Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Loose Tabs

There's no easy way to wrap this up, but as Miles said to Trane, sometimes you just got to take the horn out of your mouth. I rest assured that anything I missed below will only become more glaringly obvious next month, and if it doesn't, good thing I didn't bother.

I wrote some more notes on this piece for Notes on Everyday Life (archived here).

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 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 (12 times from April-December 2025, not much more often in 2026). My previous one appeared 34 days ago, on August 27.

By the way, I've been trying to write some more in-depth pieces on major issues (and/or personal peccadillos), using Substack as an email agent. I call this series Notes on Everyday Life. I used to have a pinned list of pieces here, but as they've grown, I've moved them into separate index.

I also have a Notes feed there. While I've done very little with it so far, it occurs to me that I might be able to use it to publish Loose Tabs items and Music Week reviews as I write them, instead of having to wait for a long compilation post.

Table of Contents:

New Stories

Most stories fit into well-established categories, organized below as Major Threads. Some sources I lean on so regularly they have their own Regular Columnists section. I also have an End Matter section for dealing with regular occurrences like books, obituaries, and tweets. Stories that don't fit into any regular category appear under Miscellaneous Stories. However, occasionally a short-term story blows up to where it needs extra attention, in which case I included it here.

Examples from last time: Trump's War on Canada; Data Centers (see AI); Meta Settles Lawsuit.

That Republican National ("Trumpapalooza") Convention: After some fact checking, I added a missing "pa" to the parenthetical, after noticing that it sounded too much like "Trump's a loser." This was a blatant grab for media attention, but the net effect was to remind everyone that the 2026 elections will be about Trump, even if his name isn't on the ballot. Nothing important happened, but too big to bury the stories under Republicans and/or Trump, where more will no doubt surface.

  • Nia Prater/Chas Danner [09-10]: The wildest, weirdest moments from day one of the GOP Midterm Convention: "From Trump's desperate pleas to Hasan Piker's underwear, here's how Republicans tried to convince Americans to let them keep Congress."

  • New York Times [09-11]: Trump floats $5,000 checks to Americans if Republicans win midterms: "The president offered a 'dividend' to every adult citizen if Republicans keep control of Congress. But his sagging approval ratings could endanger his party's chances in November." Pinned article, among many more "live updates." Wouldn't it be funny if the Democrats swept Congress then sent him the bill? — possibly loaded with a bushel of "poison pills," like funding it with taxes on the rich, and prohibiting the president from implementing tariffs and military operations without congressional approval (things that would make it even more popular). I'm not saying this "dividend" is a good idea. My first thought is: how much does Trump think Republicans can steal by hanging onto Congress? The estimated cost is about $1.3 trillion. Even if they just tack that onto the national debt, that's $1.3 trillion they could steal for themselves. Still, with tax breaks, a 50% bump in useless military spending, sweetheart contracts, lax regulation, and fraud everywhere you loook, they could still come out ahead. Especially if they don't deliver. What's their penalty for that? You're going to vote them out of office? Then why didn't you?

  • Astead Herndon [09-10]: The GOP midterms strategy is Trump and a prayer: "What we learned from the first day of the Republican convention in Dallas."

  • Stephen Fowler [09-11]: Empty seats, socialism and Trump dominate the Republican midterm convention: Link text says "7 takeaways from the 'Trumpapalooza' Republican . . . ," but the article comes up short:

    1. Republicans have an enthusiasm problem
    2. The message emphasized personal attacks over policy
    3. The rise of the -isms: Communism, Socialism, Marxism, Terrorism.
    4. What war?
    5. 2028 looms over everything
    6. It may be too late to turn the tide

  • Joseph Gedeon [09-12]: Calls for Democrats to be shot go unchallenged at Republican convention: "Crowd member repeatedly said some Democrats 'should be shot' during Ted Cruz's speech, without senator responding."

  • David Smith [09-12]: Trump personality cult alive and well in Dallas: I dropped the rest of the title, which continues, "will it power Republican midterm success?"

  • Sarah Jones [09-26]: America last: Picture is from the Convention, but the article is mostly about Trump's pro-immigration policies that offer free rides to white people from South Africa and Zimbabwe. I wonder if there's any polling of the MAGA base on that.

The 25th Anniversary of 9/11:

  • Tom Hull [09-10]: Remembering 9/11: "Notes from a highly personal turning point." I pull some bits from my online notebook, a reminder that even then I realized that America's kneejerk reaction was only going to make matters worse.

  • Thomas Alleman [09-10]: The end of the world as we know it: "Where were you on 9/11? Same place as me: In front of the TV, gritting my teeth."

  • Jon Schwarz [09-10]: The most terrifying thing about 9/11 was America's response: "The fear I experienced that terrible day in New York doesn't begin to compare with the dread I've developed watching our path since."

    In the weeks after 9/11, I told friends who didn't live in New York that Al Qaeda had really put the terror back in terrorism. But the fear I experienced that terrible day does not begin to compare with the dread I've developed since. On September 11, 2001, I realized that I was on Al Qaeda's list. Since then, I've learned that I'm also on the list of the far more mighty people in charge of America, just a little further down. Even with the most concrete dangers facing us — the destruction of a livable biosphere, an enduring pandemic, and much more — they are absolutely committed to following the same path, driven onward by complex delusions. Power tends to corrupt, not just in a standard moral sense but also intellectually and emotionally, and they've held extreme power for a very long time. What I know now that I didn't know then is that if we let them, their corruption will surely destroy us all.

  • Michael Arria [09-11]: 25 years after 9/11, our country is still dominated by the "War on Terror": Its "legacy is everywhere, from rampant Islamophobia, to another open ended war on Iran."

  • Elie Mystal [09-11]: The US had a choice after 9/11. It chose wrong.

  • Nick Turse [09-11]: Osama Bin Laden won: "The architect of the September 11 attacks dreamed of the destruction of America. In the last 25 years, his wish has come true." Well, sure, that part of Bin Laden's plan came true, or is coming true, as the corpse of American empire is still animated, twitching and lashing out, still causing incalculable harm to itself and the world. But the other part of Bin Laden's dream, that devout Muslims would rise up against the impious charlatans who ran Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and the rest of the Muslim world, that didn't happen, the only flickers of revolt occurring in the vacuum of states that were mere collateral damage of the Americans, like the Iraq/Syria borderlands, Libya, Somalia, and Mali. Meanwhile, Israel, whose leaders were giddy with delight on 9/11, has become ever more genocidal, as US presidents Biden and Trump have given up any consideration of independent thought.

    Bin Laden's bleed-until-bankruptcy plan was designed to sink America's economy — and it continues to work to great effect. And by ushering in the presidencies of Donald Trump, bin Laden left the United States morally bankrupt, too. Twenty-five years after 9/11, the country is a pale shadow of the superpower that emerged from World War II having been laid low not by the Soviet Union — the nuclear-armed power it long considered an existential threat — but by two trust-fund terrorists: the scions of a Saudi construction empire, and an outer borough New York City real estate developer, respectively.

  • Scott Hibbard [09-08]: 25 years after 9/11, the US still doesn't know 'why they hate us': "The War on Terror showed the perils of seeking military solutions for political problems. Policymakers never got the message."

  • Thomas Palley [09-11]: An American tragedy: the woeful self-inflicted consequences of 9/11.

  • Pam Bailey [09-11]: 9/11 began 25 years of nonstop war and abuses of power: "Never forget: the attacks brought us into an era of torture, the erosion of civil liberties, and the destruction of multiple Middle East countries."

