Gilead
Donald Trump
Coup attempt
Fig. 1. “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
I think we’re at a point where we can say that Donald Trump has completely and totally lost his marbles. Not a lot is making any sense at all here anymore. I can understand his defense of his foot soldiers in the coup attempt, but his call to suspend the constitution[1] his hosting of anti-Semites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes for dinner at Mar-a-Lago and subsequent complaint that Jewish leaders who condemn that dinner are ‘disloyal’[2] are simply baffling.
Possibly more serious is Dominion’s suit for defamation against Fox News. Rupert Murdoch himself now faces a deposition with Dominion’s lawyers already having accumulated evidence from his underlings. The Guardian claims that Murdoch won’t be able to claim ignorance of Fox News’ false claims about Dominion voting machines. The headline attached to this story seems excessive but the reporting indicates that Murdoch is already having difficulty paying off damages awarded in a previous, unrelated lawsuit.[3] I’ve tended to view this action as peripheral and not paid much attention; it’s possible I was wrong.
Kristen Holmes, “Trump expresses support for Capitol rioters as he continues to embrace extremist groups,” CNN, December 2, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/politics/donald-trump-january-6-rioters-support/index.html
Bess Levin, “Donald Trump, Running for President in 2024, Defends Violent Mob That Broke Into the Capitol Over His 2020 Loss,” Vanity Fair, December 2, 2022, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/12/donald-trump-defends-january-6-rioters
Karoun Demirjian and Toluse Olorunnipa, “White House rebukes Trump’s suggestion to suspend Constitution over 2020 election,” Washington Post, December 3, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/03/trump-constitution-truth-social/
Kristen Holmes, “Trump calls for the termination of the Constitution in Truth Social post,” CNN, December 4, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/03/politics/trump-constitution-truth-social/index.html
Ruth Marcus, “Trump’s call for suspending the Constitution is too dangerous to ignore,” Washington Post, December 4, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/04/ruth-marcus-donald-trump-latest-outrage-is-too-dangerous-ignore/
Martin Pengelly, “Biden rebukes Trump for saying constitution should be ‘terminated’” Guardian, December 4, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/04/biden-trump-us-constitution-terminated-election-fraud
Amy B. Wang, “GOP lawmakers largely silent after Trump suggests ‘termination’ of Constitution,” Washington Post, December 4, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/04/trump-constitution-republicans/
Caleb Ecarma, “Republicans Apparently Have No Red Line With Trump—Not Even His Desire to Terminate the Constitution,” Vanity Fair, December 5, 2022, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/12/republicans-trump-terminate-constitution
Jeremy Roebuck, “Rudy Giuliani doubles down on false Pennsylvania election fraud claims in disciplinary hearing,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 5, 2022, https://www.inquirer.com/news/rudy-giuliani-dc-disciplinary-board-hearing-bar-pennsylvania-election-20221205.html
Aaron Blake, “4 takeaways from the Georgia Senate runoff,” Washington Post, December 6, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/06/takeaways-georgia-runoff-2022-warnock-walker/
Sara Murray, Annie Grayer, and Zachary Cohen, “House January 6 committee has decided to make criminal referrals, chairman says,” CNN, December 6, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/06/politics/january-6-committee-criminal-referrrals/index.html
Jenny Jarvie, “Warnock defeats Walker in Georgia runoff, giving Democrats a 51-seat Senate majority,” Los Angeles Times, December 6, 2022, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-12-06/sen-raphael-warnock-defeats-herschel-walker-in-georgia-senate-runoff
David Von Drehle, “The tragedy of Herschel Walker,” Washington Post, December 6, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/06/herschel-walker-reputation-georgia-football-politics-senate-trump/
Jacqueline Alemany et al., “Items with classified markings found at Trump storage unit in Florida,” Washington Post, December 7, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/07/trump-tower-bedminster-records-search/
