Good morning, all, and welcome to another edition of Carnival of Fools! It’s been quite the explosive week of news, so let’s get to it quickly: There is a very real chance this newsletter may self-destruct after you’re done reading it. (And if you’re interested in seeing such dynamite blow up your inbox on Tuesday mornings, I invite you to subscribe here. Or, if you’re wondering, really, what the heck this is, you can go here to get me out of your life.)
The VP Debate
It’s the end of the season — debate season for the general election, that is — and we have perhaps mercifully been granted only three of these newsmaking messes. The first one knocked Joe Biden out of the 2024 presidential race and remains easily the single most immediately consequential debate in American political history. (Think about that, folks — you witnessed an awful sort of history!) The second one showed Kamala Harris at arguably the best she is capable of being, while Trump blustered about rogue pet consumption and generally fumbled away his electoral momentum.
And now we have the final showdown, tonight’s debate between vice-presidential nominees: Ohio senator J. D. Vance and Minnesota governor Tim Walz. I can assure you that no matter the outcome, the media will declare Walz the winner, unless he removes his clothes during the halfway commercial break and insists on doing the rest of the night au naturel. I can also assure you that I have my unavoidable biases, though they’re stranger than most: I have complicated feelings about both politicians. Mostly, I dislike to varying degrees everyone who’s running for office in 2024. I think it’s fair to say I dislike Vance the least of all four candidates on the two major tickets and Walz the most.
To be sure, Kamala Harris is every bit as phony as Walz. But I find Walz more offensive than Harris, really, because he is more effective — his cornpone shtick plays well among a certain voter demographic, and during his tenure as governor he has proven to be a relentlessly cold-blooded panderer. In a debate preview from CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere, we learn that Walz is apparently suffering from a case of nerves and wants everyone to know that he’s just not sure Coach Tim can stand up to the heat of a Big Important Debate. This is, of course, “expectations management” nonsense of the most obvious sort, intentionally leaked to set up a counter-narrative once Walz confidently executes his playbook in the debate.
For Walz is not stupid, after all; he is in fact a canny liar and serial exaggerator of his résumé who also has developed a genuine knack for talking folksy political blatherskite to voters — it’s a valuable skill — and I fully expect him to do a competent job tonight. Look, if Harris can learn her briefing book, so can Walz. The only question is what that playbook is — what are his angles of attack going to be?
I’d advise J. D. Vance to get ready to defend claims of pet-eating in Ohio and to not take the bait in any great depth. Have a tight two sentences prepared and move on, with the understanding that Trump made this an issue in the last debate but Vance was the one who perpetuated it on the campaign trail — in essence personalizing it and making it about him as an Ohioan. Vance needs to remember that he’s here to help Trump win a national election, not just Ohio, and spend his time on what matters. (Another way of putting it: Every second spent discussing this subject might as well amount to 5,000 lost votes in the Research Triangle of North Carolina.)
Other than that, I doubt Vance will have any trouble deflecting attacks persuasively unless his make-up team makes him look too rosy-cheeked again. (It’s a problem, they have to address it.) If Walz dares to open his faux-populist yap about Yale, I hope Vance is prepared to drop a nuclear bomb on his head instantly. (“What did you do after graduating from high school, Tim? I went to Iraq.”) More likely, I suspect Walz will employ his standard yam-faced “har har” Foghorn Leghorn impression, and he’ll do it over J. D. Vance as he speaks. The idea will be to re-create the moment from the 2012 vice-presidential debate when Joe Biden — then still lucid but every bit as much the arrogant gasbag he remains — simply talked all over polite Paul Ryan and laughed at him throughout as if Ryan were so crazy he shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Vance had better have a response ready for when Walz tries to brush him aside, but he also needs to remember to keep his focus on Harris.
I Wouldn’t Answer That ‘Help Wanted’ Ad from Hezbollah If I Were You
Have you heard? Planet Earth’s most roaring job market is currently “high-ranking Hezbollah official”: You get to work as part of an on-the-go, “cause-centered” organization dedicated to making change in the world, the pay is great, the hours are flexible, there’s lots of career mobility — and as it turns out, new positions are opening up all the time!
