76JmRYf5hPgO3NDIDAiI2t-NMxYOk2m2/s320/e22ce306d3df9877649e152ba39d52dc.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Philipp Plein's Billionaire clothing line, via <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/billionaire-men-fall-2023-114246518.html">Yahoo Sports</a>. </td></tr></tbody></table><p><a href="https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-25-2024">Heather Cox Richardson</a> puts together a couple of things I really should have put together myself: Bidenomics, seen as a definitive turn from Reagan-era neoliberalism, and the amazing character of the US economy at the moment, as reflected in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/business/economy/economy-recession-soft-landing.html">current numbers</a> on growth, unemployment, and consumer spending:</p><blockquote><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;">with the election of Republican president Ronald Reagan, lawmakers claimed that concentrating wealth on the “supply side” of the economy would enable wealthy investors and businessmen to manage the economy more efficiently than was possible when the government meddled, and the resulting economic growth would make the entire country more prosperous. </p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;">The problem was that this system never produced the economic boom it promised. Instead, it moved money dramatically upward and hollowed out the American middle class while leaving poorer Americans significantly worse off. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;">When they took office, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris rejected “supply side” economics and vowed to restore buying power to the demand side of the economy: ordinary Americans. They invested in manufacturing, infrastructure, small businesses, and workers’ rights. And now, after years in which pundits said their policies would never work, the numbers are in. The U.S. economy is very strong indeed, and at least some voters who have backed Republicans for a generation are noticing, as United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain made clear yesterday when the union made a strong and early endorsement of President Biden.</p></blockquote><p>It's not just a matter of steady and responsible stewardship, and it's not just the way inflation was tamed and a "soft landing" achieved when most of the economists were predicting a recession. It's the whole damn ocean liner starting to turn around. It's plausibly an answer to the question Brad DeLong was asking on <a href="https://braddelong.substack.com/p/commenting-yet-again-on-martin-wolf">Wednesday</a>:</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: snow; color: #683e3e; font-family: Spectral, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;"></p><blockquote><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: snow; color: #683e3e; font-family: Spectral, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;">The problem is that nobody likes neoliberalism. And perhaps that problem is raised to critical mass by the fact that nobody is putting forward a clearly superior alternative. So nobody will be happy doing what Martin [Wolf] suggests.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: snow; color: #683e3e; font-family: Spectral, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;">But is there a better alternative? Right now I do not see one. So I think we are stuck.</p></blockquote><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: snow; color: #683e3e; font-family: Spectral, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;"></p><p>It's what I thought I saw when the Biden White House first announced the Build Back Better program in March 2021, and I saw it in light of Biden's collaboration with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Warren's economists Saez and Zucman, turning his back on "market solutions" in favor of industrial planning focused on defense against climate change, and massive spending balanced by taxation of the wealthy: <a href="https://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2021/03/reconciliation-ii-continued.html">as I wrote</a>,</p><blockquote><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 16px;">You notice what's missing from this picture? Carbon tax, for one thing, and cap 'n' trade mechanisms, They're going to <i>spend</i> money on developing the electric cars and creating the mass transit systems and building the charging stations everywhere. They're going to <i>spend</i> money, raised from people earning over $400,000 a year, on retrofitting buildings, rather than give landlords tax incentives to do it themselves. They're talking about $700 billion in savings over the ten-year period by getting pharmaceutical companies to lower the prices Medicare pays for prescription drugs. It's the market solutions, precisely, that are missing from this plan; the Biden administration is contemplating central planning on a de Gaulle or Mitterand scale. </span></blockquote><p>This wasn't happening because Biden had shuffled down the Overton Corridor to get to the other side of its window, or abandoned his identity as a Moderate to become a Progressive; it was because he's a gifted politician, an artist of the possible as the saying goes, who saw an opportunity, in the devastation of Covid and worry about climate change, to do something really memorable.</p><p>What we got in the end of the process, after the intervention of Senators Manchin and Sinema, in the form of the Rescue America and "Inflation Reduction" Acts, was of course a lot less spectacular. Still and all! The additional taxation of the very wealthy was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act">kind of indirect</a></p><ul style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; list-style-image: url("/w/skins/Vector/resources/skins.vector.styles/images/bullet-icon.svg?d4515"); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px;"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Prescription drug price reform to lower prices, including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescription_drug_prices_in_the_United_States#Solutions" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Prescription drug prices in the United States">Medicare negotiation of drug prices</a> for certain drugs (starting at 10 new ones per year by 2026, increasing to more than 20 additional ones per year<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-KFF_2022_36-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act#cite_note-KFF_2022-36" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[35]</a></sup> by 2029)<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Sachs_2022_37-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act#cite_note-Sachs_2022-37" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[36]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Cutler_p=e223630_38-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act#cite_note-Cutler_p=e223630-38" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[37]</a></sup> and rebates from drug makers who <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Price gouging">price gouge</a> – $281<span class="nowrap" style="text-wrap: nowrap;"> </span>billion<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-:7_7-1" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act#cite_note-:7-7" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[7]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Sachs_2022_37-1" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act#cite_note-Sachs_2022-37" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[36]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Cutler_p=e223630_38-1" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act#cite_note-Cutler_p=e223630-38" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[37]</a></sup></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Imposing