5.31 Jon Ossoff: “He is a failed president and a national disgrace.” 5.31 The Sheep Detectives
5.30 Dance recital
5.30 Greg Ip in the Wall Street Journal “Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages are up 3% since the end of 2019 while profits are up 50%. That, in a nutshell, explains the chasm between an ebullient stock market and anxious public.”
5.29 Zoo
5.28 Nicolas S. Rohatyn on Bloomberg: “The investor base for America’s largest and most consequential private companies is increasingly global: sovereign wealth funds, overseas universities and endowments, international family offices, and foreign institutional investors. . . . The extraordinary US companies reshaping modern life are more accessible in some ways to international capital than they are to ordinary American citizens. . . .By the time retail investors can buy a share, virtually all of the exponential upside will already belong to venture firms, international investors and institutional insiders. The public will be invited to the party just as the hosts are heading for the door.” His remedy? “Companies that have raised capital broadly from outside investors and grown beyond a defined scale should be required to list publicly within a defined period, making their continued growth accessible to all.”
5.27 Tom Robbins dies at 76.
5.27 Gal Beckerman in The Atlantic: “The ideology of Silicon Valley is one of inevitability: History is moving, with Hegelian determinism, in one direction—toward superintelligent machines—and anyone who questions or worries about what this means is made to feel like they are waving their hands in the path of a freight train. I’ve had so many conversations with proselytizers that end with, Well, it’s coming, so you better get used to it. What Leo does is push back against the inevitability. [The Pope] chose to release his encyclical on the anniversary of a previous Pope Leo’s treatise, in 1891, which looked at the ways industrialization was flattening human beings. The current pope clearly wants to draw connections among various forms of dehumanization, based on more than a century’s worth of new evidence, AI being only the latest assailant. These analogies, comparing the crushing weight of factory work or the inhumanity of totalitarianism to Silicon Valley’s handwork, might seem disheartening (and even a little overwrought to some). But Leo’s point is that people have always found ways to resist. They have advocated for laws to protect workers, demanded human- and civil-rights laws, chosen not to surrender. He is arguing against passivity. “Most people are watching and waiting, observing from afar and merely hoping for the best,” the pope writes. But the stakes as he’s describing them demand much more. He lists questions that “can no longer be avoided: Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as a people and as a human community?”
5.26 Thomas L. Friedman in the Times: “Only two questions remain regarding the U.S. war with Iran. One, how big a plate of crow will Trump have to eat to end this conflict with at least some achievements? And two, will he tell us the crow he’s eating is lobster or filet mignon? Personally, I am fine if Trump has to eat a pile of crow — for instance, the “unconditional surrender” of Iran that he promised will not be coming his way — if it results in Iran relinquishing its roughly 1,000 pounds of near weapons-grade uranium. It would take the immediate threat of an Iranian bomb off the table, and that would be a very good thing. But please spare me the nonsense that Trump has secured a perfect and delicious deal. Because securing that highly enriched uranium will not only leave the vile, murderous Islamic republic regime in power (and still holding some 10 tons of low-enriched uranium) — but actually strengthen it in troubling ways. For starters, Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will all be remembered as the team that gave the Islamic republic a second lease on life just when it was more on the ropes than ever with its own people. That’s because the only way Iran will relinquish that near bomb-grade uranium will be as part of a deal that over time lifts the U.S. blockade on Iran’s oil exports and the whole web of U.S. economic sanctions on Tehran. That relief will provide the regime with a huge injection of cash that it will be able to use to buy off — or continue to repress — its opponents at home and to fuel its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. “Trump launched this war of choice with the transformational goal of regime change,” Robert Litwak, an arms control expert and the author of “Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy,” told me. “He is on the verge of ending it through a transactional deal that will be a variant of the agreement Obama negotiated in 2015, and Trump recklessly jettisoned in 2018, that constrained Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”
5.26 Paxton beats Cornyn in Texas Senate primary run off. Paul Krugman comments: “So Texas Republicans have, by a huge margin, rejected Sen. John Cornyn, a hardline conservative whose great failing, from Donald Trump’s point of view, was that he occasionally took stands on principle. To replace him they chose the scandal-ridden, deeply corrupt Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who received Trump’s endorsement precisely because of his vices. Paxton’s rottenness makes him a Trump kindred spirit and also guarantees that he will be dependent on Trump’s goodwill and hence slavishly loyal. . . .[D]espite Paxton’s utter unfitness for any public office – let alone Senator — knowledgeable observers of Texas politics consider the race between Paxton and the Democratic nominee, James Talarico, no better than a tossup.”
