Election 2024 has had some of the laziest writing of the entire series. There was the structure of a good story: the lightly foreshadowed withdrawal of a presumptive nominee, but the rest of this summer has seen soap opera levels of manufactured drama. Two assassination attempts? Two!?! "Sir, I'm being told that The Fonz has jumped a second shark." An then we hit peak noncredibility with "I hate Taylor Swift".

And so while I might ordinarily stick to more concise issues in the news and politics domain - e.g. specific SCOTUS decisions or weird primary candidates - this one calls for a megapost. First, it's only September and this is a presidential campaign that will probably live in infamy. That's not exactly a reason to join the chorus of reporting and commentary, but sometimes when I'm feeling nostalgic I look back on the significant events I've covered here, like The Boomerkrieg, Forte11watch, and a hospital all-nighter. Second, there's no shortage of overlap with the usual kilroy fare like technology, media, and the meme meta.

Even the graffiti has a geopolitical message now.

This lengthy post doesn't culminate with some specific advocacy like "Vote Kodos" or "hug your polling official". It's an episodic history of 2024 presidential race (up to September 24) with ample digressions into related stories and media reactions.

Source.

Let's start on the lighter side of things: podcasts. Personally, I don't believe in podcasts. I don't like the "morning radio show 2.0" formula nor the fact that podcasts are the leading cause of self-identified libertarianism. I understand why people who have long commutes listen to podcasts but if it were me, I'd do an audiobook.

That said, a couple of years ago, Mark pointed me to a weekly show that discusses legal stories of national interest. I happened to be mentally recuperating from trying to absorb Children of Time via a non-print medium, so I gave it a spin. The format of the podcast, Serious Trouble, is a Q&A-like discussion between an emcee and a lawyer of some notoriety, i.e. he occasionally (often?) provides expert opinions to national news media.

Based on this experience, I've tried a couple of other podcasts. The only one that's stuck is Knowledge Fight, a longrunning show that critically discusses Alex Jones. Knowledge Fight is run by a couple of stand-up comics out of Chicago (or something), so it's funny and entertaining rather than say, laden with indignant outrage. The Knowledge Fight guys play lengthy clips of the underlying material, so beyond the comedic riffing there is ample tin foil conspiracy nonsense to enjoy. And I do mean nonsense, over three decades on the air Jones has upped the ante from 9/11 conspiracies and crisis actor accusations to literal invasions by aliens and interdimensional beings.

Source.

Listening to Knowledge Fight is how I ended up hearing parts of Tucker Carlson's February interview with Vladimir Putin - Dan and Jordan took a momentary detour from Alex Jones to cover another luminary of the alt right. The interview didn't originally garner enough buzz for me to justify finding a transcript or mirror, but I was down for the Rifftrax version.

I expected the interview to be a well-orchestrated propaganda piece where the two could agree "NATO bad", "social liberalism bad", and "Christianity good". Both Putin and Carlson have been in the PR game for a long time, so how could this not be an infomercial for the US abandoning Ukraine? To be fair, the discussion did occasionally meander toward softball Q&A but the majority of it was vaguely confrontational.

One would have expected Putin to focus on addressing the western audience that constitutes Carlson's viewership and the potential key to US isolationism. Instead, he assumed the persona of The Old World Thinker schooling the ignorant westerner, perhaps he was more mindful of how he'd appear domestically. This tone was quickly established with a derisive, "are we going to do a show or are we going to have a real discussion?" (light paraphrasing). Putin followed this with a half-hour monologue on Russian history vis-a-vis its supposed territorial claim to Ukraine. For context, since the beginning of the "Special Military Operation" (i.e. a non-war military action), the Kremlin has maintained four independent justifications for the invasion:

1. The 'denazification' of Ukraine. Notably, to Russian ears, this term is more of an invocation of the Great Patriotric War than a condemnation of fascism or genocide.
2. Ukraine ("The Kiev Regime") isn't sovereign but actually belongs to Russia because of the aforementioned historical claim.
3. NATO is "expanding" to Ukraine and so this is a pre-emptive defensive measure.
4. Russia is obligated to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

Context: /r/PostKarma is a subreddit used by Russian bots to farm karma so that they can post in high-visibility places (Reddit is too busy making AI dataset bucks to care). Anyway, they think this is a brilliant refutation.

