#incompetence

[usindistress]

If it was going to work like MAGA said, you would FIRST subsidize US industries to start up again so that YOU AREN'T JUST RAISING TAXES ON AMERICANS. But that is hard, and complicated, so Trump wants to do something easy and stupid instead. And forget the time delay to restart domestic industries, Trump said he wants the tariffs to include FOOD, so expect your favorite imported produce to skyrocket in price. Limes, bananas, coffee, and we won't magically have MORE LAND that you can grow these plants on just because Trump wants a tariff.

[sucka99]

[fishgirls-blog]

I will never ever marry a man. They are so fucking stupid and can't do anything for themselves.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Brinkwhump Linkdump

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

Once again, I find myself arriving at the weekend with a giant backlog of links, triggering a linkump, the 15th such dumpage, a variety-pack of miscellany for your weekend. Here's the previous editions:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Let's start with the latest incredible news from KPMG, the accounting and auditing giant that is relied upon as a source of ground truth for a truly terrifying share of the world's economy. KPMG has a well-deserved reputation for incompetence and corruption. They first came on my radar in 2001 when they sent a legal threat to a blogger for linking to their website without permission:

https://memex.craphound.com/2001/12/05/reason-4332442-not-to-ask/

The actual link was to KPMG's corporate anthem, which remains, to this day, a banger:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040428063826/http://chkpt.zdnet.com/chkpt/uknewsita/http://anthems.zdnet.co.uk/anthems/kpmg.mp3

Don't miss the DJ remixes (and the Nokia ringtone!) that the internet thoughtfully provided when KPMG decided that it didn't want the world to know about "Our Vision of Global Strategy":

https://web.archive.org/web/20011128153057/http://corporateanthems.raettig.org/

Now all this is objectively very funny, a relic of the old, good internet from one of its moments of glory, but KPMG? They were already enshittifying, even in 2001, and the enshittification only intensified thereafter. Nearly every accounting scandal of the past quarter-century has KPMG in it somewhere, from con-artists selling exhausted oil fields to rubes:

https://www.desmog.com/2021/06/03/miller-energy-kpmg-auditors-oil-fraud/

To killer nursing homes that hire KPMG to audit its books – and to advise it on how to defeat safety audits and murder your grandma:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/09/dingo-babysitter/#maybe-the-dingos-ate-your-nan

They're the architects of Microsoft's tax-evasion plot:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

And they were behind Canada's dysfunctional covid contact-tracing app, which never worked, but generated tens of millions in billings to the government of Canada, who used KPMG to hire programmers at $1,500/day, plus KPMG's 30% commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien

KPMG's most bizarre scandal is literally stranger than fiction. The company bribed SEC personnel help its own accountants cheat on ethics exams. The corrupt officials were then given high-paid jobs at KPMG:

https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-trusted-professional/article/sec-probe-finds-kpmg-auditors-cheating-on-training-exams-061819

I mean it when I say this is stranger than fiction. I included it as a plot-point in my new finance crime novel The Bezzle (now a national bestseller!), and multiple readers have written to me since the book came out a couple weeks ago to say that they thought I was straining their credulity by making up such an outrageous scandal:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

But all of that is just scene-setting (and a gratuitous plug for my book) for the latest KPMG scandal, which is, possibly, the most KPMG scandal of all KPMG scandals. The Australian government hired KPMG to audit Paladin, a security contractor that oversees the asylum seekers the country locks up on one of its island gulags (yes, gulags, plural).

Ever since, Paladin has been the subject of a string of ghastly human rights scandals – the worst stuff imaginable, rape and torture and murder of adults and children. Paladin made AU423 million on this contract.

