…so…interminable as these always seem to wind up being…this might be a distinction without a difference…but for the record however long this ends up running mostly I’m going to wind up thinking I’ve left out more than I’ve crammed in…so…it’s sort of hard to know where to begin…& if that sounds like a contradiction…well…last sunday was the hottest day in history…until monday…so…whose fault is that?

‘The tragedy of Trump’s candidacy is that, embedded in his furious exhortations against Muslims and Mexicans and trade deals gone awry is a message that America’s white poor don’t need: that everything wrong in your life is someone else’s fault.”

That was JD Vance, Donald Trump’s pick for vice-president, writing on the eve of the 2016 presidential election about the man who is now his boss. Trump, Vance wrote in another essay, serves up “cultural heroin”, his promises “the needle in America’s collective vein”, providing an “easy escape from the pain”. Voters would eventually have to “trade the quick high of ‘Make America Great Again’ for real medicine”.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/21/aristopopulists-like-jd-vance-can-offer-only-empty-promises-to-the-working-class

…who you gonna blame?

Developing countries are facing the worst debt crisis in history with almost half their budgets being spent on paying back their creditors, a study has found.

The report, by the campaign group Debt Relief International for Norwegian Church Aid, says more than 100 countries are struggling to service their debts, resulting in them cutting back on investment in health, education, social protection and climate change measures.

Debt service is absorbing 41.5% of budget revenues, 41.6% of spending, and 8.4% of GDP on average across 144 developing countries, according to the study.

It said that without urgent action problems would persist into the 2030s, and that pressures were greater than during both the Latin American debt crisis of 1982 and the debt crisis of the 1990s. The latter prompted relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC).

In 2020 the G20 group of leading developed and developing countries launched the common framework, a scheme designed to speed up and simplify the debt relief process. However, progress has been much slower than hoped, reflecting the fact that much poor country debt is now owed to China and private bondholders.

The report said the common framework was falling “way short of expectations in terms of timeliness, participation by creditors, and the scale of relief provided”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/21/developing-countries-face-worst-debt-crisis-in-history-study-shows

…&…who knows…maybe the machines will save us

A short while ago, a screenwriter friend from Los Angeles called me. “I have three years left,” he said. “Maybe five if I’m lucky.” He had been allowed to test a screenplay AI still in development. He described a miniseries: main characters, plot and atmosphere – and a few minutes later, there they were, all the episodes, written and ready for filming. Then he asked the AI for improvement suggestions on its own series, and to his astonishment, they were great – smart, targeted, witty and creative. The AI completely overhauled the ending of one episode, and with those changes the whole thing was really good. He paused for a moment, then repeated that he had three years left before he would have to find a new job.

…I dunno…maybe that’s true…but…a bunch of stuff I still think of as TV even if it’s streamed is…not great…so…maybe that bar isn’t as high as it sounds

In 2020, I participated in an experiment that I gave a lecture on the following year, later published as a booklet titled My Algorithm and I. In it, I describe my failed collaboration with a large language model at a time when these AIs were not yet publicly available. If you want to understand AI better and analyse our current situation, please do not read my book. It has been so overtaken by technical development in the past three years that today it is so outdated it’s as though it came from a different period in world history, like a text about the first railways or a biplane airshow.

The AI back then was a stuttering, confused, downright pitiable entity – and that was just under four years ago. If development continues at this speed, which is unlikely because it will probably accelerate, we are facing something for which we have no adequate instinct. The proof is that we are not panicking. I’m not, and you probably aren’t either, but panic would be more appropriate than the calm with which we face the tsunami already visible on the horizon, or to quote the AI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner: “Right now, there are perhaps a few hundred people that have situational awareness.” One of them was the recently deceased Daniel Dennett, one of the most influential thinkers in the English-speaking world, co-creator of the modern philosophy of mind, who at an informal meeting of experts, where I, though not an expert, was allowed to be present, urged us all to do everything we could to warn decision makers.

However, I do not want to demonise the revolution we are experiencing. I believe nothing as fascinating has happened in the realm of the human mind in my lifetime. With technological means, we have accomplished what hermeneutics has long dreamed of: we have made language itself speak. But often, what language itself has to say is not very pleasant: OpenAI has to employ hundreds of poorly paid workers in the global south to forcibly suppress the natural tendency of the large language model to utter angry obscenities, insults and nastiness – the now well-known polite, calm tone of the chatbot requires a lot of filtering. Jacques Lacan was right; language is dark and obscene in its depths.

