Loose Tabs [Draft File]

Previous contents moved to here.

This is a safe space for collecting items that may eventually go into a Loose Tabs post.

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 (12 times from April-December 2025). My previous one appeared 28 days ago, on May 12.

I have a little-used option of selecting bits of text highlighted with a background color, for emphasis a bit more subtle than bold or ALL CAPS. (I saw this on Medium. I started with their greenish color [#bbdbba] and lightened it a bit [#dbfbda].) I'll try to use it sparingly.

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. Here's a list of recent ones, plus a couple of older ones I've pinned because they still seem relevant here, in LIFO order:

  • [05-05]: The Real Road to Serfdom: Tim Wu explains how monopoly power leads to fascism.

  • [05-02]: Lookback: Iraq 2003: Why does the Iran war story sound familiar? (with allowances for tragedy repeating as farce)?

  • [04-27]: Explaining Inflation: AI treats us like 5-year-olds. They leave out a few things.

  • [04-05]: Iran War: The Big Question: How does it end? Or does it end at all?

  • [04-03]: Iran War: The Three Questions: Why is this happening?

  • [03-13]: Days of Infamy: "Franklin Roosevelt knew how to sell a war." Donald Trump doesn't. He only knows how to start one.

  • [2025-10-21]: Making Peace in Gaza and Beyond: "Looking beyond the Trump points toward a peace we can all live with."

  • [2025-10-17]: Gaza War Peace Plan: "Twenty Trump points, for better or worse."

  • [2025-08-10]: Four Stories: My first post, which sets out the basic ideas behind my effort, and takes its title from a very wrong-headed Vox piece that offered some teachable moments. One sample quote I buried in parentheses:

    There is no problem that Trump is the solution to. But his slogan, "Trump will fix it," suggests that some people thought we had problems he could fix. I think Trump's slogan was very effective, especially as Harris made little or no effort to show how very ridiculous the boast was.

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:

Lyrics for Carsie Blanton's Everything Is Great!:

Everything is great
Everything is fine
Everything is getting better all of the time
Everybody knows that president's insane
Nobody wants to talk about what people do if their president's insane

It's the hottest summer in the history of man
For some reason yesterday we bombed Iran
Everybody knows we're starting world war three
But nobody wants to talk about what you should do if your government is starting WWIII

Everything is great
Everything is fine
Everything is getting better all of the time
Everybody knows that Luigi was right
But nobody wants to talk about what you should do when everybody knows that Luigi was right

They're shooting people lining up for bags of flour
You don't need the permission if you've got the power
Everybody knows that we're living in a death cult
Nobody wants to talk about what you should do if you're living in a death cult

That would be great
That would be fine
Light a little fire and drink a bottle of wine
Everybody needs a friend sometimes
We can sit around and talk about what we should do if the presidents insane and starting WWIII and we're living in a death cult and everybody knows that Luigi was right

And we can talk all night

New 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.

Last time:

David Warsh and the Fed: Trump's appointment to replace Jerome Powell has been confirmed, so he's now in charge. Powell remains on the board for now. Trump had tried to have Powell prosecuted to move him out before his term ended, and Powell's decision to hang on may relate to that. Otherwise, this basically confirms the pattern, where Republican presidents nominate new chairmen who are more reliable political food soldiers, while Democrats renominate Republicans to keep from spooking the financial markets, and those Republicans proceed to hold the economy hostage, so the Democrats wind up looking bad. Granted, some left-leaning economists wound up saying good things about renominating Powell and Bernanke, and also granted that some of the front-running Democrats (like Summers or Volcker) could have been much worse.

  • Bess Levin [05-14]: Kevin Warsh now gets to prove he isn't Donald Trump's 'sock puppet': "How does the incoming Fed chair's background signal his approach to inflation, interest rates, and dealing with you know who?" As for who is Warsh?

    The incoming Fed chief is a former investment banker who served on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from January 2006 to March 2011, when he resigned in protest over the decision to buy $600 billion in Treasury securities as part of a goal of lowering long-term interest rates (more on that later!). Known during his time in Washington as the "Federal Reserve's chief liaison to Wall Street," Warsh later became a partner at billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller's family office and was named a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a visiting scholar at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Speaking of billionaires: Warsh is the son-in-law of billionaire Trump donor and Estée Lauder Companies, Inc., heir Ronald Lauder, through his marriage to Jane Lauder. The soon-to-be Fed chair himself is worth over $100 million, making him the richest Fed chief in the history of the central bank. (In comparison, Powell is worth a paltry $19.5 million.)

  • Mike Konczal [05-15]: The weirdness of Jay Powell's legacy: "I think [Jay Powell] did a good job. I think he'll be remembered well" but "his legacy will be a bit weird in the short term."

