Category Archives: Morning tease

The Monday Morning Teaser

October 9, 2023 – 8:27 am

A few days ago, it seemed obvious what the week’s big news story was: the leadership vacuum in the House of Representatives. Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted Tuesday, and the Republican caucus seems to be back where it was in January: holding a narrow majority on paper, but unable to unite that majority behind any single leader or agenda. McCarthy managed to become speaker by making impossible promises to the party’s MAGA fringe and giving them the power to throw him out if he didn’t deliver. He didn’t deliver, and they threw him out.

While the GOP figures out what to do next, the House is frozen and the clock is ticking on the temporary funding that averted a government shutdown last week. New money needs to get appropriated by November 17 or the government shuts down. Averting that shutdown is what got McCarthy booted, so even if a new speaker gets chosen in time, it’s hard to imagine what he will do to resolve the situation. Anyway, that’s the subject of this week’s featured post, which should be out by 10 EDT.

If you’ve been paying attention to the news the last few days, though, the dysfunction in the House is barely a sidebar: Saturday Hamas launched a shocking attack on Israel. Hundreds or even thousands of people, mostly civilians, have already been killed, and no one knows how the situation will resolve. This isn’t the kind of topic I’m equipped to cover, so I’m not planning to write much about it. You’ll need to follow developments through some other news source.

A much slower-breaking news story got some significant coverage this week: the decline of life expectancy in the US. The WaPo had two enlightening articles on it, and Vox had something interesting to say as well.

And we’ve all got numb to the continuing outrages from Donald Trump. Thursday we found out that he had discussed nuclear secrets with a Mar-a-Lago member from a foreign country. Also, his rhetoric went full Nazi in an interview last week: Migrants crossing our southern border are “poisoning the blood of our country”. And there were the usual batch of developments in his criminal cases and the civil fraud trial currently happening in New York.

That’s all in the weekly summary, which should be out around noon or so.

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The Monday Morning Teaser

October 2, 2023 – 8:27 am

In a week full of big news events, probably the biggest is the one that didn’t happen: The government didn’t shut down yesterday, and will stay open for at least another six weeks. There’s a lot to say about how that transpired and what comes next, as the MAGA wing of the House Republican caucus comes after Kevin McCarthy’s speakership.

But the government-that-didn’t-shut-down had a lot of competition for our attention: A New York judge issued summary judgment on one part of the state attorney general’s civil suit against Trump. He ruled that Trump committed fraud by inflating the value of his properties to get bank loans, and he cancelled the Trump Organization’s licenses to do business. Also, one of Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia RICO trial pleaded guilty, New York flooded after massive rains, Joe Biden walked a picket line, and House Republicans opened their impeachment investigation against Biden.

So of course I’m going to write about Taylor Swift. This week I couldn’t help being amused by right-wingers’ ridiculous attempts to go after her online: She’s dumb, her music sucks, she’s homely, and so on. Other people know far more about Swift, her fans, and her music than I do, but this story is a hook for making a point that’s been on my mind for a while: Conservative rhetoric lauds Horatio Alger types, whom the capitalist system allows to rise to the top through talent and hard work. But in practice, right-wingers actually hate those people. How dare they have opinions of their own, or remember where they came from?

I’ll put more detail into that point in “MAGA and the Swifties”, which should by out around 9 EDT.

I’ll also contrast Democrats asking for Bob Menendez to resign from the Senate with Republicans who stay loyal to their own corrupt leaders like Donald Trump and Clarence Thomas. That piece, “When should public officials resign?” should be out a little after 10. And I’m shooting to get the weekly summary out by 11 this week.

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The Monday Morning Teaser

September 25, 2023 – 8:38 am

I don’t want to talk about polls this early in the campaign. One reason I began blogging in the first place was to fight the news media’s fixation with horse-race coverage of political campaigns. News reports ought to be giving voters the information they need to make their decisions, but instead they create a hall-of-mirrors effect where voters learn about what voters think, rather than about the underlying situation or the candidates’ plans, visions, and records.

