By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Too-patient readers, I’ve spent the day recovering from the bout of food poisoning I had last night (which is all that it was, fortunately), and so this Water Cooler is mostly an open thread. However, I will put up the Supreme Court’s decision on Presidential immunity. Also, last night before I was taken out of commission I had intended to write a post discussing the Democrat Party and Biden’s decision-making process about continuing his campaign. If any of you have facts (not hot takes) about that topic, please leave them in comments. –lambert P.S. Also, Wednesday is a travel day for me, and I may or may not have connectivity issues, so I will try to make tomorrow’s Water Cooler extra long to make up for coverage I have missed, especially of Covid.
Bird Song of the Day
Common Loon, Schoolcraft, Michigan, United States. No, not editorializing in the slightest!
Hasty reactions, not well thought out:
Trump v. United States, Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The District Of Columbia Circuit (PDF) [Supreme Court of the United States].
An obvious starting point in the age of lawfare, I should have thought?
“Justices rule Trump has some immunity from prosecution” [SCOTUSblog].
In a historic decision, a divided Supreme Court on Monday ruled that former presidents can never be prosecuted for actions relating to the core powers of their office, and that there is at least a presumption that they have immunity for their official acts more broadly.
The decision left open the possibility that the charges brought against former President Donald Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith – alleging that Trump conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election – can still go forward to the extent that the charges are based on his private conduct, rather than his official acts.
The case now returns to the lower courts for them to determine whether the conduct at the center of the charges against Trump was official or unofficial – an inquiry that, even if it leads to the conclusion that the charges can proceed, will almost certainly further delay any trial in the case, which had originally been scheduled to begin on March 4, 2024 but is currently on hold.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized that the president “is not above the law.” But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, countered that if a future president “misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop.””
In terms of the various criminal cases on-going against Trump:
Some good news in SCOTUS opinion:
1. No immunity for unofficial acts; pressuring state officials, fake electors scheme, public statements made as a candidate likely qualify;
2. Immunity for official acts is only presumptive. Conduct must fall within “conclusive and preclusive…— Barb McQuade (@BarbMcQuade) July 1, 2024
“Nixon interviews” [WikiPedia]. “In part 3, Frost asked Nixon whether the president could do something illegal in certain situations such as against antiwar groups and others if he decides ‘it’s in the best interests of the nation or something’. Nixon replied: ‘Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,’ by definition.[24][25]” (note that WikiPedia adds “by definition”). • Stoller comments:
For kicks the Supreme Court retroactively made Watergate legal.
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) July 1, 2024
And speaking of Special Prosecutors:
For kicks the Supreme Court retroactively made Watergate legal.
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) July 1, 2024
Seems like a contradiction:
So agencies can't do anything even with congressional direction but the president can do anything he wants, no matter what the law is.
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) July 1, 2024
On the bright side, does the Executive Branch now have the authority to seize all the powers the Supreme Court just took away from the regulatory agencies by nuking the Chevron Doctrine. Surely they could set on an OMB to do that, just two or three orders of magnitude larger?
UPDATE And then of course:
If you’re shocked by the Supreme Court’s ruling today, wait till you find out that 10 years ago in federal court “lawyers for the Obama administration (were) arguing for their ability to kill an American citizen without trial.” https://t.co/wxKWgizhix
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) July 1, 2024
See “The Twenty-First Century Executive Branch Is a Criminogenic Environment” at NC.
Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From Teton Time:
To compensate, there are a lot of plants!
Teton Time writes:
Kids and I have had a habit of collecting seed from plants we find on hikes in the forests here. The pollinators like to use them and do so with gusto.
We collected these seeds a few years ago. I have a testing area to see what light and soil conditions, etc these plants like. Often very frustrating and lots of fail.
We collected some of these daisy heads from the wild I think three years ago. You know they are hardy when they survive your attempts to remove them from the testing beds. I could not quite believe how good they look in the bed at the front of our property. The thing about native plants – once going they are good. In fact the job often becomes pulling them when they are out of bounds.
After another 20-30 years I should have this place up and going. Committed to all natural and native plants. It is my thing. Very large amounts of work but will be worth it one day. I have also included the peonies and poppies that are now blooming big. These are heirloom plants that have been crossbred by me. Their seeds are true. However, these are not native. But they both do very well here. The pollinators like the wild flowers much better than these man made things. Is there a lesson there?
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Oh Canada
You’re looking better every day
Yeah, I know about Justin
And his awful ways
With grieving hearts we see the rise of Dominionism
The true religion for a few you see
From far and wide
Oh Canada, my mom’s heritage can set me free!
God keep our evangs gloriously dogmatic as can be
Oh Canada, my mom’s heritage can set me free!
Historically, the place Canada and the US have been most different has been religion. Seventy-five percent of Canadians have been Roman Catholic, United (a merger of Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists in 1925) or Anglican. A large percentage of Americans are Evangelicals, they are only 11% of Canadians. The US is the home of the religious entrepreneur, a phenomenon extremely rare in Canada. Of course, in recent decades the rise of those with “no religion” in both countries has lessened these differences somewhat.
Happy Canada Day.
I’m missing my days of misspent youth when I could just shuffle across the Peace Bridge and sample the Great White North’s culture, such as stronger beer, better choices for cigarettes, and a lower drinking age.
