Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Loose Tabs

This is an occasional collection of newsworthy links and comments, much less systematic than what I attempted in my late Speaking of Which posts. The new name comes from my extensive use of browser tabs. When I get around to cleaning up, I often find tabs opened to old articles I might want to comment on and/or refer back to. So these posts are mostly housecleaning, but may also serve as a very limited but persistent record of what 20+ years ago I started calling "the end of the American empire" and nowadays feels more like "the end of civilization." I collect these bits in a draft file, and flush them out when periodically. My previous one appeared 36 days ago, on September 14.

I rather arbitrarily rushed this out, partly because it had been so long that some of the old stories have started to fade — like Charlie Kirk and Jimmy Kimmel, in the new "Topical Stories" section — while others have taken significant turns. Back when I was doing Speaking of Which I had a routine of cycling through a series of websites and sorting out whatever I found. This isn't normally anywhere close to that systematic, with this time even less than usual. Another reason for doing it now is that I have better things to do this week, and I don't want the draft file hanging over my head. I figure I can add more if need be, and possibly revisit some bits, like I did ten days after my last one, in More Thoughts on Loose Tabs. No guarantee that I'll do that again, but it seems like there's always more to say.

Topical Stories

Sometimes stuff happens, and it dominates the news/opinion cycle for a few days or possibly several weeks. We might as well lead with it, because it's where attention is most concentrated. But eventually these stories will fold into the broader, more persistent themes of the following section.

Charlie Kirk: Right-wing activist, hustler, and media personality, shot and killed on September 10, his martyrdom quickly refashioned as an excuse to purge any critical discussion of the right. Wikipedia offers a comprehensive biography as well as a sampling of his views. He ran Turning Point USA, an organizing group reputed to be popular on college campuses and instrumental in getting the vote out for Trump -- one of many ways he was closely aligned with Trump (I'm tempted to say, like Ernst Röhm was aligned with Hitler, but less muscle and more mouth). He had a prominent talk radio program, and wrote several books:

  • Time for a Turning Point: Setting a Course Toward Free Markets and Limited Government for Future Generations, with Brent Hamachek (2016)
  • Campus Battlefield: How Conservatives Can WIN the Battle on Campus and Why It Matters (2018, forward by Donald Trump Jr)
  • The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future (2020)
  • The College Scam: How America's Universities Are Bankrupting and Brainwashing Away the Future of America's Youth (2022)
  • Right Wing Revolution: How to Beat the Woke and Save the West (2024)

Some more articles on Kirk:

  • Jeffrey St Clair [09-15] An occurrence in Orem: notes on the murder of Charlie Kirk. Much of this appeared in a Roaming Charges at the time, but here has been restructured for this one subject.

  • Kyle Chayka [09-17]: Charlie Kirk and Tyler Robinson came from the same warped online worlds: "The right-wing activist and his alleged assassin were both creatures of a digital ecosystem that rewards viral engagement at all costs."

  • Eric Levitz [09-20]: The comforting fiction that Charlie Kirk's killer was far-right: "Why some progressives lied to themselves about Tyler Robinson." Not a lot of good examples of "progressives" lying to themselves here (Heather Cox Richardson, Jimmy Kimmel, although few reports are detailed enough to tell). I see little value in trying to tag a label on a shooter, and much risk, of confusion or worse. But in general, shooting your opponents isn't a very left thing to do, while on the right it's both more common and more in tune with their ideology (inequality bolstered by power ultimately based on force) and custom (like their gun fetishism). But it's also likely that the more violent people on the right become, the more tempting their victims will find it to fight back in kind. When they do, that shouldn't suggest that their violence is somehow the consequence of left thinking — where inequality is seen as the key problem, and violence is opposed both on moral and political grounds — as opposed to a stray impulse from the broader American gun culture. I'd go so far as to say that if/when someone who identifies with the left shoots an alleged enemy of the left, that such a person is experiencing a (perhaps temporary) suspension of principles, not acting from them. I can even imagine scenarios where anti-right violence is reasonable — e.g., "self-defense" (which I reject as a right, where as with our "stand your ground" laws can easily be construed as a license to kill, but may accept as a mitigating factor, one rooted less in ideology than in our common human culture).

  • Katherine Kelaidis [09-24]: MAGA's first martyr: "The killing of Charlie Kirk could turn the movement into a faith that outlives Donald Trump. "As MAGA's first martyr, the myth being crafted around Kirk both mirrors that of earlier religions' martyrs while still bearing the unique marks of the MAGA faith."

  • Zack Beauchamp [09-24]: The right wants Charlie Kirk's death to be a "George Floyd" moment. Not that they want anyone to react quite like Kirk himself reacted to George Floyd's murder. Interview with Tanner Greer ("a conservative author and essayist who had written brilliantly about what Kirk meant to the right on his blog the Scholar's Stage"). This starts with a pretty thorough description of why Kirk mattered to the right ("second only to Donald Trump himself"). Beyond the media prowess, the grass roots organizing, and the networking, Greer claims him as a model: "an example of how this conservative national populist thing can be done without authoritarian measures and be very popular."

  • Steven Pinker [09-28]: The right's post-Kirk crackdown has a familiar mob logic.

  • Art Jipson [10-01]: Charlie Kirk and the making of an AI-generated martyr.

  • Alain Stephens [10-14]: The right wing desperately wants to make Charlie Kirk its MLK: "On Kirk's 'National Day of Remembrance,' white supremacists want to replace a tradition of justice with their own manufactured myth."

Jimmie Kimmel: His late-night show was suspended in response to orchestrated outrage over some speculation over Charlie Kirk's shooter, but reinstated (with numerous local stations blacked out) after a week or so. The suspension appears to have been triggered by the affiliates, which are often owned by right-wingers who jumped on this opportunity to exert their political preferences, but they did so in the context of inflammatory rhetoric by Trump's FCC chair. This goes to show that while acquiescence to fascism can be coerced, it's often just eagerly embraced by previously closeted sympathizers.

  • Zack Beauchamp [09-17] Let's be clear about what happened to Jimmy Kimmel: He "was just taken off the airwaves because the Trump administration didn't like what he had to say — and threatened his employer until they shut him up." Trump's agent here is FCC head Brendan Carr, who earned his appointment by writing the FCC section for Project 2025.

    Carr's threat should have been toothless. The FCC is prohibited by law from employing "the power of censorship" or interfering "with the right of free speech." There is a very narrow and rarely used exception for "news distortion," in which a broadcast news outlet knowingly airs false reports. What Kimmel did — an offhand comment based on weak evidence — is extremely different from creating a news report with the intent to deceive.

