Month: March 2024

A few days ago I mentioned that Joe Biden had pulled ahead of Donald Trump in national polling. Today brings news that he's doing better in swing states too:

Joe Biden had some good news on Tuesday as polling showed him gaining on Donald Trump in six battleground states, seven months before the presidential election. In response, one leading Democratic strategist said the “Biden bump is real”.

According to Bloomberg News and Morning Consult, Biden now leads Trump by a point in Wisconsin, having trailed by four last month, and is tied in Pennsylvania, where Trump had a six-point lead last month. The two candidates were also tied in Michigan.

We still have a long way to go before the election, but Biden is finally turning things around a bit. Cross your fingers and hope he keeps it up.

A Democrat won a landslide victory in an Alabama state legislature race tonight:

It's worth noting that the Republican, Teddy Powell, was not some kind of wild-eyed MAGA candidate who was doomed from the start in a swing district. He's a relatively moderate, technocratic guy. But the Democrat, Marilyn Lands, ran exclusively on IVF and reproductive rights and just killed him.

I wonder if Republicans rue the day that Roe v. Wade was overturned? I suppose not yet. But eventually they probably will. Banning abortion isn't popular even in Alabama, and it's going to continue killing Republican candidates as long they're forced to toe the hardline pro-life position.

You all remember Christopher Rufo, don't you? He's a right-wing activist who made his bones as an opponent of Critical Race Theory, DEI, wokeness, systemic racism, LGBT "grooming," and, in general, liberalism's "long march" to take over America's most powerful institutions. Just recently he was largely responsible for getting Christine Gay to step down as president of Harvard. About CRT he said, "The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’"

In other words, he's no shrinking violet. He wants the right to gain power and he's not shy about how it gets done. But apparently Twitter has become too much even for him:

Allie Beth Stuckey: There is no way to explain to a normal person what’s happening on conservative Twitter right now.

Rufo: It's getting insane. We have a problem on the Right. The economics of online discourse are increasingly at odds with forming and mobilizing a successful political movement.

Questioner: I think I know what you're getting at, but it would be nice if you could expand on this a little and maybe be more specific, although I can see why you might not want to do that.

Rufo: Kanye-style antisemitism, right-wing identitarianism, online grifting, extreme conspiratorialism, etc. None of these are right on the merits and they are a threat to a functional, popular conservative movement.

As always, I'd caution that Twitter is not a reflection of the real world. It's a reflection of the loudest and most extreme parts of the real world. Still, there's extensive evidence that right-wing Twitter did indeed become a whole lot more vicious after Elon Musk bought it:

I guess it's nice to see a conservative with impeccable credentials take on the pit of madness that right-wing social media has become. I just wish he could be a little more public about it.

This is some hot buying and selling action at the Montreuil Flea Market in Paris. It's one of the three big flea markets in the city, but it was a disappointment: basically just a bunch of ordinary goods like this being sold at arguably ordinary prices. Are all the Paris flea markets like this? Or did we just unluckily pick the most boring one?

A sign of the times: Last night I saw a post on Twitter that displayed a video of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore collapsing. I did a quick check of a couple of news sites and saw nothing about it, so I assumed it was some kind of AI joke and moved on. Needless to say, I was wrong. It just goes to show that this whole AI deepfake thing cuts both ways.

I hope this incident doesn't spur a huge new round of moaning about America's failing infrastructure. This was not some ancient, crumbling bridge. It was built in 1977 and a piece in the Washington Post this morning makes it crystal clear that no bridge in the world can withstand a direct hit from a huge cargo ship traveling at speed. It was just a tragic accident.

After 20 years of fighting, Visa and Mastercard have agreed to lower their swipe fees. Check it out:

In the deal, the credit-card networks and banks will lower the fees that merchants pay to accept credit cards. There is a range of these fees, typically referred to as swipe fees or interchange fees, with an average of around 2%. The pact would lower the rates by 0.04 percentage point and keep them there for five years.

So fees will go down from 2% to 1.96%. Booyah! In Europe swipe fees are capped at 0.3% and credit card companies have remained thriving and profitable. Draw your own conclusions.

We all know that Donald Trump loves the Bible. No one has ever loved the Bible more than Trump. He even loves both the Corinthians.

But it turns out that Trump especially loves one particular Bible: the large-print King James "God Bless the USA Bible" from singer Lee Greenwood, which can be yours for only $59.99. And worth every penny:

So there you have it. Trump has sold his name and likeness to a Bible the same way he does to Asian hotels and Indonesian golf courses. Trump explained further in a promotional video:

Christians are under siege, we must protect content that is pro-God. We love God and we have to protect anything that is pro-God. We must defend God in the public square and not allow the media or the left-wing groups to silence, censor, or discriminate against us.... I’m proud to partner with Lee in this offering.... He’s very, very special and I think you all should get a copy of God Bless the U.S.A. Bible now and help spread our Christian values with others. There you have it. Let’s make America pray again. God bless you and God bless the U.S.A..