I don’t know about cigarette selection, but we still have stronger beer and lower drinking ages (Quebec being the lowest at 18)
North American Deep South Zeitgeist Report.
We have observed a sudden surge in retail prices at the Bigg Boxx stores and the groceries. So called dry goods have risen in price roughly ten percent over the past week. The trend seems to be general, not just specific categories of item.
One item I bought last week for $7.95 USD per rose to $8.95 USD per item this week.
The Clearance aisle is nearly empty this week. It is usually at least half full any week.
Butter is up about 20% over a months time.
Milk is up about 5% over a month.
Prepared ‘foods’ such as pizzas are up a good 20% since spring.
Chicken is up a big 50% since last winter. (I checked against some old register receipts.)
Even the prices in the Thrift Shops have gone up. (My go to source for clothing and DVDs.)
No matter what, don’t forget to blow something up for the Fourth! (Safely of course.)
Beef is up and coffee suddenly way up. Others are still creeping up although they stalled for awhile.
Hunga Tonga is driving food prices up, in my opinion.
Volcanoes blowing up real good tend to really mess with the atmosphere, a giant hurricane in June? Horrible droughts & floods?
In past episodes of volcanoes affecting us, there really wasn’t anything near the international trade in foodstuffs, nor anywhere near as many people, and everybody has to eat, thus inflationary pressures.
Hunger Tonga? Ouch! Time to create a Poi Index.
Hunga Games?
Hmmm…. Food for thought?
Oh, and prices on the Poi Index are very sticky.
Spinning flaming poi is a common sight @ Burning Man, but then again fire in all forms of creativity is a given.
Thank God the Social Security COLA increase will probably be around 2.6% for 2025. Nothing to worry about!
Oh, good. We were worried that the COLA was going to be somewhere up around seven or eight percent and thus ‘drive’ inflation. We can’t have that now.
“Oceana has always been at war against Inflation.”
> Milk is up about 5% over a month.
Much less than other items mentioned; one wonders whether demand for milk may have been weakened by the news about sick dairy herds and ‘flu virus in milk. It’s hard to imagine that the foot-dragging that has been reported in terms of producer (lack of) cooperation with the public health authorities will not have bad consequences in terms of consumer confidence in the safety of this product.
I wonder if people are even aware that this is happening?
From my admittedly unscientific ‘soundings’ of consumer sentiment in the dairy aisles of the local grocery stores, more people than one would imagine are aware of the connection. [Like Amfortas, I speak to one and all when out and about. Some consider it a threat. Others welcome the dialogue.] Curiously enough, or perhaps not, a correlation between people who wore masks in the store and people with concerns about viruses in the dairy products was in evidence.
Who could have guessed that public masking was a marker for greater civic engagement and awareness?
high supply = low prices
low supply = high prices
works with labor costs, high supply = low cost
works with food, low supply = high prices
And I’m paying the same higher prices, too. I’m told this is the best economy ever.
As they say “down on the street:” “Someone’s making out, but it ain’t us!”
Per the psycho establishment, those are just “vibes”. It’s not really happening.
Wow! Even the price of “vibes” is going up. (I wonder how much the cost of ‘tame’ “Trusted News Sources” to spout this obvious propaganda has risen? I now understand one big reason why ‘News Sources’ are going all in with AI. It allows the firms to ‘shed unnecessary workers,’ and rein in costs. [More profits for investors and management.])
NADSZR* part dieux
A bag of Tostitos Scoops Tortilla Chips is 7.29$.
Insane.
*Winn Dixie
NOLA Metro Area
Blast! I can imagine what the prices at the “Convenience” stores are like now. I stopped visiting those places years ago due to sticker shock. Today? No wonder petty theft is on the rise. The price of blunts must be astronomical now.
Curiously, around here in the Half Horse Town, Winn Dixie is beating many of the prices at the WalMart. Now, to use the big gas station adjacent to the suburban WalMart Sam’s Club complex, you have to be a Sam’s Club member.
What are po-boys at the mom and pop stores going for now? (I remember eating at Busters early in the morning after a long night at the restaurant in the Quarter. Really good beans and rice and a heel of french bread for two bucks and change. Coffee was a quarter. Good coffee too. Mix it with hot milk and you were good to go for the rest of the day.)
More and more, it’s become clear that Stoller needs to stay in his (broad, crucial, elevated) lane.
I’m also frequently appalled by how little understanding of or simple reading/research into Nixon’s scandals and impeachment precedes most punditry/commentary thereon.
Stoller: I’ve had the same thought.
> Committed to all natural and native plants. It is my thing. Very large amounts of work but will be worth it one day.
The recent heat is changing my approach to decorative beds. I’m planting a range of things and babying them for a few months to get them established, but afterwards they’re on their own, and I’ll learn what is suited to my conditions by what survives or thrives.
I don’t even baby mine for the first few months, unless we’re not getting enough rain. Sink or swim, baby!
There are a couple of spots I haven’t figure out yet but most of my gardens are doing beautifully.
I tried poppies about three times. Planted in the same spot each time, and the next year they either didn’t come back, or came back greatly reduced and then died out. I swore them off as not suitable for my garden.
