The American election system is pretty convoluted at the best of times and foreigners can be excused for being utterly baffled by it. One general feature of this system is that political parties are weak entities and what membership in them means is informal and largely determined by the individual states and can vary. The party leadership does not get to choose which candidates represent them in a general election. Instead that is decided in a preliminary election called a primary election held several months before the general election in which voters get to decide which of the candidates should represent their party in the general election.

Who gets to vote in their primary election is not controlled by the parties either. In some states, when one registers to vote, one is asked to pick a party preference. Based on that, one is sent a party ballot for the primary election. But it is usually easy to switch from one party registration to another. In some other states, one can just show up on primary day and ask for ballot for one party and vote for a candidate from that party to be the nominee in the general election. Doing so automatically registers you as having that as your party choice. In the next election, one can choose to vote for a member of the other party and your preference gets switched. This sometimes results in devious voting where a Republican (say) votes in the Democratic primary for the candidate that they think the Republican could beat most easily in the general election. It is not clear if this strategy has ever worked but the idea periodically gets promoted.
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Recently The Atlantic magazine ran a lengthy investigative piece detailing the excessive drinking of FBI director Kash Patel. (I wrote about it here.) Patel was enraged and immediately rushed to file a $250 million defamation lawsuit against the magazine and the article author Sarah Fitzpatrick. Legal observers said that Patel’s lawsuit was not well-founded and likely to lose, and thus would be yet another waste of taxpayer funds. But filing lawsuits is what the members of the Trump clown car do for the flimsiest of reasons.


Fitzpatrick and the magazine were defiant and indeed she said that since the lawsuit she had heard from a great many current and former FBI officials who wanted to provide more dirt on Patel. The results of the fresh outpouring have been released in another article by Fitzpatrick that makes Patel look even worse, someone who seems incredibly childish and obsessed with branding his name.

After my story appeared, I heard from people in Patel’s orbit and people he has met at public functions, who told me that it is not unusual for him to travel with a supply of personalized branded bourbon. The bottles bear the imprint of the Kentucky distillery Woodford Reserve, and are engraved with the words “kash patel fbi director,” as well as a rendering of an FBI shield. Surrounding the shield is a band of text featuring Patel’s director title and his favored spelling of his first name: ka$h. An eagle holds the shield in its talons, along with the number 9, presumably a reference to Patel’s place in the history of FBI directors. In some cases, the 750-milliliter bottles bear Patel’s signature, with “#9” there as well. One such bottle popped up on an online auction site shortly after my story appeared, and The Atlantic later purchased it. (The person who sold it to us did not want to be named, but said that the bottle was a gift from Patel at an event in Las Vegas.)
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In March, Patel and his team brought at least one case of bourbon to the FBI’s training facility in Quantico, Virginia, for a “training seminar,” where Ultimate Fighting Championship athletes provided mixed-martial-arts instruction to aspiring FBI agents and senior staff. At one point at least one bottle went missing, which caused the director to “lose his mind,” according to clients of Kurt Siuzdak, a retired agent who has assisted FBI agents, including whistleblowers, with legal issues. Siuzdak told me that multiple agents contacted him for legal guidance after Patel began threatening to polygraph and prosecute his staff over the missing bottle. “It turned into a shitshow,” Siuzdak said. Other attorneys told me they received similar calls from FBI employees regarding concerns about Patel’s bottles.

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A sign that Trump is flailing with his war with Iran can be seen in his wildly shifting positions in order to avoid conceding that things are not going well. After declaring that the US had won the war within the first few hours, and then claiming that it would last at most a month or five weeks or six weeks (it kept changing), he now says that we should compare it with the Vietnam war that lasted for years so that critics were too quick in suggesting that the US was again stuck in an unwinnable war. The idea that a suitable measure should be in years rather than weeks was hardly comforting, So he occasionally reprises the idea that the war is in fact over or that it is not a war at all.

Then there are his abruptly shifting tactical moves. It is clear that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a big problem, not just for him, but for the global economy and that Iran is calling the shots on it. So what does he do? He first declares that the Strait is in fact open, then he orders Iran to open it, then he declares that the US is blockading it, as if that makes things any better. Then just on Sunday, he grandly declared Project Freedom in which US warships would provide safe passage to ships to pass through the Strait and on Monday, he claimed success in that US warships had escorted two ships out. But according to the International Maritime Organization there are roughly 2,000 ships with about 20,000 crew that are stranded in the Persian Gulf as of April 21, and it was obvious to knowledgeable observers that there was no way that US warships could provide escorts for that many. So on Tuesday, Project Freedom was summarily ditched, with Trump going back to that old standby that has not worked before, of threatening indiscriminate bombing of Iran (obvious war crimes) unless they allow free passage.
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I am reposting this song by Tom Waits that I first heard over 15 years ago because it seems particularly apropos now about the greed and selfishness-infested state of the US in our time, especially the first stanza, where I take ‘the ship is sinking’ as a metaphor for the US.

I’d sell your heart to the junk-man baby for a buck, for a buck
If you’re looking for someone to pull you out of that ditch, you’re out of luck, you’re out of luck
The ship is sinking, the ship is sinking, the ship is sinking
There’s a leak, there’s a leak in the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves and lawyers
God’s away, God’s away, God’s away on business.




Someone noticed the remarkable similarity between the voices of Waits and Cookie Monster and made a mashup of Cookie’s scenes from Sesame Street with Waits singing the song. For me the words carry even more weight when seemingly sung by the beloved muppet.

Since it is hard to make out the words sometimes, here are the lyrics.
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The US has very little in the form of safety nets for people who are struggling. One of the few things is the Supplemental Security Income program that “provides monthly payments to people with disabilities and older adults who have little or no income or resources.” Like most government social programs in the US, it does not cover the actual needs but at least it provides something.

Many of the people on SSI cannot live on their own because of mental or physical disabilities so it makes sense if they can find family members or other people with whom they can stay. This not only provides some emotional relief it actually relieves the burden on the state to fully cover the costs. But now ProPublica reports that the Trump administration is seeking to reduce the benefits paid to such people simply because they have families to help share the burden of care.
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Jerome Powell has announced that even after his term as chair of the Federal Reserve ends in May of this year, he will continue to serve on the body until his term as a member expires in January 2028 around the same time as Trump leaves office. While the terms of office on the board and being the chair are not the same, usually the chair leaves the board as well when they stop being the chair.

Powell was very clear that his decision to stay on was prompted by Trump’s attacks on the board.

Jerome Powell said Wednesday he plans to remain on the board of the Federal Reserve after his term as chair ends next month “for a period of time, to be determined,” saying the “unprecedented” legal attacks by the Trump administration have put the independence of the nation’s central bank at risk.

“I worry these attacks are battering this institution and putting at risk the things that really matter to the public,” Powell said in remarks at a press conference after the Fed announced its decision to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged.

Powell’s decision to stay — the first time a Fed chair will remain on the board as a governor since 1948 — denies President Donald Trump a chance to fill a seat on the central bank’s seven-member governing board with his own appointee. The Senate Banking Committee earlier approved Powell’s successor as chair, Trump appointee Kevin Warsh, on a party-line vote. Powell will continue as a Fed governor, possibly until January 2028. Warsh, if confirmed, will take a seat currently held by Stephen Miran, a previous Trump appointee, whose term ended in January.

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