The Frankish Reich

Pure jazz joy.

Wow, talk about on brand. The 14 year old who discovered Rush (and in turn Ayn Rand) in 1976 is the 62 year old right-wing Trumpy conspiracy theorist in 2024. Who would've guessed? EDIT: I guess I should be thankful that he approves of Geddy Lee taking puberty blocking drugs in his own childhood.

The Holy Trinity of contemporary country: Tyler, Sturgill, Chris.

The 16 Nobel economists specifically state that they believe a Trump presidency would increase inflation. This is not terribly surprising given that Trump was pretty much a deficit dove, and that he is now pitching the most extreme tariffs we've seen since Smoot-Hawley. (By the way, it's taking an awfully long time for the righty critics to point out that one of the 16 - Akerlof - is Janet Yellen's husband. So there. I did it for you.)

I'm not sure about that. If you look at it purely as "adopted the conservative side/adopted the liberal side," that may be true. But there's kind of another type of analysis, the "institutionalist" vs. "agent of change" axis. We've seen the "agent of change" opinions like Alito's decision in Dobbs, which recognized the half century of precedent in Roe but basically said it doesn't matter since the Roe court was so clearly wrong (in his opinion). Decisions like the social media case today are more on the "institutionalist" side: the Supreme Court rejects the claim on the basis of the plaintiffs not showing a concrete injury directly attributable to government action. In other words, standing. That is a very old fashioned gatekeeping doctrine. I haven't looked at all his decisions by any means, but it seems to me that Roberts and Kavanaugh are very much on the institutionalist side of things; Alito/Thomas/Gorsuch/Sotomayor (too soon to tell with Jackson) on the "agent of change" side of things. Kagan and Barrett seem to tend institutionalist, although clearly on opposite sides of the political spectrum.

Exactly. It can be hard to establish the quid pro quo unless you have a complete confession. But when we have an official (governmental) act that clearly benefits a specific private party, followed immediately thereafter by a "gift" to the official, it seems obvious that we should infer a that this was, in reality, a bribe. A decision that emboldens corrupt officials.

Important to note that this is the result of an unusual alignment of conservative and liberal justices: Barrett wrote the opinion, joined by Roberts, Kavanaugh, Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson.

Julie Kelly suddenly worried about the Supreme Court acting in a "political manner" after it took its sweet time on the immunity issues, thereby ensuring that a trial cannot be held until after the election. Which seems to me to be acting in a political manner.

UPDATE: Lee DaVinci down to 5 monthly Spotify listeners. Go MAGA, go broke?

Trump is ostensibly leading, but he and his supporters now seem to be in panic mode. Does he know something we don't? How do we know that? Watch them bring up Hunter's laptop again!

Talk about not answering the question. Three people are prosecuted for crimes = COMMUNISM! Your Twitter friend is an idiot looking for clicks. And you will always take the bait.

She tells them what they want to hear. They believe that the Trump indictments are all a political ploy to keep Trump from regaining the presidency. So she is Ms. Confirmation Bias. She leaps to unfounded conclusions that feed the outrage machine. I used to think this was because she was in over her head; now I realize she is knowingly creating fake outrage stories.

Good news: the Dems look like they're ready to send one of their congressional clowns back home. Bad News: the Reps look like they're ready to reward their #2 clown, Lauren Boebert, with reelection in a new district.

Not really. There's the close the border thing, in which he implies that he'd go back to the Title 42 thing, which was based on a declaration of a COVID health emergency. There's the occasional quarter-baked tax stuff. Last week he was eliminating the income tax and going to a full tariff-based revenue system. This week he was keeping the Paul Ryan tax amendments in place. In other words, not eliminating the income tax, but keeping it in its current form and adding new taxes (tariffs), which isn't exactly lowering taxes except in Trump's mind. We let the states decide on abortion! Yeah, and New Mexico now is the abortion capital of America as Texans go there. So if you think abortion is baby killing, well, you accomplished nothing except raising the cost a bit. What's next? You'll end the Ukraine-Russia war in 24 hours. In other words, you'll pull all U.S. assistance and tell Ukraine to waive the white flag. And they eat it up, don't they.

Borders, well, ok. She does realize that no-cash bail is a NY state thing? That she may just be substituting one emotional response for another?

Our friend Julie was also behind the fake outrage over "authorized use of deadly force" warrant thing. It isn't reporting. It's agitprop.