And here's the scandal: KPMG audited the wrong company. The Paladin that the Australia government paid KPMG to audit was based in Singapore. The Paladin that KPMG audited was a totally different company, based in Papua New Guinea, who already had a commercial relationship with KPMG. It was this colossal fuckup that led to the manifestly unfit Singaporean company getting nearly half a billion dollars in public funds:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/24/incredible-failure-kpmg-rejects-claims-it-assessed-the-wrong-company-before-423m-payment-to-paladin

KPMG denies this. KPMG denies everything, always. Like, they denied creating "power maps" of decision-makers in the Australian government to target with influence campaigns in order to win contracts like this one. Who knows, maybe, this one time, they're telling the truth? After all, the company whose employees gather to sing lyrics like these can't be all bad, right?

The time is now to lead the way, We share the same the idea That may win by the end of the day. Our strength is here to stay. Identity, one energy, One strategy, with sympathy. These are the words that will lead us into a new world.

https://everything2.com/title/KPMG+corporate+anthem

You may find it strange that I'm still carrying around the factoid that KPMG once threatened to crush a blogger for linking to its terrible corporate anthem, but that's just my "Memex Method," which helps me keep track of literally everything that seemed important to me through most of my adult life:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

One of my favorite quips from the very quotable Riley Quinn is that "leftists are cursed with object-permanence" – that is, we actually remember what just happened and use it to think about what's happening now. The Memex Method is object permanence for 20+ years worth of stuff. A lot of those deep archives never see use, but there's a surprising number of leading indicators buried in the stuff that happened in years gone by.

Take James Boyle's 2014, XKCD-style comic about the experience of driving a notional Apple car:

https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/11/07/apple-updates-a-comic/

Apple, it turns out, spent the next decade working on just such a car, and while that car has now been canceled, Boyle's comic correctly anticipates so much about the trajectory Apple's products took. It's uncannily accurate – real "don't invent the torment nexus"/"cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion" stuff:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus

But no matter how many times we insist that the torment nexus shouldn't be created, the boardrooms of end-stage capitalism continue to invent them. Take HP, the poster-child for enshittification, edging out even KPMG in the race to turn everything into a pile of shit. After years of tormenting people to punish them for wanting to print things, HP has announced a new service that so mustache-twirlingly evil that it lacks verisimilitude:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/hp-wants-you-to-pay-up-to-36-month-to-rent-a-printer-that-it-monitors/

Here's the pitch: HP will sell you a printer that you don't own. In addition to paying a monthly fee for your ink – which you pay no matter whether you print or not – you will also pay a monthly fee just for having HP's printer on your premises. You are absolutely, positively forbidden from using third-party ink in this printer, and must use HP's own ink, which sells for about $10,000/gallon.

But while you aren't allowed to use this printer in ways that are bad for HP's shareholders, HP is absolutely free to use the printer in ways that are bad for you. When you click through the signup agreement, you grand HP permission to surveil every document you print – and your home wifi network more generally – and to sell that data to anyone and everyone.

What's more, HP reserves the right to discipline you with punitive credit-card charges if you disconnect this printer from the internet, on the basis that doing so makes it harder for them to spy on your printer.

I'm sorry, this is just more torment nexus shit, the kind of thing you'd expect to drop on Apr 1, not Feb 29, but I guess this is where we are. I can only conjecture as to whether HP's businesses strategists are directly taking direction from my novella "Unauthorized Bread," or whether they're learning about it second-hand from a KPMG consultant who converted it to Powerpoint form and charged $1,500/day for the work:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

All of this cartoonish villainry is the totally foreseeable consequence of a culture of impunity, in which companies like HP and KPMG can rob, cheat, steal (and sometimes even kill) without consequence. This impunity is so pervasive that the exceptions – where a rich criminal faces real consequences – become touchstones: Enron, Arthur Anderson, Theranos, and, of course, FTX.

FTX was arguably the largest-scale corporate crime in world history, stealing more than $10 billion dollars, mostly from rubes sucked in by hype and Superbowl ads. When news that FTX founder and owner Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and was in for a lengthy prison sentence made a huge stir, because criminals like SBF usually walk away from the wreckage with their hands in their pockets, whistling a jaunty tune.