    But months before the shooting, Carr had begun investigating complaints under this exception against ABC and CBS stations, specifically allegations of anti-conservative bias. Stations had to take Carr's threat seriously — even though Carr himself had declared (in a 2024 tweet) that "the First Amendment prohibits government officials from coercing private parties into suppressing protected speech."

    Hours after Carr's Wednesday threat, Nexstar — the largest owner of local stations in America — suddenly decided that Kimmel's comments from two nights ago were unacceptable. Nexstar, it should be noted, is currently attempting to purchase one of its major rivals for $6.2 billion — a merger that would require express FCC approval.

  • Constance Grady [09-18] How Jimmy Kimmel became Trump's nemesis.

  • Jason Bailey [09-18] Jimmy Kimmel's cancellation is un-American: "Everyone concerned about free speech should be concerned about his show being pulled from the air."

  • Cameron Peters [09-18]: Trump's brazen attack on free speech: "How the Trump administration took Jimmy Kimmel off the air."

  • Jeet Heer [09-18]: Jimmy Kimmel's bosses sold us all out: "The mainstream media is complicit in the biggest attack on free speech since the McCarthy era. Kimmel's suspension is just the latest proof."

  • Adam Serwer [09-18]: The Constitution protects Jimmy Kimmel's mistake.

    What happened to Jimmy Kimmel is not about one comedian who said something he should not have said. The Trump administration and its enforcers want to control your speech, your behavior, even your public expressions of mourning. You are not allowed to criticize the president's associates. You do not even retain the right to remain silent; you must make public expressions of emotions demanded by the administration and its allies or incur its disfavor, which can threaten your livelihood.This is the road to totalitarianism, and it does not end with one man losing his television show.

  • Eric Levitz [09-19]: The right's big lie about Jimmy Kimmel's suspension: "the right believes that liberals are getting a taste of their own medicine."

  • Paul Starr [09-22]: Capture the media, control the culture? "Trump's attack on Jimmy Kimmel helps spotlight an even bigger problem."

  • Christian Paz [09-24]: Jimmy Kimmel's return showed the potential — and limits — of celebrity: "An emotional monologue, a takedown of Trump, and a victory for individual action." But note: "Sinclair and Nexstar are continuing their boycott of his show."

The right-wing war on free speech: The Kimmel suspension was just one headline in a much broader offensive.

  • Benjamin Mullin [09-15] Washington Post columnist says she was fired for posts after Charlie Kirk shooting: "Karen Attiah said she was fired for 'speaking out against political violence' and America's apathy toward guns."

  • Shayan Sardarizadeh/Kayleen Devlin [09-18] What is Antifa and why is President Trump targeting it?.

  • Zack Beauchamp [09-17]: The third Red Scare: "The right's new assault on free speech isn't cancel culture. It's worse."

  • Charlie Savage [09-18]: Can Trump actually designate Antifa a terrorist group? Here are the facts.

  • Jeff Sharlet [09-26]: Rubber glue fascism: "A close reading of "National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence."

  • Louis Menand [09-26]: Where the battle over free speech is leading us: Starts by quoting Trump's Jan. 20 executive ovder on "Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship," then this:

    The President and his Administration then proceeded to ban the Associated Press from certain press events because it did not refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, sanction law firms that represented clients whose political views the Administration regards as unfriendly, arrest and seek to deport immigrants legally in the United States for opinions they expressed in speech or in print, defund universities for alleged antisemitic speech and leftist bias, sue the Wall Street Journal for libel, extort sixteen million dollars from the corporate owner of CBS because of the way a "60 Minutes" interview was edited, set about dismantling the Voice of America for being "anti-Trump" and "radical," coerce businesses and private colleges and universities to purge the word "diversity" from their websites, and order the National Endowment for the Arts to reject grant applications for projects that "promote gender ideology."

    After threats from the head of the Federal Communications Commission, a late-night television personality had his show suspended because of some (rather confusing) thing he said about Trump's political movement. Other media outlets were advised to get in line. Trump has proposed that licenses be withdrawn from companies that air content critical of him. The Administration has opened Justice Department investigations into and yanked security details from people whose political views it dislikes. It has also warned that it may revoke the visas of and deport any foreign nationals who joke about the death of Charlie Kirk. West Point cancelled an award ceremony for Tom Hanks, after having already winnowed its library of potentially offensive books.

    This piece goes on to review a couple of books: Christopher L. Eisgruber: Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right; Fara Dabhoiwala: What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea. "Eisgruber thinks that the maximalist character of American free-speech law is the best thing about it, but Dabhoiwala thinks it's the worst."

  • Matthew Whitley [09-27]: What liberals get wrong about Trump's executive order on antifa: "Liberals dismiss antifa as just an idea — instead of acting to defend the activists, researchers, and organizers facing persecution."

  • Nicole Hemmer [09-30]: We have seen the 'woke right' before, and it wasn't pretty then, either.

  • Thor Benson [09-16]: Republicans want to protect free speech for themselves and no one else: "The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress continue to attack free speech in numerous ways." Based on an interview with Adam Serwer, who sums up: "Conservatives can say what they want, and everyone else can say what conservatives want. So it basically means that only conservatives have a right to free speech." Or: "I sometimes refer to it as conservatives believing they have a right to monologue. They can speak, and you have to listen and like it. But you can't talk back."

Trump's political prosecutions: He's been collecting his grudge list. Now his DOJ has it, and is moving against his "enemies," including his investigation of John Bolton, and indictments so far against James Comey and Letitia James.

Trump, Hegseth, and the rally at Quantico: They're certainly making it look like they want to use the military to dominate and control their political enemies. The New Republic did a series of articles in 2024 about What American Fascism Would Look Like, and they're worth revisiting now that it takes less imagination to see their relevance. In particular, see Rosa Brooks [2024-05-16]: The liberal fantasy is just that: on the military in fascist America. While she starts dismissive of "liberal fantasy," she does concede this much:

Even without the specter of a president bent on retribution, the vast majority of military personnel will err on the side of obedience if there is even the slightest uncertainty about whether a particular presidential directive is unlawful. And if the senior officers most inclined to object have already been demoted or dismissed, it is implausible that Trump's orders will face widespread military resistance.

No one should kid themselves about the degree of legal latitude President Trump would enjoy. Bush administration lawyers had to turn themselves into pretzels to argue that torture wasn't really torture­. But most of Trump's stated plans won't even require lawyerly contortions. Historically, there's been a strong norm against domestic use of the military to suppress protest or engage in law enforcement activities, and some legal safeguards exist. But under the Insurrection Act, the president can employ the military domestically in response to rebellion or insurrection, or when "any part or class of [a state's] people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution," or when an act of rebellion or violence "opposes or obstructs the execution" of the law.