Lloyd Green, “Georgia’s runoff was a resounding rebuke of Trumpism. Will Republicans hear it?” Guardian, December 7, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/07/georgias-runoff-was-a-resounding-rebuke-of-trumpism-will-republicans-hear-it
Debra Cassens Weiss, “3 conservative SCOTUS justices appear to seek middle ground on ‘independent state legislature’ theory,” American Bar Association Journal, December 7, 2022, https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/3-conservative-scotus-justices-appear-to-seek-middle-ground-on-independent-state-legislature-theory
Spencer S. Hsu et al., “Justice Department asks judge to hold Trump team in contempt over Mar-a-Lago case,” Washington Post, December 8, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/08/trump-contempt-mar-a-lago-records/
Aaron Blake, “The politics of Kyrsten Sinema’s party switch,” Washington Post, December 9, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/09/what-sinema-party-switch-means/
Burgess Everett, “Sinema switches to independent, shaking up the Senate,” Politico, December 9, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/09/sinema-arizona-senate-independent-00073216
David A. Graham, “Kyrsten Sinema Is Going to Be a Perpetual Pain for Democrats,” Atlantic, December 9, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/sinemas-switch-changes-very-little/672413/
Jacob Magid, “Trump berates disloyal US ‘Jewish leaders,’ ignoring calls to condemn Kanye, Fuentes,” Times of Israel, December 9, 2022, https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-lays-into-jewish-leaders-ignoring-calls-to-condemn-kanye-fuentes/
Chris McGreal, “Is Dominion’s $1.6bn defamation lawsuit a death blow for Murdoch and Fox News?” Guardian, December 11, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/dec/11/rupert-murdoch-fox-dominion-lawsuit-deposition
Competitive authoritarian regime project
Fig. 1. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Clarence Mitchell during signing ceremony of the voting rights act. Yoichi Okamoto, August 6, 1965, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Debra Cassens Weiss, “3 conservative SCOTUS justices appear to seek middle ground on ‘independent state legislature’ theory,” American Bar Association Journal, December 7, 2022, https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/3-conservative-scotus-justices-appear-to-seek-middle-ground-on-independent-state-legislature-theory
Cristian Farias, “‘A Theory With Big Consequences’: The Supreme Court’s Gamble With Democracy Appears to Be Veering Away From Extremism—For Now,” Vanity Fair, December 8, 2022, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/12/supreme-courts-election-case-moore-harper-oral-arguments
Quinta Jurecic, “A Case That Even This Supreme Court Seems Torn Over,” Atlantic, December 8, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/moore-harper-scotus-independent-state-legislature/672399/
Fig. 1. “Elon Musk shared a video of his entrance on his Twitter account.” Photograph attributed to Elon Musk, October 26, 2022, via the New York Post,[4] fair use.
Mr. [Elon] Musk “appears convinced that capitalistic interests will win out,” [Danah Boyd] wrote in a recent blog post, noting that the advertising community always seems to come back when users linger.
But first, Twitter must endure. Cue Mr. Musk’s latest tweets suggesting things are improving. He regularly writes that Twitter is seeing record usage. And last weekend, Mr. Musk even thanked advertisers for returning to the platform, suggesting that perhaps the worst was over. . . .
Earlier this month the New York Times reported that as of October, Twitter’s roster of advertisers had fallen nearly 42% since May. Similarweb’s data paint an even worse picture: Activity on Twitter’s ad manager, a subdomain of Twitter’s ad platform sites that specifically hosts those creating or monitoring ad campaigns, declined nearly 74% in October from a year earlier, according to the firm’s data. In November, visits fell 85% on the same basis—the largest ad traffic decline since Twitter’s change of hands.[5]
I dunno.
There’s still plenty of stuff in my feed, as I’ve noted previously, almost all of it from institutional sources. I can’t quit Twitter yet, but I do have to say it feels like an increasingly uncomfortable place to post. I’m thinking about shutting the public account down; right now it’s mainly a source of notifications of apparent sex workers following me (hoping, I assume, I’ll follow back, but with very little in their timelines to follow, even if I were interested).