a selective 15% corporate minimum tax rate for companies with higher than $1<span class="nowrap" style="text-wrap: nowrap;"> </span>billion of annual financial statement income – $222<span class="nowrap" style="text-wrap: nowrap;"> </span>billion</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Increased tax enforcement – $181<span class="nowrap" style="text-wrap: nowrap;"> </span>billion<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-:7_7-2" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act#cite_note-:7-7" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[7]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-:3_39-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act#cite_note-:3-39" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[38]</a></sup></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Imposing a 1% excise tax on <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_buybacks" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Stock buybacks">stock buybacks</a> – $74<span class="nowrap" style="text-wrap: nowrap;"> </span>billion</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">2-year extension of the limitation on excess business losses – $53 billion<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-:7_7-3" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act#cite_note-:7-7" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[7</a>]</sup></li></ul><p>but it's a lot of money, $738 billion in deficit reduction, paid in by Pharma, the richest corporations, individual tax dodgers like Donald Trump (that's why Republicans are so determined to stop the "<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/31/irs-is-not-hiring-an-army-of-auditors-whats-really-happening.html">87,000 new IRS agents</a>"—they're lying about the bill, of course, but the fear of the bill among their donors is genuine).</p><p>And it offers things we really need.</p><p>It's nowhere near enough, and yet it has, as Cox was saying, had a big effect. It hasn't really reduced inequality, but it's made a lot of hard lives somewhat easier. It's also offered serious evidence, as we see, that a demand-side approach to economic management led by progressive taxation and progressive spending can be very good for an economy (as it was between 1945 and 1980.</p><p>And it's only a down payment. There's so much more that could be done, from renewing the fully funded Child Tax Credit that lifted so many kids out of poverty in 2022-23 (<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-new-child-tax-credit-deal-is-really-a-safety-net-deal-and-by-that-measure-it-is-only-a-start/">something like that</a> but on a much more modest scale is likely coming out of the current Senate negotiation) is probably coming back soon but the whole thing could be restored. A couple of hundred billion dollars in could be clawed back from the very rich under current law, but taxing unrealized capital gains for the rich could net <i><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/billionaires-tax-biden_n_65971f6ce4b0912833af6d32">$8.5 trillion</a></i>. Biden and Harris are great, but we really need a better Congress. Vote and donate Democratic.</p><p><br /></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-30591792151413469852024-01-25T20:25:00.003-05:002024-01-25T20:25:59.472-05:00War on Reality<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjljptOU1WA6ONXe04wUFFg0dQJmU0WCjSgNSfPC5lnzVG7DYWBnTYE3lWbanjJl3ViiKmmpcfQKXIHOV4qAq2LV79MaYk684QK2ArMgBAi3SePmrq3GI7qZCORLndZMp-rdOmW4nObngbpC-xDNQA86fHY5tG94qr64JEsQX67_QfA5pR98Yprz2g0NDx9/s832/2022_8$largeimg_995893797.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="832" data-original-width="489" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjljptOU1WA6ONXe04wUFFg0dQJmU0WCjSgNSfPC5lnzVG7DYWBnTYE3lWbanjJl3ViiKmmpcfQKXIHOV4qAq2LV79MaYk684QK2ArMgBAi3SePmrq3GI7qZCORLndZMp-rdOmW4nObngbpC-xDNQA86fHY5tG94qr64JEsQX67_QfA5pR98Yprz2g0NDx9/w235-h400/2022_8$largeimg_995893797.png" width="235" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">6th-grade journalist Sarfaraz, of Jharkhand state, via <a href="https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/trending/jharkhand-student-turns-reporter-to-expose-sorry-state-of-school-video-goes-viral-419129#top">TribuneIndia</a>. </td></tr></tbody></table><p>A goodhearted little story on <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/01/22/1226019238/a-visit-to-one-florida-school-where-mindfulness-is-helping-youngsters-succeed">NPR</a> the other morning, reported by Pien Huang, about an elementary school in Tampa Bay with a substantial number of unhoused students, and a mindfulness program:</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; float: none; font-family: NPRSerif, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.36px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto 1.17647em; max-width: 680px; padding: 0px 15px; position: static; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;">HUANG: Sullivan Elementary School is a public school. It partners with a local nonprofit called Metropolitan Ministries which supports poor and homeless families in Tampa Bay. Principal McMeen says many of the students come from the homeless shelter across the street, and they're dealing with serious stressors outside of school.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; float: none; font-family: NPRSerif, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.36px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto 1.17647em; max-width: 680px; padding: 0px 15px; position: static; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;">[PRINCIPAL] MCMEEN: Students experience these traumas of which sometimes they don't have control over. While we have them, what do we have control over? It's those few moments to say, OK, take that hurt, take that pain, let's figure out how we can release it.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; float: none; font-family: NPRSerif, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.36px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto 1.17647em; max-width: 680px; padding: 0px 15px; position: static; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;">HUANG: Research shows that chronic stress can shrink the brain, especially the parts that play a role in learning and memory, and that mindfulness helps reduce that stress. It's now 8:50 in the morning. Principal McMeen takes us to the second and third-grade classroom, where a mindfulness session plays over the loudspeaker.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; float: none; font-family: NPRSerif, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.36px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto 1.17647em; max-width: 680px; padding: 0px 15px; position: static; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;">UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Breathing in and out. Placing the hands on my heart. Repeating to yourself, I have the power to make wise choices.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; float: none; font-family: NPRSerif, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.36px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto 1.17647em; max-width: 680px; padding: 0px 15px; position: static; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;">UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: I have the power to make wise choices.