The Supreme Court has historically interpreted this as giving the president complete discretion to decide what kind of activity justifies domestic use of the military. "The authority to decide whether the exigency has arisen belongs exclusively to the President," opined the court in Martin v. Mott in 1827. If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and deploys military personnel domestically to quell protests or round up immigrants, there will be plenty of unhappy military personnel—but they are unlikely to have any basis on which to claim such deployments are unlawful.

And when it comes to military action outside the United States, the news is worse. Notwithstanding Congress's constitutional powers and legislation such as the War Powers Act, successive presidents have enjoyed a virtually unconstrained ability to use military force beyond our borders. There would be plenty of military unhappiness if Trump directed attacks on Mexican soil or the use of tactical nuclear weapons, but it's unlikely military leaders would have any lawful basis to object.

Military leaders who dislike the orders they receive sometimes engage in the time-honored Pentagon tradition of stonewalling and slow-rolling, looking for ways to quietly thwart the objectives of their civilian masters while maintaining a facade of compliance. But if President Trump uses his power to fire or demote insufficiently loyal general officers, as he says he will, even this dubious avenue of military resistance will likely be closed off.

The purpose of the Quantico gathering of all of the military's general officers was pretty clearly to assess and police their loyalty to the administration, which increasingly matches Trump's political agenda. One big thing on that agenda is staying in power beyond Trump's elected term. Using the military to do that seems desperate and risky, but it is something to think about, if only because it is something Trump's people are definitely thinking about. The following are some articles on the Trump-Hegseth military — rechristened the War Department, because they want you to fear it, and because they see a growing cult of "warrior ethos" as serving their needs:

Shutdown: The federal government was nominally shut down on October 1, with the expiration of the earlier continuing resolution that allowed the government to spend appropriated money pending new authorization. For an overview, see Wikipedia: 2025 United States federal government shutdown. it has continued at least 12 days, making it one of the longest of the increasingly frequent shutdowns. I've paid very little attention to this, but have noted a few articles below. Without careful study, I'm inclined to believe that Democrats are historically so opposed to shutdowns that if they're responsible for this one — and they are blocking cloture on some kind of continuing resolution in the Senate — they must have an awful good reason for doing so. And with Trump politicizing every nook and cranny of government, I'm not sure that shutting things down will be much worse than letting them continue to run amok as they've been doing. But that's not a reason for or against shutdown; it's just a reason not to get overly worked up over the issue.

Bari Weiss: Former "anti-woke" New York Times commentator keeps failing upwards, now to the top editor spot at CBS News.

Epsteinmania: Not dead yet, especially if you're a Democratic pol, but fading fast.

Kamala Harris: She's in the news (barely) with her campaign memoir, 107 Days.

  • Jeet Heer [09-26]: The shortest presidential campaign: "a devastating indictment of Joe Biden. It also documents the limits of her own politics."

  • Eoin Higgins [10-07]: Jonathan Chait thinks Kamala Harris went too far left. He's just falling for Trump's demagoguery. I haven't read Chait since he moved to The Atlantic — not that I wouldn't have taken the opportunity to ridicule recent pieces like Democrats still have no idea what went wrong, but paying for him seems a bit much — but he seems stuck in the idea that the left-right axis is all there is to politics, and that implies that the left party should hew as close as possible to the right party in order to obtain the most votes. But politics doesn't work that way: some issues don't have a left-right divide, and there are other traits to consider, like integrity, competency, fortitude, and leadership skills. But perhaps most foolishly, he assumes that the right's talking points matter to the mugwump voters he reveres as centrists. The problem is centrism isn't merely a shade between left and right. Centrists are conflicted, embracing some things the right says, and some things the left says. The trick isn't to muddy the waters, as Chait would have you do, but to make your points seem more important than theirs. Soft-pedaling rarely if ever works, because they pick up on your doubts and don't believe you.

    By the way, for an idea of what Chait's been writing over there, see this list of titles. His anti-Trump pieces are probably as good as ever.

  • Amy Davidson Sorkin [10-08]: Who can lead the Democrats? "Kamala Harris almost won in 2024. So why does her new book feel like another defeat?" Possibly because henceforth the losing is what people remember, what defines her, and what she'll never escape from. "One of the puzzles of 107 Days is that such details do not, on the whole, come across as humanizing, let alone endearing, but as dreary and even sour." Maybe because she's a loser? And nothing she has to say is substantial enough to overcome that? "Harris was dealt an enormously difficult hand and for the most part she played it well, galvanizing much of her party while enduring an immeasurable level of misogyny and racism. And she almost won." But she didn't. And the "galvanizing" had less to do with her than with a party base that desperately wanted her to be the leader they needed. The party was psyched to move beyond Biden, and readily accepted her as their leader. I can nitpick now, but I didn't have a problem with going with her back then, nor did other Democrats. We trusted her, and even her team, and they let us down. That's not easily forgiven. Still, one thing I wonder here is since she does have some kind of critique of Biden, would it have helped had she been more explicit about it during the election.

  • Ross Barkan [10-11]: The emptiness of Kamala Harris: "The lack of vision in her book tour shows why she lost."

No Kings protests: I've never had much interest in demonstrations. My first was against the Vietnam War, and while I was not just opposed, the war had shaken all my faith in American justice and decency, I only went because my brother insisted. I only went this time because my wife insisted. We wandered around the northwest perimeter, and left early. Lots of people, all sorts, many in costume, most with a wide range of homemade signs. They were lining Douglas, but hadn't blocked traffic. It was very loud, with chants of "this is what democracy looks like," and car horns (presumably in approval, but I saw one Trump pickup with four flags blasting out "YMCA"). Here's some video (caption says "8,000 to 10,000 people"). I'm not making a search for articles, but ran across some anyway:

  • Quinta Jurcic [10-18]: Resistance is cringe: "But it's also effective."

    Idealism helped motivate Trump's opponents during his first term. But it has the potential to carry even more weight during his second, given how the president's anti-democratic project is not as constrained as it was the first time around. As Levin of Indivisible told me, "The real enemy in an authoritarian breakthrough moment is nihilism and cynicism and fatalism." This idea was a regular subject of the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who famously argued that totalitarian regimes depend on eroding their subjects' sense of political possibility. Such governments, she wrote, aim not "to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any."

    "I didn't like resistlib cringe content in the first Trump administration," wrote Adam Gurri, the editor in chief of Liberal Currents, in a social-media post two months after Trump's second inauguration, admitting: "I was wrong. I was just being a snob." As Gurri suggests, the administration's insistence on irony and insincerity has given a new power to plain, old, corny symbols. Recently, a photo published in the Chicago Tribune went viral, showing a Marine veteran protesting amid clouds of tear gas in front of an ICE detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, stoically holding not one but two American flags. Even the name of the No Kings protest is a reclamation of foundational American heritage that might have felt cheesy a year ago, but today carries a new seriousness.