Like any other time someone uses a "throwing shit at the wall" justification, these fall down under independent scrutiny. And to Carlson's credit, he scrutinized them, forcing Putin to go to the standard throwing shit at the wall response and simply pivot to another one as a non-answer. Tucker asked questions like (paraphrasing) "why aren't you denazifying other countries like Poland" and "if Ukraine has never been a country, why invade now?". The Knowledge Fight guys speculated that Carlson didn't plan to challenge Putin's ideological consistency but was baited into it by the Russian president's smugness.

This wasn't a compelling interview, but it was far more entertaining than it had any right to be.

Finally, I was vaguely aware in February that Carlson had asked Putin for the release of the imprisoned WSJ journalist. It wasn't until I heard the audio that I realized how awkward the interaction was. Tucker really thought he'd get a triumphant return to the US with Evan Gershkovich but instead got Putin to say (paraphrasing), "In Russia you don't need to work for a foreign intelligence service to be imprisoned on espionage charges."

Source. The obscenely stupid story of a test engineer with a clearance who decided that he'd rather move to Russia where you're free from stuff like vaccines.

"They don't say things for the sake of being true"

This was well articulated:

mtawspy

When are you guys going to learn not to take the Kremlin literally, even off-the-record? They lie. They don't always lie, but they don't say things for the sake of being true. This isn't that complicated. Whenever you see a report saying "Putin thinks/believes/wants X", rewrite that into "Putin wants to think that he thinks/believes/wants X". Then start considering possible reasons why he'd want that, and try to figure out which is more likely.

Recent history has had no shortage of people who stayed in key government positions a smidge longer than they should have; Ronald Reagan, Strom Thurmond, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mitch McConnell, Frank Underwood. In that vein, here's a chat from the investment thread in the days before the first presidential debate between Trump and Biden:


Because the president is not young, there had been plenty of speculation about his cognitive acuity. Critics would point to things like verbal stumbles and limited press conferences. On the other hand, he delivered a sharp and energetic SOTU in January and decided he would run for re-election.

Covfefe and fun gaffes

In a few recent incidents the president mixed up his words, like calling President Zelensky "President Putin" at a July NATO summit. A freudian slip like this is not new or alarming, innocent gaffes like these give us chuckles and SNL sketch material and meme formats. Thanks to President Trump, we can now refer to CEOs as [given name + company name], e.g. Tim Apple, Jenson Nvidia, and Michael Dell. And if you find yourself bullshitting and unable to think of concrete examples of something, just tack on "Many such cases!". If Teddy Roosevelt voters can have 'bully', then we can certainly have 'bigly'.

The dawn of the Twitter president also gave us typographical gaffes:

Donald Trump

Despite the constant negative press covfefe

'Covfefe' quickly became a stand-in for 'coffee' and sometimes as a wildcard noun, "I have to go see a man about a covfefe". The inaccurate and antagonistic take was, "see, he's illiterate!" when really it was no worse than "see, he doesn't always proofread!". These moments are funny and humanizing:

George W. Bush

There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.

And sometimes gaffes end up being profound:

George W. Bush

The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq - I mean Ukraine. Iraq too. Anyway, I'm 75.

In three darkly charming sentences, GWB acknowledged the fake WMD debacle, criticized Putin's Ukraine invasion, and suggested that maybe 75 is too old for public life.

Not covfefe

Returning to President Biden, in a handful of recent incidents, he started a sentence on one subject and ended it on another. This is (in my estimation) a much different situation than mixing up words or botching a folksy saying. In one case, Biden began a sentence on the subject of Egypt/Gaza and ended it on the subject of immigration from Mexico (to my knowledge he also failed to catch the discontinuity after the fact). Was it simply a topical pivot that turned too quickly? Well, as indicated in the chat above, I did a little volatility hedging going into the first presidential debate (since it was on a Thursday the 1DTEs were cheap).

