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Two notes: First, the headline theming will be back next week. Second, there was a lot of news yesterday, including a debate that took 3 hours to watch and write up. We could have the planned Henry Kissinger content ready today, but we'd need until 6:00 a.m. PT, and it would push the length of the post past 10,000 words. In the interest of posting in a timely manner, and at a manageable length, we'll run it Tuesday, instead.

DeSantis, Newsom Debate

Last night was the big debate between Govs. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Gavin Newsom (D-CA). We'd like to give you a link so that if you missed it, and would like to watch, you could do so. However, at Fox, the news is a business and not a public service, and this was (technically) a regular episode of Hannity. So, if you want to watch it, you have to pay for Fox's streaming service. Sorry. That said, here's a pretty good 3-minute rundown of the highlights.

We watched it, of course, because that's part of our responsibilities. And we're going to give you our assessment by focusing on the four entities that were (or, in one case, were not) a part of the debate:

  1. Newsom: Newsom may have been going into hostile territory, but he almost certainly had the easier task, which was to establish himself as a credible candidate of national stature. And he managed to achieve his goal.

    Newsom would love, love, love to be butter-smooth, like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan, but he's not that. It's probably not a coincidence that all three of those men were either college professors or actors; two jobs that force you to learn how to read and respond to an audience. Newsom is also not a passionate, fire-breathing true believer, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT); not that the Governor is shooting for that.

    No, Newsom is a wonky debater, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). That's not an insult; Warren was a champion debater who was good enough at it to earn a college scholarship. Being like Warren means that Newsom had strong command of facts and statistics, that he was well-prepared for DeSantis' lines of attack and was generally able to parry them, that he generally was capable of thinking on his feet and adapting when needed, and that he got off the occasional bon mot. Certainly the line of the night (which was undoubtedly pre-written) was when Newsom looked at DeSantis and said that "[what] we have in common is that neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024."

  2. DeSantis: DeSantis, meanwhile, had the de facto home field advantage, but he had the harder task, namely to try to change the trajectory of the 2024 GOP primaries. The Governor did not come within a country mile of doing that.

    To start, DeSantis showed once again that he has exactly one facial expression, which is "grimace." And he has one tone of voice, which is nasal/whiny. No matter what he says, whether it's pro-Democratic or pro-Republican, it's going to be kind of a turnoff because he is kind of a turnoff.

    Beyond that, however, DeSantis' remarks and responses had three themes: California sucks, Democrats suck and Joe Biden sucks. If you can explain how any of those three messages help explain why you should vote for DeSantis instead of Donald Trump, then you are cleverer than we are.

    It is also the case that DeSantis seems to live in a fantasy world (but definitely not in Fantasyland, where he's not welcome). Most obviously, his version of California is that it is a dystopian hellscape. This comports with Republican talking points, but not with reality. At various points, DeSantis claimed that California has made it legal for unhomed people to defecate on the sidewalk (he even held up a map of defecation hotspots in San Francisco) and to light their own encampments on fire, that it takes twice as long to shop in California because everything is under lock and key to prevent theft, and that women in the state can never wear jewelry in public because they are certain to be mugged. The Governor shared similar fantastical ideas about Democrats and about Biden.

    This is not to say that everything that came out of DeSantis' mouth was a lie or an exaggeration, or that some of his ideas about California don't have SOME basis in reality. For example, (Z), who walks around Los Angeles a lot, has seen human feces on the sidewalk... twice. At his local drug store, the razors, baby formula, cigarettes and liquor are under lock and key... while 95% of the inventory is not. And he knows a couple of women who turned their diamond rings around while in downtown. On the other hand, he's been to Florida, and he's seen most of these things there, too.

    Maybe there are people out there who accept everything DeSantis says uncritically. Probably there are. But anyone watching with even a sliver of an open mind surely has to be left with the impression that he's as truth-challenged as Trump is, while being considerably less effective at selling his lies and exaggerations.

  3. Hannity: Hannity made clear that he should never, ever, ever be allowed to moderate a real debate, even if it's candidates for assistant dogcatcher of East Cupcake. The first problem is that despite the fact that it was his show, and his studio, with microphones ostensibly controlled by his staff, he had absolutely no ability to enforce discipline. The candidates constantly talked over each other. Not only was Hannity unable to control it, but he eventually became petulant and whiny, at one point complaining that "I'm not a potted plant here!"

    The second problem is that a disproportionate number of Hannity's questions were, to be blunt, stupid. For example, he asked the two governors to "grade" Joe Biden, while not allowing them to explain their choice of grade. Surprise, surprise; DeSantis gave Biden an "F" and Newsom gave an "A." What on earth was the point of that exercise? What could possibly be learned from that? And there were a lot of questions of that sort, that basically boiled down to: "Please give me your talking point on [Subject X]."

