At issue is …
I'm not one to gratuitously take the Lord's name in vain, but… Jesus.
Jim Geraghty has some textual thoughts on President Trump’s Self-Inflicted Divine Mess.
President Trump has many powerful enemies, but few more powerful than his own emotional incontinence and lack of self-control.
As we slog toward the midterms, it is sometimes genuinely fascinating to see what Trump can and will do to alienate his usual supporters.
Sometimes Trump will have a public angry split with the likes of once-stalwart allies like Marjorie Taylor Greene or some high-profile podcasters. Sometimes he’ll hesitate or drag his feet on keeping a campaign promise, like releasing the Epstein files. While self-identified MAGA voters overwhelmingly support the war, no doubt the war alienated some Trump fans who thought they were getting an end to “forever wars” and regime change against hostile states in the Middle East.
And this week, amidst an increasing war of words with the pope, Trump shared an image of himself as Jesus.
In case you missed the ensuing kerfuffle, Jim has more.
Also of note:
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When he's not healing the sick… Josh Barro points out that Trump Is Failing the 'Big-Ass Truck' Test.
The average voter wants to live an abundant lifestyle that entails a lot of energy consumption. When Abundance came out last year, I had a warning for Democratic politicians: if you make energy expensive, voters will not believe you have delivered abundance. This is the “big-ass truck” Sen. Ruben Gallego has talked about: a lot of men would like to own one, and they’ll need to buy a lot of gasoline to fill it up. Democrats face an electoral penalty because of their commitment to climate policies that make the big-ass truck less available and the gas to drive it less affordable.
Unfortunately, the party has shown little interest in reckoning with this. In Abundance itself, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson tried to finesse the energy question in a way that was unconvincing, and in elected politics, Democrats have continued to vote for unpopular climate policies, including when every Senate Democrat except Elissa Slotkin stood with the party’s climate-obsessed donors and voted to uphold California’s highly unpopular electric vehicle mandate. It’s a huge drag for a Democratic Party that is supposedly trying to win back working-class voters who had shifted toward the Republicans in recent years.
And then Donald Trump decided to fritter away one of the Republican Party’s biggest political advantages.
In case it's unclear: foreseeable consequences from the Iran War make those big-ass trucks a lot more expensive to drive.
Non-Disclaimer: I do not own a big-ass truck. And I would have to hold my nose to vote for Republicans, but I probably will be doing that in November.
Making things slightly easier: Trump won't be on the ballot.
Making things slightly harder: the GOP's candidates will still probably bend the knee to Trump.
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Ackshually, if you count the LPNH, it will be a fourth party. NHJournal looks at a dark horse: Former Dem Kiper Forming Third Party, Staying in Gov's Race.
For months, Newmarket small business owner and former town councilor Jon Kiper has been campaigning in the New Hampshire Democratic gubernatorial primary, telling voters they need a new governor.
On Monday, Kiper announced New Hampshire needs a new political party.
“My relationship with the Democratic establishment was clearly frayed, but seeing Chris Pappas at an AIPAC event doubling down on sending billions more dollars to the Middle East to support another endless war was more than I could bear,” Kiper said in a statement Monday.
“If the Democrats would like to be the party of war, the party of Purdue Pharma lobbyists, that’s their choice, but I want no part of that,” Kiper added. “And neither should the people of New Hampshire — I will be giving voters a third choice in November, the Community First Party.”
You can examine Kiper's election pitch here. It's pretty standard "progressive" stuff, including a Constitutional amendment that would (somehow) say "corporations are not people and money is not speech." I.e., partial undoing of the First Amendment, by opening up a wide path for government censorship of speech. He also wants to reinstate NH's Interest&Dividends Tax.
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Luddites across the river. The WSJ reports: Maine Lawmakers Pass Ban on Large Data Centers.
Maine lawmakers on Tuesday passed a ban on large data-center construction, making it the first state to enact such a measure as communities around the U.S. deal with fallout from the artificial-intelligence boom.
Greg Lukianoff and Adam Thierer, on the other hand, encourage AI, free speech, and America’s real advantage over China.
Cameron Berg, founder and director of the AI cognition nonprofit Reciprocal Research, published a smart essay in The Wall Street Journal yesterday called “AI Is Bound to Subvert Communism.” In it, Berg gets at something many Americans still seem reluctant to admit: China wants world-class AI, but it also wants to control what people can say, know, and ask — and those goals do not sit comfortably together.
Berg’s point is that advanced AI systems are hard to contain inside a regime built on censorship, ideological discipline, and fear of open inquiry. The better these systems get, in fact, the more they encourage the very habits authoritarian governments hate most: asking questions, testing claims, following arguments, and noticing contradictions.
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And wannabe terrorists in California and probably elsewhere. Maya Sulkin dives into a sewer: ‘This Should Be a Nightly Occurrence’: How Social Media Users Cheered the Attacks on Sam Altman.
“Sam Altman is, like, evil as shit.”
“This should be a nightly occurrence.”
“All I can say is I’m disappointed that they didn’t train their aim.”
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
These were just some of the messages on Reddit and social media in the hours after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was attacked. The point, in all of them, was the same: Altman had it coming.
On Friday, April 10, at 3:45 a.m., Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s San Francisco home while Altman, his husband, and his baby were asleep. It set the exterior gate on fire.
Things aren't as bad as they were in the 1970s, but we seem to be on that path.
![[The Blogger]](/ps/images/barred.jpg)
