Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

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  And, when people like Gary point out that their theories are outdated, they disparage him and tell him that no “real” economists agree with him, so he must be wrong.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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Sunday, September 27, 2026

Doom Report (Week 88: Reduced to the Equivalent of Bees Buzzing)


This week, the opposition to the Paramount-Warner-Brothers merger fell apart.  California Attorney General Rob Bonta had sworn to oppose the merger to the end ... or at least until he could wring some serious concessions from the Ellisons, rightwing nutjob billionaires of the Trumpiest order.  But, in the end, he just ... caved.

Why?  Well, we can never know for sure what’s in a man’s mind, but there’s a good chance it’s because the Ellisons threatened to move Paramount to Nashville.  Basically, they said they would pick up the entire studio and physically move it across the country, taking all the jobs with it.  This was a ridiculous thing to threaten, because it wasn’t even remotely realistic.  Paramount was already in danger of having to pay penalties for every day they didn’t complete the merger—back when they thought Trump was the only thing standing between them and completion, they were willing to agree to some ridiculous stuff to get the merger done—so the idea that they would incur additional costs of multiple millions of dollars just to spite a few states’ attorneys general was ludicrous.  Trump had been in their pockets—or they were in his—or maybe both; doesn’t matter—so the resistance from the 12 states AGs, including Bonta, was unexpected.  And they were about to be hemorrhaging money, so this threat of “let us do what we want or we’ll bleed even faster!” didn’t seem to have a lot of actual force to it.  But then Gavin Newsom, current governor of California, started saying Bonta should settle.  And then Xavier Becerra, soon to be next governor of California, said Bonta should settle.  Then Karen Bass, mayor of Los Angeles, joined in.  And, eventually, Bonta caved.

There are some pro forma concessions, but most of them lack any teeth.  Best coverage on this from Adam Conover, who has a personal stake in it, being on the board of the Writers Guild.  Short version: because of all the debt Paramount is taking on due to the merger, layoffs will be unavoidable.  So, while “you’ll lose jobs if you don’t let us do this” seemed pretty implausible, “you’ll lose jobs now that you have let us do this” seems almost inevitable.  And, look: while I live in California, and even very close to Hollywood, I don’t personally know that many people in the industry ... I’m unlikely to be personally impacted by this decision.  But I’m still royally pissed off at Newsom, radically disappointed in Bonta, and Becerra just lost my vote.  (Not that I’ll vote for Hilton, of course—I’ll just have to leave that race blank on my ballot.)  This is a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

And I have just one request.  In two years, there will be a crowded primary for the Democrat candidate for President, and I can almost guarantee that Gavin Newsom will at the head of that pack, begging for your vote.  He will want you to forget about this merger altogether, and, if anyone brings it up, he will want you to believe that all the jobs that will inevitably be lost, all the lowered wages from lack of competition and all the lost opportunity from movies not getting made, and all the loss in news coverage by having CNN run by the same idiots that have crushed the reputation of CBS News—all that, Newsom will claim, all that was Rob Bonta’s fault.  Nothing to do with him.

Let’s not let him get away with that bullshit.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Then, on Thursday’s Kinzinger Report, Adam is back, and covers the judge who blocked Trump’s press ban, but, more interestingly (at least in my opinion), the MAGA podcasters talking about Trump less and less, and the shifting landscape of the Senate races.  Plus, as always: more.
  • More Perfect Union has some ideas on how to tax the rich.  It’s not “tax wealth not work,” but they’re good ideas anyway.  Worth checking out.
  • Last week’s Last Week Tonight has John Oliver covering why UnitedHealthcare is so bad.  Remember when that really hot guy shot a corporate CEO way back in week -7 and everybody cheered him on instead of condemning him?  This explains why, much better than I did at the time.

In petard-hoisting news, Trump fucked around and found out what happens when the press refuses to cover you.  The now-classic NewsMax clip where Trump sounds like a hive of angry bees due to the lack of microphones is covered eloquently by Desi Lydec at The Daily Show, Brian Tyler Cohen in “Another Day”, and Seth Meyers in “A Closer Look”.  If you want more in-depth coverage on what Trump himself literally called “the ban on the Free Press” (and people say he never tells the truth), you could try Jon Stewart from Monday’s Daily Show or Monday’s Even More News, but, trust me: there is no greater satisfaction than hearing this admission from the flustered NewsMax announcer:

Okay, so there is no microphone because—there’s no microphone because the pool cameras aren’t there.  So maybe, Tim, this is one example of it backfiring just a little bit.

Or, as Desi responds:

I’m sorry.  You’re going to have to speak up.  I can’t hear you over the sound of you stepping on your own dick.

The Republicans may have lost their ability to detect irony (and to feel shame), but the universe, it seems, has not lost its ability to mete out a bit of poetic justice.









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Sunday, September 20, 2026

Doom Report (Week 87: Brave, Brave, Brave Mike Johnson)


I think the top story this week is—certainly should be—the Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s half-baked scheme to fuck with mail-in voting.  Let’s not give the Supremes too much credit here: I’ll refer you back to week 78 where Kim Scheppele explained how captured courts will rule against an autocrat (especially when the autocrat can get the desired result in alternative ways) in order to maintain a veneer of legitimacy.  But it’s still a bit of welcome news (for a change).  Good coverage on this story from Brian Tyler Cohen (also includes good info on how to check your voter registration), Tuesday’s “Kinzinger Report” (also includes our new oil crisis, and more), and, of course, Strict Scrutiny’s breaking news segment.  The ladies have fun breaking down the bad (i.e. the unhinged dissent from Alito and Thomas, plus the almost-dissent from Coach Kavanaugh) in this overall good decision.

