Running The Numbers, Con't

June year-over-year inflation was the worst yet, with a 9.1% rise in prices over the last twelve months.

Shoppers paid sharply higher prices for a variety of goods in June as inflation kept its hold on a slowing U.S. economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The consumer price index, a broad measure of everyday goods and services, soared 9.1% from a year ago, above the 8.8% Dow Jones estimate. That marked another month of the fastest pace for inflation going back to December 1981.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core CPI increased 5.9%, compared to the 5.7% estimate.

On a monthly basis, headline CPI rose 1.3% and core CPI was up 0.7%, compared to respective estimates of 1.1% and 0.5%.

Taken together, the numbers seemed to counter the narrative that inflation may be peaking, as the gains were based across a variety of categories.

Energy prices surged 7.5% on the month and were up 41.6% on a 12-month basis. The food index increased 1%, while shelter costs, which make up about one-third of the CPI rose 0.6% for the month and were up 5.6% annually. This was the sixth straight month that food at home rose at least 1%.

Rental costs 0.8% in June, the largest monthly increase since April 1986, according to the BLS.

Stock market futures slumped following the data while government bond yields surged.

Much of inflation rise came from gasoline prices, which increased 11.2% on the month and just shy of 60% for the 12-month period. Electricity costs rose 1.7% and 13.7%, respectively. New and used vehicle prices posted respective gains of 0.7% and 1.6%.

Medical care costs increased 0.7% on the month, propelled by a 1.9% increase in dental services, the largest monthly change ever recorded for that sector in data that goes back to 1995.

Airline fares were one of the few areas seeing a decline, falling 1.8% in June though still up 34.1% from a year ago. The meat, poultry, fish and eggs category also fell 0.4% for the month but is up 11.7% on an annual basis.

 

The good news is that July numbers are already better, with a sharp drop in oil prices this month so far.  Oil is down $25 from its June highs of $120 a barrel, but that still means oil is $95 right now, and gasoline prices still remain remain high.  They are falling too, finally, with the national average down 40 cents from $5 average highs.

But we'll almost certainly see more major rate cuts in the weeks ahead, another three-quarter percent or even a full percent point is not out of the question.

Last Call For Hearing Aides For America, Con't

The 7th hearing of the January 6th Committee today laid out the case that the white supremacist domestic terrorists involved in the deadly terrorist insurrection were of course there at Trump's bidding.

The day after an explosive Oval Office meeting in which a motley crew of outside advisers clashed with White House lawyers over a plan to seize voting machines, then-President Donald Trump turned his focus to riling up his supporters for the Jan. 6 push to stop the counting of electoral votes, according to evidence presented in Tuesday's House committee hearing.

Two longtime Trump advisers, Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, were in contact with leaders of the violent extremist groups The Proud Boys and The Oath Keepers, according to text messages and photographs produced by the committee — though Stone, through a lawyer, disputed participating in a group chat. The two groups began working together for the first time after Trump issued his call for a Jan. 6 rally in Washington, the panel said.

One witness, Stephen Ayres, who has pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after entering the Capitol Jan. 6, said he didn't plan to march until Trump called on the crowd at a "Stop the Steal" rally to march to the Capitol to encourage Republican lawmakers to block certification. Ayres said he went thinking that Trump would accompany the mob.

"We basically just followed on what he said," Ayres said. "I think everybody thought he was going to be coming down. ... I believed it."

The evidence presented by the committee Tuesday is designed to fit into its broader case that Trump resorted to inciting violence after learning that he had lost the election and had no legal means to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. In that effort, the panel portrayed the weeks after the November 2020 election as a time of desperation for Trump, during which he considered strategies his own lawyers viewed as detrimental to the nation and his close confidants encouraged the extremist groups that led the attack on the Capitol.

 

Trump's own inner circle told him that the game was up on several occasions. Trump turned around and tweeted a call to armed insurrection.

On Dec. 19, just hours after the meeting ended, Trump tweeted to his followers that they should come to the nation’s capital.

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Be there, will be wild!”

That turned into a “call to action” for some and a “call to arms” for others, said Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., a member of the committee.

Some Trump supporters came to see Jan. 6 as the last chance to stop his ouster by voters — and a moment that begged for violence, according to videos and online posts the committee played.

There was at least one reference to a “red wedding” — the scene from the HBO show “Game of Thrones” in which members of a leading family are slaughtered by enemies.

“I’m ready to die for my beliefs,” one person posted on social media in reference to Jan. 6. “Are you ready to die police?”

In a group chat dubbed “The Ministry of Defense” Proud Boys and Oath Keepers discussed strategic and tactical plans for Jan. 6, including pinpointing police locations, according to the committee. Kelly Meggs, a leader of the Oath Keepers, directly discussed security with Stone on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, Raskin said.

 

And at the end of the day's testimony, Rep. Liz Cheney hinted at what's coming next. 

 

The House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 revealed that they told the Department of Justice that former President Donald Trump contacted one of its witnesses who hasn’t publicly testified yet.

“After our last hearing. President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation. A witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee, said on Tuesday.

“That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice,” she added.

A spokesman for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

 

The Committee has now referred Trump to the Justice Department for investigation into federal witness tampering, folks.  Already, the info from this hearing has pushed Thursday's prime time hearing back until next week.

We'll see.

Sittenfeld This One Out, Con't

After his arrest on federal bribery and corruption charges in November 2020, former Cincinnati City Councilman and rising Democratic party star PG Sittenfeld was convicted last week on two of those charges and now faces prison time.

 

Former Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, who at one point was widely considered to be the next mayor, was found guilty Friday of federal corruption charges.

Sittenfeld, 37, was convicted on felony charges of bribery and attempted extortion. But he was acquitted on four other counts, including honest services fraud.

Sittenfeld dipped his head and slumped forward in his seat after hearing the verdict. His wife, Sarah Coyne, and at least one other woman in the packed courtroom started to cry.

No sentencing date was set. Those are often set weeks after verdicts in federal cases.

Federal sentences are determined by calculating numerous factors. Chase College of Law professor Kenneth Katkin, who attended nearly every day of the trial, calculated a possible sentence range between 15 months and 3½ years in prison.

U.S. District Judge Douglas Cole could depart from that range, but he would have to have a specific reason for doing so.