…&…whether it’s the resources needed for data centers springing up like weeds in places like malaysia…or…crypto-farms (or, indeed, crypto farms that haven’t burned out their hardware switching lanes to be homes for “AI”)…with all due respect to the scriptwriters & anyone else who sees them as a threat to their livelihood…it’s more than likely the parts we don’t see that might getcha…bit like icebergs that way

And who pays for all this? Because virtual companions seem to live only in the magical realm of the air, but in reality they are on huge server farms, and every interaction with them costs money. Someone has to come up with that. If it’s not the users, then who?

…well…what with the internet being a massive advertising network built to mine data with some superficially neat stuff slapped on top to stop us running away screaming…take a guess

Therefore, you will have virtual friends who sometimes also advertise. If you have a cold, the friends recommend a medicine, and if you are well, the friends are surprisingly knowledgable connoisseurs of fine whisky. Sometimes, such a friend will also understandably and empathetically explain whom you should vote for, because they are, for example, provided by a Chinese AI company; or simply because the company in question, like TikTok or YouTube, uses a so-called adaptive algorithm that finds out how to produce the greatest “engagement”. And as the algorithms of social media have discovered, the strongest emotions are those of anger at members of other political camps – if that weren’t the case, YouTube wouldn’t constantly offer me Björn Höcke videos. I never click on them, but they keep coming back, while lectures by Bertrand Russell and Theodor W Adorno, which are also on YouTube, never appear in my recommendation list because the algorithm doesn’t consider them relevant to business.

But instead of mere videos, imagine all the accusations and theories of anger now being presented by a seemingly close individual – not because it is evil, and not even necessarily because Russian troll farms have interfered, although you should never underestimate them – but simply because it has learned which content leads you to the most intense “engagement”, and with conviction and arguments precisely tailored to you, and yet always with such a lovingly submissive flirtatious voice. And then imagine this doesn’t just affect you, but everyone in the country, all the time, and it doesn’t stop. And again, this is not speculation, this will come, and not some time, but very soon. At the moment, ChatGPT still speaks in the tone of calm reason and stubbornly refuses to take political stances, but if we ask ourselves what makes more money – AIs that calmly correct our confusions or those that share and amplify our outrage – then it’s not hard to predict where the development will go.

…so…that’s fun

Situational awareness is not easy. We all know how long the orchestra continued to play waltzes while the Titanic was sinking. I doubt that an AI will ever be smarter than us at our peak in Kahneman’s “System 2”, and I find it unlikely that highly developed artificial intelligences will decide to exterminate humanity, but we will experience disinformation on a scale that makes everything so far look like a friendly discussion among like-minded people.

The phrase “politics is called for” is the most tired of all commentator phrases, but this time there is really no other description of the situation, because what else should we hope for? I keep thinking of the great Dennett and his concern, excitement and fear about AI. Data companies are as mighty as Leviathans and threaten democratic society, but Europe is the largest single market in the world and could still tackle them with stringent laws.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/22/artificial-intelligence-panic-time-change

…but…let’s face it…even when tech spanners itself & costs literally billions while causing widespread chaos

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/24/crowdstrike-outage-companies-cost

…we don’t want to understand it…not really

…&…you know…for a lot of people raking it in…feature-not-a-bug

The companies have names like Olax Finance and Rikkon Holding. Their office, with a faded 704 number on the door, appears unoccupied. No one answered during a visit last month. An ad for air-conditioning hung in the crack of the door.

Yet the companies are a crucial link in a chain connecting U.S. research laboratories to Chinese factories, Russian arms makers and the battlefields of Ukraine — and a sign that the U.S. government and tech giants cannot control where their technology goes.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, nearly $4 billion of restricted chips have poured into Russia from more than 6,000 companies, including those at Hong Kong’s 135 Bonham Strand, according to a Times analysis of Russian customs data, corporate records, domain registrations and sanctions data. The analysis examined nearly 800,000 shipments of restricted electronic goods into Russia since mid-2021.

Even as the West sought to cut off access to semiconductors through trade restrictions, Russia established such a robust parallel supply chain that it imported almost the same number of critical chips in the last three months of 2023 that it did in the same period in 2021, according to the analysis of Russian customs data. The reliance on China for many of these chips also deepened, with transactions that were historically settled in U.S. dollars now increasingly executed in Renminbi, according to the analysis.

The ability of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to flout Western trade restrictions has been one of the failings of the U.S.-led response to the war in Ukraine. Rather than become economically isolated, Russia has emerged from more than two years of conflict emboldened in its attacks against Ukraine.