5.26 At the Fernbank Center
5.25 Sonny Rollins dies at 95.
5.25 The Knicks sweep the Cavaliers, reach the NBA Finals.
5.25 In a 42,300 word encyclical,Pope Leo XIV warned corporate executives, politicians and individuals who will shape and be shaped by the future of artificial intelligence to safeguard humanity from A.I.’s most disruptive effects. The encyclical outlined the Pope’s desire to protect human dignity and agency in an age in which technology threatens to replace humans in many professional and social roles. While emphasizing that “technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity,” he wrote that “the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs.” Stressing the importance of retaining a fundamental social role for all humans, the Pope said “A society that guarantees employment to only a small fraction of the population, despite having a high level of technical development, risks exposing many to forced inactivity.”
5.25 Raymond Berry dies at 93.
5.23 Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson, after the Knicks took a three games to none lead in the Eastern Conference Finals: “Analytically … we’ve won 2 out of 3. We’re two out of the three in the expected score. . . .I can go to our analytical table and be like, man, the expected score was like one point or two — us shooting way below expected, them shooting way over.”
5.22 Tulsi Gabbard resigns.
5.22 A federal judge dismisses the Justice Department’s criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador last year. The court ruled that prosecutors appeared to have targeted Garcia in a retaliatory manner, stating that the evidence they presented “sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power.”
5.21 The series finale of “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert airs.
5.21 Donald Trump, on the possibility of attending his son’s wedding on Saturday: “Uh, he’d like me to go, but it’s gonna be just a small, little, private affair, and I’m gonna try and make it. I’m in the midst—I said, “You know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran and other things.” Uh, that’s one I can’t win on. If I do attend, I get killed. If I don’t attend, I get killed by the fake news, of course, I’m talking about. No, but he’s, uh, got a very, uh, person who I’ve known for a long time, and hopefully they’re going to have a great marriage.”
5.21 Senator Mitch McConnell: “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick.”
5.20 Barney Frank dies at 86.
5.19 Jon Stewart: “I mean this from the bottom of my heart, not just for this show, but for the country. The day, the day, oh people, close your eyes and dream. The day that the electorate in this great nation we call home repudiates this putrid administration. The day that that happens, my brother. My brother. There will be, and I mean this, the day that that happens, there will be a joyful noise from the bowels of this great country that will make Hungary’s repudiation of Orban look like an Amish Sabbath. And it’s going to come. We are tired. We are tired.”
5.19 Axios: “In a government filing late last week, Trump disclosed more than 3,500 stock trades on his behalf in the first quarter — at least $1 million each was purchased in shares of Nvidia, Oracle, Microsoft, Boeing and more. The trading included sales of holdings in Meta, Amazon and Walt Disney, among others. All told, there were hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions, per the Financial Times, although it is not known how much money the president earned (or lost) as a result. In modern history, no president has had an active investment portfolio quite like this. “We’ve never seen a president trading actively in the stock market before,” says Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics counsel under former President George W. Bush. The number of trades during the first quarter was enormous — an average of about 60 a day. “Other than someone who is plugged into the markets full time, it’s essentially impossible to do that,” says Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. “In the 40-plus years of my time on Wall Street, this is an unusual amount of trading by any standards,” Eric Diton, president and managing director at The Wealth Alliance, told Bloomberg.
5.19 Lucian Truscott IV: “[T]here it is, everything Trump and his family and anyone associated with the Trump Organization, and presumably anyone who did business with Trump and his companies which provided him with income, is off the hook for any crimes they committed. This is the dream of crime bosses everywhere. You spend a lifetime skirting the edges of the law, breaking the law, achieving wealth from the crimes you have committed, and you don’t have to pay another lawyer another dime to keep you free from the long arm of the law. You can take your money and spend it any way you want, because it’s now legitimate, every cent of it.”
5.19 Jamie Raskin: “[Trump and his loyalists] are figuring out a way to refund the January 6 militia, presumably to get them ready for the next round of battle.”