Sittenfeld's attorney, Charles M. Rittgers, declined to comment after the verdict.

Mike Allen, a former prosecutor who practices in federal court, said he expects an appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"This isn’t over," said Allen, who is now a defense attorney. "The 6th Circuit will be looking at this closely."

U.S. Attorney Kenneth Parker said in a statement: “Democracy requires politicians to uphold their oath with the highest standards of integrity and respect. In this case, we worked alongside the FBI to hold Mr. Sittenfeld accountable for abusing his oath and, ultimately, the trust that the citizens of Cincinnati placed in him.”

The jury convicted Sittenfeld of bribery and attempted extortion that took place between Sept. 21, 2018 and Dec. 17, 2018.

He was acquitted of alleged crimes that took place between July 8, 2019 and Feb. 5, 2020 – all of which involved interactions with undercover FBI agents.

Before the trial began, Sittenfeld turned down a plea deal that would have capped his possible prison term at two years and allowed him to argue for probation only.

 

The number of bad decisions made by Sittenfeld over the last few years almost guaranteed this outcome.  The Feds have been cleaning up Ohio corruption in both parties over the last few years, and Sittenfeld destroyed his career over a stupid bribery move.  He then refused a plea deal, and now he's stuck looking at two or three years in prison. If he had taken the deal in 2021, he'd probably have gotten away with probation.

Even if the guy gets out of the clink and makes another stab at Ohio politics, he's a convicted felon now. People tend to not vote for those.

This dumbass did it all to himself.

Don't Read All About It

America has tuned out the news in 2022 so far, and if you're wondering why the only thing voters care about is $5 gas, it's because nobody really wants to look at the damn news anymore.

Engagement with news content has plunged during the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2021 and in some cases has fallen below pre-pandemic levels.

Why it matters: Americans have grown exhausted from the constant barrage of bad headlines that have replaced Trump-era crises, scandals and tweets.

The big picture: The level of news consumption in 2021 took a nosedive following historic highs in 2020. Despite a slew of major stories, readers have retrenched further in 2022.The war in Ukraine, a series of deadly mass shootings, the Jan. 6 hearings and the Supreme Court's revocation of abortion rights haven't been able to capture the same level of attention spurred by the onset of the pandemic and the 2020 election.

Details: Engagement with news content across all platforms declined significantly in the first half of 2022.Cable viewership across the three major cable news networks — CNN, Fox News and MSNBC — is, on average, down 19% in prime time for the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2021. Those losses skew heavily toward CNN and MSNBC, which are down 47% and 33%, respectively. Fox's ratings are up 12% in that six-month span.  

News app sessions for the top 12 mainstream most-trafficked publishers dropped 16% in the first half of 2022, according to data from Apptopia. Website visits for the top 5 news websites in the U.S. by unique visits tracked by Similarweb dropped 18% in the first half of 2022. Engagement on social media with news articles cratered over the past six months, dropping 50% since the first half of last year, despite more articles published, according to data from Newswhip. Engagement is measured by interactions with articles posted, which includes likes, comments and shares.

Yes, but: The steep drop-off in social media engagement with news was likely influenced by Facebook's de-emphasizing news in the News Feed as it seeks to move news consumption to its News Tab.

Zoom out: In some cases, engagement has fallen below pre-pandemic levels — a news diet "whiplash."Among the top 12 news apps, sessions in the first half of 2022 are down 13% compared with the first half of 2019, per Apptopia.Engagement with news articles on social media has cratered from the pre-pandemic rate, according to NewsWhip data, with interactions down 42% in the first half of 2022 compared to the first half of 2019. 

The pre-pandemic comparison for cable news viewership also shows a drop, with numbers for the three major cable news networks in primetime down 15% in the first half of 2022 compared to the first half of 2019. Fox News is up slightly, but MSNBC and CNN are down 16% and 35%, respectively.

Be smart: Interest in the presidency has declined considerably under Biden compared to his predecessor, fueling some of the engagement declines.Trump and Biden have generated the same level of Google searches in the time since Biden took office. In the year and a half after Trump took office in 2017, he generated 7 times more search interest than former President Obama.

The big picture: Survey data shows Americans have grown weary amid what feels like a never-ending cycle of bad news.

 

This seems like a confession to me. "We're flooding America with bad news, Biden and the Democrats are greatly suffering because of it, and nobody cares about Biden's accomplishments....nobody."

I think the second half will see more of America turning in as the midterms get closer, but the real story here is that the news industry desperately wants Donald Trump back and are at this point openly pulling for Republicans so that they can get more coverage, controversy, and clicks.

Maybe tuning out the news is a good idea at this point.

Racist Bannon Strikes Again, Con't

As January 6th hearings resume this week, including a primetime hearing Thursday night, Donald Trump needs a way to slow down or derail the testimony train, and the perfect candidate for that is living trash elemental Steve Bannon. Marcy Wheeler on why Bannon, why now:

Back on June 29 (less than two weeks ago), Bannon moved to delay his trial until October, claiming — as many other accused January 6 criminals have — that publicity associated with the January 6 Committee makes it impossible to get a fair trial. It was a reasonable claim for the Proud Boys to make. But thus far, Bannon has no more figured in the hearings than other passing faces in the mob.

Indeed, DOJ mocked Bannon’s claim, noting that he had been mentioned just twice in more than fourteen hours of hearings, one of which was just a description that he had blown off the Committee subpoena.

In fourteen hours of hearings, Bannon merited no more than thirty seconds of attention.

Presciently, DOJ noted that no one but Steve Bannon and his lawyers are talking about Steve Bannon.

Bannon responded on July 6, just four days ago, presenting entirely irrelevant data that counted how many times his name has shown up in the press, then attributing all of that to the Committee, and not his own big mouth.

Then he opened his own big mouth and caused what he claims he’s trying hard to avoid: a press torrent of mostly inaccurate reporting.

Two weeks ago, Steve Bannon needed to be something more than a thirty second man in hopes of delaying his trial. And multiple outlets jumped to do his bidding.

 

So now Bannon almost certainly will accomplish multiple things if he really does have a deal with the January 6th Committee to testify: a reason to delay his own trial, a voice to attack the credibility of other committee witnesses, a way to fill the news cycle with bullshit to cloud the truth, and a way to get back in Trump's good graces.

