Events

Take 20 minutes to fully understand the incompetence that brought us to 205,000 Covid-19 deaths when our peer countries have only a fraction:

Last night's, ah, debate between the president and Joe Biden raised eyebrows worldwide: The Chicago Tribune: "But despite his efforts to dominate the discussion, Trump was frequently put on the defensive and tried to sidestep when he was asked if he was willing to condemn white supremacists and paramilitary groups. ... The scattershot debate bounced from topic to topic, with Trump again refusing to embrace the science of climate change while Biden accused Trump of walking away from the American promise...

Every single talking head in the US is now saying "I've never seen a debate like this one." No kidding. Judy Woodruff: "I can say we broke new ground with presidential debates." I'm going to watch PBS's talking heads for a bit, until my head explodes, and then I'm going to read some of Kay Ryan's poetry because...because I need to. I promised some reactions from friends: "Joe's inherent goodness is actually breaking through." "I wish I hadn't stopped drinking right now." "Biden lost. He should have...

Start refreshing this page around 21:00 EDT. I'll be watching the festivities intently and reacting in real time. The best idea for a drinking game I've heard is to take a drink every time the president tells the truth. (It's the best way to stay sober throughout.) In no small irony, neither of the candidates drinks, and both for largely the same reason (alcoholism in a close family member). I think the public will drink enough for both of them tonight, though. All times below are Eastern US time, 4...

Daniel Shaviro, a veteran tax attorney, lays out 10 takeaways from the New York Times story Sunday about the president's tax returns: 1) Tax is the least of it. The article offers direct evidence of Trump’s impending financial liability to unknown lenders, and of pervasive conflicts of interest as president, that are of grave national security concern. 6) The consulting fees that Trump’s various foreign businesses paid to Ivanka Trump and others look potentially fraudulent.  Based on what the article...

UK-based Metal Ball Studios created this gorgeous 3D rendering of fictional (and real) starships in order of size from the 30 cm Hocotate Ship to...well, a lot bigger than you can imagine:

The New York Times dropped a bomb over the weekend with its revelation that it obtained 20 years of the president's tax returns. The documents show that either the president is one of the worst businessmen in American history, or he has committed (and indeed may still be committing) one of the largest tax frauds in American history. Actually, it looks like both: The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American...

Nicholas Kristof reminds us that you can beat a narcissistic authoritarian by laughing at him: That’s one gauge of the power of humor: Dictators fear mockery. The Committee to Protect Journalists says it has intervened this year alone to defend seven cartoonists around the world who were arrested, threatened with prosecution or threatened with death. Leaders like Trump who pose as religious are particularly easy to skewer, as Iranians have shown in their use of humor to highlight the hypocrisy of their...

Jamelle Bouie thinks 1820 offers a better view of today's politics than 1850 or 1968: There is no one-to-one comparison from the past to current events; there never is. But drawing on the Missouri controversy, I do have an observation to make about our present situation. Once again, under the guise of ordinary political conflict, Americans are fighting a meta-legal battle over the meaning of both the Union and the Constitution. A fight over the fate of the Supreme Court is weighty enough, but beneath...

Andrew Sullivan takes a step back and explains, carefully and quietly, the tyrant's mindset: [T]yranny is not, in its essence, about the authoritarian and administrative skills required to run a country effectively for a long time. Tyrants, after all, are often terrible at this. It is rather about a mindset, as the ancient philosophers understood, with obvious political consequences. It’s a pathology. It requires no expertise in anything other than itself. You need competence if you want to run an...