  • Robert Wright [09-11]: Always forget: My own personal takeaway from 9/11:

    But if I were in charge of US foreign policy, the message I'd try to get out is: "Forget! Forget! Forget!" Dwelling on 9/11 is what initiated and helped sustain a disastrous quarter century of American adventurism abroad.

    I mean, sure, if America's leaders had rationally assessed the causes of the 9/11 attack, dwelling on it could have been productive. They might have started by looking into the conditions that gave birth and subsequent energy and direction to al Qaeda, and pondered the following possibilities: (1) Maybe the US shouldn't have staged a proxy intervention in Afghanistan two decades earlier that flooded the place with weapons and created the cauldron that enticed, shaped, and revved up a young Osama bin Laden (and also created the violent chaos that allowed the Taliban to take control of Afghanistan — a position the Taliban used, during the runup to 9/11, to provide safe haven for bin Laden and al Qaeda). (2) And maybe, after the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the US shouldn't have established an enduring military presence in the Islamic holy land, Saudi Arabia — a presence that became a persistent and powerful bin Laden grievance and helped direct his belligerence toward America.

    Conceivably, such reflections on the past could have led to such ideas about the future as: Maybe what the US should avoid after 9/11 is further military adventures in Muslim countries. After all, such adventures might continue to be conducive to the creation or growth of militantly anti-American groups — and might also prove a godsend for any terrorist recruiters who wanted to focus their efforts on young alienated men already living in America.

    If the memory of 9/11 had set in motion trains of thought like this, I'd be OK with remembering.

Major Threads

War on Iran:

Israel:The focus here is on Israel's wars, especially against their own people, and on internal Israeli politics. A second section will address Israel's relations with the world, especially the US.

Israel-American-World Relations: This section deals with Israel's relations with the world, especially the US, both at the state level and regarding public opinion.

  • Antony Loewenstein [07-28]: Israel's end game in Palestine is a land with no Palestinians: "A decades-long campaign of dispossession is accelerating fast." I meant to cite this article when it came out, but it keeps slipping my attention. Not much of an article, but the title is clearly the point. Or would seem to be, if you accept that Israel has an "end game" — that it is possible to satisfy them, so that they finally bring the carnage and dispossession to an end. I'm skeptical. It seems more likely that they're so much in love with the game that they will stretch it out as long as possible.

  • Michael Arria:

  • Andrew O'Hehir [09-14]: US allies' dramatic Israel pivot: They're done taking orders from Washington.

  • Xavier Abu Eid [09-15]: Why Latin America is key to Israel's diplomatic impunity: "While alienating traditional allies, Israel is deepening ties with a new wave of right-wing populist leaders who are willing to shield it from accountability."

  • Dave Zirin [09-15]: Justice for Macklemore: "The rapper has been dumped from Ed Sheeran's tour for saying 'Free Palestine.' That's a disgrace." Well, obviously, it's Palestine that needs justice, not Macklemore. But note first that the person who claims credit for blacklisting Macklemore is Robert Kraft, who thanks to the people of Massachusetts owns the stadium Sheeran was scheduled to perform at.

  • Ariana Aspuru/Noel King [09-18]: The film infuriating the Israeli government: "Almost no one has seen NAZA yet, but almost everyone has something to say about it."

    Made by two Israeli filmmakers, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, the movie takes place on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, where 24 anonymous Israeli intelligence agents and soldiers discuss things that they did in Gaza and how they did them.

    As Bilge Ebiri writes in his Vulture review of NAZA, "One officer recalls blowing up a building with 500 people in it to go after one target. They admit to knowingly wiping out entire neighborhoods, fully aware of the catastrophic human toll." Another interviewee agrees that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.

    Interview with Shany Litman, who also hasn't seen the film, but has been reporting on it. She says, "There's a really long history of films that were criticized, especially by different culture ministers. But I haven't seen anything like this, like what is happening now. This is really frightening." Some more on NAZA:

    PS: From a tweet, I see this quote from an article in the Atlantic (I haven't tracked it down, and it's probably paywalled anyway):

    NAZA could have asked its viewers to identify with these soldiers, to see the potential in themselves to do exactly as they had done, to be vigilant against such corrosive thoughtlessness. But this film does not want to be a mirror. It wants to tell us that there is something uniquely malevolent about Israeli society.

    Perhaps that's because there is?

  • Zack Beauchamp [09-21]: Settler violence is now upending American politics on Israel: "It's so bad now even Mike Huckabee is recoiling."

    But Huckabee's outrage reflects something deeper. Settler terrorism, once relatively uncommon, has exploded in severity in recent years — with wink-nudge support from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

    The violence is so egregious, and so indefensible, that retired Israeli generals have compared the settlers to Nazis and demanded action to stop them. In mid-September, the INSS — Israel's top national security think tank — issued a strategic alert warning that "Jewish terrorism" had become a national crisis and even an existential threat to Israel's future.

    "As history teaches us, democracies that fail to restrain radical forces within them do not survive," the alert argues.

    In Washington, settler terrorism against Palestinians has flipped the Israel debate on its head. Congressional Democrats, who have long been divided over the Gaza war, have come together to support legislation that would impose sanctions on Israeli politicians and corporations implicated in the violence. The Trump administration, the most pro-settlement White House in American history, has very conspicuously stood aside as Canada and European nations implemented sanctions of their own.

  • Gerry Shih [09-24]: An unabashed Netanyahu assails critics in UN speech as election nears: "Israel's leader delivered a blistering defense of his country, appealing to voters back home and condemning critics including New York mayor Zohran Mamdani." So he went all the way to the UN, an institution which Israelis loathe, to give a domestic campaign speech, knowing full well that no one in the UN wanted to hear any of it. (Most had in fact already walked out.)

  • Jonathan Ofir [09-25]: Netanyahu just incited genocide in his UN speech. Here's what you missed.: "At the end of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's unhinged rant at the UN, he recited a seemingly obscure Bible verse. But it's actually a dog whistle for genocide."

  • Varsha Gandikota [09-25]: Israel and the US have battered the international legal order. The impunity must stop.

  • Leon Hadar [09-25]: The worst-case scenario for Israel isn't Tehran: "It's the American electorate." He notes that, "among Democrats, unfavorable views of Israel have reached 80 percent." Sure, Republicans still favor Israel 70-13, but does Israel really want to depend on Trump as a character witness?

  • Khaled Ezzelarab [09-26]: The evolution of New York Times opinion on Gaza: From unconditional support to bounded criticism: "Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, the so-called paper of record has begun to update its language on Israel, reflecting a larger shift in US public opinion." Well, slowly, fitfully, and not at all for Bret Stephens.

  • Joseph Gedeon [09-29]: US Senate blocks resolution demanding accountability over Israeli violence in West Bank: "Nine American citizens have been killed by Israeli settlers or security forces in occupied West Bank since 2022." The only Democrat to vote against Chris Van Hollen's resolution was John Fetterman (D-PA).

Ukraine, and Other World Politics: A catch-all, where the focus is away from, but not unaffected by, Trump's wars.

  • Wen Stephenson [09-08]: A reckoning comes for Nepal: "A year after its Gen Z uprising, Nepal faces a struggle not only for democracy and human rights but for climate survival." Nepal is in the news after catastrophic flodding caused by melting glaciers caused by, well, you know.

  • CJ Polychroniou [09-09]: Germany's fascist party just won control of a state government: "The Alternative for Germany party's victory in the Saxony-Anhalt state election is an ominous coup for the far right."