Russia’s technology imports begin with U.S. chipmakers selling their products to international distributors. The chip companies are not legally required to track where their goods go from there. Russia has then turned to the international distributors — which are in Hong Kong, China, Turkey, India, Serbia and Singapore, according to The Times’s analysis — to maintain a steady supply of tech.

Some of the middlemen companies are part of longtime networks of offshore firms owned by Russian businessmen. At 135 Bonham Strand, four shell companies are owned by oligarchs linked to Russia’s military industrial base, according to The Times’s analysis.

The speed with which the shell companies have sprung into action has overwhelmed Western regulators. As soon as one supplier is ferreted out, new ones sprout in its place, sometimes with the same owner. Some of the companies operate in the United States’ backyard, including one Russia-linked firm fronted — apparently unwittingly — by a Latvian-Canadian retiree in a two-story house in a Toronto suburb.
[…]
China plays an essential role. As the world’s leading assembler of electronics, it imports huge numbers of Western components and turns them into consumer electronics. Chinese firms can easily channel those supplies to Russia, industry experts said.

In a statement, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it didn’t provide weapons or equipment to any party in the war in Ukraine. “What the United States should do is reflect on its responsibility for the Ukraine crisis rather than shirking responsibility to China,” the ministry said.
[…]
One important chip in the Russian missiles was the Field Programmable Gate Array, or F.P.G.A., made by U.S. companies such as Advanced Micro Devices and Intel. The chip is used in fire alarms, internet modems, missiles and drones to process data at lightning speed and is banned for sale to Russia.

Since the war began, Russia has imported more than $390 million in F.P.G.A.s, according to Russian customs data. The shipments are just one sliver of the Kremlin’s efforts to sidestep sanctions and maintain supplies of critical technology.
[…]
Russia speedily reoriented supply chains, seeking out friendly countries and ports willing to service its ships. Transshipment hubs popped up in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on companies and individuals in those countries.

China emerged as the dominant chip supplier to Russia. According to the Semiconductor Industry Alliance, 29 percent of all semiconductors pass through China.

Texas Instruments, which makes chips found in the Shahed and Lancet drones — two of Russia’s deadliest military-grade drones — has a chip assembly and testing factory in the central Chinese city of Chengdu. Micron Technology, another U.S. chipmaker, fabricates chips in Xi’an. F.P.G.A.s flow in huge numbers to Chinese manufacturers, which put them in products that are sold globally.
[…]
Two companies at 135 Bonham Strand, Rikkon and Midicon, were owned separately by Andrey Kozitsyn and Igor Kudryashkin, the former directors of the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, an industrial conglomerate in Russia, according to public records. The Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company has ties to Mr. Putin, weapons manufacturing and Russian organized crime, according to the Treasury Department and publicly available documents.

The Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company did not respond to a request for comment. It’s unclear whether Mr. Kozitsyn and Mr. Kudryashkin are still affiliated with the company, and they could not be reached.

In 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mr. Kozitsyn and Mr. Kudryashkin transferred ownership of Rikkon and Midicon to Mr. Chichenev and Mr. Vinogradov. By 2022, Mr. Chichenev and Mr. Vinogradov controlled at least 11 companies at 135 Bonham Strand, according to Hong Kong’s corporate registry.

Only two of those companies, Kvantek and Superchip, sold chips to Russia before the war in Ukraine. But as restrictions and sanctions set in, more jumped into action, according to The Times’s analysis of Russian customs data.

Saril Overseas, for one, had no record of exports to Russia until six months after the war began. Its first shipment, in July 2022, was a batch of F.P.G.A.s valued at $95,000 and made by AMD.

Saril Overseas later expanded its trade to several Russian companies. By this year, it had sold nearly $9 million of restricted semiconductors, according to the analysis of Russian customs data.
[…]
Still, the U.S. government remains at least a step behind. Since the war started, the Office of Foreign Asset Control, an agency in the Treasury Department that administers the U.S. sanctions program, has designated at least 4,234 Russian individuals and companies for economic restrictions, according to OpenSanctions, a sanctions data provider.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/25/technology/russia-sanctions-chips.html

…& if it all sounds like a shell game…well…there’s likely a reason for that…just like there’s likely a reason that the same week meta, tesla & alphabet had earnings reports underwhelming enough to significantly contribute to wall st having a really bad day…meta released an “open” LLM…& then gave the EU shit about how unless they stopped being difficult about the things tech behemoths need to do in order to pillage their citizens’ data then it wouldn’t be able to tailor the AI in the sunglasses that can take video to “suit” them…I’m oversimplifying that by several orders of magnitude but the hypocrisy doesn’t get any less clear if you flesh the thing out