Source.

I had soccer the same night as the Trump-Biden debate but caught the first ten minutes on the drive out. In those ten minutes there were numerous instances of the president beginning a thought in one place and ending it somewhere else entirely. I was concerned that the situation would deteriorate as the two hour event dragged on, but Biden's clarity of mind seems to have ebbed and flowed. Still, it was a clear demonstration that the president was struggling.

I didn't watch a replay of the debate, the commentary seemed it indicate that standing at the other podium, former president Trump more or less gave a campaign rally speech. He could say things like "I have the best environmental numbers ever" without fear that his opponent could question what that even means.

Aftermath

We got the debate trainwreck but not the market volatility (the lesson is to always inverse me). The media commentary was weird, it described a "poor performance" by Biden. That feels like saying an F1 driver whose engine exploded put on a poor performance. The optimistic view of the media response is that they were exercising decorum and/or restraint in the absence of a qualified medical diagnosis. On the other hand, it whitewashed reality. The pessimistic view is that the media legitimized the debate to sell a horserace, regardless of how competitive it is.

After June 27, the Trump campaign pivoted to the strategy of not interrupting an opponent in the middle of a mistake. There was a strange purgatory period where the attacks were largely replaced by positive campaigning. On the other side, the Biden campaign circled the wagons and put out the message that nothing had changed.

Unless June 27 was truly a one-off, it seemed that the remaining debates could only get worse. I wondered about the memoirs that would discuss why the DNC decided to play chicken with Biden's age. Certainly, shooting themselves in the foot is totally on-brand for the Democrats, but they had every opportunity to see the indications that maybe he wasn't sharp enough for another contest.

Source.

There's not much to say about the shooting itself. Some kid managed to find an elevated position with a direct line of sight to the podium from which the former president spoke. He was interrupted by a police officer and perhaps hurried his shot, grazing Trump's ear as the former president turned his head (as a one does when speaking to a crowd). People seated behind the stage were hit. Secret Service sharpshooters immediately incapacitated the would-be assassin.

As you'd expect, the weekend of the shooting was a media frenzy. News outlets didn't have a whole lot to report - they relayed the trickle of factual details and some restrained speculation. Mainstream left wing opinions were largely rote condemnations of political violence and sympathy for the victims. That left plenty of air in the room for right wing pundits to loudly denounce whomever they decided was responsible.

Nobody likes word clouds, but if there was a word cloud of conservative opinions from the weekend of the 13th, the biggest word would be "they". While some declared that the shooter was Antifa or an MK-activated vaccine automaton, most settled on Thomas Crooks being "the violent left" or simply "they". Blaming "they" was an easy way to score political points without making a guess that might be quickly proven wrong.

Basically this, though this is from the second assassination attempt* - oops, spoilers.

It took about a week to find out that Crooks didn't really fit any political category:

• He was in his early 20s.
• He was a firearms enthusiast (but perhaps not overtly political about it).
• He had indirect connections to the Republican party but nothing especially convincing.
• He lacked any clear association with ANTIFA or BLM or anything else that could be called "the violent left". He apparently did offer a five dollar donation to some progressive cause once, perhaps just as "go away" money.

The weekend of the shooting, the consensus was that it would carry Trump to a November victory. By Wednesday the only thing newsworthy was the US Secret Service response.

Tucker again

I'll spare you a recap of how Alex Jones responded, but Knowledge Fight covered a promo interview Jones did with Tucker Carlson for some live speaking event. To closely paraphrase Carlson: "If Trump had been shot, you would have a hundred million people who have nothing. They have no political power, they have no economic power, all they have is Trump."

That's crazy on a number of levels. First, it would be weird to tell someone living outside an autocracy, "You're nothing without this one politician who isn't even in office." It's like the most insulting possible invocation of siege mentality. Second, assuming Carlson's statement were true, how big of a betrayal would it be for a political party to have no backup plan? "Vote GOP, oh by the way if this obese 78-year old becomes incapacitated (or incarcerated) your life is forfeit" It would be really dumb for a political party to have no heir apparent. Really dumb, like DNC levels of dumb. Lastly, well, is there any reasonable way to interpret this other than "yes this is a cult of personality"?

