Our Supreme Court, which surely isn’t done doing us harm, temporarily blocks an EPA rule concerning interstate pollution, while plaintiffs (sigh Ohio sigh Indiana sigh West Virginia) can work their lawsuits through lower courts. Meaning it’s not a permanent defeat for the common-sense notion that air pollution doesn't just stop at the next state’s border, but a significant setback nonetheless. Anyway, dig Justice Barrett calling the majority opinion’s reasoning “an underdeveloped theory that is unlikely to succeed on the merits.” I’d say I’m starting to like her, but I know she’s going to disappoint me later like she’s disappointed me before. Right, Anthony Kennedy?
Benjamin Sandofsky tells us the story of the Lambda School, which was, spoiler alert, a school that raised a crap-ton of venture capital money promising a “better way” of teaching students to code (and then design websites, and then become nurses!) but pissed it all away through incompetence and hubris. The school never worked, it turns out, and telling everyone how well it was working when it wasn’t has, you know, consequences. Law and order consequences, you might say! Naturally, the anti-hero of this story, a Lambda co-founder I shall not name because his name and works deserve oblivion, whined about how “jealous” everyone must have been of his success to tear down his corporation. It’s like no one remembers Jesus turning over the moneylenders’ tables in His Father’s house.
At ProPublica we learn of the political non-profit that “Enriches Fundraisers While Spending Almost Nothing on Its Stated Causes.” Turns out the “political non-profit” is actually a thing some corrupt individuals create after their charitable empires collapse under FTC scrutiny (Trump Administration FTC scrutiny, no less!); they typically spend almost none of their donations on voter education and outreach, which you’d think a political non-profit would exist to do, and almost everything on fundraising and administrative costs, a lot of which goes to crony consultants and political non-profits. Yay, the rich have figured out yet another way to rob the poor! Now they’ll say we’re just “jealous” of them. Who’ll be the jealous one at the Pearly Gates?
Sen. Lindsey Graham (E-SC) says that the “lawless” President Biden should be put in jail – for forgiving student loans! Not even over whatever the hell that was that James Comer was ranting about in our House. How do you sound when you accuse a guy of “lawlessness” and say he should “be in jail” and your accusation’s all about forgiving student loan debt? You sound like a partisan whiner at best, and a crazy person at worst. Note well that his Personal Lord and Savior might get actual jail time in a few weeks for trying to cover up an affair with a Playboy bunny so people wouldn’t vote against him! I know which I think is worse.
Finally, a bit of advice about that debate performance: Walter Mondale crushed Ronald Reagan in the first 1984 debate and lost by 19 points; John Kerry smoked George W. Bush in the first 2004 debate (one exclusively about foreign policy, no less) and went home with the silver on Election day, and Mitt Romney’s unexpectedly good performance in the first 2012 debate, coupled with Barack Obama’s unexpectedly bad one, meant nothing for Mr. Romney’s electoral fortunes either. And the first 2024 debate happened three months before any of the others I mentioned, meaning most folks (I mean people, not pundits) will forget about it as quickly as they forgot about Mr. Biden’s sterling State of the Union address or his incongruously upbeat rally after the debate. Mr. Biden could very well be playing a game of rope-a-dope, and you know who the dope is.
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