    And the third problem is that Hannity started the debate by promising to be a neutral arbiter, but then spent the entire debate putting his thumb (and the rest of his hand, and arm) on the scale for DeSantis. To take one example, Hannity's staff had a pre-prepared graphic that revealed that since 2019, California has had 19 mass shootings that killed 4 or more people while Florida has had 9 such shootings. This was part of the discussion of gun-control laws (California) or lack thereof (Florida), and was meant to help DeSantis make his point that gun-control laws don't work.

    We are not experts on gun-violence statistics, but we suspect some cherry picking here. At very least, with such a small number of qualifying incidents per year, there has to be some amount of random variation here, which means that 4 years is too small a sample size. Also, the population of California is 39.24 million, while the population of Florida is 21.78 million, which means California has 180.1% of the population that Florida does. Meanwhile, 19 is 211% of 9. So, it would seem the primary difference between California and Florida when it comes to the total number of mass shootings is... California has way more people. And there were at least a dozen things like that, where Hannity and his team had chosen statistics or had made infographics clearly designed to prop up DeSantis.

  4. The Audience: One of Newsom's requirements for attending the debate was "no audience," and he got what he wanted. And wow, even with the two governors yelling over each other on a constant basis, the absence of an audience was still noticeable and a vast, vast improvement. Debates are not a football game, and the viewing audience does not need to be told what to think or feel by a bunch of howling yahoos.

Who knows if this is a one-off, or if it will establish some sort of tradition? We tend to suspect that DeSantis will not be eager to repeat the experiment, once someone tells him that he did himself absolutely no good when it comes to the 2024 presidential race, but that's just a guess. (Z)

The Missing Piece of the Trump-Obamacare Puzzle

Earlier this week, we wrote about Donald Trump, who dug up Obamacare from the political graveyard, and decided to start carping on the issue again. We assumed that somehow, someone had put that bee back in his bonnet, but we didn't know who it was, at least on Tuesday. We know now.

As it turns out, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial about Obamacare (reminder: WSJ pieces are paywalled). The editorial was only tangentially about Trump, but even a perceived insult is enough to set him off, of course. Further, although the Journal is right-leaning, it's anti-Trump, so it's also "the enemy." Hence his angry tweet.

And yesterday, the pissing contest continued. In the morning, the Journal published another editorial, this one taking more direct aim at Trump, pointing out that Obamacare has its problems, but that Trump and other Republicans have offered no viable alternative. This infuriated the former president, and so he hopped on his failing boutique social media platform to blast Obamacare ("Obamacare Sucks!!!") and then to blast the WSJ:

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page is really a MESS! The Globalist "paper" sucks, its influence is badly waning, and the concept of, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, is not exactly music to their ears. They fought me hard in 2016, but when I WON, Rupert Murdoch was the first to call. "Great going," he said, "lets have lunch." He called often, never getting what he wanted to get, or hearing what he wanted to hear. How did that work out, Rupert? Now he's given up on a hopeless Ron DeSanctimonious, who became Florida's Governor because of me, only to be pushing Nikki "Birdbrain" Haley, an even more disloyal candidate than Ron. Just like 2016 (In 2020 I got millions of more votes than I did in 2016, but the ELECTION WAS RIGGED!), 2024 will be a GLOBALIST DEFEAT, and a rebuke to the losers at the WSJ, who have gotten almost nothing right for years. Remember, I am leading Haley & DeSanctus by 50 Points, & Crooked Joe by a lot, & the Radical Left Democrats want no part of MAGA, or TRUMP!

Trump has no truck with actual salads, except for the occasional taco salad on Cinco de Mayo. But he's a Michelin-starred chef when it comes to creating word salads.

We mention this news for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's growing more and more likely that Trump will make Obamacare a key theme of his reelection campaign, particularly if hostile right-wing media makes a point of pushing his buttons on the issue. We continue to believe this issue is a loser for him and his Party (though see the upcoming Sunday letters for a reader who disagrees).

The second is that, in our item about the Koch machine backing Nikki Haley, we made a brief allusion to Trump's use of encoded antisemitic language (i.e., "globalists"). Well, it's back again in the WSJ screed. Although, in the Haley post, we overlooked something that reader J.A. in Puerto Armuelles, Panama brought to our attention:

While I'm glad you pointed out that "corrupt network globalist[s]" is far-right code for "Jews," I wish you had made a better job of it. It doesn't just mean Jews, it means "cabal of sneaky Jews."