I wonder what Trump's cut from each Bible is?

Good news today:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed unlikely to limit access to a key medication used in more than 60 percent of U.S. abortions and first approved more than two decades ago.

A majority of justices from across the ideological spectrum expressed skepticism that the antiabortion doctors challenging the government’s loosening of regulations have sufficient legal grounds — or standing — to bring the lawsuit.

One of the issues at question is whether the folks proposing to overturn the FDA's approval of mifepristone have any standing to bring suit. In cases like this you have to show a genuine injury to someone, but the Christian group that brought the case couldn't do that. Their argument is that easy availability of mifepristone could cause psychic harm to doctors who oppose abortion but have to treat a patient suffering complications in an emergency room. That's too thin even for most of the conservatives on the Court.

But of course, there's also this:

The toughest questions for the Biden administration and the drug manufacturer came from the court’s two most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Alito will never vote for a "Democratic" win. The substance of the case doesn't really matter.

How much is Donald Trump's social media company, Truth Social, really worth? It's never made money, so you can't judge it that way. But lots of startup companies are unprofitable in their early years, and venture capitalists figure out values for them anyway.

The most common alternative is to look at net sales. Generally speaking, a startup with slow growth might be valued at about 3x revenue while a startup with faster growth would be around 7x or so. A skyrocketing startup might command 15x.

Truth Social only has three years of results with inconsistent growth. In 2022 growth was negative and in 2023 it grew 200%. Investors are hoping that Trump will win the presidency and growth will continue at a high rate. Based on that, you might aggressively but plausibly value Truth Social at 15x revenue, or around $70 million. If you're a real true believer you might push that as high as $100 million. That's kind of crazy, but social media is a crazy kind of space.

Now, pay attention to some arithmetic. Today Truth Social will merge with a vehicle called DWAC, which currently has $300 million in cash and nothing else. So it's worth $300 million. Truth Social is worth (at a stretch) $100 million.

After the merger DWAC will have 188 million shares of stock outstanding. This means the cash is worth $1.60 per share and Truth Social is worth about $0.53 per share, for a total share value of $2.13. And yet the stock is currently trading at nearly $50 per share:

Question: Since the value of the cash is $1.60 per share no matter what, this means that Truth Social is being effectively valued at $49.95 - $1.60 = $48.35 per share. This is nearly 100 times its maximum plausible value. Why?

Once you figure that out, you know who's being scammed in this deal. The answer is: anyone who buys stock in DWAC.

UPDATE: After DWAC stock began trading on Tuesday morning under the DJT ticker symbol, the price soared above $70. In other words, Truth Social is now trading at an implicit value of 131 times its maximum plausible value.

It's long been a truism in hard right-wing circles that the harder you hit the better. This has produced a culture in which they believe they can say anything they want with impunity. What are you gonna do? Sue 'em?

Actually yes. Over the past year or so a whole bunch of right wing actors have been successfully sued for making shit up:

• Rudy Giuliani lost $148 million in a defamation case over his claims that a pair of Georgia poll workers had rigged the 2020 election in the state.
• Donald Trump lost two defamation suits worth $88 million for lying about his sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll.
• Fox News paid a $787 million settlement for claiming on air that Dominion voting machines had been rigged to steal the 2020 election.
• National Review was hit with a $1 million award for saying that climate scientist Michael Mann had engaged in fraudulent research.
• Pillow king Mike Lindell was ordered to pay $5 million to a cyber forensics expert who entered the "Prove Mike Wrong Challenge." The challenge was to show that Lindell was wrong about his frequent claims of election fraud, and indeed, it turned out he was wrong.
• Alex Jones was ordered to pay $1.5 billion after spreading conspiracy theories that the Sandy Hook shootings were a hoax.
• Project Veritas settled a lawsuit on undisclosed terms for accusing a Pennsylvania postmaster of voter fraud.
• Kari Lake admitted she defamed Maricopa County election official Stephen Richer when she said he stuffed thousands of fake ballots into counting machines. Damages have yet to be determined.

Does this mean that the era of just spewing out any old thing you want is over? Maybe—though I'm not sure I've noticed any decline yet. But at least conservative nutcases have been put on notice.

UPDATE: Project Veritas and Kari Lake have been added to this list.