Keep in mind this isn't about Bannon's legal fees. Trump isn't paying them, supposedly, but that doesn't mean Bannon doesn't have the money. No, this is about mutual self-interest at the expense of the nation.

Bannon's case judge is not impressed one bit.

 

A judge said he would not delay the contempt of Congress trial of Steve Bannon on Monday, just one week before it is set to begin.

Bannon was indicted last year for refusing to answer questions from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Bannon, who had stonewalled the committee since October 2021, had a last-minute change of heart over the weekend, a decision his lawyer attributed to a letter from former President Donald Trump that waived a purported claim of executive privilege. The Justice Department maintains that Bannon's offer to testify was nothing more than a “last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability.”

Trump's own lawyer, Justin Clark, according to the Justice Department, told the FBI that Trump “never invoked executive privilege over any particular information or materials" and offered no basis for Bannon's "total noncompliance" with his subpoena.

Judge Carl Nichols, who previously ruled that Bannon could not argue that he was not guilty because he was relying upon the advice of his lawyer, ruled Monday that Bannon cannot present evidence that he relied upon old opinions from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) regarding executive privilege either.

 

Oops.

 

Slovenly little carbuncle.

 

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

As I've been saying for years now, one of the major goals of the GOP is to get rid of public education as we know it and replace it with for-profit charter and private schools as well as publicly-funded religious education. Public schools as we know them will be eliminated, replaced with the promise of "top quality schools" that of course will have limited numbers of students, leaving everyone else out in the cold with no promise of even being able to attain education.  

It's why Republicans want to force parents to pay for schools directly with charter school schemes that have failed only due to scope, and those who can't afford schools will find that work ages have been lowered so that kids can still be sent to do the jobs that nobody else wants to do for less than minimum wage.

And the newest testing ground for this total workhouse replacement mess? The state of Arizona under Gov. Doug Ducey. 

As Gov. Doug Ducey signed Arizona’s universal school voucher expansion into law Thursday, public education advocates geared up for a petition drive to block the effort, promising once again to use a public referendum to halt universal access to the Empowerment Scholarship Account program.

The program is now the largest school voucher program in the country. It changes the very nature of how families in Arizona can spend public education dollars by opening up the option for all students to spend a portion of tax funding initially allocated to public education at private schools.

Ducey, who will complete his term as governor in January, celebrated the law.

"This is a monumental moment for all of Arizona’s students. Our kids will no longer be locked in under-performing schools," he said in a statement Thursday. “With this legislation, Arizona cements itself as the top state for school choice and as the first state in the nation to offer all families the option to choose the school setting that works best for them."

Public education advocates called it a disaster for Arizona schools.

“Arizona voters will be eager to reject HB 2853 (Universal ESA Voucher Expansion) once and for all on the November 2024 ballot, sending a clear message to national privatizers that Arizona voters overwhelmingly support public schools and want our lawmakers to prioritize them,” said Beth Lewis, Save Our Schools Arizona director.

She said the group would start printing petitions the moment the bill went into law and distribute them among volunteers across the state already doing voter outreach work.

“Arizona voters are fed up with majority lawmakers who are prioritizing their wealthy donors and greedy special interests over the Arizona students, parents, and citizens they are supposed to represent."

The tug of war between laws passed by Arizona’s school choice-minded state leaders and public education groups like Save Our Schools Arizona is far from new, but there is no promised outcome.

If Save Our Schools Arizona and its supporters can secure 118,823 valid signatures before September 24, the voucher expansion will be placed on hold until November 2024, when voters get a chance to weigh in.

A similar voucher expansion was successfully stopped through a public referendum in 2018.

But the most recent voucher expansion, as well as court rulings like the one that killed Proposition 208, the voter-approved tax increase for education, show how those efforts can be curtailed. The Legislature could also repeal the voucher law next year and replace it with a similar bill, thus nullifying the referendum effort.

 

The problem, as with so many other Republican-created disasters that we're dealing with now. is supply.

There are only X number of seats in the top-performing schools. Those will go to those already paying to live close to top-performing local schools. Everyone else gets their second, or third, or fourth, or...their last choice. It's reverse busing.

And this is all going to require lots of non-union teachers, you see.

The education requirement for teachers in Arizona has changed. Under legislation Gov. Doug Ducey signed earlier this week, a person only needs to be enrolled to get their college degree to begin teaching in public schools. It’s a big change, and it’s been met with mixed reactions.

Jens Larson said there was a teacher shortage back when he joined the profession in 2000. “I was hired as an emergency certified teacher. I had a degree but I didn’t have the teacher credentials that were needed,” Larson said.

For 14 years, he worked at the Phoenix Union High School District. He said the low pay, lack of respect, and resources led him to leave. Since leaving, he started Phoenix Youth Circus Arts Program and continues to work with children. “I have more fun teaching circus than I do teaching geometry, I have to admit that,” he said.

But this new change, SB 1159, he said, was a stretch. “The situation will be even worse if you’re dealing with either younger people or even less well-educated people,” Larson said.

“It could work, obviously there’s no one size fits all plan,” said Christopher Ramsey, a Phoenix teacher. Ramsey also benefitted from the teacher shortage years back. “I’m a teacher, and I taught for two years while doing an accelerated master’s program, so I didn’t have my teacher’s degree,” he added. He said if you have the right person, it could work.

The Arizona Educators Association, or AEA, fought this legislation. “You have to have some experience. It’s going to allow people to do on the job training, and that’s where it’s scary,” Marisol Garcia, the President of the AEA, said. 

Charter schools are going to hire all sorts of "teachers" under this plan, but what they won't be is unionized. Arizona's public education system is going to collapse spectacularly in the next few years, and it's only a matter of time before red states follow suit with this awful scheme.

Last Call For The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin only has to waste another four weeks with posturing over a deal that will never happen before the Senate's month long August recess and campaign season beginning Labor Day, and he'll have successfully, singlehandedly, killed Biden's Build Back Better plan completely, as intended.

Senate Democrats are redoubling their efforts to finalize a new spending package that could lower health-care costs and combat climate change, hoping to hammer out a long-elusive deal with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and bring it to the chamber floor later this month.

