Prior to the election, I think we were all aware that Joe Biden was an ineffectual waffler on Middle East issues. He would wag his finger and then do nothing but wobble along the status quo line. I had this wishful hope that Harris was just going along out of loyalty to her president — unfortunately, we’ll never find out if she would have changed the country’s course if she’d gotten out from under Joe’s feeble thumb. All we can know for sure was that Biden stood by doing nothing while children were murdered in Palestine.

Now ProPublica lists all the cowardice behind the Biden administration’s Israel policy. He kept saying one thing, and doing nothing.

Biden’s warnings over the past year have also been explicit. Last spring, the president vowed to stop supplying offensive bombs to Israel if it launched a major invasion into the southern city of Rafah. He also told Netanyahu the U.S. was going to rethink support for the war unless he took new steps to protect civilians and aid workers after the IDF blew up a World Central Kitchen caravan. And Blinken signaled that he would blacklist a notorious IDF unit for the death of a Palestinian-American in the West Bank if the soldiers involved were not brought to justice.

Time and again, Israel crossed the Biden administration’s red lines without changing course in a meaningful way, according to interviews with government officials and outside experts. Each time, the U.S. yielded and continued to send Israel’s military deadly weapons of war, approving more than $17.9 billion in military assistance since late 2023, by some estimates. The State Department recently told Congress about another $8 billion proposed deal to sell Israel munitions and artillery shells.

“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the red lines have all just been a smokescreen,” said Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a preeminent authority on U.S. policy in the region. “The Biden administration decided to be all in and merely pretended that it was trying to do something about it.”

“Don’t you dare bomb that Palestinian town!” Israel, without hesitation, bombs the town. “Oh, OK, here’s a billion dollars worth of bombs to replenish your supply.” Over and over again. The article talks a lot about all these “red lines” the US was drawing in the conflict, and how US credibility was constantly diminished because Israel didn’t care and knew they’d get all the money they wanted, no matter how far over the line they crossed.

The article doesn’t end on an optimistic note.

On Nov. 14, more than a year after the war started, Human Rights Watch released a report and said that Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians is widespread, systematic and intentional. It accused the Israelis of a crime against humanity, writing, “Israel’s actions appear to also meet the definition of ethnic cleansing.” (A former Israeli defense minister has also made that allegation.)

During a news briefing later that day, reporters pressed a State Department spokesperson, Vedant Patel, on the report’s findings.

Patel said the U.S. government disagrees and has not seen evidence of forced displacement in Gaza.

“That,” he said, “certainly would be a red line.”

Who in the world cares what red line the US draws anymore?

Biden was a weak president, but don’t expect Trump will be any better. He’s going to bluster and lie louder is all.

The civil war sundering the Republican party continues. Steve Bannon minces no words in his hatred of Elon Musk.

“I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser, told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Wednesday. The article was flagged on Saturday by Bannon’s former employer, Breitbart, which published excerpts in English.

“He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon said. “Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it; I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore.”

I am made extremely uncomfortable by my agreement with Steve Bannon, and I hope he and Musk engage in a game of mutual annihilation. I also appreciate all the irony he is delivering.

In addition to Musk, Bannon blasted David Sacks and Peter Thiel, who also have roots in apartheid South Africa.

“Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans,” Bannon said. “He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”

You know, Bannon’s gripe with Musk is over those H-1B visas, that allows some well-educated brown people to live and work (and be exploited) in the USA, polluting his vision of an all-white America — yet white South Africans are the most racist people? Come on, guy. Racists are diverse, too, and both Bannon and Musk are equally racist, just in different ways. Racism is a spectrum, ranging from red-faced, rummy-nosed blustering MAGAts to pale flabby bros with sketchy facial hair. Kumbaya! Now go murder each other. I don’t want to see anything left but a pair of tails.

In 1921, the Canadians formulated a plan they called Defense Scheme #1 to invade the United States. This was not a serious plan to conquer North America, but was a contingency to be deployed in case they discovered that the US was plotting to annex Canada.

That condition is currently valid.

The idea was that Canadian militia would come charging down our highways to distract and disrupt our preparations, to give Great Britain time to come to their aid. The situation has changed; I don’t think King Charles III is going to be much use in this hypothetical war. Still, it’s a good plan to shake up our unjust invasion.

Lt. Col. “Buster” Brown even scouted out the eastern prong of their invasion plan.

Brown even undertook some very informal (though probably grossly illegal) reconnaissance missions in and around Vermont, near the border – scoping out bridges, locks and railroad lines, and chatting with locals in taverns. Lippert’s telling of these missions and their reports are the most amusing parts of a dark alternate historical scenario. Brown apparently found Vermonters to be “fat and lazy but pleasant and congenial,” and suspected there were “large and influential numbers of American citizens … [who are] not altogether pleased with democracy and have a sneaking regard for Great Britain, British Law, and Constitution, and general civilization.” He suspected alcohol-deprived Americans might welcome their new Canadian overlords, and the barrels of illegal Canadian whiskey they’d bring with them.

