July 5, 2024 ❧ The Biden train wreck continues, the Tories get routed, and Jeff Landry is cool with AI deep fakes

Plus: Some 4th of July wisdom, the Heritage Foundation gets scary, and the bees are back in town!

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CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, "What's going on with our politicians and oligarchs?")

❧ The Joe Biden situation keeps getting worse. It’s now been over a week since the disastrous June 27 debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and the fallout just keeps coming. A new batch of post-debate polls have come out, and Politico reports that they put Biden in “the worst electoral shape of the 2024 election.” The New York Times/Siena College poll has Trump leading by six points among likely voters (49 percent to 43), and by nine points among registered voters (49 to 41.)

As Isaac Chotiner points out in the New Yorker, this is not just the widest lead Trump has had over Biden, but the widest lead he’s held over any Democrat since his 2016 run. Similarly, the newest Wall Street Journal poll has Trump leading by six points, 42 percent to 36. And in the New Republic, we learn that a leaked internal Democratic poll suggests that “Several states that were considered solidly blue are now competitive for Donald Trump, including Colorado, New Hampshire, Virginia, and New Mexico.”

Graphic: Lily Boyce, the New York Times

To make matters worse, more details keep coming out about the main reason for the bad polling—Biden’s age and visible mental decline. For New York Magazine, White House reporter Olivia Nuzzi writes that there’s been a “Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden” among the Democratic Party and members of the press:

When they discussed what they knew, what they had seen, what they had heard, they literally whispered. They were scared and horrified. But they were also burdened. They needed to talk about it (though not on the record). They needed to know that they were not alone and not crazy. Things were bad, and they knew things were bad, and they knew others must also know things were bad, and yet they would need to pretend, outwardly, that things were fine. The president was fine. The election would be fine. They would be fine. To admit otherwise would mean jeopardizing the future of the country and, well, nobody wanted to be responsible personally or socially for that.

It’s worth pointing out, of course, that Nuzzi herself appears to have been part of the “conspiracy of silence” she describes. There’s no reason she couldn’t have been the one to blow the whistle on Biden’s condition, before the debate made it obvious to the whole world. But there are more worrying aspects to her story, like when she admits that Biden is “spoken for more than he was speaking or spoken to” and “may not really be the acting president after all.” 

It raises the question of how much Biden actually makes his own policy, and how much is made for him by close advisors like Dr. Jill Biden, Antony Blinken, and John Kirby. (We know, for example, that Edith Wilson was effectively the president in her husband Woodrow’s last years, when his health was failing; there’s precedent for this kind of thing.) At the bare minimum, the American people have a right to know the truth about the situation. Now that it’s clear the Democratic Party has been running an elaborate fraud on them, pretending Biden was perfectly fine all these months, it’s hard to see how they’ll be able to regain the public trust. 

In other news...

• Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation—the organization behind Trump’s authoritarian “Project 2025” platform—issued a violent threat to the American left this week: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless—if the left allows it to be.” The statement came shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling that presidents are effectively above the law. (The New Republic)
  
  
• Only ten minutes of the presidential debate were focused on foreign policy. And in that time, writes Melvin Goodman, “Neither man presented a single substantive idea” to end the wars in Gaza or Ukraine. (CounterPunch)
  
  
• In an Independence Day piece for Truthout, Eman Abdelhadi writes that “For hundreds of millions across the world, the stars and stripes are symbols of US empire, not independence.”

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ In the UK, the Tories received their expected electoral shellacking at the hands of Labour on Thursday, leaving them out of power for the first time in 14 years. As of Friday morning, Labour is expected to hold 412 seats of 650, with the Conservatives losing a historic 251 after a shambolic decade in power. We don’t have high hopes for the premiership of Keir Starmer, who has lurched dramatically to the right since becoming the Labour leader after the party's kneecapping of Jeremy Corbyn. But if there is any silver lining, Corbyn at least comfortably won re-election in the constituency he’s held since 1983.