But this week an outlier poll came out showing Trump with a ten-point lead over Biden — most polls show a neck-and-neck race — and it seemed to be all the weekend news shows could talk about. At a moment when Trump is pushing House Republicans to shut down the government and impeach President Biden, nobody is talking about that. Instead they talk about polls. It’s crazy.

Anyway, though, I sense that we’re all worrying, so we might as well talk: What about those polls? Should we be anxious? Is there any point to fretting over them? That’s the topic of this week’s featured post: “About the polls”, which should be out around 10 EDT.

The weekly summary has substantive issues to cover: the looming shutdown, new corruption stories about Senator Menendez and Justice Thomas, Rupert Murdoch’s retirement, and a new opportunity for the Supreme Court to crash the country. That should be out around 11.

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The Monday Morning Teaser

September 18, 2023 – 8:45 am

It’s hard to know where to start. House Republicans are moving towards impeaching President Biden for something-or-other, but they don’t seem to be moving towards funding the government, which looks increasingly likely to shut down in two weeks. The Justice Department indicted Hunter Biden, but apparently that just proves that it’s not independent, because Republicans hold that it’s not indicting Hunter for the right things — the things that implicate his father, and which they have no evidence to support.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is back in office, having escaped his impeachment trial without being removed. NBC gave Trump a major platform to spew his lies, and demonstrated the complete helplessness of Cronkite-era interviewing tactics when confronting a subject who can’t be shamed.

Mitt Romney is retiring, and getting in a bunch of parting shots at his party before he goes. He’s being lauded for his courage, but I can’t help thinking that a truly courageous man wouldn’t wait until he had nothing to lose before telling the truth. And while we’re talking about character, there’s Lauren Boebert and Kristi Noem. But other than just salacious gossip, those would be stories about hypocrisy, which no one is ashamed of any more.

And then there are natural disasters: a hurricane affecting New England, an earthquake in Libya. The auto workers are striking.

You know: Just another week.

In the featured post, I take a step back from the Biden impeachment effort and look at a thought pattern we’ll undoubtedly see a lot of if it proceeds: connecting the dots. Connecting the dots is about telling a story that weaves together a collection of plot points your audience already believes or wants to believe. A true investigation would begin by drilling down on the dots themselves, to see if they’re real. Only after the dots are solidly established would the investigator begin turning them into a story.

But connecting the dots flips things around. The overall appeal of the story — the “stolen election”, the QAnon “storm”, the “Biden crime family”, the worldwide plot to unleash Covid on us and then trick us into taking vaccines that do something nefarious to our bodies or souls — is what establishes that the dots must be true.

So the featured post “Don’t just connect the dots” should post around 10 EDT. The weekly summary will be out somewhere around noon.

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The Monday Morning Teaser

September 11, 2023 – 8:42 am

In this morning’s featured post, I try to find the bright side in the ridiculous complexity of the Trump trials: four criminal indictments, additional civil suits, various numbers of co-conspirators, nearly 100 counts, state vs. federal procedures, civil vs criminal procedures, does the 14th Amendment ban him from running, and so on.

What a legal education we’re getting, eh?

I find myself turning into something of a law nerd. So this week I loved federal Judge Steve Jones’ denial of Mark Meadows’ motion to remove his case from Georgia state courts to federal courts. Jones took something I’d seen lawyers arguing about on TV and explained it in a way that actually makes sense. And Fani Willis’ explanation of federalism in her well-researched takedown of Jim Jordan’s attempt to intimidate her? Priceless!

I think that’s the attitude we need to take: For the next year or so, we’re not going to be able to follow the news without learning a bunch of law, so let’s try to see that as a feature rather than a bug. That’s the attitude I try to take in “We’re all in law school now”, which summarizes this week’s far-flung Trump legal developments. It should be out maybe around 10 EDT.