Also, you really dropped the ball on the significance of "backstabbers," which I'm quite sure made the folks over at whatever sewer that Stormfront is hanging out in these days feel all warm and fuzzy, and was clearly meant to do so.

J.A. is quite right; all of this language (and we write this while exceedingly mindful of the risk of Reductio ad Hitlerum) is straight out of the Adolf Hitler playbook. We honestly don't know how we missed it in the first piece, but the stab-in-the-back myth was a core element of antisemitism in Europe after 1918, and was a key theme in Mein Kampf.

We do not pretend to understand the mindset here. The Koch network is wealthy, and the Journal is the financial newspaper of record. Maybe wherever there is money, Trump assumes there are Jews. Or maybe now that he's built his arsenal of hateful, dog-whistle rhetoric, he just fires it off at will, without regard to the original meaning/intent. Who knows? The only thing we can say for sure is that it is disturbing that such verbiage barely registers these days, thanks to Trump and his supporters having normalized it so thoroughly. (Z)

Trump Gets Gagged Again

The saga of the Donald Trump gag order in New York has taken another turn, as yesterday, a panel of judges re-imposed the order that they had temporarily stayed.

The order does not explain exactly what persuaded the judges to make this move, but it does allude to their having read "the papers with respect to the motion." That presumably is a reference, at least in part, to the "deluge" of threats made against Judge Arthur Engoron and his law clerk. Court employees transcribed all the threatening voicemails that have been received, and the resulting, single-spaced document runs... 275 pages.

Trump did not take kindly to this news, and responded by using his failing boutique social media platform to attack Engoron's wife. The gag order does not cover family members of court employees, but that may change in the near future.

Thus far, the New York court system has been handling Trump with kid gloves, but that's surely going to come to an end sometime soon, maybe today. As to Trump, it's yet another case where we just don't understand his mindset. Is he simply unable to control himself? Or is he trying to get himself arrested so as to make himself into some sort of martyr? The former president did compare himself to Nelson Mandela several weeks ago, which is absurd, but might just speak to his thinking. In any event, it's not too easy to end up in jail as the result of a civil case, but Trump is certainly doing his best to buck the odds. (Z)

No Democratic Primary in Florida

Every state has its own, distinct policies and procedures for running caucuses, or primaries, or both. In the case of Florida, it is up to the state-level party organs to submit lists of candidates they deem to have qualified, with a deadline of November 1. The Florida Democratic Party submitted its list on time, and it had one name: Joe Biden. Under the terms of Florida state law, that means there will be no Democratic primary.

Marianne Williamson is still figuring out how this comports with her aura, and so she apparently hasn't said much about being shut out. But Rep. Dean Phillips (DFL-MN) is furious. He is making all the standard threats, including filing a lawsuit, waging a write-in campaign, pitching a fit at the Democratic convention, etc.

There are two possible explanations for what happened here. The first is that the people who run state party organs tend to be loyal party men and women, and so may have done what they could to give a (small) assist to the presumed nominee of the Party. The second is that the November 1 deadline arrived just days after Phillips declared, and so there was no way he could be deemed a serious candidate at that time. Of course, he's not a serious candidate now, either. If you asked us to speculate as to which theory is correct, we would guess it's a little bit of #2 and a whole lot of #1.

We are inclined to doubt this little bit of maneuvering, which is pretty inside baseball, will have much of an effect, no matter how much Phillips carps about it. If he was the champion of the liberal wing of the party, or if he was a Black woman, or if he had some other distinctive, suspicious-of-Biden constituency to be outraged on his behalf, then maybe. But Phillips has no such constituency. So, he's basically just shouting into the void. (Z)

"Santos'" Goose Looks to Be Cooked

No, not the goose that lays the golden eggs that he got from climbing up Jack's beanstalk. Rep. "George Santos" (R-NY) keeps that one at home. We mean his political goose. Politico has done an informal whip count, and concluded there are at least 90 Republican votes for expulsion. Add in all the Democrats, and the two-thirds threshold figures to be cleared by 15-20 votes. Maybe more, if "Santos'" supporters decide he can't be saved, and they'd rather not have a vote in his favor on their ledgers.

The Representative, for his part, insists that he will not resign. That is hardly surprising. To start, he appears to be a narcissist, and narcissists do not often take actions that imply wrongful behavior. On top of that, he doesn't want to do anything that implies he's guilty of the crimes with which he has been charged. Also, he wants to collect every minute of congressional pay he can, as his post-expulsion income doesn't figure to be too healthy (unfortunately, golden geese don't lay eggs in the winter, according to the staff consultant on Care of Magical Creatures).