It’s certainly satisfying to see such a decisive rout of the Tories, which included the defeat of particularly odious right-wing figures like the comedically short-lived former Prime Minister Liz Truss and former House of Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, who campaigned this election to “build a wall” in the English Channel to stop migrants. (Between Viktor Orbán complaining about “wokeness” and now this, it’s pretty amazing how quickly the global right has turned into a cargo cult of Trump imitators.)

We’d be jumping for joy at Rees-Mogg’s defeat if we weren’t so distracted by the guy standing next to him. In case you’re wondering who this bean-faced interloper is, he’s a joke candidate from the Monster Raving Loony Party called Phin “Barmy Brunch” Adams. (Photo: Tom Noble, Twitter)

While Labour will no-doubt take this victory as a validation of its centrist turn, it is quite a hollow one when examined more closely. This election saw just 60 percent turnout, the lowest engagement since 2001. And the absolute number of votes for Labour was actually lower than in 2019, when they were still helmed by Corbyn and soundly defeated by the Conservatives. BBC pollster John Curtice said “All in all this looks more like an election the Conservatives lost than one Labour won.” Third parties also took sizable bites from the Tory carcass, including the centrist technocrat Liberal Democrats and the far-right psycho Reform UK. (Its leader, Nigel Farage, is heading to Parliament for the first time, God help us). 

But it is also the perfect sort of victory for a Labour Party that expressly seeks to avoid doing big, important things. As Daniel Finn writes in his election debrief for Jacobin:

From day one, this has been the kind of outcome Starmer and his team were hoping for. They never wanted to take office amid a surge of enthusiasm with an ambitious reform program to address Britain’s multifaceted social crisis. Their goal was to make Labour completely inoffensive to all those who benefit from a dysfunctional economic model.

Graphic: BBC

In other news…

• Avigdor Lieberman, a far-right member of the Israeli Knesset, has suggested using nuclear weapons against Iran. Seems bad! (Common Dreams)
  
  
• Jair Bolsonaro, the disgraced former president of Brazil, has been indicted for money laundering and criminal association after failing to disclose that he’d received a $3.2 million diamond necklace from the Saudi government. It’s only the second-most low-brow crime he’s accused of—he’s already been indicted for faking his COVID-19 vaccination status. (Associated Press)
  
  
• In anticipation of Russian interference, the U.S. is drafting up its own plans to meddle in Moldova’s upcoming election. “Is it Washington’s responsibility to become even more entrenched in Eastern Europe and risk further escalation with Moscow over a country with little security relevance to the United States?” asks Alex Little. (Responsible Statecraft)
  
  
• Artificial intelligence has raised Google’s carbon footprint by 50 percent over the past five years. (The Guardian) This statistic demonstrates a difficult human dilemma: In order to prevent climate apocalypse, we may need to sacrifice the ability to effortlessly create images of the Beatles looking like sloths.

AROUND THE STATES

❧ Louisiana’s Governor Jeff Landry has vetoed a bill that would have banned deceptive AI-generated “deepfakes” of political candidates. In an open letter explaining his decision, Landry claimed that the bill “creates serious First Amendment concerns as it relates to emerging technologies” and that “more information is needed before such regulations are enshrined into law.” 

Well, okay Jeff; you asked for it. 

❧ Also in Louisiana, a federal judge has ruled that rapper B.G.—part of the legendary Hot Boys group with Lil Wayne—must submit all of his lyrics to the U.S. government for approval. B.G., whose birth name is Christopher Dorsey, is currently on parole for a gun charge. As the Guardian reports, one of the conditions of his supervised release is that he “must provide the government with copies of any songs he writes moving forward, ahead of their production or promotion.” If officials determine that his lyrics are “inconsistent with his goals of rehabilitation,” he could be subject to vague and unspecified penalties that “toughen” his parole terms. 

This is pretty blatantly unconstitutional, since it places a “prior restraint” on B.G.’s speech, one of the things the First Amendment is designed to prevent. But given the history of criminal courts using rappers’ lyrics against them, it shouldn’t be surprising. There’s an obvious double standard in who the First Amendment protects, and who it does not, and it breaks down along racial lines. Maybe B.G. should switch to making political deepfakes, since those are apparently okay?

