Weekend Roundup [70 - 79]Sunday, September 1, 2019
Weekend Roundup
The lead story for most of next week will be
Hurricane Dorian, which as I write this (see
here and
here) is a Category 5 Hurricane moving slowly through the
Bahamas toward the coast of Florida. It is expected to turn north and
follow the coast (possibly without the eye making landfall) up to North
Carolina, where it will most likely head back into the Atlantic. The
current tracking forecast puts it off the coast of Palm Beach around
2PM Tuesday, Jacksonville 2PM Wednesday, close to the SC/NC border 2PM
Thursday, and straight east of the NC/Va border 2PM Friday. Presumably
the storm will lose intensity as it drifts north, but not as quickly
as it would if it landed. Rain forecasts are relatively mild, but the
coast will see storm surges and a lot of wind.
Dorian was still a tropical storm when it passed over the Windward
Islands last Monday (55 mph winds in Barbados, 4.1 inches of rain in
Martinique). It wasn't much stronger when it crossed Puerto Rico, but
was predicted to intensify to Category 3 or 4 as it headed through
the Bahamas to Florida. It did more than that, reaching sustained
winds of 185 mph and gusts to 225 mph. The
2019 Atlantic hurricane season has been relatively mild so far,
even compared to the forecasts (12 named storms, 5 hurricanes, 2 major).
With the season about half over, there have been 5 named storms (TS
Erin was named after Dorian, but has already dissipated), 2 hurricanes,
1 major (Dorian). The season continues through the end of November,
so we're not much below expectations.
Some scattered links this week:
Anya van Wagtendonk: This week in mass shootings:
If you'd like to keep score, see Neil Vigdor:
53 people died in mass shootings in August alone in the US. Liaquat Ahamed:
The rich can't get richer forever, can they?: "Inequality comes in
waves. The question is when this one will break." Reviews several books,
including Binyamin Applebaum's The Economist's Hour: False Prophets,
Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society (on Milton Friedman and
his "Chicago school" of free market fundamentalists) and Branko Milanovic's
Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World.
David Atkins:
Do conservatives believe there are more bad people in America than
elsewhere? Well, sure they do. For starters, they believe there
are more conservatives in America than elsewhere.
The conservative pundit problem in the Age of Trump. Well, part
of the problem, as he limits himself to conservative pundits cultivated
to dialogue with centrist readers of the New York Times and Washington
Post (David Brooks, George Will, Bret Stephens), most of which recognize
that their brand as sane voices would be jeopardized by following Trump
into the fever swamps of the alt-right. That skips over other pundits
who've had no qualms about embracing Trump wholeheartedly (e.g., the
ones syndicated in my hometown paper: Marc Thiessen and Cal Thomas). Max Boot:
Here are 14 reasons I'll vote for any Democrat over Trump: He starts
off by chastising Michael Bloomberg (whom "I have the utmost respect for")
for stopping short if the Democratic nominee is Sanders or Warren, then
goes on to list his 14 issues. A couple items here I actually lean toward
Trump on, but nothing I would vote for him for. Boot and Bloomberg remain
narrow ideologues, their differences reflect that the Democratic Left is
more of a threat to oligarchs (like Bloomberg) than to neoconservatives
(like Boot). But also that Boot still thinks that the Republican Party
can be recover from Trump's heresies, corruption and bullshit, and must
to keep the empire from collapsing. Quoctrung Bui/Karl Russell:
How much will the trade war cost you by the end of the year?
"About $460 over a year for the average family." Jonathan Chait:
Jane Coaston:
The problem with primarying Trump. I would have guess it has something
to do with money. Sixteen Republicans ran for president in 2016, because
that many billionaires felt they had a chance backing whoever best fit
their pocket. Regardless of how shaky Trump might look in the general
election, running against him is a waste of money: he's consolidated his
base within the Republican Party, and his brand and the Party's are now
effectively synonymous. The article reads more like the problem is that
the challengers are all idiots and cranks, which is the only sort you'd
figure to bet against the smart money. David Cole:
Trump doesn't think he's 'ever even heard of a Category 5' hurricane.
Four such storms hit the US since he took office. "Trump has
previously indicated several other times that Category 5 hurricanes
are unprecedented weather events that either he or others had never
heard of or witnessed." Summer Concepcion:
Gillibrand campaign insiders felt Franken resignation foiled her bid:
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand gave up on her presidential campaign
after failing to qualify for the September debates. This is one of the
few reports I've seen that tries to assign blame, probably because they
interviewed "Hillary Clinton's former communications director" --
obviously someone who knows a thing or two about deflecting blame
elsewhere. Gillibrand was the first Senator to call for Franken's
resignation, and I doubt she did so without considering how doing so
would reflect on campaign. I thought that was unfair and unwise, but
I wouldn't reject her for that. She's moved smartly to the left, and
I would have easily picked her over Harris and Klobuchar (or Franken,
even before the taint). But she's been a less effective advocate for
progressive issues than Sanders and Warren, and her special focus on
"women's issues" isn't very distinct. For more:
Lee Fang:
David Koch's most significant legacy is the election of Donald Trump.