But then a few years later, because I lose all common sense when I go to the greenhouse and invariably spend way more than I intended, the poppies caught my eye again and I tried one more time. But this time I fertilized them. They are still in the same spot, now on their 3rd or 4th year, and each year they have come back bigger to the point I had to transplant some nearby bachelor buttons.
I generally go the sink or swim route too, but sometimes a stubborn and ignorant persistence pays off.
I think a generous fertilization of the planting hole can go a long way. I’ve taken to adding worm compost/sludge, a bit of commercial fertilizer, and some commercial growing medium (Pro-Mix BX, which contains soil fungus spores). A dozen smallish Echinacea starts planted last year were completely eclipsed by interplanted Zinnias, but this year, in spite of near total neglect (they do benefit from the leftover wash-water from cleaning garden plastics) they are lush, tall and covered in blossoms, and it’s the Zinnias that are shaded.
> I don’t even baby mine
That’s why invasive is good! (Though I draw the line at Japanese bamboo, and kudzu.)
“That’s why invasive is good!”
Uh, have you been drinking the Neo-con Kool Aid lately? Had lunch over at the Kagans?
My go to example of malicious “invasives” are the Zebra Mussels.
See: https://www.nps.gov/rlc/greatlakes/great-lakes-invasive-mussels.htm
“Illegal” immigrants are not the only “Border Security Issue” floating around.
Enjoy your Fourth. Blow something up! (Safely of course.)
A lot of native plants are, ahem, “excessively vigorous”. Paradoxically, they can be difficult to establish, but once they get going, look out! And why not? They have to fight it out in harsh conditions in uncultivated meadows, and are really difficult to accommodate in small garden plots.
During a recent workshop through the local extension agency, the instructor characterized native plant growth as, 1st year sleep, 2nd year creep, 3rd year leap. I’ve found that to be true in my experience.
Wisteria vines are awful too.
I don’t know how they control them in Europe, where they are so beautiful, to say nothing of Japan. Perhaps the (paid, undoubtedly) gardeners there just love to cut things back all the time. Or course the Japanese are famous for their pruning mania — and I salute them.
There is an American native one that is quite mannerly and also a pretty, saturated color, but it’s not fragrant, and to me at least the fragrance is a big part of the attraction.
For fragrance, nothing beats honeysuckle. We have those climbing up some mid-sized tree shrubs along the alleyway to the rear. We also have mock orange growing in a row just behind the house. In spring that aroma wafts in the bathroom window in the early morning.
We have two colours of wisteria also along the back line, lilac and white. They do need to be pruned back savagely. I have seen old wisteria “trunks” that you cannot grip two hands around.
A mix of native plants and “heritage” old-fashioned garden specimens is just my thing! Thanks for the dopamine boost.
What you may learn over the coming decade is that what thrives today will no longer, as climate change comes to favor other kinds.
Note that I have not read any of today’s SCOTUS decisions so I will refrain from trying to write anything legally reasoned.
However, looking back a common theme emerges. Approaching it from a “feelings” point of view, they seem to have largely increased Americans feelings of powerlessness:
(1) We’re powerless now to restrain a President who decides to go rogue, drone Americans, kill journalists, etc. as part of his/her official duties. Good thing that Assange is now free in Australia. I’d stay there, if I were him. Only Congress could bring such a hypothetical crime to justice through impeachment.
(2) We’re powerless to do anything about government officials colluding with Big Tech to censor stories, ban users, de-platform, and create false narratives like Ivermectin is a dangerous drug when it’s not.
(3) We’re powerless to hold white-collar criminals to account because the Court held that the SEC can’t fine individuals without full due process in a non-administrative court.
Powerlessness leads to anger. Don’t be surprised if the black-robed bastards generate some serious blow-back. We can always look forward to wild-west type frontier justice making a comeback.
The entire goal is to make people powerless so that large corporations and oligarchs hold all the power. Want to enforce labor laws? Try and stop me while I litigate you to death. They read the dystopia cyberpunk novels and thought it was an instruction manual.
RE: COVID cases keep rising in L.A. County due to FLiRT; Mayor Karen Bass tests positive —
COVID-19 cases are continuing to climb in Los Angeles County, as are the number of people hospitalized with infections, as the typical summer surge in the illness creeps up. Rong-Gong Lin II in the Los Angeles Times$ — 7/1/24
Link to article without paywall:
https://www.aol.com/news/flirt-variants-push-covid-cases-100040593.html
“The new FLiRT subvariants, officially known as KP.3, KP.2 and KP.1.1, are believed to be roughly 20% more transmissible than their parent, JN.1, the winter’s dominant subvariant, Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-disease expert at UC San Francisco, has said.”
KP.2 20% better than JN.1? How much better was JN.1 over XBB? Are we more transmissible than measles yet?
Let me say something about Lambert’s food poisoning. I don’t know. What I know is that Taco Bell and Del Taco have received much undeserved blame since the pandemic started. Often it isn’t what people ate; it’s what they inhaled. SARS-CoV-2 gets into the lungs. The lungs clean it out and dump it into the GI tract. The GI tract says, “Oh! We know what this is! This is SARS-CoV-2. We’re going to get it out of here through vomit and diarrhea.”