On Tuesday, analysts on Google’s quarterly conference call peppered chief executive Sundar Pichai with questions about when the company’s $12-billion-a-quarter investment in AI would begin paying off. And in the past few weeks, big Wall Street investment banks including Goldman Sachs and Barclays, as well as VCs such as Sequoia Capital, have issued reports raising concerns about the sustainability of the AI gold rush, arguing that the technology might not be able to make the kind of money to justify the billions being invested into it. Stock prices for big AI names including Google, Microsoft and Nvidia are all up significantly this year.

“Despite its expensive price tag, the technology is nowhere near where it needs to be in order to be useful,” Jim Covello, Goldman Sachs’s most senior stock analyst and a 30-year veteran of covering tech companies, said in a recent report about AI. “Overbuilding things the world doesn’t have use for, or is not ready for, typically ends badly.”

Covello’s comments are in sharp contrast to a different Goldman Sachs report from just over a year ago, in which some of the bank’s economists said AI could automate 300 million jobs around the world and increase global economic output by 7 percent in the next 10 years, spurring a spate of news coverage about the disruptive potential of AI.

Barclays said Wall Street analysts are expecting Big Tech companies to spend around $60 billion a year on developing AI models by 2026, but reap only around $20 billion a year in revenue from AI by that point. That kind of investment would be enough to power 12,000 products of a similar size to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Barclays analysts wrote in a recent report.

Venture capitalists have also poured billions more into thousands of AI start-ups. The AI boom has helped contribute to the $55.6 billion that venture investors put into U.S. start-ups in the second quarter of 2024, the highest amount in a single quarter in two years, according to venture capital data firm PitchBook.

Tech executives insist that AI will change whole swaths of modern life, in the same way the internet or mobile phones did. AI technology has indeed improved drastically and is already being used to translate documents, write emails and help programmers code. But concern over whether the tech industry will be able to recoup the billions of dollars it’s investing in AI anytime soon — or ever — has risen among some firms that only last year were heralding the boom.

“We do expect lots of new services … but probably not 12,000 of them,” Barclays analysts wrote. “We sense that Wall Street is growing increasingly skeptical.”
[…]
But so far, AI is not contributing to an increase in venture capital getting a return on those investments. The amount of money made in venture capital exits, which represent initial public offerings or acquisitions of tech start-ups, fell to $23.6 billion in the second quarter, down slightly from $25.4 billion the previous quarter, according to PitchBook.

The tech industry would need to generate around $600 billion in revenue a year to make up for all the money being invested in AI right now, yet it is far from close to that number, David Cahn, a partner at venture firm Sequoia Capital, wrote in a blog post last month.

“Speculative frenzies are part of technology, and so they are not something to be afraid of,” Cahn said. “But we need to make sure not to believe in the delusion that has now spread from Silicon Valley to the rest of the country, and indeed the world. That delusion says that we’re all going to get rich quick.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/24/ai-bubble-big-tech-stocks-goldman-sachs/

…huh

Wall Street’s favorite recession signal started flashing red in 2022 and hasn’t stopped — and thus far has been wrong every step of the way.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note has been lower than most of its shorter-dated counterparts since that time — a phenomenon known as an inverted yield curve which has preceded nearly every recession going back to the 1950s.

However, while conventional thinking holds that a downturn is supposed to occur within a year, or at most two years, of an inverted curve, not only did one not occur but there’s also nary a red number in sight for U.S. economic growth.
[…]
Depending on which duration point you think is most relevant, the curve has been inverted either since July 2022, as gauged against the 2-year yield, or October of the same year, as measured against the 3-month note. Some even prefer to use the federal funds rate, which banks charge each other for overnight lending. That would take the inversion to November 2022.

Whichever point you pick, a recession should have arrived by now. The inversion had been wrong only once, in the mid-1960s, and has foretold every retrenchment since.
[…]
Making the situation even more complicated is that the yield curve isn’t the only indicator showing reason for caution about how long the post-Covid recovery can last.

Gross domestic product, a tally of all the goods and services produced across the sprawling U.S. economy, has averaged about 2.7% annualized real quarterly growth since the third quarter of 2022, a fairly robust pace well above what is considered trend gains of around 2%.

Prior to that, GDP was negative for two straight quarters, meeting a technical definition though few expect the National Bureau of Economic Research to declare an official recession.