One of the very best commentators on cryptocurrency scams generally and FTX/SBF in particular is Molly White, whose Web3 is Going Just Great feed is utterly indispensable. White's newsletter, "Citation Needed," dives deep into the wrangle of SBF's sentencing:

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-52/

Bankman-Fried's parents – prominent law professors at top law schools – helped brief the court this week on their son's punishment. According to them, SBF faces 100 years in prison, but should be sentenced to 5.5-6.5 years at the most. Why? Because he is a vegan, who is not greedy, and feels remorse, and cares for individuals (recall that SBF presented himself as the avatar of the batshit "effective altruism" philosophy while privately admitting that he used this as a smokescreen).

The most bizarre note in the 100-page filing is SBF's mother declaring that her son is an "angel of mercy," apparently unaware of the grisly meaning of that term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_of_mercy_(criminology)

America's prisons are a travesty and I wouldn't wish them on anyone, but that's not the argument SBF's parents are making; rather, they're arguing that their special boy doesn't deserve the treatment America metes out to poorer, less white people who merely steal hundreds or thousands of dollars. A crook who steals ten billion should be handled the way a casino handles a whale – with concierge service.

The problem is, there are so many of these remorseless, relentless crooks that there's no way we could scale up that white-glove treatment when we finally round 'em all up and make them pay. Writing for The American Prospect, Maureen Tkacik tells us about the ransomware attack that shut down America's pharmacy system last month:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-03-01-zoomer-hackers-shut-down-unitedhealthcare/

The attack brought down Change Healthcare, part of the monopolist Unitedhealth, which serves as the "pharmacy benefit manager" to a vast swathe of American pharmacies. PBM is one of those all-American finance scams, a middleman garlanded with performative complexity put there to make you feel stupid for asking why independent pharmacies all have to pay rent to this malicious, unaccountable – and now, manifestly incompetent – gang of crooks.

Tkacik's breakdown of this scam – and how it rendered Americans' ability to get the drugs they depend on to go on breathing – is characteristically brilliant. Tcacik is fast emerging as my favorite Explainer of Scams, a print version of John Oliver or Adam Conover. You may recall her work from my post last week on how private equity has taken a wrecking ball to America's hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

I always try to finish these linkdumps with some upbeat news to carry you through the weekend, and this week brought two genuinely wonderful – and totally underreported – pieces of amazing news.

The first is that Starbucks has sued for peace in the war against its workers' unions. Hundreds of Starbucks stores have unionized in recent years, but not one of them had a contract. Instead, Starbucks had waged dirty war on their own workers, from denying gender-affirming care to unionized employees to simply shutting down whole stores after they voted to unionize:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/14/starbucks-union-company-threatens-that-unionizing-could-jeopardize-gender-affirming-health-care.html

But the workers held fast and after years of this, Starbucks has caved, promising contracts for all unionized stores and an end to its campaign of terror against workers seeking to unionize more of its stores. In a postmortem for Jacobin, Eric Blanc rounds up "seven lessons from Starbucks workers' historic victory":

https://jacobin.com/2024/02/starbucks-sbwu-contract-bargaining/

This is the kind of listicle I can get behind. According to Blanc, the Starbucks unions won by deploying worker-to-worker organizing, a tactic that many of the new unions that are shaking up formerly impossible-to-organize jobsites are using (Blanc has a book about this coming from UC Press called "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Unionism Can Transform America," so he should know).

Other tactics that made the difference for Starbucks unions: new digital training and support tools and partnering with established unions for support and infrastructure. Blanc also calls out the success of "salting" – the venerable but largely disused tactic of union organizers applying for a job at a non-union shop in order to organize it.