As for the weekly summary: The biggest news this week is the Moroccan earthquake, but I’m not equipped to cover it. So I’ll just remind you about it and point you somewhere else. The ongoing Covid resurgence looks manageable if you use common sense and get the updated vaccine when it comes out. But of course folks like DeSantis are urging their followers not to do either. I’ve finally decided I can’t ignore Tommy Tuberville any longer, so I’ll state my opinion: His promotion blockade isn’t about abortion at all, it’s about his outdated notion of masculinity. And Climate Change Summer appears to be rolling into Climate Change Fall. Elon Musk is blaming the Jews for his Twitter blunder. Right-wing indoctrination is continuing its creep into red-state public schools. And I still have to come up with a closing.

Let’s say that posts sometime after noon.

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The Monday Morning Teaser

September 4, 2023 – 8:51 am

Rachel Maddow often advises us to ignore what Republicans say and watch what they do, because the two are often in conflict. This week, I point to one obvious application of her maxim: Trump’s response to his indictments.

He says that the indictments are all political shenanigans by partisan Democratic prosecutors, engineered by Joe Biden to interfere in the 2024 election. But if that’s true, there’s an obvious way he can counter: Get the cases into a courtroom as fast as possible, where his lawyers can poke holes in the Democrats’ ridiculous claims and fantastical theories. Then a jury of ordinary Americans can vindicate him with a quick, unanimous acquittal.

That outcome would turn the issue around in a hurry: Biden’s nefarious plots would be exposed for what they are, and Trump’s string of courtroom victories would propel him back into the White House.

But what he does is avoid trials any way he can: Delay the proceedings. Ask the courts to recognize his “absolute immunity” from prosecution. Get his followers in Congress to defund the Justice Department until it sidelines Jack Smith, and have Jim Jordan’s committee harass hostile local prosecutors like Alan Bragg and Fani Willis. Get Georgia to fire Willis. And if all else fails, send his loyal cultists into the streets, even to the point of “civil war”.

Anything to avoid letting a jury see the evidence against him and make a judgment. Especially before the election.

This week’s featured post will lay that saying/doing contradiction out in detail. It should be out around 10 EDT.

The weekly summary will mark Labor Day, point to the compassionate way Democrats have handled Mitch McConnell’s unfortunate freeze-up, review developments in the Trump trials, continue marking the disasters of Climate Change Summer, note the resemblance between the Republican message and Harold Hill’s, and cover a few other things before closing with one cartoonist’s view of the therapy Disney princesses need. That should be out before 1 this afternoon.

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The Monday Morning Teaser

August 28, 2023 – 8:37 am

Wednesday, even I couldn’t make myself watch the Republican presidential debate. But I did eventually read the transcript, and what struck me was how the candidates are struggling to dress up their most unpopular position: banning abortion. They actually have a strategy, and it could work if nobody confronts them with the facts. So this week’s featured post will be “Republican candidates think they’ve found a way to pitch abortion bans”. It should be out between 9 and 10.

The weekly summary has to cover what was everywhere this week: Trump’s mug shot, the first one his career of crime has produced. The week’s other big story was in some sense the most predictable: Putin rival Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash. I don’t pretend to know what that portends for Russia’s future, but I’ll link to some people trying to figure it out.

Then there was the Republican debate in general, where a number of topics other than abortion were covered. This led to the bizarre ascent of Vivek Ramaswamy, who was on all the talk shows this weekend, saying all manner of absurd things. Ramaswamy is a challenge to our news system: He’s intentionally saying outrageous things to get attention, and it’s working. I’ll try to tell you what you need to know about him without falling into that trap. (Wish me luck.)

Also, a number of significant things are happening in the Trump trials this week, and especially today.

This week’s news calls for a goofy closing, so I found one: an amusing collection ways people have posed with statues and other famous landmarks. The Leaning Tower of Pisa, for some reason, is especially popular.

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The Monday Morning Teaser

August 21, 2023 – 8:27 am

Last week Maui was the target of this summer’s apocalyptic weather. This week it’s Southern California. A tropical storm hit San Diego and Los Angeles yesterday, and it’s raining hard in Las Vegas. This never happens. Also this week, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territory had to be evacuated due to wildfire.

Climate change isn’t something to debate about any more. You just have to open your eyes and see it.

