…I know I get unhelpfully caught up in the circular logic…but mostly I’m just trying to stop the feeling that my head is spinning…& if you try to follow a thing that keeps turning…& reading a script that keeps flipping…well…occupational hazard, I suppose…call it a moral hazard

In economics, a moral hazard is a situation where an economic actor has an incentive to increase its exposure to risk because it does not bear the full costs of that risk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

…which…uhhh…applies to…well

…but…here we go again

“Catch and kill,” we have learned from Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York, amounts to a publisher paying for a salacious story with the purpose of bottling it up, preventing any embarrassment to the subject (Trump).

…uh huh

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann explained on MSNBC the “catch and kill” analogy:

…I’ll get to quoting that part when I get back to quoting this thing…it’s clearly one of “those” days

…analogy? …not completely sure analogous is the right way to characterize the relationship…but…it’s probably not helpful to think that people who can’t afford to surf over paywalls might both increase their exposure to risk & ultimately bear the full costs of that risk off the back of balls & strikes caught & killed & turned into flannel…& if you’re persuaded that the ones trying to set the agenda have your best interests at heart

By pitching too much to the base, he is leaving behind the centrist voters who shift between parties from election to election and, I believe, will be the key factor deciding the 2024 race.

…&…I get it…unlike my man mark penn…if I say shit like this

I’ve spent decades looking at the behavior of swing voters and how candidates appeal to them

…it doesn’t mean the same thing…I’m just some no account dilettante…he’s a paid up “expert”…& if I’m going to whine about how people shouldn’t ignore expert opinion…goose…gander…yadda yadda…but…gee…I dunno…something never seems to sit right?

If Mr. Biden wants to serve another four years, he has to stop being dragged to the left and chart a different course closer to the center that appeals to those voters who favor bipartisan compromises to our core issues, fiscal discipline and a strong America.

…if the center keeps drifting right while claiming to be standing on principle…in principle it seems like…just maybe…even if that statement is accurate…it shouldn’t be…at least it does to me?

People usually assume that turning out so-called base voters in an election matters most, since swing voters are fewer in number. And it’s true that in today’s polarized environment, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump have about 40 percent of voters each and nothing will change those people’s minds. But in that remaining 20 percent of the electorate, voters have disproportionate power because of their potential to switch. It’s simple math: Take a race tied in the run-up 5 to 5. If one voter swings, the tally becomes 6 to 4. Two voters would then need to be turned out just to tie it up, and a third one would be needed to win.

…&…we can all join in on the chorus…fuck a poll…but…just assuming for a second…for the sake of argument…that “undecided” voters with the potential to “flip” aren’t the least desirable source of electoral wisdom ever to be the featured bug in a system…say it’s a fair call…say they really are the be all & end all…if among the premises we leave unexamined we give pride of place to an underlying unifying principle that the principal point to bear in mind is that those folks are comfortable because they’re accustomed to a steady diet of being told how making them uncomfortable is how to lose friends & influence nobody…fair enough…that’d make me a playa hater…notwithstanding the part where I like a beach just fine

Take Michigan, a battleground state where Mr. Trump has led Mr. Biden by as many as three percentage points in the past month. To overcome that gap, Mr. Biden would need to bring out nearly 250,000 additional voters (3 percent of more than eight million registered voters) just to tie it up in a state that has already achieved a record of over 70 percent turnout in a presidential year. Or Mr. Biden could switch just 125,000 swing voters and win.

…apparently the numbers are on “their” side…even if their side is the center…which is sort of by definition neither side while having a side on both sides on account of the “stuck in the middle” part…but…that’s a me problem, I’m reliably informed

Despite this math, scared candidates are, in my experience, easily sold the idea that the Democratic base or Republican base is going to stay home in November unless they are constantly fed what they want to hear. One call from the head of a religious group, a civil rights group, a labor group and others (often called the groups), and fear runs through a campaign. A New York Times article this winter about Black pastors warning the Biden White House that his Gaza war policy could imperil re-election is a good example. Maybe if Mr. Biden were running against a well-liked centrist opponent, concern could be justified. But during a fall election against Mr. Trump, the final month of this campaign is going to see a frenzy of get-out-the-vote efforts, and I doubt the Democratic base is going to sit idly by at the thought of the Trump limo cruising up Pennsylvania Avenue. The reality is that swing voters in battleground states who are upset about immigration, inflation and what they see as extreme climate policies and weakness in foreign affairs are likely to put Mr. Trump back in office if they are not blunted.

