Sunday, October 18, 2026

Doom Report (Week 91: Yeah, But That Was Different)


Once upon a time—by which I mean a little over two years ago—I told this story about my record-collector father:

In our family, he’s somewhat infamous for shitting on my and my brother’s musical taste.  For everything from rap to heavy metal—and, in particular, for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which he has an inexplicable hatred of—he can be heard to proclaim decisively “they can’t sing, they just scream” and “it sounds like a bunch of stray cats fighting” and sometimes just “that just isn’t music, son.”  And, once, after he’d said that, I reminded him that he grew up in the motherfucking fifties: during the foundational years of rock-n-roll, when parents holding their ears and decrying their children’s choice of listening material is practically a stereotype.  “Dad,” I pointed out as gently as I could, “isn’t ‘that’s not music’ exactly what your parents said to you when you were young?”  And he furrowed his brow, and shook his head, and responded, with zero irony or self-awareness whatsoever, “yes, but that was different.”

And, as I ponder the weeks’ news, I have to wonder: is it just a coincidence that my father is a conservative Republican?  Not a rightwing nutjob—mostly—but a staunch conservative nonetheless.  So maybe it’s something about that type of personality that leads people to fall into this trap, over and over again.  Because, it occurs to me that I also wrote a short post a bit over two years ago where I talked about the college protests against Israeli genocide.  (Hard to believe that that started even before Trump, although not before Mike Johnson’s tenure.)  If you’ll allow me the supreme indulgence of quoting myself a second time in one post, here’s what I said about the lack of irony that university administrators were showing when they decided to bring in the police and the National Guard to “calm things down”:

... it might also behoove people in positions of collegial power to try to think of a time when there were widespread college protests that we currently look back on and think, man, those college kids were totally wrong.  Would it be the Free Speech Movement in 1964? the civil rights protests against racial inequality in 1968? the antiwar protests of 1970? the anti-apartheid protests of 1985? the protests against school shootings in 2018? the Black Lives Matter protests of 2014 and again in 2020?  Which of these are people looking back on and saying “well, here’s an example of where the college kids really blew it, and I bet they’re embarrassed about it now!”  Is there a single counterexample that I’ve missed? a single case where the protests were misguided? a single case where these people—and to call them “young people” is just pointlessly reductive—really should have been told to “stop the nonsense; stop wasting your parents’ money”?  I haven’t thought of one yet.  But perhaps I lack the imagination of those wiser than I.  (Although, I gotta tell you: at this point, I’ve managed to live long enough that most of the idiots spewing this sort of garbage are no longer older than I, so maybe I should start referring to them as the “young people.”)

And this pattern keeps on being repeated, again and again.  Joe Biden’s kid got around $3 million from a Ukrainian company, and that was the ultimate expression of nepotism and grift, but when Tump’s son-in-law got $2 billion from Saudi Arabia, that was different.  When Trump was prosecuted for something he absolutely, unquestionably did, that was weaponization of the Justice Department, but when Trump’s DoJ brought charges against James Comey—and Letitia James, and Jerome Powell, and on and on—which were so badly constructed that they were essentially laughed out of court, that was different.  When Obama saluted with a coffee cup in his hand, it generated reams of rightwing outrage.  But when Trump refused to take his hat off while attending the dignified transfer of the first troops killed in his new forever war, Fox didn’t even show the footage ... because that was different.

And, sure: maybe some of this is deliberate hypocrisy and obfuscation, especially for the hacks over at Fox “News”.  But if we’re talking about the regular people that, say, Jordan Klepper is interviewing at Trump rallies, I believe they sincerely think this.  If your guy does it, it’s bad; if my guy does it, well, that’s different.  Many of our comedic commentators have opined that we now live in a post-irony society, and maybe that’s true.  Many have mourned the death of civility, and maybe that’s true too.  Or maybe it’s just that the inability to indulge in self-introspection, to recognize in yourself the same faults you easily call out in others, is endemic to a certain kind of political viewpoint, and that all those other things are not cause, but rather effect.

Or at least that’s what I’ve been pondering lately.  It’s just a thought.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • On Tuesday’s episode of Even More News, Katy, Cody, and Jonathan cover the federal raid on Ilhan Omar’s home, plus their take on the Talarico conspiracy theory, and a few other bits and bobs.
  • Three good “Kinzinger Report"s this week:
    • On Monday, Ukraine takes out a significant Russain Internet asset and all of a sudden there were a lot fewer bots on the Internet (go figure), Trump wants to give Putin money to try to drop the price of diesel (but it’s probably too late), and more.
    • On Thursday, Adam covers the latest MAGA infighting, this time between “lawyer” Alina Habba and “director” of the Kennedy Center Rich Grenell, Talarico showing up to a debate that Paxton was too chickenshit to attend, and more.
    • Finally, on Friday, Adam tells us about the January 6th Memory Project, which rescued all the DoJ documents on Jan 6 before the Trump regime started taking them down.  Best quote: “They can’t erase history.  That’s what his project proves.  The administration pardoned the rioters, fired the prosecutors, and scrubbed the record, but they couldn’t make the facts disappear.”  Plus, as always, more.