Another fun thing this week: the “return” of Mitch McConnell.  Best coverage here from Pod Save America and Jimmy Kimmel’s Tuesday monologue (which also has a pretty good montage of Trump falling asleep, plus some coverage of Don Jr’s Russian oligarch wedding party).  If you want a much longer discussion of McConnell and his place in the gerontocracy, try this week’s Some More News.  Written and filmed before the reappearance, but still incisive.  The reappearance itself was ... a bit weird.  Mitch McConnell looks like someone shot him full of that Joker drug that freezes your face into a grinning rictus then hooked him up to a marionette frame, and now he’s being Weekend at Bernie’sed straight into Congress.  To call it “creepy” would be underselling it.  Watch the clips yourself and you tell me how lively he looks.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Wonder why McDonald’s sucks lately?  More Perfect Union tells you why.

This week, as BTC reported on his “Another Day” segment on Wednesday, Mike Johnson bravely ran away.  Again.  Brian covers this very well in the video, but it very much reminded me of the Ballad of Brave Sir Robin (from Monty Python and the Holy Grail).  If you feel like celebrating our vertebrae-challenged, poultry-inclined Speaker of the House, I invite you to sing along; I’ve written some fresh words for the classic tune.


Bravely bold Mike Johsnon rode forth from the Capitol.
He was not afraid to vote, O brave Mike Johsnon!
He was not at all afraid to be voted down in nasty ways,
Brave, brave, brave, brave Mike Johsnon!

Brave Mike Johnson ran away.
Bravely ran away, away!
When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Mike Johnson turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Mike Johnson!

Enjoy.









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Sunday, September 13, 2026

Doom Report (Week 86: Trumpapanausea, More Like)


This week, the Republicans held a midterm convention, which is not a thing.  But Trump said that the reason that the Republicans aren’t doing well in the polls is because he isn’t on the ballot, and, every time he’s on the ballot, Repubs win.  (But, you ask, what about 2020?  What a stupid question! who are you with? fake news!!!)  So obviously the solution to help the rightwing nutjobs win is to pretend Trump is on the ballot.

That’s not a sarcastic remark from me: that’s something that Trump literally said in his first(!) speech at what many (including the Repubs themselves) are calling “Trumpapalooza”, which rambled on for an hour and 45 minutes, and included such gems as Trump promising to pay all Americans $5,000 and a loyalty pledge.  Oh, and when I’m talking about 1:45, I’m not saying the convention went on that long—just Trump’s speech.  That particular speech, I mean: he spoke for another 40 minutes the second night.  The conference as a whole dragged on for hours and hours and featured speeches from multiple crazy people.

My favorite non-Trump crazy-person speech came from South Carolina senator Tim Scott.  People have been making fun of Scott due to his over-the-top performance: to call it “chest-thumping” would not be hyperbole, since he was literally thumping his chest.  And, sure it’s fun to watch a guy who thinks he’s a professional wrestler trying to deliver a political speech.  But I would rather concentrate on the actual words Scott used.  At one point, he says this:

This is a battle for the heart of our nation.  The Democrats’ extreme candidates will rip that out of our chest.  They hate our culture.  They hate what it means to be American.

Hunh.  Do I?  I am, certainly, not one of the Democrats’ candidate, extreme or otherwise, but I tend to identify with them.  “Extreme” in this case is code for “progressive,” code for “socialist.”  I don’t live in New York, but I certainly would vote for Mamdani and AOC if I did.  I don’t live in Minnesota, but I certainly would vote for Peggy Flanagan and Ilhan Omar if I did.  I don’t live in Michigan, but I certainly would vote for Abdul El-Sayed if I did.  So, I do hate Tim Scott’s culture? do I hate what it means to be American?

See, the problem here is that Scott and the other rightwing nutjobs are trying to redefine what it means to be American, and I kinda do hate that.  Scott is a black man, but he supports an administration that is openly racist, and I hate that.  Scott seems to think that what it means to be an American is blatant corruption and a regime that is actively pro-crime, and I hate that too.  Scott supports a president who campaigned on bringing peace but insteead seems very fond of war, and I really hate that.  Scott’s “culture” seems to be one that despises trans people, and I utterly despise that.  If all those things are what it means to be an American, then ... well, yeah: I guess I do hate your culture, Tim Scott.  But I think that the conceit that that is what it means to be an American is a cheat, a scam.  It’s the con man whispering “look ... see? you’re just like us.”  It’s trying to appeal to the worst parts of human nature, the parts of us that want to push away the unfamiliar, that want to huddle together with only those that look like us, act like us, think like us.  Perhaps there was even a time, far back in our evolution, when that was a useful trait, when it might have kept us alive a little longer and therefore ensured the survival of our species.  But many of us—I would love to believe most of us, even—have evolved beyond that instinct.  We now understand that embracing the multitude of different human experiences is a good thing, that all people are the same even as all of us are different, and that our similarities give us the strength of union and our differences imbue us with the endless fascination that makes life worthwhile.  So many of those people that try to tell us otherwise claim to be Christians, but they never seem to want to explain why God created such diversity of human life if He didn’t want us to love each other and learn from each other and enlighten each other and experience each other and find joy in each other.  I’m not much of a Christian personally, but I have read the Bible, and what I remember that Jesus said about people who are different from us is this: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