Major Threads

Israel: Worse than ever, but main news story as been "Trump's Peace Plan," which (without much research yet, I can safely say) doesn't show much understanding of "peace" or "plan," and is probably just a deniable, insincere feint by Netanyahu. Still, it's hard to imagine Israel accepting any measure of peace without strongarming by the US, so hopeful people are tempted to read more into this than is warranted. Many articles scattered below. I'll try to sum them up later.

  • Muhannad Ayyash [07-13]: Calling the world to account for the Gaza genocide: Review of Haidar Eid's book, Banging on the Walls of the Tank, which "reveals a disturbing but irrefutable reality: the world has abandoned the Palestinian people to be annihilated as a people in the most calculated and brutal fashion possible."

  • Amos Brison [08-01]: Germany's angel of history is screaming: "As Israel obliterates Gaza with Berlin's backing, German public support is plummeting. Yet the government is crushing dissent and refusing to change course — all in the name of atoning for Germany's own genocidal history." One sign from the demo pic: "NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE."

  • Ben Lorber [08-20]: Israel's iron grip on the American right is slipping away: "Generational shift, isolationism, and nationalist anger are breaking the GOP's pro-Israel consensus. But the left must remain wary of their motives."

  • Alaa Salama [08-29]: Forget symbolic statehood — the world must recognize Israeli apartheid: "To push to recognize a Palestinian state creates the illusion of action, but delays the real remedies: sanctioning and isolating Israel's apartheid regime."

  • Bernie Sanders [09-17]: It is genocide: "Many experts have now concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. I agree." It took him quite a while, but he's pretty clear (and blunt) about it here.

  • Lili Meyer [09-18]: How "antisemitism" became a weapon of the right: "At a time when allegations of antisemitism are rampant and often incoherent, historian Mark Mazower offers a helpfully lucid history of the term." Review of Mazower's book, On Antisemitism: A Word in History.

  • Abdallah Fayyad [09-19]: The growing conseusns that Israel is committing genocide: "A UN commission joined a chorus of experts in calling Israel's actions a genocide. Will the world listen?

  • Joshua Keating [09-23]: Turning point or political theater? The big push for Palestinian statehood, explained.

  • Nick Cleveland-Stout:

    • [09-25]: Israel is paying influencers $7,000 per post: "Netanyahu referred this week to a 'community' pushing out preferred messaging in US media -- and boy are they making a princely sum."

    • [09-29]: Israel wants to train ChatGPT to be more pro-Israel: "In a new $6M contract, US firm 'Clock Tower X' will generate and deploy content across platforms, help game algorithms, plus manage AI 'frameworks" to make them more friendly to the cause." Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale "is at the center of the Israeli government's new deal," so aside from whatever misinformation they produce, there is an element of old-fashioned payola at work.

    • [10-07]: Israel wants to hire Chris Pratt and Steph Curry: "The Jewish state is seeking to target Christian Evangelical churches for support, using celebrities and an anti-Palestinian message in a new $3.2M effort."

  • Lama Khouri [09-26]: The necropolitics of hunger: man-made famine and futurity of the Palestinian nation. This stresses that both the short-term and long-term impacts of Israel's starvation tactic concentrate on children. Even those who survive will bear the scars as long as they live. This is sometimes hidden in jargon, like "the mental architecture of unchilding" and "intergenerational biological inheritance," which may take you a while to unpack, but is no less hideous in abstraction.

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos [09-27]: Israel wins TikTok: "Larry Ellison and a constellation of billionaires will finally get their way, buying the very app they wanted to kill a year ago for being too 'pro-Palestinian'. Hard to credit this, but note: "TikTok has now become where 30% of Americans get their news." Related here:

  • Jonah Valdez [10-01]: The Trump-Netanyahu peace deal promises indefinite occupation.

  • Joshua Keating:

  • Phyllis Bennis [10-03]: Trump and Netanyahu's 20-point Gaza ultimatum: "The plan for Gaza does not promise to end Israel's genocide — but does promise indefinite occupation."

  • Qassam Muaddi

  • Shaul Magic [10-07]: The Zionist consensus among US Jews has collapsed. Something new is emerging: "Two years after the 7 October massacre and the onset of Israel's slaughter in Gaza, American Jewry has been profoundly transformed." Magid is the author of an interesting book on the relationship between American Judaism and Zionism, The Necessity of Exile.

  • William Hartung [10-07]: $21.7 billion in US military aid has fueled Israel's war on Gaza: "A new report shows how American support has been essential to what many experts are now calling a genocide."

  • Jeffrey Sachs/Sybil Fares [10-08]: A decolonised alternative to Trump's Gaza peace plan: "Only a deoclonised plan centered on Palestinian sovereignty can bring lasting peace to Gaza." They list 20 points, in parallel to the Trump points. The most problematic part of this is the extension of Palestinian sovereignty to include some (or all) of the West Bank, with all of it governed by the PA. Although I can imagine Israel, under pressure, giving up its claims to Gaza, there is no chance of it doing so with the West Bank settlements let alone the (illegally, sure) annexed Jerusalem and Golan Heights. While the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank is grim, the situation in Gaza is far more dire, so much so it has to be addressed separately — which means bracketing the broader and more intractable issues of ethnocracy and apartheid. A second point is that the PA is more accurately seen as an Israeli client than as a representative of the Palestinian people. They have no more right to administer Gaza than Hamas does. While I expect that whoever organizes aid to a post-Israel, post-Hamas Gaza will be in the driver's seat, the goal there should in a fairly short time frame to stand up a new polity, which will certainly still have to negotiate with donors but will practice sovereignty. One big problem is that Israel (and before them the UK, and before them the Ottomans) has never allowed the establishment of democracy in any Palestinian territory. Hence, leadership has either been appointed to quislings, or seized by revolutionaries, with neither serving the people well, giving Israel an excuse to run roughshod over all of them.

  • Trita Parsi [10-09]: Trump Gaza Deal will work: If he keeps pressure on Israel: That assumes that Trump has any independent will in the matter. No evidence of that yet.

  • Gershon Baskin [10-09]: A first short note on some thoughts this morning. I was pointed to this piece with a tweet from Michael Goldfarb, who wrote: "Simply the most important piece written about the deal to end the war in Gaza written by a man with two decades of negotiating experience negotiating with Hamas including the last two years since the war started." Baskin is a New York-born Israeli columnist, who founded the think tank IPCRI. He was an adviser to Rabin during the Oslo years, and was involved in the Gilad Shalit negotiations, and has been involved in later "back channel" negotiations with Hamas (via Qatar). He offers some details here:

    During the period between the Israeli attack in Doha and September 19, I was working on ways to get back to the point where we were negotiating the end of the war, with all of the details. Hamas was in a paralysis mode and did not know what to do or how to get back to talks about ending the war.