…see…if I were smart…then it wouldn’t worry me that the performative antics of michigan’s “undecided” primary voters actually made a bunch of sense if you happened to be of that number looking to gain some leverage with the numbers that make your point…because people who think that way aren’t as good a bet for deciding a national trajectory or the substance of a campaign…as…[checks notes]…primary voters who check the nikki haley box…ignore the part where they sound like they answer to an equal & opposite definition of the same 2-for-1 electoral math deal that makes them the same logic’s target for the GOP this go-around…so joe…shouldn’t give them a thought much less the time of day?

I believe most of the 101,000 uncommitted votes that Mr. Biden lost in Michigan will come home in the end because they have nowhere else to go and the threat Mr. Trump poses will become clearer and scarier in the next six months. But regardless, there’s a much bigger opportunity for Mr. Biden if he looks in the other direction. Mr. Trump lost nearly 300,000 votes to Nikki Haley in the Michigan Republican primary. These people are in the moderate center, and many of them could be persuaded to vote for Mr. Biden if he fine-tuned his message to bring them in. And remember to multiply by two: Persuading those 300,000 Republicans to cross party lines would have the equivalent force of turning out 600,000 Democrats. The same math applies to other battleground states, like Pennsylvania, where 158,000 people voted for Ms. Haley instead of Mr. Trump in the Republican primary, even though she dropped out seven weeks earlier.

Unfortunately, Mr. Biden is not reaching out to moderate voters with policy ideas or a strong campaign message. He is not showing clear evidence of bringing in large numbers of swing voters in the battleground states at this point. Those swing voters look for fiscal restraint without tax increases, climate policies that still give people a choice of cars and fuels and immigration policies that are compassionate to those who are here but close the borders. The balanced budget remains one of the single strongest measures that swing and other voters want. Mr. Clinton’s efforts to balance the budget set off the revolution that resulted in an eight-point win, even with third-party candidates in 1996, and catapulted his job approval ratings to above 70 percent. Instead of pivoting to the center when talking to 32 million people tuned in to his State of the Union address, Mr. Biden doubled down on his base strategy with hits like class warfare attacks on the rich and big corporations, big tax increases, student loan giveaways and further expansions of social programs despite a deficit of more than $1.1 trillion. The results quickly dissipated.

…if a dude approaches you in a casino to tell you all about a system he has that doubles your winnings & halves your odds…sorry…I know…not helpful…but this sort of shit pops into my head unsolicited all the time & I can’t always head it off at the pass before the typing gets there…I was trying to grant the premises

Mr. Biden’s campaign has fundamentally miscalculated on Israel. Those Haley voters are strong defense voters who would back our ally Israel unreservedly and, I believe, want to see a president who would put maximum pressure on Hamas to release hostages. By pandering to base voters with no choice, Biden is pushing the Haley vote to Mr. Trump, and so his first instincts on Israel were both good policy and good politics. Eighty-four percent of independents surveyed said they supported Israel more than Hamas in the conflict, and 63 percent said they believed a cease-fire should occur only after the hostages have been released. The more Mr. Biden has pandered to the left by softening his support of Israel, the weaker he looks, and the more his foreign policy ratings have declined. Rather than pull decisively away from Israel, Mr. Biden should instead find a plan that enables Israel to go into Rafah and that has enough precautions for Rafah’s civilians so the American president can back it.

…nope…no…sorry…I tried…but…fuck that…just…fuck all of that…it’s a mealy-mouthed pile of specious fucking confabulated bollocks unless I’m much mistaken…in fact even if I am much mistaken…& that’d hardly be a wonder…I’m pretty sure it still looks odds on that would be a fair estimation of its approximations?

…if you ask me…which…well…ok…all y’all know better than to ask me much of anything unless you’re having a hard time dropping off & you want a fast-track to the land of nod…I get that…but it’s a figure of speech…so whether or not you picture me looking like a militant mickey mouse on a self-inflated soapbox is no skin off my nose…still…I strive for consistency…so…for the sake of accuracy…since it’s pretty much what I’m doing in most of these…if I ask me?

