I feel worse than I thought I would if this happened, even though I probably expected it more than a lot of lefties and Democrats did. The whole Cheney thing was the closest she could get to hugging Kissinger, saying she couldn't think of a single thing she'd do different from Biden was just stupid, refusing to let a single Palestinian endorse her was criminal political malpractice, and I just don't want to talk about it yet. I will point out that Rashida Tlaib massively out-performed Harris in Dearborn. And that Harris lost a bunch of crucial states she had been winning before her veer to the right.
"What Election Do These People Think We Just Had? Democrats are inventing wild fantasies about the power of Big Woke rather than confront the failures of their actual approach. The ugly truth for these people is that Kamala Harris ran as right-wing a campaign as any Democrat in living memory. She downplayed discussions of her race and gender. She bent over backward to welcome billionaires, corporate titans, and Republicans into the fold. She told Black men that one of her priorities for them was…crypto. She made her past as a prosecutor a cornerstone of her pitch. She bragged about owning a Glock and joked that she would shoot people who broke into her house. She stuffed the Democratic National Convention to the gills with cops and Border Patrol agents while crushing even the tiniest dissent over her support for the genocide in Gaza. She promised the most 'lethal' military in the world. She was seemingly joined at the hip with Liz Cheney for weeks. She even praised Dick Cheney! It's hard to think of what more she could have done to satisfy the people clamoring for her to pander to conservatives. But admitting that would mean that the CNN favorites and the anonymous politicos had to confront an even more uncomfortable reality: that, ideologically at least, Harris ran the campaign of their wildest dreams, and got crushed."
Branko Marcetic, "Democratic Party Elites Brought Us This Disaster: The story that is about to be pushed hard is that Kamala Harris lost because she was too far left. It will be pushed because this is the Democratic establishment's go-to explanation for all its failures. [...] For years now, voters have been telling pollsters that they were fed up with the economy, and poll after poll during this campaign registered them saying it was the issue that would most decide their vote, especially among those who were leaning toward Trump. This held across last night's exit polls. Across all seven battleground states and nationally, survey results were virtually the same: voters viewed the economy as the most important issue in the election; they felt their personal financial situation was worse and they thought so at significantly higher rates than they did in 2020; and huge majorities of those who voted for Trump viewed the economy negatively, considered it the election's most pressing issue, and voted for the person they thought was going to bring 'change.'"
"Exit Right: Trump has remade Americans, and to defeat Trumpism requires nothing less than the left doing the same. [...] In our century, American politics has been blown open by the reverberating crises of neoliberalism and capitalist globalization. They have rebounded on our society and politics in four major forms: imperial blowback and endless warfare; deindustrialization and the hollowing out of American society; the rise of an engorged, predatory, and increasingly insane billionaire class, obsessed with eugenics and immortality; and the climate crisis, now a source of regular natural disasters and swelling refugee flows. At each juncture, the Democrats have attempted restoration: to manage the crisis, carry out the bailout, stitch things back together, and try to get back to normal. It is the form of this orientation, as much as substantive questions of culture, race, and gender, that seems to me the fundamental reason the Democrats are often experienced as a force of inhibition rather than empowerment by so many voters. And it is against this politics of containment that Trump's obscenity comes to feel like a liberation for so many."
"One thing I'm sure of: Harris ignored voters' anger over Gaza, and it cost the Democrats dear: Disempower voters and they will seize back that power in the only way they can, showing you that they have a choice by rejecting the status quo. The voters who switched to Trump will get the headlines, but there will probably be many who went third party, or simply stayed at home. The Democrats broke their pact with many members of the electorate, and then were shocked that voters did not unilaterally uphold it. [...] The feeling of unperturbed exceptionalism is the same one that cannot allow them to understand the sense of vulnerability, precarity and fear that the past year has given rise to. Those astonished by Trump's win and who worry about the terrifying era that he is about to usher in will never grasp that to many, that world is already here, they've just not been living in it."