As usual, though, I don’t cover breaking news. So this week’s featured post will take a step back from the Trump-indictment soap opera and look at the larger picture. Lots of Democrats are anxious about the 2024 election, but I’m optimistic. The featured post will explain why. It should be out around 10 EDT.

The weekly summary will point to stories about the weather, review the recent developments in the Trump trials, explain why I haven’t been paying much attention to the Hunter Biden investigations, and cover a few other things. It should be out a little after noon.

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The Monday Morning Teaser

August 14, 2023 – 8:50 am

This week downtown Lahaina, which I visited many years ago, burned to the ground in a wildfire that started in dry grass and was driven by hurricane-force winds. It was the most devastating event yet in our Climate Change Summer, emphasizing yet again that we cannot simply go on this way.

The Sift leaves breaking news to organizations that have the resources to cover it, and information about the disaster is still coming out. (And the death toll is still rising.) So if I don’t say a lot about Maui, that doesn’t imply I don’t see the seriousness of the situation there.

Instead, my attention was caught this week by something that may seem trivial by comparison. In July, the Authoritarian State of Florida approved videos by the right-wing non-university Prager University for use in public elementary schools. PragerU Kids videos constitute precisely the kind of “indoctrination” Governor DeSantis claims to be against. They are slickly produced and probably quite effective at distorting kids’ views of history and the world we live in today.

One video in particular stood out for me: Two time-traveling kids from the present go back to 1852 to talk to Frederick Douglass about abolition, and come back with a negative view of Black Lives Matter protesters today. The Douglass in the video seemed nothing like the Douglass of history, and yet I know the Prager style: They cherry-pick and deceptively reframe history, but seldom lie outright. So how did they do this?

Via the internet, I took my own trip back to the 1800s so I could listen to Douglass (or at least read his speeches). What I found emphasizes (at least to me) how tricky the Prager people really are, and why it’s so dangerous to give them this kind of access to American children. The post “How Frederick Douglass became a conservative spokesman” should appear before 10 EDT.

That leaves the weekly summary a lot to cover: Maui, of course, but also developments in Trump’s various trials, a victory for reproductive rights in the red state of Ohio, other disturbing things we’re learning about Florida education as the new school year approaches, that viral brawl in Montgomery, and a variety of other news. That post should appear before 1.

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The Monday Morning Teaser

August 7, 2023 – 8:34 am

So, I missed a week for personal reasons. Did anything happen while I was gone?

Well, Trump got indicted again — not once, but twice, if you count the superseding indictment in the Mar-a-Lago case. And the indictment for plotting to overturn the 2020 election is the one we’ve all been waiting for. In a life and career that has been full of law-breaking, this is the one I want Trump held accountable for. If he gets away with cheating on his taxes and paying off porn stars, that’s just normal billionaire crime. But trying to stay in office after losing an election is arguably the worst thing any American president has ever done (though the Japanese removal and crimes against Native Americans make me hesitate about that). I want him to go to jail for it.

So naturally, the featured post has to be about the new indictment, but I’ll try not to repeat the wall-to-wall coverage you’ve undoubtedly seen elsewhere. To me, the striking thing in this case — and in the other Trump trials — is that he isn’t really contesting the evidence. The arguments Trump supporters make are mostly ad hominem attacks against anyone who dares to investigate the Great Orange One.

In the featured post, then, I want to model how I think we should argue with Trump supporters: Let them rant about “deranged” prosecutors, “Trump haters”, “election interference”, and “What about Hunter?”. But keep drawing them back to the evidence: Is he guilty? Did he do the things he’s accused of? If he did commit these crimes, should he be above the law? That post should come out shortly.

I wanted to keep that post focused, so more general stuff about the indictments (the text, links to other people’s analysis, etc.) will be in the weekly summary. Also: tomorrow’s vote on Ohio’s ballot initiative, yet another good jobs report, the ongoing destruction of public education in Florida, the democracy crisis in Israel, and a few other things.

Plus: I wanted to do a longer report on the Heritage Foundation’s detailed plan for the next Republican administration (and I may yet next week). But I’ll at least mention it today.

The weekly summary should come out around noon EDT.

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