Putin and Trump are meeting in Anchorage as I write this.
The NY Times is reporting that “The initial meeting between Putin and Trump will now include the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, according to the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. An expanded bilateral meeting a short while later will include not only Rubio and Witkoff, but also Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.” Did somebody think Trump and Putin meeting one on one by themselves was a bad idea?
A bit of housecleaning — yesterday the NT Times had a story about the real reason Billy Long was fired from the IRS. And, as I suspected, it had nothing whatsoever to do with a failure to supply names from IRS files to Homeland Security, as had been reported earlier. The real reason was that Scott Bessent wanted him out. Long was absolutely useless at the IRS. He never finished college and has no formal education in taxes or economics. He had no management experience and no experience working in a large multi-level organization. He chaffed at having to run everything he wanted to do past Bessent. He made some gaffes in public statements. In short, he was even more in over his head than the rest of the administration.
Good article by Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect — Why Republicans Are Terrified of Nonexistent Crime. It begins:
Among the favorite pastimes of Republican men, two stand out: first, boasting about what strong, courageous, hypermasculine operators they are; and second, publicly melting down about how pants-pissingly terrified they are of American cities.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) is the latest in a long line of conservative men expressing delirious panic about an American city, in this case Washington, D.C. “I drive around in Washington, D.C., in my Jeep and, yes, I do drive myself. And I don’t buckle up,” he said on Fox News recently. “And the reason why I don’t buckle up, and people can say whatever they want to, they can raise their eyebrows at me, again, is because of carjacking.” Consider my eyebrow raised.
I grew up in an all-white rural-ish small town. I know the drill. Cities are full of nonwhite people. More crime is assumed. And most cities in the U.S. are governed by Democrats, because cities really have to have a government and not just a committee of good old boys thinking up ways for there to be more guns and fewer abortions.
The irony is that while not-city folks associate cities with crime, high crime rates are not limited to cities. See The Hidden Truth About Rural Crime Rates. Further, red states have higher rates of gun deaths than blue states (guess why). There are some random rural counties with unusually high homicide rates.
Axios just came out with a report that the highest crime rates are in blue cities in red states. “Eight of the top 10 cities with the highest murder rates and populations of at least 100,000 were in red states — Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, Ohio and Louisiana, Axios found.” The highest rate is in Jackson, Mississippi, with a homicide rate of 78 per 100,000 residents. The most recent homicide rate for New York City I could find was 4.1 per 100,000 residents. Yet the whole time I was living in Missouri people asked if I was glad to be away from all the crime in New York. It’s just stamped into their belief systems that those great big cities are hellscapes.
The Axios article doesn’t mention gun control, or the lack thereof, but I’m sure that the Missouri legislature’s permissible gun laws — carry whatever you want just about anywhere you want, no license, no permit, no training — is a big part of St. Louis’s homicide rate of 69.4 homicides per 100,000 people.
Ryan Cooper continues,
This seems to be a core emotion of modern conservatism: wallowing in terror of largely imaginary dangers. But there is a very real project behind their trembling cowardice—the violent subjugation of liberal cities. Today, D.C. is the target. Trump has seized control of the D.C. police department, deployed FBI agents to wander around peaceful D.C. parks, and authorized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to send in National Guard troops.
Cooper continues, “for anyone who has lived in any big American city, these Republican men are almost indescribably pathetic.” But of course it’s not really about crime, is it?
There’s another interesting piece by Brian Beutler, The Bad Math Driving Democratic Infighting. This is about the “we must be moderates to win elections” argument. One point is that the model long used by Democratic strategists to determine which candidate might best win an election is possibly all wrong. There’s a new model that shows moderation is less of an advantage than the old one does. I’ll let him explain the math part.
Beutler also makes the interesting point that perceived moderation is not necessarily about policy positions.
You can campaign comfortably along almost any part of the Democratic ideological spectrum, while developing a moderate image, by, e.g.:
*Describing your agenda as “common sense” rather than revolutionary;
*Being white and/or male rather than black and/or female;
Being “folksy”;
*Having good propaganda, and good responses to oppositional propaganda;
*And, yes, emphasizing heterodoxy on an issue or a small number of issues.
Voters perceived Joe Biden to be more moderate than Donald Trump, whom they perceived to be more moderate than Hillary Clinton, even though Biden ran to Clinton’s left, and Trump is a fascist who feigns heterodoxy on a small number of issues.