Eloln

Elon called this unintentionally psychadelic clip "Best AI video to date!". It depicts Biden as Agent Smith who fires the rounds that, in real life, absolutely struck both the former president and bystanders.

This election cycle has seen Elon Musk go from "I'm not giving either candidate support" to, after the shooting, full-throated support for Trump (so to speak).

He's come a long way.

Elon seems desperate to portray his growing political involvement as ideological but it doesn't fit with his constant parroting of GOP talking points. He may have political ambitions and has simply chosen a side. Or there is a financial motivator. Musk could fear the consequences of the unrealized capital gains tax that Congress has been discussing. He might alternatively/additionally see the future profitability of Tesla being reliant on federal approval for actual self-driving cars and/or robotaxis. His other big financial exposure is Twitter:

MSN

The Federal Court in California ordered X to disclose the list of investors. This list contains over a hundred entries, including individuals from the world of finance and show business and a Saudi Arabian royal family member. Specifically, this is about the 8VC Opportunities Fund II. On the fund's website, Denis Aven and Jack Moszkowicz are listed in the staff section. They are the sons of oligarchs Petr Aven and Vadim Moszkowicz. Petr Aven, a Russian billionaire and founder of Alfa Group, is described as "one of Putin's main portfolios."

Elon's Twitter acquisition was funded, in part, by foreign authoritarians with a stated interest in seeing Trump get elected/re-elected.. Looking back on Elon's Ukraine peace proposal tweet (lol), there's this nugget: "Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev's mistake)." It's weird to see a westerner echo Putin with the "historical claim" argument.

The (second) interview of the century

After endorsing Trump, Elon interviewed the former president. Like the First Interview of the Century (mentioned above), I decided "nah" to the original event but heard some clips via Knowledge Fight covering InfoWars covering the interview. This one had all of the boring, pregamed interaction that one would have expected from the Putin interview. The only worthwhile part of the discussion was seeing two allies who so clearly hate each other struggle find ways to exchange convincing complements.


In the wake of the June debate and Trump's approval-boosting assassination attempt, the DNC leadership must have suddenly come to the realization that it would have been wise to have established a Biden backup plan.

• Vice President Harris had been largely out of the limelight for the past three years.
• Governor Gavin Newsom had some national notoriety after debating Ron DeSantis for no clear reason, but a California governor would be a longshot in the current climate.
• There are some household names in the legislature - Schumer, Pelosi, Schiff, AOC - but none was a viable presidential candidate, especially without a chance to advertise themselves in primary season.

The dems had no one who resembled an heir apparent and it seemed way too late to switch horses. It seemed like they were really going to stick with Biden. It was also not externally clear where the president stood on the matter of his own competence - he presumably could not be forced to give up the nomination.

Law and Crime

According to the Washington Post, if there is an open convention candidates would have to obtain signatures from at least 300 delegates to get on the ballot. Should no candidates earn the majority, there would be a second ballot with super delegates voting. There would be subsequent ballots until a nominee wins over half of delegates.

Ultimately, Biden announced his withdrawal and the Democrats were on the same page about running Vice President Harris in his place.

Reactions

After three weeks of uncertainty punctuated by a popularity-boosting assassination attempt, it seems like Democrats were receptive to the baton being passed to VP Harris.

NJ

Shannon Bream asked Buttigieg - the Transportation Secretary who has been floated as Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate - if President Joe Biden was aware of how badly he had been doing in polling against Donald Trump. The answer wasn't what Bream expected, because she tried to interrupt, but Buttigieg wouldn't allow it. "I'm aware of how he was doing. We're all aware of how he's doing," Buttigieg said. "Our country has watched our president lead, and yes, we've also seen the fact that he's 10 years older than he was 10 years ago. But unlike Republicans, who in Trump's personality cult will take a look at Donald Trump and say he's perfectly fine, even though he seemed unable to tell the difference between Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi, even though he's rambling about electrocuting sharks and Hannibal Lecter, even though he is clearly older and stranger than he was when America first got to know him. "They say he's strong as an ox, leaps tall buildings in a single bound. We don't have that kind of warped reality on our side. "On the contrary, the president confronted that reality in what must have been one of the most difficult decisions for an American president to make ever. And he did something that I don't think Donald Trump could even conceive of doing, which is putting his own interests aside for the country."