Blanc also mentions government policy, including the outstanding work of NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a shrewd and committed tactician whose understanding of the technicalities of labor law have let her push for bold measures. For example, in Thrive Pet Care, Abruzzo is arguing that when a company refuses to bargain in good faith for a contract with its union, she can step in and order them to honor the terms of a contract at comparable unionized competitors until they produce a contract of their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

Abruzzo is one of several smart, competent tacticians in the Biden administration who are working to kneecap corporate power. Another is Rohit Chopra, chair of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, who just announced another bold, important initiative that will help Americans fight corporate corruption and get a fair deal:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-03-01-public-option-credit-card-shopping/

Chopra is taking aim at credit-card comparison sites that purport to show you where you can get the best deal. If you're an affluent person who doesn't carry a balance, this might not matter to you, but if you're an average working stiff, high interest rates can gobble up a massive share of your paycheck. What's more, credit card margins are higher than they have ever been:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/credit-card-interest-rate-margins-at-all-time-high/

The most expensive credit cards come from the big, monopolistic banks, but you wouldn't know it from the leaderboards produced by Credit Karma, NerdWallet, LendingTree, and Bankrate. All of these sites take bribes from the big banks to list their credit cards above those offered by credit unions – who are typically 10% cheaper than the big banks' cards.

The new CFPB rule prohibits this fraudulent ranking, but the Bureau is going even further. They're using their administrative powers to force banks to report their rates to the Bureau, which will publish them on a publicly funded, neutral website – what David Dayen calls "a public option" for shopping for credit cards.

This policy makes a perfect bookend to the last CFPB initiative I wrote about here: a rule that forces banks to allow you to transfer your account to a rival with a couple of simple clicks, importing all your history, payees, and everything else you need to switch to a better bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

Combine that ease of switching with reliable information on which banks will give you the best deal and you get something that will directly transfer millions and millions of dollars from giant, wildly profitable banks to low-income people who've been tricked into paying them punitive interest rates.

So that's it, this week's linkdump. I promised you I'd end on a high note, and I did it. The world may be full of all kinds of terrible things, but workers and regulators are scoring big, muscular victories in battles where the stakes are real and important. Have a great weekend – we've earned it.

And remember!

The time is now to lead the way, We share the same the idea That may win by the end of the day. Our strength is here to stay. Identity, one energy, One strategy, with sympathy. These are the words that will lead us into a new world.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/02/macedoine/#the-public-option

Image: Stacy (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/notahipster/4402860361/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[usindistress]

Trump caused the inflation. Trump said he caused the inflation and how while campaigning in Iowa in 2023.

[scanost]

Hey Y’all! I just put up a single on Spotify! It would be supa cool if y’all checked it out…

[blueiscoool]

In the Moscow region, Russian cops decided to demonstrate their driving skills and of course you know the rest.

[jangillman]

[thethinkingman]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

david rowe :: @roweafr :: would you like nukes with that :: @FinancialReview

* * * * *

"The Bizarro Presidency"

November 20, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

If Trump's nominations were not so deadly serious, they would qualify as parody bordering on slapstick. On Tuesday, Trump nominated as the head of Medicare a T.V. doctor who promoted hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid and who supports privatizing Medicare. The world is upside down.

Trump then topped his nomination of Dr. Oz by nominating Linda McMahon to lead—or dismantle--the Department of Education. Linda McMahon is the former CEO of the scandal-plagued World Wrestling Entertainment, which was sued last month for knowingly tolerating the abuse of teenage “ring boys” by the ringside announcer. See Rolling Stone, (10/23/24), Vince and Linda McMahon Named in New ‘Ring Boy’ Sex Abuse Lawsuit Against WWE. (“WWE founders “knew or should have known” about an employee who allegedly assaulted teenage employees in the 1980s, according to five new John Does who have come forward.”)

As with other nominations, those of Dr. Oz and Linda McMahon are insults to the tens of millions of Americans who rely on Medicare and the Department of Education to provide essential health insurance during retirement and educational support for students with special needs. I

have already received emails from readers who are living on a fixed income who are fearful that their Medicare will be privatized by Dr. Oz. For parents with students with special needs, the dismantling of the Department of Education would be a seismic shock and a blow to the health and education of their children.