But you’ll probably think twice before responding to that job listing (especially electronically), because right now Hamas, Hezbollah, and various and sundry other associated terrorist allies of Iran are exploding at an alarming rate all across the Levant, as the IDF kicked into overdrive beginning on Friday with a series of stunning hammer-blow air strikes that decapitated the leadership of Hezbollah and crippled Hamas even further. Hassan Nasrallah, the shadowy and elusive leader of Hezbollah, is dead along with the vast majority of the terror organization’s high command after a massive yet precision-targeted strike on a meeting outside Beirut. Several Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine leaders have been struck in pinpoint rocket attacks on Saturday and Sunday. Even the Houthis down in Yemen — on the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula — got a rocket up their socket for their troubles in assisting Hezbollah and Hamas during the current war.
Yes, it seems like, with the successful Friday military strike on Nasrallah, the floodgates have opened: Israel is finally settling all “family business,” and it is impossible to know whether this is meant as prelude to a ground invasion to root out the rest of Hezbollah (particularly in southern Lebanon) or as a conclusion. Perhaps both, in a way — the elimination of the group’s leadership likely makes any potential Israeli incursion into Lebanon that much briefer and logistically easier to execute with a minimum of civilian casualties.
But all that is speculation, and I’m no expert in any event. Let’s talk for a moment instead about what a coup this was and how, in retrospect, you can see the steps unfold beautifully: First, Israel leaked to the media that it had irrevocably compromised all of Hezbollah’s internet/high-tech communications. (It didn’t say how it had done so, only that it had done so, and made it seem like news that was being reported against the IDF’s will. It’s so easy to play games with the terrorist mind-set.) This sent Hezbollah scurrying to purchase low-tech communications equipment — pagers, shortwave radios, and walkie-talkies — and to quickly install these as their primary means of communication and control.
We all remember what happened next — first the pagers all exploded, then the shortwave radios and walkie-talkies — but what we didn’t appreciate at the time was the long game underlying it. Having taken out all reliably safe means of long-distance communication, Israel forced Hezbollah leadership to gather for an in-person meeting where most of them could safely (or so they thought) travel: the suburbs of Beirut. Israel engineered this meeting, tracked their whereabouts, and then hit them so hard it took them out in their underground bunkers.
As we near the anniversary of the October 7 attacks next week, it is shocking — and, I will not lie, mildly exhilarating as well — to see Israel swoop down with such precision, forethought, and success to so suddenly destroy so many of their worst and most formidable enemies. As one who had grown accustomed to the sitzkrieg on Israel’s northern border over the last twelve months, I feel that things are moving so quickly there now that the pace is dizzying. The mathematical balance of power in the Middle East seems to have shifted, in a matter of days, against Iran.
Eric Adams’s Bizarre Turkish Scandal
Sometimes you get hit by an IDF missile strike, and sometimes you get hit by the Southern District of New York. (Both forces tend to score fatalities on their targets.) For those outside of the NYC metropolitan area who once thought of Mayor Eric Adams as a hapless doofus most famous for finally introducing trash cans to an uncivilized heathen populace, he is now perhaps better known as the first man in the position to be federally indicted while in office. His sin? Bribes from the Turkish government, allegedly, taken mostly in the form of travel perks and straw donations from small donors. Dan McLaughlin did a fantastic job of laying out how absurdly quotidian the entire case is, but I want to add, as a Chicagoan who moved from Rahm Emanuel to Lori Lightfoot to Brandon Johnson in the span of four accursed years between 2019 and 2023: Whoever comes next will inevitably be worse.
Quote of the Day: Joe Biden
As he was deplaning from Air Force One yesterday, President Joe Biden was asked by a reporter on the tarmac whether he had “any comment on the strikes in Yemen,” referring to the recent Israeli missile strikes on the Iran-funded and -directed Yemeni Houthi terrorists. Biden’s response, for posterity: “I’ve spoken to both sides. They gotta settle the strike. I’m supporting the collective-bargaining effort. I think they’ll settle the strike.”
You can make whatever joke you want; I instead want you to remember that this man was seeking four more years in the presidency as recently as July, and he will continue to be commander in chief until the end of January regardless. Ruminate on that happy thought awhile, and I’ll see you next week.