On the right... after weeks of calling for Biden to step down, they didn't seem to have a game plan for what to do when it actually happened. The messaging from GOP pundits was scattered and uncharacteristically disunified. The only explanation I can think of is rooted in the (currently obvious) fact that the GOP in 2024 is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Donald Trump. Trump purged and mocked disloyal legislators in the 2018 midterms, he recently used campaign contributions for his legal battles, and got his daughter in law appointed co-chair of the RNC. Republicans like Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Lindsay Graham, and Ron DeSantis have been forced to publicly kiss the ring or face the same exile as Liz Cheney, Paul Ryan, John Bolton, The Mooch, and a carousel of cabinetmembers and military brass. In reshaping party leadership, Trump has also moved the Republican platform from neoconservative values to isolationism and fiscal recklessness.

What does the GOP takeover have to do with its reaction to Biden's resignation? While both political parties have well-oiled machines that propagate talking points from the decisionmakers down to the lowliest social media bots, the GOP sometimes finds itself having to regurgitate the former president's late night Truth Social rants rather than workshopped messages from the brain trust. With the stroke of a pen, Biden upended Trump's easy-mode debate schedule and post-shooting momentum and the former president was clearly frustrated:

Donald Trump

I spent $100 million on fighting [Biden], we weren't fighting anyone else, we weren't fighting a vice president, we didn't even know who the hell she was, and then all of a sudden, they say "Joe you're losing badly you got to get out."

"I'm the better candidate and I'm also angry that the worse candidate agreed and thereby resigned." This internal contradiction wouldn't ordinarily propagate beyond a single social media post, yet suddenly GOP voices claimed they were going to file lawsuits over the change in nominees. We also got some of the weirdest talking points, like Roger Stone claiming Michelle Obama would seize the nomination at the convention or that it was a coup and Biden had been sequestered (while also appearing at the NATO summit). In the political trenches of the internet (and probably on Hannity or whatever), Trump supporters expressed "very serious" concern that a Harris nomination would be undemocratic since Biden, not Harris had won the primary.

Source. That time that qanon thought JFK Jr would be Trump's running mate. Maybe RFK Jr is almost as good?

Ah yes, RFK Jr. Because he is an ex-liberal, antivaxer, and isolationist, Kennedy has been a darling of the "independent thinker" podcast listener type. And he's had considerable meme value, from confessing to having an actual brain worm to supposedly staging a bicycle-on-bear accident in NYC. After running a Super Bowl ad on the family brand and campaigning as a third party candidate, Kennedy dropped out and endorsed Trump.

Source. Policies aside, Kennedy admitted to having a lengthy history of likely-disqualifying personal misdeeds. Who throw so much money at an unserious candidate?

On the subject of RFK Jr, Joe Rogan, "independent thinkers", and their One Issue:

hitch21

I honestly find it so bizarre there's a large sub section of people who just never moved on from Covid whilst the vast majority of the world has moved on with their lives. None of their conspiracy theories turned out to be true. Remember when they said lockdowns would never end and it was the start of an authoritarian take over? Few months later everything was back open and it's business as usual. They said and many still claim the vaccine was dangerous and going to lead to a ton of deaths. Again factually proven wrong as the death rate has returned to pre covid levels as expected. I just genuinely don't get what world they are living in that they can't see how repeatedly wrong they were.

I do recall that by now the "purebloods" were supposed to be the only survivors of vaccine "mandates" and the rest of us would be cyborgs beholden to 5G masters. Since vaccine hysteria was Junior's One Issue, he seems to have only roped in the 2016 Trump voters who are mad that the former president greenlit Operation Warp Speed. That's not to say RFK Jr had no platform, he just didn't choose a great marquee issue.

