Left Jabs

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John Bolton is in Deep Doo-Doo

J ohn Bolton is once again in the spotlight. For two decades we’ve been charmed by his Cold War-style bellicosity. And now he joins James Comey and Leticia James as the first real targets of Trump’s vendetta indictments. But unlike the Comey and James cases — which are end-to-end bullshit and everybody knows it — Bolton’s day in court will be more complicated. There is, in fact, a real case against him, and he might actually be facing prison time. Try to resist the schadenfreude. Yes, the indictment is a textbook example of politically motivated. Yes, Trump publicly ordered his pet attorney general, Pam Bondi, to make it happen, which is wildly illegal. Yes, Trump has publicly castigated Bolton, which was once a surefire way to get a case thrown out of court. But apparently, a case can be politically motivated and still be competently put-together, a rarity in the Bondi DOJ. And that’s a problem for Bolton. It was just a few months ago I was writing abo...

Have You Thanked a Regulation Lately?

I recently talked to a lawyer of my acquaintance, whose practice is focused on educational institutions. She represents schools and universities in their relations with the Department of Education, and she does her best to keep her clients compliant with that department’s many regulations. She felt the need to add, somewhat sheepishly, that she wasn’t sure those regulations were still in force, or whether the Department of Education, as she’s known it, even exists. As the junta keeps tampering with the gears of the federal government, we’re all left wondering what happens when the rules are no longer there. In the same week that I talked to her, the six grand inquisitors on the Supreme Court were happy to overturn a lower court ruling, thereby giving the green light to major “workforce reductions” in the Department of Education. 1,400 or so employees — people responsible for regulating schools — were subsequently laid off, a good chunk of them just last week...

The Rapture Disappoints Yet Again

T he Rapture has always struck me as the quintessence of religious crankery, right up there with snake handling and speaking in tongues. How does anyone get to a mindset where they’re absolutely positive that Jesus will be coming around this week and whisking them off to heaven? If you’re not familiar with the Rapture — or with Armageddon, the Second Coming, and the whole End Times theology — let’s bring you up to speed a bit. An Australian writer named Dan Foster has an excellent article on the subject, written from his own experience. Raised in a “Rapture culture,” he says he suffered from “Rapture anxiety” as a child. He defines the Rapture as: …a belief held by many evangelicals. It describes a sudden moment when all Christians, living and dead, will be taken up into heaven. According to this view, the faithful will escape the world before a long period of disaster and suffering begins for everyone left behind. The theology is based, loosely, on the B...

Probably Not The Last Word on Charlie Kirk

Kamala Harris is wired to be repulsed by the name of God. She mocks God. Again, everything Democrats love, God hates. Let me say that again: everything that Democrats love, God hates. And if you’re a Christian that votes [for] the Democrat Party, you are voting for things that God hates. That’s between you and God. Think about it. If you’re voting for the Democrat Party, you’re voting for stuff that God hates. —Charlie Kirk, “ The Charlie Kirk Show, ” October 21, 2024 Let’s speak ill of the dead, shall we? Keith Olbermann now calls him “St. Charlie of Kirk,” and who could argue with a rapid canonization, given the deep piety of the statement above? It’s impossible for decent people to talk about Charlie Kirk’s assassination without starting the sentence with the obligatory “I condemn all forms of violence, but…” This is quickly followed by some watered-down version of Kirk that paints him as less loathsome in death than he was ...

AR-15: The Must-Have Accessory for the Well-Dressed Republican

I’m not ready to write about Charlie Kirk, and might decide not to. Either way, it won’t be this week, in which writing has been impossible. So let me return to a piece that I feel has some resonance at the moment, given the concurrent shootings of Kirk and of two school kids in Evergreen, Colorado, a town I once lived in. I posted this in April 2023, but its subject is timeless. Even when an AR-15 isn’t directly involved with some atrocity, its culture usually is. F or decades, a standard tactic of anti-abortion activists was to display, in as much gruesome detail as possible, photos of aborted fetuses. It was a vile tactic — an easy punch in the gut to the gullible and squeamish — but it’s hard to deny its effectiveness, or the inflammatory role it played in the culture wars. It was, in a way, a harbinger of the death of Roe v. Wade. Revulsion, whether we like it or not, is a real political tactic. An extreme tactic, to be sure, but it has its uses. Hold...

The Tourism Slump Isn’t Just About Tourism

N ot enough is being said about ripple effects. We still haven't felt the real fallout from the destructive policies and harebrained leadership we are currently stuck with. The effects have yet to fully ripple. When these policies are announced, we’re all rightly appalled at the immediate headlines. Then, even before the next news cycle, we’re on to the next atrocity before the last one even has time to dry. Outrage fatigue sets in, and we can’t keep up. But the toxic effects of these policies, while easily predicted, tend to happen in slow motion, and over time. Often, they’re not even perceptible, except through statistics. When the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was fired last month for publishing employment numbers that reflected reality, as opposed to Trump’s fantasies, it was clearly a ripple effect of terrible policies, and Trump didn’t like it at all. Whether they ripple through the economy, the environment, the legal system, the healthcar...