A new sense of optimism — and urgency — has set in among party lawmakers nearly seven months after their last attempt to pass a sweeping bill ended in stunning defeat. Piece by piece, Democratic leaders in recent days have started reconstructing their economic ambitions as they race to deliver on a staple element of President Biden’s agenda before the midterm elections in November.

So far, top Democrats have worked out with Manchin new agreements that would cut drug costs for seniors, improve the financial health of Medicare and close a tax loophole that benefits the wealthy. They even have advanced talks around addressing the challenges posed by a faster-warming planet, raising the prospect that they can secure a limited initiative to penalize methane emissions.

Those early agreements have set the stage for Senate Democrats to make an upbeat return to the Capitol on Monday. Manchin is expected to have his next private meeting with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) early in the week, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the deliberations. They are set to discuss climate as Democrats try to bring one of their thorniest fights with the moderate West Virginian to an end.

Plenty remains unresolved, including the fate of a key program that lowers insurance costs for millions of Americans, raising the prospect that the latest round of talks could collapse much as they did before. Adding to the challenge, Republicans have intensified their opposition in recent days, hoping to apply enough political pressure on Manchin that he walks away from the talks again.

“To my friend Joe Manchin from West Virginia, whose vote is going to be necessary for this, I would remind him Joe Biden’s popularity in that state is as low as it is in Wyoming, only 17 percent.,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), leader of the Senate Republican Conference, said during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” He added that Manchin “shouldn’t walk the plank for Joe Biden” politically.

Even if Manchin and members of his party manage to strike a deal, it is guaranteed to be far smaller than Democrats’ original, roughly $2 trillion package, known as the Build Back Better Act, which the senator scuttled last year. The cuts might have been unthinkable earlier in the debate, but many Democrats have come to acknowledge them as the costs of compromise — and feel more hopeful than ever that there is now a pathway to achieve it.

“We’re making real progress, we’re picking up steam, and the central reason is we’re focused on cutting costs and addressing these real pocket book issues on the minds of Americans,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the tax-focused Finance Committee.

“I’m not saying it’s all done, it’s all over and the like,” Wyden later added, “but I do feel more confident about the progress that has been made.”

 

So when President Manchin and Senate Majority Leader McConnell finally destroy this bill over the next few weeks, remember that I told you wrecking any meaningful economic progress to help the Democrats in 2022 was Manchin's goal all along.

He just has to yank the football away one last time, and he can then do whatever he wants after that, switch parties, retire, run again, either way he'll get what he wants.

He's a lot better at this game than people realize.

 

 

Playing Near Gasoline WIth An Open Flame

The Biden administration is trying to find a sweet spot between keeping Russian sanctions on oil and causing a massive jump in oil prices to $200 a barrel or more, and one wrong move could blow up the global economy completely.

Relief at the gas pump coupled with this past week’s news that businesses continue to hire at a blistering clip have tempered many economists’ fears that America is heading into a downturn.

But while President Biden’s top aides are celebrating those economic developments, they are also worried the economy could be in for another serious shock later this year, one that could send the country into a debilitating recession.

White House officials fear a new round of European penalties aimed at curbing the flow of Russian oil by year-end could send energy prices soaring anew, slamming already beleaguered consumers and plunging the United States and other economies into a severe contraction. That chain of events could exacerbate what is already a severe food crisis plaguing countries across the world.

To prevent that outcome, U.S. officials have latched on to a never-before-tried plan aimed at depressing global oil prices — one that would complement European sanctions and allow critical flows of Russian crude onto global markets to continue but at a steeply discounted price.

Europe, which continues to guzzle more than two million barrels of Russian oil each day, is set to enact a ban on those imports at the end of the year, along with other steps meant to complicate Russia’s efforts to export fuel globally. While Mr. Biden pushed Europe to cut off Russian oil as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine, some forecasters, along with top economic aides to the president, now fear that such policies could result in huge quantities of Russian oil — which accounts for just under a tenth of the world’s supply — suddenly taken off the global market.

Analysts have calculated that such a depletion in supply could send oil prices soaring to $200 per barrel or more, translating to Americans paying $7 a gallon for gasoline. Global growth could slam into reverse as consumers and businesses pull back spending in response to higher fuel prices and as central banks, which are already raising interest rates in an effort to tame inflation, are forced to make borrowing costs even more expensive.

The potential for another oil shock to puncture the global economy, and perhaps Mr. Biden’s re-election prospects, has driven the administration’s attempts to persuade government and business leaders around the world to sign on to a global price cap on Russian oil.

It is a novel and untested effort to force Russia to sell its oil to the world at a steep discount. Administration officials and Mr. Biden say the goal is twofold: to starve Moscow’s oil-rich war machine of funding and to relieve pressure on energy consumers around the world who are facing rising fuel prices.

To transport its oil to market, Russia draws on financing, ships and, crucially, insurance from Britain, Europe and the United States. The European penalties, as currently constructed, would not only cut Russia off from most of the European oil market but also from those other Western supports for its shipments. If strictly enforced, those measures could leave Moscow with no means of transporting its oil, at least temporarily.

The Biden administration’s proposal would not affect the European ban, but it would ease some of the other restrictions — but only if the transported Russian oil is sold for no more than a price set by the United States and its allies. That would allow Moscow to continue moving oil to the rest of the world. The oil now flowing to France or Germany would go elsewhere — Central America, Africa or even China and India — and Russia would have to sell it at a discount.

Some economists and oil industry experts are skeptical that the plan will work, either as a way to reduce revenues for the Kremlin or to push down prices at the pump. They warn the plan could mostly enrich oil refiners and could be ripe for evasion by Russia and its allies. Moscow could refuse to sell at the capped price.

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen plans to push for more support for the cap when she meets with fellow finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations — including Russia’s — in Asia in the next week. The American delegation will have no contact with the Russians, a Treasury official said.

But even some skeptics say that the price cap could, if nothing else, keep enough Russian oil pumping to avoid a recession-triggering price spike.

Administration officials say privately that there are signs in oil markets that even in its infant stages, the cap proposal is already helping to reassure traders that the world could avoid abruptly losing millions barrels of Russian oil per day at the year’s end.