…arguments are like designs for mechanisms…sometimes you have different people trying to solve the same problem & they arrive at the same solution because it’s a good one…that’s how you get newton & leibniz arguing about which one of them invented calculus when it’s pretty clear that neither could so much as hypothetically claim to have birthed the first principles of the mathematical discipline…but I’m getting distracted again…the part I was trying to get around to is that there’s another way to get from A to B…start at B…work back to A…then run the process in reverse order…but it has hallmarks…like when your sense of disbelief takes a knock in the movie because the blithe assumptions of the various antagonists & protagonists are jarring when you don’t have the notes on the available plot armor…& that’s what this looks like to me…if you start out by working back from a theoretical loss to a shit-gibbon handed over by a bunch of willfully ignorant bathwater-slingers butt hurt that they didn’t get adequately pandered to until they felt warm & fuzzy as their comfort zone took the spotlight & hoovered up the oxygen…then…any semi-competent asshole can produce a schema to demonstrate some coulda, woulda, shoulda…but…if you’re sitting here on a tuesday morning pondering who’s calling the “see you next tuesday” shots…it…lands different…because if you say to me, “who probably has the right ideas about how to make the awful less?”…my first thought isn’t “people in michigan who like the shit nikki haley says, that’ll be the key – let’s use that as a fulcrum & see how hard we can pivot the bandwagon before people fall off the back in significant numbers”

…that’ll be why nobody even pays the proverbial penny for my thoughts, probably

The 2024 election is a rematch, but Mr. Biden should not assume that he will get the same result as he did in 2020 in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and other battleground states by running the same playbook. This time around, he is seen as older, and the assessment of the job that he has done is in negative territory. While he won’t get any younger, he could still move more to the center, vacuum up swing voters who desperately want to reject Mr. Trump, strengthen his image as a leader by destroying Hamas and rally the base at the end. But that means first pushing back against the base rather than pandering to it and remembering that when it comes to the math of elections, swing is king.

…& I know…I went arguably too hard on the rap at the weekend…& I promised myself I wouldn’t keep doing it…but…”swing is king”?

…good thing he has a day job because that wouldn’t cut it on a beat…but mark seems quite committed to the idea that he’s hitting the one true mark all pols & their attendent [pardon my french] polls are all about in the final analysis

The Simple Math That Could Swing the Election to Biden [NYT]

…I guess I’m wary of simple answers to complicated shit…that part isn’t exactly complicated…so…getting back to the thing quoting weissmann

She has consistently making erroneous legal decisions. They are consistently always on the side of Donald Trump. And as the transcript shows in terms of how that came about, it came about because it’s precisely what Donald Trump’s lawyers asked for and said should be done, and then she did it.

There is no law to support it. And to be in the weeds, she keeps on referring to the Presidential Records Act and wants to instruct the jury on the Presidential Records Act. That is not the crime. It has nothing to do with the crime. It is what Donald Trump wants the case to be about, but it is not actually what the criminal law is about. So this is a judge, in my estimation, who is engaging in, out in the open, catch and kill. Which is to never have this case go to trial before the election.

…handy template, no?

That is not the [point]. It has nothing to do with the [point]. It is what [a particular point of view] wants the [point] to be about, but it is not actually what the [underlying shit] is about. So this is a judge[ment], in my estimation, wh[ich] is engaging in, out in the open, catch and kill.

…ya don’t say?

The Limits of Moralism in Israel and Gaza […you guessed it…your boy doubt-that in the NYT]

Banks have given almost $7tn to fossil fuel firms since Paris deal, report reveals

Among world’s top 60 banks those in US are biggest fossil fuel financiers, while Barclays leads way in Europe [Guardian]

Trump is gagged. So his surrogates say the forbidden stuff for him. [WaPo]

Justice Department warns against threats to voting rights, election workers [WaPo]

…uh huh, uh huh

The 54 Celebrities, Executives and Allies on Trump’s ‘Close Contacts’ List [NYT]

…uhhhhhhh

Love it or hate it, the United States has an imperial presidency, and in his first term, Donald Trump demonstrated a record of using such powers with noted relish on the world stage. As in many areas, he does not have a conventional approach to global relations. But it may turn out that, like Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush before him, Mr. Trump enjoys engagement with foreign policy.

His particular style of politics can be provocative, of course, but also effective. Mr. Trump’s approach to America’s place in the world is pragmatic or unpredictable or both, and it could offer surprising opportunities for peace.

If Mr. Trump re-enters the Oval Office, he may seek to surprise in his final act, perhaps inspiring parallels, in its unpredictability and volatility, with Nixon and his “madman” foreign policy.