  • Zack Beauchamp [09-09]: A Nazi-curious party just won big in Germany. The White House approves. "How a very dangerous state election in Germany helps reveal Trump's real foreign policy." Note especially that Elon Musk has spoken at AfD rallies. Vance and Rubio have also spoken out in favor of the AfD. I've sometimes referred to Steve Bannon's efforts to organize a World Brotherhood of Fascists, but what practical value do nationalists have in cooperating with each other? It's true that the US has long supported certain fascists abroad, but that's usually for lack of a liberal alternative in face of a left-wing threat. This just looks like a circle jerk.

  • Sandra Davidovic [09-16]: What NATO leaves behind as it pulls back from Kosovo: "27 years after the Western intervention in Yugoslavia, the alliance is starting to withdraw despite ongoing tensions."

  • Matthew MacKenzie [09-22]: China is outfoxing the US in the battle for Mideast influence: "Washington's military posture comes with huge risks and responsibilities, easing Beijing's burden in the region." As Trump continues to trip up, the US is certain to lose "influence" in the region, but China doesn't seem to be in any hurry to pick up the slack, possibly because they don't view America's idea of "influence" as either tenable or desirable. As usual, Americans are projecting their own character flaws onto others. It's easy for Americans to imagine that China, as our sworn enemy, might want to cause us trouble, like the US did to Russia in Afghanistan. But ask yourself, how well did that work out for America?

  • Steve Bloomfield [09-26]: In his final UN speech, Macron may have given other leaders a valuable parting gift: the guts to stand up to Trump. Some day every reputable politician in Europe is going to claim to have opposed Trump. All Macron did was wait until the last possible moment.

  • Mitchell Plitnick [08-28]: Saudi Arabia's desperate situation: "After relying on an unreliable Trump for defense, suspending normalization talks with Israel, and losing access to the Bab-al-Mandab Strait, Saudi Arabia turns to hesitant allies for help."

Trump's War Department: I set this section up to deal with Trump's threats of war. We're obviously beyond that now, so see the section on Iran for more on that.

  • Heather Digby Parton [09-01]: Trump's Venezuela oil deal is even sleazier than you think.

  • Medea Benjamin/Nicolas JS Davies [09-01]: Throughout Latin America, US backs autocrats in the name of liberty: "Trump regime is supporting a range of ruling-class right-wing leaders who will do as America orders." Assuming what America orders is what they want to do in the first place, which is to rip off their own people. Trump and Rubio are in tune with them, as long as they get their cut.

  • Blaise Malley:

    • [09-02]: What Huckabee is doing about dead Americans in the West Bank: Contrary to the subhed, his job as ambassador to Israel has never been "supposed to protect our citizens," but to service Israel in killing whoever they want, a job that pales next to his true calling, which is to usher in the apocalypse.

    • [09-03]: House to universities: Don't you dare boycott Israel: "Legislation that could strip federal aid from campuses passes by a 236-169 vote."

    • [09-04]: Witkoff & Kushner to spend Labor Day weekend in Russia, Ukraine: "The diplomatic duo is hoping that the window has not closed on a peace agreement," which is a pretty generous interpretation given that they've never shown any actual interest in peace. More likely, they're just sniffing around for bribes.

    • [09-11]: Will 'America First' survive Trump's war-first presidency?. If the definition of America being "Great" is simply that Donald Trump is president, isn't "America First" simply whatever Trump wants? And since Trump's wants are incoherent, anything is possible: first in war? first in peace? At least one Trump prediction proved right: what we'd grow tired of his "winning" and beg him to stop.

    • [09-15]: Vance claims US 'on top' of Red Sea crisis. Houthis say otherwise.

    • [09-16]: New Russia sanctions amid war risk even higher gas prices: "House passes legislation with significant bipartisan support, sending it to the president's desk." Republican vote was 203-7 yea; Democratic vote was 152-58 nay, which suggests to me that Democrats are not as hawkish on Russia as they once were.

    • [09-22]: In UN speech, Trump threatens to 'annihilate' Iran if no deal reached: "Speaking to General Assembly, he also touted both is peacemaking record and an increasingly belligerent US foreign policy." This is too insane to paraphrase:

      Trump presented the past year as proof that military force and economic pressure could resolve conflicts that diplomacy had failed to settle.

      "As president of the most extraordinary nation in history, I have no interest in leaving dangers to grow for another day," he declared. "I do not believe in letting problems fester; they only become harder to solve. So while others have talked, I have acted."

      The leading example of this approach, Trump said, was Iran, which, in his telling, has rejected Washington's diplomatic overtures that had pushed Trump to take military action with Israel in June 2025 and then launch a much larger-scale war beginning at the end of February.

      My bold. The past year has proved exactly the opposite. None of the conflicts are settled. (Even Venezuela, where the still intact Bolivarist regime has chosen to humor him with graft rather than fight him, at least as long as they're in on the graft.) As for the guy who can't stand to let problems fester, what about climate change? Sure, he'd say it isn't a problem, that it's all just a hoax, but we've seen nothing but festering for 30-40 years, and it's feeling pretty real. As for who's willing to negotiate with whom, Trump's two major offensives against Iran occurred during negotiations, not in their breech. More outrageously dumb things follow, like calling people who point to dwindling munitions stockpiles "cowards and traitors," and especially this: "Whoever wins superintelligent wins. That's the group that wins, and we're leading now over China by a lot, and everyone else, and we're going to keep it that way."

  • Mark Thompson [09-03]: Pentagon puts $131 billion price tag on 1970s-era fighter: "The F-15 has been upgraded since it first flew but the sheer size of the sum is staggering." Boeing's contract for upgrading F-15s is more than the entire 2009 Air Force budget. Meanwhile, the more modern (and more useless) F-35 is getting even more expensive.

  • Daniel L Davis [09-08]: Hegseth has been a disaster. It's time for Trump to fire him.

  • Bess Levin:

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos [09-15]: Massie tells RS why he went after Hegseth and not Trump: "The Kentucky congressman has rolled out eight impeachment articles against the defense secretary and is forcing a vote on Thursday." [PS: Hegseth avoids impeachment vote with early House election recess.]

  • Chas Danner [09-18]: We almost went to war with China thanks to AI-hallucinated intel: "'AI-first' Pentagon almost tried to seize a Chinese ship after an AI chatbot convinced an analyst it was carrying nuclear components." I'd back up a bit here, and ask whether the US should seize Chinese ships regardless of what they were carrying?

  • Gregory A Daddis [09-20]: Pete Hegseth declares war — on his own troops: "The defense secretary's crusade is inflicting damage unlike any in history. . . . The U.S. military is being impaired not by some determined overseas enemy but rather by its own leadership in a fratricidal war against cultural bogeyman."

  • Andrew Cockburn [09-22]: Nuclear war could be just another hallucination: "Military discussing how to use AI to launch."

  • Lee Schlenker [09-22]: Trump and 14 Lat Am leaders ignite new drug-terror war at UN: "Leaders designated 24 cartels, gangs, and drug trafficking groups as foreign terrorists. Expects lots of guns, ammo, and drone strikes to follow."

  • Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling [09-25]: Hegseth issues veiled order to military to vote Republican in midterms: He says there are 300,000 "warriors" who are not registered to vote. Even if he manages to correct that, I doubt the net vote gain will be as much as he thinks. Could even go negative, as most "warriors" would be better off avoiding war zones.