 

And I see we're conducting war with the Rational Actor Theory again, where the White House assumes that Putin is in this for the money. If oil overheats, the argument goes, oil would collapse economies, a global recession would occur, and oil would drop back to $20 again. Putin will then go along with the price cap because not doing so would hurt him far more than the West.

That's a hell of a bet, that Putin will be an active participant in his own punishment.

If it fails, we're looking at a nightmare just as elections are coming up here.

We'll see.

Sunday Long Read: Out Of Africa

The Guardian's Eve Fairbanks gives us our Sunday Long Read this week, as she details her experiences with Black farmers in post-apartheid South Africa, and if you think Black farmers in America are being driven out of business in favor of white farmers, remember that South Africa has all but perfected that move.

The tiny plane banked and headed north. It was a sunny morning in 2015, and the pilot and I were flying out of a Johannesburg airfield towards the Zimbabwe border. Having lived in South Africa for six years, I wanted to see from the air a problem I had often thought about: a problem proposed by the end of apartheid, when black people had to enter into and possess a world that white people believed they had created.

Two decades earlier, in 1994, Nelson Mandela had been inaugurated as the country’s first black president. He’d gripped the hand of FW de Klerk – its last white president – and said in Afrikaans, his former jailers’ language: “Wat is verby, is verby!” (“What is past, is past”). These words had expressed the hope for the country’s transition: that with the right attitudes – repentance from white people and forgiveness from people of colour – the damage that segregation had done could be left in the past.

And some parts of South Africa did look miraculously transformed. Apartheid was the most rigid form of legalised racial segregation history has ever known. Now, on the new high-speed train that connects Johannesburg with its airport, white men stood and yielded their seats to black women who were doing business deals on their iPhones.

But it also felt like a dread was hanging over the country. In one newspaper, I read a letter written by a black South African who warned that the country’s level of dissatisfaction would soon “make the burning of Mississippi” – the unrest in the Jim Crow-era American South – “look like a little bonfire”. And I noticed how much of the past was still present. Many roads were still named after Afrikaner heroes, and mine dumps still divided mostly white-dominated neighbourhoods from the ones black people lived in. But the view from the plane was the most graphic manifestation of this division. From the air, Johannesburg’s dense suburban developments gave way to equestrian estates, then to the folds of the Magaliesberg mountains. And then, beyond the mountains, farmland began. And suddenly I saw it. It was so stark.

Apartheid leaders had tried to carve South Africa into multiple countries: a “white” country and a handful of black “homelands”, which they insisted were completely different, sovereign nations. Politically, that was always a farce. The homelands had puppet rulers and no local economies; they commanded little loyalty among their so-called citizens. Most of their residents still commuted to white areas to work.

No foreign country ever recognised the demarcation between white and black South Africa as real. And yet over time what began as an absurdist proposition had become real.

As segregation deepened throughout the 20th century, much of the fertile, rain-washed land had been given to white people, while the barren peaks and hot, dry, malaria-ridden lowlands were given to black tribal leaders. From our little plane, the borders between white and black landscapes were clearly visible: green was white South Africa and dust brown was black South Africa. Different patterns of habitation had emerged: in black South Africa, regularly placed little metal-roofed homes dotted the dun-colored earth. White-owned areas were large sweeps of unbroken pasture or cropland.

Intensive farming had been a pride and a fixation for white South Africans. The degree to which they made the land yield harvest was supposed to be their justification for keeping it. The apartheid government not only stripped black South Africans of the right to privately buy land, but poured massive amounts of money into assistance programmes for white farmers. From the air, the country looked as if a child had cut up travel-magazine pictures of some pastoral English fantasy and spliced them with pictures of the Sahel desert to make a collage.

I was curious to hear from black farmers what it was like to take over formerly white-owned farms. The intense association between whiteness and hi-tech agriculture posed a sharp challenge to black South Africans. Finally able to possess the land they had so long been denied, they felt driven to prove they could farm just as well or better. Land reform was one of the flagship policies that Mandela’s political party, the African National Congress (ANC), instituted after apartheid’s end. It set up a process to buy whites out of their farms and pass them to black people.

The ambitious goal was set to transfer at least 30% of South Africa’s white-owned agricultural land to black people. From 10,000ft up, though, I saw how challenging it would be. When I zoomed in on the lives of the people trying to make it work, I saw that it might be impossible.

 

South Africa learned a lot from Jim Crow America, and just as a new Jim Crow is sweeping across the US right now, South Africa is discovering that the structural racism in the country makes it far easier to have a new era of de facto apartheid.

 

We're headed there ourselves.

Indepen-Dunce Week In Review

So far in the last 72 hours we've seen the ouster of PM Boris Johnson in the UK, the assassination of former PM Shinzo Abe in Japan, and now the absolute collapse of Sri Lanka's government as the country's financial reserves have been plundered so badly that it has run out of money for importing basic goods like food, fuel, and medicine.

 

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose family has dominated politics in Sri Lanka for much of the past two decades, was asked by the country’s political leaders to step down on Saturday after months of protests accusing him of running the island nation’s economy into the ground through corruption and mismanagement.

The call for Mr. Rajapaksa’s departure was confirmed by two lawmakers and came after protesters entered the president’s residence and his office, ​and thousands ​more ​descended on the capital, Colombo, to register their growing fury over his government’s inability to address a crippling economic crisis.

By the evening, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took office only in May and was also facing demands to resign, said he would step down, saying he had “the safety of all citizens” in mind. Protesters entered his private home late Saturday and set it ablaze, said Dinouk Colombage, a spokesman for the prime minister, adding that Mr. Wickremesinghe was not at home at the time.

Sri Lanka has run out of foreign-exchange reserves for imports of essential items like fuel and medicine, and the United Nations has warned that more than a quarter of Sri Lanka’s 21 million people are at risk of food shortages.

The economic crisis is a major setback for the island nation that was still grappling with the legacy of a bloody three-decade civil war. That conflict, between the government and the Tamil Tiger insurgents who had taken up the cause of discrimination against the ethnic minority Tamils, ended in 2009. But many of its underlying causes have remained, with the Rajapaksa family continuing to cater to the majority Buddhist Sinhalese.

At least 42 people have been injured in clashes with security forces in the city, health officials said, after the police used tear gas and water cannons against protesters and fired shots into the air to try to disperse them.