Laura Forman, “Twitter’s Advertising Truth Hurts,” Wall Street Journal, December 11, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitters-advertising-truth-hurts-11670706720
Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh
Infrastructure
Fig. 1. Post-collapse scene at the Fern Hollow Bridge, photograph by National Transportation Safety Board, January 29, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
What the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board fails to understand is that local politicians love, absolutely love, indeed, can’t get enough traffic jams. They hate cars and punish drivers in every way they can.
It shows up in too many ways for it to be anything else. You see it in maliciously timed traffic signals that jam traffic; in the potholes, the cobblestone streets, and the brick streets that relentlessly destroy cars; in traffic-disrupting street festivals even at the hub of Pittsburgh’s hub-and-spoke road network (downtown); in the unending road projects that are never ever finished that further damage road surfaces (Forbes and Fifth Avenues come to mind) and jam traffic; in an absolute refusal to enforce laws against reckless driving, leading, of course, to collisions and loss of life.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Too many bridge closings in Pittsburgh,” December 10, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2022/12/10/ptitsburgh-bridge-closure-sister-downtown-maintenance-lighting-installation/stories/202212080100
2022 election
Fig. 1. John Fetterman as mayor of Braddock, photograph uncredited and undated, via Next Pittsburgh,[6] fair use.
Stephen Caruso, “With majority at stake, Pa. House Republicans sue to block Democratic-scheduled special elections,” Spotlight PA, December 10, 2022, https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2022/12/pa-house-majority-special-elections-republican-lawsuit/
- [1]Karoun Demirjian and Toluse Olorunnipa, “White House rebukes Trump’s suggestion to suspend Constitution over 2020 election,” Washington Post, December 3, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/03/trump-constitution-truth-social/; Caleb Ecarma, “Republicans Apparently Have No Red Line With Trump—Not Even His Desire to Terminate the Constitution,” Vanity Fair, December 5, 2022, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/12/republicans-trump-terminate-constitution; Kristen Holmes, “Trump calls for the termination of the Constitution in Truth Social post,” CNN, December 4, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/03/politics/trump-constitution-truth-social/index.html; Ruth Marcus, “Trump’s call for suspending the Constitution is too dangerous to ignore,” Washington Post, December 4, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/04/ruth-marcus-donald-trump-latest-outrage-is-too-dangerous-ignore/; Martin Pengelly, “Biden rebukes Trump for saying constitution should be ‘terminated’” Guardian, December 4, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/04/biden-trump-us-constitution-terminated-election-fraud; Amy B. Wang, “GOP lawmakers largely silent after Trump suggests ‘termination’ of Constitution,” Washington Post, December 4, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/04/trump-constitution-republicans/↩
- [2]Jacob Magid, “Trump berates disloyal US ‘Jewish leaders,’ ignoring calls to condemn Kanye, Fuentes,” Times of Israel, December 9, 2022, https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-lays-into-jewish-leaders-ignoring-calls-to-condemn-kanye-fuentes/↩
- [3]Chris McGreal, “Is Dominion’s $1.6bn defamation lawsuit a death blow for Murdoch and Fox News?” Guardian, December 11, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/dec/11/rupert-murdoch-fox-dominion-lawsuit-deposition↩
- [4]Thomas Barrabi, “Elon Musk barges into Twitter HQ as deal nears: ‘Let that sink in,’” New York Post, October 26, 2022, https://nypost.com/2022/10/26/elon-musk-barges-into-twitter-headquarters-as-deal-nears/↩
- [5]Laura Forman, “Twitter’s Advertising Truth Hurts,” Wall Street Journal, December 11, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitters-advertising-truth-hurts-11670706720↩
- [6]Kim Lyons, “Braddock Mayor John Fetterman keeps on truckin’ in his quest for the Senate,” Next Pittsburgh, March 11, 2016, https://nextpittsburgh.com/features/the-challengers-braddock-mayor-john-fetterman-keeps-on-truckin/↩