  • Caitlin Dewey:

    • [09-28]: Trump's China reversal: "The president made confrontation with China core to his political identity. Now he's walking it back." This might be an interesting story, but Trump's too incoherent to give it any sense. Actually, I have no problem with Trump sucking up to Xi. I just wish he had better reasons than trying to get Musk and Zuckerberg an audience with Xi. But I also wish Xi could use his leverage to nudge Trump away from his current warpath.

    • [09-24]: Why Americans are warming to China: "More than half of Americans still say they view China negatively. But that percentage is dropping." No explanation given. Maybe the propaganda is losing its grip?

  • Andrew Day [09-29]: Yes, the Iran War has destroyed Trump's presidency. He's far from unique: Lyndon Johnson and George W Bush are the most obvious precedents; Truman was no less unpopular after Korea dragged on; Biden was unfairly slammed for Afghanistan, but his trenchant support for wars he didn't start in Ukraine and Israel had the same effect. George HW Bush may have claimed two wins, but they did him no credit. Arguably the only American presidents who might have burnished their legacies in war were Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, but both died before they had to face the voters again. (Unlike Churchill, who was soundly rejected after being widely acclaimed during WWII.) I suppose you could point to Madison, Polk, and/or McKinley, if you go back more than a century. Wilson won his war, but he lost his peace. Still, no American war has been this unpopular this quickly.

Trump vs. Law and/or Law vs. America: From ICE to the Supreme Court and the assault on democracy.

Trump's Administration: Trump can't remake America in his own image (i.e., destroy the country, culture, and civilization) just by himself. He needs help, and having largely purged the government of civil servants and replaced them with his own minions, this is what they are doing — whether he's paying attention or not, and that it's mostly not is no excuse: he sets the tone, then distracts the media with his own insanity.

Donald Trump: The cult (or should I say sinkhole?) of personality. While most of the bad things he has done and is doing are the work of his administration, and many of their bad ideas are deeply ingrained in the Republican Party, he hogs the spotlight, giving them a uniquely pungent odor.

The Elections: Pieces on US elections (recent and future) and, more generally, inter-party politicking. Party-specific pieces in following sections.

  • Ed Kilgore:

  • Michael Tomasky:

    • [09-04]: Donald Trump as no idea of the tidal wave that's coming for him: "There are three groups of voters who matter in this election, and each of them is going to punish the president." He justifies this by having been right once before (1998?), so that's not terribly convincing. His three groups:

      1. "people like you and me — the people who always thought he was a fascist goon and an imbecile"
      2. "swing voters who were naïve enough to believe that Trump could lower prices and fix the economy"
      3. "Betrayed MAGA Pigeons . . . [who thought] Trump would improve the economy; that he was right on immigration and heads needed to be cracked; that Kamala Harris was the real warmonger, and Trump would calmly keep the peace. Well, that defense against reality has been crushed like a grape under a tire." He thinks it's more likely that this group will simply not vote, than that they will turn and vote for a Democrat.

      In a rational world, he's right. In ours?

    • [09-25]: A "bloodbath" will only make Donald Trump more corrupt and lawless: "Most pols would hunker down for an electoral wipeout and take their medicine. Not Roy Cohn's protégé." This piece doesn't venture beyond the tantrums Trump will throw if Republicans lose in November, but as he reminded us in his UN speech, he'll still be president, and as "the most powerful person in the world," he'll still have a lot of leeway to do terrible things. Nor do I take much comfort in "with subpoena power, Democrats could launch investigations that could eventually make their way into federal courtrooms and dog him for the rest of his iron-slicing, well-done-steak-eating life." Haven't we not only heard that before, but seen how ineffective it was? I winced at the "well-done-steak-eating" dis, which says more about the snobbery of the accuser than about the tastes of the accused. I grew up with folks who didn't trust a steak that wasn't fully cooked, and who would take this as evidence of Trump's common touch — unlike, say, his fondness for golf.

  • Chris Lehmann [09-11]: Trump wants voters to pretend he's on the ballot: "But Republican midterm candidates are hoping everyone forgets he exists."

  • Caitlin Dewey [09-15]: 6 other ways Trump is meddling in the midterms: "The Supreme Court ruled against Trump's mail voting rules, but the president is still trying to mess with the election."

  • Miles Bryan/Sean Rameswaram [09-15]: California's audacious plan to tax its billionaires: "And why some tax experts think there's a better way to do it." Interview with Cristobal Young, who wrote The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight: How Place Still Matters for the Rich. Doesn't sound like he's against it. One complaint here is: "Firstly, it's a one-time tax, but this is not a one-time problem."

  • Toby Buckle [09-23]: Centrists won't tell you where "moderating" on trans rights ends up: "The recent example of the UK Labour Party shows that 'compromising' rarely stops at some acceptable midpoint." We've seen this already on issues like abortion rights, where there is no middle point where the right will be satisfied. This adds some evidence suggesting that seeking the "midpoint" loses more votes than it adds.

  • Cameron Peters [09-28]: Trump's taxpayer-funded propaganda blitz: "Trump is using your money on TV ads to stroke his ego."

    Over the weekend, the Trump administration aired a 30-second spot of Trump promising to "demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers from our government," and "cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists," paired with black-and-white footage of the president walking down a hallway.

    For the final 10 seconds of the ad, a line of white text appears on the screen: "Paid for by the U.S. Government." . . .

    The other two ads also promote Trump, one with clips from a speech he gave over the summer and the other declaring "America will never be a communist country" over flashing photos of Trump as the song "Love Me" plays in the background. All of them are likely illegal, according to several ethics experts who spoke with the Times. . . .

    The White House has defended the ads as "public service announcements," pointing out that Trump is not currently on the ballot.

    The black-and-white spot, however, is almost a 1:1 duplicate of a 2024 Trump campaign ad — and the others are no less Trump-heavy and substance-light.

    Contra the administration line, Trump has also spent the months leading up to the midterms asking voters to "pretend I'm on the ticket" — including, now, by using their own money to put himself on air.

    If Trump was at all serious with banishing the warmongers, he'd have to start with himself. Also see:

    • No More Mister Nice Blog [09-29]: Trump is finally using his powers for good. Link includes the ad clips, if you're so inclined, and notes:

      But that's great! I'm delighted that he's still so good at getting attention that even people who don't watch the TV programming where these ads have appeared and don't have social media algorithms that would put the ads in their feeds will learn about them anyway. I'm glad because it means that millions of people will see these bad, tone-deaf ads and learn that tax money was squandered on them, in defiance of the law.

      In other words, the usual Trump double-tap -- do a brazen thing that's attention-grabbing, then get more attention as everyone discusses how Trump did the brazen thing -- is working to the Democrats' midterm advantage. Democrats should be thrilled that these bad ads are out there, and thrilled that stories about their illegality and cost are also out there. Without meaning to, Trump is finally using his attention-grabbing and criminal talents for the good of the country.

Other Republicans:

  • John Ganz [08-31]: The Milo and Loomer fall out: "Funny and scary." Loomer claims she alerted ICE to deport former MAGA-darling Milo Yiannopoulos. As it happens, I just noticed tweets by Loomer calling the Democratic Senate candidate in Florida a "ghetto bitch," after which she started to get really nasty (something about ebonics and dogs).

  • Troy Farah [08-31]: Kalshi kicks out George Santos forever: Once again, the former Republican congressman gets caught in a con.

  • Jeet Heer [09-04]: Maria Bartiromo was fired for the wrong reason: "For Fox News, blind servility to Trump is fine until it hits the bottom line."

  • Jennifer Wilson [09-07]: Have conservatives taken sexy back? "The culture wars have come for lingerie as the right, once the advocates of promise rings and purity culture, embarks on a crusade to 'Make America Hot Again.'"