That condition is mostly valid. We are fat and lazy and clearly many of our citizens want a king, but not a British one — they want a king who is fat and lazy, like them. Also, Prohibition is over, so the barrels of Canadian whiskey aren’t as enticing as they once were.

The Pacific prong of the invasion is already doomed. There has been a massive build-up of military force in Washington state since 1921 — that’s the home of JBLM.

The Canadian flying columns would have been deployed in trucks, packed with guns, explosives and soldiers. Historically, flying columns have utilized horses, though in this interstitial period between equestrian warfare and modern mechanized tank warfare, trucks seem most likely.

That collection of casual Canadians in trucks full of rifles and whiskey would be met by the 7th Infantry Division, the 8th, 189th, and 191st Brigades, the 75th Ranger Regiment, and a swarm of cocky fighter pilots who are well-practiced in the art of strafing and bombing lines of trucks. Stay home. “Independently directed units of unarmored Ford trucks packed with rowdy prairie province roughnecks packing TNT and machine guns” are not going to hold up well.

The central prong, on the other hand, has potential. We’re still weakly defended here in the Midwest, and swinging through the Dakotas with their ripe ICBM silos dotting the landscape would give Canada the opportunity to become a nuclear power. Then the lovely progressive state of Minnesota might not offer much resistance — I know I’d be out there on the side of the highway happily waving my Canadian flag (note to self: buy a Canadian flag to prepare).

A century of military development on the US side means that Defense Scheme #1 is grossly obsolete, but the idea of Winnipeg thrusting deeply into Minnesota is somehow arousing. Especially if they’re planning to serve drinks first.

Welcome to the fin de siècle, only a few years too late. According to Wikipedia:

Without context, the term is typically used to refer to the end of the 19th century. This period was widely thought to be a period of social degeneracy, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning. The “spirit” of fin de siècle often refers to the cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s, including ennui, cynicism, pessimism, and “a widespread belief that civilization leads to decadence”.

“Period of hope for a new beginning…” that part doesn’t apply.

Also, the previous end of a century got some great art, but we’re just going to get some flaccid, dead-eyed AI art.

Donald Trump held a press conference this week in which he once again threatened to invade and take over Greenland and Panama, and that Canada should be annexed as our 51st state. Trudeau replied to that by saying “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” while the French foreign minister said “Non,” the EU wasn’t going to sit back and let their borders be violated.

All of this is utterly bonkers — the delusional aspirations of a very stupid narcissist. That he’s the president is not sufficient grounds to justify this program of expansionist imperialism, and I hope that reality is going to crush his dreams in short order. Hope. That’s a threadbare belief at this point.

But I am most worried about the weird, pathetic obsessions of this rambling old man — the frozen strawberries of his career. He wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America…what? I know he doesn’t believe in history, but now he wants to reshape geography to fit his nationalistic ignorance? And then there are the Big Issues of the Trump campaign.

Perhaps Trump’s most consistent political position, since his first run for office, is his vehement opposition to windmills.

His latest comments came as part of extended criticism of environmental and energy efficiency — complaining about dripping showers, low-water dishwashers and electric heaters. (He railed against the water in toilets during his first term, saying in 2019, “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once.”)

On Tuesday, he blamed windmills for a sharp increase in whale fatalities across southern New England’s coastlines in recent weeks. “The windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously,” Trump said.

He said windmills “litter our country” and compared them to “dropping garbage in a field.” He said they are “the most expensive energy ever,” and that only those who build them with subsidies want them.

“We’re going to try and have a policy where no windmills are being built,” Trump said.

I can sort of understand the opposition to wind turbines — he’s in the pocket of the oil industry, and wants to increase our reliance on fossil fuels — but showers, dishwashers, electric heaters, and toilets? WTF?

When you buy a house that no water comes out because they want to preserve even in areas that have so much water, you don’t know what to do. It’s called rain. It comes down from heaven.

No water comes out of the shower. It goes drip, drip, drip. So what happens? You’re in the shower 10 times as long.

This is an imaginary problem. Trump doesn’t have to deal with trivial details like plumbing, so this is his idea of the problems the little people have. There aren’t any water restrictions in places that have lots of water, and in places with serious droughts, the first thing they’ll shut down is watering lawns and golf courses. No one takes a “drip, drip, drip” shower.

Likewise, washing machines, they want in your washing machine to have very little water coming out of the washing machine. So when you wash your clothing, you have to wash it four times instead of once you end up using more water.”

We’re a party of common sense. And things that I’m telling you now is really all about common sense.

Trump has never in his life operated a washing machine. That’s not how they work.

The Republicans are not a party of common sense. Nothing their president says makes any sense.

You know, the US Constitution has this 25th Amendment that allows congress to dismiss a president for inability or incapacity to perform the duties of his office. There is a clear case that Trump is not fit to be president — he’s demented, with delusions of grandeur, and an unrealistic grasp of the state of the world. Unfortunately, congress and the Supreme Court will never question the god-king, and even if they did, they’d put JD Vance in his place. We are so screwed.

Not as screwed as Canada, Greenland, Panama, the EU, and Ukraine if he gets his way, but still pretty goddamned wrecked.