Jeff Landry after receiving a new shipment of lyrics. (Created in Midjourney)

PAST AFFAIRS

Alex Skopic on why "Using Rap Lyrics as Criminal Evidence is a Travesty of Justice"

In other news…

• Wisconsin’s newly liberal-leaning Supreme Court just made it easier for people to vote by mail, ruling that ballot drop boxes would once again be allowed for the upcoming election. Two years ago, when the court had a conservative majority, it ordered that most of them be removed, one of several voter suppression tactics the GOP has implemented since losing the 2020 election.  (New York Times)
  
  
• Kansas’ Supreme Court struck down a ban on a second-trimester abortion method known as “dilation and evacuation.” They cited a provision in the state Bill of Rights that guarantees bodily autonomy. (Kansas Reflector)
  
  
• A horrifying wildfire swept over parts of Northern California this week, forcing 17,000 people to flee their houses. Thankfully, the fire is nearly out and most evacuees have been allowed to return home. But California still faces nearly 110F temperatures this weekend. (NPR)

SOME QUOTES FOR INDEPENDENCE DAY

“Standing there, identified with the American bondsman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.” — Frederick Douglass

“I like the Fourth of July. It breathes a spirit of revolution. On this day we reaffirm the ultimate triumph of Socialism. It is coming as certain as I stand in your presence.” — Eugene V. Debs

“America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.” ― Hunter S. Thompson

Art by Greg Houston, from Issue 38 of Current Affairs Magazine, November/December 2022

From the article “Weird Vibes at the Ballot Box” by Alex Skopic

“I envy you. You North Americans are very lucky. You are fighting the most important fight of all. You live in the belly of the beast.” — Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara

“America is a nation that can be described in a single word: Asssfhhhtlllmmnfff” — Joe Biden

BEE FACT OF THE WEEK

The bees are back in town! 

Photo: US Department of Agriculture, via Rawpixel

After two decades of relentless worry about the steady decline of bee populations, March’s Census of Agriculture found that America’s honeybee population has suddenly jumped to an all time high!  “We’ve added almost a million bee colonies in the past five years,” wrote Andrew Van Dam in the Washington Post. We now have 3.8 million, the census shows. Since 2007, the first census after alarming bee die-offs began in 2006, the honeybee has been the fastest-growing livestock segment in the country! And that doesn’t count feral honeybees, which may outnumber their captive cousins several times over.”

What has caused this boisterous bee boom? By far, the greatest increase in honeybee populations has been seen in Texas, which the Post points out is “not traditionally considered a honey hotbed.” But in 2012, Texas introduced tax breaks for farmers that raise bees. “Over the next few years,” the Post says, “all 254 Texas counties adopted bee rules requiring, for example, six hives on five acres plus another hive for every 2.5 acres beyond that to qualify for the tax break.” Since 2012, the number of agricultural operations with bees has ballooned by nearly 400 percent.

The other big change: almonds. The amount of acreage dedicated to them has doubled since 2007. Loads of bees are required to pollinate all those new trees—in fact, $4 out of every $5 spent on bee fertility assistance is put toward growing almonds. (Almonds often get a bad rap for the immense water usage required to grow them, but almond trees also help a lot with carbon sequestration and, on the whole, they have a lower carbon impact than other similarly energy dense foods, according to the Yale School of the Environment. This is before even mentioning the bees!)

While this bee rebound (bee-bound?) is a pleasant surprise, it doesn’t mean that the pollination crisis is solved. Bees are far from the only insects that pollinate plants, and others like butterflies, moths, beetles, flies, midges and gnats, are all on the decline, with the heavy use of insecticides and other forms of environmental destruction being major culprits. Domesticated honeybees themselves also threaten other pollinator species. While you may want to focus on the goal of “Saving the Bees,” by getting your own hive, a better method, according to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, is to focus on preserving the natural habitats in which all pollinator species can thrive.

The song of the summer.

Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.

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