  • Sarah Kliff [09-08]: A doctor sued 700 patients for debts; 81 were arrested. Now he's a Senator: Worse than that, he's Roger Marshall (R-KS) — the doctor who, wanting to curry favor with Trump during the 2020 pandemic, prescribed Trump-recommended ivermectin to his own family.

  • Amanda Marcotte:

  • Aaron Kleinman: [09-09]: Proof from the states: The right wing attempt to repeal the 20th century: "We read the legislation introduced across all 50 states this session and pulled out the worst of it. 1,182 bills, 48 states, everything from abortion bounties to studying chemtrails to a proposal to legalize cockfighting against robots."

  • David A Graham:

  • Laura Jedeed [09-20]: We need to talk about the apocalypse: "End-times prophecy, pro-war prayer circles, Democrats as demons: Christian dominionism's influence is everywhere in the second Trump administration — and increasingly, within America itself. Can democracy survive the assault?" I've always had trouble taking this sort of thing seriously, even though I've known people who were seriously into it. My grandfather was one: I remember him asking me if I thought the gathering of the Jews in the new state of Israel was a sign that the end times were nigh. My father had his own dissenting theories on Revelation, which I never tried to get clarification on, perhaps because my own theory was that the Book was tacked on as a belated reveal that the whole Bible had been a joke. While it's easy enough to understand that most Americans still identify with the religion of their ancestors, that they might actually believe in the literal truth and/or the cosmological extrapolations is hard for me to rationally grasp: so hard, I don't really have an answer to the political challenges they seem to be presenting. How do you reason with people who have none?

  • ProPublica [09-22]: The FBI anti-corruption squad was circling Susan Collins — until Trump got in the way: This was followed by: Susan Collins dismissed our reporting as old news. Also see:

Democrats:

  • Ben Schwartz [09-04]: Hasan Piker and the Democrats' edgelord dilemma: Cited for reference. I don't know enough about Piker to care what he says. And I'll trust politicians like Abdul El-Sayed to speak for themselves. I will say, though, that if you want to complain about "dirtbag trolls," that isn't a left problem, even if you find a few examples that break against the right.

  • Dylan Gyauch-Lewis [09-13]: Centrists are soft-launching the idea that we have a little too much democracy: "As the right attacks mass particpation head on, the center is telling the rest of us to pipe down while the elites are talking." At a time when every day's news is filled with things we should find outrageous, Matthew Yglesias is quoted as saying "what we need is fewer engaged people," another wag is complaining about "the growing obsession with the common good," while consultants are advising a "move away from the dominance of small-dollar donors." Centrists are like hall monitors (or prison guards) assigned to keep rank-and-file Democrats from getting too uppity.

  • Matthew Duss [09-16]: The reality today is that foreign policy hawks are a minority in the Democratic Party. As noted, rank-and-file Democrats are significantly less hawkish than their representatives, especially on Israel. Duss wants more accurate representation on foreign policy roles. What he doesn't do is go further and argue that Democrats need to reconcile foreign policy with their core domestic policy beliefs: that support for war, tyranny, and exploitation abroad is deeply at odds with the way they think that Americans should be treated.

  • Monica Potts [09-24]: Bashing Trump isn't the best way to win these fickle voters: "A new research survey reveals which messages are most persuasive in convincing low-motivation voters to support Democrats." Few beliefs are more common among the American people than the notion that politicians are corrupt, favoring the wealthy donors they spend so much time courting. Fighting against corruption is one issue where the Left has much more credibility than the "centrists" have (see the example below).

    The research found that populist economic messages and anti-fraud messages that named specific harms from corruption won across all of these groups. Some of the most popular messages included statements like, "Our leaders should be fighting to make all of our lives better," and, "We need leaders willing to stand up to right-wing corporate interests that hold influence in both political parties." Other popular messages named no-bid contracts, donor favors, ballrooms, monuments, and corporate price gouging as some of the consequences of government corruption. These messages worked better than the more conservative options, and also worked better than simply bashing Trump, which might feel too partisan for voters. . . .

    Even still, voters don't just want to hear about everything terrible Trump has done since returning to the White House, but what Democrats can actually do to improve these problems. With politicians like Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York City working to deliver on their promises, voters are more persuaded than ever that these problems are solvable. "People are seeing more Democrats fighting and winning, and so that is also kind of part of the new moment," Fernandez Ancona said.

  • Tim Wu [09-28]: Affordability is a winning message for Democrats. But there's an even better one. But I don't see where he packages his better concept into something one can easily campaign on — although "justice" might work, if you can free that concept from its abusers.

    The most important political division in our times is not between Democrats and Republicans, or socialists and capitalists; it's between those who think today's economic system is fair and working well for most people, and those who do not. While a minority of Americans defend the current system, citing aggregate indicators like growth rates, a majority see things differently.

    A recent CBS News poll found that some 60 percent of Americans think the economy is "unfair" and that most people under 45 say they have fewer economic opportunities than their parents did. In a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 66 percent of Republicans said that the gap between rich and poor is a "big problem." Though the stock market is up and the United States is not suffering a recession or mass unemployment, Gallup's monthly Economic Confidence Index has been persistently negative.

    To run a proper affordability campaign — one that taps into a discontent even deeper than that over high prices — Democrats should cater to this widespread sense of unfairness. The key message is rebalancing: a promise to level out a lopsided economy that favors huge concentrations of wealth.

    That message can risk sounding like generic political talk about standing up for the little guy. Credibility has to come from a platform of policies that shift economic power away from the big guys in ways that voters can readily understand.

    Affordability works because it joins two dimensions: income and prices. Life becomes more affordable when incomes rise and/or prices fall.

Economists and the Economy:

  • Paul Krugman:

  • Dean Baker: For more, look here.

  • Marina Bolotnikova [08-05]: Renting in America can suck. Tenants deserve better solutions than rent control.

    Renting offers many benefits — flexibility, far lower upfront costs, never having to figure out what a "sacrificial anode rod" is — and homeownership is overrated as a savings vehicle.

    But being a renter in America (as roughly one in three people here are) can also be a very undignified experience. In most states, your landlord can kick you out when your lease ends for no reason at all, even if you haven't done anything wrong. Many tenants live in fear of receiving their next lease renewal, not knowing if they'll be displaced by the next rent hike.

    I'll add that moving is expensive, and can be traumatic, so one can easily feel like a prisoner, and landlords can take advantage of that feeling.

  • Cameron Peters [09-16]: Trump's failed Fed takeover: "The Fed is raising interest rates, despite Trump's best efforts." Trump may get to nominate the Fed Chair, but his options have been pretty limited. Nor is that just Trump's failure to do any due diligence: the last three Democratic presidents renominated Republican chairs rather than pick their own person.

  • Robert Kuttner [09-25]: The coming AI meltdown: "The whole economy has been pumped up by unsustainable investment in AI. The unwinding will not be pretty — and could be catastrophic." Brookings is estimating that the "total cost of the AI build-out through 2032 will be $10.3 trillion" (3.63 percent of GDP each year).

Technology (Including AI):

  • Ryan Cooper [08-31]: Big Tech crashes headlong into American democracy: "The AI oligarchs thought they could stuff data centers down the throats of the American people. They thought wrong."