5.19 Paul Krugman: “So the Trump administration is creating a $1.776 billion slush fund — 1776, get it? — to pay off victims of “lawfare and weaponization.” Just to be clear, if you’re a U.S. taxpayer, this action means that almost $1.8 billion of your money will be handed out to whomever a panel appointed by Donald Trump decides to reward. The beneficiaries are likely to include January 6 insurrectionists, as well as Trump, his family, and his allies. Few things shock me these days, but this development — in which a Justice Department that works for Trump is paying a vast sum to “settle” a lawsuit brought by Trump himself — is a new nadir in self-dealing, further revealing Trump’s utter contempt for the American people. Now, massive corruption on the part of Trump and his minions isn’t new. But the shamelessness of this latest episode of looting takes it to a new level. Until now, we’ve seen a combination of crony capitalism and insider trading. Plutocrats and corporations have been enriching Trump through back channels, especially crypto, in return for government contracts and policy favors, while Trump himself and people close to Trump have been making hugely profitable market bets thanks to advance knowledge of government policies. But now Trump has eliminated the middlemen, effectively telling his officials to pay money directly to him or anyone else he favors…. So you can think of the $1.8 billion slush fund as a promise to MAGA-world that there is a payoff to be had if they just stick with him for the next two and a half years. Beyond that, we are, in effect, watching what happens when a quasi-authoritarian regime’s corruption and criminality pass the point of no return.”
5.19 Huffington Post: “[The fund] violates Congress’ appropriations power, which states that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” Congress never authorized this, nor did they vote for the funding And as a product of collusive litigation where both sides are working together, it violates the Constitution’s claim that courts shall only hear “Cases” and “Controversies.” It similarly violates Article II’s declaration that the president “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” as Trump is twisting the law to extract this money. And finally, it would violate the 14th Amendment’s ban on payments to insurrectionists if it does dole out money to Jan. 6 participants. “This undermines almost all parts of the Constitution simultaneously,” said David Super, a law professor at Georgetown Law School who specializes in administrative, budgetary and appropriations law. “It’s hard to be more efficient when you’re violating the Constitution than this.”
5.19 The Wall Street Journal: “Rotten.”
5.19 The Justice Department has “forever barred” the IRS from pursuing any audits into past tax claims for Donald Trump, his relatives and his companies, according to a one-page document released Tuesday. The sweeping document, signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, said the U.S. government could not audit Trump’s tax returns filed before Monday or any matters “that were raised or could have been raised.”
5.18 French soccer star Kylian Mbappé, in an interview with Vanity Fair, on the prospects of a victory by the far-right National Rally party in next year’s presidential elections: “I know what it means, and what kind of consequences it can have for my country when those kinds of people take control.”
5.18 The Department of Justice announces that as a part of the settlement agreement in President Donald J. Trump v. Internal Revenue Service, the Attorney General has established a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.
5.18 Paul Krugman: “The global scene right now isn’t dominated by a conflict between a rising and a declining superpower, because the declining power is led by a man who has no idea what makes great powers great, is easily distracted by trivia, is focused on self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement, and fantasizes about himself as Jesus. If you want classical analogies, think of America right now as the Roman Empire under Caligula, although Caligula didn’t do anything like as much damage.”
5.17 Axios: “If AI were a candidate for political office, it would be losing in a landslide.”
5.15 Lucian K. Truscott IV: “We are far beyond worrying about any sort of normalization of Donald Trump. We are on a lost highway of wonderment at this point, looking around for signposts that might give hints of where we’re headed. But there are none. Trump does what he wants, and there is nothing to stop him. The law does not apply anymore. The Supreme Court took care of that. We would be defenseless if we didn’t still have elections, but the Republican Party – aided and abetted once again by the Supreme Court – is trying to negate the right to vote along with the right to control your own body and your right to drive a car or walk down a street without being shot dead by an agent of the state wearing a badge that reads ICE or CPB. It needs to be said that this country is in more trouble than it has ever been in. It can be saved by people of goodwill, but the question is, are there enough of them?”
5.14 Claudine Longet dies at 84.
5.13 Trump: “The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran [is] they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.” 5.12 Mark Fuhrmann dies at 74. 5.12 Rex Reed dies at 87.
5.12 T.J. Stiles: “Iran has defeated Trump. The dumbest war in American history proves that magical thinking is not a strategy, and ‘dominance’ is just geopolitical posing.”