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; float: none; font-family: NPRSerif, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.36px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto 1.17647em; max-width: 680px; padding: 0px 15px; position: static; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;">HUANG: The transformation is amazing. Seventeen rambunctious kids are now settled at their desks. Their eyes are closed, and today's session is about forgiveness.</p><p>I was enchanted with it until an unwelcome thought showed up: that there are people who would want to destroy it, for one reason or another, maybe for the same reason they've objected to school yoga, because mindfulness is the property of a religion that's not "Judeo-Christian" and it might endanger the children's souls; it might be some kind of Satanic plot.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Not that there's anything ostensibly religious, let alone particularly Hindu or Buddhist, in the <a href="https://innerexplorer.org/">Inner Explorer</a> platform or other manifestations of a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program; in fact it's fairly dripping with scientific concepts and <a href="https://web.innerexplorer.org/compass/research">research publications</a> and <a href="https://web.innerexplorer.org/compass/research">empirical claims</a> along the lines of</p><p></p><blockquote>[a] study showed students who were in the Inner Explorer intervention condition significantly increased their overall grade point averages (GPAs) by 29% in School A and 9.8% in School B, and increased their math grades by 27.9% in School A and 18% in School B. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds, particularly English Language Learners, benefitted from the intervention, which may help ease these students' pressure of growing up with chronic socioeconomic stressors. This study also collected data on teacher stress and well-being, showing a 43% reduction in stress and a 47% improvement in trait mindfulness.</blockquote><p></p><p>but mindfulness is a meditation technique, and it comes from those places. It's <i>foreign</i>, and it's not how we bring <i>our</i> children up.</p><p>And probably <i>leftist</i>. To the folks at NPR, there is absolutely nothing political about this story—it's just about education, and taking care of kids. But to the rightwinger, it's full of triggers: it's a public school spending taxpayer money, for one thing (Inner Explorer materials don't come for free), and it's about lavishing luxuries on the poor and unhoused, people whose lives have been blighted by shiftlessness and indiscipline, that is by their own fault, getting what they deserve, and probably foreigners as well (homeless children in Florida are among the most victimized <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/news/2022/02/07/child-immigrants-at-tampa-bay-shelters-caught-up-in-state-federal-squabble/">victims of DeSantis feud with the Biden administration</a>), and as I was saying meditation is foreign too.</p><p>Which is why they think NPR, along with all sorts of exceedingly sober and responsible news outlets, is a socialist plot. It's to do with that "reality-based community", as somebody (probably Karl Rove) once called it, of people who believe you can learn what's going on by examining the evidence; to which both the journalists and most of the political left or "center-left" belong, together with all kinds of normal people leading their normal lives, and even some old-fashioned conservatives, but not the bulk of the 21st-century political right, which is committed in the paranoid spirit to "creating our own reality," and letting the evidence take care of itself.</p><p>Last time I was <a href="https://yastreblyansky.substack.com/p/reality-based-communities">weighing in on the subject</a> of the reality-based community, in August, I was most interested in clarifying the class difference within it, between the view-from-nowhere journalists and the politically engaged us, such as garden-variety Biden voters:</p><blockquote><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: #f2f2e3; color: #58584a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;">
The high-end journalists and opinionists think Biden voters are basically the same as them, because they have a very clear idea of why a person might decide to vote for Biden—many of them do it themselves, as I was saying; because they think Democrats sound smart, and foreigners like them, and Republicans sound weird, and Trump is disgusting, and they have lots of gay friends and wish they had some Black ones, and they loved <em>Succession.</em> Probably there’s some particular policy agenda they like, on abortion or the junior high history syllabus, or the preservation of the earth. They’re not exactly ignorant.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: #f2f2e3; color: #58584a; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;">But they all went to high-end sleepaway colleges and finished in four years, and did their high-end internships, and got their high-end jobs, and they’re the Coastal Élite Senators Hawley and Cruz keep sneering at, just as much as Hawley and Cruz are themselves, and most of us are really not. Graduates of the top 12 colleges constitute less than 1% of the total number of college graduates in the US, and that’s not enough to elect a president.</p></blockquote><p>On the other hand, we do have important things in common: the journalists really do have that idea that good reporting can <i>discover</i> reality, and reality can make a good story, and they really work on it accordingly, and that leads us to have a certain amount of genuine confidence in the reporting, and a willingness to use it, rightly, in forming our own opinions about reality. We have a good idea of how reporting is done, and fact checking, and it's pretty trustworthy—even in the news sections of the Wall Street Journal.</p><p>But to the rightwingers of the create-our-own-reality world, as Colbert said, "reality has a liberal bias," and it just makes them mad: "Why can't you report both sides?" And this upsets the reporters, to think they're suspected of violating the sacred rules of objectivity they learned in J-school, so they work very hard to accommodate them, weakening their stories, and that just makes <i>us</i> mad (and even a little paranoid, as we work to guess who every anonymous source in a given news item is working for so we can calculate how much credence to give it), without appeasing the rightwingers at all. And they'll keep crying "Fake news!" and accusing the papers of belonging to an international conspiracy, as the war on reality continues.</p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-7269557982128863962024-01-22T12:23:00.004-05:002024-01-22T12:23:39.819-05:00Burdens: Postscript<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5myJEiE2IDQSV-oE_yOaLCRxZtmcEUOvYGHCokWL1kCUO6D7OAVwSXXX1nD6VsxVg6E8BWc6q5ctHRaeArBeMqZetHCJUREW-RP-KKKn2fUgM3QzhPnnLvvLCcoomFDuIzJ7gDU_ULxdQPabPI3RZN2hmWUJlZksOR0JPgkmHYEulXEjwHjdoOXTP97KP/s984/6157.jpg.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="984" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5myJEiE2IDQSV-oE_yOaLCRxZtmcEUOvYGHCokWL1kCUO6D7OAVwSXXX1nD6VsxVg6E8BWc6q5ctHRaeArBeMqZetHCJUREW-RP-KKKn2fUgM3QzhPnnLvvLCcoomFDuIzJ7gDU_ULxdQPabPI3RZN2hmWUJlZksOR0JPgkmHYEulXEjwHjdoOXTP97KP/w305-h400/6157.jpg.webp" width="305" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Black-figure amphora ca. 510 B.C.E., now in the British Museum: Sisyphus pushes his boulder up a slope using his arms and a knee while Hades, Persephone, and Hermes look on. <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/sisyphus/#google_vignette">Via</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />
<p>
After I posted a
<a href="https://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2024/01/burdens.html">piece</a>
yesterday on the David Brooks column on administrative burdens, Mr.