AI Goes to Trial: Elon Musk (xAI) is suing Sam Altman (OpenAI) over who can be trusted with running the world through AI.

Trump Goes to China:

  • Anatol Lieven [05-13]: picking up on the vibes in Beijing before major Trump-Xi visit: "Insights from my trip two weeks ago: Beijing doesn't want to indulge Trump's actions in Iran, nor lead international condemnation or an 'Axis of Upheaval.'"

  • Joshua Keating [05-13]: Trump's China policy is nearly the exact opposite of what everyone expected: "As Trump heads to China, attention and resources are being shifted from Asia to yet another war in the Middle East." I think "from unconventional hawk to unexpected dove" is wrong on both counts. "Hawk" and "dove" are tactical ploys for him, not ideologies. I think you should look at Trump on two levels, and understand that he's not coherent enough to consistently link them. One is rhetoric: what he says is mostly independent of what he does, but it is highly variable according to who he's talking to. In America, for domestic political consumption, he's very hawkish about China, but when he's face to face with Xi, he's very dovish, deferential even. But action is something different. Trump, like any bully, understands that actions are situational as well: there are some people you can beat up, and some you can't. Often, he overestimates his power, and errs on the side of aggression, as he has done with Iran. But what can he actually do to China? He knows that simply talking a tough game will not work. He doesn't have the firepower to cower China, and he doesn't have the logistics to take the fight to them. He doesn't even have any good opportunities for skirmishes. If he tried to send the Navy into the South China Sea to secure some artifical islands, he's probably get routed. If he could provoke China into attacking Taiwan, he might be able to defend it, but nobody wants to test that. And if he tried to turn China into an active enemy, there's a lot more they could do to him than he could do to them. If China really hated us, they could arm Iran, like the US did Afghanistan and Ukraine. China could extend Iran a "nuclear umbrella," like the US offers to South Korea and Japan (and maybe Taiwan?). Trump thought he could act unilaterlally on tariffs, but even there he's mostly had to back down. You could say he doesn't have the guts, but really he just doesn't have the cards.

  • Kate Lamb [05-14]: What is the Thucydides Trap and why did Xi Jinping mention it in his meeting with Donald Trump: I've heard the term, but couldn't give you a definition off the top of my head, partly because I've had very little interest in Greek and Roman precedents (I've been known to quip that every bad idea in western thought can be traced back to some fool Greek), partly because the "experts" who dwell on such things tend to be assholes (e.g., Victor Davis Hanson, Robert D Kaplan; by the way, there's a 2017 book by Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?, so it's easy to see how Xi might think that Americans recognize the term). Here's a definition: "A staple of foreign policy commentary, including by Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon, the Thucydides Trap refers to the idea that when a rising power threatens to displace an established one, the result is often war."

  • David Smith [05-14]: Trump delilghts in his deference to Xi, his strongman fantasy made flesh: There are those who might regard Trump's showering of Xi and China with flattery as demeaning for the frequently dubbed "most powerful person on earth" — or would, if a Democrat came even remotely close to such a display — but Trump seems to get a bye, perhaps in deference to his reputed mastery of multi-dimensional chess, or maybe just because we know him to be an inveterate liar? But I figure it's just a quirk: as someone who expects and thrives on flattery, Trump may figure it works on others, and it costs him little. It also conveys the feeling that nothing serious is at stake, and it's all meant to be quickly forgotten. Xi certainly understood that part, loading the brief two-day schedule — they must have spent as much time in the air as on the ground — with nothing more than pomp and circumstance. My only takeaway is the menu:

    The dinner was also notable for a menu that felt like fusion cuisine to appease Trump's unadventurous palate: lobster in tomato soup, crispy beef ribs, Beijing roast duck, stewed seasonal vegetables, slow-cooked salmon in mustard sauce, pan-fried pork bun and trumpet shell-shaped pastry, tiramisu and fruits and ice-cream.

  • Chas Danner [05-15]: Did Trump's China trip accomplish anything at all? "Here's what did and didn't happen, as far as anyone can tell." Not much, least of all for public consumption.

  • Michael D Swaine:

  • Robert Wright [05-15]: Trump's accidental triumph in Beijing. After taking some shots at "dean of Blob scribes" David Sanger, Wright takes Trump's modest posture in Beijing as good news (admitting, "I've always been a sucker for peaceful coexistence"):

    Imagine, for example, that the Iran War had gone according to plan: Trump oversees a Venezuela-esque display of military mastery, installs a puppet regime, starts exercising remote control over Iran's oil spigot, and waltzes into Beijing as king of the world. In that scenario, this summit might have had a different tenor, with Trump demanding more and demanding it loudly, creating the kind of friction he's so good at creating. And it's especially easy to imagine that kind of summit if — to add a second power-of-contingency thought experiment — some adviser had last year persuaded him to go easy on the tariffs and other forms of economic warfare, in which case Beijing wouldn't have been pushed to the point of chastening Trump by playing its rare-earth minerals card.