I think Tim Scott and his ilk missed this passage in the Bible.  And the saddest thing of all is that, as they sit there whispering to us “you’re just like us; come, join us” they literally can’t understand why we say no.  Their reasoning is flawed; their rhetoric is empty; their religion is performative.  They’re so convinced they’re right that it confuses them that we can’t see it.  I think maybe they assume we’ll come around eventually, or else we’ll just get booted out along with all the other people they don’t like.  It amuses me to imagine what it would be like if they actually got what they wanted: there wouldn’t be anyone to exploit any more, no one to do all the work for them that they’re too good to do for themselves, no one to make their food, no one to write them books or make them movies, no one to play sports for their enjoyment, no one to learn from, no one to debate with.  They could all sit around looking like each other and agreeing with each other while they all starved to death or started killing each other out of sheer boredeom.

Jimmy Kimmel interviewed James Talarico this week.  Early in the interview, James said this:

Scripture tells us that you can’t love God and hate other people.  You can’t love God and abuse the immigrant.  You can’t love God and oppress the poor.  You can’t love God and bully the outcast.  We spend so much time looking for God out there that we miss God in the person sitting right next to us, in that neighbor who bears the divine image.  I was brought up to believe that in the face of a neighbor, we glimpse the face of God.  Matthew 25 tells us Christians exactly how we’re going to be judged and how we’re going to be saved.  By feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger.  I often wonder what would Jesus do if he visited the US Senate.  I think he would tell the senators on the floor, “Depart from me, for I was hungry and you cut my food assistance; I was sick and you kicked me off Medicaid; I was a stranger and you deported me and my family.”  And then I think he would flip over those fancy desks on the floor of the US Senate and demand that we take care of all of our neighbors, especially the least of these.

Maybe that’s what it should mean to be an American.  Just a thought.

Excellent coverage on Trumpapalooza from Kimmel, from Jamelle Bouie, from Brian Tyler Cohen’s “Another Day” segment (twice, even), from Alex Wagner and Jon Favreau on Runaway Country, and on The Coffee Klatch.  You know I always recommend the Klatch when W. Kamau Bell sits in, and he’s back again this week, this time with Michael Lahanas-Calderón and Heather Lofthouse.  A bit of a longer video, but well worth your time.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Although Robert Reich wasn’t in this week’s Coffee Klatch, you can catch his short video featuring Gabriel Zucman on how wealth taxes work.  Zucman is a French economist that I discovered via Gary Stevenson, whom I’ve recommended many times; Zucman doesn’t actually say “tax wealth not work,” but that’s certainly the subtext.
  • Good episode from Pod Save the UK this week; feel free to watch the whole thing if you like, or just skip to the interview with Cory Doctorow.  You guys know I love me some Doctorow, and this interview with Nish and Coco is just as good as the others I’ve pointed you to.  Best quotes from this time out:
    • ”And in fact, you can invent a really successful computer program without knowing what it is.  People are often very dumb about their own creations.  Ray Bradbury insisted to his dying day that Fahrenheit 451 was a book about the evils of television and had nothing to do with censorship.  People are wrong about their own stuff all the time.”  (I explored this very concept in a blog post from 15 years ago.)
    • ”And so, yeah, I’m really worried.  But again, like in the same way that I’m worried that people will get fired not because the AI can do their job, but because their boss can be convinced to fire them or replace them with the AI that can’t do their job.  I’m worried that AI is going to destroy the world: not because it’s going to turn us into paper clips, but because it’s going to vaporize the economy after 50 years of Thatcherism where the only thing we know how to do is austerity.”  (If you’re not familiar with Margaret Thatcher, think of her as the UK’s Ronald Reagan and you won’t be far off.)

If you want some hope this week, I must refer you back to James Talarico, whose Texas senate race is now considered a toss-up.  Sure, it’d be even more hopeful if he were considered ahead in the polls by more than the margin of error, but Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, and hasn’t elected a Democrat to any statewide office in over 30 years.  So, overall, a toss-up is still fairly astonishing.

And I think Talarico has a decent shot.  He’s a compassionate, caring, deeply religious guy.  Here’s what he had to say about Trumpapalooza:

And you know, Jimmy, the the RNC convention is in in my home state right now.  ...  But while while corrupt politicians and their their billionaire mega donors were partying at a convention center in Dallas, our campaign brought people together across the state to collect groceries for families that are struggling.  The tickets to that billionaire ball are $20,000.  And so it’s fitting that our volunteers collected 20,000 lbs of groceries for working Texans.  So the contrast couldn’t be couldn’t be starker.

Of course, the Republicans have tried to use that compassion to insinuate that he’s everything from gay to a vegan to a “freak” (James has embraced this by now selling “I’m a Talafreako” tee-shirts on his website).  Meanwhile, his opponent Ken Paxton is so detestable that Trump starts off every endorsement of him by admitting that “You may not like the way he looks.  The fact is that some may not like the way he dresses: I don’t. They may not like the way he talks.”  After Kimmel played a clip of Trump saying that, Talarico responded with:

I’m James Talarico and I approve that message.

I mean, you know, Ken’s own staff reported him to the FBI.  His own party—his fellow Republicans—impeached him for bribery.  His, actually, his own defense attorney has endorsed me in this campaign.  And now his biggest supporter is calling him ugly on national television.  I’ll just say, I mean I know the president likes to win.  He’s a big winner, and if he wants to be on the winning side in this race, he is welcome to join the movement that we’re building.