During Ronald Reagan’s first term, Saturday Night Live produced a skit called the “Bizarro Presidency.” The premise was that Ronald Reagan appointed cabinet members who were the sworn enemies of the federal agencies they headed. The two examples I recall from the skit are Secretary of Interior James Watt who famously said that “killer trees” were the cause of urban pollution. And EPA head Ann Gorsuch (Justice Neil Gorsuch’s mother) did her best to dismantle the EPA by firing 30% of the agency’s employees and replacing them with executives from the oil and logging companies that the EPA was supposed to regulate. (I cannot locate a video of the skit and would appreciate anyone who can post a link in the Comments or forward a link by email. I need some comedic relief.)

The Reagan appointments were a scandal. Trump's appointments are an assault on the federal government designed to advance Trump's dictatorial aspirations. And he is advancing those aspirations by imperiling the health and safety of the American people.

Dr. Oz is a physician who holds an MBA. That hardly qualifies him to run the Department of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). But he should be disqualified from running CMS because he continuously promoted unproven supplements and fraudulent cures on his television show. A study in the British Medical Journal found that 54% of the supplements and cures promoted by Dr. Oz were “contraindicated” or lacked support. See British Medical Journal, (12/17/14), Televised medical talk shows—what they recommend and the evidence to support their recommendations: a prospective observational study | The BMJ

During the height of the Covid pandemic, Dr. Oz promoted the off-label use of hydroxychloroquine in 25 appearances on Fox News. He also promoted Medicare Advantage plans that Trump hopes will allow the privatization of Medicare. See Newsweek, Mehmet Oz Backed Massive Change to Medicare That Would Impact Millions. During his 2022 Senate campaign, Dr. Oz called for a 20% payroll tax to pay for the privatization of Medicare.

Linda McMahon is a nonsense choice for the Department of Education. Her career has been devoted to taking a regional professional wrestling company and converting it into a publicly traded wrestling company. McMahon’s experience in education consists of planning to become a teacher (but never doing so) and serving for one year (in 2009) on the Connecticut Board of Education. Those credentials do not qualify McMahon to lead the Department of Education—but they may qualify her to dismantle it. See ABC News, Dismantling the Department of Education? Trump's plan for schools in his second term.

As Trump added two wildly unqualified candidates to his proposed cabinet, he told a reporter that he stands by his nomination of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. See Reuters, Trump says he is not reconsidering Gaetz nomination for attorney general.

Trump's failure to reconsider the nomination is reprehensible. Details continue to emerge about Gaetz’s drug use, payment for sex with (at least) two high school girls (over 18), and his sexual relationship with one 17-year-old high school girl.

Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed the lawyer for two of the high-school girls that Gaetz paid for sex. The attorney said that the girls saw their (then) 17-year-old friend having sex with Matt Gaetz at the home of a retired Florida congressman. See MSNBC, Lawrence: Matt Gaetz cannot possibly survive a Senate confirmation hearing

Although Speaker Mike Johnson does not want the House Ethics Committee to release the report on Matt Gaetz, the committee will vote on the release of the report later this week. But the committee’s vote may be overtaken by the fact that a hacker reportedly obtained the investigative file from a private law firm. See Forbes, Matt Gaetz Controversy Explained: Hacker Reportedly Gets Depositions As Lawmakers Debate Report.

The problem with atrocious nominations like Dr. Oz and Linda McMahon is that they distract attention from dangerous nominations like Matt Gaetz, Robert Kennedy, and Tulsi Gabbard. Gaetz is a threat to democracy; Kennedy is a menace to public health; and Gabbard is a threat to national security.

The problem is also that it is exhausting to force ourselves to care deeply about every dangerous or wildly unqualified nomination proposed by Trump. But we have no choice. We are in this mess (in large part) because Merrick Garland cared more about the reputation of the Department of Justice than he did about bringing Trump to justice—which was the harder path, by far.

Garland chose the path of least resistance—virtuously honoring the internal policies of the DOJ to the detriment of the Constitution and the American people. We must not be like Merrick Garland. We must fight every battle—even when we are exhausted or accused of being “over the top” in constantly raising the alarm about Trump.

And yet, we must also maintain our sanity and self-respect. We must be centered in our lives so that we can help others who are suffering from an incoming administration whose goal is to psychologically torture the majority of Americans who did not vote for Trump.

