Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Reward: Engraving signed by every president and first lady since Ford has been lost in downtown DC by historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony, who just picked it up from White House where it was kept it in a locked safe after the Bidens signed it, per @playbookdc https://t.co/nttC2WIfLu https://t.co/M04W82sLhn pic.twitter.com/xE8GFj2OMu
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) July 27, 2023
Every *legitimate* President, maybe?…
So this has happened:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump faced new charges Thursday in a case accusing him of illegally possessing classified documents, with prosecutors alleging that he asked a staffer to delete camera footage at his Florida estate in an effort to obstruct a federal investigation into the records.
The indictment includes new counts of obstruction and willful retention of national defense information, adding fresh detail to an indictment issued last month against Trump and a close aide. The additional charges came as a surprise at a time of escalating anticipation of a possible additional indictment in Washington over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
I continue to regret my failure to purchase popcorn futures at the appropriate time.
Over to the jackaltariat! (Open, if schadenfreude doused thread.)
Image: Dirk Hals, Merry Party in a a TavernMerry Party in a a Tavern, 1628
Sparta’s military performance was merely mediocre, but Spartan politics makes it an exceptionally bad example for citizens or soldiers in a modern free society. https://t.co/jxKsLpX5FR
— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) July 26, 2023
But they had such a KEWL saga / movie / video game!… A historian explains, for those aspiring authoritarians who imagine themselves as the citizen elites ruling over dozen, nay hundreds, of faceless broken slaves — “Spartans Were Losers”:
The Athenian historian Thucydides once remarked that Sparta was so lacking in impressive temples or monuments that future generations who found the place deserted would struggle to believe it had ever been a great power. But even without physical monuments, the memory of Sparta is very much alive in the modern United States. In popular culture, Spartans star in film and feature as the protagonists of several of the largest video game franchises. The Spartan brand is used to promote obstacle races, fitness equipment, and firearms. Sparta has also become a political rallying cry, including by members of the extreme right who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Sparta is gone, but the glorification of Sparta—Spartaganda, as it were—is alive and well…
Much of this tendency to imagine U.S. soldiers as Spartan warriors comes from Steven Pressfield’s historical fiction novel Gates of Fire, still regularly assigned in military reading lists. The book presents the Spartans as superior warriors from an ultra-militarized society bravely defending freedom (against an ethnically foreign “other,” a feature drawn out more explicitly in the comic and later film 300). Sparta in this vision is a radically egalitarian society predicated on the cultivation of manly martial virtues. Yet this image of Sparta is almost entirely wrong. Spartan society was singularly unworthy of emulation or praise, especially in a democratic society.
To start with, the Spartan reputation for military excellence turns out to be, on closer inspection, mostly a mirage. Despite Sparta’s reputation for superior fighting, Spartan armies were as likely to lose battles as to win them, especially against peer opponents such as other Greek city-states. Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War—but only by accepting Persian money to do it, reopening the door to Persian influence in the Aegean, which Greek victories at Plataea and Salamis nearly a century early had closed. Famous Spartan victories at Plataea and Mantinea were matched by consequential defeats at Pylos, Arginusae, and ultimately Leuctra. That last defeat at Leuctra, delivered by Thebes a mere 33 years after Sparta’s triumph over Athens, broke the back of Spartan power permanently, reducing Sparta to the status of a second-class power from which it never recovered.
Sparta was one of the largest Greek city-states in the classical period, yet it struggled to achieve meaningful political objectives; the result of Spartan arms abroad was mostly failure. Sparta was particularly poor at logistics; while Athens could maintain armies across the Eastern Mediterranean, Sparta repeatedly struggled to keep an army in the field even within Greece. Indeed, Sparta spent the entirety of the initial phase of the Peloponnesian War, the Archidamian War (431-421 B.C.), failing to solve the basic logistical problem of operating long term in Attica, less than 150 miles overland from Sparta and just a few days on foot from the nearest friendly major port and market, Corinth…
Highbrow Entertainment Open Thread: <em>They… Are… SPARTA!!!</em>Post + Comments (144)
(Image by NEIVANMADE)
Quick housekeeping note: I’m fried, so just a brief update tonight.
The Russians opened up on Ukraine again last night. The Ukrainian Air Force has the details on their Telegram channel:
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
The myth of Musk has become increasingly tattered over recent years. He’s no MoTU, not a world-spanning genius uniquely able to bend technology to his will. As the Twitter debacle has made obvious, he’s no more than an ordinarily clever guy who parlayed a family apartheid fortune and some good timing into early Silicon Valley success, who then deployed his one true talent–as a hype man and a skilled approach to the manipulation of gov’t subsidies–to parlay a first fortune into the stupendous wealth he has today.
That talent had its uses: Space X is a real company, and Tesla can, I think, be credited with accelerating the electric car transition. How much credit he truly deserves for either is a question I’ll leave for those who will do the research and reporting. My point here is that this emperor is truly naked, which is a mental image I’m sorry I just created for you.
And no, this is not a post about today’s Twitter horrorshow, in which it seems that Musk has gone all in on enabling and succoring the dissemination of CSAM.* It is, rather, that he’s a common garden-variety con man.
Tesla…decided about a decade ago, for marketing purposes, to write algorithms for its range meter that would show drivers “rosy” projections for the distance it could travel on a full battery, according to a person familiar with an early design of the software for its in-dash readouts.
“Tesla” didn’t decide; Musk did.
The directive to present the optimistic range estimates came from Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, this person said.
“Elon wanted to show good range numbers when fully charged,” the person said, adding: “When you buy a car off the lot seeing 350-mile, 400-mile range, it makes you feel good.”
That’s the classic con-dynamic. Make the mark feel good just long enough to spirit away their cash.
