Sunday, February 15, 2026

Doom Report (Week 56: The Pendulum, and the Pit of Accountability)


This week I had a long talk with my children about the economy.  Now, my children (that still live with me) are almost-20 and almost-14, so you might think that the economy would be a very boring topic for them.  But here’s the thing: they have to consider whether they’re ever going to be able to move out; whether they’re ever going to be able to afford to buy their own house.  And, I gotta tell you: they don’t think they will.  And I can’t really argue with them either.

This week on the Weekly Show, Jon Stewart interviews conservative economist Oren Cass.  And he gives lots of interesting historical perspective: for instance, he thinks the New Deal swung too far in one direction.  And I don’t necessarily agree with that—of course: I’m a pretty hard progressive—but it’s easy to see the point.  First there was the Industrial Revolution, and all the rich people made all the poor people go work in the factories—men, women, and children—and then all the poor people kept dying or getting mangled in those factories, so there was no one to buy all the products being produced by the factories, so then we introduced labor laws, instituted the weekend and got the kids out of the coal mines, and then the rich people got really rich, and we had the Gilded Age and the robber barons, which of course led inevitably to Black Tuesday and the Great Depression, so then FDR comes in with the New Deal and jobs programs and the Glass-Steagall Act and the Securities Exchange Act and appointing trustbuster Thurman Arnold.  Now, Cass’s point is that the regulations fixed things, but the Democrats took from that the wrong lesson: they thought that, if some regulations were good, more regulations must be better, right?  So they overregulated.  Then along comes Reagan and starts deregulating.  And, again, the Republicans took the wrong lesson: if some deregulation is good, then more must be better, right?  And now here we are in the 21st century, with the 2008 financial crisis and wealth inequality that puts the Gilded Age to shame.  The crux of Cass’s argument is that the pendulum had swung too far, so it swung back; now it’s swung too far in the other direction, and must, inevitably, swing back towards equality.  So, maybe, by the time my children are ready to move out, that swing will be in progress.

This is what passes for hope in our house these days.

Last week I tried to articulate why I think it’s important to include videos from Adam Kinzinger alongside those from Mehdi Hasan and the Some More News crew.  With further time to reflect, I think it may be best summed up by Kinzinger himself, who is fond of saying that, if we guesstimate that people don’t start paying to politics until they’re around 15 or so, that means that every single person in America today under the age of 25 doesn’t know politics without Trump.  They don’t understand what it means to say, yeah, this person is on the “other” side, but they still make some good points.  They don’t realize that this—what we’re living through today—is not normal.  And that makes me sad.  It just occurred to me this week that my children have grown up thinking that I sure must like the news a lot, because I listen to so much of it.  And I hate the news.  I successfully avoided watching nearly all of it until 9/11 happened, and then I (like many of us) went crazy for a while, and then I scaled back for my own sanity and refused to watch any news that didn’t have a humourous angle, and then ... Trump.  And, while I still desperately try to focus on news that can make us laugh while we learn, even when we’re learning about the horrors, there’s just too much.  I dream of a time when watching The Daily Show will be sufficient again.  I dream of my children saying, “hey Dad, how come you don’t watch the news all the time any more?”

So I think that’s why I love it when I can point you to Adam Kinzinger, or Tim Miller, or, this week, to Oren Cass, who is absolutely a conservative, and you (if your political viewpoint is more or less aligned with my own, and I assume it is if you’ve lasted this far into these reports) will absolutely yell at your screen at least once or twice when listening to him describe something.  But here’s Jon Stewart, every bit as progressive as I, also disagreeing with Cass, and yet ... there is so much they do agree on.  I want us to get back to that place.  That place where the Democrats and the Republicans, the conservatives and the progressives, can all talk to each other, and maybe they fight a little, but, at the end of the day, they still shake hands and smile at each other.  Because this bullshit demonization of the “other side” is completely manufactured: it was wholly invented by rich fucking assholes who want to make damn sure we don’t pay attention to how much money they’re siphoning off us, because last time that happened, they ended up with tax rates over 90%.  And I want my children (as well as my readers) to embrace that.  The “other” side is fine.  We can talk to them.  They, like us, believe in democracy, and the rule of law, and basic human dignity and equality.  And the people who don’t believe in those things are not a different side—they’re a whole different species.  And one we should probably not be looking to preserve.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • I suppose the big news of the week was the Epstein Files (again) and the MAGA meltdown over Bad Bunny’s superbowl performance.  For a capsule view of both topics, try Kimmel’s monologue from Tuesday.
  • How does deep red Kentucky wind up with a Democratic governor?  On Monday’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart interviews governor Andy Bashear to find out.  Note Bashear’s emphasis on making working people’s lives better: every time Jon asks “how did you get Republicans to vote for you?” this is the answer: if you make their lives better, they don’t care which letter is next to your name.  Other Democratic candidates damned well better be taking notes.
  • Adam Kinzinger’s week in review is perhaps not quite as indispensable this time around, but still good.