Administrative Burden himself, Don Moynihan, published a
<a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/donmoynihan/p/what-david-brooks-gets-wrong-about">commentary on his Substack</a>—on Brooks, not on me, fortunately, and a different kind of piece, but
certainly more important than the thing I wrote. And somewhat fairer to
Brooks, perhaps, and making the point that I originally got from him and his
colleagues in a different tone. Also, on the subject of how Brooks sees DEI as
a "dangerous ideology":
</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;">
<span style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0;">Let's just pause for a moment to reflect upon how quickly and
easily </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/20/us/dei-woke-claremont-institute.html" rel="" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0;">the far right has succeeded</a><span style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0;"> in persuading moderate voices that offices who dedicated to the
values of diversity, equity, and inclusion are promoting a “dangerous
ideology.” It is seemingly so self-evident that no evidence is
needed.</span>
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;">
Brooks also bemoans administrators and managers “doing things like designing
anti-harassment trainings, writing corporate mission statements, collecting
data and managing “systems.”” Let's assume that Brooks and many others value
harassment trainings at zero. The evidence on the efficacy of such trainings
is, at best, mixed. But those other tasks seem important. Having a clear
mission, having data that tells you how well you are doing, and functional
“systems” (let's say an IT system) matter a lot to organizational
success!
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
I also really wish I had gotten into one big thing involving the presidential
campaign: the question of whether Trump, the traditional Republican hater of
red tape and bureaucracy and overregulation, will do anything to reduce
administrative burden in a second term, should voters give him one:
</p>
<blockquote><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 var(--size-20) 0;">
<span style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0;">if [Trump voters] are angry about bureaucracy, will they be served by
Trumpian solutions? Probably not. Such solutions include not
just </span><a href="https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/a-tangible-thing-you-can-do-today" rel="" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0;">massive politicization</a><span style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0;"> that will reduce the quality of public services. Based on Trump’s
record, we know that he will directly impose more bureaucracy, by, for
example:</span>
</p>
<ul><li>
<span color="var(--print_on_web_bg_color, var(--color-primary))" face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; font-size: 19px;"><a href="https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/a-tangible-thing-you-can-do-today">massive politicization</a> will lead to a terrified bureaucracy, unable to make the smallest
decisions without the say-so of political appointees. It is a recipe for
burdens.</span>
</li>
<li><span color="var(--print_on_web_bg_color, var(--color-primary))" face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; font-size: 19px;">Deconstructing parts of the government whose job it is to stop citizens from
being scammed: this included changing the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/26/17008864/trump-cfpb-mulvaney-investor-consumer-protections">mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau</a>, or refusing to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2020/10/20/judge-slams-devos-for-blanket-denials-of-student-loan-forgiveness-cites-irreparable-harm-to-borrowers/?sh=1976f6d15d2c">offer citizens the help</a> they were legally entitled to having been ripped off by private higher
education institutions.</span></li><li><span color="var(--print_on_web_bg_color, var(--color-primary))" face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; font-size: 19px;">Introducing administrative burdens in the social safety net - Trump signed an
executive order calling for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-crux-of-republican-policy-make-public-services-harder-to-use/2019/01/28/9e9d4b94-1f66-11e9-8e21-59a09ff1e2a1_story.html">adding work requirements</a> to any social program. When this was applied to Medicaid, the
results <a href="https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/get-in-loserswe-are-tanking-the-us">were disastrous</a>, leading to eligible people losing benefits because of the red tape involved
in documenting work, and generating no labor market benefits.</span></li><li><span color="var(--print_on_web_bg_color, var(--color-primary))" face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; font-size: 19px;">Reducing capacity in government to benefit industry or those who don’t want
to pay taxes - for example, Trump and other Republicans have opposed badly
needed investments in IRS capacity that have improved customer service and
allowed the IRS to pilot a free tax filing system. Trump wants you to pay
Turbotax, and spend more time fruitlessly trying to get an IRS employee on the
phone.</span></li></ul></blockquote>
<p>He'll definitely make it worse.</p>
<p><br /></p>
<p></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-19386779193232393052024-01-21T18:37:00.001-05:002024-01-21T18:37:42.383-05:00Burdens<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4elFhbkTmrdhJ5Y7Ey-JvCSI-3zpe2H42OCMw59pGM131Kum0CGAKaln2mAuy5Rj_LNkYKEzgrrNC_BZIsoCN9b4VRtDuikYS-BeoZFnpnLGp43VLSRjDYk1dC2YzUjE9YHmyECVKu-FA3vgJ5Fw0kHBA6doFalyN2cKquCc38aYX0YcxgQkch3VuE56B/s909/slow230927-1.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="909" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4elFhbkTmrdhJ5Y7Ey-JvCSI-3zpe2H42OCMw59pGM131Kum0CGAKaln2mAuy5Rj_LNkYKEzgrrNC_BZIsoCN9b4VRtDuikYS-BeoZFnpnLGp43VLSRjDYk1dC2YzUjE9YHmyECVKu-FA3vgJ5Fw0kHBA6doFalyN2cKquCc38aYX0YcxgQkch3VuE56B/w396-h400/slow230927-1.webp" width="396" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2023/09/28/csotd-the-boors-of-perception/#google_vignette">Jen Sorensen</a>, November 2023.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><p>Things David Brooks ("<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/18/opinion/american-life-bureaucracy.html">Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts</a>") is worried about:</p><blockquote><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">In a recent </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/good-people-the-new-discipline/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">essay</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;"> in Liberties Journal, [University of Virginia English professor Mark Edmundson] illustrates how administrators control campus life by citing the rules they have devised to govern how members of the campus community should practice sadomasochistic sex: “When parties consent to BDSM 3, or other forms of kink, nonconsent may be shown by the use of a safe word, whereas actions and words that may signal nonconsent in non-kink situations, such as force or violence, may be deemed signals of consent.” Do institutions really need to govern private life this minutely?</span></blockquote><p>Uh, yes. There are surely lots of overregulated campus activities, but you really do need to be careful about this one. Before somebody, as they say, gets hurt, I mean when they didn't actually want to.