A bunch of longer videos this week!

  • W. Kamau Bell is back with Robert Reich (and, this week, Michael Lahanas-Calderón) on the Coffee Klatch.  This time they cover just how fast a press secretary can get canned, more about the raid on Ilhan Omar, and their take on the midterms.

I’m not going to say it was the brightest spot in my week, but it was a bright spot, and I thought it worth sharing.  Saturday Night Live was dark this week, but SNL UK was not.  And we were treated not only to another great Andy Burnham impression from SNL UK regular George Fouracres, but also James Austin Johnson shows up to do his classic Trump.  Johnson does a little fourth-wall breaking as well, marvelling at how you can say “shit” on British television (“very weird”) and having a bit of fun with the fact that Fouracres also did the impression of the previous Prime Minister, Keir Starmer (“please Keir Andy, please Andy Fouracres ...”).  But my favorite bit was this exchange, after one of Johnson’s spot-on stream-of-consciousness ramblings:

Burnham: Mr. Trump, do you have a point?
Trump: Not usually, no.

It’s a quick 6 minutes out of your day for a few chuckles.  Not a bad exchange.









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Sunday, October 11, 2026

Doom Report (Week 90: Didn't Get in the Way of Growth; It Got in the Way of Greed)


I’ve talked about Gary Stevenson many times (specifically, in weeks 38, 39, 42, 43, 49, 72, 78, and 81).  One of the things he’s expressed frustration about is that the field of economics has been stuck for decades in a model that just doesn’t work any more.  Thus, we have a bunch of PhDs running around—and, as Gary points out in week 49, mostly coming from wealthy backgrounds—telling us how to “fix” the economy using techniques that only make it worse.  And, when people like Gary point out that their theories are outdated, they disparage him and tell him that no “real” economists agree with him, so he must be wrong.

Except that things are, slowly, changing.  More and more often we’re starting to talk to economists who understand how our growing wealth inequality and rampant monopolies turn the “free market” into something that can’t possibly work the way the old-school capitalists described it.  Gabriel Zucman (weeks 86 and 89), Kyla Scanlon (weeks 26, 57, and 78), and Clara Mattei (week 26) are all speaking Stevenson’s language, decrying the staid academics who have gone before.  And, this week, Jon Stewart speaks to another one: he interviews Kathryn Anne Edwards on this week’s Weekly Show.  I found a lot of what she says to be simple common sense: much more so than what our “traditional” economists arew spewing.  There are lot of great quotes here (including the one I used for the title of this post, and another where she says she’s “optimistic out of spite”), but my favorite is this one:

I like to turn on my, like, heartless, economist, sarcastic voice and be like, listen: I also hate children.  I hate their mothers, but I hate kids, and I don’t want to invest in them any more than you want to invest in them.  Those snot-nosed little devils, they’re ... vectors of disease.  But I’ve got to give them daycare if I’m gonna get more hours of work out of their mom, which is good for the economy.

And so I can, like, code switch ...

And I think that’s what we need: more progressive economists who know how to appeal to the heartless conservative traditionalists in their profession.  And I think we’re starting to get them.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • More solid “Kinzinger Report"s:
    • On Moday, Adam talks about Senator John Kennedy—or, as Michael Ian Black from Have I Got News For You? is fond of referring to him as, “Senator Foghorn Leghorn”—talking about Trump going from “zero to A-hole in 3 seconds”, Ka$h Patel chasing conspiracy theories, and more.
    • On Thursday, he covers the bizarre fact that a convicted, incarcerated election denier is now handling federal election security.  To understand that weirdness, you need to remember that Tina Peters, a county clerk in Colorado, was convicted in 2024 on seven charges of tampering with election machines in the 2020 election.  In 2025, Trump claimed to have pardoned her, even though these were state crimes, for which a federal pardon doesn’t apply.  In June of this year, Democratic(!) governor Jared Polis commuted her sentence and let her out of prison.  Now she’s meeting with Trump and advising him on plans to seize ballots if the midterms don’t go his way.  I cannot agree more with Adam’s response: “Trump couldn’t pardon her state crimes, so he threatened Colorado’s federal funding until the governor, Jared Polis, commuted her sentence.  He said she was remorseful.  Jared, if you’re watching this: you’re an idiot.”  (Plus more on the Guilfoyle scandal, and other bits and bobs.)
  • Kinzinger also has strong opinions about Pete Hegseth’s proposed execution livestream.  As Adam points out, we currently have a government who seems to think the way to look tough is to kill people: by bombing boats, by encouraging ICE to murder citizens, and now by conducting televised executions.  Can’t say I disagree with Adam on any of his points: both that the target may deserve it, and that it’s bringing us that much closer to living in Idiocracy.
  • Have you ever wondered why Congress sucks so much?  Well, no: you already know why it sucks.  Except, maybe you don’t realize how bad it truly is.  Let Some More News educate you.  Soooo many awful things going on on Capitol Hill.