“KP.2 20% better than JN.1? How much better was JN.1 over XBB? Are we more transmissible than measles yet?”
The wonders of unlimited ‘wild’ serial passage of a pathogen in the general population.
I am convinced that Radical Eugenicism is a guiding principle of our Democidal Elites.
Casually stupid, or malicious. COVID is not a respiratory disease. Perhaps one day, she’ll get what she ought to have coming, if she practices what she preaches. I only hope I live long enough to see many of these people disabled. That would be at least some cosmic justice.
Re the question you asked–Nixon, a lawyer, was correct. The president is the enforcer of the laws and therefore only answerable to a higher power which is the public as represented by the Congress. Impeachment.
And that’s what happened and it also already happened to Trump who was impeached for Jan 6 and not convicted. Meanwhile the premise of lawfare is that we will keep finding things to prosecute you for until we get the guilty verdict we want.
Plus not only did Trump face the verdict of the Congress but he is also offering himself up to the literal verdict of the public. Presumably if they vote him in again as president that’s a not guilty or at least a jury nullification.
The Dems are whiny little children who insist on getting their way. So it makes sense that the head Dem has returned to a childlike state as per Shakespeare’s ages of man. That doesn’t make the Repubs any more virtuous but at least they are slightly more adult and willing to see their power as what it is–i.e. we have it and you don’t. Less pretending.
The Trump impeachments were performative on the part of the democrats. They could show their displeasure with Trump with no prospect of actual consequences lacking the votes to convict. Thus, the democrats lessened the gravity of impeachment, which I have always seen as reserved for the gravest of offenses against the integrity of the government.
You may see a Trump victory in November as a verdict exonerating Mr. Trump. I would see it simply as an electoral victory. More important is that given Mr. Trump’s self-regard, he will see it as a license to do as he wishes.
When Nixon was impeached he resigned because he knew enough rep senators were ready to convict. Everybody knew today’s rep senators would not convict trump on the given charges. Imo there are charges that at least some reps, if convinced he was guilty, would vote to convict.
Nixon was not impeached. It was the imminent threat of such and the high probability of conviction that convinced him to resign. Obviously, the pardon by Ford was negotiated into the bargain.
The hand G. H. W. Bush played in that is fascinating (see Family of Secrets, Russ Baker, really interesting declassifications)
So, just to be clear, Trump abuses his power by encouraging his followers to go make a stink at the Capitol and we are supposed to be horrified. But not when Biden abuses his power by getting the US involved and even encouraging a war with Russia where hundreds of thousands of people have died and there’s a non trivial risk of all of us dying in a nuclear war. Then there’s the very fact of Biden arranging prosecutions (and he is) of his electoral opponent in hopes of short circuiting any chance that the public might not pick him.
Good to know that you are keeping power and its abuses in perspective. And you have quite a lot of company in this blindness that says it’s ok–or at least not worth dwelling on–for the president to provoke massive violence around the world even though the Constitution itself says only the Congress has the power to make war.
Of course Trump to a much lesser extent did the same thing by assassinating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard commander and trying to overthrow Venezuela’s government. These were among the few things that the Dems praised him for.
I’m not a Trump supporter and in many ways Nixon was a villain but then so was Johnson. However I do believe that all the claims that “the law” has something to do with TDS are pure hogwash.
The two Trump impeachments weren’t just performative they were flat out tantrums. And both were overseen by a Speaker who refused to do even a “performative” impeachment of a President who lied to get us into an almost two decade long war. And if that wasn’t a high crime, nothing Trump has ever done comes close to being one.
Your first paragraph sounds to me rather similar to the divine rights of kings. Of course the higher power in their case was supposed to be god, but since god was often busy, an armed revolution had to act in god’s place.
Is the president not being responsible to laws actually stated somewhere in the constitution, laws, early court cases, federalist papers or other places?
To me it doesn’t sound like something a bunch of quarrelsome states would decide after breaking free from a monarch they labelled a tyrant. It sounds rather like something that would grow with the empire. The empire requires crimes, therefore the emperor needs to be above the law.
The law does not mean Presidents (or other officials) can do whatever they want–I have no idea where that interpretation comes from. The remedy for law-breaking is called “impeachment” and there are clear rules and procedures for that. Regardless of all that Presidents can and do things that are illegal all the time–no one bothers with any of that unless that Presidents name is Trump.
The president’s name was Johnson and then it was Nixon and then it was Clinton and then it was Trump. Is it not extraordinary that one president was impeached during the first 184 years of the Republic and three in the next 48? Perhaps we should be more cautious and thoughtful as to who we select for the office. Perhaps we should be more cautious and thoughtful as to who we elect to congress.
Johnson: murdered lots of Vietnamese, Americans (57k)
Nixon: continued the killing spree in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos
Clinton: Bombed Belgrade, Aspirin factory in the Sudan
Trump: murdered an Iranian general, a few others, but overall, he had relatively low body count.
American Presidents have always been able to kill with impunity, it’s a perk of the job. Being a truly religious person who takes the 10 commandments seriously is disqualifying. Even Carter probably had some body count, perhaps that is why he spent the rest of his life doing so much good (guilty conscience.)
Congress is at the root of the problem, to your point.