A Sri Lankan television station said four of its journalists were attacked by security forces outside the residence of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Saturday evening. In a video released by News 1st, the Colombo-based media outlet on Twitter, officers in riot gear can be seen using sticks to repeatedly beat a man holding a camera, even after he falls to the ground. The station said all four of its journalists were rushed to the hospital after the incident.

Local news media showed footage of protesters breaching parts of the presidential residence as well as his secretariat, a separate building that houses his office.

Videos on social media showed protesters jumping into the pool in Mr. Rajapaksa’s residence, resting in bedrooms, and frying snacks in the presidential kitchen.

“I came here today to send the president home,” said Wasantha Kiruwaththuduwa, 50, who had walked 10 miles to join the protest. “Now the president must resign. If he wants peace to prevail, he must step down.”

 

The last three years in the US has been unprecedented.

So have the last 3 days around the world.

Indepen-Dunce Week: Georgia On My Mind Once Again

The Democrats' most bunerable senator remains Raphael Warnock, who is neck and neck in his battle with human concussion tackling dummy/sperm donor Herschel Walker.

Georgia is already a hotbed of political spending as Democrats try to maintain their momentum in the state—and a new poll shows the race between former NFL player Herschel Walker (R) and incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) is neck-and-neck.

A survey by Data for Progress conducted between July 1 and July 6, exclusively shared with The Daily Beast, shows Walker narrowly leading Warnock by 49 percent to 47 percent. Both candidates fell into negative favorability ratings, as Walker received a -3 favorability while Warnock received a -7.

The Georgia Senate seat is one of the Democrats’ top priorities this year as they hope to maintain power in Congress’s upper chamber. But with the party forecast to face massive headwinds during the midterm elections while President Joe Biden’s favorability continues to spiral, Democrats in Georgia, like many other states, could be facing an uphill battle.

But there have been glimmers of hope for Warnock’s re-election bid. Walker has been plagued by scandals, most recently reports by The Daily Beast that he has at least three children he’d kept secret from the public, despite speaking against absentee fathers throughout the campaign. And other polls have shown Warnock and Walker as tied, while another had Warnock leading by 10 points.

Though the latest poll shows Warnock down from those previous numbers, Data for Progress founder Sean McElwee told The Daily Beast he sees it as “a more accurate reading of the race,” noting their research shows Republicans are invested in economic issues this cycle while Democrats continue to focus on party values.

Walker has consistently hammered economics as a tenet of his campaign, railing against Democrats for inflation and gas prices throughout his candidacy.

The gubernatorial race between Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams and Republican incumbent Brian Kemp is not nearly as close, according to the poll. The survey found that 53 percent of respondents said they’d vote for Kemp compared to only 44 for Abrams. Kemp also had a +3 favorability rating, compared to Abrams’ -9.

Previous polling shows Kemp and Abrams in a close matchup, with a June Quinnipiac poll having them tied.

 

If there's any caveat here, it's that in 2020, state polling was across-the-board abysmal, as it was in 2018 and 2016. Especially for Senate contests, races that were thought to be close were double-digit wins for Republicans like Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, Thom Tillis, and Roger Marshall.

Of course, those state polling errors went the other way too, that both Georgia Dems won as well in 2020.

Here's hoping that Warnock can hold on.

 

Indepen-Dunce Week: Shinzo Abe Assassinated

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot in the back at a political rally for his party yesterday and succumbed to his injuries.

Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, a towering political figure at home and abroad, died after being shot at a campaign event Friday, doctors said, shocking a nation where firearms laws are among the world’s strictest and gun violence is rare.

Abe, 67, was stumping for a fellow politician from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Nara, near Osaka, on Friday morning when a gunman opened fire with what police described as an improvised weapon.

Hidetada Fukushima, head of the emergency center at the Nara Medical University Hospital, said Abe had no vital signs when he arrived there at 12:20 p.m. Friday. Doctors found two gunshot wounds to his neck, and one of the bullets had reached his heart, Fukushima said. Despite efforts to save him, including a transfusion, Abe died of blood loss less than five hours later.

The assassination of Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, and a staunch U.S. ally, sent shock waves throughout the country ahead of elections for the upper house of parliament on Sunday.

Police arrested a suspect, a man from Nara in his 40s named Tetsuya Yamagami, and seized a gun. Yamagami was a member of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force for three years, defense officials told Japanese media.

Footage of the event showed Abe giving a speech, then a plume of smoke forming behind him as he collapsed. Officials ran to apprehend the shooter, who appeared to be positioned behind Abe. Videos showed a chaotic scene with Abe, unmoving, lying on the ground as attendees yelled for an ambulance. The bullet wounds were found in the front of Abe’s body, Fukushima said.

Abe, who came from a prominent political family, was the youngest person to become prime minister of postwar Japan. His popularity soared after he resigned from office in 2020, and he remained a power broker who frequented campaign events to support other LDP politicians.

At an emotional news conference after Abe’s death, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida praised his former colleague as “a dear friend who loved this country.”

“To lose such a figure in this manner is absolutely devastating,” he said.

Kishida said Sunday’s upper house election would continue as planned but with enhanced safety measures, saying it was important to protect the democratic process and not allow violence to change its course.

“Elections are the foundation of democracy, which we must defend. We cannot give in to violence. For this reason, we will continue to fight the election campaign until the very end. I hope the people of Japan will think about and work hard to protect this democracy,” Kishida said.

 

It's nearly incomprehensible for this to happen in a country like Japan, it's like the start of a particularly cynical and depressing anime series where things only get worse in the country. Japan doesn't have nearly the amount of reactionary fascist types that America or Europe does, and Abe was still killed, the equivalent of America losing President Obama or Clinton to a bullet, or German Chancellor Angela Merkel falling to an assassin.

If this is happening in a country like Japan, the world is in real trouble.

Indepen-Dunce Week: Bye=Bye Boris

After a three-year rule plagued by scandal and stupidity, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is finally headed out after the majority of his own cabinet resigned over the last 36 hours. BBC Political Editor Chris Mason:

Boris Johnson is to stand down as Conservative Party leader, but intends to carry on as prime minister until the autumn.

He plans to stay in Downing Street until a new Tory leader has been elected to replace him as PM.