    On September 19, in the late evening Witkoff called me and said "we have a plan." We had a long conversation and I supported what the Americans were planning and I made a few suggestions on how to get Hamas on board. I was requested to convince the Hamas leadership that Trump was serious and wants the war to end. Throughout the last months I have been in contact with 8 members of the Hamas leadership outside of Gaza. Three of them engaged with me in discussions. I did not make suggestions regarding the Israeli side because for over a year I believed that if President Trump decides that the war has to end, Trump will force Netanyahu into the agreement. That is exactly what happened.

    So he seems to have some inside connections, but isn't really an insider, especially on the Israeli side. He admits to having very few details, but stresses that this isn't just a ceasefire, but an end to the war. He's very generous to Trump, Witkoff, and Kushner. I'm skeptical — perhaps he is also, and simply realizes that these are very vain people who respond to flattery, something I'm in no position to care about — and in any case I'm less forgiving, but it does appear that Netanyahu's decision to bomb Qatar finally crossed a red line, which at least temporarily moved Trump to what seems to be Witkoff's deal. Netanyahu has always preferred bending to breaking, so he bent, trusting his own skills to win out in the end. (After all, he signed Wye River, but kept it from being implemented.) One more quote here (my bold):

    The new government in Gaza — this has to be a Palestinian government and not a neo-colonial mechanism which the Palestinians do not control. The names of independent Gazans with a public profile have been given to the Americans and also to other international and Arab players involved with the day after and the reconstruction of Gaza. The names that Samer Sinijlawi and I submitted to these important players were Gazan civil society leaders that we met with several times on zoom. They drafted a letter and signed it to President Trump that I delivered to Witkoff for the President stating that they were willing to play a role in the governance of Gaza. We don't know how this new government will be formed and when it will take over. Hamas agreed from the outset to this kind of government, even from last year. We don't know if Mahmoud Abbas will ask Dr. Nasser Elkidwa to play a role in the governance of Gaza — something that he has said that he is ready to do.

    I would go much farther in separating Gaza from Israel, including from the Palestinian Authority, which is of necessity an instrument of occupation. I also worry about the thinking on future governance and development by everyone involved, which is another reason to stress the importance of self-determination in Gaza. On the other hand, the people need help, and humoring the rich is inevitably baked into that deal.

  • Refaat Ibrahim [10-10]: When the bombs in Gaza stop, the true pain starts: "The ceasefire brought a silence taht revealed Gaza's deepest wounds — the grief, loss and exhaustion that war had only buried."

  • Ramzy Baroud [10-13]: The defeat of Israel and the rebirth of Palestinian agency: It's hard to argue that either of those things happened, but there is still life in Gaza after two years of genocide, and the current "mere pause" (Baroud's term) offers a moment to reflect on the many failures of Israel's vilest schemes and the West's indulgence of Israeli atrocities. Baroud's prediction that "there will certainly be a subsequent round of conflict" depends primarily on whether Israel can be permanently separated from Gaza, which is not yet envisioned in the Trump plan. Then, of course, there is the West Bank, which is still up for grabs, and will be until Israel learns from its failures, including the damage to its reputation, and sets out on another course.

  • Juan Cole [10-14]: Terror from the skies of the Middle East: a hug airbase with a small country attached to it. Cole, by the way, as a new book: Gaza Yet Stands.

  • Jonah Valdez [10-15]: Israel's mounting ceasefire violations in Gaza: Israel has repeatedly violated ceasefires in the past, and one has good reason to be wary, but I'm not seeing a lot of detail here, beyond the aid restriction from 600 to 300 trucks per day.

  • Connor Echols [10-16]: Gaza ceasefire hanging by a thread: "Repeated violations of Monday's agreement could provoke a return to war." The both-sides-ism here, as everywhere regarding Gaza, is remarkably asymmetrical: Hamas is accused of dragging its feat on repatriating the bodies of dead hostages, some or many of which are likely buried under the rubble of Israeli bombing; Israel, on the other hand, is killing people, and hindering the delivery of aid. The reports about Hamas executing Israel-supported gang members are troubling, but could well be fake (easy to understand why Hamas might execute Israeli agents, harder to see why they would take and publish videos) — in any case, if Israel cared, they should prioritize the release of gang members over hostage corpses. And by the way, note that Israel's decimation of Hamas's civilian administration, as well as their support for gangs to sow chaos, is making the transition to peace all the more treacherous. And that too was undoubtedly part of the plan.

  • Tom Hull:

    • [10-17]: Gaza War Peace Plan: "Twenty Trump points, for better or worse." The first of two pieces I've written on plans to end the war. This one takes Trump's 20 points one-by-one, noting the hidden assumptions and various possible meanings. I promise a second piece, more on what I think should be done.

    • [10-21]: Making peace in Gaza and beyond: A second piece, fairly long, tries to put the Gaza War Peace Plan back into its broader context, so peace can work for everyone. Along the way, I sketch out several ideas for developing international law to provide a framework that puts people about nation states and their power interests.

  • Win McCormack [10-19]: The crime is nationcide: "This is the precise offense of which Israel is guilty." I find this less useful than Baruch Kimmerling's term "politicide" (the title of his 2003 book, subtitled "Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians, which I recall as the first book to really get to the core of Sharon's agenda). Sharon's goal was to destroy the Palestinian Authority, leaving Palestinians with no political options or hopes: with none, all they could do was fight, and Sharon was confident in his ability to kill any who do. This is where the "utterly defeated people" phrase came from. But nationcide makes two mistakes: it assumes that there is a nation to kill, and it suggests that the genocide is incidental to some other aim. There never has been a Palestinian nation to kill. The idea of one was a reaction to Israeli nationalism, and Israeli has struggled mightily (and successfully) to prevent one from forming, but there is a Palestinian people. While Sharon was content merely to reduce them to powerlessness, the current mob has gone much further. I'm not sure "genocide" is the best word for what they're doing, but it is a word that that has legal weight, and if it is to mean anything it has to be applied here.

Russia/Ukraine:

  • Connor Echols:

  • Anatol Lieven [09-30]: 'The West demanded that we get involved in a war with Russia': "In an interview, Georgian President Mikheil Kavelashvili talks about how external interference has poisoned his country's chances for EU ascension."