Lots of biology teachers show their students this map in their classes. I’m one of them. The US has an ugly history of involuntary sterilization, using the excuse of eugenics. Personally, I like to point out that our progressive state of Minnesota sterilized over a thousand unwilling people, all in the name of helping society.

But that’s from 1935! We don’t do that anymore, right?

The state of California had to pass a law to compensate all the women they have sterilized in the last decade. Now they’re squirming to avoid paying out.

Pressure from advocates for incarcerated people and investigative reporting pushed California officials to take action in recent years. In 2021 state lawmakers passed a reparations program to provide $35,000 to each person who was involuntarily sterilized while in state custody.

But that program has compensated only a fraction of the around 800 women identified by a state audit who underwent procedures that could have resulted in sterilization while imprisoned between 2005 and 2013; that state audit also found that prison doctors regularly violated the consent process for such procedures during that time. As of June, the California Victim Compensation Board (CVCB), the body tasked with determining who gets reparations under the program, has approved compensation for roughly 120 of those survivors, according to documents from the board.

How do you sterilize 800 people against their will by accident? This would be grounds for massive malpractice suits, except that it happened in prisons.

In 2014, the California State Auditor found many violations of the consent process leading up to the sterilization procedures, including physicians failing to sign documents certifying that the women “appeared mentally competent and understood the lasting effects of the procedure.” They also found that the sterilizations were not always reported if they were conducted alongside another procedure, such as a woman giving birth.

The audit also found that the majority of women who were sterilized were between the ages of 26 and 35, and most had a high school reading level. Of the women who received a tubal ligation procedure, which blocks or removes fallopian tubes to prevent pregnancy (one of the only procedures the compensation board previously deemed eligible for reparations), between 2005 and 2013, 50 were white, 47 were Hispanic, and 35 were Black. For most, it was their first time being incarcerated.

So a woman gives birth, and the prison doctor goes back in and scrapes out her endometrium? That’s unjustified and should be treated as criminal behavior.

Don’t worry. Some of the doctors have a perfectly good excuse — they were doing these women a favor.

The news outlet also interviewed an OB-GYN at Valley State Prison, James Heinrich, who claimed he was providing an important service to poor women. “Over a 10-year period, that isn’t a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare paying for those unwanted children—as they procreated more,” he said in 2013.

“Heinrich”? Really? Did he have to have such a German name? Regardless of nationality, doctors should never carry out a medical procedure without informed consent, that the patient does not want, because they think they know what’s best.

It is so delicious that even before Trump is signed into office, MAGA is ripped with an internal war.

Civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republicans. On the one side are the traditional MAGAs, who tend to be white, anti-immigrant, and less educated than the rest of the U.S. They believe that the modern government’s protection of equal rights for women and minorities has ruined America, and they tend to want to isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world. They make up Trump’s voting base.

On the other side are the new MAGAs who appear to have taken control of the incoming Trump administration. Led by Elon Musk, who bankrolled Trump’s campaign, the new MAGA wing is made up of billionaires, especially tech entrepreneurs, many of whom are themselves immigrants.

The battle is over immigration, between those who want perfect purity and every non-white expelled from the country, and those who want to allow a few brown people to stay to work in their factories and tech industries. It’s really that simple — are you so racist you don’t want to even see a brown person, or are you so racist you want to exploit their labor? Unfortunately they’re still in total agreement on the racism part.

One of the problems is that the leaders of these two factions, Trump and Musk, are ignorant buffoons with fallacious ideas about genetics.

Among the many charming aspects of their partnership is a fondness for some highly unsavoury views on genetics. Trump is an enthusiastic advocate of “racehorse theory”, which he shares with white supremacists; the belief that he is personally superior and that this is rooted in his “good genes”. It’s a vapid idea, but it directly informs his toxic views on immigration, where he argues the country needs to be shielded from the “bad genes” of outsiders.

Meanwhile, Musk has his own equally baffling take on genetics, infused with a characteristic messiah complex. Like some of his fellow tech moguls, he is determined to “save humanity” by producing as many offspring as possible, convinced that our future depends on it. This might all be laughable were it not for the fact that Trump and Musk now wield more power than they ever have before. The shared thread running through their rhetoric is genetic determinism: the idea that who you are, and what you can achieve, is all down to your DNA. Nothing else matters.

Do I need to explain why these ideas are bogus? I’m tired. I’ll let Jonathan Roberts do it for me.

In debates surrounding genetics and social policy, it is easy for the language of genetic determinism to lure you into an ill-advised “nature v nurture” debate. You know this debate: maybe she’s born with it; maybe it’s the pervasive conditions of social inequality? But this debate misses the bigger picture entirely: it should not be seen as a binary choice. The truth is, humans are born with genes that require a good environment to thrive. It’s not either/or, but a complex interaction between the two that determines who someone becomes. We have a nature that requires nurture. Good science accounts for this complexity, rather than reducing it to a simplistic binary.

No matter how the “civil war” is resolved, we’re still screwed because all of these people are stupid assholes.