  • Rebecca Gordon [08-31]: It's time to rein in lethal AI drones: Gordon wrote a similar piece in TomDispatch in 2022 (A world of killer robots?), but with all the AI apocalypse talk of late, it's worth noting that some of this is already happening, and that you don't need AGI to start killing people. All you need is to hook a killing machine, like a missile-equipped drone, to a fairly rudimentary computer program. We've already seen a huge acceleration in two things: drone warfare (in Ukraine/Russia, where being used to hit targets way beyond the lines, and in the Middle East (Iran, Yemen, Israel, the US); and Israel's use of AI for target selection in Gaza and Lebanon. I used to think that AI deployment would be slow as people would first have to make sure it works correctly, but Israel clearly doesn't care whether AI target selection meets strict criteria; they only care to make sure that their bomb budget gets applied efficiently. As near as I can figure out, Israel's military strategy in Gaza (and they seem to be applying this wholesale in Lebanon, if anything more effectively, as most residents of occupied southern Lebanon have been able to flee north):

    1. Identify a list of Palestinian leaders ("militants" prominently, but others may be included, like journalists), and kill them all off whenever possible.
    2. Systematically destroy critical infrastructure, making daily life as hard as possible for everyone (greenhouses are a good example here).
    3. And they are killing small numbers of people almost randomly, in a strategy that could be called "stochastic terror."

    AI is certainly useful for sifting intelligence data (especially images, which can involve facial recognition), the likelihood that it will generate false positives in target selection is high. But since that just adds to the stochastic terror, that's their idea of a feature.

  • Rachel Cohen Booth [09-08]: The smartphone trap we built for ourselves: "It's time to end the mandatory QR code."

  • John Herrman:

    • [09-07]: Meta's reckoning: "Like its users, the company is stuck in an endless, unhappy doomscroll."

    • [09-24]: The AI assistant wars are coming: "The world's biggest companies are battling it out to become your trusted personal agent. Things could get ugly.

  • Andrew Prokop

    • [09-14]: The week the AI freakout went mainstream: "Warnings about AI killing many people, or everyone, are going viral. Here are 3 things the government could do." The false premise here is the idea that under Trump, there is a "the government" that can actually do anything. None of these three strike me as especially good: banning some forms of AI; introducing government oversight; increasing civil liabilities. My own preference is to undercut the bubble by reducing the potential economic rewards for owners of AI technology. One could, for instance, deny patent protection to AI tech or anything developed with AI tech. One could require that all AI be open source and publicly auditable and reparable. One could also prohibit suspect organizations, like militaries and security forces, from buying AI-based products (since they are the most likely to abuse them).

    • [09-18]: The man behind Trump's rejection of AI safety: "David Sacks has clashed with safety advocates. He's no fan of Anthropic or OpenAI. Here's what he wants."

  • David Futrelle [09-14]: Time has run out for AI risk deniers: "The recent spate of reports about the technology's destructive power underline two prime directives: Be afraid, and regulate aggressively." But I still don't understand what these "existential threats" are and how they work. On the other hand, it's relatively easy to see how the fearmongering feeds into the mystique of AI, thereby driving up its potential value to owners.

  • Cameron Peters [09-14]: Everyone but Trump is worried about AI: "AI experts want guardrails. Trump wants to go full speed ahead." Of course, nothing could be less reassuring than that Trump is the exception here. This quotes Trump:

    The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades. There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!

    Wins? If the race is to see who can first produce autonomous agents of mass destruction, is "winner" a word that makes any sense?

  • Natasha Lennard [09-14]: Tech CEO's doomsaying is a distraction from real, existing harms of AI: "The binary between AI apocalypse and AI redemption asks us to ignore data centers and AI war machines — all as tech executives get incredibly rich."

  • David Wallace-Wells [09-16]: We may finally be ready to do something about A.I. What took so long?

  • Eric Levitz [09-19]: The scariest AI doom scenario you haven't thought about: "Claude, design a doomsday bioweapon. Make no mistakes." My guess is that most of the people who have thought about AI doom scenarios at least considered this one. Bioweapons have been a sci-fi staple for many years now. As best I can figure it, AI adds to the risk two ways: it speeds up the grunt work, especially modeling and simulation; and it's error prone, so may generate fruitful mistakes at a much faster pace. Still, the real problem isn't what AI might do, but what people might want to do. But why should anyone want to make them? We should recognize that bioweapons are not just dangerous but too unpredictable to target, contain, and/or counteract. They've been called "weapons of mass destruction," but "weapons of mass irresponsibility" is more like it.

    • Sara Herschander [09-17]: We're worrying about the wrong AI apocalypse: "America's infrastructure was already hackable. Then came AI." While it's hard to imagine why anyone would pursue bioweapons, cyberwar is a much lower bar, and one that has few if any guardrails, practiced by people with few if any scruples. I'm far less worried about the non-zero chance that AI could exterminate all humans than by the much greater likelihood that it can be used to cause us a lot of annoyance and aggravation. Again, AI is an accelerant, not the core problem.

  • Kylie Jones [09-22]: Soldiers can refuse to commit war crimes. Can AI?: "The Pentagon wants AI models that can't say no." Actually, I'm not aware of any US soldiers refusing orders, illegal or merely outrageous, so I doubt this is much of a consideration. The bigger advantage that killer robots have is that they're disposable. The US military got much more cautious about wasting their own soldiers after the draft ended and they had to rely on volunteers.

  • Branko Marcetic [09-24]: AI destruction isn't hypothetical. It's already here.

  • Peter Balonon-Rosen/Sean Rameswaram [09-29]: What China wants from AI: "China has its own AI worries — but a robot apocalypse isn't one."

  • Timnit Gebru/Emily M Bender [10-01]: Forget 'superintelligence': error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month.

Climate and Environment:

  • Ananya Rupanagunta [09-18]: The wildfire danger we're only just beginning to understand: "Toxic smoke will soon be everyone's problem."

  • Judson Jones [09-09]: Heard about the Super Godzilla Monster El Niño? Here's how it could actually affect you. Argues "that's not always a bad thing," but that depends on where you are. As I'm writing this, there are massive flood watches for much of the midwest and Texas, which are taking our minds away from the recent droughts.

    • Raymond Zhong/Chico Harlan [08-12]: This year's El Niño is huge and already changing the world: "The recurring climate phenomenon is expected to peak later this year, but it is already causing dry spells and crop failures on three continents."

      What's clear is that El Niño's gyrations are adding to the stronger storms, drier dry spells and fiercer wildfires that global warming is already bringing about. El Niño will magnify those phenomena in some regions and could lift global temperatures to record levels next year, as the heat from the Pacific spreads around the world.

      "What we'll see in 2027 is a sneak peek of what the new normal will be in 2035," said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit research organization. "We'll see things that have never happened before in our history in terms of temperature, drought conditions, extreme heat."

    • Emma Rosemurgey [09-11]: Five ominous signs of strongest El Niño ever recorded are showing up around the world. Appears to be a typo here: "the worsening drought in [Panama] is reducing the amount of water needed to operate the canal." Sub "available" for "needed."

  • Brian Lada [09-29]: A 121-year-old Atlantic hurricane record could be broken in October: "The Atlantic has yet to produce a hurricane in 2026, putting the season within reach of a record set in 1905 for the latest first hurricane. AccuWeather is now forecasting 0-2 hurricanes through the end of the season." The ocean and seas are warmer than ever, but wind shear, probably related to the ominously developing El Niño

Media:

Regular Columnists

Sometimes an interesting columnist writes often enough on a range of topics that it makes sense to collect their work in one place, rather than scatter it about (especially if they cover a range of topics).