Andrew Johnson, impeached in 1868 for violating a law that Congress had enacted over his veto for the purpose of constraining his ability to fire a subordinate.
This one seems to confirm your conclusion, too.
Those who do the actual selecting are very thoughtful. They always pick somebody that carefully follows their instructions. No fundamental change makes sense when everything is just as you like it.
When Truman went into Korea he had to call it a UN police action because the crazy notion that Congress declares the wars still held sway. And Korea was very unpopular at the time precisely because it wasn’t undertaken in the usual way.
The forces that have made the military so much a part of our society are many. But back when this wasn’t true the US was a better or at least less dangerous (to the world) country. If we want to complain about our leaders this is the most important thing to complain about. Michael Kinsley said in DC the scandals are not the things that are illegal but the things that are legal. And how.
IMO Trump hate is just a way to distract from the above truth. In the debate he said he was only running because of the mess created by Biden. Just rhetoric perhaps but to that assertion I say “good.”
I doubt he would run against Biden pre-Neera. When Biden let Manchin dunk on him, Biden revealed he’s a bully and a wimp.
Nixon himself was not impeached, but the impeachment process against him is so far the only one that has brought about a president’s departure from office.
As discussed frequently at length here at NC, “we” have no effing agency to “choose wisely” among the shelf full of poisoned chalices that the Owners allow to be presented to “us,” so “we” can go through the nugatory exercise of legitimizing the bullshit Uniparty fake-binary Hobson’s Choice between Horrid 1 and Horrid 2. Enriching a bunch of PMC Parasites in a sinusoidal flow of “dark money” that buys the Owners another bunch of years of institutional fig leaves to cover the private parts they screw the rest of us with.
Don’t be blaming the mopes stewing in a cauldron of Bernays Sauce ™ as the temperature inside and outside the pot inexorably and incrementally rises. Question is whether the mopery will be completely braised and consumed before there comes some watering of the tree of Liberty. (I never much liked Jefferson’s formulation — why must the patriots shed their blood before any shedding by the tyrants? So nobly heroic in notion, so totally feckless in practice.)
Ya!
Say it again, brother McPhee.
Bernays Sauce. Put that on a bumper sticker, and I’ll buy it, paste it on, and honk the horn as I pass by.
And the shedding of blood. Yes, it seems like that’s what it’s going to take, and of course, that instinct is what the Bernays Sauce is designed to remove.
I do endorse the idea of shedding the blood of the malignants first; glad you made that point. Amfortas has mentioned the possibility of feeding them to the pigs.
That’s poetic, on several counts.
Relatedly … I don’t spend much time around the 20-30s crowd; does anyone have any idea what they’re thinking about all this?
The ones I’ve spent time with are 90% Dem-leaning. These fine people are disgusted by the ultra conservative SCOTUS, think Biden should retire today, and recognise that Trump will win unless the Dems change course. The few right wingers are surprisingly not gloating or threatening to shoot anyone at the moment (I’m not exaggerating about shooting). The older MAGA folks (both blue and red) are the really insufferable- to- actually- dangerous ones.
I find myself interacting with young people between ages of 17 and 35. Many are not engaging with the news cycle as a form of mental health protection. They are very selective about their news feed. Older ones in the cohort are more concerned with student debt, workplace stressors, and lack of prospects for home ownership. The most poignant comment came from a young man who volunteered in a nursing home during high school. He said the “debate” reminded him of two residents arguing in the common room. Want to generate a mini kerfuffle? Mention pronouns.
I saw a comment on the Xitter just now:
Born too late to own property.
Born too early to be a Tik Tok star.
Born just in time to watch sandwiches go from $5 to $15.
im 35, most of my friends are late 20s-early 40s. nearly everyone is some form of liberal-progressive-left, im the only (extreme left – like i hate liberals level of left) independent.
theyre going on and on about how they dont like biden or his foreign policy (especially israel) but that this is the most important election of their lifetime, democracy is at stake, we have to suck it up and vote for genocider biden or else big scary project 2025 is going to happen! and as queers we cant let that happen!
and guess what? doesnt matter whos in office, project 2025 will still be enacted even under the democrats. it solidifies capitalist power and theyre a capitalist party.
my idiot friends really think theres a difference between the two parties – there isnt! theyll say im a traitor to my queerness, and i say that theyre gullible and naive. the democrats only ‘support’ us queers because its currently (barely) politically expedient. the very second it is no longer politically expedient they will throw us into gas chambers themselves if it would help them triangulate their ‘third way’ voting base.
they would much rather fund raise off our suffering, just like they fund raised off roe v wade while refusing to turn it into law for 50 f-ing years and then make a shocked picachu face when radical off the rails SCOTUS guts it.
if biden is not replaced on the ticket with someone below the age of 50 the democrats will lose. guarantee it. and i love the irony of the ‘democrat’ party refusing to abide by democracy. screwing over bernie in 2016. screwing him again in 2020. not even allowing a primary in 2024, and then biden bombs the debate and suddenly they want to replace him in backdoor deals. im sure with another corporate pro war stooge.
why arent we at the violent revolution stage yet? how much more do people have to suffer before they break? by the time this fever breaks we will be getting shot by drones who get their targets from AI combing through social media posts, just like the palestinians daring to go against israel. the imperial core is about to get a taste of what happens when the empire’s power is pointed back at home.