On this week’s Coffee Klatch, Robert Reich and Heather Lofthouse are joined by their digital strategist Vishal Shankar, and they’re talking about what the Democrats’ chances are of retaking the Senate.

Now, I will once again stress that I am not a Democrat.  The Democrats are run by greedy corporate bastards, just like the Republicans, are led by ineffectual cowards such as Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries (just like the Republicans), and, in my view, are at minimum equally responsible for the sorry state our of country.  In fact, one could make an argument that they’re even more responsible in some ways: after all, it was a Democrat who failed to prosecute Trump when he had the chance, allowing him to run out the clock until he could regain power; it was a Democrat whose idea of Supreme Court reform was talking it to death and taking no actions; it was a Democratic administration that spawned multiple failed programs (such as rural broadband) that gave the Republicans something to point to when begging the American people for another bite at the apple.  “Politics as usual” has utterly failed, and I don’t feel confident at all that putting the Democrats back in charge will result in any meaningful changes.

Sadly, they’re the best option, because the Republicans’ response to the fact that politics as usual have failed is to make politics thoroughly unusual: by bilking the government for all the money they can, elevating racism to national policy, and lying about everything, even things that don’t matter a whit (see also: reflecting pool).  So leaving the Repubs in charge would certainly be far worse, and that means I have to root for the Dems to take the Senate.  Yay.

So what are the odds?  In January, the answer to that question was “slim to none.”  But, weirdly, the answer these days is closer to “it’s a toss-up.”  The Democrats are currently 3 seats down in the Senate, so if they gain 3 seats, they tie, but that does them no good because JD Vance is the tie-breaker.  If they gain 4, they’re technically in the majority, but that realistically does them no good because John Fetterman seems to have forgotten he’s a Democrat (sort of like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema had an idiot lovechild).  So the Dems, realistically, need to flip 5 or more seats, while not losing any (or at least only losing as many as they beat that magic number 5 by).  Not gonna lie: it’s tough.

On the “not losing” side, the 3 close states are Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed (who we talked about mostly in week 81, but also in weeks week 82 and week 84) is looking strong but not a lock; New Hampshire, where Jeanne Shaheen used her retirement to cover her cowardice when she and 7 other Dems caved on the government shutdown (cf week 43), so now Chris Pappas (current NH Rep and first openly gay man to serve NH in Congress) holds a narrow lead over John Sununu (former NH Senator who was ousted by Shaheen back in 2008, and son of Bush Sr’s chief-of-staff); and Minnesota, where Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan (who was notable for speaking out after the Renee Good shooting: see week 51) is in close to a dead heat with MAGA nutjob and former sports reporter Michele Tafoya.  I feel cautiously optimistic about most of those—Sayed’s opponnent is a current Rep who’s voted for Trump’s agenda many times over and yet is now trying to distance himself from him; Flanagan’s is a proper nutjob who once posted that she was embarrassed to admit she lives in the state.  Sununu is probably the toughest opponent: he’s done the job before and wasn’t always in lock-step with his party (according to Wikipedia, he joined with Dems to filibuster the Patriot Act and voted against the Defense of Marriage Act).  Still, overall positive.

The possible flips are more varied.  Texas is getting all the press, where James Talarico (who we started noticing way back in week 6, and continued to cover in weeks 19, 34, 57, 71, and 86) has the good fortune to be up against one of the most hated men in Texas politics—and, let’s not forget: Ted Cruz is from Texas.  Still, that race is just barely out of the margin of error (in Talarico’s favor), and may well have shifted again by the time you read this.  Kansas is a toss-up, as is Nebraska, as is Iowa (we talked about Iowa’s Dem candidate Josh Turek in week 89).  Lindsey Graham’s supremely ignorant sister is, somehow, leading her Democratic opponent in South Carolina; on the other hand, former Governor Roy Cooper is all but a lock in North Carolina.  In Maine, the detestable Susan Collins trails her opponent very slightly, but the new bribery allegations (see last week) don’t look good for her.  In Ohio, Democratic-Senator-until-last-year Sherrod Brown is back to oppose the guy appointed by the governor to fill JD Vance’s seat, and has a slight lead, plus more money in the campaign bank.  As does Mary Peltola in Alaska, the first native Alaskan to serve in the House of Representatives, and now showing a pretty decent edge in becoming the first to do so in the Senate as well.