In These Times, "Democrats Chose to Back a Genocide and Turn Right Over Defeating Trump: By refusing to budge on Palestine, Harris and the Democrats surrendered their moral advantage, forcing them to track right and alienate their base. [...] But feigned concern and vibes can only go so far. As the honeymoon of 'brat summer' gave way to a codified campaign theme, it was clear not only was Gaza going to be ignored entirely as an issue — and the death machine would churn on without pause — but Team Harris would be leaning into a strategy of attempting to woo so-called 'disaffected Republicans.' She made the centerpiece of her campaign Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney, the former vice president of George W. Bush. To the Savvy Commentators this made sense — obviously, winning over fence-sitting Republicans was the right call. And few in our media questioned whether this strategy had any downsides."
OMG: "Axelrod pushes for Rahm Emanuel as DNC chair." Robert Reich is all right, I guess, but absolutely no one else from the Obama or Clinton administrations should ever again be in government, in the Democratic leadership, or communicating in public.
Just before the election, we heard from Stanley Greenberg, "The Campaign That Pushed Harris Into a Tie With Donald Trump [...] Three years ago, I titled my piece in the Prospect 'Democrats, Speak to Working-Class Discontent: It's the one way to mobilize Blacks, Hispanics and Asians, not just white workers.' Harris and Walz were doing precisely that. Major speakers at the Democratic convention took up corporate greed, the hardships from high costs, and the current battle for the middle class. They pointed out what Harris said in an economic speech on August 16: 'Donald Trump fights for billionaires and large corporations. I will fight to give money back to working- and middle-class Americans.' Base voters made the cost of living their very top concern, and she was finally telling them it was her top priority too. [...] And for reasons that I still can't understand, they dropped the middle-class message and voicing its discontent." And started campaigning with Liz Cheney instead. On October 9th Harris/Walz had all three "Blue Wall" states and Nevada, with Arizona tied and a lead of 276-251 in the Electoral College. As of October 27th, she's lost Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as well as Nevada and Arizona (with Virginia going from dark blue to light blue). There was a while back there when even Florida was only barely pink.
"A GOP operative accused a monastery of voter fraud. Nuns fought back.: Sister Stephanie Schmidt had a hunch about what her fellow nuns would discuss over dinner at their Erie, Pennsylvania, monastery on Wednesday night. The day before, a Republican operative in the battleground state falsely suggested to his nearly 58,000 followers on X that no one lived at the monastery and that mail ballots cast from there would be 'illegal votes.' Cliff Maloney, who hired 120 people to go door-to-door across Pennsylvania urging Republican voters to return their mail ballots, wrote on X that one of those workers had 'discovered' an Erie address where 53 people were registered to vote but 'NO ONE lives there.'"
Earlier in the week, Congress rejected a bill to give an administration the power to pretty much kill any non-profit organization that disagreed with it, although 52 Democrats also voted for it — every one of whom should be removed from Congress at our earliest opportunity. But now the newly-elected Congress has the votes — thanks to those same Democrats — to to pass it. The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which would empower the secretary of the Treasury to designate any nonprofit as a 'terrorist supporting organization' and revoke its tax-exempt status, is set to go before the Committee on Rules on Monday for a hearing that could tee up the bill for a new floor vote. [...] The bill, also known as H.R. 9495, has come under withering criticism from a broad coalition of organizations that say its sponsors are pushing it as a means of cracking down on free speech — particularly speech in support of Palestine. In a joint statement earlier this week, a coalition of Arab American and Muslim organizations pledged to continue to fight the bill."
"No Thanks to These 52 Dems, House Defeats Bill Enabling Trump Assault on Nonprofits: 'Every single Democrat who voted for this is not taking the threat of Trump remotely seriously and should be disqualified from any leadership positions moving forward,' said Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman. Legislation that would have handed President-elect Donald Trump sweeping power to investigate and shutter news outlets, government watchdogs, humanitarian organizations, and other nonprofits was defeated in the House of Representatives on Tuesday after a coalition of progressive advocacy groups and lawmakers mobilized against it, warning of the bill's dire implications for the right to dissent. But 52 Democratic lawmakers—including Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.)—apparently did not share the grave concerns expressed by the ACLU and other leading rights groups, opting to vote alongside 204 Republicans in favor of the bill. One Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, joined 144 Democrats in voting no. The measure ultimately fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to approve legislation under the fast-track procedure used by the bill's supporters, but progressives wasted no time spotlighting the Democrats who supported the measure." The bill was fast-tracked last week and required a two-thirds majority to pass, but this time it will only take a plain majority and there will be no stopping it.