    But those are just thought experiments. In the real world, Trump came to Beijing a humbled man (OK, OK, a closer-to-humbled-than-usual man). What's more — and what makes me so emphasize the magnitude of this moment — the things that humbled him have implications that go well beyond US-China relations. True, his Middle Eastern demonstration of the limits of American military power has, on the one hand, implications for Taiwan (a fact that has no doubt crossed Xi's mind). But it also has implications — tectonic implications — for the Middle East itself. As the Beijing summit started, there were reports that Saudi Arabia has proposed a non-aggression pact between Iran and its Arab neighbors. That's the kind of thing you propose when you realize that your guardian superpower can't keep you safe — and it could turn out to be the kind of thing that foreshadows the eventual withdrawal of that superpower from the region.

The Hantavirus Outbreak: For background, see MV Hondius hantavirus outbreak. The outbreak was confirmed on a Dutch cruise ship, which departed from southern Argentina on April 1 to visit Antarctica and several islands in the South Atlantic. The first passenger began showing symptoms on April 6, and died on April 11.

Cuba:

SpaceX IPO:

  • Bess Levin [05-21]: SpaceX warns humans may suffer 'same fate as dinosaurs' in eye-popping IPO pitch: Elon Musk's space company filed to go public, which means they have to explain some things, like why "according to the filing, the company thinks it could pull in $28.5 trillion — yes, you read that right — in the future." Most of that ($26.5 trillion) is supposed to come from AI. (The "real GDP" of the US economy is currently $24.2 trillion.)

  • John Herrman [05-23]: The SpaceX IPO reveals what really happened to Twitter.

    As visible as X is in the outside world, though, and as integral as it is to Musk's public image, in SpaceX's 150-plus pages of corporate prospectus, it hardly shows up. And when it does, things don't look great.

    The numbers that are shared tell a story of decline, losses, and liability. Advertising revenue fell by nearly $600 million in 2023, bounced back a bit in 2024, and kept slipping again in 2025. As for the subscription business, the company has reached "approximately 6.3 million active paid subscribers" to X and around 1.9 million to versions of Grok (some X subscriptions come with expanded access to Grok). The company recorded a onetime, $3.75 billion impairment "primarily related . . . to the Twitter brand following its rebranding to X." The prospectus describes hundreds of millions of dollars of settlements stemming from Musk's massive, early, and chaotic cuts at the firm after he took over; looking forward, it suggests Musk's other businesses, including the profitable Starlink, face political risks from their connection with X, citing the company's 2024 free-speech battle with the Brazilian government.

    Then there are the numbers we don't get, ones a company might be inclined to share if they told a particularly good story.

The Trump Slush Fund: Trump's Department of *Justice, headed by his former personal attorney, signed off on a "settlement" to his $10 billion lawsuit over an independent contractor leaking Trump's tax returns while Trump was still president, agreeing to set up a $1.77 billion slush fund that Trump could use to "compensate victims of Biden's weaponized prosecutions" (e.g., of January 6 rioters), which also includes a promise to never again audit Trump, his family, or any of his businesses. This jumps to the head of a very long list of the most corrupt things anyone in the US government has ever done (mostly over other Trump examples).

  • Nia Prater:

    • [05-22]: Trump's weaponization slush fund is 'completely insane': Interview with former New Jersey attorney general Matt Platkin on "the legalilty of the controversial fund created by President Trump's IRS settlement." Platkin is representing 93 members of Congress in challenging this. At least one more lawsuit has been filed to block the "settlement." The legal grounds for doing this ("blatant self-dealing makes this matter a collusive suit") appear to be very shaky, which makes me doubt that they'll get away with it, but strange things are happening every day. One note here is that they "settled" just days before having to file briefs before a court that could very well have thrown the entire suit out. So there is an element of panic in how quickly this happened. But that it happened at all shows that Todd Blanche was mostly concerned with appeasing Trump, and that Trump was careless as to the optics of such blatant corruption.

    • [05-22]: Everyone trying to cash in on Trump's slush fund: Some names: Michael Cohen, George Santos, Mark and Patricia McCloskey ("the gun toters"), Enrique Tarrio ("seditionist Proud Boy"), Mike Lindell, Michael Caputo; and more generally, "members of the January 6 mob."

Major Threads

War on Iran:

  • Sudarasan Raghavan [05-12]: The art of the ceasefire: "How President Trump's approach to the war in Iran is turning endless conflict, interrupted by fleeting pauses, into the status quo." The title was foreordained, but also ridiculous, as with Trump there is no art, just poorly considered impulses.