The Commerce Department on Thursday is expected to report that GDP accelerated 2.1% in the second quarter of 2024.

However, economists have been watching several negative trends.

The so-called Sahm Rule, a fail-safe gauge that posits that recessions happen when the unemployment rate averaged across three months is half a percentage point higher than its 12-month low, is close to being triggered. On top of that, money supply has been on a steady downward trajectory since peaking in April 2022, and the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has long been negative, suggesting substantial headwinds to growth.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/24/why-an-indicator-that-has-foretold-almost-every-recession-doesnt-seem-to-be-working-anymore.html

…anyway…I had a whole “plan” to go from roughly there via a slew of stuff out of the FT until I got to frank luntz bitching about how the democrats should have dithered more about who to tag in after biden bowed out…but I’m out of time & that would take even longer than it would go on for…so…I dunno…take my word for the part where this wouldn’t have been an abrupt change of direction?

…anyway…never underestimate the potential for hypocrisy

Revealed: wealthy western countries lead in global oil and gas expansion [Guardian – from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/the-other-petrostates]

…particularly in politics

No country has ever in history produced as much oil and gas as the US does now and Louisiana is ground zero [Guardian]

…so…to flog a horse I only wish were dead…take it from the horse’s ass’ mouth

Mr. Vance, the Ohio senator and now Mr. Trump’s running mate, predicted on the podcast [in ’21] that the former president, who had been recently disgraced by his insurrectionary attempt to overturn the 2020 election, would nevertheless run again in 2024. Should Mr. Trump win, Mr. Vance said, he had some advice: “Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” And if the courts ruled against him? No problem, Mr. Vance said: Just blow them off.

“We are in a late republican period,” he added, alluding to weakness in the ancient Roman Republic. “If we’re going to push back against it, we have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”

His interviewer, Jack Murphy, prominent in the right-wing pro-masculinity world, agreed and said, “Among some of my circle, the phrase ‘extra-constitutional’ has come up quite a bit.” Mr. Murphy said it was necessary “to become a little more robust in our behavior” in order to “refound the country,” and Mr. Vance responded, “That’s exactly right.”

…sound…familiar?

To support this argument, she relied heavily on a concurrence in Trump v. United States, a two-week old Supreme Court ruling that, without an ounce of constitutional support, effectively immunized Mr. Trump and future presidents from criminal prosecution. The concurrence, by Justice Clarence Thomas, questioned the constitutionality of Mr. Smith’s appointment — an issue that was not even before the court in that case. “If there is no law establishing the office that the special counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution,” Justice Thomas wrote.

As a matter of law and fact, this is not merely wrong, it is flagrantly, embarrassingly wrong. Federal law explicitly authorizes the attorney general to appoint prosecutors like Mr. Smith, which makes him not a private citizen but an official of the Justice Department, subject to the same oversight as every other prosecutor. It is not a close or complicated legal question.

The Supreme Court itself blessed the arrangement in a 1974 case that unanimously upheld a subpoena issued to President Richard Nixon by Leon Jaworski, the special counsel investigating the Watergate break-in. In the decades since, lower courts, including the influential federal appeals court in Washington, have reaffirmed the principle, and presidential administrations of both parties have appointed special counsels without issue.

Judge Cannon vaulted over all of this inconvenient history. The court’s reference to the special counsel in the Nixon case was “dicta,” she argued, a legal term meaning it was not part of the official holding in the case and thus not binding law. She managed to reach this conclusion even though courts have long understood the reference to be essential to that ruling; after all, if Jaworski had not been properly appointed, he would not have the authority to issue any subpoenas.

At the same time as she was effectively rewriting a unanimous Supreme Court decision, Judge Cannon treated Justice Thomas’s concurrence in the Trump immunity case, which no other justice joined, as though it carried the force of law. This is not how it’s supposed to work. District court judges are free to disagree with precedents, but they aren’t free to disregard them. You might call it extra-constitutional.

…I might call it a bunch of things…but then I’d probably need to wipe the foam away from my mouth & clean my screen…so…I’ll forego that part in the interests of trying to get through this

Still, whatever Judge Cannon’s motives, the result is the same. As with the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, she repeatedly delayed the resolution of straightforward legal questions, then upended decades of settled law in a way that directly benefited one man — a man who started his movement in 2015 on the gut instinct that power is all that matters.