Peter S Goodman:
Trump can battle China or expand the economy. He can't do both. Ryan Grim:
A top financier of Trump and McConnell is a driving force behind
Amazon deforestation: Stephen Schwarzman, of Blackstone, owner
"in large part" of Hidrovias do Brasil. Gerald Horne:
Jazz is a music of perseverance against racism and capitalism.
Horne has a book: Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy
of Music. Related (interview with Horne): Anton Woronczuk:
White supremacy tried to kill jazz. The music triumphed. John Hudson/Josh Dawsey:
Bolton sidelined from Afghanistan policy as his standing with Trump
falters. Rex Huppke:
Bret Stephens, Donald Trump and the epidemic of male fragility. Umair Irfan:
Sarah Jones:
Ed Kilgore:
Yes, Trump does terrible things constantly. Does that mean we shouldn't
cover Biden's gaffes? Refers to Peter Hamby's "rant":
"Are we really going to have a gaffe-fest over Joe Biden?": How clickbait
and outrage porn are hurting readers -- and elevating Trump. Well,
it's not as if Trump's gaffes have been underreported. One problem is
that his gaffes don't seem to have much downside for Trump. Reporting
them makes it look like he's being picked on by liberal media elites,
endearing him to his base. On the other hand, Biden's gaffes undermine
his central message, which is that he intends to restore competent and
responsible leadership to the presidency. So, yeah, reporting on them
hurts him, and is probably unfair. On the other hand, few in the media
are up to reporting on substantive issues. Gaffes are more their speed,
which winds up selecting for candidates who make lots of them (actually,
good for Biden) and who can slough them off (better for Trump).
If the Democrats take the Senate, they plan to fix Obamacare, not pass
Medicare for All. Sure. Some Democrats will balk at Medicare for All,
especially in the expansive formulation that Bernie Sanders has proposed,
but everyone agrees that the ACA framework can be tuned to work better,
so that's where the initial focus will (and should) be. On the other hand,
Democrats who want Medicare for All are likely to support better fixes
to ACA, because they understand that single-payer is the preferred longer
term solution, and because they're not the sort of people who will break
an inadequate system in hopes of replacing it with a better one. Would-be
saboteurs mostly belong to the other Party. Jen Kirby:
Boris Johnson just suspended Parliament over Brexit. Here's what's going
on. More on Brexit:
Andy Kroll:
The Trumpiest week ever: "Donald Trump's re-election strategy couldn't
be clearer: chaos covering up cruelty." Paul Krugman:
Sharon LaFraniere:
Trial of high-powered lawyer Gregory Craig exposes seamy side of
Washington's elite. Eric Levitz:
Annie Lowrey:
The next recession will destroy millennials: "Millennials are already
in debt and without savings. After the next downturn, they will be in even
bigger trouble." Related (Dec. 6, 2018): Derek Thompson:
Millennials didn't kill the economy. The economy killed millennials.
"The American system has thrown them into debt, depressed their wages,
kept them from buying homes -- and then blamed them for everything." Dylan Matthews:
Trump wants to cut taxes for rich people yet again: "Indexing capital
gains to inflation, as Trump is considering, would overwhelmingly benefit
the top 1 percent." Andrew Prokop:
The inspector general report on James Comey's memos, explained.
Related: Josh Marshall:
Of course Comey was right to share the memos. Marshall, with his
instinct for big stories, also weighed in on a previously unknown White
House staffer getting fired:
Getting fired ain't the story. Not clear whether "Ms. Westerhout" has
a first name. David Roberts:
Many businesses oppose Trump's deregulatory agenda. Here's why. Nouriel Roubini:
The anatomy of the coming recession: posits three possible "negative
supply shocks that could trigger a global recession" -- two involving
Trump and China, the third oil. Roubini was pretty sharp on the coming
of the 2008 recession. Related: Robert J Shiller:
The Trump narrative and the next recession. Aaron Rupar:
Jack Shafer:
The fake feud between Trump and Fox. More on the "feud":
Ganesh Sitaraman:
To rescue democracy, we must revive the reforms of the Progressive Era.
Matt Stieb:
Matt Taibbi:
John Hickenlooper is the new Joe Lieberman: "What Lieberman was to
antiwar Democrats, Colorado's Hickenlooper is to environmentalists."
