The Weekly Sift

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yesterday I talked to friends who had recently relocated to a summer place in eastern Pennsylvania, where torrential rains have produced deadly flash floods. They came up from Florida, where a heat wave has pushed ocean temperatures into the mid-90s. Apocalyptic weather is pretty much everywhere this summer. You can’t get away from it.

In one of this week’s featured posts, I’ll argue that this summer could be a turning point in the political debate about climate change. Up until now, we have had our weather disasters one-by-one. Sure, there was a hurricane somewhere or a flood or a wildfire, and maybe it seemed unusual in one way or another. But fundamentally, in the perception of the average person, it was nothing new: There have always been hurricanes or floods or wildfires somewhere. You could argue that those disasters were becoming more frequent or more destructive, but in the end that claim would rely on somebody’s statistical analysis. And, face it, large chunks of the public have never trusted statistics.

But this summer is different. “Bad things didn’t used to happen this often” is a statistical claim. But “Bad things didn’t used to happen all at once” is something we can all verify through our own experience. It might change the national debate. That article should appear maybe around 10 EDT.

Another post will come before it. The big news in Congress this week was FBI Director Chris Wray testifying to the House Judiciary Committee. Chairman Jim Jordan and the flying monkeys in the Republican majority treated us to a display of really wacko conspiracy theories. Apparently Wray, a lifelong Republican appointed by Trump, has turned the FBI into “an arm of the Democratic Party”.

This hearing was not such a major event in itself, but it gives me a chance to apply two ideas I’ve discussed on this blog before: How to judge conspiracy theories, and what the “Deep State” really is. That post is just about done and should be out shortly.

The weekly summary still has to cover the House’s abandonment of the bipartisan tradition of the National Defense Authorization Act, the Hollywood strike (which gives me a chance to promote a classic work of Marxist economics), the countdown towards Trump’s next indictments, a heart-rending IndyStar article about family annihilations, and a few other things. I’ll try to get that out by noon.