</p><p>Anyhow, Professor Edmundson's main complaint in the Liberties article seems to be that he is now expected to do some extra work when he's reporting on his year's academic activities:<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><br /><p></p><blockquote><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)" style="background-color: white; font-family: Garalda, georgia, serif; font-size: 19.2px; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; letter-spacing: -0.288px;">I had just learned that there would be a new aspect to our annual reports. We would be asked to tell our overlords how each one of our activities contributes to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Teaching? How did it advance DEI? Scholarship? How did it help speed DEI on its way? If you get an honor or an award, you are to say how it contributed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Outside consulting: did it do any DEI duty? And what does the university mean by Diversity, by Equity, by Inclusion? The university doesn’t say. There are no official definitions out there to consider. So I had a lot to tell my friend about administrative interference with academic freedom....</span></blockquote><p>At least I think that's what the essay is about, not campus BDSM regulation, from the part of the very long opening paragraph I can see without subscribing or accepting the offer of "two free articles per month" if I give them my email address, which I've decided I don't care to do with a magazine called "Liberties Journal" that publishes expensive-looking articles by Cass Sunstein, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Leon Wieseltier, I may get back to that. </p><p>And Brooks is writing about yet another thing, though he drops a poisoned mention of the DEI thing into the piece:<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNh055SgdtftFbAsCJl8TsDagayDpP5NRDqmm5KtJevwQab90EXj4HPAxcwzalSCpBOPltkm89FKh-5wVHgu3lG4VjOp5YAnFuMq8eUWvTpI7kzMJ9ASdo14NSttfrE5vHqp8UndghTUzOx-CPAvdhUgJ7kLeyrmIKXpfnwKux03tKWL8o7lsbZ8bXNTgh/s1014/Screenshot%202024-01-21%20at%202.52.04%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1014" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNh055SgdtftFbAsCJl8TsDagayDpP5NRDqmm5KtJevwQab90EXj4HPAxcwzalSCpBOPltkm89FKh-5wVHgu3lG4VjOp5YAnFuMq8eUWvTpI7kzMJ9ASdo14NSttfrE5vHqp8UndghTUzOx-CPAvdhUgJ7kLeyrmIKXpfnwKux03tKWL8o7lsbZ8bXNTgh/w400-h224/Screenshot%202024-01-21%20at%202.52.04%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>His real subject is the development of what Frankfurt School sociologists Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer were referring to in their 1944 <i>Dialectic of Enlightenment</i> as the "totally administered world" controlled by various agencies and institutions under the monopolistic conditions of late capitalism, as described by <a href="https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/adorno-on-late-capitalism">Deborah Cook</a>:</p><blockquote><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; font-family: "Crimson Pro", Baskerville, serif; font-size: 19.2px;">Observing the emergence of a new oligarchical ruling class in many Western states, Adorno argues that this class has disappeared ʻbehind the concentration of capitalʼ, which has reached such a ʻsize and acquired such a critical mass that capital appears as an institution, as an expression of the entire societyʼ [cite from Adorno's 1942 draft "Reflections on Class Structure"]. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; font-family: "Crimson Pro", Baskerville, serif; font-size: 19.2px;">Owing in part to the concentration of capital, then, the ruling class was becoming ʻanonymousʼ, making it much more difficult to identify those in control.</span><p></p><p></p></div></blockquote><p>Haha, just kidding, Brooks has no idea his idea is 80 years old and Marxist.</p><p>But the Marxism does emerge from the examples he cites, as in the case of healthcare, where administrative costs account for <a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2023/oct/high-us-health-care-spending-where-is-it-all-going">30% of the difference</a> in costs between the US and other OECD countries; half of that going to the private health insurance industry, and the other half to private providers' general administrative costs (and the immense salaries of executives who spend their time cadging donations off the rich), and quality reporting and accreditation through private agencies. (Other excess costs, as you know, come from US failure to control drug prices, and much higher salaries for doctors and nurses who must pay off crazy educational loans.)</p><p>The same goes for colleges and universities: Brooks writes,</p><blockquote><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">This situation is especially grave in higher education. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology now has </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulweinstein/2023/08/28/administrative-bloat-at-us-colleges-is-skyrocketing/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">almost eight times</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;"> as many nonfaculty employees as faculty employees. In the University of California system, the number of managers and senior professionals </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-20151011-story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">swelled</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;"> by 60 percent between 2004 and 2014. The number of tenure-track faculty members grew by just 8 percent.</span></blockquote><p>But nonfaculty employees <a href="https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics4_611300.htm">include</a> not just managers but financial drudges, IT workers, lab and field scientists, engineers and architects, counselors and social workers, librarians and ed tech workers, arts and sports and media people, healthcare professionals and support staff, campus security, and food service, all of which are really necessary to keep the places running. As for the article he cites on the Cal system (from 2015), it adds that
</p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 30px 0px;">Only about a quarter of the UC system’s budget is made up of “core fund” spending on the educational mission, they point out. The remainder encompasses everything else, including five medical centers that are more than self-supporting and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which helps bring in the billions of dollars in government grants and contracts that UC researchers attract each year.</p></blockquote><p>Plus of course most tertiary education has virtually stopped hiring tenure-track faculty because schools are so poor, and try to make do with low-paid adjuncts.</p><p>None of this is to suggest that over-administration and administrative burden aren't a problem in the US. They absolutely are problems. But not so much for tenured septuagenarian professors like Mark Edmundson getting forced to admit that he isn't doing anything for diversity, equity, and inclusion by leaving the spaces in the form blank, as if he cared. Or me trying to get a free look at an article in Liberties Journal, for that matter.