I can’t tell you that Talarico will win.  But I can you that he’s a young, charismatic, man of faith, and his opponent is a black hole of unappealing and corrupt.  Certainly there are people who will punch the button beside the (R) and not even much care whose name is written there, especially in Texas.  But there are also people who are sick of being used and abused and taken for granted, and maybe enough of them will be looking for a change.

Many people are saying that if the Republicans lose Texas, they lose the Sentate.  And that sounds pretty hopeful to me.









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Sunday, September 6, 2026

Doom Report (Week 85: Expanding Our Judicial Horizons)


This week, there’s been quite a bit of talk about Supreme Court reform.  Jamelle Bouie’s Takes™ has an excellent overview of court expansion in particular, and a “breaking” episode (read: shorter) from Strict Scrutiny that gives you slightly more detail from Leah Litman.  The big news here is that Jim Clyburn, one of the top-ranking and longest-serving Democrats in the House of Representatives, has indicated that he’s open to Court expansion.  And this is a big deal because a lot of major figures in the party—especially the traditionalists—have been resistant to expansion even when they’re willing to entertain other reforms.  So Clyburn represents a major sea change: he may be a traditionalist, but he’s also a Black man from South Carolina born in the 40s.  He knows intimately what the Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act means for Americans in general, and Black Americans in the South in particular.

For even more on Court reform, try this week’s full Strict Scrutiny episode, featuring Kate and Leah.  It kicks off with a great breakdown of the latest buttfuckery from the Supremes, and how it fucks over everybody (for instance, the suits brought by the torture victims at Abu Ghraib may be overturned because of recent Supreme Court cases), then there’s an interview with Roy Cooper about how the Court is screwing him over in his North Carolina Senate race, and finally Steve Vladeck talks to Leah about docket reform: not as sexy as expansion, but still a necessary reform to stop this runaway Court.

Finally, there’s another shorter, breaking news Strict Scrutiny segment about the Supremes allowing Trump to carry on with the wildly illegal ballroom, featuring Leah and Melissa.  Fun legal times.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Regular readers will recall that I love it when W. Kamau Bell shows up on the Coffee Klatch.  This week, a new host configuration: Heather is off this week, leaving Robert Reich to sit with Bell and producer Michael Lahanas-Calderón.  They talk about Trump continuing to duck the Epstein files, billionaires breaking the rules, and the young Haitian immigrant who took his own life this week because of ICE harassment.  A longer video, but worth your time.
    • And, if you want more detail about that young Haitian immigrant, give Jamelle Bouie 6 minutes of your time.  Warning: it’s heartbreaking.
    • Side note: the story of Pierre Damas Bel is eerily similar to that of Jason Arday over in the UK.  For people who think that racism is an annoyance, a frustration, something that should be condemned but must be tolerated, they’re just wrong: these are stories that demonstrate that racism can kill ... and not in an old-timey, once-upon-a-time-the-KKK-was-bad sort of way.  Today, right now: people are dying.  If you want to hear some of the trivially disproven lies that racist media outlets used to hound Arday, here’s a 9-minute video from Owen Jones that will make you as angry as you ought to be.

This week, there’s been a lot of talk about how Trump is holding onto his campaign funds rather than using them to help his Republican colleagues in the midterms.  Of course, Trump’s been very busy: he’s been spending his time making videogames and talking shit about the candidates he’s supposed to be supporting.

Meanwhile, Trump’s “midterm convention” is running into trouble: specifically, most of the candidates don’t want to attend.  Probably this is partially because no sane Republican candidate wants to be associated with the historically unpopular president, but a big part of it is likely the 5-figure fees he’s trying to charge the candidates.  In order words, he’s not just trying to hoard what he has: he’s trying to grift more.

But the amusing thing is that anyone is surprised by this.  Way back in week 11, I pointed you at this link to an excerpt from Michael Lewis’ book The Fifth Risk, wherein he tells the story of Trump’s first ascension to the White House.  Short version: he found out that Chris Christie was paying people on the transition team and he described it as “stealing my fucking money.”  And, when Christie and Steve Bannon explained that federal law said you have to pay the workers on the transition team, Trump’s answer was simple: shut down the transition.  This is why Trump has zero clue about how to run the government: he never learned, because he was too cheap to pay for it.  And this is the guy Republicans expect to spend money to help them win the midterms?  Good luck with that.

So there’s a very real possibility that one or more—maybe even many—Republicans will lose their races in the midterms because Trump is a greedy bastard.  And I can’t imagine a more delicious irony than that.









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Sunday, August 30, 2026

Doom Report (Week 84: No Asterisk after "Neighbor")


I want you to imagine a time in the United States when we have an increasingly unpopular president, we’re staring down the barrel of a war in the Middle East for no good reason, our traditional allies don’t want anything to do with it, and our government has decided that just changing the name of something is going to fix everything.