…go ahead & chalk me up in the “hate it” column, I guess?

In a second term Mr. Trump would likely not assemble a right-wing establishment cabinet of oil executives and generals. He would instead be guided by a new group of establishment figures or pragmatists as well as a cut of advisers associated with the new right who want a broader convulsion in foreign policy and who wonder, with increasing despondence at the state of American culture, if a new Cold War-type enemy, perhaps China, would unify the population.

…I know these fools are all about whatever it takes to not take the L…but…”a cut of advisers” became a thing, when? …I missed another fucking memo, I guess…my dumbass read that as cu[l]t…because I’ve learned to avoid the [n] word…unless you see what I did there, I guess?

Members of this new right group increasingly disagree among themselves, particularly on just how far to take it to China and just how interchangeable conservative foreign policy should be with Israel’s.

…israel’s? …as in [currently rabid for doing the shit that we collectively considered was so bad an idea we ought to invent israel as way of stating just how not down with that sort of thing the world was]…or just “bibi’s interests”? …only those align more with vlad’s than…say…my dad’s…& I don’t generally think of those as “interchangeable” terms

In addition to the wonkish ideologues and pragmatists, there is an unpredictable milieu of true believers, among them Steve Bannon and the retired colonel Douglas Macgregor, a cult hero on the new right who in the chaos of the 2020-21 transition was installed by Pentagon loyalists to Mr. Trump with the intent of a quick withdrawal from Afghanistan.

This team would suggest a vision — relative aversion to ideology but a tolerance for radicalism — that could fulfill Mr. Trump’s foreign policy approach, which favors a mixture of staying out of trouble and engaging in conflicts decisively and briefly. Washington veterans often react with puzzlement to the idea that Mr. Trump has a foreign policy vision at all. His approach confused people like Mr. Bolton, who criticized Mr. Trump for looking at “things on a transactional basis.”

But Mr. Trump likes to occupy two identities at once: threat and negotiator. And as he showed in a recent interview with Time magazine, he has a shrewd understanding of how to manage his team in negotiations. For example, he said in the interview that Mr. Bolton “served a good purpose” because “every time he walked into a room, people thought you were going to war.”

…is it churlish to quibble about the meaning of “good purpose”…maybe it is…but…we’re already claiming that idolators & idealogues represent “an aversion to ideology”…so…might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb…be it “of god” or…otherwise?

Or take Mr. Trump’s language around Russia and NATO. Last winter, Mr. Trump caused outrage when he said that he’d be willing to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that don’t spend enough on their defense.

In his Time interview, Mr. Trump said of that earlier comment, “When I say things like that, that’s said as a point of negotiation.”
[…]
In a second term, there would also be the promise that Mr. Trump would at last attempt to prove the technocrats and Washington bureaucrats wrong — the experts he fired and flouted, the prestige financiers who have mocked him and the lawyers who have tried to imprison him.

…that’s…something you’re arguing…for?

If Mr. Trump wins in November, he will almost certainly read a life’s worth of vindication into how he does business and the value of his ability to be in two places at once. The uncertainty that comes with his style is poised to once again give him power over America’s soft and hard power in global affairs.

Maybe Mr. Trump can continue to surprise and achieve what Mr. Nixon aspired to. His gravestone in Yorba Linda, Calif., contains a line from his first Inaugural Address: “The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.”

What Trump Could Do in Foreign Policy Might Surprise the World [NYT]

…not to be curt, curt…& if this is what it’s like to be curt…I don’t want no part of that…your feature is…bugging out

How is any of this making Israel more secure? [WaPo]

…spoiler alert…unless you swap out bibi for israel again…it isn’t

How Israel and the United States suppress democracy in the Middle East [WaPo]

…but…it’s…”subtle”, see…so you might have missed it…allegedly…& anyway…what you should be worrying about if you know what’s good for us all is what someone who’d vote for haley in a GOP primary would find persuasive…because that’s how we save all our souls

And that was in March, before the latest outrage.

…want to guess which piece that little gem is pulled from?

…trick question

…it’s the one about the judge with only bad judgement

On its face, Cannon’s statement is absurd, practically an admission that the case is too complicated for her. (As the New York Times noted, “She has limited experience overseeing trials of any kind – let alone one involving explosive allegations that a former president and current candidate illegally took highly classified state secrets from the White House.”) Her latest delay follows a series of widely criticized moves revealing her inexperience. Among the most inexplicable: Demanding a debate on jury instructions (even sillier in retrospect, with a trial postponed indefinitely!) and threatening to reveal witnesses‘ names, which prosecutors say would endanger them.