So my talk with my children about the economy sort of devolved into a history lesson.  And my kids are homeschooled (for non-religious reasons), so we’ll take any excuse at all to be educational.  And for me, a person who see connections in everything, it’s hard not to get overwhelmed by how much all this stuff fits together, and how much of what’s happening today is inextricably entangled with what went on 20 years ago, 50 years ago, a hundred years ago ... notice how Oren Cass’s pendulum swings took us backward all the way to the Industrial Revolution, and that was about 250 years ago.  But another thing we had to talk about was accountability.  Because, if the Democrats can successfully take back the government at some point—and, if they don’t quickly wake up to the plans to cheat and start preparing better than Jamie Raskin, they might not—but, presuming they can, they’re going to have to hold some people accountable.  And that’s going to be tough, because, historically, it just isn’t done.  And some people point to Obama’s refusal to prosecute anyone in the Bush administration for their blatant lies about Iraq—and, you know: all the torturing—but what I pointed out to my children was this goes back way farther than that: after Watergate, Ford pardoned Nixon.  And whether your excuse is that we need to be looking forward instead of back, or that we need to maintain the dignity of the office, or whatever else bullshit you can come up with, the truth is, if we never hold anyone accountable, then they’re just going to keep on doing it, over and over again, forever.  And, while we were talking about that, we touched on impeachment: Nixon wasn’t actually impeached, of course, but he’s one of the five cases where the Articles of Impeachment were drafted and approved ... he just resigned before they could be voted on.  In the other four cases—Johnson, Clinton, Trump, and Trump—the votes all passed.  But, while I was explaining all this, it occurred to me: does the lack of accountability go back even further than Nixon?  Because Johnson (who, by the way, came within a single vote of being convicted of the crimes for which he was impeached: the closest any President has ever come) is a study in this as well: he pardoned 7,000 former Confederates and allowed them to regain political power.  Is this cycle of refusal to hold the political class—or, to adopt Jon Ossoff’s clever coinage, the Epstein Class—accountable that we’re currently locked in really 160 years old? or more?

If an 18 year boy shoots someone, we lock them in prison for life, because we want to make sure people know they can’t do that sort of thing again.  But if a 78 year old banker steals billions, we give them a slap on the wrist (or, if Trump happens to be in office, a full pardon) ... why?  Do we not want to let other people know not to do that again?  Or do we just not care?  And, if a 78 year old billionaire—who may not have been a billionaire before but damned sure is now—grifts the entire country, and indeed the entire world, out of billions of ill-gotten gains, do we want to let other poeple know that that’s not okay? or just encourage more people to try?  Accountability is going to need to be a major plank in any next candidate’s platform, or else I fear my granchildren will be writing Doom Reports about how they can trace their own current horrors back 50 years to some guy named Trump ...









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Sunday, February 8, 2026

Doom Report (Week 55: Mountainish Inhumanity)


This week a lot of the focus has been on the latest release of the Epstein files:

  • Seth Meyers has a “Closer Look” segment that covers this as well as a few other tidbits that this tried to push out of the news cycle.

Over in other countries, politicians are being held accountable.  Not so much here.  Here, Trump says that the 3 million documents released so far totally exonerate him, despite his being mentioned thousands, if not tens of thousands, of times.  And his minions wander around saying that he’s answered enough questions about Epstein, while all the answers he gives are just that people need to move on and journalists need to smile more.  And I know that many are focussing on the rank misogyny in this comment, and that’s a fair thing to focus on, but I wish more people would ask what kind of psychopath smiles while asking questions about underage victims of rape and abuse?