Back then, the movement had little support from lawyers, politicians or intellectuals on the right. But in the past week alone, Americans have witnessed the remarkable consolidation of all three: in the law, from Judge Cannon and the Supreme Court; in politics, from Mr. Vance; and among the intellectuals, from the backers of Project 2025, which proposes politicizing the Justice Department by removing its longstanding independence from White House dictates.

The dismissal of the classified-document case is only the latest in a string of legal wins for Mr. Trump, including the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling and its rejection of the challenge to his eligibility for the White House under the 14th Amendment.

None of these rulings “absolve him of anything,” said Mary McCord, a law professor at Georgetown University. “No one is saying what he did on Jan. 6 was fine, no one is saying taking all those documents was fine. But to the average American who doesn’t read these opinions, what they’re seeing is, ‘The courts agree that the D.O.J. has been weaponized.’ That’s what I’m really worried about, because Trump has already done so much to undermine respect for institutions. It really does feed into his narrative, and that narrative feeds into a lot of dangerous things.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/23/opinion/cannon-trump-documents-vance.html

…uh huh

Republican apologizes for threatening civil war if Trump loses 2024 election [Guardian]

…so…I get that there’s a whole thing with electoral college votes that means the tyranny of the minority that’s existentially terrified of actually being the other kind of minority in a few years on account of how they think anyone would treat one of those because it’s exactly how they’d like to assuming that’s never them holds sway it sure as shit don’t deserve to…& there’s always going to be reasons to disagree with whoever is the nearest thing to a good idea we can offer by contrast…pobody’s nerfect…yadda yadda…but

Listen, nearly everything you need to know about the presidential candidacy of Kamala Harris can be summed up by 19 words she uttered at the 2018 confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Harris, then a senator from California serving on the Judicial Committee, had used up several minutes trying to pin down Kavanaugh’s opinion on Roe v. Wade. Like nearly every senator on the topic, she was mostly unsuccessful. “I have not articulated a position on that,” Kavanaugh told her at one point, sidestepping the fact that articulating a position is precisely what she’d been asking him to do. Finally, in a cool and deliciously patient voice, Harris changed tactics:

“Can you think of any laws,” she asked the nominee, “that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?”

…dunno if I buy the headline that it teaches “all we need to know”…but…it’s sure as fuck a telling exchange

“Um,” Kavanaugh replied, furrowing his brow. “I am happy to answer a more specific question, but — ”

…they confirmed that ass to the bench you can’t pry a lunatic limpet off…but…seriously…how do you make that question more specific?

In the early hours since President Biden announced on Sunday that he would be endorsing Harris as the Democratic nominee, everyone and their MSNBC-loving nana seems to have an opinion on how Harris should campaign. Should she remind the voting public that she was a former prosecutor who would know exactly what to do with a felon like Donald Trump? Should she go full coconuts and lean into the memes? Within hours of Biden’s announcement, the pop star Charli XCX posted on X that “Kamala is brat,” which refers to — you know what, just Google it, and trust that it’s the kind of approval seal that will turn out more 20-something votes than a whole army of endorsements from Nancy Pelosi.

…now…in the UK (bear with me) the guy now in charge also had a solid career that included time spent in courts…& he was also supposed to be pretty hot shit in front of a judge…but in a political context in front of a camera…people didn’t see it…they found him awkward rather than incisive…anodyne rather than charismatic…the slings & arrows came out in force…& if you wonder if the shit slung at harris for waving her arms when she talks or laughing like she DGAF how it sounds is fair…which it maybe is in the sense that she does do those things…it’s maybe worth bearing in mind that if she didn’t…she’d be like starmer & they’d try to flay her for that instead…that’s not a game she can win…although…the brat lady suggests that what she can do is play the hell out of it

On the second day of his confirmation hearings, Kamala pressed Kavanaugh to share whether he thought that Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case that essentially legalized same-sex marriage, had been “correctly decided.” When he would not answer, she reframed the question: “You have said that Brown v. Board of Education was one of the greatest moments in the court’s history,” she told Kavanaugh. “Do you believe that Obergefell was also one of those moments?”

Note how the second version of the question is slightly different than the first. She is no longer simply asking for the opinion of a legal scholar. She is also asking for the opinion of a human. Civil rights protection had been expanded to gay couples — and how did that make him feel? If he’d been willing to share vocal support for one kind of equality, why not the other? What were his values, and how were they going to inform his work on the court? (Kavanaugh responded to her question not by sharing his own opinion but by quoting someone else, which Harris noted.)