That’s right: I’m talking about the early 2003 “freedom fries” incident.  (Why? what did you think I was talking about?)  Yes, there once was a time when we got pissed off at France, because they didn’t want to go along with our bullshit reasons for invading Iraq.  And so, naturally, some people in our government decided that obviously the solution was to rename “french fries” to “freedom fries” (and, less publicized, they also tried to rename “french toast” to “freedom toast”).  Sadly, this brilliant scheme turned out to have a few, minor problems.  Namely, the vast majority of the American public thought it was ridiculous.  Specifically, polls showed that ⅔ of Americans thought it was silly, and fully 80% just kept calling them “french fries” anyways.  And, in terms of “that’ll show those French bastards,” they ... didn’t care.  Because: why would they?  How could some dimwits in a Congressional cafeteria an ocean away decide to call something which the French never named in the first place possibly affect their lives in any way whatsoever?  (Plus: french fries originated in Belgium anyhow.)  It was, to put it mildly, an utter failure that made everyone involved seem like a complete moron.

Wait ... sorry.  Getting some déjà vu here ...

Because, here in 2026, our increasingly unpopular president, now hopelessly embroiled in a war just one country over, with (once again) no conceivable logic as to why, and (once again) no support from our allies because they don’t want anything to do with this clusterfuck, has decided the way to fix everything is to (wait for it) rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America”.  And here we see the parallels start to fall apart.  First off, there was at least a thin thread connecting France to the war in Iraq (i.e. that France had threatened to veto any war resolution in the UN Security Council), whereas Canada has nothing whatsoever to do with Iran (and also the idea of going to the UN for approval for war seems a bit quaint nowadays).  Also, the whole “freedom fries” thing at least went through some people in Congress (though it never required nor received a full vote in the House), whereas Trump just did the whole “Lake America” thing all by his lonesome.

If you just want to hear people agree with you on how utterly dumb the Canada trade war is, Runaway Country host Alex Wagner and Hysteria host Erin Ryan have you covered, including discussion of Ontario premier Doug Ford noting that his ass has a lot of real estate, which makes it easy for Trump to kiss it.  If you want to hear people talking about how Trump is just trying to pick on Canada because he’s too scared to mess with Russia or China and he thought Canada wouldn’t put up much of a fight—and just how wrong that turned out to be—you could check out the latest installment of “A Closer Look: Proof of Life” (it’s a longer video, but well worth it, or you could just jump right to the Canada discussion).  Or, if you just want to hear someone lay out all the ridiculosity for you in under 10 minutes, give BTC a shot and listen to Thursday’s installment of “Another Day”.

But the upshot is that, like the French, the Canadians really don’t give a shit.  Because: why would they?

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Seth Meyers is still on hiatus, so their channel is releasing “A Closer Look: Proof of Life”, which features Seth and one of his writers talking about the events they would cover if they were back in the office.  These episodes are a bit longer, but they’re pretty fun.  Two such episodes this week: one we mentioned above covering the trade war with Canada; the other has more info about Natalie Harp, plus covering Abdul El-Sayed’s Fox “News” interview where he completely crushes Jesse Watters.
  • Like Meyers, The Daily Show is also still on hiatus, but their channel’s strategy has been to celebrate their 30th anniversary (and keep the algorithm fed) by releasing clips from classic shows.  And it just so happens that, this week, they released one of my all-time favorite Daily Show field pieces.  I wish I could tell you it had no relevance to today, but ...  Look, just go watch a much younger John Oliver explore solutions for gun control.  It’ll take 5 minutes of your time, and then you can go back to asking yourself why our politicians are so brain-dead.

Like Meyers and the folks over at The Daily Show (and Colbert, once upon a time, before Trump got him fired), Jimmy Kimmel takes time off during the summer.  But Kimmel does it differently: instead of 2 or 3 extended breaks throughout the summer when there’s no show at all, Kimmel just takes the whole summer off ... and brings in guest hosts.  Each host stays for 1 week, so you’re never without a show altogether.  There’s always a mix of returning guest hosts and brand new faces, and, as you might imagine, the quality of the guests (and their utility for these Doom Reports) varies considerably.  This summer, Colman Domingo was fabulous but not overly political; Rosie O’Donnell was surprisingly apolitical (though she got her jabs in: speaking directly to Trump one night, she said “it’s time to hang up your wig and let Natalie tuck you in; time to go nighty-night”); Anthony Anderson was exactly as political as you’d expect; and Tiffany Haddish was fairly vicious.

This week was Jelly Roll.  The Grammy-winning country music singer surprised some of the rightwing nutjobs by getting in a few zingers at Trump’s expense: apparently, as a straight white country singer, devout Christian, and fan of professional wrestling—who even had nice things to say about the MMA fight on the White House lawn—he was supposed to be a Trump supporter, and the critics took advantage of the opportunity to decide he was selling out, or “going Hollywood”, or any number of other derogatory phrases.  But Jelly himself took advantage of his final monologue of the week to address his critics and to disabuse them of the notion that he could be reduced to anything so simplistic as a political party.  I’d advise you to listen to the whole thing, but let me offer you a taste; when speaking about his regrets at not using his Grammy speech to deliver a more powerful message, he notes:

And I want y’all to know that, despite the fact that I cuss and I tell jokes, I truly am a man of faith.  And I can’t read the Gospels without being confronted by the words of Jesus himself when he said, “When I was hungry, you gave me food.  When I was thirsty, you gave me a drink.  When I was a stranger, you welcomed me in.”  That’s what Jesus said.

He also gave us two commandments: love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.  And that’s what I should have said that night.  There wasn’t an asterisk after “neighbor.”  There wasn’t a political party exemption.  It did not require us to know what country you were born in.  There wasn’t a sentence afterward that said, “unless you’re afraid of them.”  It just said, “Love. Your. Neighbor.”