It's amazing how many people supported Trump thinking he is some kind of peacenik, despite his record when he was previously in office, not to mention his more recent public statements. "Trump to Nominate Marco Rubio as U.S. Secretary of State, Bridging GOP's Hawk-isolationist Divide: Florida senator has vocally defended Israel's right to respond to Iranian attack and backed Trump's promise to deport pro-Palestinian protesters in the U.S. on student visas" I wonder if they are going to be disappointed when they realize he's stacking his administration with neocons, the very people they've been objecting to. (And, also, even Republicans have been supporting a ceasefire, at least while Biden has been refusing to support one).
"Museum finds remains from a victim of a notorious 1980s Philadelphia police bombing: [...] The remains are believed to be those of 12-year-old Delisha Africa, one of five children and six adults killed when police bombed the MOVE organization's headquarters, causing a fire that spread to dozens of row homes. The violent confrontation, a rare bombing of American citizens by U.S. civilian authorities, led to lawsuits but no criminal charges against police or city officials."
RIP: "Phil Lesh, bassist for the Grateful Dead, dies at 84: The musician was a founding member of the influential band and died 'surrounded by his family and full of love'" (Rolling Stone's obit is here.) I saw them a few times, but a friend showed me this video that showcases what Phil Lesh brought.
RIP: "Candyman actor Tony Todd dies aged 69" I know he was best known for his horror roles (I saw Night of the Living Dead in a movie theater, although I don't really remember much about the movie, now, nevermind who was in it), and I know I saw him in numerous cop shows from Homicide to I don't kmow how many others, and he was even one of the members of the party in The Man From Earth, but the stand-out memory for me was his role as grown-up Jake Cisco in DS9's "The Visitor". Took my breath away. (Mind, he was pretty good as Worf's brother Kurn, too.)
I don't know anything about the author of this book or the reviewer, but I'm afraid "Finally, a fresh argument against 'wokeness'" tracks pretty well with what I've observed over the decades. Some academic types make a name for themselves, but the amelioration mostly doesn't happen out there in the trenches. Poor black people aren't suddenly doing better because of DEI - in fact, it seems to have done more harm than good. "One of the hallmarks of Awokenings, according to al-Gharbi, is that they do little or nothing for the marginalized people they are supposed to benefit. As the historical record shows, they mostly serve to create jobs, scholarships and other opportunities for symbolic capitalists. The growing ranks of diversity, equity and inclusion officers in corporations, on campuses and in other symbolic-capitalist hubs is just par for the course during an Awokening. At the same time, Awokenings create real problems for the marginalized people — on the left, on the right and in the center — who resist or even question them." I don't think the working class is really all that socially conservative, but I know they aren't neoliberals who think it's more important to say "Latinx" than to have a living wage.
Just for the record, this is Liz Cheney, pretending that Democrats want to kill babies because they didn't want to pass a law to make infantacide illegal because it already is. She has also always been a warmonger. Her father, by the way, helped steal the 2000 election, lied us into bombing the hell out of Afghanistan and invading Iraq and violated US law against torture. I can't imagine how Democrats convinced themselves that they could win an election by putting her front and center to campaign with.
"University of Michigan recruits state attorney general to crack down on Gaza protesters: Revealed: in a highly unusual move, regents allegedly bypassed local prosecutors, believing Dana Nessel would be tougher on student protesters". And then when Rashida Tlaib complained that this unusual move against protesters suggested some kind of bias was involved, Nessel accused Tlaib of saying it was because she was Jewish, a false claim that was repeated more than once by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, with plenty of amplification from ADL. Slanders of Tlaib for supposedly saying antisemitic things proliferate widely in the smear-osphere, both on the net and off it. It's an adventure asking for a citation. (And I do wish people would remember that Palestinians, most of whom are too young to be familiar with English-speaking discourse on antisemitism, may be completely unaware of "antisemitic tropes" such as that Jews are miserly and money-grubbing. This image is an example of that kind of antisemitism which, strangelty, ADL and AIPAC never had a word to say about.)