Musk then compounded the fraud. When Tesla owners tried to schedule service to deal with what seemed to be defective batteries, Tesla employees were directed to gaslight them:
…last summer, Tesla created the Las Vegas “Diversion Team” to handle only range cases, according to the people familiar with the matter.
The office atmosphere at times resembled that of a telemarketing boiler room. A supervisor had purchased the metallophone – a xylophone with metal keys – that employees struck to celebrate appointment cancellations, according to the people familiar with the office’s operations.
Advisers would normally run remote diagnostics on customers’ cars and try to call them, the people said. They were trained to tell customers that the EPA-approved range estimates were just a prediction, not an actual measurement, and that batteries degrade over time, which can reduce range. Advisors would offer tips on extending range by changing driving habits.
If the remote diagnostics found anything else wrong with the vehicle that was not related to driving range, advisors were instructed not to tell the customer, one of the sources said. Managers told them to close the cases.
That is, the Tesla response seems to have been, “We sold you vaporware! Sucks to be you.”
IANAL, but to me this at least approaches criminality. It certainly confirms my already firm buying decision. Sometime in the next couple of years I’ll be looking to replace my venerable appliance, a 2013 Toyota Prius plug-in. My wife and I plan to buy an all-electric vehicle once the current ride either turns its toes to the ceiling or my son needs a car.
There were already lots of reasons beyond Musk’s personal wretchedness to avoid Tesla (my son still laughs at the Tesla guy at their Prudential Center showroom who insisted that a visible half-inch rise between panels on a Model Y was “within spec”). But this? Not just the range issue, but the terrifying evidence of service negligence–this is not a company in which anyone should put any trust.
But we knew that.
Have some thread, as open as a manhole cover when you really, really need there not to be traffic.
*I was today years old when I learned that acronym and I find it double-plus ungood that I inhabit a timeline in which such coinages are evoked.
Image: Guy Pène du Bois, The Confidence Man, 1919.
As y’all know, I despise Ron DeSantis to the depths of my soul, maybe even more than I abhor his former mentor/current tormenter the orange fart cloud. So I’m following accounts of the DeSantis campaign struggles with an unseemly amount of glee. I beg your forgiveness!
Josh Marshall has an update at TPM under a promising title: “GOPers Hit the Half-Drowned Ron with Their Paddles as He Struggles to Climb Back in the Campaign Boat.” (Sounds like Marshall loathes the schmuck almost as much as I do.) The “Dead Bounce Ron Daily Update” begins as follows:
In today’s episode of the ongoing collapse of the DeSantis campaign, we have a new moment which we might see as the severed segments of Dead Bounce Ron roiling and twitching around, much like a worm that has been cut into pieces but continues to wiggle and move about almost as if nothing had happened. Yesterday in response to a question about ersatz candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., DeSantis said that while he wouldn’t choose Kennedy as his vice president, he would consider him to run the FDA or CDC.
This is of course a ridiculously inane suggestion. But the key is that it was immediately attacked even by many of DeSantis’s erstwhile allies or the kinds of Republicans he needs to gain the support of to remain in the race.
As Marshall notes, Repubs see RFK Jr. as a ratfuck opportunity. No one is seriously considering putting that lunatic in charge of a lemonade stand, let alone a federal agency. So, that was a dumb self-own by DeSantis and an opportunity for rivals to attack him.
Also, Nazi eruptions in a campaign are a bad look, even for Repubs, especially outside of districts like those repped by MTG and Gosar. It’s not like Repubs are sincerely horrified, but a parade of overt fascists is embarrassing for those who are still pretending their party isn’t a gr0yper cesspool.
Also? DeSantis just sucks at being a human being and even more at being a presidential candidate, and that perception is snowballing among people he needs to win over NOW:
Meanwhile, DeSantis reportedly crashed and burned on a fundraising jaunt through the Hamptons, according to The New York Post, even as RFK Jr. made bank on Hamptons Republicans eager to fund his trolling operation. According to the Post, DeSantis was reduced to cutting the minimum contribution in half — essentially offering discount fundraisers — and ended up having to scrap two events for lack of interest.
Of course, it’s the Post. So who knows? But why spoil a good story?
The loser stench is growing, and the first GOP debate takes place less than a month from today, dog help us. DeSantis better hope to sweet merciful Christ that Trump shows up at the debate (he won’t). Because otherwise, his fellow aspirants will aim their piñata bats at the maggoty meatball in their midst.
Open thread.
I haven’t really been able to follow the news – but it sure seems like cake is coming. Maybe today or maybe tomorrow?
They will not have their parking validated.
Again.
— Just Jack (@7Veritas4) July 27, 2023
Insert the Airplane I guess I picked a bad week to quit smoking / drinking / snorting coke / meme here.
But seriously, it’s great to get to know my Australian cousins! I like them very much and I will be sad to leave tomorrow because it’s unlikely that I will see them again. But maybe!
Yesterday I had to stay home from the big outing because I was still behind on work for one of my clients. But I worked for 10 hours yesterday and got to a point where I feel fine not working until Saturday when I will wake up again in my own bed.
Open thread.
Update: Since I was staying back, I offered to have my niece’s pups stay here because they are terribly afraid of storms, and I knew that big storms were coming yesterday. So I cranked up Jimmy Buffett on the stereo and worked for hours, singing to the pups when the thunder got too loud and especially when Skye got so scared that he climbed up in my lap. He has to weigh maybe 80 pounds> I adore Skye and Stella, so I was happy to have them with me. I sang so much yesterday that my voice is a bit croaky this morning. Totally worth it!
Here’s the file I created when they went home after staying with me for 10 or 14 days when they were just 4 months old!