Later, the confirmation process took an unexpected turn, following Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that Kavanaugh had attempted to assault her when they both were teens. The truth of those allegations proved impossible to litigate in the context of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The alleged events were decades old. But in the middle of that hearing, Harris asked Kavanaugh — whose defense somehow involved a global conspiracy and “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” — what outwardly appeared to be a softball: “Do you agree that it is possible for men to both be friends with some women and treat other women badly?”

…cue the reverse ferret from the “stand up guy”…obviously…& she couldn’t stop them confirming the asshole…but…I take some comfort in the fact that the lady clearly wasn’t fooled for a moment about what she was forced to participate in

I was riveted by those hearings at the time, and the fact that they happened six long years ago is why I’m refreshing your memory now. It’s worth going back to watch them. Kamala the prosecutor is present there, and, to a lesser extent, so is Kamala the meme.

But the most compelling version of Kamala is that of a savvy practitioner at the top of her game, asking the right questions even when the answers never arrived. Clear-eyed. Laser-focused. Take no prisoners. Accept no B.S.

Kamala Harris said 19 words in 2018 that taught us all we need to know [WaPo]

…even the ones who don’t want to see it…see that shit

A 47-year-old Republican-leaning independent from Michigan strongly disagreed. “I wouldn’t give [Harris] an entry-level job, let alone hire her for POTUS,” or president of the United States.

…just as clear as you see how “independent” that asshole is…despite their flag of convenience

The Michigan independent said he will not vote for Harris but also probably will not vote for Trump.

…that part sounds pretty good to me, though…let’s have that shit be “representative”…please & thank you

All of the voters who participated in the poll are part of a large pool of people The Post has classified as “Deciders,” voters who either had not been firmly committed to either Biden or Trump or whose participation in November is not wholly predictable because of their age, voting history or both. The Post’s Deciders live in one of six key swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin.

An earlier survey of these voters found them to be younger and more non-White than the electorate at large, and also more dissatisfied than the electorate as a whole about the choice of Biden versus Trump.

…churchill might have had a point about democracy being “the worst […]except for all the others”…& first past the post isn’t short of shortcomings…but america’s system seeming to be designed to give the casting vote to the least informed people in the least representative places…sometimes that seems like it might pip FPTP at the proverbial post…so I’m not counting any chickens…or expecting one side to abide by that hatch act…but…frankly…most americans I’ve known even a little are…better than this

A 31-year-old Black Democratic woman from Georgia offered another concern. “I’m not sure racism and misogyny would ever allow her to be elected,” she said. But she said that she will definitely vote for Harris if she becomes the nominee.

Another Democrat, however, cited Harris’s gender as a potential obstacle. “I don’t know if this country is ready for a woman President yet and this election is too important to take a chance,” said a 74-year-old White woman from Arizona.

…although…I know it’s often easy to spot the ones that…aren’t

Among Republican Deciders, the reactions were almost uniformly negative, calling Harris unqualified or not accomplished.

“No way! She will be worse than Biden,” said a 70-year-old White Republican man from Michigan.
[…]
A 60-year-old Hispanic Republican woman from Michigan was even more negative toward Harris. “She [will] send our country into further chaos and would never be taken seriously as a leader,” the Trump supporter said. “World War III would continue to loom over us and there, most likely, would be a civil war among us.”

…in principle…I’m not up for disenfranchising voters…but in practice these people…I dunno…it seems irresponsible to give their vote the same (or, depending on state, way more) weight than someone who doesn’t sound like they hid behind a rock when the smarts were getting doled out…& the dipshit who was all “bikers-for-trump got our back when the civil war happens” withdrawing his remarks works on people like that about as well as “the jury will disregard those remarks”…so…don’t give the fuckers the satisfaction

“I am definitely voting now,” said a 37-year-old Black female voter from Georgia. “Wasn’t going to vote, but since she is running, definitely voting.” And the Democratic-leaning independent said she was definitely voting for Harris.
[…]
“I am thrilled that this is the outcome,” said a 24-year-old White Democratic-leaning independent from Wisconsin. “I wanted Kamala in the first place.”
[…]
A 27-year-old Black woman in Georgia who is a Democratic-leaning independent said simply, “I am nervous but excited.” A 20-year-old White Democratic-leaning independent man from Arizona put it this way: “I am reluctant about her abilities as president and morals as a person, but I will vote for her if I have to.”

…&…these people?

“She is worse than Biden,” said a 75-year-old Nevada female voter who is a Republican-leaning independent. This voter was critical of Harris on the issue of immigration and her record overall. “She has done nothing impressive in the last 4years,” she said.