And he has begun appointing new ministers to replace the ones that quit in protest at his leadership.

But some Tory MPs are urging him to leave as soon as possible to avoid government paralysis.

Former minister Sir Bob Neill told MPs there was a "serious question mark" over how long a "caretaker" prime minister could stay in place. 

"Might it not be in everybody's interest to speed up the transition as much as possible?" he added.

Sir Keir Starmer said that if the Conservative Party did not "get rid" of Mr Johnson immediately then Labour would bring a vote of no confidence "in the national interest".

"We can't go on with this prime minister clinging on for months," said the Labour leader, adding: "He needs to go completely... he's inflicted lies, fraud, and chaos in the country."

A vote of no confidence would be held in Parliament - if the government lost the vote that could lead to a general election, but this would require a significant rebellion from Conservative MPs to back a Labour motion.

It follows a dramatic 48 hours which saw dozens of ministers - including chancellor Rishi Sunak - resigning in protest at his leadership.

Mr Sunak's replacement as chancellor Nadhim Zahawi was among the ministers urging the PM to quit.

Mr Johnson resisted the calls until Thursday morning, when it became clear that he had lost the confidence of his MPs and that the government could no longer function.

Attorney General Suella Braverman and leading backbencher Steve Baker are the first Tory MPs to declare a leadership bid, with others expected to follow.

Less than three years ago, Mr Johnson won an historic landslide victory in a general election - but he has been dogged by controversy in recent months, including a fine for breaking his own lockdown laws.

The revolt this week was triggered by revelations about the prime minister's handling of sexual misconduct allegations against former Deputy Chief Whip Chris Pincher.

BBC political editor Chris Mason said Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, has met the prime minister to tell him he has lost the confidence of the party. 

 

I'm fairly sure the cowards in Toryland aren't going to go along with Starmer's no confidence vote this time because they'd actually lose a general election, so expect months of infighting about a new Tory leader who would then become PM. Some 18 Tories want to be the next Boris.

Still, it's possible in a world where enough of the government has resigned to the point of "no longer being a going concern" as the Brits say.

Now the race begins to see how fast Boris Bad Enough can get gone good enough.

Indepen-Dunce Week: The State Of Church And State

White supremacist "Christian" nationalists are openly telling us what's coming next: a theocratic police state where anyone who isn't a white, straight male "Christian" will have their rights stripped until nothing is left but their lives, and even those will be taken in violent fashion, as journalist Katerine Stewart reports from the front lines.

A good place to gauge the spirit and intentions of the movement that brought us the radical majority on the Supreme Court is the annual Road to Majority Policy Conference. At this year’s event, which took place last month in Nashville, three clear trends were in evidence. First, the rhetoric of violence among movement leaders appeared to have increased significantly from the already alarming levels I had observed in previous years. Second, the theology of dominionism — that is, the belief that “right-thinking” Christians have a biblically derived mandate to take control of all aspects of government and society — is now explicitly embraced. And third, the movement’s key strategists were giddy about the legal arsenal that the Supreme Court had laid at their feet as they anticipated the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

They intend to use that arsenal — together with additional weaponry collected in cases like Carson v. Makin, which requires state funding of religious schools if private, secular schools are also being funded; and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which licenses religious proselytizing by public school officials — to prosecute a war on individual rights, not merely in so-called red state legislatures but throughout the nation.

Although metaphors of battle are common enough in political gatherings, this year’s rhetoric appeared more violent, more graphic and more tightly focused on fellow Americans, rather than on geopolitical foes.

“The greatest danger to America is not our enemies from the outside, as powerful as they may be,” said former President Donald Trump, who delivered the keynote address at the event. “The greatest danger to America is the destruction of our nation from the people from within. And you know the people I’m talking about.”

Speakers at the conference vied to outdo one another in their denigration of the people that Mr. Trump was evidently talking about. Democrats, they said, are “evil,” “tyrannical” and “the enemy within,” engaged in “a war against the truth.”

“The backlash is coming,” warned Senator Rick Scott of Florida. “Just mount up and ride to the sounds of the guns, and they are all over this country. It is time to take this country back.”

Citing the fight against Nazi Germany during the Battle of the Bulge, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina said, “We find ourselves in a pitched battle to literally save this nation.” Referencing a passage from Ephesians that Christian nationalists often use to signal their militancy, he added, “I don’t know about you, but I got my pack on, I got my boots on, I got my helmet on, I’ve got on the whole armor.”

It is not a stretch to link this rise in verbal aggression to the disinformation campaign to indoctrinate the Christian nationalist base in the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, along with what we’re learning from the Jan. 6 hearings. The movement is preparing “patriots” for the continuation of the assault on democracy in 2022 and 2024.

The intensification of verbal warfare is connected to shifts in the Christian nationalist movement’s messaging and outreach, which were very much in evidence at the Nashville conference. Seven Mountains Dominionism — the belief that “biblical” Christians should seek to dominate the seven key “mountains” or “molders” of American society, including the government — was once considered a fringe doctrine, even among representatives of the religious right. At last year’s Road to Majority conference, however, there was a breakout session devoted to the topic. This year, there were two sessions, and the once arcane language of the Seven Mountains creed was on multiple speakers’ lips.

The hunger for dominion that appears to motivate the leadership of the movement is the essential context for making sense of its strategy and intentions in the post-Roe world. The end of abortion rights is the beginning of a new and much more personal attack on individual rights.

And indeed it is personal. Much of the rhetoric on the right invokes visions of vigilante justice. This is about “good guys with guns” — or neighbors with good eavesdropping skills — heroically taking on the pernicious behavior of their fellow citizens. Among the principal battlefields will be the fallopian tubes and uteruses of women.

At a breakout session called “Life Is on the Line: What Does the Future of the Pro-Life Movement Look Like From Here?” Chelsey Youman, the Texas state director and national legislative adviser to Human Coalition Action, a Texas-based anti-abortion organization with a national strategic focus, described the connection between vigilantes and abortion rights.

Instead of the state regulating abortion providers, she explained, “You and me as citizens of Texas or this country or wherever we can pass this bill, can instead sue the abortion provider.” Mrs. Youman, as it happens, played a role in promoting the Texas law Senate Bill 8, which passed in May 2021 and allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion. She was exultant over the likely passage of similar laws across the nation. “We have legislation ready to roll out for every single state you live in to protect life regardless of the Supreme Court, regardless of your circuit court.” To be sure, Christian nationalists are also pushing for a federal ban. But the struggle for the present will center on state-level enforcement mechanisms.