5.12 Robert Kagan at The Atlantic: “Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be “open,” as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia, as Iran’s allies, are strengthened; the role of the United States, substantially diminished. Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust to America’s failure…. The American defeat in the Gulf will have broader global ramifications. The whole world can see that just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power have reduced American weapons stocks to perilously low levels, with no quick remedy in sight. The questions this raises about America’s readiness for another major conflict may or may not prompt Xi Jinping to launch an attack on Taiwan, or Vladimir Putin to step up his aggression against Europe. But at the very least America’s allies in East Asia and Europe must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.”
5.11 We win the trivia game at Anthony’s Pizza by going all in on the final question.
5.11 Paul Krugman: “It’s clear that we are not experiencing a mere replay of the reign of the robber barons. We are living through something much worse. The tech bros make the “malefactors of great wealth” called out by Theodore Roosevelt look benign by comparison. . . .Today’s oligarchs control a huge share of America’s wealth — much larger than their share even at the end of the 1980s: Tellingly, unlike the robber barons of yore, many modern plutocrats show little sense of gratitude for their good fortune, little inclination to give back to society by devoting a significant part of their wealth to good works. Forbes reports that Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have devoted almost none of their wealth to philanthropy, while Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are only slightly better. More important than the stinginess of the superrich, however, is the fact that their wealth has brought great political power, arguably more than the robber barons ever possessed — power that they abuse on an epic scale.”
5.7 A gold statue of Trump was unveiled at his golf course in Doral, Florida, at an emotionally charged ceremony presided over by evangelical Mark Burns, a member of Pastors for Trump. At the dedication ceremony, the fifteen foot statue, which stands on a seven foot pedestal in a clearing of palm trees, was draped in white and blue fabric, resembling a Greek toga. The statue depicts Trump thrusting his fist into the air, echoing his defiant gesture after the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania. “Let me be clear,” said Burns, “this is not a golden calf. This statue is a celebration of life. It is a symbol of resilience, freedom, patriotism, strength, and the will power to keep fighting for the future of America.”
5.6 In The Atlantic, Sarah Fitzpatrick reports that Kash Patel travels with “a supply of personalized branded bourbon” with the label “KASH PATEL FBI DIRECTOR” and an FBI shield. She explains: “Surrounding the shield is a band of text featuring Patel’s director title and his favored spelling of his first name: KA$H. An eagle holds the shield in its talons, along with the number 9, presumably a reference to Patel’s place in the history of FBI directors. In some cases, the 750-milliliter bottles bear Patel’s signature, with ‘#9’ there as well.” . . .Fitzpatrick lists the places and occasions on which Patel has given out bottles of the whiskey and explains that he has transported the whiskey on a Department of Justice plane including to the Olympics in Milan, Italy. When a bottle went missing during a “training seminar” with Ultimate Fighting Championship athletes in Quantico, Virginia, Patel was angry enough that he threatened to make his staff take polygraphs and face prosecution. Fitzpatrick notes that “[s]everal current and former FBI employees, including multiple senior leaders, told me that the director regularly handing out his own personally branded bourbon, including to civilians outside the bureau, was unheard-of.” They explain: “The FBI has traditionally had a zero-tolerance approach to unauthorized use of alcohol on the job and for its misuse while off duty.”. . . Ron Filipkowski of MeidasNews: “The journalist who is being sued by Kash Patel and reportedly being investigated by the FBI is out with a new story. Is there a Pulitzer for being a fearless badass? If so, she should win it.”
5.6 David Rothkopf in The Daily Beast: “Not since Vietnam have we seen a more systematic effort by an administration to lie about the nature, costs, consequences, and results of a war than we have seen from the White House on Iran.”
5.6 Ted Turner dies at 87.
5.4 John Sterling dies at 87. “Thuuuuuuuuuh Yankees win! … Thuuuuuuuuuuh Yankees win!”
5.2 Bruce Springsteen at State Farm Arena.
5.1 Paul Krugman: “The moral, intellectual, emotional collapse of the Republican Party is in a way a bigger story than Trump. I mean, yeah, he’s a world-class, bizarre, dangerous person, but what makes him able to do this is the submissiveness of his party. The celebration of a guy who is an absolute disaster at presidenting—he has led, more or less single-handedly, on his own decisions, his own faith, his own judgment, he has led America into one of our worst strategic defeats in our history. He took on this relatively small military power in Iran, figuring that he could destroy the regime and install his people in a few days, and he lost the war….Marie Antoinette had nothing on Trump. [P]eople are complaining about gas prices, there’s a war, and he’s always obsessed with his gilded ballroom. And yeah, I think that for him, it’s an escape. He fantasizes about giant ballrooms.”