    Historically, negotiating a ceasefire to end an international conflict of this magnitude would have involved months, even years, of talks led by skilled negotiators with large teams of experts, the help of credible mediators such as the United Nations, and armies of diplomats shuttling between the different sides to build trust. Peace proposals are usually negotiated behind closed doors; threats are seldom made publicly. With the Trump Administration, none of this appears to be happening. Ceasefires are not treated as avenues to solve political contradictions and pave the way to a lasting settlement, Bhamidipati said. Instead, they have been reduced to tools of conflict meant to speedily manage escalation, contain risk, limit spillover, and restore short-term stability — a version of kicking the can down the road. Ceasefires don't end wars; they only interrupt them. And, the longer they continue without a real political resolution, the higher the risks of even greater violence in the future.

    Historically, this almost never happens. Ceasefires have two uses: one is to limit the damage while a resolution is negotiated, which can happen if both parties seek peace, or are willing to settle for the status quo (as happened in Korea); the other is as a tactical pause in aggression (Israel agreed to two ceasefires during 1948-50, time when they used to rearm so they could launch new offensives). Trump has found himself in the position where he can't politically afford to make peace, but also can't afford to keep bombing at the levels so far, so a ceasefire is useful for him. It's also agreeable to Iran, which never wanted this war in the first place. Perhaps there is some art to Israel's bad faith ceasefires — there have been hundreds since 1950, nearly all violated by Israel on the slightest pretext (or none at all).

  • Muhammad Saad [05-13]: Why Gulf data centers became deliberate targets in Iran War: "Not only did the US make the placement and investment in these tech warehouses a 'loyalty test,' they then made the dual use for Washington's military."

  • Trita Parsi:

    • [05-16]: China's position on the Hormuz Strait: What 'open' really means: "Beijing is not going to put itself in a position where it loses access to Iranian oil, nor will it support a UN call for force."

    • [05-18]: Trump appears poised to restart the Iran war: "Tehran believes fresh attacks will come over the next two days. Feeling emboldened, leaders there are ready with new targets for retaliation." This is quickly becoming old news, as Trump has already canceled a wave of attacks planned for Tuesday, May 19, citing concerns of the Gulf States, and "improved negotiations."

  • Mark Mazzetti/Julian E Barnes/Farnaz Fassihi/Ronen Bergman [05-19]: Early War Goal Was to Install Hard-Line Former President as Iran's Leader: "An Israeli strike designed to free Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from house arrest in Tehran, US officials said, was part of an effort to bring about regime change and put him in power." After spending the entirety of his term propagandizing that he was the incarnation of anti-US and anti-Israel evil.

Israel:

  • Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man [05-18]: The dangerous allure of a post-Netanyahu Israel: "Naftali Bennett and his emergent opposition in the upcoming election are just as hardline on security but they want you to think otherwise." A subhed here explains that "Netanyahu is not the problem," but Netanyahu is very much one problem, and that may be the only one Israelis can attempt to solve in the next election. I agree that the driving forces behind genocide in Gaza and pogroms in the West Bank have been Ben Gvir and Smotrich, who have become Netanyahu's essential coalition partners, and who have encouraged him to embrace a extreme religious (not just Kookist but Kahanist) vision of Israel's destiny. As I've said before, Netanyahu's one consistent political instinct is to never allow anyone to pass him on the right. Sure, that may be impossible viz. Ben Gvir, but Netanyahu's wars against Iran and Lebanon are very much matters of his own choosing, supported by his right-wing allies mostly because they provide cover for further "ethnic cleansing" in the West Bank. So while Bennett is unlikely to break with Israel's blob (the professional security state, which Moshe Dayan built in 1967 and every Israeli politician since has had no option but to serve), a break with the holy rollers is more feasible. While it won't solve the fundamental inequity of Israel's ethnocracy, it could take a bit of its sanctimonious arrogance off.

Israel-American-World Relations: I used to try to separate out Israel-related pieces into several bins. The Iran war has its own news section. The Israel section above pertains to security operations in Gaza, Israel/Palestine, and Lebanon, as well as internal Israeli political affairs. This one deals with America's relationship to Israel, and possibly with the world's.

  • Rawan Abhari [04-04]: Stop asking if Israel has a right to exist: It's rhetorical trap, asking you to grant an innocuous premise, which is then taken to justify murder and mayhem by a state that only represents one "chosen" group of people. I would say that no state has a right to exist, but we should accept all states that are constituted by the consent of the governed. I'd also stipulate that all people have a right to equal citizenship in the state that governs them. Israel might arguably have met the first criteria from 1951, when those Palestinians who were not driven into exile were granted nominal political rights, to 1967, when Israel extended its land but denied political rights to the people of the newly occupied territories. After that, Israel ceased to be a legitimate state. Even in the 1951-67 period, the case is shaky.

