Josh Marshall
Keith Richards at 80
Today Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones turns 80.
For years it’s been impossible to venture onto social media without seeing memes about Richards’ death-cheating immortality: the often gaunt hollowed visage, the legendary drug use, urban legends about recurrent full blood transfusions. Richards’ legendary junkiedom has been decades longer in the myth-making than the reality. As best as the various histories and memoirs inform us, Richards spent about a decade addicted to heroin, from around the age of 25 to roughly 35. There were recurrent clean-ups for tours, relapses, or just decisions to start shooting heroin again. He eventually kicked the habit in stages after a notorious drug bust in Toronto in 1977, which could have sent him to prison for years. In other words, that supposedly central thing about the man actually ended going on half a century ago. Of course, there are drugs and drugs. Richards continued to drink, smoke grass, snort cocaine for years while seemingly weening himself of the vices over time. He even quit smoking at some point during the COVID pandemic.
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Four Deaths, One Story—Examining the Deaths of Three Israeli Hostages 
You’ve likely heard about the incident on Friday in which Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Israeli hostages who had either escaped from their captors or been abandoned by them during fighting in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City. The three were two Israeli Jews and one Israeli Bedouin, each of whom had been captured on October 7th. At the most basic level this is a version of “friendly fire” in which soldiers inadvertently kill fellow soldiers from their own army during wartime. In this case, it’s hostages not fellow soldiers. But the nature of the case is comparable.
The incident has produced a firestorm within Israel, both for the inherently tragic nature of the hostages’ deaths but also because of the particular details of how they died. Their deaths have added renewed intensity to arguments and protests about how the government is balancing the imperatives of destroying Hamas and bringing the country’s hostages home safely. Recent weeks have seen various protests in Israel, often led by or featuring families of hostages, demanding the government focus more on making a deal with Hamas to return all the hostages. The controversy has been fueled in part by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s almost total refusal to visit and meet with residents of communities attacked on October 7th or the families of the hostages.
Read MoreJeff Roe, the chief strategist for Ron DeSantis’s official super PAC and top cheese of the DeSantis campaign, has resigned. As usual, there’s lots of talk about cronies getting lavish sums of money. But really it’s never a good situation when your billionaire backers have given you massive amounts of money and your campaign is flat-lining.
Leveraged Buyout? Is Christian Ziegler Looking for Cash to Put the FL GOP Out of Its Misery?
News comes this morning that Christian Ziegler, embattled chair of the Florida GOP, accused rapist and one half (or perhaps one third) of the threesoming Zieglers, wants a buyout. Yes, a buyout. Usually we think of a buyout as a cash offer in exchange for some property interest in something, or a job in which someone has something akin to a property interest. It’s not usually something you get when you agree to relinquish an elected political office. But as we noted earlier, the bylaws of the Florida GOP don’t appear to contain any process for firing a party chair. The party can ask him to leave. They can investigate him. But they can’t fire him. So far Ziegler has been adamant in his refusal to resign.
Read MoreWe finally have access to the apology letters written by Sidney Powell and Ken Chesebro that they agreed to write as part of their plea deals in the Fulton County election subversion case. There’s another from a guy named Scott Hall. But you’ve never heard of him. So we’re not going to discuss his other than to say his letter was pretty good and ran five paragraphs.
Here’s Sidney Powell’s.
Read MoreAs I reread my post below about staying on the attack, I realized I hadn’t defined what it means to “attack,” perhaps not even entirely to myself. Attacking isn’t saying mean things or criticizing someone or calling them out. An attack is something that compels a response. If it doesn’t do that it wasn’t an attack or not one that mattered. Don’t hold me to a universal definition. Some attacks are designed to overawe an adversary to the point they’re unable or afraid to respond. But this basic definition helps us understand what counts and what doesn’t.
In politics today we spend a lot of time doing things that don’t matter. Criticizing Trump, insisting how outrageous the latest statement is — none of that matters. It’s true. It doesn’t compel a response. A big part of Trumpism is driving cries of outrage. Those cries may be good for other things. It’s not an attack. It’s not an action in any political context.
Always Attack! Some Thoughts On Politics in a Time of Trumpism
Back in August 2015, based on a TPM Reader making the connection, I described how a concept from the world of military intellectuals — the OODA Loop — helped explain the uncanny power of Donald Trump’s impulsive and thoroughly un-theorized way of engaging in political fights. It’s not the point of this discussion, but I need to explain the basic OODA Loop concept to have it. So I’ll summarize it quickly: In any fight or combat, each side is in a process of seeing what’s happening, understanding it, making a decision how to react based on it and then attacking. John Boyd, the military theorist who devised the concept, called this Observe, Orient, Decide, Act — OODA. If you move fast enough, you can act and thus change the observed reality to something new while your opponent is still in the process of making sense of and reacting to the old one. Conventional military theory captured the same insight, albeit in a less analytic way, in its emphasis on taking and maintaining the initiative. Act and make your adversary react to you, not vice versa.
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Beneath the Headlines in Gaza, Tel Aviv and DC
I wanted to give a quick update on American and Israeli wrestling over the pace and duration of the Israeli offensive in Gaza. The U.S. has been pushing the Israelis with increasing vigor to end the campaign in Gaza in early January. It has also been demanding greater consultation and coordination between the U.S. and Israeli militaries. We want to know exactly what your plan is, basically. Publicly the Israeli government has been saying that its campaign will take as long as it takes. As much as it appreciates U.S. support it won’t agree to any arbitrary timetable.
In practice, however, something else appears to be happening on the ground and in the air.
Read MoreWe do elections different here at TPM. If you’re a TPM Reader you know exactly how and why that’s the case. We don’t do the bothsides thing. We don’t pretend to take a disinterested view of what’s happening in the country or the consequences of an election outcome. We go deep on the details. We share insights that news orgs either don’t have or, just as often, don’t see as appropriate to include in their coverage. Right now we’re at just less than a year from Election Day. So we’re offering a steep discount on our annual membership — 30% off. Join now and your membership will take you right through Election Day. You get full access to everything we publish, our members-only newsletters, reduced ads and a lot more. Plus, you help give TPM the financial stability to keep delivering for you day and day out. Click right here to join with this special discount.