Movement leaders have also made it clear that the target of their ongoing offensive is not just in-state abortion providers, but what they call “abortion trafficking” — that is, women crossing state lines to access legal abortions, along with people who provide those women with services or support, like cars and taxis. Mrs. Youman hailed the development of a new “long-arm jurisdiction” bill that offers a mechanism for targeting out-of-state abortion providers. “It creates a wrongful death cause of action,” she said, “so we’re excited about that.”

The National Right to Life Committee’s model legislation for the post-Roe era includes broad criminal enforcement as well as civil enforcement mechanisms. “The model law also reaches well beyond the actual performance of an illegal abortion,” according to text on the organization’s website. It also includes “aiding or abetting an illegal abortion,” targeting people who provide “instructions over the telephone, the internet, or any other medium of communication.”

 

The goal will be statewide pogroms, with the Roberts Court conservatives weakening civil rights to the point that they can attain national power again and turn the federal government against "those people" in a massive, national purge, complete with privately-run prisons in every state to round up dissidents and to strip them of their voting rights by making them felons.

I understand that this sounds absolutely bonkers, and it is. But I just don't know how many more times I can ring this alarm bell, folks.

They are coming for us with guns blazing, in some contexts, quite literally.

The fight will be decades long, but the alternative is hell where many of us don't make it.

Indepen-Dunce Week: We're The Kids In America

The big question in November is if the record number of voters under 30 that powered Democrats to wins in 2018 and 2020 will bother even showing up in 2022, and they demand that Biden and the Democratic leadership be as passionate about defending abortion rights as they are, or else they will stay home and the country over to the GOP.

A debate is raging inside the Democratic Party about whether it’s giving its base — especially those under 30, the generation that most strongly supports abortion rights — enough motivation to keep voting for the party, as federal Democrats struggle to meaningfully push back against the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The fear is that an already deflated Democratic base won’t show up in November, particularly the youngest voters, who smashed participation records in the last two elections and backed President Joe Biden by a 25-point margin in 2020. Some Democrats stress that the Biden administration and Congress need to do more to show their rage — and willingness to take significant action — to mirror the passion seen among young people, three-quarters of whom support abortion being generally legal.

“There’s a fine line between the recent events pushing someone to never vote again or pushing someone to vote with that righteous anger and bring friends with them,” said Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old Democrat who is running for a Florida congressional seat. “It’s up to our leaders to decide which direction that’s going to go in. When they show they’re in the fight, using all the resources to fight for the most vulnerable in our community … but we need more right now.”

That sentiment was echoed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted that Democrats “cannot make promises, hector people to vote, and then refuse to use our full power,” ticking through a list of potential actions the party could take, including moving to expand the Supreme Court, opening abortion clinics on federal lands and repealing the Hyde Amendment.

Days later, Vice President Kamala Harris pushed back on that frustration in front of a room full of donors, defending Biden’s urging to vote in November: “I know some people are saying, ‘stop talking to us about the elections. We know.’ Don’t trivialize the significance. We can’t afford to,” because Democrats’ margins in Congress are razor-thin.

A big step in defusing the disagreement came when Biden confirmed last week that he would support a carveout to the Senate filibuster rules in order to codify in federal law the same access to abortion that was previously protected by Roe v. Wade. That move was a “step in the right direction,” said Carmel Pryor, senior communications director of the Alliance for Youth Action.

“However, ensuring momentum in the fight for control of Congress requires more action,” Pryor continued. “There’s a lot of talk about Roe strengthening the multigenerational coalition and, sure, there’s potential, but we need to see action taken now. This is an emergency that can’t wait until November.”

To be clear, the chances of a filibuster exception actually coming to pass are slim. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) both indicated they don’t plan on backing such a carveout.

Even so, Democrats said this kind of “political theater” is what voters, especially Gen Z, need to see to “value signal” that they’re “willing to fight for them,” said Terrance Woodbury, a Democratic pollster. He cited Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s effort to bus migrants from the Texas border to Washington, D.C., in the absence of federal action on immigration, calling it an example of a vivid action that effectively riles up the Republican base. Democrats, Woodbury continued, could be considering their own version of such attention-grabbing actions now.

“Can you imagine seeing hundreds of mobile clinics deployed from Washington to [the] states?” Woodbury added.

Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who focuses on Latino voters, a demographic group that skews far younger than most racial groups, echoed those concerns, noting that he’s “found in focus groups that just saying, ‘[I’m] fighting for it,’ is not enough any more.”

“They are tired of us saying, ‘we’re fighting,’ but not delivering shit. What can you do tangibly to make a difference to do something about this?” Rocha continued. “We are good at bringing a policy book to a fist fight, and I worry about young people not showing up to vote because of it.”

 

If there is anything that the "DO SOMETHING" kids have learned from the GOP, it's that those who are willing to burn down the country in order to play the long game usually end up winning, no matter how many folks get hurt in the process. If you're 25, you figure you have time to wait out the 70+ something Dem leadership and the 70+ something Republicans and then take over when they're gone.

They figure they have time for a 20+ year fight on civil rights, abortion, and climate change, but sacrifices have to me made. The article basically asks if these kids are already so cynical that they're willing to let the GOP go literally scorched earth for the rest of the decade, and then try to fight them when they can gather a coalition of survivors.

It sure looks like it. If AOC's performative, legislation-free approach is what under-30 voters demand, and that they won't lift a finger otherwise at the voting booth, then maybe it's time for a dog and pony show to rally the troops.

If everything Biden tries from an executive order standpoint is immediately shot down by the Roberts Court, and it will be, the Biden White House still has to, you know, try, is the argument.

Is it better to go down swinging, even if you keep hitting foul balls into the crowd and take a few folks in the crowd out and that's the best you can hope for?

I don't know. All I know is I still plan on voting, in a red state without abortion, in order to try to change things. Maybe that's the real foul ball analogy, swinging in the vain hope you connect and hit a home run, but at long as I get a chance at the plate every November, I'm taking it.