  • Carl Bildt [10-19]: Putin is out of options: "Whether Russian leaders realize it or not, they have no path to victory." That's been true for a long time. But Ukraine also has no path to victory, and it's long proven futile for either or any side to think in those terms. Perhaps Putin's hope was that Trump would throw Zelensky under the bus, but he missed his chance to dicker in Alaska, and when Europe regrouped behind Zelensky Trump had to pick sides. So the war slogs on, under the dead weight of leaders who were selected not for insight and reason but because they projected as tough and tenacious, cunning and/or stupid.

Trump Regime: Practically every day I run across disturbing, often shocking stories of various misdeeds proposed and quite often implemented by the Trump Administration -- which in its bare embrace of executive authority we might start referring to as the Regime. Collecting them together declutters everything else, and emphasizes the pattern of intense and possibly insane politicization of everything. Pieces on the administration.

Donald Trump (Himself): As for Il Duce, we need a separate bin for stories on his personal peccadillos -- which often seem like mere diversions, although as with true madness, it can still be difficult sorting serious incidents from more fanciful ones.

  • John Whitlow [09-18]: The real estate roots of Trumpism and the coming clash with democratic socialism: "Trump's brand of authoritarianism emerges out of New York's real estate industry. As mayor, Zohran Mamdani vows to curb that sector's outsized power."

  • Michael M Grynbaum [09-19] Judge dismisses Trump's lawsuit against the New York Times: "The judge said that the complaint failed to contain a 'short and plain statement of the claim.' Trump has 28 days to refile." Trump was asking for $15 billion in damages, because four New York Times reporters were "disparaging Mr. Trump's reputation as a successful businessman."

  • Cameron Peters [09-23]: Trump's weird day at the UN, briefly explained.

  • Abdallah Fayyad [09-25]: Why voters keep shrugging off Trump's corruption.

  • Eric Levitz [09-26]: The big contradiction in progressive thinking about Trump: "The Democratic debate over whether 'moderation' works is very confused."

  • Brian Karem [10-03]: I've covered Trump for years -- and I've never seen him this scared.

  • Margaret Hartmann [10-10]: Will Trump win a Nobel Peace Prize? All about his desperate bid. Lots of grotty details, but all? The main thing that's missing is the calculation behind the bid. Trump surely knows that he has no real interest in the prize, what it stands for and/or the legacy behind it. And given that he focuses much more on being seen as a warrior (or maybe just a thug), wouldn't he be a bit embarrassed if he actually won? Even Obama was embarrassed when he won. I'll never forget Ariel Sharon's face when GW Bush introduced him as "a man of peace." Sharon's autobiography was Warrior, and he wasn't exactly reknown for his wit. But most importantly, Trump surely understands that the absurdity of his bid guarantees that it will be huge publicity either way. And his supporters will add his loss to the long list of slights and insults he has endured as their champion.

  • Alex Shephard [10-10]: Why Trump will never win a Nobel Peace Prize: "He's embarrassingly desperate for the honor, but his presidency is becoming ever more dictatorial and bloodthirsty."

  • Michael Tomasky [10-10]: Memo to future historians: This is fascism, and millions of us see it: "From Chicago to Portland, James Comey to Letitia James, and so much else — this is no longer America.

  • Nia Prater [10-12]: Trumpworld goes to war over Nobel Peace Prize loss: "The White House and Trump allies are attacking the Nobel Committee, which gave Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado this year's prize."

  • CK Smith [10-13]: Trump saves Columbus Day from "left-wing arsonists": No more Indigenous Peoples' Day.

  • Kim Phillips-Fein [10-14]: A family business: "Trump's theory of politics." A review of Melinda Cooper's book, Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance.

  • George Packer [10-17]: The depth of MAGA's moral collapse: "How we got to 'I love Hitler.'" Paywalled, of course, but looks to be a major review of the recent prevalence of Nazi paraphernalia among young MAGA Republicans -- I've already skipped over dozens of such stories, figuring that there is little reason to nitpick among the excrescences of people we already know to be vile and/or stupid. But if you need to be reminded that "Professing love for Hitler is more than anti-Semitic — it's antihuman," Packer is here for you. My only question was whether to give this its own slot in the miscellaneous articles, or to dedicate a whole section to recent right-wing ideologizing. But then I realized I already had a section on that explains his subtitle. While one could just as plausibly argue that Trump is merely the vessel of Fox's fermented rot, is unique contribution was in freeing the right from any second-thoughts of shame. In such a universe, the new normal is to seek out the most extreme expressions, which brings them back to Hitler.

  • Simon Jenkins [10-20]: In Gaza, and now Ukraine, Donald Trump may be peace activists' greatest ally. That deserves our backing: "It's a fool's game trying to understand the president's true motives, but do our misgivings matter if the outcome is a speedy end to war?" Yes, it does matter. Peace terms matter, and their variances reflect the intents and goals of those who negotiate or dictate them. Never trust the fascist, even if it seems like the trains are finally running on time. They won't be for long, because the inequity and arrogance, the belief above all in the efficacy of force, is fundamental for them, and will always come back to bite you. Other key point here is don't assume that what Trump is pushing for is really peace. Real peace requires that people on all sides feel safe and secure. That's not Trump's thing. I'd also worry about giving Trump any praise, even ironical, that can be taken out of context (as you know he will do). I don't have a problem acknowledging real accomplishments, but we should keep in mind that the wars Trump supposedly is ending were ones that he helped start in the first place, and has helped sustain as long as he's been president.

Democrats:

Republicans: A late addition, back by popular demand, because it isn't just Trump, we also have to deal with the moral swamp he crawled out of:

Miscellaneous Pieces

The following articles are more/less in order published, although some authors have collected pieces, and some entries have related articles underneath.

Jeffrey St Clair:

  • [07-25]: Un-hinged: Trump at the UN. Mostly excerpts from the speech, as they practically write their own critiques. For instance, when Trump says, "Under my leadership, energy costs are down, gasoline prices are down, grocery prices are down, mortgage rates are down, and inflation has been defeated," all St Clair needs to add is: "Energy costs are up, gas prices are up, grocery prices are up, inflation is rising."

  • [09-26]: Roaming Charges: What's the frequency, Donald?

  • [10-03]: Roaming Charges: He loves a (buff) man in uniform: Quotes from Trump's nonsense at Quantico, then moves on to recent ICE tactics, then to Israel. He quotes an Israeli rabbi praying for all the children in Gaza to starve, and another "frequent commentator on NewsMax" as saying he wants Greta Thunberg terrified, "rocking in a corner, covering her eyes, pissing." Then there's this Mike Huckabee quote:

    I've been married 51 years . . . There comes a point where there's just no point in even thinking about getting a divorce. The reason Israel and the US will never get a divorce is because neither country can afford to pay the alimony . . . We're hooked up for life.

    It's hard to tell what he understands less of: international relations, America, Israel, or marriage. But he must be thinking of divorce if he's rationalizing so hard against it.