"If Trump Wins, Blame the Billionaires: Without them, this presidential race wouldn't be close at all." Well, Elon makes that clear, and then this week both The LA Times and The Washington Post declined to endorse a candidate in the presidential race. But I still find it strange that Trump's and Vance's two immediate backers, Musk and Thiel, are exactly what their campaign is based on being against: immigrants.
From The Verge, "Intuit asked us to delete part of this Decoder episode: We declined. Today's episode of Decoder, well — it's a ride. I'm talking to Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi, who's built Intuit into a juggernaut business software company through a series of major acquisitions. Quicken and QuickBooks are incredibly well known as personal finance and small business accounting software, but nearly everything else — TurboTax, Mailchimp, Credit Karma, and loads more — were acquisitions of some kind along the way. That leads to a lot of challenging structure questions that Sasan and I really got into — integrating all those companies and their different approaches to software requires big decisions, and Intuit made a big decision handling it all by betting on interoperability that I found fascinating. So far, that sounds like normal Decoder stuff, right? Here's where it got weird. I couldn't have the CEO of Intuit on without asking about tax reform in the United States. Individual income taxes are more complicated in the US than in almost any other developed economy, and Intuit has been lobbying hard since the late 1990s to keep it that way to protect TurboTax, spending nearly $3.8 million in lobbying in 2023 alone. There's been extensive reporting about it." And then he got a demand from Intuit to delete that whole section of the interview.
"Big Supermarkets Kill Your Favorite Products [...] One of the arguments Amazon makes to justify selling its own private label products ahead of the products sold on its platform by third parties is that supermarkets often do this as well. What Bezos and co. leave out, of course, is that the ability to self-preference your own private label product, for supermarkets as well as Amazon, is probably a result of scale and some level of monopoly power." (Further reading: "The Grocery Cartels")
"'The Police Had Their Eye on Me': How Law-abiding Israelis Calling for the Hostages' Release End Up in Jail: Over 800 people have been detained at protests calling for the release of the hostages since the October 7 attack, with some spending hours or days in detention. Five of the arrestees detail their treatment at the hands of the police, and whether it has deterred them from attending further demonstrations."
"Shaming Israelis for Fleeing Their Country Ignores the Reasons Behind Their Departure: A large number of those leaving Israel are doing so out of a realization that the ethos they grew up on is giving way to one based on Jewish supremacy and ruinous policies"
Forbes, "Money Growth Does Not Cause Inflation! [...] The bottom line is that the 'money growth==>inflation' view makes perfect sense in some alternate universe where all those assumptions regarding the variables DO hold, but not here, not today, not in the United States of America in 2011. That's not how it works. It's a damn shame, I know, because it's so simple and intuitively appealing and it would make controlling inflation really simple. But, if we are to develop useful policies then we need a model better suited to the way the modern financial system works."
"Rapid Money Supply Growth Does Not Cause Inflation: Neither do rapid growth in government debt, declining interest rates, or rapid Increases in a central bank's balance sheet. Monetarist theory, which came to dominate economic thinking in the 1980s and the decades that followed, holds that rapid money supply growth is the cause of inflation. The theory, however, fails an actual test of the available evidence. In our review of 47 countries, generally from 1960 forward, we found that more often than not high inflation does not follow rapid money supply growth, and in contrast to this, high inflation has occurred frequently when it has not been preceded by rapid money supply growth."
"October 7: Forensic analysis shows Hamas abuses, many false Israeli claims: Investigation draws up a list of those killed in Hamas attack, but also finds certain claims repeated by Israeli politicians untrue." One-hour film from Al-Jazeera.
"A Cartography of Genocide: Israel's Conduct in Gaza Since October 2023"
"The thing about the Kobayashi Maru"
Pocketful of Miracles is one of my favorite movies of all time and it helped me feel a little better the other week watching it for free on YouTube. Glenn Ford, Bette Davis, and Hope Lange are great in it, but for me, Peter Falk and Edward Everett Horton are the real delights. Do yourself a favor and take a little time out to watch it, it sure can't hurt.