  • Alex Schultz [05-21]: The man who explains Israel to John Fetterman: "How a little-known writer became one of the senator's closest friends." David Safier.

Ukraine, Other Hot Spots, and World Politics:

Trump's War Threats: 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.

  • Timothy Snyder [05-09]: On superpower suicide: "The United States has just spent billions of dollars to lose a war that enriches its oligarchs, impoverishes the citizenry, sabotages its alliances, and strengthens its enemies. As justification for the self-destructive mindlessness, the White House gestures towards Jesus and genocide." Interesting how you can start with a premise that is utterly wrong, and still make points that seem sensible.

  • Stavroula Pabst [05-13]: CBO: Golden Dome to cost $1.2 trillion: "The new estimate dwarfs Trump's initial assessment and would be close to the entirely of today's defense budget." That's the price "to build, deploy and operate over 20 years," assuming it works, or at least doesn't fail so badly they can't pretend othewise.

  • Nick Turse [05-15]: Internal Pentagon report reveals Hegseth is willfully putting civilians in danger: "A damning Department of War report finds that the Pentagon didn't fully implement any required civilian harm mitigation measures."

  • Katherine Thompson [05-18]: Can we please talk about WHY we are in a missile shortage? "Lawmakers on Capitol Hill who are being cajoled into spending billions more on the military budget need to read this first."

  • Nia Prater [05-22]: Tulsi Gabbard resigns as Trump's intelligence chief. So far, this is being cast as voluntary (unlike the departures of three previous cabinet women; her husband's health was cited as the reason). But Gabbard's 2024 endorsement of Trump and subsequent appointment was widely seen as buttressing his anti-war credibility, which is now in tatters (something she's been conspicuously quiet about).

Trump vs. Law:

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):

  • The FDA approves vaping:

  • Spencer Woodman [05-15]: Trump administration curbs state oversight of crypto industry: "The shift offers companies immunity from certain regulations — and, critics say, weakens protections for scam victims."

  • Julianne McShane [05-19]: Abortion providers saw waves of threats in 2025 as Trump pardoned their detractors: "The National Abortion Federation catalogued death threats and harassment targeting its members — and cast blame on the Trump administration."

  • Zach Beauchamp [05-21]: There's more to Trump's corruption than stealing money: "It's transforming the US government at a cellular level." I suspect it's not just affecting government but everywhere: government is merely the most obvious, because we've long had a civil service system that was at least nominally dedicated to the public good, as opposed to the Trump system of graft and tribute. Business, on the other hand, has always pursued private profit, but in a Trump-dominated world there are fewer inhibitions against rank profiteering. Moreover (and this is not a Trump innovation, although he's certainly made it worse) businesses are finding that their best profit opportunities are not in satisfying market demand but in exploiting government.

Donald Trump:

Politicking: New section, covering elections, gerrymandering, and other bipartisan mischief, with party-specific pieces to follow.

  • Ed Kilgore

    • [05-12]: The Supreme Court chose to upend the midterms: "The Callais decision should have been timed to be implemented next year. Apparently, the Court couldn't wait to blow up the Voting Rights Act."

    • [05-13]: What Republicans got out of their gerrymandering blitz. Louisiana and Alabama have eliminated one black-majority House district each, with Tennessee soon to follow. Mississippi, South Carolina, and Georgia may hold off until 2028. "Including the recent Florida GOP gerrymander and the Virginia Supreme Court decision overturning a voter-approved Democratic gerrymander, that means Republicans will roll into the midterms with 12 US House seats in their sights, all of which Democrats thought they would control as recently as two weeks ago."

    • [05-15]: When extreme polarization outlasts Trump, we know who to blame: "Samuel Alito's poisonous Callais opinion is moving the center stage in both parties' future plans."

    • [05-15]: Why the midterms battleground keeps shrinking: "The 2026 races will effectively end with the primaries in much of the country." That's because most districts are designed not to be competitive.

    • [05-20]: Trump gets revenge on Massie, but primary may haunt GOP: "The president took down several Republican foes in last night's primaries. But there was also good news for Democrats in November."

    • [05-20]: Trump's self-absorption spells midterms disaster for the GOP: "Forget poicy goals or even boosting his party. The president wants his ballroom, his vengeance slush fund, and lots of payback."

    • [05-21]: Senate GOP turns on Trump, freezes ICE bill. Trump was hoping to push the bill through by June 1. Senate Majority Leader John Thune pulled the plug on that happening.

    • [05-21]: Autopsy report shows Democrats really are in disarray: So, "DNC chairman Ken Martin has released an extremely unfinished draft of the 'autopsy' report, and those who wanted this to happen are going to be very disappointed — or perhaps even horrified."