All of which raises the question: If the dividend of issue moderation is so easily overwhelmed by non-substantive factors and tactics, what is the point of all this factional war?
I keep going back to the pleasant but utterly bland Democrats I saw running for office in Missouri. They were so careful to not come across as anything but moderate that they didn’t come across as much of anything at all. I look at Mamdani’s Master Class on How to Talk to Voters, and I think any candidate can do something like this. Bring up an issue that lots of people can relate to. Explain why it’s a problem. Say how you will address it, specifically. You don’t need to present a 48-point plan. But instead of something too general — “We need a better way to do this” — but more like “we must eliminate bottlenecks created by X so that we can do Y.” And then put out different ads addressing several positions.
Well, it sounds like the big summit meeting is over. And there’s no deal. That’s probably for the best. I’m sure more details will come out over the next several hours.
Not since General Custer brought peace to the West at Little Big Horn did the United States pull off a mission like the one in Alaska. Nothing like a strategic massacre to bring out the peace pipes. I'd say this on goes to the indigenous people who survived locally in spite of the Russians or the United States interference. Let's hope they remember their old ways, as they may need them.
Current readings of history tend to support a notion of one land bridge and one migration of humans to the Americas that occurred between what is now Siberia and Alaska. Evidence comes from genetic data, which does not support a multiple historical migration theory. This all happened long after the extinction of dinosaurs and the rise of mammals. Small mammals got a leg up after the dinos went away.
Putin did not cover any of this, though he did ramble on quite a bit about very recent history through an interpreter. Fearless leader omitted reference to it also.
Putin did finally admit to lend-lease support I hear during WWII. I am sure that was breaking news to a lot of people who slept through that part of history class. If you got your history from the Russian educational system that tidbit of history seems intentionally left blank.
So, much to-do about nothing or just a nothing burger? At least it was expensive.
Seems like a long way to go for a history lesson. The big history news happened eons before that. That history they both left out.
I was very impressed that the USA rolled out the red carpet for President Putin. It's a pity that it looked like something picked up at the Salvation Army Thrift Store.
Still, Foreign Minister Lavrov showing up in a CCCP [1] sweatshirt and padded vest was fun.
1. CCCP is the Cyrillic for USSR in Latin script.
BLOTUS: Boot licker of the US. What a marooon the orange man is, looks like Putin got everything he needed quickly, declared a deal, and bailed before lunch. I wonder if he was impressed by getting a ride in Donny's car. It is a shame that our country is being led to collapse by a guy who thinks like a pre-teen.
I've been baffled a bit by the Alaska summit. Ruth Ben-Ghiat clears up a lot of it in The Make Russia Great Again Summit
The events of the last couple weeks: troops in DC, the Texas redistricting, the absurd attacks on Obama, Adam Schiff, and other Democrats, the meetings with Ghislane Maxwell and her move to Club Fed, and now this Alaska summit – signal how much distracton Trump is trying to create to hide the Epstein scandal.
Well Stump got Puty to say there wouldn't have been an invasion if diaper Don were president in 2022. Mission Accomplished!
Thx for link to "Bad Math driving Democratic Infighting". I agree with Beutler's suggestions, especially about "common sense" and being "folksy". The part about "Being white and/or male rather than black and/or female" is socially and politically problematic, but it might be good math (though that would depend on the district involved).
But IMO, the real Math Problem facing the Democratic Party is that Money and the Voters don't agree. 'Centrists' have the money, 'Progressives' have the enthusiastic voters. Beutler's prescriptions are mostly good advice for Progressives; essentially, ways to broaden their appeal (to voters AND donors) by cleaning up their act a bit, learning to behave more like adults and Good Neighbors.
It is fairly evident that Putin has much more on fearless leader than the Epstein files. How many ingratiating responses is Putin going to demand? It looks like fearless leader is up to whatever Putin needs and has no other options. His bluff has been called, and he has wasted what few chips he had.
If fearless leader had not looked like a dog who had been caught in the hen house again it might have had a better appearance. Europe knows where they stand and what they are up against. Turkey is pretending to crack down on crime as Putin seems to have them in his pocket also. They will continue to play the rogue NATO player and the EU knows that. They also know they need Ukraine's skill in fighting off the Russians and are learning quickly. All is not well on the East. We too seem to be in for more than a bit of a rough patch. Too bad fearless leader got himself compromised in so many places. Too bad for us.