The nominations to date and those to come are intended to be part of a “Bizarro Presidency” in which the chief law enforcement officer is a criminal, the chief national security officer may be a Russian asset, and the chief health officer does not believe in medical science.

But we recognize the long con that Trump is playing. We must be serious in our opposition without allowing Trump to engage or enrage our emotions. This is strictly business. Deadly serious, strictly business. We must maintain professional distance even as we invest our hearts and minds to the fullest extent in preserving democracy by resisting Trump's anti-democratic moves.

We can do that. The Bizarro Presidency is a gambit. Recognize it. Resist it. Call it by its name—fascism. But do not let it gaslight or dispirit us. Every day that we can maintain resistance is one day closer to the end of Trump's last term in office.

Morning Joe and Mika Brzezinski show us how not to act

CNN is reporting that Morning Joe and Mika Brzesinski met with Trump to “restart communications” because they are afraid of Trump. See CNN, ‘Morning Joe’ meeting with Trump was driven by fears of retribution from incoming administration, sources say.

Professor Timothy Snyder reminds us constantly that the first step to surrendering to tyranny is to “obey in advance”—i.e., to give up resistance before the battle has been joined.

Morning Joe and Mika Brzesinski have “obeyed in advance.” They have shown us what surrender looks like. We must not be them.

Reuters is reporting the “contours of a peace deal” in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine

Reuters is reporting on an exclusive basis that Russia is open to a Trump-brokered “peace deal” that maintains Russia’s control over Ukrainian territory that it has unlawfully seized from Ukraine. See Exclusive: Putin, ascendant in Ukraine, eyes contours of a Trump peace deal | Reuters.

The problem with the Reuters’ story is that it is written from the perspective of Russia—in which “peace” means victory for Russia and surrender for Ukraine.

Imagine, for example, if Canada engaged in an unprovoked attack against the US and seized the states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota.

Canada then leaks to the press that it would agree to a “peace deal” that awards Canada the four US states that it seized in the war of aggression.

How likely is it that the US—or Ukraine—would agree to surrender substantial portions of its territory to the aggressor?

As noted in the Reuters article, Ukraine entertained a proposal for a ceasefire in the early days of the war (2022)—when Russia had nearly encircled Kyiv. The conditions on the ground have since improved considerably for Ukraine, although Russia controls about 20% of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. It is also true that public opinion in Ukraine is shifting toward a “negotiated peace”—a phrase that contains oceans of ambiguity. Everyone is in favor of peace. The question is, “At what cost?”

The poll was conducted by Gallup. In a particularly callous aside, Gallup noted that its results did not include responses from Ukrainians living in areas seized by Russia—a cohort that might have strong feelings about a negotiated surrender.

Concluding Thoughts

The urge to declare the “answers” explaining the 2024 electoral outcome is strong. Whatever those answers are, most of them will improve with the benefit of more time and additional data.

For example, we don’t yet know how the House will be decided. At the moment, it is looking like 214 to 221—a four vote margin for Republicans. But temporarily eliminating three seats for Trump cabinet nominees reduces the margin of control to two votes—214 to 218. (E.g., if Republicans suffered two defections, the House would be tied 216 to 216 and any motion or legislation would fail because they would not have a majority.)

But Adam Gray (CA-13) is within 227 votes of taking the lead as ballot curing and counting continue. If Gray were to win, then the margins of control for Republicans (discussed above) would reduce to three votes (before vacancies for cabinet nominations) and one vote (if three vacancies are caused by cabinet confirmations).

Those margins are extraordinarily thin and could be affected by illness, accident, or family emergencies. A one-vote margin of control will require the cooperation of Democrats on important bills—and provide Democrats with leverage not apparent in the “binary” election descriptions of who “won” and “lost.”

Another area of Democratic influence that has emerged is the progress made on state supreme courts. See Mark Joseph Stern, Slate, 2024 Election: The surprising bright spot for progressives.

As explained by Stern, Democrats won important victories in Michigan, Kentucky, Montana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and (likely) North Carolina. I recommend Stern’s article, which describes the significance of those victories.