    • [05-23]: Trump is becoming the un-populist: "From the ballroom to Iran to blatant self-dealing, he's ignoring the will of the people — to his party's peril." Or to his party's delight, if you ask them. If the ultimate goal of Republicans is "own the libs," just look at all the ways he's winding them up. On the other hand, the most compact charge one can make against a complete scumbag (or any political foe) is that he lies, cheats, and steals. That he's a habitual liar has long been obvious, but the cheating (like his attempts to rig congressional seats and interfere with voting) and the stealing (like his $1.77 billion self-dealt slush fund) have grown too blatant to ignore.

Other Republicans:

Democrats:

  • Zack Beauchamp [05-13]: Are far-right politics just the new normal? "Liberals are prearping for a longer war with right-wing populists than they once expected." Reporting from something touted as "a recent conference for the international left, featuring people like former President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney," where speakers are still lamenting that the wonders of the Biden economy weren't appreciated by the unkempt masses. How can anyone still confuse these "liberal elites" with "the left"? Rather than just accepting the "populist right" as a permanent fixture, shouldn't we try to figure out how to redirect their anger against more appropriate targets (like the superrich)? While they have many ill-considered views, their basic sense that something is profoundly wrong, and someone in power must be held responsible for it, is something one can work with and build on. Makes a lot more sense than trying to tell people that their problems are just in their heads.

  • Errol Louis [05-13]: AOC's plan to win the midterms: "To prevail in November, House Democrats need to do more than oppose Trump." Focus on substantive issues, and don't let the media get you sidetracked with speculation about personal ambitions.

The Economy (and Economists):

Technology (Including AI):

  • Eric Levitz [05-21]: The hidden way dictatorships are shaping what AI tells you: "Authoritarian states may have accidentally brainwashed ChatGPT." And casually calling China and Russia "authoritarian" while exempting the US and Israel is what? AI only knows what it's been trained to know, and it only "thinks" in ways that are consistent with fidelity to its training materials. That could make it useful for propagating an establishment worldview, as much in the US as in China, as the rulers of each have no doubt already recognized. The difference may be the degree of control they exercise: in the US, that's usually been weak but certainly not neutral (e.g., consider how willingly major media went along with the Cold War and the War on Terror, where very distorted views of the world became ubiquitous and for the most part unquestioned).

Media:

Regular Columnists

Sometimes an interesting columnist writes often enough that it makes sense to collect their work in one place, rather than scatter it about.

Dean Baker:

Tom Carson:

  • [05-12]: Triomphe the insult comic's Arc de Trumpe. After being assured by "sandbox-loving Trumpies, that we're the lucky owners of the most powerful, most lethal, most all-around bitchenest military on the planet and/or in world history," he points out that "this coming August will mark the 81st anniversary of the last time we won a war." (Then misses the opportunity to quibble over whatever the hell we actually "won" in that war.)

    Maybe I'm a born Eeyore, but the Trump administration's Epsteiniran gamahuche strikes me as a poor candidate to liven up America's moldy victory laps with a new lap dance. And that, my friends, is why we need a Trumpian Arch of Triumph in Arlington, Va., to grandly fuck up the view from the Lincoln Memorial to the Lee-Custis mansion on the other bank of the Potomac. . . .

    One unpleasant truth that can't be avoided is that his plans for a gloriously Trumpified nation's capital resemble Albert Speer's designs at Hitler's behest for a gigantic, pastless new postwar Berlin to be known as Germania. Another, more reassuring truth is that Germania never got past the stage of being a big 3-D scale model that the addled Fuhrer spent increasing hours canoodling with as the war went phhht. . . .

    Yet in both cases, what porn connoisseurs call the money shot — destruction on a vast scale — will already have been accomplished. Berlin's hash got settled by American and British bombers and Red Army artillery and tanks in 1945; whatever happens next, the White House's East Wing is rubble for good. Don't bet against the same being true soon of the Kennedy Center, a building, concept, and Camelot talisman Trump hates so much that sticking his name on it provided only inadequate and temporary respite. You know, like a dog pissing on sumac to mark its own territory.

  • [05-18]: Trump and what army? "As Memorial Day looms, let's take stock of how POTUS values America's military." Having "grown up partly around military people in Berlin during the Cold War," etc., he has a soft spot for the military I've never shared, but I can count dozens of relatives and a few friends who have done their bit, some at great personal sacrifice, some merely gloating over the personal perks of the closest thing America has to socialism, I can suspend my own disdain for the military to allow those so inclined to show them some respect. Especially when that respect runs counter to Trump:

    Two particular features of Trump's reign that fascinate me. One is his hostility to American history. Guy's really got a grudge against it, wonder why. The other is his administration's truly extraordinary disdain for the United States military. You can't say it exceeds any prior administration's disdain only because no prior administration has gone anywhere near the lunacy of expressing disdain at all. . . .