No More Mister Nice Blog:

  • [09-09]: If Trump is hated, why aren't the polls predicting more Democratic blowouts? One reason may be that Democrats don't run and act like a party:

    I think a major problem is that Democrats don't tout the Democratic Party -- progressives attack it from the left, while moderates brag about bipartisanship and wear their Democratic affiliation almost apologetically.

    And Democrats don't attack the Republican Party.

    This was the ideal year for Republican-bashing: not only is the Republican president wildly unpopular, but every Republican is his enabler, apart from a few who are hounded out of the party if they don't enable him.

  • [09-13]: Apart from hating conservative politicians, America is really conservative: Because we like country music? Because Ella Langley has a hit single? With charts, in case you're interested.

  • [09-17]: We still haven't seen how fascist American could become. About Charles Haywood, a Claremont fixture, so this naturally descends to Franco, Pinochet, and JD Vance.

    I believe Vance is an old-school blood-and-soil neo-Confederate, but I also think that while he's trying to maintain credibility among the groyper/neo-fascist edgelords, he's also determined to reassure establishmentarians and advocates of Israel that he's on their side. Vance reminds me of an earlier racist striver, Richard Nixon, who carefully built bridges both to the establishment and to Goldwater/John Birch extremists in his long march to a presidential victory in 1968.

  • [09-22]: Trump is suffering midterm ego death.

  • [09-23]: The Trump administration doesn't seem to know the difference between authoritarianism and ragebait.

  • [09-26]: Trump's media ban is working perfectly — for him: Reviews his ban of "hostile" news organizations, quoting Quinta Jurecic, Timothy Noah, and Greg Sargent on how the ban has backfired. Then he explains:

    If, as Sargent says, news organizations are hurting Trump where he's most vulnerable -- his desperate need for attention -- then why is he continuing to put the media's pool coverage at risk?

    The answer is obvious: Trump might not be getting his ordinary coverage from the press pool, but his fight with the media is getting massive amounts of media attention. The world's neediest attention seeker is getting the attention he seeks.

    The main battle Trump is fighting right now -- the war with Iran -- isn't going very well, so Trump is picking a different battle, with the media, an enemy he knows his (shrinking) base hates. The base loves this, and loves Trump for picking this fight.

    However, I don't see how this helps Trump's party as midterm voting begins. The GOP's numbers just get worse and worse, as do Trump's numbers. But he doesn't care. He's just seeking love from the voters who haven't abandoned him.

  • [09-27]: If the GOP suffers bloodbaths in 2026 and 2028, Republicans will still like themselves more than Democrats did after 2024.

  • [09-28]: Why aren't pundits encouraging Republicans to move to the center? When Democrats underperform, it's always because they're perceived as too far to the left. So when Republicans fall behind, why not chide them as being too far to the right? (Even the obvious slam dunk cases seem to escape scrutiny, while Democrats as conservative as Harris regularly get lambasted.) Probably because so many liberal pundits see patrolling the left as the source of their legitimacy.

Jeffrey St Clair:

  • [09-04]: Roaming Charges: America First, Americans Eventually: I'm shocked to say this, but he's more optimistic than I am. Starts with the story of Brian José Morales Garcia, a US citizen who was snatched up by ICE and deported to Mexico. Further down he quotes a more famous deportee:

    + Milo Yiannopoulos on his arrest and deportation (apparently it's funny when it happens to Haitians, Salvadorans, and Mexicans and an outrage when they come after you): "I didn't really understand the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality is in America. The manner in which they arrest you, they put you in manacles; everybody is arrested like an MS 13 gang member. It was physically degrading. It was frightening. I don't think I've ever been frightened like that before. I was weeping like an old woman for an hour. I wouldn't wish it on anyone."

    + As they kicked 5 million American families off of food aid, the Trump White House is offering white South Africans $4500 in living expenses to move here . . .

    + Norman Mailer: "Will the time come when we can cease concerning ourselves with the fiction that the rich need large profit incentives in order to keep our economy going? Just as a poor man does all he can to survive under the most wretched circumstances, so will the rich continue to be rich (although less so) if their profits are reduced by the recognition that a modern society cannot take an honest breath until it manages to provide for all of its citizens."

    Unfortunately, I think the answer to this, thirty years after said this during his Chubb Lecture at Yale, is no . . . Not this society, anyway.

    + A new Reuters poll finds that 89% of Americans believe that corruption in government is "widespread." But how many of them think, to rework the line from Wall Street, that "corruption is good," as long as your guy's the one doing the grifting?

    + Trump continued to buy and sell oil and gas stocks throughout his war on Iran. Trump's one-third Roy Cohn, one-third Jay Gould and one-third Baby Huey . . .

  • [09-18]: Roaming Charges: Say hello to my little gear!: Opens with Trump:

    Trump no longer projects power. Only the gilded trappings are left. But the low-rent Versailles decor he has cocooned himself inside only makes him look like an aging potentate well past his prime. He has surrounded himself with sycophants, none of whom have the political skills to save him from the perilous pit he has dug for himself and the country at large. . . .

    Mostly, though, Trump seems bored, out of it half the time, barely engaged the rest. The old fire has burned down to a few smoldering embers. He's distracted by shiny things. His Oval Office bric-a-brac. His ballroom. His arch. His name on the Kennedy Center. Natalie, oh, Natalie.

    He's caught in a war that he can't win and can't bring himself to get out of. It's the mentality of someone he never went to war but has played the role of a bully his entire life. Nothing infuriates Trump more than being called a loser. But he is one. . . .

    Trump is Trump, even in his diminished capacity. There will be no successor. In a sense, there will be nothing to succeed to. The Trump political empire, like his economic empire, is a mirage. . . .

    There was always only the brand and the brand without the man is empty, a void filled only with debts that will never be paid.

    More items:

    + The 100 wealthiest Americans now hold an estimated $5.5 trillion in net worth, which exceeds the $4.3 trillion combined total held by the entire bottom half of the U.S. population (roughly 66 million households).

    + CNBC: "The number of apartments renting for more than $50,000 a month in Manhattan has more than doubled compared with 2025, while the number renting for more than $100,000 a month is up sevenfold."

    + NOAA: "The average temperature for meteorological summer (June-August) 2026 was the warmest for the contiguous United States in the 132-year record, exceeding the previous records, set in 1936 and 2021, by 0.4 degrees." Five years from now, people will be longing for the summer of 2026 . . .

    + Macklemore should put together his own tour with Kneecap and Bob Vylan.

    + Ben Ehrenreich: "It's sort of a weird tell to fervently believe that anything smarter than us would want us all dead."

    + RFK. Jr. on Trump: "I discovered a self-effacing man of superior intelligence, of empathy and compassion with an encyclopedic grasp of the issues and in molecular detail. And most of all a near-reckless courage to challenge vested interests and official orthodoxies . . . who cared about transparency in government and free speech."

  • [09-25]: Roaming Charges: The freaks of caprice:

    + Trump at the UN, sounding like Lex Luthor on ludes: "I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran? Or do I annihilate them, and do it quickly? Do I drive them into Hell with no chance of survival and no hope?" No wonder he wants to get rid of the International Criminal Court . . .

    + Fewer stocks are lifting the market than at any time since the dot-com boom/boost. According to MarketWatch, "the last time there were that many S&P 500 components below their 200-day moving averages with the index within 1% of its record high was indeed March 27, 2000 — right around the dot-com bubble peak."

    + If oil prices stay at their current levels, home heating oil customers can expect to pay as much as 31% more this winter.

    + Herman Melville on Trump's plan to sell off part of Yosemite to a billionaire donor for a private airstrip and build sprawling data centers on public lands: "All the world over, the picturesque yields to the pocketesque."