hi. resident 20 year old here. the ones i hang around are equally disillusioned. they know its a scam, and even more so are worried about their future- we all see climate change and the food prices going up, and just do not trust those in power.
and honestly, people both right and left have this distrust- trump gets votes largely because he pandered to the distrust to those in power, played up being an outsider, etc. and an even larger chunk of people are just focused on paying their rent and working and don’t have the time to think deeply about politics. (thats how oppression works after all.)
i admit that my friendgroup is skewed towards the left, anti-imperialists deeply critical of the united states both at home and abroad. but people outside of that also feel similarly. i think the only people who dont are those who buy into the grift and think they can play the system and win. manosphere sigma male southern fratish types. or again, people concerned with things lower on the totem pole (fast fashion, tiktok, short attention spans, etc.) or people too anxious to leave their homes and such.
“i admit that my friendgroup is skewed towards the left, anti-imperialists deeply critical of the united states both at home and abroad.”
Out of curiosity: on Ukraine as well?
yes. the specific friendgroup i mention is very anticolonialist and a lot of their commentary is, why ukraine? why does ukraine get all this support and not other countries also struggling? and then they start getting into how race and culture affects things. the types that are militantly pro-palestine and after seeing the funding going to israel, became more and more critical of any us defense funding going anywhere.
although i can’t say the general population is like this, these are my most politically active friends. those of average interest in politics tend to exude apathy and confusion.
All the cool young kids are rejecting identity politics and embracing Political Economics via r/stupidpol and classunity.org.
Word is out, Y’all…
The Juice Is Loose
The “lockdowns” have claimed more victims:
The Youngest Pandemic Children Are Now in School, and Struggling
I wonder when someone might notice that children can get COVID, repeatedly, and that it causes brain damage?
In a few more years, we’re gonna be hearing about how women pregnant during the “lockdowns” now have children that are developmentally behind, because the situation was so traumatic for the pregnant mother, or something. I can’t wait.
And it’s coming!
(bold mine)
A legitimate fear, I’d say.
Huh. We need them to be able to open bags of garbage chips? Like why are there chips?
And why are these kids “missing” school? I don’t understand. It’s almost as if some thing is going on right now, what could it be? What a puzzle.
From my perspective about children as a teacher, fine and gross motor skills are down because kids don’t do as much in person, but they do a lot on screens and play video games instead. It’s been happening for years. If you have kids or grandkids, get them off of their devices and play with them. Give them something to build.
Also, I had students miss 30 and 40 days last year. Some of it was Covid specifically. But then it was strep, then pink eye, then the flu, then strep again. Their poor little immune systems can’t catch a break. Were I to have kids, I would be afraid to have my kids near other kids, too, if they were constantly sick like that.
Also, the years or months spent being taught online were probably less than adequate for their development. In class, the teacher can tell when you’re goofing off or daydreaming looking out the window and can get your attention back to what she’s trying to teach. A kid in front of a computer has all kinds of distractions from lessons being presented, and how can the teacher tell if anyone is paying attention? I think this has a lot to do with why school kids are behind on their reading and math skills.
There is also the examples other kids set. The kid who finished 2nd in our times tables race in 2nd grade was a moron in the eyes of most kids. Despite being a bright guy, the other kids almost certainly knew that if Tyler could do anything academic wise they better be able to also. Tyler and I famously faked a book report in middle school. Even in college people we knew brought up how insane our presentation was. Can kids read well enough to even fake book reports?
Adults can set expectations, but if the other kids don’t do it, isn’t that just some olden times nonsense?
The Times article covers kids new to school; so they probably don’t have that history of remote learning to saddle them down.
It’s weird how kids are both incredibly resilient, so COVID isn’t a problem, and simultaneously, “lockdowns” completely destroyed them educationally and developmentally.
This is the stupidest timeline.
The simplest explanation, that repeat infection with a level 3 biohazard is bad, is never broached at all.
Not necessarily for Covid, but this is a thing as trauma is often transmitted multi generationally. This would be something interesting to reread on, maybe take a few classes for the latest research. So buckle up.
Epigenetics? Yeah, I assume this will be blamed for developmental problems children have from lockdowns for at least a generation. Being “locked down” for a month or two so destructive! Going to end civilization as we know it, I think!
“Going to end civilization as we know it, I think!”
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
If spending six months home from school makes a kid permanently neurotic, shouldn’t every kid who was home-schooled for 8 years have turned out to be an axe murderer?
i have some friends who work with children at summer camps. they agree that its bad. a lot of it is also the culture of overprotectiveness, those horror stories about dcf/cps/whatever taking away kids playing in the yard unsupervised. or just how much easier it is to give a child a phone instead of taking care of their complex needs. it also relates a lot to the shortage of childcare providers, especially low income parents who struggle to have the time/money/resources to take care of children properly, and giving them a phone to play games on is very cheap.
and yeah, a lot of it is fear because of the pandemic. but a lot of it is also just a general unease, and the culture of overprotectiveness we have created.
my favorite ancedote was one from my teenage brother, a lifeguard at a local pool. apparently some kids are so afraid of skibidi toilet that they poop in the pool. which i think relates to the points of overaccess to screens and how anxious kids are.
a lot of people in my sphere have been talking about jonathan haidt’s ‘anxious generation.’ and i think it fails on a lot of points, overemphasizes the phones when there are a lot of other structural issues at play. but yeah.
