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Come on…

Republicans are all saying that this proves Hunter Biden needs to go to jail for the rest of his life. And it means that Joe Biden is the most corrupt leader in the history of the world: We now know that the deal is on hold and they will appear in court in a couple of weeks presumably with this deal ironed out. This is just par for the course these days. As I Xitted earlier:

They have brainwashed the right into being pro-Putin and even Sean Hannity can’t stop him. I’m too tired to go into why he’s wrong about everything so I’ll just let Evan at Wonkette explain: Legitimate Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was feeling like ending the polarization, so last night he visited Sean Hannity, where the polarization ends, for an exclusive town hall. That’s what he literally said at the end of the interview when Hannity asked him why he was running for president. He said he would end the polarization by telling the truth. SPOILER: When somebody asks you why you’re running for president, and the beginning of your answer is “I mean …” and then a long pause, you’re definitely about to tell the truth. That’s how the interview ended, so now we’ll backtrack. The meat of the interview didn’t do much to end the polarization or spread the truth, unless you’re one of the fluffers in King Putin’s court, in which case the message was exactly what you instructed your propagandists to disseminate to the useful idiots.

Last fall as we were all girding ourselves for the impending “Red Tsunami” and contemplating what it was going to do to the remains of the Biden agenda, I wrote that we should be prepared for Revenge of the MAGA cult and recognize that it was inevitable that the Republicans were going to try to impeach Joe Biden. At that time Georgia Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene had already filed five impeachment resolutions against him and it was well known that Donald Trump would not be very happy if the new Republican majority didn’t issue payback for the two impeachments on his record. One of the resolutions she filed on Biden’s very first day in office claimed that he had tried “to influence the domestic policy of a foreign nation and accept benefits from foreign nationals in exchange for favors.” That was, of course, based upon the bogus Ukraine scandal that prompted Donald Trump’s first impeachment. Nothing would be more satisfying to Trump than for Biden to be impeached for doing what Trump did when he attempted to blackmail the President of Ukraine into smearing Biden.

I’s sure you’ve heard by now that Florida’s new school curriculum says that enslaved people in the United States may have had a rough time in some respects but they got some benefits from slavery too! (This isn’t a new thing, I’ve heard right wingers suggest for years that Black people thank white people for bringing their ancestors to America.) Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis was clearly not sure if it may have gone too far and didn’t claim credit for it but defended it anyway. Philip Bump at the Washington Post took a look at why he would do that: Asked about it, DeSantis offered that the curriculum — which he insisted wasn’t something he produced — would probably “show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.” Needless to say, this is not generally how historians view the institution of slavery. But DeSantis’s argument isn’t offered solely as a governor of a large state.

Demographic change is more than race and ethnicity A flurry of articles and polling herald the arrival of Gen Z voters: progressive, more engaged than their predecessor “Gens” and, critically, more prone to show up and vote. You’re either at the table or on the menu, the saying goes. Younger voters are pulling up chairs. Youth turnout jumped dramatically in 2018 and again in 2020, spawning headlines. Critically, turnout among the 18-29 set in 2022 helped stave off the overhyped red wave that instead rippled. “Researchers say the 2022 election had the second highest voter turnout among voters under 30 in at least the past three decades,” NPR reported. The record was set in 2018 when 31% of those eligible cast ballots. Not exactly “whopping,” but we’ll take it. The trends are moving in the right direction. Harvard Youth Poll director John Della Volpe points to “the big four” issues driving their engagement: climate change, gun violence, economic inequality and LGBTQ+ rights drive their engagement.

Pay no attention to those pundits behind the curtain Attempts on the right to vilify teachers and public schools have long infuriated me. As I’ve indicated time and again, it’s about the money. An investor class bent on privatizing public schools wants to turn those not-for-profit abominations into another rent-seeking extension of Wall Street. Teachers and school adminstrators stand between them and their money. Christian right parents are their useful idiots. Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum cites data that refutes the notion that parents of school-age children are unhappy with their kids’ public education: “Contrary to elite or policy wonk opinion, which often is critical of schools, there have been years and years worth of data saying that families in general like their local public schools,” said Andy Smarick, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.  “It would be natural to assume that in 2020, 2021, parental support for schools would have cratered,” said Smarick. “But it didn’t.” You might not know that from that narrative advanced in the press.

These days the news is filled with stories about the “extreme”, “record-breaking” and “deadly” heat waves sweeping across Asia, the US and, most notably, Europe (and especially Italy). Rome — my hometown — has been redubbed the “infernal city”. I appreciate the global concern for us poor Romans but I can assure everyone that we’re …

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I’ve written for UnHerd about the right-populist wave sweeping over Europe. Liberal politicians and pundits are understandably freaking out. Conservatives, on the other hand, can barely contain their excitement. But — “anti-wokeness” aside — what alternative do these parties offer? As it turns out, on a number of issues, they are peculiarly aligned with the mainstream. In terms …

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The banks know it. Why don’t more Americans? Those folkloric man-on-the-street (or in a rural diner) puff pieces are as infuriating as they are uninformative. They do, however, reinforce false, often minority, impressions of what’s really happening in the country, Timothy Noah argues in The New Republic. Misinforming tales abound (his mock example): “People Believe Stuff That Isn’t True, but They Feel Like It Is True, So Let’s Give Them a Hearing Because We Don’t Want to Seem Elitist.” Outlets such as The Wall Street Journal regularly hand Joe Everyman a megaphone and let him expound on microchips in vaccines, schoolteachers “trying to turn your children gay or trans,” and the crappy Biden economy that isn’t. Given a platform, uninformed views steer public opinion by making the wrong seem right. Polling later confirms that people think the economy sucks. It doesn’t. Ask Morgan Stanley.