RFK Jr's explanation of the origins of the Ukraine war is hilarious. Unfortunately, podcasters like Howie Mandel and Joe Rogan aren't financially and/or intellectually capable of doing anything but nodding and mumbling "that's wild".

September 4: "RFK supporters"

New Republic

On Wednesday, the DOJ announced it would seize 32 internet domains linked to a larger Kremlin scheme to promote disinformation and influence the 2024 election. The Russian campaign, known as Doppelganger, uses AI-generated content to create "fake news" boosted through social media with the aim of electing Donald Trump. "Today's announcement exposes the scope of the Russian government's influence operations and their reliance on cutting-edge AI to sow disinformation," FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement about the charges. According to records, the plan was well known at even the highest levels of the Russian government-and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself may have been aware of the campaign.

There's nothing surprising about Russia launching an online disinformation blitz to get an isolationist in office, it's just a rehash of Project Lakhta (lazy writing this season, smh). Unlike 2016, however, the Kremlin is now pot-committed on an invasion that appears difficult to sustain economically. Specifically, the Russian central bank recently raised benchmark interest rates to an astronomical 19% (they'd briefly been this high in a post-invasion emergency/temporary hike). Borrowing at payday lender rates isn't great for them, it's even worse because Russian state expenditures have increased 50% from pre-war levels. I'm sure they'll be fine in the near term; as a sovereign nation, Russia can do whatever it wants to its currency and borrow against the future wellbeing of its economy. But this only superficially hides the fact that in the the war and western sanctions have been very costly to the Russian state and people.

Returning to the quote above, the news out of the DOJ started with the September 4 announcement that two Russians had been indicted for funneling money to alt-right podcasters/influencers, including "beanie guy" Tim Pool. Basically, the Russian money would pay Pool and his peers to create additional content (podcasts) with their usual shtick, like praising RFK Jr. The total amount ($10M) seems somewhat inconsequential, but at a quoted $100k per episode (of just bullshitting for an hour) it suddenly seems like pretty good money.

The indicted foreign nationals will presumably never actually be prosecuted and the American recipients of the propaganda money haven't been charged, despite the middlemen having had a pretty good idea of where the money was coming from. Pool and the other influencers have apparently claimed ignorance of their foreign patrons, it remains to be seen if their viewership will find that this reflects poorly on their ability to provide political analysis.

Source.

The first Trump-Harris debate was a spirited affair and demonstrated some of the better writing of this season. It gave us "I have concepts of a plan" and memes about people eating cats and dogs. Trump was Trump. Harris put on a pretty normal presidential debate performance.

For me, there was far too much of my absolute least favorite thing - hyperbole. Both candidates attempted to describe their opponent in the direst of terms, "My opponent wants to ban fracking in Yellowstone National Park and this will lead to the end of America". Slippery slopes aside, Harris claimed Trump was dangerous to democracy, ableit there's plenty of evidence that he intends to be dangerous to democracy. Trump brought his usual rhetoric of claiming Harris is a communist and the most extreme candidate in history. These seem mathematically unlikely, if not patently false, and it was annoying to watch these assertions remain unchallenged. Of course, replying "Mr. Trump can you explain why you think I am a communist such that I might address specific assertions" simply invites a meandering response about student loan forgiveness and open borders. It's really a weakness of the format, although this debate did feature some spicy moderator/candidate fact checking moments.

The hyperbole thing is just a bee in my bonnet. In my estimation, the only real issue is this: if Trump is going to win centrists, it's going to be because "he's better on the economy". I don't think even immigration is something that will convince anyone who hasn't already made up their mind. And in this debate, Trump seemed to be able to pin inflation on the Biden administration (and Harris by proxy) simply because Harris's response amounted to, "I have a plan to fix it". If voters believe that the Biden/Harris administration is to blame for their economic woes, it seems unlikely that they'll believe in the "opportunity economy" plan.

Source. The FED balance sheet seems like it should factor in to any discussion of inflation.