I’m seeing more and more 20 somethings either day hiking or backpacking, and I think a real attractant is the idea of being unconnected in the wilderness, although your phone is still useful for taking photos, star apps and maps et al.
There aren’t many places out there where you can be without a signal, and its also cheap in that a wilderness permit for overnight backpack trips is $15, about the price of a movie ticket.
Should you get lost or hurt yourself, NPS will spends tens of thousands of $’s if need be and sometimes have a dozen people searching to help you out of your predicament. Unlike our health system, you’ll be charged precisely nothing.
Will Biden stay in the race or will he go?
Mike Benz has articulated two important indicators to watch on this issue.
First Benz argues that, up to this point, the intelligence community has been quite silent. There has, as of yet, been no intelligence community letter calling Biden’s mental state a national security threat. (Why are our big Spies (Brennan, Clapper etc.) not busy collecting 51 signatures!
Secondly, there are two extremely powerful people close to Biden, and I am not talking about Jill and Hunter, who at this point also appear to be giving silent support to Biden’s apparent desire to stay in the race– the Donilon brothers Tom and Mike.
Tom Donilon has held positions at the apex of the National Security State ( 22nd National Security Advisor under Obama (2010-2013) as well as the present Chairmen of the BlackRock Investment Institute and his younger brother Mike Donilon, who has been a close political advisor to Joes Biden for over 40 years.
Watch for what they say or don’t say.
> the Donilon brothers Tom and Mike.
Wikipedia: Tom Donilon is “married to Catherine M. Russell, who was chief of staff to Jill Biden, and in March 2013 was named the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues at the U.S. State Department.” One big happy!
As for the spooks. their response might not take written form.
Is it not ironic that we look to the Spooks for help? And to the military for restraint in foreign mis-adventures?
That’s how bad things have gotten.
In related news, I just received a text regarding a poll from the outfit democraticvoters.org which poses the question “Are you still voting for Joe Biden?” Am I still beating my wife? If you do not respond to the poll, you will be “marked” as a Trump voter.
So if you answer no, then it is implied that you had planned on voting for him at some point. I expect there will be an attempt to game this number. Good luck with that.
There is no way to respond to this poll and indicate “I am not and never intended to vote for Biden, but I am not a Trump voter, either.”
Also, I wonder what “marked” means…
We still have a secret ballot, and for good reason. I would delete such a text, “marking” it as spam.
Disagree re the silence. It would not be proper for anyone in the Administration to rebel.
The spooks HAVE been telling Biden to go. David Iganatius did so in a WaPo op ed last November. Sy Hersh is also a spook whisperer, and his latest piece (where most focused on his question of who is in charge) clearly says, at the top, that Biden is a danger to the US via his internally contradictory policy decisions on Ukraine and Israel. I read this as a justification for an assassination if Biden would not go nicely. As I have also repeatedly pointed out, it would be easy to do Biden in. All that has to be done is get a very high dose of amphetamines in his regular performance meds. The hard part is delaying or messing with the medical team that would come to revive him. I am sure there are other ways, but the point is his obviously impaired state opens up options that would not be viable with a healthier man.
And you’ve said in NC that you’re a person without hope. Not so, in my book.
I think you mean that to be a compliment, but I never said that.
I have repeatedly said in the context of climate activism, and likely other political initiatives, that hope is a poor motivator (in fact it is an anti-motivator, you hope circumstances will bail you out) and therefore a lousy basis for fomenting change. Fear, anger, and a sense of duty are all more compelling.
Vogue does a profile on Dr. Biden.
Have your DSM-IV ready before you start reading, lol.
https://www.vogue.com/article/first-lady-jill-biden-august-2024-cover-interview
Well, that was nausea inducing. The sainted Dr. Jill, reincarnation of Eleanor Roosevelt, even has Bernie’s wife pimping for Genocide Joe in Vogue. What a sickening display. I have lost all respect for Jane Sanders.
Whiteslice Oprah doing philanthro-capitalism whilst completely oblivious of the underpinning economics which have created the whole mess over 40 years ….
Same sort of mentality which is and has been applied in the Ukraine and against Russia/China, solution to everything is more of the same … failure is always attributed to bad people with a finger in the narrative pie …
The white suit was a nice touch. In years to come, historians will have to go into what roles she played in the workings of the White House as it seems that it was much more extensive than most people know. When you think about it, she has hardly been mentioned in the news for the past three years which seems strange.
I don’t remember seeing that many profiles when she first became Vice President.
An artistic interlude to go with the open thread, this one feels very zeitgeisty to me: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/06/toni-hamel-in-lieu-of-better-days/
perfect. Tks.
What part of Jan 6th or election interference is official business?
I have not read the decision but I believe it includes a mention that speaking on important events is part of the normal presidential role, so his remarks at Jan 6 are apparently covered as official acts. Hopefully other readers can clarify.
Here you go Lambert: a nothing burger straight from the Donkey’s mouth:
https://x.com/AOC/status/1807814421168710111?t=XI14KzMYzptJEvA2rjT42w&s=19
Good luck making sense of the present non-sense.
