CSotD: A Suddenly Disassembling America

Bruce MacKinnon got the most out of the Space X launch. For all the horse laughs at Musk’s expense, he had only predicted a 50% chance of success and some people who seem to know about this stuff agree with him that it was a necessary way to learn about what works and what doesn’t and what needs to be fixed and what maybe can’t.

Which makes it an excellent metaphor for Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, which was also launched before the bugs had been worked out and probably before it should have been and which now is in the stage of rapid unscheduled disassembly.

The difference being that Musk says he’s got a couple more rockets that will be ready to go as soon as the necessary tweaks and adaptations are made, while DeSantis may have to wait four years for another shot.

Darrin Bell (KFS) is more direct in his criticism, which brings in DeSantis’s original failed attempt to punish Disney for supporting its employees in the face of his Don’t Say Gay legislation, and his continued flailing as he tries to either overturn their legal legerdemain or find new ways to hamper one of Florida’s leading employers and taxpayers.

It’s more than a mishap. The GOP as a whole proclaims its dislike of government interference in private business while repeatedly doing just that.

But, first of all, you’re supposed to disguise it as acting in the interests of the people, and people all around the country save money and plan vacations to visit either Disney World or Disneyland.

Screwing with Disney is like banning ice cream.

Second, if you are the governor of Florida, you should have a perspective that lets you know just how skilled and powerful Disney’s attorneys are. You don’t mess around with the Mouse unless you have a real urge to be rapidly disassembled, on their schedule, not yours.

See you in 2028, pal.

Juxtaposition of the Day

Still on the topic of stupid moves by ambitious politicians, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, as fellow Texan John Branch points out, listened to Tucker Carlson apparently instead of looking into the murder of Garrett Foster and announced his intention to pardon a man convicted by a jury in the death.

Daniel Perry has been proposed for mercy because he’s in the army by the same people ready to jail that Air Force Guardsman who leaked classified information, and who ignore his social media offerings, which were vicious and bigoted and indicative of his motives when he “accidentally” drove into a crowd of BLM marchers and then shot to death a man who had a gun but wasn’t pointing it at him.

As Stantis suggests, if Perry deserves a pardon, Abbott could readily find all sorts of equally deserving people.

The difference being that, while DeSantis made himself look foolish to everybody, Abbott will only look foolish to people who already suspected he was kind of incompetent.

Far better yet to be Kevin McCarthy. Mike Luckovich brings the debt ceiling debate down to kitchen table economics.

The metaphor is spot-on, and it’s important for people to understand that the debt ceiling is about money we already owe, not money we might spend in the future, and you can’t simply refuse to pay it.

But they won’t hear it from McCarthy, or on Fox. So a lot of people will never hear it.

I heard some expert talking about personal debt yesterday, and it shamed me, because, as a consumer reporter, I, too, was guilty of telling people that, if they were too far in debt, they should ask their creditors to lower their payments.

When I found myself unemployed and under crushing debt, I did just that and the answer was that they wouldn’t even talk to me until I was in default. (Yes, there are debt relief companies who will offer to help. You’re probably better off just declaring bankruptcy.)

Kevin? Are you listening? The metaphor expands well into the macroeconomic world.

Unlike DeSantis or Abbott, McCarthy is in no danger of having the public turn on him, because if our economy crashes, it will be blamed on Biden, at least by the half of the country that put McCarthy in power to begin with.

McCarthy finally released a budget proposal, and it’s the same old same old. In kitchen table terms, the GOP doesn’t want to get a second job (i.e., raise taxes on the rich), they just plan to make ends meet by no longer feeding their children or taking them to the doctor (no translation required).

If the plan fails, he’ll brush it off as Biden’s fault. And if you question that, he’ll sic his guard dogs on you, Taylor-Greene and Boebert and the rest of the caucus.

He is the little man, so spic and span, who won’t be around when the debt hits the fan.

Juxtaposition of the Day #2

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Senator Dianne Feinstein’s health-based, age-based absences have paralyzed the Senate’s ability to confirm judges. She plans to retire in 2024, and, certainly, California is likely to return another Democrat, but you can’t guarantee the rest of the country will vote blue.

Now is the time for Democrats to put judges on the bench, and it doesn’t matter whether they are being blocked by the GOP or by the stubborn pride of one of their own members.

Arwa Mahdawi has a brilliant piece at the Guardian whose headline tells the story: “Clinging to power does not make Dianne Feinstein a feminist hero.” Here’s a sample, but the rest is worth reading.

In news of interest to women, and to men who have mothers, sisters, sweethearts, wives, daughters and suchlike, it was good, given the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, that seven of nine justices agreed to put a hold on the anti-science religion-based decision to halt distribution of mifepristone.

It was, however, predictable that, as Ann Telnaes depicts it, Alito and Thomas would dissent, because dissenting is what they do. Alito wrote a four-page statement explaining his reasoning, Thomas did not. Perhaps he hadn’t asked Ginni or Harlan why he was voting the way he did.

Alito explained that nobody would suffer if mifepristone were off the market while the matter winds through the courts.

In case you thought SCOTUS wasn’t perhaps a little disengaged from day-to-day America.