  • [10-10]: Roaming Charges: United States of Emergency. Opens with (examples follow):

    The fatal flaw in Donald Trump's scheme to whitewash American history of its most depraved and embarrassing episodes is that his administration is committing new acts of barbarity and stupidity in real-time on an almost hourly basis. Consider the last week in Chicago and Portland.

    Much more, including:

    • The Energy Department has added "emissions" and "climate change" to its banned words list. Too bad George Carlin isn't around to expound upon the 1,723 words you can't say in the Trump Administration . . .

Marcy Newman [08-17]: Sarah Schulman tackles the urgency, and pitfalls, of solidarity: A review of her book, The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity.

Zack Beauchamp

  • [08-20]: How conservatives help their young thinkers — and why liberals don't: This is a basic asymmetry: the right wants hierarchy and inequality, and those who profit can afford to hire propagandists; the left, lacking such incentives, depends on good will/altruism, which can be tough to muster when everyone has to scratch out a living. That may have been good enough for a long time, but the big right-wing media push since the 1970s has flooded the zone with crap — a surprising amount of which was taken seriously during the New Democrat vogue. We don't need our own counter-crap, but we do need a way for scholars and reporters to do honest work about the real world, and to make a living doing so.

  • [09-03]: The right debates just how weird their authoritarianism should be: "A roundtable discussion among leading MAGA intellectuals suggests they might be suffering from success." Not an interview, but a review of a 2-hour video roundtable featuring Curtis Yarvin, Patrick Deneen, Chris Rufo, and Christopher Caldwell. "The overall direction, it is clear, is giving more and more power over our lives to Donald J. Trump." For background, refer back to:

  • [2024-09-25]: The 6 thinkers who would define a second Trump term: Caldwell, Deneen, and Yarvin again, plus James Burnham, Harvey Mansfield, Elbridge Colby.

  • [09-19]: This is how Trump ends democracy: "The past week has revealed Trump's road map to one-party rule." Having just read his chapter on Orban's Hungary in his The Reactionary Spirit book, much of this seems pretty familiar.

Katha Pollitt [09-09] We're living in an age of scams: "The anonymity of the Internet makes us all vulnerable to being swindled — and it's making us trust each other less." This is very true, and very important, aside from the obvious point that the age of scams didn't start with the Internet: scams have plagued us at least since the snake oil salesmen of the medicine shows, accelerating with every media advance. They grew out of the invention of money as a representative of value, and the spirit of capitalism, which considered all profits morally equal. This article hardly scratches the surface, not even mentioning AI, which is already a major source of fabricated scam props. I'm surprised that nobody has taken this up as a political issue, given that nearly everyone would support measures to cut down on fraud, spam, and non-solicited advertising. (I wouldn't have a problem with people producing ads and putting them on a public website where people could request them.)

Henry Giroux [09-26]: The road to the camps: echoes of a fascist past.

Julian Lucas [09-29]: Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Now he wants to save it." "Today, in the era of misinformation, addictive algorithms, and extractive monopolies, he thinks he can do it again." Not real clear to me how he intends to do that, but I suppose more of it is laid out in his new memoir, This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web.

[PS: I was struck by this book title by one of Berners-Lee's blurbists: The Future of the Internet — and How to Stop It. This also led me to Tim Wu: The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity, and (only slightly blunter) Cory Doctorow: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse, and What to Do About It.]

Umair Irfan [09-29] America's flood insurance system is doomed to fail: "Between Congress, property development, and climate change, there's no easy fix."

Peter Balonon-Rosen/Jolie Myers/Sean Rameswaram [09-30]: How Rupert Murdoch took over the world.

Peter Turchin [10-02]: Hundreds of societies have been in crises like ours. An expert explains how they got out. "An analysis of historical crises over the past 2,000 years offers lessons for avoiding the end times." I read Turchin's 2023 book End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, which is based on a database of crisis periods that increasingly looks like a misguided AI training set. Here he reduces the wisdom of ages to something he calls "the wealth pump," where:

  1. It causes growing popular discontent.
  2. The wealth pump creates too many wealthy elites — more than there are high-power positions.
  3. The wealth pump creates too many youths pursuing not just college but even more advanced degrees in hopes of escaping looming "precarity."

Thus he sees frustrated, desperate "wannabe elites" driving nations to ruin. He suggests some remedies here that I don't disagree with: regulation encouraging production over rent extraction; progressive taxation; worker empowerment (including unions); reducing concentrations of political power. Still, when I read his title, my gut reaction is emphasize new aspects of the present instead of recurring patterns of inequality — and not because I discount the problems posed by significant inequality. It's just that the quantity and quality of changes from 250, 100, even 50 years ago are so overwhelming.

Whitney Curry Wimbish/Naomi Bethune [10-02]: Microsoft is abandoning Windows 10. Hackers are celebrating. "The company will stop supporting the OS on October 14. Advocacy groups warn this will leave up to 400 million computers vulnerable to hacks or in the dump." Ok, here's an idea to mull over: any time a company effectively ceases to support a copyrighted software product, that product must be surrendered to the public, as open source software, so that the public can pick up the slack. Stuff that's officially mothballed obviously should qualify. There also needs to be a mechanism for to appeal cases of inadequate support, so companies that aren't serious about support can't simply lock up their old products by pretending to go through the motions. Selling off the technology to a sham company might be another way to work around this, and another loophole that could be tightened up. There are probably more angles to consider, but the general point is that we should do what we can to make forced obsolescence unviable as a business strategy.

Jared Bernstein [10-03]: Measuring the vibecession: "Why top-line federal statistics miss the economic pain average Americans feel."

Tom Hull [10-04]: Cooking Chinese: My own piece, but surely worth a mention here. Some pictures and links to recipes. Not much technique, but all you really need are some knife skills, a glossary of ingredients, and a willingness to turn the heat up and work fast. Some philosophizing on the theme that a possible path to world peace is learning that all food, no matter how exotic it seems, lands on the same universal taste buds. I also wrote a postscript here:

Dan Grazier [10-07]: US gov't admits F-35 is a failure: "With some wonky, hard to decipher language, a recent GAO report concluded the beleaguered jet will never meet expectations." It was conceived in the 1990s in Lockheed's famous "skunk works" as a state-of-the-art stealth fighter-bomber. The contract was awarded in 2001, but the first plane didn't fly until 2006. It's been a fiasco, but has made Lockheed a lot of money. Lately, you mostly hear about it when some sucker ally agrees to buy some, less because they need or even want it than to please America's arms exporters.