Articles of impeachment on the Supremes? What?
I had to do a search just to confirm what I very barely remembered. One Supreme Court Justice, Samuel Chase, was impeached, but not convicted, in 1804. I guess AOC is going to bring articles of impeachment for six of the nine justices?
IMO the Court’s decision was wise. I thought this would be the decision, but expected and hoped it would be unanimous. I suspect the Court is looking at the increasing likelihood that the Republicans will sweep the upcoming election, perhaps with a mandate level vote. This decision will make it much more difficult for there to be a “revenge” lawfare war against the Dems & hopefully stop the “tit-for-tat.” I consider this a victory for the separation of powers.
That’s a nice dream. Ever since the apotheosis of “parties” (criminal syndicates squabbling over the loot from the Spoils System “winner takes all”) it’s been tit for tat in the long bezzle to separate people from their incomes and rights. Long as the imperial structure system prevails, there will be factional sniping, both real and kayfabe. “Nothing will substantially change,” as the Big Guy poromised.
So does this supreme court ruling mean it’s not illegal for Biden to straight up assassinate Trump?
Liberal Democrat Twitter lost its mind of on this, but apparently they believe this does green light assassinations of American citizens. Although Obama already nailed that one, legal or not! I think Citizens United is still more pernicious.
No.They were clear that immunity only involved actions made in the context of official presidential conduct
True, but only to the extent that no court has defined the distinction between official and unofficial conduct.
Eventually we will find out what the 18th century founders considered official duties.
I mean… the President is Commander in Chief of the armed forces. If, in order to combat terrorism or whatever, he orders a drone strike on a building a political rival just happens to be staying in, he’s pretty clearly immune from prosecution for it according to the standard set out in the ruling, which includes as official all actions “not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority” and explicitly prohibits the courts from examining his motives in making that determination.
Not a legal expert but this decision sure seems like a steaming-hot pile of garbage to me.
A couple of The Supremes would be on my short list of direct imminent threats to the US.
Ditto Johnson, McConnell, and Trump.
Seems entirely defensible, if Trumps Jan 6 shenanigans with Pence and Congress are the benchmark.
Might start a war. I just don’t think Trump is Martyr-worthy material. Can’t polish a Turd.
It’s time to resurrect President Roosevelt’s proposal for the Supreme Court–for every Justice over the age of 70 who doesn’t retire, the President gets to appoint an additional Justice. That would mean an additional Justice if Thomas and Alito did not retire, with two more when Roberts (age 69) and Sotomayor (also 69) don’t retire. That’s four additional Justices, who can then reverse all these abominable decisions this Court has been handing down. Congress manipulated the number of Justices in the aftermath of the Civil War by reducing the size of the Court to 7 Justices, just so that Andrew Johnson could not appoint another. Then, as soon as those 7 Justices refused to declare Greenbacks as Legal Tender, President Grant appointed two more Justices, and the Court reversed the previous 4-3 decision. In the process, the Senate must abolish the filibuster to restore something like democracy to Congress. Whoever becomes the Democratic nominee should run on this as a major plank in the platform. IMHO
https://archive.ph/4aTbO
(NYT)
In a Staring Contest With Democratic Voters, Joe Biden Hasn’t Blinked
The jokes write themselves with the “hasn’t blinked” headline.
Climate change is leading to more intense heatwaves and storms in many parts of the United States, so can some cities provide a refuge from extreme weather?
Over the past few years, the city of Buffalo, New York, has been all over the headlines. But instead of US media focusing only on the city’s occasional epic snowstorm, Buffalo is making news for its (perhaps surprisingly) moderate year-round climate – at a time when other parts of the world are becoming uninhabitable because of climate change.
This conversation kicked off in 2019, when Buffalo’s mayor Byron Brown declared, during a state of the city address, that Buffalo could be a “climate refuge city”, a place where residents of the hurricane-prone Southeast or wildfire-ravaged West, for example, could move to escape climate-induced disasters.
A local economic development organisation, Invest Buffalo Niagara, picked up on the mayor’s climate haven claim and ran with it. It was an attractive pitch: though the air and water temperatures of this post-industrial city on the shores of Lake Erie will rise as the climate warms, climate scientists don’t anticipate an increase in weather-related disasters there in the coming decades.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240628-us-climate-havens-cities-claim-extreme-weather-protection
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Buffalo has only had the pleasure of my company once, and we’d sold our abode in the City of Angles about 20 years ago, and while there picked up a real estate guide and there were quite a few $10k-20k homes for sale, and i’m sure they were beaters, but the thought ran through my mind, ok, for 1 LA home, I can be the ultimate Buffalo slumlord for say 66 of them, such a deal, er not consummated.
About the weirdest thing my better Buffalonian half shared was the spot where McKinley was assassinated, is marked by a plaque on a rock right in the median of the street in a neighborhood of homes.
Did a time share with a bunch of others seated around us and the Bills prevailed over the Bengals, leaving my record @ the Ralph a perfect 100% @ 1-0.
Beryl is a category 5 hurricane. Earliest by nearly 2 weeks.
With another potential one just behind in the Mid-Atlantic.