My point is this: In the deluge of articles scolding Democrats, no one is highlighting the fact that Democrats scored important victories on the supreme court in red states. Since that fact isn’t included in the “Lazy Journalist’s Guide for Reporting on the 2024 Election,” it is not something you will read about in the op-ed pages of legacy media.

So let’s spread the word about Democrats’ hidden successes that run counter to the “landslide” narrative that legacy and right-wing media are spreading. It was a close election and a tough fight. We held our own—and we have every right to be proud of those efforts! Stay strong and keep the faith!

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[savagechickens]

Ideal Team.

And more work.

[softysofao3]

I know it's been weeks but the JD Vance Doughnut shop video still haunts me. The amount of people who fucked up with that is astounding.

First, the preparation.

They could have contacted the owners before going. The owners might have been there, and the employees would have had warning about filming. A little research would have helped.

If you have a candidate who finds social situations difficult, prep them! I assume based on the video that it was the first time he bought doughnuts from a shop like that. They should have given him more material than just the "two dozen doughnuts, please." They could have practiced the encounter amongst themselves or JD could have done a practice stop in another doughnut place without the cameras.

Knowing him and throwing him in a semi-hostile new social setting is not a way to go. As someone who struggles with social situations, having someone film me like that would be a nightmare.

He should have had a script ready. Instead of awkwardly asking each employee how long they had worked there, he could have asked about the best things about working there. Or just anything about the product.

If you don't know how to order an assortment of doughnuts, tell them you want 1/2/3 of each. Or ask them for their favourites. Or ask about the best sellers. Anything other than "whatever makes sense".

Then the posting of the video. How the hell is someone in the year 2024 posting a video where someone explicitly states they don't want to be filmed, without AT LEAST blurring their face???? That's just basic decency people!

And who watched the video and thought the impact would be positive???? How did that video ever get released?

To my understanding (not from the US) the entire purpose of these videos is to show that the candidate is like an ordinary person. They have respect for other people, even minimum wage workers in the food industry. The JD Vance video shows the exact opposite of that. He seems to be lost among the regular people, and doesn't have any interest in what he's buying or the people serving it. I don't think I could have scripted a worse video if I tried.

I don't understand how they fucked it up that bad. Having a candidate who is not natural in these situations is not necessarily bad, but then you need to handle it better. The bar was on the floor, but they somehow still limboed under it.

[thepersonalwords]

Superficial knowledge is potentially more dangerous than ignorance. It gives a false sense of security encouraging an ignorant man to persevere in his efforts that can result in huge damage.

Eraldo Banovac

[heartsmade4more]

A lesson can look a lot like a loss. A new beginning can look a lot like a setback. Exploration can look a lot like uncertainty. Growth can look a lot like incompetence. Vulnerability can look a lot like weakness. Life isn't what happens to us. Life is how we choose to look at what happens to us.

Eddie Pinero

[dailybehbeh]

Behbeh

[tomorrowusa]

Yes there is a double standard in the news media AND among members of the public.

Democrats are held to a higher standard. Democrats are always expected to act like grown-ups while Republicans are allowed to wreck institutions of democracy while getting only a perfunctory tsk tsk.

If Biden gave a bizarre and semi-coherent speech like this the media and users on social media would go into convulsions of disparagement. But because it came from Trump, the general feeling is that "it's just Donald being Donald"...

...and that doesn't even touch on fact checking.

The House drama is another case in point. One candidate for Speaker, Gym Jordan, turned a blind eye to sex abuse as an assistant coach; and the leader of the anti-McCarthy coup, Matt Gaetz, has an appetite for girls under 18. Republicans are like the villains in their own QAnon conspiracy folklore.

Jen Sorensen, an American national treasure, touched on this double standard in a cartoon.

With the emergence of every new revelation of GOP idiocy, incompetence, or downright treason, publicly ask what the reaction would be if a living Democrat had done the same.

Don't let membership in the GOP excuse people for being anti-democratic dickheads.