It's basically an insult comic routine. Long digressions like some old monologue comedian. Everyone's heard the shtick before but they still fake laugh and applaud. Sharks. Electric boats. Ramps that he thought were too slippery. Joe Biden doesn't know where he is. Hillary is a crook. We beat Obama. Wiry looking immigrants are really cage fighters. Blah blah blah It's a bonding experience for them. People who look like me! He plays to people like us! He's paying attention to us! Yes, a cult experience. I went to one political rally in my life. Believe it or not it was Mike Dukakis 88. I was working downtown where the rally was. Most boring stupid thing ever. Kept waiting for him while people like Darryl Hannah said things like "we need a guy like Mike who'll roll up his sleeves and work for us." I barely caught Dukakis before I had to go back to work. Why anyone attends these things is beyond me.

Sometimes something is so stupid it doesn't warrant a response. Trump, Bannon, Navarro convicted = "that's how communism works." Yeah. Communism works by jailing an opponent of free trade and "globalism" (Navarro), a sexual deviant and serial liar (Trump), and a former investment banker who hates immigrants (Bannon). She is an idiot.

I've pretty much stopped looking at state-wide polls, or even worse Congressional district polls. There is so much error there that it's hard to draw any conclusions. Weirdly, though, national presidential polling is still pretty good. I say "weirdly" because who answers their phone and agrees to take a poll? I've had a few of these calls over the years that I have answered, but they always seem kind of fake and I don't go ahead; they won't give me the name of the company doing the polling. If they simply said "Quinnipiac" or something I recognized I would do it. So in 2020 we had Biden with about a 7 point lead in the national poll aggregates, and he won by about 5, within what we would consider margin of error (there is no such thing when aggregating, but you know what I mean). Pretty good, all things considered. Nate Silver is promising his model before the debate, so we'll see. For now, fivethirtyeight (which he really no longer is a part of) has it as a virtual tie - Biden + 0.2 in the national aggregate. But that's with RFK still drawing 9+ percent. The national polls really don't mean anything in the electoral college, but I think it's fair to assume that with the electoral college advantage the Republicans have Biden will need to win the national popular vote by at least the same margin as he won by in 2020.

Maybe that, maybe Dr. Ronny's Special Adderal Blend, maybe both. But watch out for Smokin' Joe come Thursday night. I'm taking the over on Number of C'mon Mans.

I agree with you on the transferable vote thing. We used to say that our system of elections meant that politics was fought in between the 40 yard lines. That's not how it works now. We are now in a horrible rut that rewards extremes on both sides by the way our primary process works. But I disagree on expanding the size of the House. It is already pretty unwieldy, and I can't imagine a 900 member House being more willing to reach reasonable compromises. I think it would only get worse as representatives answer only to their smaller/even more uniform constituents. Your gerrymander reforms could help, but I'm not optimistic.

I've done plenty of court arguments in my career. And yes, I think I "know the material" in each and every one. But you know what I still do? Prepare. Practice. Lawyers do moot court sessions with their colleagues in which they can be asked any and every thing. It would be malpractice to just walk into a courtroom and start spewing things off the top of my head. But no, we should expect our candidates today to stand for 90 minutes riffing on things like battery powered boats and sharks and my genius uncle at MIT rather than actually study and prepare. That's the true sign of genius.

Again - have I suggested any out of left field questions here that would surprise either candidate? Do you have some of those? If so, let's hear them! Remember that we know more about these 2 old men than we know about virtually any other public figure.

And while the initial strayer is to blame, others that take the bait ought to know better. We had a newsworthy event, for both sports and society. A 78 year old former baseball great returned to a place of unhappy memories from 58 years ago, and he reflected - in an emotional way - on his experiences. Isn't that enough? I say this as a guy who hated Reggie and the Yankees back in the day. At least I thought I hated. I really didn't. It was just sports. I see a real man today, not a caricature. I hope others can share in that experience.

So what are your "gotcha" questions? All predictable as far as I can see. For Biden: do you regret pressing so hard for your final COVID stimulus package? Do you believe it had some impact on the burst of inflation we saw in 2022-23? For Biden: do you agree that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was chaotic, that it caused deaths to U.S. soldiers, and that Afghanistan slipped quickly back into Taliban control? How could you have gotten this so wrong? For Trump: during your 2016 campaign and in your presidency, you promised that you would release a replacement for Obamacare. Do you believe Obamacare should be repealed? If not, what specific fixes do you propose? And why did your administration (or your 2024 campaign) never release a plan of your own? Why should we believe that one will be forthcoming if you win? For Trump: you proposed increased tariffs to replace the income tax. Have your campaign economists estimated what the tariff level would be to allow for such a replacement? Independent economists have suggested that it may need to be in the range of 60-80 percent or more. Do you have any studies showing it could be lower? And last week you stated that you want to make the Ryan/Trump tax bill permanent. I thought you wanted to repeal the income tax altogether? Which one? Where's the actual tax/revenue plan?