If things go according to plan, the House will vote on the matter today. This will be the third time the chamber has done so; by the time you read this, we might well know if the third time is the charm. "Santos'" only hope is a miracle; since he is a close personal friend of the Pope, maybe the Representative can ask the Holy Father to pray for one. Failing that, we understand that pulling a fire alarm in the middle of a vote can be an effective technique. (Z)

A December to Rhymember, Part I: Never a Silent Night

As a reminder, we launched this feature by accident 2 years ago, with a couple of poems about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). But since we have multiple items today about Donald Trump's bad behavior, we are going to let him bat leadoff this year. First, from E.O.S. in Eatontown, NJ:

"On the last day of Christmas (January 6th)"

On the last day of Christmas
My voters gave to me:
Twelve unhinged rallies
Eleven fake electors
Ten assault allegations
Ninety-one indictments
Eight kids in cages
Seven alt-right bloggers
Six lawyers stalling
Five miles of wall
Four jail bookings
Three children shilling
Two pop vote losses
and... an insurrection on TV

And it wouldn't be a December to Rhymember without at least one or two takes on "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General," like this one from A.C. in Highland Park, IL:

I am the very model of a modern Trump conservative.
I am convinced that Biden's only living through preservatives.
I want to own the libs and so I purchase MAGA merchandise.
Of course for Jan. 6th I've lined up all my alibis.

The Deep State and the globalists, the RINOs and the Loony Ds
Are no match for our leader's profound mental mediocrity.
He fights the Left, he built the wall, his Supreme Court canceled Roe v. Wade.
To help him I will donate more so his attorneys can be paid.

I am convinced that Trump is electorally invincible,
To "Stop the Steal" I will act beyond reason, rhyme or principle.
Even if the "witch hunt" ends in five or more convictions
No chance in hell of ending our Donald Trump addictions.

Reagan and the Neocons and even libertarians
Are less my jam than demonizing middle school librarians.
In short, my values hold less water than a very leaky sieve,
I am the very model of a modern Trump conservative.

And so it begins. Reader submissions continue to be welcome; send them here. (Z)

This Week in Schadenfreude: Jesus Day

Did you know that Jesus Day is an official state holiday in Texas? People don't get the day off, in part because it's always on a Saturday, but they are encouraged to march as part of public demonstrations in support of Jesus. The enabling legislation was signed into law by George W. Bush back in the year 2000.

In other words, it's yet another reminder that Texans don't think too much of the separation of church and state. We also feel pretty comfortable hazarding a guess that the people who promulgated the holiday, and probably a lot of the people who partake in celebrating it, are the sort of Christians who seem to have very little interest in the spirit of the Bible and who, more often than not, seem to be unfamiliar with the letter of the Bible, except for a few carefully chosen passages that just so happen to support their modern-day political views.

And you know what kind of person drives those right-wing Christians nuts? A left-wing Christian, particularly one who most certainly has studied his or her Bible. Someone like state Rep. James Talarico (D), who is very clearly a devout Christian, and is also very clearly not the sort of Bible-thumper that suits the taste of many Texans.

The reason that Talarico is in the news right now is a hearing held about seven months ago and once again making the rounds online, in which state Rep. Candy Noble (R) presented a bill to Talarico's committee that would have required the Ten Commandments to be posted in all Texas schools. The give-and-take between Talarico and Noble was really quite something to behold, as he was ready with both civic and religious arguments, while she was generally reduced to stammering. We don't love linking to TikTok, but that's where the video is, and where it has gotten more than 6 million views and 26,000 comments. So, here it is:

@jamestalarico Texas Republicans are trying to force public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. I told the bill author: "This bill is not only un-constitutional and un-American, it's deeply in-Christian."#txlege ♬ original sound - James Talarico

If you don't care to watch it, or you can't watch it (TikTok embedding is a little dodgy), here are the money lines from Talarico's interrogation:

There are a sizable number of readers of this site who are devout Christians. But, in our experience, those readers are entirely in agreement with Talarico that it's not OK to force religion on people, particularly when it's the state that's doing the forcing. And, presumably, our non-Christian readers, and our non-religious readers, are in agreement as well. So, we thought you'd like to see it (or, at least, read about it) when someone like Noble gets cut down to size by someone like Talarico. As a bonus, you can see several of Noble's fellow Republican Christians squirming in the video; some of them even disappear halfway through.