…it is what it is…& what it is ain’t fucking subtle

Cannon’s actions suggest some awareness that she is on thin ice. The judge has deftly reversed herself and kept motions under wraps, apparently to prevent the prosecutors from taking their issues to the circuit court. Some prosecutors speculate that in taking motions under advisement, she might be waiting until a jury is impaneled to hand down rulings devastating to prosecutors or even issue a directed verdict – thereby preventing retrial.

The judge’s actions are particularly galling given the strength of prosecutors’ case. “There are many felony cases that the DOJ pursued based on conduct that was significantly less egregious than the present set of facts in the Trump case,” Just Security model prosecutors memo explained. “Aggravating factors in Trump’s case include the length of time of his retention of government documents, the volume of government documents, the highly sensitive nature of the documents, the number of warnings he received, his obstructive conduct, and his involving other individuals in his scheme.” Not prosecuting him, the memo said, “would be a major deviation from how defendants are typically treated.”

The indefinite trial postponement announced by Cannon last week prompted strong condemnation from critics. “It is just truly a disgrace that she is not doing her job,” Weissmann succinctly put it on MSNBC. Former prosecutor Barbara McQuade told me, “I like to presume that judges act in good faith, even when I disagree with their decisions, but Judge Cannon’s order postponing the trial indefinitely is truly baffling. It is not only the defense but also the public that has a right to a speedy trial. Delay causes memories to fade, evidence to go stale, and jury appreciation for the seriousness of the case to diminish.”

McQuade added, “In a case that alleges illegal retention of some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets, it feels like to judicial malpractice to slow-walk this case the way Judge Cannon has.”

…&…that ain’t the half of it, neither

In bottling up the classified documents case, Cannon might send a disturbing signal to U.S. allies. “Beyond compromising U.S. information, the security breach is significant because of its potentially damaging impact on intelligence liaison relationships and information sharing with other countries,” Just Security’s Tess Bridgeman and Brianna Rosen wrote last year. “If the documents contained information from joint collection streams, for example, it is possible that the former president has compromised allied governments’ sources and methods.”

If the documents case doesn’t even go to trial, allies’ fear of sharing intelligence with the United States would only increase.

…but…eh…what are ya gonna do?

Although Cannon has no excuse for “repeated delay of the Mar-a-Lago documents case, a very serious case that would be extremely difficult for Trump to defend,” former prosecutor Renato Mariotti tells me, “Jack Smith likely does not have a viable way to force Judge Cannon to move the trial forward quickly because trial judges are given extremely broad discretion over their trial schedule.”

Many legal experts still argue that Smith might as well try one of these moves: What has he got to lose? At the very least, the special counsel can highlight the danger of giving Trump another chance to stock the courts with Aileen Cannons.

Cannon plays ‘catch and kill’ with the Trump classified documents case [WaPo]

…paywalls…part of the problem…or part of the solution…I dunno…you pays your money & you takes your choice

…wait a minute

…shit…asked & answered…& out of time to boot

…told ya it were one of them days

…avoid rap…avoid rap

…I can do this

…but I could go in this thing with nothing but tori amos, joan armatrading & sarah mclachlan in mind…& before you knew it I’d be pulling up pj harvey from a dry well…& after that I could tip headlong into someplace smelling of skunk anansie…so…our centers of gravity come for us all?

…is it my fault if connie’s track-list looks like journo shorthand for how to curate the headlines?

…it’s hard, y’all…the struggle is real…I mean…out of deference to the fact the resident blacksmith might come for me with an admin hammer I don’t spam handsome boy modelling school all over the DOTs…but

…even as often as I give in to temptation do you have any idea the number of times sage francis’ lie detector test is vying with makeshift patriot as the loudest background music whoever controls the playlist for my mind’s eye has on repeat…because I’m here to tell you from my perspective I show surprising restraint…& maybe signs of progress…I mean…I mentioned them but I haven’t posted either…so maybe I can avoid temptation if I persevere?

…oh, c’mon…that ain’t fair…can’t be comin at me with a british take about what we oughta do on the roads man…AA doesn’t serve bloody mary’s for a reason…& I was *so* close to closing it out, too

…something, something…old dogs…new tricks…something, something