I really do encourage you to watch the whole thing.  It was moving, and inspiring, and it serves as yet another reminder that, as much as the rightwing nutjobs—and the corporate Democrats—keep trying to tell us that we’re oh so different ... we’re not.  We’re just not.  And that, even if you’re a white country boy from Nashville, a son of a Marine who grew up in the church, you can still see everyone as human, regardless of race, religion, or anything else that our “leaders” tell us is important, or dangerous, or divisive.  Those “others” are neither poisoning the blood of our country, nor are they a basket of deplorables.  They’re just regular folks.

Jelly also discussed why he shook Trump’s hand, and said it came down to his veteran father.

This might be a hot take, but out of respect for him and everybody who has ever served and continues to serve this country, I will always shake the hand of the sitting president of the United States when asked; my father would have been disappointed had I done anything other than that.  I’m proud that I was able to shake the president of the United States’ hand.  I’m also proud that I live in a country where I can make jokes about him.  Ain’t that’s what great about being an American?

And you can’t say fairer than that.









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Sunday, August 23, 2026

Doom Report (Week 83: Novel and Dubious)


This week has been all about Natalie Harp, who has gone from someone that very few of us had ever heard of to the butt of jokes for late-night comedians.  The impetus for all this was twofold.  First, Trump bailed on his “free” Qatari jet (which actually cost you and I and every other American taxpayer around a billion dollars) and snuck out on a catering truck because of a credible threat of attack, leaving the vast majority of his cabinet and staff (not to mention all those expendable reporters) to be living decoys.  (We covered this last week.)  And so you can hardly blame people for wondering who he didn’t leave behind: who was so important to him that they warranted a place on the plane that was actually safe?  Well, three people: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (Leah Litman of Strict Scrutiny likes to call him Pete Kegsbreath, which I find quite fun), Walt Nauta, who you may remember as the Mar-A-Lago guy who helped Trump try to cover up the stolen documents in his bathroom, and a “personal assistant” named Natalie Harp, who was, at that time, primarily notable for being yet another of the young blondes that Trump likes to surround himself with.

But the truth is, according to reporting done long ago but now suddenly being paid attention to, much stranger.  Harp is often referred to as the “human printer” because she follows Trump around with a portable printer and prints favorable coverage of him for him to read.  Her devotion to Trump is slavish; she’s written several letters to him that ... well, let’s just say that to call them “creepy” would be an understatement.  One pundit called her Trump’s “human binky.”  And, according to Wikipedia, she’s “a devout, evangelical Christian,” her father “died by suicide in July 2020,” and she suffers from “health issues, particularly chronic pain and complications incurred by a medical error involving intravenous therapy for stage II bone cancer.”  So I feel like she was probably already broken long before she fixated on Trump, but she’s gone all in at this point: speech at the RNC in 2020 comparing Trump to George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life, four years on air at OANN, and now ... personal assistant.

The second thing that caused Natalie to leap into the spotlight was an offhand comment by Jon Ossoff.  In the midst of listing the things that Trump would rather be doing than being President, right between building his ballroom and trading stocks, Ossoff said that Trump would rather “travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Amir of Qatar.”  And that’s literally the only time he refers to her: you can listen to the whole speech if you like—it’s a tight 5½ minutes, so it won’t take much of your time, and it might help you understand why people are now floating Ossoff’s name as a potential presidential candidate for 2028.  The reference to Natalie is near the end; it’s practically a throwaway line.  But it sent the rightwing nutjobs into a rage: they’ve been frothing at the mouth about how Ossoff has “smeared” Harp for days now.  Except ... did he?  He only said that Trump would rather travel with Natalie, and that’s tough to argue with.  He left Marco Rubio on the decoy plane.  He left Scott Bessent on the decoy plane.  But not Natalie.

If you only have 10 minutes to devote to this story, try Takes™ from Jamelle Bouie; it’s the best explanation of who Harp is.  If you’ve got another 10 minutes, try Bouie again: this time he explains why Harp may be the most powerful person in the White House.  And, if you’ve 10 more minutes, perhaps let Brian Tyler Cohen give you a wrap-up (including clips from the truly insane letters) on his “Another Day” segment from Friday.

This deep dive into the life of Natalie Harp reminds me a lot of the one I did into Ghislaine Maxwell back in week 27.  What Maxwell did is undoubtedly worse than what Harp has done—more essentially evil—but, if Bouie’s take on Harp is correct (and I rather think it is), Harp has contributed to a significant amount of pain and suffering over the past two years.  And, like Maxwell, the hardships of Harp’s life are interesting context for her behavior ... but they are not an excuse.  It can be an interesting exercise to wonder if people will one day be haunted by the ghosts of those whose lives they destroyed—in that sense Harp can join the likes of Musk, Stephen Miller, Ted Cruz—but the depressing truth is they likely will never give it a second thought.  The villains of the story never think they are villains in their own minds; they’re just sad, broken people that can never seem to find happiness, regardless of how much money and power they accumulate.  I’m not saying we should feel sorry for them.  But maybe we should be using them as exemplars of why mental health is so important: imagine how much happier a place the world would be right now if, instead of a “small loan” of a million dollars from his father, Trump had received a million dollars in therapy.