This one happened only a few days ago, so here's the bulleted rundown of what we know at press time:

• Some dude flew into Florida and allegedly purchased an SKS and some body armor.
• He set up in the bushes at Trump's golf course.
• Secret service saw a gun barrel poking out of the bushes and shot at it.
• The FBI apprehended him.
• The guy had a wide variety of strong opinions.
• *Since the gunman didn't actually shoot at the former president, it might be premature/inaccurate to call this an assassination attempt. He might have been helping the golf course with its gopher problem.

From the Trump campaign and its proxies: "There are two wars under Biden and none under Trump." For her part, VP Harris addressed this during the debate with the reciprocally pedantic point that are no US troops in combat anywhere in the world and that was not the case in the previous administration. When you go one layer deeper, discussion of our support for Ukraine centers on three points:

• The cost of supporting Ukraine.
• The likelihood of success.
• The threat of nuclear escalation.

Assessing these is an exercise left to the reader, but some recent developments have reshaped the debate.

Kursk

Source. Ukraine got their first delivery of F-16s and unfortunately lost one outside of combat. Pic unrelated.

Fmr Russian Soldier

For those on the front line, this breakthrough is not a surprise at all. They've long known that something like this would start sooner or later; it was just a matter of time. As usual, all requests up the chain were met with: 'We have everything under control; intelligence reports that nothing has been noticed.' And this was all standard practice - before the attack, the shelling intensified. For example, a classic American tactic: they mop out as much as possible with aviation, then the troops go in. In this case, they didn't use aviation, but intensified the shelling with drones. Here, intelligence, the Ministry of Defense, and the 'TikTok troops' at the border (referring to the Chechen 'Akhmat' battalion, which was sent to defend the border. After the AFU invasion of Kursk Oblast, its fighters forced a Russian conscript to apologize on video for saying that the Chechens were hiding behind conscripts. - Ed.) seriously fucked up.

Ukraine mounted a counteroffensive into Kursk Oblast (in Russia). Russia has begun to push them back in recent days, but they held their ground long enough to embarrass their invader. The motives for the counterinvasion have been the subject of plenty of speculation. Perhaps it was an attempt to draw Russian forces from their grinding offensive. Perhaps it was an opportunity to temporarily change the war's narrative, however briefly. Perhaps it was a strategic opportunity enabled by recent armor deliveries and the attrition of Russian air defenses.

The War Zone

Yesterday, we wrote about how Ukraine is playing whack-a-mole with pontoon bridges Russia is building over the Seim River to avoid encirclement after Ukraine blew up the existing spans. Today, visual evidence emerged in the form of drone video showing Ukraine targeting those make-shift crossings.

Escalation

Russian oil depots have made impressive drone strike targets.

Morning Edition recently interviewed someone from the McCain Institute who "confirmed" the notion that Russian promises of nuclear retaliation were bluster, proven so by the muted response to the Kursk offensive. To struck me as a terribly hasty conclusion, simply because Ukraine does not represent an existential threat to Russia. NATO certainly could be an existential threat, so it'd be reckless to presume that a NATO incursion would be treated the same way, but there is eighty years of evidence to prove that nuclear arms aren't a weapon of convenience.

Also frequently missing from the escalation discussion (including my paragraph above) is an understanding of the difference between tactical nuclear arms and strategic ones. Russia might find itself pressed to use small-yield nuclear weapons to gain a battlefield advantage, but only a confrontation with NATO would reasonably result in a Doctor Strangelove scenario. While tactical nuclear weapons might quickly dispatch the Ukrainian forces in Kursk, there are strong reasons against using them, one of which is that Russia would be nuking its own territory. Beyond that, even small yield munitions would imperil Russia's partnership with China and India. So I don't really understand why the McCain Institute would think that the counteroffensive would provoke nuclear retaliation (in Kursk or elsewhere) and thereby conclude that the threats are bluster.

But for Election 2024, Putin threatening to glass our planet can be used as a compelling reason to elect the guy who promises to end the war by making outrageous threats against both sides.

Source.

Source.

The US Supreme Court will probably be called upon to resolve election disuptes this winter, but for the moment they're doing damage control on multiple fronts.

