Since they cannot get to him since he lives in the cocoon that all rich people can put around themselves, they are going after Teslas.

The Las Vegas police department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are investigating a blaze set at Tesla showroom as potential terrorism. The FBI is probing at least three other incidents of Molotov cocktails hurled at Tesla facilities since January, including one in Kansas City, Missouri, that took place on the same night as the alleged arson in Nevada.

In Las Vegas, in the middle of the night on Tuesday, a cluster of Tesla vehicles were set on fire as they sat in a lot at a Tesla collision center, according to the Las Vegas metropolitan police department. Security cameras caught a person dressed in all black tossing what appeared to be Molotov cocktails into the vehicles at approximately 2.45am.
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I am sad to report that Kevin Drum’s wife Marian posted on his blog that he had died on Friday, March 7th. In 2014, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, the severity of which fluctuated with the various treatments that he underwent. He wrote openly about his travails with the disease but was never self-pitying or maudlin.

I was a regular reader of his blog starting from the days when he started out as a private blogger Calpundit in 2003 and then moving on to start the blog Political Animal at the Washington Monthly magazine, then to blogging at Mother Jones, before going back to a personal blog again, now called Jabberwocking, in 2021.

While I did not always agree with his politics (he was a little too mainstream liberal, centrist Democrat for my taste), I respected him for his data-driven approach to the news. He wrote well and would take news items and subject them to rigorous fact-checking and often present the results in the form of easy-to-understand charts. He was a big advocate of the idea that lead was a major cause of aggressive behavior in people and I found his arguments and the data he presented in support of it persuasive.

He was a sane, positive, stabilizing presence in the chaotic world of internet punditry and he will be missed.

My earlier post about how some of the people getting fired by Musk-Trump are also getting abuse from their friends and relatives showed how those people seemed to view the fired federal workers as somehow parasites, enjoying a life of luxury off the backs of hardworking taxpayers and doing little to earn their keep, just goofing off while drawing a paycheck.

This misunderstands the nature of work. I suspect that most people, whether in the public or private sector, take pride in doing a good job. It is part of one’s sense of self-worth to know that one is pulling one’s weight and not dragging other people down. It is usually just those who have been treated badly by their employers who try to get away with doing nothing, perhaps out of a sense of grievance or getting revenge. Some of course are incorrigibly lazy but I doubt that they constitute more than a tiny fraction.
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Of all the fights that Trump has instigated, the most pointless seems to be the one with Canada. For a country that has been a good neighbor, a loyal ally, and with a great deal in common linguistically and culturally, Trump’s insulting attitude towards them is mystifying. And it looks like they have had enough.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods, coming on the heels of his taunting threats to make the country the 51st U.S. state, are eroding the inherent politeness of Americans’ northern neighbors and rallying them around their own flag.

Canadians are removing American liquor and California wines from their store shelves. They’re pulling back on future visits to the U.S. They’re pushing “Buy Canadian” to counter higher costs and spite Trump. And they are uncharacteristically brandishing unvarnished anger over what they see as a betrayal by a longtime friend.

“I will never visit America again,” Angela Qin, a university student, told NBC News as she exited an ice rink in downtown Toronto. “You don’t stab the back of your friend.”

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Being fired from your job suddenly despite not having done anything wrong can be devastating to one’s personal finances, let alone one’s sense of self. But when the people you know among your family and friends celebrate your loss, that makes it much, much worse. But that is what seems to be happening.
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