Ruth Marcus [10-09]: Nixon now looks restrained: Author focuses on cases where a president weighs in on a pending criminal case, as Nixon did with Charlie Manson, and Trump with James Comey, but the point can be applied almost everywhere. "But the thirty-seventh President looks like a model of restraint when compared with the forty-seventh, and his supposedly incendiary commentary anodyne by contrast to what emanates daily from the current occupant of the White House. What was once aberrant — indeed, unimaginable — is now standard Trumpfare, demeaning not only the Presidency but to the rule of law." Still, one shouldn't hold Nixon up as a "model of restraint," or as any sort of moderate or liberal, as he consistently did things that in their context were every bit as extremely reactionary as Trump is today. Indeed, Trump's argument that nothing he does as president can be illegal has a singular precedent: Richard Nixon. The slippery slope that Nixon started us on leads directly to Trump.

Bruce E Levine [10-10]: Celebrating Lenny Bruce's 100th birthday: "The world is sick and I'm the doctor".

Democracy Now! [10-10]: 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for anti-Maduro leader María Corina Machado "opposite of peace": interview with Greg Grandin, who pointed out (per Jeet Heer, link below):

Machado's brand of democracy promotion, reliant as it is on US military intervention, deserves skepticism. Speaking on Democracy Now! on Friday, Yale historian Greg Grandin described her winning of the Nobel as a "really a shocking choice." Grandin noted that Machado supported a coup against democratically elected President Hugo Chávez in 2002. Her hard-line position on economic matters has both hampered and divided the anti-Maduro coalition. And the fact that she's praised both the bombing of Venezuelan boats and welcomed further American interventions into Venezuela is likely to strengthen Maduro's hold on power, since it vindicates his claim that the opposition is filled with US puppets. Grandin also pointed out that if the Nobel committee had wanted to legitimize the anti-Maduro opposition, they could've given the award to feminist leaders who are both critics of the regime and oppose US intervention.

    Jeet Heer [10-13]: The Nobel Peace Prize just surrendered to Trump: "Trump is mad that he didn't win. But by honoring Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Committee has endorsed his war against Venezuela — and continued Europe's MAGA groveling." Heer concludes:

    Trump is foolish to think he needs to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He has all the power and glory he could want, because the people who could theoretically stop him have decided to surrender.

  • Greg Grandin:

    • [09-09]: The rift in Trump world over Venezuela: "The Trump administration wants to exert more control over Latin America. Will it come by deal-making or by force?"

      The latter question isn't even rhetorical. To Trump, a "deal" is an occasion when someone else surrenders to his ultimatum. Such deals tend to be as resented as force, just less dramatically opposed. But also note that Trump's maneuvers against Latin America are easy to pin on Marco Rubio, who often seems even more excited to restore reaction there than he is here, and will be no less so when they blow up. Ominous section here on "importing the logic of Gaza."

    • [10-14]: Trump's Caribbean killing spree: "The president's unprecedented and lawless attacks supposedly target drug cartels, but serve a far more troubling political agenda."

  • Gabriel Hetland [10-14]: How María Corina Machado's Nobel Peace Prize could lead to war: "Machado's record makes a mockery of the idea she is a committed champion of peace, promoter of democracy, or unifying figure."

Some notable deaths: Mostly from the New York Times listings. Last time I did such a trawl was on July 20, so we'll look that far back (although some names have appeared since):

Tweets: I've usually used this section for highlighting clever responses and/or interesting ideas, but maybe I should just use it to bookmark some of our leading horribles.

  • Jamelle [09-30]: Links to After volatile summer, Trump's approval remains low but stable, poll finds, and adds:

    Perhaps instead of cowering under a blanket labeled "health care," Democrats should respond and advance on the issues that move people. This, of course, would require a foundation of conviction and principle, which may be asking too much of the party's leadership and strategists.

    Note that the image cut off before showing the most damning poll results, that Trump is -20 on "the war between Russia and Ukraine," and -19 on "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict": two issues that Biden blew even worse.

  • Josephine Riesman [10-05]:

    It is morally wrong to want a computer to be sentient. If you owned a sentient thing, you would be a slaver. If you want sentient computers to exist, you just want to create a new kind of slavery. The ethics are as simple as that. Sorry if this offends.

    • Apologies in advance for including an Amazon book link, but I doubt any review can really do this one justice. The book is: John Kennedy: How to Test Negative for Stupid — And Why Washington Never Will. Senator Kennedy ("the one from Louisiana") is being billed as "one of the most distinctive and funny politicians," lauded for "his perceptive (and hilarious) takes on the ridiculousness of political life in this scathingly witty takedown of Washington and its elite denizens." I've seen him dozens of times, and can't say I've ever noticed his wit, but he does offer a pretty good impersonation of the dumbest person in all of America, as well as one of the most repugnant politically. On the other hand, his most quotable quotes turn out to be more humorous than I expected:

    • "Always be yourself . . . unless you suck."
    • "I say this gently: This is why the aliens won't talk to us."
    • "If you trust government, you obviously failed history class."
    • "I believe that our country was founded by geniuses, but it's being run by idiots."
    • "Always follow your heart . . . but take your brain with you."
    • "I'm not going to Bubble Wrap it: The water in Washington, D.C., won't clear up until you get the pigs out of the creek."
    • "I have the right to remain silent but not the ability."
    • "Common sense is illegal in Washington, D.C., I know. I've seen it firsthand."
    • "I believe that we are going to have to get some new conspiracy theories. All the old ones turned out to be true."

    Granted, on balance we're not talking Groucho Marx level here, or even Yogi Berra. But he's possibly funnier than Bob Dole, who was much wittier than anyone so evil had any right to be.

  • Comfortably Numb [08-18]: Features a New York Times headline from Sept. 18, 1931 [most likely fake]: "HITLER CONDEMNS RIOTS.; He Says They Were Provoked by Paid Agents in Germany." This appeared in my feed just below a picture of mink-clad protesters with signs for "Rai$e the Rent," "Frack Brooklyn," and "Billionaires Against Mamdani." And just above a Fox News headline: "Billionaire's cash flows to anti-Israel activists in nationwide 'No Kings' rallies." More signs noted on placcards:

    • First they came for the immigrants and I spoke up because I know the rest of the God damn poem"
    • No crown for the clown
    • Trump gave my nut to Argentina [chipmunk costume]
    • I caught the woke mind virus and all I got was empathy and critical thinking skills

    Other comments:

    • Imagine what a shitty president you have to be to have nearly 7 million Americans use their day off to protest you.

    Miscellaneous memes:

    • Republicans have $200 million for a ballroom, $1 billion for a new jet and $72 million for endless golf trips. They have money to give ICE $50,000 bonuses. They have $1 million per day to occupy American cities. They have $3.8 billion to send Israel weapons and $40 billion to bailout Argentina. But there's no money for healthcare.

Current count: 254 links, 13906 words (18425 total)

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