And there are still 3 million more documents to come.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Stephen Colbert talks to “Melania Trump” about her new movie opening.  Laura Benanti’s Melania impression is one of the most brilliant bits of personification I’ve ever seen, and this piece is one of her best.  There are at least 3 times during this 7 minutes that I laughed out loud at disturbing volumes.  Laura nails the insouciance, the apathy, and the casual disdain for Trump along with the whole rest of the world.  Melania is often seen as a somehow sympathetic figure, as if she’s being held hostage or something.  But, as Josh Johnson noted this week, she’s a grown-ass woman who both seems to hate Trump as much as we do and also is fully in it for the money just as much as he is ($28 million of the documentary’s $40m price tag went straight into her pocket).  Two things can be true.
  • Sir Ian McKellen was on Colbert this week, and he did an insanely amazing (and amazingly topical) speech from Shakespeare that somehow captures our current zeitgeist perfectly.
  • Why do I keep on pointing you at Adam Kingzinger’s week in review even though he’s a conservative and I disagree with him at least once in every appearance he’s ever done?  Because he’s smart and articulate, because knowing that even conservatives are not okay with the current regime helps keep us sane, and because it’s crucial to remember that, no matter how much they try to frame it so, this is not a debate of Democrats vs Republicans.  This is Democrats and Republicans—and independents, and libertarians, and progressives—vs crazy MAGA rightwing nutjobs.
  • I’m surprised we didn’t get more coverage about Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that MAGA was “all a lie.”  I suppose that’s Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” strategy showing some successes.  But Jane Coaston over on What a Day has you covered.
  • The arrest of Don Lemon should also probably not be overlooked.  Legal Eagle’s Devin Stone has a pretty great summary.
  • There was a bit of coverage of the regime’s ridiculous “coal mascot”; wanna know why coal is never coming back?  Hank Green has you covered in his aptly titled video “Coal Is Extremely Dumb”.

If you didn’t listen to that Ian McKellen speech I linked above, first of all, what’s wrong with you?  It’s a brilliant performance, even impromptu as it was.  It’s a speech about “strangers,” which is Elizabethan-speak for foreigners—immigrants.  In the scene, Sir Thomas More (lawyer, judge, philosopher) is trying to calm a mob who are ready to drive out the strangers from their country, at the point of a knife if necessary.  At one point, he asks them: should you succeed, what would that get you?

What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an agèd man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.

Or, to sum up: violence breeds violence.  What you give out will surely come back to you.

More continues the metaphor.  What if you were evicted from your country, and you found yourself in a foreign land, now yourself the stranger, now yourself chased by an angry mob ...

That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity.

“Mountainish inhumanity” seems like a pretty good description of the Trump regime.  And, you know, when Shakespeare himself is calling you out, using the voice of Gandalf, that might be a pretty convincing sign that you’re on the wrong side of history.









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Sunday, February 1, 2026

Doom Report (Week 54: In Memoriam)


The last words of Renee Good: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”

The last words of Alex Pretti: “Are you okay?”

These are the people your government is murdering.


This week, a spate of heartfelt tributes and incisive discussions about the execution of Alex Pretti, and other ICEscapades.