None of these are a guarantee (apart from North Carolina, which most agree is a done deal).  Some of these are places where voters consider voting Republican a part of their cultural identity: Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988; Kansas hasn’t done so since 1932.  Dan Osborn in Nebraska is running as an independent to avoid association with the Democratic party.  So it’s not the individual races where we’ll get our hope this week: it’s the plurality of them.  We’re talking about nine opportunities to flip a seat, where we only need five (or six, if Pappas can’t hold the line in New Hampshire).  Those are still not great odds, but it’s a real chance.

And that’s more than we’ve seen in a long time.









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Sunday, October 4, 2026

Doom Report (Week 89: Could It Then Be that University of Iowa Is the Hawkeyes?)


This week, I got a flyer in the mail explaining why I should vote “no” on California’s proposed wealth tax.  It boiled down to 2 points:

  • There are no taxpayer safeguards!  Perhaps ... but then again the only taxpayers targeted are the billionaires, and I’m not sure they really need any “safeguards”.
  • Billionaires will flee the state, costing billions to the budget!  So, first of all, millionaire/billionaire flight is a myth: a fantastical fable concocted by Ayn Rand for the purpose of selling Atlas Shrugged and its sequels.  But, secondly: the problem that the wealth tax is trying to solve is that billionaires aren’t paying any taxes.  So, if they did flee ... would we even notice?

For a better response to this bullshit narrative than I can come up with off the cuff, watch this video from economist Gabriel Zucman (who you may recall from his similar video with Robert Reich three weeks ago).  A thorough debunking.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue from Thursday was a real banger, including Trump’s weird new racial stereotype of Hispanics and Pete Hegseth’s even weirder “high-T” rant.
  • Not to be outdone, Seth Meyers’ “A Closer Look” on Thursday was pretty good too: the sliminess of reusing a campaign ad and making you and I pay for the airtime, plus Ken Paxton caught admitting that Trump isn’t really helping his numbers.
  • In the “longer videos this week” category, this week’s Weekly Show has Jon Stewart interviewing Josh Turek, Democratic candidate for Iowa’s Senate race.  You may recall last year when current Iowa Senator Joni Ernst gained some fame (or infamy) by responding to constituents’ criticism of her support for cutting their health care by pointing out that “we all are going to die”.  That was last May; by last September, she had decided not to run for re-election (surprise, surprise).  So now Paralympian and Iowa state Rep Turek has a very good chance to flip her seat.  Let’s hope he succeeds.

The best thing to come out of this week was the humiliation of Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt.  Today’s GOP (or at least the rightwing nutjobs therein) seems obsessed with Congressional hearings as theater—remember back in week 80 when it was Fauci’s turn in the barrel?  These hearings aren’t designed to actually achieve anything.  They’re just designed to spawn viral moments so the nutjobs will look good on YouTube.

And, this week, Eric Schmitt engineered such a moment, in the hearing of Jack Smith.  You remember “deranged” Jack Smith, right?  He was the special prosecutor in two of Trump’s court cases: the insurrection case, and the classified documents case.  So, obviously Trump hates him, so therefore all the rightwing nutjobs have to hate him too.  Thus the hearing, and thus the viral moment.  Except ... Schmitt’s virality has been for putting his foot in his mouth.

I can’t even properly explain how moronic this was.  Watch the coverage yourself: start with Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s “Closer Look”, then check out Jordan Klepper on Wednesday’s Daily Show.  If you can stop laughing long enough, you could then move on to Alex Wagner talking to Leah Litman on Runaway Country, Brian Tyler Cohen’s Tuesday coverage, and the Friday episode of Even More News.  (This latter one, with guest Alex Pearlman, also covers the very disturbing story of the Cornell 7.)  Both BTC and the SMN crew also cover the fact that Schmitt later appears on several rightwing nutjob podcasts where they apparently had gotten the heads-up about Schmitt’s “gotcha” moment but not heard about the actual end result.  And does Schmitt correct them?  No, of course not.

Amy Klobuchar says to Schmitt:

I think that people should have their facts straight before they accuse someone of being a dirtbag and not get the teams wrong.

To which I can only respond: oh, I dunno ... it’s much more entertaining when they don’t.









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