On tour

Justice Gorsuch did a really boring interview with David French to promote his book. The tldr is that "the government has too many words". It really is that dumb; to paraphrase "why do we have so many statutes and regulations in 2024 when we didn't need so many in 1790?". This is particularly rich in the wake of the Roberts Court overturning Chevron (and some of the ruling's dictum) that are increasingly placing intricate regulatory planning on Congress.

Going a different direction, French asks about proposals for term limits and enforcible ethics codes for Supreme Court justices, Gorsuch declines to comment. There was, at least, an exchange on originalism:

David French: ... there were a number of concurrences describing what text, history and tradition sort of means to different justices. The principal concern I have with this formulation: It seems to, as I read the text, history and tradition cases, they seem to call back quite often to colonial-era legislatures, to legislatures that existed in the early American period. And the question that I have is, why would these legislatures be considered trustworthy or terribly relevant as interpreters of constitutional provisions, when A) that's not the role of the legislature, to be the interpreter of the law and B) we all know that legislatures can flat out defy the Constitution? And you mentioned one of the most famous incidents in the book, the Sedition Act that was passed so quickly after the ratification of the First Amendment. So how important should these early American legislative enactments be?

Justice Gorsuch: Now, this really is a question for legal nerds.

French: It really is.

Gorsuch: And the answer is going to be the same, which is whenever you're looking for the original meaning of a statute, we do that all the time, without objection. We're all textualists now, right? Or the Constitution, there's going to be better and worse evidence of original meaning, and certainly the Alien and Sedition Acts, I would argue, very bad evidence of the First Amendment's meaning. You're absolutely right. And yes, legislatures can defy it. But what if you have an unbroken history of 100 years of legislative enactments that are consistent? Might that be some good evidence of the original understanding? Possibly, possibly. So, like anything else, it calls for, as Madison called, judgment. Judges need to exercise judgment, not will, he said.

This is a much different tone from recent rulings that have been like, "originalism obligates us to decide based on early legislation".

The Bruen test

This past summer SCOTUS ruled that citizens could be disarmed by protective orders for domestic violence. In her concurrence, Justice Jackson listed pending lower court cases that point to the new Second Amendment test established in Bruen. A judge in Kansas has now ruled that federal bans on fully automatic weapons fail this test:

Kansas District Court

Under the Second Amendment, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." U.S. Const. amend. II. "[T]he Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding." D.C. v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 582 (2008).

Soon: "All we said is that every decision in the past fifty years used the wrong constitutional test, we didn't say we wanted to relitigate every decision from the past fifty years."

Leaks

Then in July, a SCOTUS insider seems to have decided to talk to CNN about the EMTALA/abortion decision. I hadn't followed this one but from what I gather, the basics are this:

1. The Biden administration said that an emergency medical care act required that abortions be permitted in the emergency department (to qualify for federal funds?).
2. Idaho challenged the legality of this.
3. SCOTUS agreed to hear the challenge, leaving the Idaho law in place in the meantime. This was a 6-3 decision.
4. Once the positions were briefed, the 'centrist' justices wanted an offramp to have the lower courts do more fact finding.
5. Justices Kagan and Sotomayor agreed to this if the interim judgment was overturned.
6. Justice Jackson dissented, believing that the final decision should be made immediately.
7. Justice Alito said that the fact finding should proceed, but the stay on ED abortions should remain in place.

CNN followed up the next day with a leaks about the Trump immunity case.

The story with these leaks is the leaks; nobody doubts that negotiation and horse trading occurs behind the curtain of the highest court. Information about this politicking is far less common so it's interesting that someone would go to the press about it. In contrast, the newest round of leaks (this time to NYT), appear to show the Chief Justice Roberts acknowledging that SCOTUS has an image problem. Justice Alito was - according to the NYT's read of the memos - slated to write the majority opinion for the decision that January 6 insurrectionists were not actually guilty of obstructing an official proceeding. Alas, before the decision could be inked, photos of the Alito household on January 6 made national news. While this apparent bias wasn't enough to impugn Alito's participation in the decision, I guess the optics of having him be the first author were considered suboptimal.

Or, better idea, let's go to the Winchester have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over.

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