Just something to ponder.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • In past Doom Reports, I’ve noted that this or that person is “on fire” that week if they managed to have several noteworthy videos in the same week.  Well, this week, the person on fire is our favorite conservative-who-isn’t-a-right-wing-nutjob, Adam Kinzinger.  If I wanted to be uncharitable, I could note that Colbert is gone, both Meyers and The Daily Show are off this week, and Kimmel’s guest host was Rosie O’Donnell, who (surprisingly) didn’t do much politics other than needling Trump for the fun of it.  So Kinzinger might be standing out just due to the lack of competition.  But I think I’ll be generous and note that he’s really hitting a rhythm with the “Kinzinger Report"s: he’s got a solid blend of outrage and humor, and he doesn’t stumble as much as he used to (although still a little).  Plus, as a conservative, he often notes things that my usual liberal outlets don’t pay much attention to.  This week, every single day was a banger:
  • Pod Save the UK’s full episode this week was a bit too in-the-weeds in British news for most non-Brits, but I enjoyed this clip of Natasha Devon discussing her new book The Nuance Drought.  For this clip, when they talk about Nigel Farage, think of him as the British Trump, but before he’d come to power; when they talk about Zack Polanski, think of him as a sort of British AOC, and when they talk about MAGA ... well, that’s just MAGA.  Lots of trenchant discussion about how “we we exist in a political system where we’re encouraged to vote for what we hate least rather than what we like most.”  Best quote: “So your political identity becomes about what you hate as opposed to what you love.  And that’s bad vibes.”  Amen.  Also, Devon’s description of the experiment involving pain vs uncertainty was particularly illuminating (and a bit depressing).

I know it’s really hard to keep track of all the awful and illegal things this regime has done, but do you remember, back in March of 2025, that there was a pardon attorney who refused to restore gun rights to Mel Gibson after he had been convicted of domestic violence? so then Gibson whined to Trump and Trump fired her?  That was Liz Oyer, and she was a guest host on Strict Scrutiny this week.

There was a good discussion of Trump’s desperate (and ongoing, despite his Supreme Court loss) attempts to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve, which somehow reminded me of my discussion way back in week 7 about the assassination of Garfield and how it led to civil service protections.  Of course, what Trump would prefer is a return to the system of patronage.  There’s also an interesting interview with Julia Angwin and Ami Fields-Meyer about their new book on what it means to be a dissident in today’s political climate.

But the most interesting bit was their discussion of Todd Blanche’s new OLC opinion on executive privilege.  As Oyer characterized it, it “took a really expansive view of the president’s ability to withhold information from public scrutiny”, and she and regular host Kate Shaw theorized that this was an attempt to get a headstart on gumming up the works once the Democrats are in charge.  That is, if the Democrats take control of the House, the first thing they’re going to do is start deposing people, and Todd “I Love You Sir” Blanche wants to give cover for all those people to claim that they can’t talk about what they’ve done, or seen, or participated in, due to “executive privilege”.  As Oyer puts it:

Now, that is not only—just as a legal matter—a novel and dubious interpretation of the privilege, but it is also (as a practical matter) an important signal about what Todd Blanche is planning and preparing for, which is likely a slew of Congressional investigations if the Democrats win the midterm elections.  The purpose of this decision is to be able to insulate as much as possible from scrutiny by Congress if the Democrats start investigating the corruption and misconduct by this administration after the midterms.  So they want—DOJ wants—to be able to respond to congressional subpoenas by saying we can’t give you these documents, or this witness cannot appear to testify, because of executive privilege.

Any my first thought was “novel and dubious interpretation” is a bit of a metaphor for pretty much everything Trump has ever done as president.

But my second thought was: if they’re doing this so as to be prepared for when the Democrats control Congress, that means that they think the Democrats will control Congress.  Their worry is our hope.  And it’s probably the most hope we can hope for this week, so I think we’ll have to be satisfied with that.









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Sunday, August 16, 2026

Doom Report (Week 82: A Toll in the Strait of Hormuz Forever)


This week, a couple of NBA dropouts signed up for the Culture Wars: they’ve announced that, since the WNBA doesn’t currently have any standards on the admission of trans women, they will pronounce themselves female and seek to join the league.  Yes, they are, apparently, attempting to re-enact the plot of that classic comedy, Lady Ballers.  What’s that, you say? never seen that movie?  Good for you: it’s a detestable piece of rightwing nutjob propaganda dressed up as a movie, brought to you by the God-damn-we-wish-we-could-have-made-it-in-Hollywood failures over at The Daily Wire.  (If you really need to know how bad it is, Some More News has you covered.)