    Trump's loathing of being seen with maimed combat veterans — they didn't make him look good, he complained, underlining who the only important guy in the visual was — makes George W. Bush like he missed his calling as a battlefield surgeon. His craving for a tank-crunchy military parade in D.C. disregarded how many — sadly, not all — of the U.S.A.'s wars have been fought against everything such images represent. His hatred of Black and female generals and trans enlisted troops spits in the face of the one government entity that, for all its sins, has been in the forefront of literally embodying social equality.

    There isn't space enough here to list all of Trump's military-bashing insults and smears, and keep in mind I'm writing this online. So let POTUS's ability to discern a competent and laudable Defense Secretary in Pete Hegseth, who believes war is a continuation of date rape by other means — a line I've used before, but screw it, it's an evergreen — stand for the rest.

Current Affairs: Including interviews by Nathan J Robinson.

Jeffrey St Clair:

TomDispatch:

Miscellaneous Pieces

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

Rebecca Dudley/Gloria Fall [05-06]: WashU's financial mismanagement is jeopardizing our education: Authors are PhD students at my almost alma mater. (I had a couple summer school courses that would have met my BA hours total, but some strange things happened, and I got shot down by an incomplete on a course that I wasn't allowed to finish. It's a weird story I should write up some time, including why I didn't much care about the degree I missed out on. But that was 1973. The bit I find most shocking here is the current $71,310 tuition. As I recall, it was about $6000 then, which I could only handle with scholarship and loans, which even then meant that most of my classmates were rich kids.) Another item here is their use of some software called Workday, which WashU "has spent over $265 million on." That in turn has led to "massive layoffs."

Sara Fischer [05-20]: Vox Media sells podcast biz, some publishing brands to James Murdoch's Lupa Systems: This includes the Vox and New York Magazine websites, which I often cite. Some other brands will remain independent, but none I recognize (maybe The Verge). Vox Media co-founder/CEO Jim Bankoff will join Lupa. James is one of Rupert Murdoch's sons, which raises some sort of alarm.

Books:

  • The Guardian [05-12]: The 100 greatest novels of all time: Click bait, which often for music and sometimes for movies I used as checklists, but I read so little fiction this will likely prove useless. Fwiw, I've read one (The Master and Margarita), started several others, have heard of (can tell you the authors of) most of them, and have seen a couple dozen in the form of movies or television series. One thing I have in common with my wife is that we both started then abandoned Anna Karenina, back in our teens, after a couple hundred pages. She's gone on to read the majority of the list. One novel I did read and liked so much I'm pretty sure it would hold up in this company is Thomas Pynchon's V. But I gave up on Gravity's Rainbow after 350 pages, and haven't attempted any of his later books.

  • Michael Eby [05-14]: Is antitrust enough?: "Tim Wu's Age of Extraction lays out an antitrust strategy for fighting platform capitalism. But does the challenge posed by Big Tech require a new playbook?" I've read Wu's book, and there is much more to his solution than just antitrust. Still, some business models are problems in themselves, a problem that making them more competitive and less extortionate doesn't help much.

Other media:

Obituaries: I had been using the New York Times, but they're giving me aggravation these days, so I'll switch over to Wikipedia (May), which is probably better anyway. Roughly speaking, since my last report on May 12:

  • [05-13]: Clarence Carter (90): American singer-songwriter ("Slip Away," "Patches," "Strokin'")

  • [05-18]: Sally Head (79): British trelevision producer (Cracker, Prime Suspect, Jeeves and Wooster).

  • [05-19]: Barney Frank (86): Member of Congress (D-MA, 1981-2013).

  • [05-21]: Kyle Busch (41): NASCAR driver.

  • [05-25]: Sonny Rollins (95): Saxophone colossus.

Some other names I recognize:

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

  • David Everall [04-30]: Forwarded a post from Chalkie Davies, noting that "Lester Bangs died on this day 44 years ago," and including an obituary written by Robert Christgau (also available here).

  • Steven Hendricks [04-27]:

    Communication Con Job

    As a former corporate communications and government affairs executive, I've been watching Donald Trump answer questions with the media for more than 10 years now. The confidence, the certainty, and the way he controls media interviews. It's no wonder some people "think" that he's a skillful communicator.

    Every single time that Donald Trump is asked a question — any question — he runs the same exact seven 'deceitful' steps — the same exact order—without exception.

    This is not one's personality, not confidence nor is it charisma either. This is a deliberate repeatable "control the lie" formula — and here is the formula.