Oh, and the bill was never brought up for a vote, so it will not become law. Did Talarico's words have something to do with that? We'd like to think so. (Z)

This Week in Freudenfreude: Now That's an Obituary

This isn't really political, but obituaries are the theme of this week (and next week), so we checked with the judges and they will allow it. You've never heard of Virginia Jane Smith, because she was just regular folks. But when she passed a few weeks ago, she exited with the kind of obituary that everyone should aspire to. We tried to summarize it, but it works better to just read it in its original form. So, here it is (credit to her granddaughter, Laura Bassett):

Virginia Jane Smith, a New Orleans legend, died blissfully in a morphine cloud on her 98th birthday Thursday, Nov. 9. Ginnie was a spitfire, a sailor, a poet, a Katrina survivor, a stage performer, a geriatric Tito's vodka ambassador, and of course, my grandmother.

Ginnie was born in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1925, and worked as a secretary at a stationery company on Madison Avenue in the late 1940s. She fled to New Orleans after a handsome WWII vet named Fulton proposed to her outside the men's room in the Hoboken train station. The two leave behind three children, nine grandkids, and eight great-grandkids, all of whom adore them.

Ginnie was hyper-social and lived for entertaining—sometimes to the exclusion of paying utility bills. Her house was full of random music instruments, costumes, and eccentric little treasures, and she was constantly singing and dancing and inviting friends over for a Toddy. She was obsessed with her grandkids, smothered us with physical affection, and constantly tried to gift us her belongings.

Three of Ginnie's grandkids were raised in Homer, Alaska, and the greatest pleasure of her life was her trips to visit them. They would drag her out of bed in the middle of the night and the dead of winter to view the Northern Lights, in her nightgown with snow boots and a coat hastily thrown on. Later, after losing her eyesight, she would say she could still travel in her mind and see the sublime view of the Northern Lights over the ocean. Alaska was her happy place, to the extent that in her blind years she accidentally gave me an "Alaska" shot glass for Christmas, only to ask for it back when she realized she still needed it.

Ginnie lost her house and everything in it in 2005's Hurricane Katrina. She was a widow then, living alone in Pass Christian, Mississippi. Referencing dire warnings, we begged her to evacuate, but she clung to life in her then-boyfriend's attic, where she claims they survived for nearly a week on boiled eggs, water and whiskey. Right when we considered her lost to the storm, she washed up at my parents' house in Opelousas, Louisiana—with mud up to her knees, and holding a bucket she'd been peeing in—to ask them if they had any cherries with which to make a Manhattan, because she'd run out.

In her retirement home, Ginnie continued to party as hard as ever and regularly performed for the other residents. Most recently, she wore a Marilyn Monroe-inspired stuffed bra and blonde wig and lip-synced to "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." Later, at the height of the pandemic, she caught the attention of Tito's vodka when a tweet of mine went viral about how we'd called Granny to check on health and safety, but her main concern was that the residence had run out of Tito's and needed reinforcements. The company sent her a lifetime supply of vodka and a closet's worth of swag, including Tito's sunglasses and a visor, which she wore constantly until she passed.

In her final years, as Ginnie lost her sight and hearing and refused to communicate via technology, she began sending grandkids and great grandkids handwritten poems in the mail (with crisp $2 bills folded in). She'd wake up in the middle of the night thinking of rhymes and write them down in giant shaky handwriting so she wouldn't forget them by morning. I always responded in rhyme, too, understanding that this had become her love language.

At our last visit, less than a month ago, she told me she'd just nearly been kicked out of her retirement home for stealing furniture. She'd recruited a neighbor by sticking a note under his door instructing him to wear a Covid mask and visor and meet her in the hallway, where they used his motorized wheelchair to scoot their favorite chair back from another ward. She was furious the next day when security called her and told her they recognized her from the camera footage, even in disguise, because her visor said "Tito's" on it.

Just weeks later, my grandmother was in the hospital fighting for her life. But she spent her final days in the best way possible for her: blissed out on a morphine drip, with my mom reading her loving, funny goodbye letters from her nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, including an audio recording of a soon-to-be-ninth-great-grandchild's heartbeat.

An employee at Ginnie's assisted living home told her son as she was dying that the whole staff at the place loved her for her rare combination of "grit, class, and gusto."

In a moment of clarity just before she died, my grandmother asked my mom to call her 93-year-old sister, Cece, whom she called "Froggy" (while Cece called her "Pearly").

"I have a question for you, Froggy," she said.

"What, Pearly?"

"Why did you let me tie a sheet around your waist and lower you out of the upstairs window that time?"

"Because I'm stupid and always did whatever you told me to do."

"See you on the other side, Froggy," she said, and then drifted back to sleep.

Vaya con dios, Mrs. Smith. And have a good weekend, all! (Z)


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