There’s good coverage of this from (of course) Even More News—including talking about the even more detestable new movie from Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire crew—as well as from Brian Tyler Cohen.  To call what these no-names are doing a “stunt” is an insult to people like Evel Knievel and Super Dave Osborne.  Personally, I wish the WNBA would just say “sure!” and then let them try out.  Apparently these men think that (much like the plot of Lady Ballers), they would obviously win if they were playing against women.  But I have a feeling this fantasy might turn ugly once it collides with reality: just ask Bobby Riggs how that worked out for him.*  So make these guys put their money where their mouths are, I say.  After getting relentlessly embarrassed by the women and failing to make the cut, they likely wouldn’t want to talk about this bullshit ever again.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • On this week’s Strict Scrutiny, Melissa and guest Elie Mystal cover Todd Blanche’s confirmation, Jeanine Pirro crashing and burning (yet again), subpoenas for journalists, and more.  I adore Elie; you may recall me mentioning him back in week 6, or my original discovery of him waaay back in December of 2023, when I had a brief discussion of third parties back before the Doom Report was even a thing.  My favorite moment this time was when Elie just goes off on Republicans: “We have to stop thinking that Republicans will ever grow a spine and stand up to this president, right?  Even the ones that the president has humiliated, even the ones that the president has kicked out of his inner circle, even the ones, as in the case of Tillis and Cornyn, that the president has literally taken their jobs away, they’ll never grow a spine.  If they had a spine, if they had a conscience, if they had decency: they wouldn’t be Republicans in the first place, right?  You don’t become a Republican because you have decency.  You don’t become a Republican because you have a spine, because you have commitment to the people.  You become a Republican because you are a spineless coward who lives to lick boots.  And that’s who Cornyn is.  And that’s who Thom Tillis is.  And that is who they will always be regardless of what this particular president does to them.”  Now, is this perhaps too harsh?  My favorite person who proves that “conservative” is not the same as “rightwing nutjob” (i.e. Adam Kinzinger) might say that it is.  But I mainly just admire Elie’s passion: preach on, brother.
  • Whereas in Friday’s “Kinzinger Report”, Adam covers Trump getting shut down on his Harvard lawsuit, the toll the Iran War is having on our sailors,** for a decade longer than he was in Congress, even), and more, including Mamdani’s program to get Broadway tickets into the hands of underprivileged schoolkids.  Like most conservatives, Adam can’t pronounce “Mamdani”, but, the difference is, he keeps trying till he gets it right.  And that’s why we love him.
  • I love it when my streams get crossed.  This week, Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know meets More Perfect Union: Hasan interviews John Russell, whom I’ve talked about many times in these Reports, most recently in week 78, where I enumerated all the previous weeks that I mentioned him, so just go look at that one to see all those.  In fact, Hasan brings up most of the pieces I’ve covered in the Doom Reports in this very interview.  A bit of a longer time investment, but well worth it in my opinion.
  • And, speaking of More Perfect Union, this week they had a video exposing the scam that is home insurance.  If you’ve ever wondered why you keep having to pay more for insurance only to get denied more often, this explains it all.

On Tuesday, PBS published an interview with the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.  Needless to say, this is not a group which grants a lot of interviews, so it was a big deal ... and yet almost no one I watched covered it.

The one exception: this week’s Coffee Klatch.  There’s no Robert Reich this week, but W. Kamau Bell sits in with Heather Lofthouse, and he’s always great.  As he says in this episode: “I never thought I’d quote the Iranian ... Revolutionary Guard: you know, if you check Trump’s pockets and bank accounts, he’s doing great.”  Specifically, the commander was talking about the way Trump is handling the war, and what he said was this:

As soon as the stock market closes, they start hostilities.  When the stock market opens, they send positive messages to raise stock prices.  All the while, they are buying and selling the stocks themselves.  If I was in the place of the American Congress, I would call for an investigative committee to compare the assets of Mr. Trump, his family, and his inner circle before the war to their assets after the war.

Which ... yeah.  Kind of embarrassing that we have to hear it from the “Death to America” folks, but there you have it.  As Kamau also says in this Coffee Klatch episode: “When I was a kid ... there was generally a country that we made fun of for being run ridiculously.  There would be like a country ... that’s the international punchline.  ...  It’s us.  We’re the ridiculous country now.  That even the—like you said—the Republican [sic] Guard guy could be, like: they are really messing up over there.”

Also this week, Election Profit Makers is back, after a 4-month hiatus.  There’s a fair amount of diarrhea talk (which is only to be expected from David Rees), and a fantastic metaphor for the reflecting pool,*** and then they too talk a bit about the war in Iran.  Here’s David’s take on the current situation:

We’re going to pay Iran money to stop making fun of us online, basically, and then we’re going to give them a toll in the Strait of Hormuz forever.  That’s my understanding of the current state of play.

Mild hyperbole, perhaps ... or then again maybe not.  Here’s the Revolutionary Guard commander’s assessment of how we’re doing so far:

The longer this war lasts, the more experience we gain.  We had never seen a real war to gain real experience to learn how to fight with America.  In these five months, we have learned how.  We have also seen how the American military is weaker than what we perceived.

All the Trump flunkies say that Trump is keeping us safe by ensuring that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.  I think what Iran is demonstrating that they don’t need a nuclear weapon to kick our ass.  Not sure how safe that’s keeping us.

Not sure this counts as a note of hope (unless of course you happen to be Iranian).  But, on the other hand, the chances seem increasingly slim that this war will be over by the midterms, and that may have a distinct impact on the election.  So, as fucked up as it is, maybe we can eke out some positive outcomes from this debacle.  Certainly it would be better if people didn’t have to die for us to get there.  But it seems like reducing the power and influence of the assholes who are prosecuting the war that’s killing all the people—primarily for the purpose of lining their own pockets—maybe that’s about the best we can hope for.



__________

* Fun fact: I’m actually old enough to remember this match, and how upset my dad got over Billie Jean King’s victory.  Kind of a punch to the gut when your deeply held misogyny gets upended in real time.

** Remember: Adam himself was in the armed forces, for a decade longer than he was in Congress, even.  So he has particular empathy for stories that impact our troops.

*** Specifically, David says: “Everybody knows about the Washington Monument, right, because it’s phallic, and it thrusts up into the sky, ...  The pool is sort of the inverse of the Washington Monument; a pool is a receptacle, right? ...  The Washington Monument is the daddy, and the reflecting pool is the mommy, and the Lincoln Memorial is the baby, because Lincoln represented the best of our country.  And there you have the whole nuclear family.”











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