</p><p>The problem is really for the victims of administration designed to prevent people, often members of minorities, from having access to benefits or enjoying their rights, as examined with reference to government in Pamela Herd's and Donald Moynihan's <i><a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/administrative-burden">Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means</a></i> (2018):</p><blockquote><span face="freight-text-pro, Georgia, "Times New Roman", "DejaVu Serif", serif" style="background-color: #f6f6f6; color: #565656; font-size: 18px;">Through in-depth case studies of federal programs and controversial legislation, the authors show that administrative burdens are the nuts-and-bolts of policy design. Regarding controversial issues such as voter enfranchisement or abortion rights, lawmakers often use administrative burdens to limit access to rights or services they oppose. For instance, legislators have implemented administrative burdens such as complicated registration requirements and strict voter-identification laws to suppress turnout of African American voters. Similarly, the right to an abortion [was, until <i>Dobbs</i>,] legally protected, but many states require women seeking abortions to comply with burdens such as mandatory waiting periods, ultrasounds, and scripted counseling. As Herd and Moynihan demonstrate, administrative burdens often disproportionately affect the disadvantaged who lack the resources to deal with the financial and psychological costs of navigating these obstacles.</span></blockquote><p>And the designers, of course, are Republicans, intent on punishing the poor and disadvantaged for having needs, with "work requirements", intrusive verification procedures, online documentation for people who may not have access to computers, making services hard to find and hard to find out about, and so on. David Brooks has no interest, of course, in such matters. He's too busy contemplating Professor Edmundson and his safe word (I'm guessing it's "academic freedom!").</p><p></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-35260019947790918902024-01-19T22:03:00.001-05:002024-01-21T00:25:03.538-05:00All My Trials<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6l-LtleEFIKhx7Yq0aWzgp-Fg6YYOY8gI7CecC_0exIq3F5vxvfnxgaT_DF-7jdJKXpr-LjyJYD4G-QigxIxO8P5_GkERh7lgajLd2HxINsO11cnnsPAy7IuNAJNfiNPtiOjQdR-dszHM5IgwmMoqouyD9-RDsU9l5cz6GxUm61lP-LdFt6R_Ej3YtI5z/s860/Screenshot%202024-01-19%20at%2012.38.26%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="860" data-original-width="820" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6l-LtleEFIKhx7Yq0aWzgp-Fg6YYOY8gI7CecC_0exIq3F5vxvfnxgaT_DF-7jdJKXpr-LjyJYD4G-QigxIxO8P5_GkERh7lgajLd2HxINsO11cnnsPAy7IuNAJNfiNPtiOjQdR-dszHM5IgwmMoqouyD9-RDsU9l5cz6GxUm61lP-LdFt6R_Ej3YtI5z/w381-h400/Screenshot%202024-01-19%20at%2012.38.26%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="381" /></a></div><br /><p>From Trump's <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-719/298125/20240118171750343_Trump%20v%20Anderson%20Petitioner%20Brief%20on%20the%20Merits.pdf">petitioner brief</a> to the Supreme Court re Trump's Colorado disqualification; I think it's pretty much the same as what the Minnesota Supreme Court decided in their version of the case, and it's what I've been saying since <a href="https://yastreblyansky.substack.com/p/hi-its-stupid-section-3">August</a>—Section 3 doesn't say insurrectionists should be kicked off the ballot, it says they can't hold the office.</p><p>That's what the text plainly says, and it's how the provision has historically been applied, most notably the only time it was applied between Reconstruction and Trump, in the Red Scare expulsion of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_L._Berger">Victor L. Berger</a> (Socialist-WI), who was convicted of espionage in 1919 over his opposition to World War I, subject of numerous editorials in his newspaper, the <i>Milwaukee Leader</i>, and given a 20-year sentence:<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;"></span></p><blockquote><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">Even though Berger was under indictment, the voters of Milwaukee once again elected him to the House of Representatives in </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1918" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="United States House of Representatives elections, 1918">1918</a><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">. When he arrived in Washington [after his trial and conviction in February 1919] to claim his seat, Congress formed a special committee to determine whether a convicted felon and war opponent should be seated as a member of Congress. On November 10, 1919, they concluded that he should not, and they declared the seat vacant,</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-27" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_L._Berger#cite_note-27" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[27]</a></sup><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;"> disqualifying him pursuant to Section 3 of the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution">Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution</a><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">.</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-28" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_L._Berger#cite_note-28" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[28]</a></sup></blockquote><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-28" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_L._Berger#cite_note-28" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;"></a></sup><p></p><p>He then ran again in the special election called to replace him, in December, and won that one as well, upon which the House refused to seat him and declared the seat vacant again.</p><p>Meanwhile he'd appealed his conviction, which was eventually overturned (in January 1921, sadly not on freedom of speech grounds—it was a bad time for the First Amendment—but because the judge, the famous Kenesaw Mountain Landis, should have been <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/255us22">disqualified</a> owing to his irrepressible prejudice against Germans and persons of German descent, including Berger, who was 18 when he came to the US with his parents from the Austrian empire in 1878, and spoke English with a strong accent).</p><p>But the main point is that he was <i>not</i> scratched from the ballot as an insurrectionist, in spite of his conviction, in two separate elections, including one <i>after</i> his official disqualification by Congress. The same goes, by the way, for Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, who was actually in prison for the same crime when he won 3.4% of the vote in the 1920 presidential election. Nobody ever thought of it until this past year.</p><p>Debs, incidentally, gave Berger the credit for converting him from a simple labor agitator to all-out socialist, when Berger came to visit him in his cell after he was jailed for participating in the 1894 Pullman strike:</p><p><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;"></span></p><blockquote><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">Books and pamphlets and letters from socialists came by every mail and I began to read and think and dissect the anatomy of the system in which workingmen, however organized, could be shattered and battered and splintered on a single stroke [...] It was at this time, when the first glimmerings of socialism were beginning to penetrate, that Victor L. Berger — and I have loved him ever since — came to Woodstock [prison], as if a providential instrument, and delivered the first impassioned message of socialism I had ever heard — the very first to set the wires humming in my system. As a souvenir of that visit there is in my library a volume of </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Das Kapital">Capital</a></i><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;"> by </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Karl Marx">Karl Marx</a><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">, inscribed with the compliments of Victor L. Berger, which I cherish as a token of priceless value.