Miscellaneous Pieces

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

Katherine Krueger [09-07]: They tried to make Charlie Kirk a saint. They made him a meme. "By elevating Kirk to a martyr and clamping down on free speech, the right assured that he would be ridiculed even in death." It's been one year since the Republican youth organizer was killed, and the right-wing propaganda machine went into overdrive trying both to sanctify him and to turn his death into a club for use in beating anyone who expressed doubts or indifference. (See, e.g., Alain Stephens [2025-10-14] The right wing desperately wants to make Charlie Kirk its MLK.)

  • Daniel Bessner [09-07]: Seven theses on Charlie Kirk. While I won't pick a fight with Walter Benjamin, I'm skeptical of the other six theses. Even if one sympathized with Kirk in death, his person was best forgotten, as his agenda was quickly replaced by dozens of other right-wing operatives. As for his supporters, they milked his martyrdom for all they could, after which he ceased to have any purpose, or purchase.

Books: Multiple reviews are grouped under book.

  • Jeffrey Sklansky [08-06]: The class struggle in your wallet: "A new book about the meaning of money argues for how to use finance to create a more equitable economy." The book is J.W. Mason and Arjun Jayadev: Against Money.

  • Jimmy So [09-01]: The appalling history that enabled Trump's immigration cruelty: "Trump inherited laws designed over two centuries to benefit slaveholders, eugenicists, and segregationists." Review of Kelly Lytle Hernández: Racist by Design: Two Centuries of US Immigration Control.

  • Vivian Gornick [09-08]: Home truths: "Love and literature in Leslie Fiedler's America." Revisits Fiedler's 1960 book, Love and Death in the American Novel. I recall reading his book later in the decade, and being astonished at how interesting it was to read about books that my previous schooling had convinced me were so dead-ass boring as to be unreadable. I never overcame that early prejudice, but I did read widely about books I never read, and it proved to be a pretty efficient learning strategy.

  • Osita Nwanevu [09-08]: Can we save democracy? "Hélène Landemore's case for an alternative system of popular government." Review of her book, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule. The critique of the intrinsic flaws of politicians is interesting, and possibly accurate, but they seem like a necessity now and well into the future. It is very rare that one gets a chance to design a political system from scratch. (Where I have thought about this, as in standing up initial consultative governance in a Gaza freed of Israel, where past political parties would be unwelcome, I have come up with similar approaches, starting with a random selection of representatives.) I'd be curious here about what the book has to say about "Bringing the Shy People Out." Also on Landemore:

    • Nathan Heller [2020-02-19]: Politics Without Politicians: "The political scientist Hélène Landemore asks, If government is for the people, who can't the people do the governing?" Which refers back to an earlier (2012) book, Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many.

  • Christian Paz [09-08]: How Christians can fight back against Christian nationalism: "A new book argues that the future of democracy depends on a segment of American Christians." Interview with Robert P Jones, author of Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy.

  • Jonathan Kaufman [09-09]: Blame Ronald Reagan: Author has a new book, When America Roared: How the 1980s Saved, Then Broke, the Country — and Led Us to Today. Googled summed up the core argument: "While Ronald Reagan's market-driven changes saved the US from 1970s economic stagnation, they also broke the social contract and created modern populist anger." The economic feats of the Reagan years were much less impressive than many people are given to think, mostly because they were so unevenly distributed. From the New Deal in the 1930s through most of the 1970s, workers were able to claim a nice chunk of business profits, sustaining the notion that the country was unified — not that there were no exceptions, but nothing like what happened in the 1980s, when unions were busted, taxes on the rich were slashed, and opportunities for financial shenanigans exploded. Much of this can be traced back to previous presidential agendas — Kennedy (tax cuts), Nixon (ending the gold standard, farm policy), and Carter (deregulation) — but with Reagan profiteering went shameless, creating a cult of the rich that leads directly to Trump. The only boom industry in America in the 1980s was fraud, which is why Reagan wound up with more corruption scandals than any presidents since Harding and Grant, but even more telling is what people got away with. Kaufman drops some names here — evidently his book is built around profiles of people like Jack Welch — but doesn't go very deep. Still, that something significant happened around 1980 is well established. Reagan's popularity rested largely on adoption of a fantasy of American bliss, a stark contrast to the bleak worldview of Carter. What's harder to understand is why Democrats got invested in the same delusions, especially as they became increasingly untenable. It's taken Trump to finally expose Reagan as the ogre he always was.

  • Kai Bird [09-15]: We are living under Roy Cohnian logic: "The political fixer created a career for himself as a self-promoting, ubiquitous hustler. Like Trump, he got away with it by having the right friends." The author, with Susan Goldmark, wrote the book American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump.

  • Susan Neiman [09-21]: The Left should start using the word "evil": "According to philosopher Susan Neiman, the Left abandons the concept of good and evil at our own peril. If we refuse to use such morally freighted language, we concede it entirely to people who will use it for immoral ends." Interview, good introduction to her new book, Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era. I pulled the following quote from the book:

    Trump and his ilk could never have come to power without one belief: Moral concepts are for suckers who don't know they're being conned. . . . Donald Trump has made it easy to be shamelessly racist, misogynist, and homophobic at a time when we'd made some progress in beating hatred back. Even worse, he has done so by making it acceptable to have no values at all beyond the search for wealth and power. Everything else is for losers.

  • Yahia Lababidi [09-22]: A restored history of Jewish anti-Zionism — and the loss it cannot repair: "Benjamin Moser's new book recovers a tradition of dissenters who paid a price for opposing Palestinian dispossession, even as they could not prevent it." The book is Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History. It is written as a series of biographical sketches, less a tradition than a reminder that anything as domineering as Zionism is bound to generate multiple dissents.

Music:

Obituaries: I had been using the New York Times, but they're giving me aggravation these days, so I'll switch over to Wikipedia, also August), which is probably better anyway. Roughly speaking, since my last report on August 27:

Some other names I recognize:

Tweets: I've usually used this section for highlighting clever responses and/or interesting ideas.

  • Aaron Rupar:

    • [09-30], quoting Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (pictured behind a seated, snoozing Trump):

      I have the best job, because I get to sit and watch Donald J Trump make the coolest deals I've ever seen in my life. And I have the best time doing it.

    • [09-30]: quoting War Secretary Pete Hegseth:

      It's worth saying again so the fake news understands it. We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation of that -- no fatties no trannies no beardos no weirdos no wimps no radicals. Just warriors.

    • [09-30]: Hegseth again:

      The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top.

  • Norm Ornstein [09-30]:

    I first started working in the Senate in 1970 — 56 years ago. I have loved and revered the institution, worked in it and with it over all these decades, with dozens of senators from both parties. I've seen bad stuff and bad people along with great ones. Nothing quote compares to Eric Schmitt.

  • Zachary D Carter [09-30], referring to a New York Times article, What would John Maynard Keynes say about A.I.? The Keynes Bot told us:

    I am admittedly outraged by absolutely everything about this, but as a matter of basic analytic rigor, a Keynes Bot that is not offended by the concept of a Keynes Bot has failed on its own terms.

  • Matthew Dodd [10-01]:

    Latest WSJ poll:

    "63% want to pause AI development
    61% want a billionaire wealth tax
    59% want Medicare for All
    57% want a $20 minimum wage
    58% want to end U.S. military aid to Israel"

    This is the center of the country politically. It is time all adjust to this political spectrum, esp. media.

Initial published count: 328 links, 16414 words (21476 total).

Current count: 331 links, 16534 words (21667 total)

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