    1. KILL THE QUESTION (First thing every time — make the question itself the problem.) —"That's a stupid question." / "Fake news."
    2. KILL WHO ASKED IT (Destroy the source so the question has nowhere to stand.) —"Your ratings are terrible. Nobody watches your network."
    3. INSERT HIMSELF (Every topic. Every time. Without fail. It always lands here.) —"Nobody has ever done what I've done."
    4. SCALE IT TO THE BIGGEST CLAIM POSSIBLE (Not good. Not great. The greatest—ever— In history. Every single time.) — "More than any administration — by far." / "Nobody has ever had crowds like I've had in history, for any country."
    5. UNNAMED PEOPLE AGREE (Faceless. Countless. Unverifiable. Always there.) — "Smart people are saying it. Great people. A lot of people."
    6. VAGUE THREAT (Something bad will happen. Never specified. Always implied.) — "All hell will break out." / "They know it. Believe me."
    7. LOOP BACK TO HIMSELF (Different words. Same destination. Formula complete.) — "It's been an amazing period of time. Page after page of accomplishments."

    The question was never answered — the formula was just executed. Go back and watch any news clip, any interview, any topic, any reporter. Count the steps — they're all there.

    And this is the part that nobody wants to believe . . . A "control the lie" formula runs the same seven steps whether the topic is war, Epstein Files, or egg prices. Which means the response was never built for the question; it was built for you—the listener; to feel certain; to stop you from noticing that nothing was actually answered.

    And it worked — for years it has worked. It's why he lies with such confidence, with such arrogance, with such certainty — he's controlling the moment — and he's doing it without people noticing.

    Pull any news clip video, any interview transcript, any public statement and count the steps yourself. This isn't about politics. This is about controlling what you were never supposed to notice — and Donald Trump is a master it!

    MAGA Trumpublicans eat it up and they fall for Trump's "communication con job" — every single time! Unfortunately, so does a lot of other people!

  • Tom Carson: Picture of a guy who looks like Lindsey Graham in a "69 47" T-shirt."

  • Astra Taylor: She seems to have a new book coming out, combining forces with Naomi Klein, called "End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World." Book is scheduled for September release. Quote from Naomi Klein:

    Trapped in Bad Fiction

    Must the future be this corny? Are we really doomed to live inside the half-remembered childhood fantasies of overgrown teenage boys? To be cast as bit characters in a misunderstood book that Elon Musk or Peter Thiel may or may not have finished reading? Is it even possible to write about those hackneyed futures without becoming a cliché yourself?

    Over the past year, as Astra Taylor and I have immersed ourselves in what we call End Times Fascism, I have returned to these questions often. Whether it's Musk's dreams of space colonization, Sam Altman's prediction of an imminent machine-human merger, or Pete Hegseth's Armageddon complex, it often feels as if we are trapped inside very bad science fiction.

    Our book comes out in September and now that we are through the copyedit (and the fact check, and the legal review . . . ) I finally have a little space to engage in real time conversations about how apocalyptic stories about the end times are shaping the news cycle, from everyone accusing everyone else of being the Antichrist, to Donald Trump's obsessive drive to build a gilded ballroom over a fortressed bunker (which I think of as a sort of drydock Titanic).

    I love this new direction because it speaks directly to that uncanny feeling, shared by so many of us, of being caught in somebody else's kitschy version of the future — one we have all been warned against countless times. The cold blues recall several classic Isaac Asimov jackets, and the retro rocket ship brings the same scifi era to mind.

    Jim Stoddart, who designed the cover for Allen Lane, explains that the rocket's exodus "illustrates the most extreme metaphor of the super-rich believing they can escape the rest of humanity — whether fleeing to islands on the other side of the globe or rocketing off to Mars — while exacerbating devastation behind them." And, of course, the Earth on the cover is imperiled, "being metaphorically shrouded with poison intentions by the privileged few." But Stoddart points out, all is not lost: "the planet has not yet been entirely overwhelmed — and there lies the hope for the future."

    Astra and I firmly believe that to be the case, which is why we wrote the book and immersed ourselves in that poison since Trump re-entered the White House. A huge part of the reason why a dystopic future can feel inevitable is precisely because versions of that violent story have been told and retold so many times, riffing off the same template that appears in the Book of Revelation, which casts armageddon as a necessary stage on the way to a frictionless, lifeless heavenly utopia. Unfortunately, we have far less practice imagining versions of the future in which we come together to fight for all that is irreplaceable in the blessedly imperfect, friction-filled living world.

    And yet we are surrounded by examples of people doing just that, from parched communities coming together to resist AI data centres to the historic summit happening right now in Santa Marta, Colombia, where 60 governments have convened to chart a path away from fossil fuels, refusing to let the breakdown of climate negotiations at the United Nations be the last word in the fight against climate breakdown. With the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran showing us all — yet again! — the enormous perils of fossil fuel dependence, the summit comes at a critical moment.

Current count: #^c