</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-14" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_L._Berger#cite_note-14" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[14]</a></sup></blockquote><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-14" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_L._Berger#cite_note-14" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;"></a></sup><p></p><p>The first 21st-century use of Section 3 also took it as involving holding an office, not running for it, when Cowboy For Trump Couy Griffin was kicked out of his position as a county commissioner in New Mexico for participating in the January 6 insurrection. As Trump certainly should be, if he gets reelected president (of course if he gets reelected Republicans in Congress will surely be able to stop him from getting kicked out).</p><p>But I'm betting he will be on the Colorado Republican primary ballot. For what it's worth. Not just that the fix is in with the Supreme Court—I'm not sure that it is, with Trump—but I think their interest above all is just to not be the ones who decide whether Trump was in an insurrection or not, as the authorities in Colorado and Maine found that he was. The easiest thing for them will be to say that Section 3 doesn't authorize state governments to make the decision, and the Supremes don't have to answer it; and I think that's what they'll do.</p><p>By the same token, I think they also won't want to be the ones who decide whether or not Trump has immunity in the January 6 charges, obvious thought it may be to you and me that he doesn't. I'm convinced after the DC circuit court officially finds that he doesn't, as they are bound to do (it's ridiculous to imagine any other outcome, and the opinion won't address any controversial issues, because we've known the answer since 1974.) the Supreme Court will let it go through the shadow docket, decline to hear it at all or issue an opinion or even tally the votes, and let the circuit court's decision stand. And the trial will be starting very close to the designated March 4 date. And we really can hope to see a conviction before the November polls.</p><p>Also incidentally, Berger was a great congressman, a democratic socialist and gradualist, though his ideas were too wild for the time, including getting rid of the presidential veto, abolishing the Senate, and the first ever bill in American history proposing a pension system for the aged. And nationalizing the radio broadcast spectrum, inspired by the <i>Titanic</i> sinking.</p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910925102347498027.post-15211877055747399172024-01-17T00:44:00.002-05:002024-01-17T13:59:37.650-05:00Ross Has an Insight<p><br /></p><p>Monsignor Ross Douthat, apostolic nuncio to 42nd St., seemed to be letting his inner Bill Kristol out for a spin over the weekend with this fantasy ("<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/13/opinion/desantis-trump-iowa-republicans.html">The DeSantis Campaign Is Revealing What Republican Voters Really Want</a>"):</p><blockquote><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">If Ron DeSantis surprises in Iowa and beyond, if he recovers from his long polling swoon and wins the Republican nomination, it will represent the triumph of a simple, intuitive, but possibly mistaken idea: That voters should be taken at their word about what they actually want from their leaders.</span></blockquote><p>Based on his own inquiries into what Republican voters wanted, which had led him to believe that a plurality of the party, maybe 40%, would really like to vote for somebody like Ron DeSantis, Trumpish in his style of appointing judges and managing the economy, and opposing "progressive cultural hegemony" fiercely but perhaps in a less annoying manner; though I don't know where he got his opinion that Trump had been managing the economy, as opposed to the TV personalities like Larry Kudlow and out-and-out cranks like Peter Navarro who stumbled into his path; and Douthat's research methods on public opinion may have left something to be desired:</p><blockquote><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">I talked to a lot of these kind of Republicans between 2016 and 2020 — not a perfectly representative sample, probably weighted too heavily toward Uber drivers and Catholic lawyer dads, but still enough to recognize a set of familiar refrains. These voters liked Trump’s policies more than his personality. They didn’t like some of his tweets and insults, so they mostly just tuned them out. They thought that he had the measure of liberals in a way that prior Republicans had not, that his take-no-prisoners style was suited to the scale of liberal media bias and progressive cultural hegemony.</span></blockquote><p>I assume the Catholic lawyers were Connecticut neighbors he met in church and school functions, assuming his kids and theirs were in the same parochial schools, and he didn't talk to the moms. No, that's not a representative sample, Ross.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>And while I'm up, Ross, <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ron-desantis-probably-didnt-turn-florida-red/">no</a>, DeSantis did not personally turn Florida from Purple to Blue (the process began before he was involved in politics, Trump arguably had more to do with it, and so for that matter did the state's hapless Democrats), and Democrat Donna Deegan got elected mayor of Jacksonville last May and <a href="https://www.mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2024/01/16/special-election-day-for-house-district-35-seat-in-osceola-and-orange">just today</a> Democrat Tom Keen captured an open seat in the Florida House, in a district divided between Osceola and Orange Counties. So the turnaround that began nationwide in 2018 and went kind of wild in 2023 has hit Florida too, just at the moment when DeSantis supposedly wrestled it in the other direction. </p><p>And no, he's not "more adept than Trump" at leaping into cultural battles, which is why <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4116964-the-memo-culture-war-battles-fail-to-deliver-for-desantis/">it doesn't do him any good</a>. He doesn't "pick fights" with major donors, he just <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/22/politics/ron-desantis-gop-donors-2024/index.html">doesn't like hanging out with them</a>, and that's one of the reasons they started losing faith <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/ron-desantis-donors-donald-trump-uncertainty-1234716875/">nearly a year ago</a>; and when it gets down to fistfights, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/fight-nearly-breaks-out-at-desantis-aligned-super-pac-meeting-198855237863">that</a>'s not doing him any good either. He came out of the fight with Bud Light <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/dylan-mulvaney-poll-ron-desantis-favorable-1812409">less popular</a> than Dylan Mulvaney, the transgender influencer who was helping to promote the beer, and he's been <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/desantis-takes-tone-disney-fight-moved/story?id=102267285">slinking away</a> from the war with Disney in recent months. His Covid response, with its <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/desantis-surgeon-general-joseph-ladapo-spreads-covid-lies-while-grand-jury-is-silent">irrationality</a>, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/22/politics/ron-desantis-gop-donors-2024/index.html">lies</a>, and <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/07/25/covid-vaccine-death-rates-republicans-democrats-study">thousands</a> of avoidable deaths may have been "exactly in tune with the party's mood", but it's not going to look good in a national campaign.