  • An excellent, impassioned summary from Jon Stewart on Monday.  “And maybe that, more than anything, explains why Alex Pretti really was a threat.  Because he was brandishing a weapon: a handheld, aluminum, 1080p, 60 FPS weapon of mass illumination.  Because there is nothing more dangerous to a regime predicated on lies than witnesses who capture the truth.”
  • An excellent, thunderous summary from Stephen Colbert on Monday.  “Yes, do not compare ICE or Border Patrol agents to the Nazis.  That’s an unfair comparison.  The Nazis were willing to show their faces.”
  • An excellent, emotional summary from Jimmy Kimmel on Monday.  “And to the people of Minneapolis, to the Pretti family and the Good family and these people who were looking out for their neighbors, we want you to know that we are with you and you are not alone.”
  • As per usual, a more angry take from Christopher Titus on Tuesday.  “Alex Pretti never went for his gun—his legal to carry gun.  He never tried to punch an officer.  He was protecting a woman these cowards had pushed to the ground.  He was blind, unarmed, face down, and they shot him 10 times.  They murdered him.  So, I guess this ICU nurse who took care of veterans and whose first instinct was to protect someone else instead of himself was the definition of ‘worst of the worst’.”
  • A very passionate speech from Congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, who is herself under indictment for her efforts protesting ICE.  “This is not a stepping stone in my career.  I want this seat because I want to do what I’m good at: help others, fight Nazis, and go back home to hang out with my cat.  If you’re angry, stay angry.  I’m angry, too.  And we’re in this together.”
  • The first 19 minutes of this week’s Strict Scrutiny is dedicated to covering the incident from both a legal and human perspective, including some chilling witness statements.  “We just want to suggest the radical idea that it cannot be that everyone is allowed to carry a gun for their safety, but the government can still murder you in the streets if you lawfully possess a gun.  Having a gun, we are told, does not make you a criminal, except, apparently, when you are protesting the government.  Even more maddening is that the Republican party and this court have attempted to justify the Second Amendment right to carry and possess a firearm by saying that people have a right to defend themselves—wait for it—from the government.”
  • More Jon Stewart: on The Weekly Show, he interviews 404 Media co-founder Joseph Cox and civil liberties journalist Radley Balko about ICE surveillance and enforcement.  The best part was probably a discussion of how the current situation with ICE is so reminiscent of the conditions that led to the American Revolution.  ”... the tension in Boston of having those soldiers there are why it eventually will lead to the Boston Massacre.  But it is specifically why we have a Second, Third, and Fourth Amendment, because you had soldiers who had these general warrants.  They had the power to break into anybody’s home at any time to look for untaxed goods, right?  Well, what’s ICE trying to do now?  They’re claiming they can break into anybody’s home at any time without a warrant to look for undocumented people, right?  I mean, the parallels are so incredible.”
  • On this week’s first Even More News episode, Katy Stoll does a great job pointing out that “killed while resisting arrest” is such a bullshit rationale because a) he wasn’t resisting—flailing around while people beat the shit out of you is not resisting—and b) even if he was, he wasn’t under arrest, because ICE aren’t cops, and they can’t arrest you, and c) even if he had been, you cannot be executed for resisting arrest.  Not legally, anyway.
  • I often point you at Adam Kinzinger, a never-Trump Republican, but it’s not because I always agree with him.  In point of fact, I often disagree with him, including at least some of what he says about this incident.  But I think it’s important to know that even lifelong conservatives are not okay with this bullshit, and Kinzinger’s words are sincere and heartfelt.
  • On the What a Day coverage, Jane Coaston not only has a good summary of the incident; she also interviews Laura Jedeed, a journalist who applied for a job with ICE for a story and somehow ended up getting the job, despite the fact that she never submitted any paperwork and utterly failed the drug test.  Her insight into the ICE hiring process is really revelatory.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • A pretty good cold open from SNL again this week.  It is often so hard to find any humour at all in these types of situations, but SNL has still got it, even after 50 years.  Pete Davidson’s Tom Homan impression is not particularly accurate, but it’s funny, and the ICE agents portrayed by Kenan Thompson (SNL’s longest-serving cast member) and James Austin Johnson (taking a break from his Trump impression) are spot-on.
  • Graham Platner has been a controversial figure, but I still think he’s an excellent candidate to supplant Susan Collins in Maine: younger than the current governor (who’s running against him), an oysterman and veteran, and a self-described “New Deal Democrat.”  He explains what that means in this campaign video.

Kat Abughazaleh, who I’ve mentioned many times in these reports, released an attack ad ... against herself.  It is one of the most hilarious things I’ve seen all year (and I know that’s a low bar, but still), and you simply must watch it.  At only a minute long, it captures the utter absurdity of the criticisms against her—and against any of the crop of strong new progressive faces we’re (finally) seeing, such as Mamdani, AOC, Jasmine Crockett, and Ilhan Omar.

Omar, of course, got a lot of press this week because one of the rightwing nutjobs sprayed her with apple cider vinegar, for some unknown reason (other than just Trump being in his head—I think that might be the real “Trump Derangement Syndrome”).  Rather than shrinking back and/or freaking out, Representative Omar stepped to the crazy man, fist cocked back.  The really stupid thing—even stupider than squirting vinegar at someone—is that it’s likely that almost no one outside her native Minnesota would even know her name, except that Trump cannot help himself when anyone brings up a strong woman of color, and he goes on and on about how terrible they are, how dumb they are, and how he’s so much smarter than they are.  I myself was barely aware of her as one of the original members of The Squad, but knew almost nothing beyond that.  But now Trump and his big mouth have ensured that she’s receiving national attention, with people on the left praising her and those on the right having to make shit up to discredit her.  (Best coverage on this is likely the Even More News segment on it, which has the added bonus of Matilda star Mara Wilson weighing on the sexual abuse generation machine that is Grok.)  But now I, and just everyone else in the country, know her name, know her face, and know that she don’t take no shit.  To say that Trump is an idiot is underselling it a bit; more fair to say he’s a toddler, with a limited grasp of object permanence, who lacks the self-control to keep his mouth shut even when it would benefit him to do so.  That and the toxic narcissism, of course.

So Abughazaleh and Omar are my hope for this week.  Strong women, and especially strong women of color, are the one thing Trump can’t handle, and maybe that’s exactly what’s going to save us all.









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