Category Archives: Politics

Three Tech-Related Stories Today

Three things that caught my eye this morning:

Posted in 2020 Election, AI, Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 9 Comments

Sing It

What does it mean when you have lost not only Taylor Swift but also Barbra Streisand:

One thing it means is a spike in voter registration.

(Not that I ever ever imagined I’d link to a Barbra Streisand video…)

Posted in 2018 Election, Kultcha, The Resistance | Comments Off on Sing It

New Times Unearths DeSantis’s Book

And it’s terrible.

Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis’ 2011 tome, Dreams From Our Founding Fathers, is terrible. It’s a book-long screed from the then-Tea Party candidate, in which DeSantis screams at President Barack Obama for 286 pages, implies he is a closet Marxist, and at one point writes that Obama has “Muslim roots.” The book sucks because it is an absolute slog. New Times combed through huge portions of DeSantis’ repetitive, banal, witless, and crushingly pedestrian prose, and the project reads like a book report from a dying Confederate soldier trying to get a community college poli-sci degree.

But, more important, the book sucks because parts of it are pretty offensive to black people, Muslims, and women. DeSantis’ book includes justifications excusing the legalization of slavery in the U.S. Constitution, as well as repeated complaints about policies designed to protect women from rape and domestic violence.

New Times sources the discovery to American Bridges, an advocacy group, but I couldn’t find the report on their site.

Posted in 2018 Election | Comments Off on New Times Unearths DeSantis’s Book

Vote ‘Em Out

Willie Nelson premiered his new song at a Beta O’Rourke rally:

Good stuff, but what we really need is someone like Lana del Ray to do an anti-Kavanaugh song. (And while this is quite something, it doesn’t count.)

Posted in 2018 Election, Kultcha | 2 Comments

If Trump Fires Rosenstein, Who’s Mueller’s New Boss?

Marty Lederman has a detailed answer in his (revised) post, Who Might Replace Rod Rosenstein and What Would it Mean for the Mueller and SDNY Investigations?: A Deep Dive.  Worth a read.

Posted in Law: Constitutional Law, The Scandals | Comments Off on If Trump Fires Rosenstein, Who’s Mueller’s New Boss?

This Campaign Is on the Right Footing

This Bigfoot-themed campaign commercial is pretty good.


It’s in suppoprt of Democrat Dean Phillips who is running against the incumbent, Erik Paulson, in Minnesota’s 2nd congressional district, a district that Clinton took by nine points in 2016. Thanks perhaps in part to this commercial, Phillips is now thought to be a tiny tiny bit ahead.

There’s a companion web site if you want more.

Posted in 2018 Election | 1 Comment