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibpDukokIVAwdwPzyNkVJDK-GC4JDpGavedIpSnksf0x-WJNRIR75kTQ9eOiV4WejjPyNUMx4mFbo7wC24rgyv6kTKc4HaMvKhNwaR9K6HpguadNrl5h_nHoW5iFM0x3DGHyQjoOB9DTxdUPYrGDvoweq6Yu5jLdaIPh-Y3XM9McMBFoTOEUyKp5wdfIsW/s1402/Screenshot%202024-01-16%20at%209.27.25%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1402" data-original-width="1268" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibpDukokIVAwdwPzyNkVJDK-GC4JDpGavedIpSnksf0x-WJNRIR75kTQ9eOiV4WejjPyNUMx4mFbo7wC24rgyv6kTKc4HaMvKhNwaR9K6HpguadNrl5h_nHoW5iFM0x3DGHyQjoOB9DTxdUPYrGDvoweq6Yu5jLdaIPh-Y3XM9McMBFoTOEUyKp5wdfIsW/w361-h400/Screenshot%202024-01-16%20at%209.27.25%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="361" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I just realized this is a fantasy about race mixing: what they're afraid of is that the DNA might be "foreign", something that might "poison the blood of the country".</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Also, I don't know about the Catholic dads, but this is exactly the argument you've been making to sell DeSantis since <a href="https://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2021/04/fantasy-politics-league.html">April 2021</a>.</p><p>Anyway, it's like everything you could want from Trump with a Yale degree, Douthat thinks, which puts him in mind of the dull fiancé in a romcom (+10 points for referencing the Ralph Bellamy character in <i>His Girl Friday</i>), who gets dumped in act 3 because he's not magic, or</p><blockquote><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">the type of Generation X-er who pretends to be alienated and rebellious but actually has a settled marriage, a padded résumé, a strong belief in systems and arguments and plans — and a constant middle-aged annoyance at the more vibes-based style of his boomer elders and millennial juniors.</span></blockquote><p>That's what he's thinking, in fact (he was born in 1979, just at the end of the Gen X period, and I won't comment on whether I think his résumé is padded or not). He's a bit of a DeSantis himself, flirting with transgression and what voters actually want from their leaders might be quite different from what they say:</p><blockquote><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">The Republican Party in the Trump era has boasted a lot of Gen X leaders, from Cruz and Marco Rubio to Paul Ryan and Haley. But numerically and spiritually, the country belongs to the boomers and millennials, to vibes instead of plans.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">This might be especially true for a Republican Party that’s becoming more working-class, with more disaffected and lower-information voters, fewer intensely focused consumers of the news, less interest than the Democratic electorate in policy plans and litmus tests.</p></blockquote><p>It's all those damned workers, wouldn't you know it (mostly Republicans' wishful thinking, as I've often pointed out, but the newer GOPers, still typically Chamber of Commerce proprietors, are certainly less educated than they used to be), who don't comprehend the value of a Yale degree. </p><blockquote><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">the indictments were the ideal opportunity to break decisively for DeSantis — a figure who, whatever his other faults, seems very unlikely to stuff classified documents in his bathroom or pay hush money to a porn star.</p></blockquote><blockquote>
<p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">
But it doesn’t feel at all surprising that, instead, voters seem ready to break decisively for Trump. The prosecutions created an irresistible drama, a theatrical landscape of persecution rather than a quotidian competition between policy positions, a gripping narrative to join rather than a mere list of promises to back.</p></blockquote>
<p>And there he achieves a moment of genuine insight, it seems to me, which could have been about his Gen X self.<span> That's indeed why voters shouldn't be taken at their word about what they actually want from their leaders—and that includes you and me, though we think we're so smart: some of us know how to talk about policy positions, but everybody's a sucker for a story; everybody needs narrativium.</span></p><p><span>The big partisan difference at the present historical moment is between small-d democrats in search of a story where the protagonist is "the people" and authoritarians for whom it's a Big Man. I'm not going to be embarrassed about being an addict of narrativium, I'm going to be glad I'm on the right side. And, obviously, let policy play its part in the story, because policy is where the people can win, and that's how we small-d democrats roll.</span></p><p><span>Trump and the Trumpies on the one hand, Douthat and DeSantis on the other, have authoritarian stories to tell, but they're different in important ways: one, which has been developing through Trump's political career, is that the stakes for him are truly extraordinary, death in prison and the disassembly of the business enterprise on which he's labored half a century and the despoiling of his children's inheritances.</span></p><p>I think that's what Douthat dislikes about Trump—the reality of it. It's distasteful. He loves the trolling and insult comedy, he <i>prefers</i> it to policy, but he prefers it in a safe space, with Curtis Yarvin and Ben Shapiro living the wingnut welfare dream and playing at being intellectuals, arguing over what kind of monarch American needs. He likes DeSantis's attempt at a sports story, the college baseball star who grew up to be a politics star, where there aren't any real stakes. That's the Gen X aspect: he hates a story on Trump's appalling, risky scale.</p><p>That's where he ended up in yesterday's column after the caucus results came in ("<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/opinion/trump-iowa-desantis-haley.html">How Trump's Opponents Made Iowa Easy For Him</a>") and DeSantis was wiped out (I hear he's staying in the race in the hope that Trump's legal troubles will in fact do him in and make room for young Ron), completely losing control of his insight and yelling at DeSantis for letting the team down ("you should blame DeSantis, first, for botching a chance to clear the field early and for failing to adapt thereafter") and Haley for running at all ("not her voters so much as the big donors who sustained her and right-of-center media figures who have spent the past few months boosting her—for going all in on a candidate who clearly, clearly has less of a chance of winning a head-to-head battle with Trump than even the disappointing version of DeSantis"). It's not a real consolation, but maybe a good sign, that the Monsignor is going to hate the 2024 election, whatever happens.</p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0