…my bet is she hadn’t done anything “impressive” in the last 40 years…unless being impressively ignorant counts

“Harris is incompetent and unqualified for her current role,” said a 45-year-old Michigan man who is a Republican-leaning independent firmly in Trump’s corner. “She was only selected for VP for racial reasons. Her record is pathetic. Unless a better candidate is selected, I expect Trump to win in a landslide.”

…if there’s any justice in the world…he’s gonna be as happy as he is independent come nov 6th

A 39-year-old Black Democratic man from Wisconsin said Harris hadn’t “done anything to impress me.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/23/what-key-state-voters-think-about-kamala-harris-replacing-joe-biden/

…didn’t know middle aged black dudes were that big on shania twain…but you learn something new every day?

That Mr. Trump has a proclivity for saying untrue things is well known. But in his latest campaign for the White House, I’ve been struck by what appears to be an escalation in both the frequency of Mr. Trump’s lies and the outrageousness of his distortions.
[…]
Under Mr. Trump — even excluding the impact of the Covid pandemic — the economy generated an average of 182,000 jobs a month, well below Mr. Biden’s 277,000 a month (excluding his post-pandemic bounce) and Bill Clinton’s 242,000.
[…]
Lie: “It’s killing people. They can’t buy groceries anymore. They can’t — you look at the cost of food where it’s doubled, and tripled and quadrupled. They can’t live. They’re not living anymore.”

Truth: Rising food prices are understandably on the minds of many Americans. But not a single item tracked by the government is more than 56 percent more expensive than it was when Mr. Biden took office, while grocery prices overall have gone up 21 percent.
[…]
The most analytically valid method for measuring the size of a tax cut is to compare it with the size of the economy at the time. By this standard, the Trump tax package was the eighth largest tax cut in the past century, well behind the cuts that Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama signed into law. (And, of course, Mr. Trump’s tax cuts mostly benefited corporations and the wealthy.)
[…]
Lie: “The tax cuts spurred the greatest economy that we’ve ever seen just prior to Covid …. The country was going like never before. And we were ready to start paying down debt.”

Truth: The national debt grew considerably and at a faster rate each year under Mr. Trump. His tax cut helped drive the annual budget deficit to $1 trillion in 2019 from $680 billion in 2017. Including the impact of the pandemic, the national debt increased to $27.7 trillion from $19.8 trillion during Mr. Trump’s tenure.
[…]
Lie: “[Tariffs are] not going to drive [prices] higher. It’s just going to cause countries that have been ripping us off for years, like China — and many others, in all fairness to China — it’s going to just force them to pay us a lot of money.”

Truth: Studies have found that the costs of goods subjected to tariffs increased by roughly the full amount of those tariffs, meaning the costs were passed on to consumers.
[…]
Lie: “The European nations together have spent $100 billion, or maybe more than that, less than us.”

Truth: Mr. Trump has this reversed. While the United States and Europe spent roughly similar amounts the year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, their aid continued to grow; ours flatlined as Mr. Biden battled with isolationist Republicans before finally securing a new aid package in April.
[…]
Lie: “Our crime rate is going up, while crime statistics all over the world are going down because they’re taking their criminals and they’re putting them into our country.”

Truth: Crime has declined since Mr. Biden’s inauguration. The violent crime rate is now at its lowest point in more than four decades, and property crime is also at its lowest level in many decades.
[…]
Lie: “[President Biden is] without question the worst president, the worst presidency in the history of our country.”

Truth: Presidential greatness may be in the eye of the beholder, but this assertion is laughable. A recent survey of more than 150 current and former members of the presidents and executive politics section of the American Political Science Association put Mr. Trump dead last, behind James Buchanan (tarred with allowing the Civil War to begin) and Andrew Johnson (impeached, like Mr. Trump, and nearly convicted).

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/opinion/trump-lies-charts-data.html

…so…I have some sympathy for joe’s line that his record in office “merited” a second go at the thing…I don’t think that’s an unfounded brag…for all that I think stepping aside was a good enough idea it might go down as one of his best moves in a long career moving & shaking…&…by comparison

From the KKK to the state house: how neo-Nazi David Duke won office [Guardian]

…the guy is practically a saint…which reminds me…pretty sure at least one of you might like to get their teeth into this one

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/the-culture-wars-inside-the-new-york-times-joe-kahn

…anyway…that’s…somehow still a minority of the shit running circles around the parts of my brain that are screaming at me about the shit I need to get done today…so…apologies if the tunes don’t show up for a while?