Related: Aida Chavez/Akela Lacy:
Senate Democrats' campaign arm is pressuring consultants not to work
with leading progressive candidate in Colorado. Chavez previously
wrote:
National Democrats endorse John Hickenlooper, a proponent of fracking,
in competitive Colorado primary. Philip Weiss:
Trump will greenlight West Bank annexation to force Israeli pols to keep
Netanyahu as PM, observers say. Other pieces on Israel and the war
flare-ups that seem to be part of Netanyahu's reelection campaign:
Alissa Wilkinson:
Political commentary can be both caustic and incisive. Molly Ivins showed
America how. Interview with Janice Engel, director of the documentary
Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins. Benjamin Wittes:
Matthew Yglesias:
It's time to talk about James Mattis's involvement with the Theranos
scandal: "He's selling a book, not saving the country from Trump."
I've seen several articles on Mattis this week, mostly about him being
coy about what he will and will not say about his differences with
Trump, when and if he will say anything, but this is the one piece
that reflects directly on his character:
But Mattis isn't out babysitting Trump anymore. He's trying to sell books.
And while his thoughts and reflections on his time in the Trump cabinet
are certainly somewhat interesting at this point we hardly need another
person to tell us that the president is erratic, uninformed, impulsive
and all the rest. This stuff isn't highly guarded state secrets, it's
out in public on Twitter for everyone to see. Rather than dwelling on
this stuff that's out there and obvious, it would be nice for journalists
granted access to the retired general to ask some questions about Theranos.
Fundamentally, Trump's rise to power is part of a broader epidemic of
elite impunity in the United States. And Mattis's ability to dabble in
questionable activity, cash a few checks, and then skate away with his
reputation intact is very much part of the problem.
Donald Trump's escalating war of words with Fed Chair Jay Powell,
explained.
The most dangerous idea in central banking, explained. Someone named
William Dudley has suggested that the Fed sandbag the economy to hurt
Donald Trump's reelection prospects -- or, to put a finer point on it,
that the Fed shouldn't attempt to stimulate the economy when Trump's
trade wars drag it down. Article points out that some Fed chairs have
used their power over the economy to dictate political concessions --
e.g., Alan Greenspan vs. Bill Clinton. I'd add Ben Bernanke vs. Barack
Obama, but in that case Republicans were livid that the Fed was doing
anything at all to salvage the economy. According to law, the Fed is
responsible for balancing competing demands for full employment and
low inflation, but in practice the Fed has always kowtowed to the
banking interests it is supposed to regulate.
The past 3 wild days in Trump's trade war with China, explained.
Ask a question, or send a comment.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Weekend Roundup
There are more than a few "Trump's gone nuts" moments below. Not the
first time this has happened, but the count is definitely rising (and
continuing as the G-7 articles arrive). The Fallows links below offer
an extended opportunity to plot Trump's decline. Also see Steve M:
Even if Trump is impaired, he won't go quietly. He cites Charles
Pierce recalling the 1984 Reagan-Mondale debate as the occasion when
he realized that Reagan exhibited clear signs of Alzheimer's. I recall
watching that debate, and thinking I've never seen a more one-sided
drubbing, yet Reagan went on to a landslide victory that November.
On the other hand, I also came away very annoyed with Mondale, who
scored many of his points by being more resolutely (recklessly even)
anti-communist than Reagan -- whose own Cold War ardor was undoubted
but, at least in person, tempered by his genial incoherence.
Trump's incoherence is less benign, partly because he projects a
degree of menace (resentment and vitriol) Reagan never projected.
But also Reagan was never his own man. He was the front guy, hired
as the face and mouth, reading from prepared scripts, happy to be
playing a role, while his evil "kitchen cabinet" called the shots.
Trump has always been a one-man show, with few (if any) competent
advisers, but with great faith in his ability to wing it. Early on,
all presidents are dazed and overwhelmed at first, allowing their
staffs to hold sway over the administration. However, deference and
ego eventually favor the president, who eventually take charge of
what matters most. It took GW Bush well into his second term to get
out from under Cheney's thumb. Obama and Clinton evolved faster
because they knew more, but in both of those cases early staff
decisions did a lot of damage. Trump got saddled with a lot of
hardcore GOP regulars early on, but most of them have been purged,
allowing Trump to replace them with flunkies distinguished mostly
by their sycophancy. The result is that when Trump wigs out, we
no longer have the comfort of "adults in the room" to contain
the damage.
I imagine you could plot two curves here. One shows the increased
fragility of the administration (and really the whole country) as
competent people are replaced with ones who are less so (and/or are
too crooked to know better). The other would is the increasing
likelihood that Trump himself will break down and blow something
up. (Too early to call his performance at G-7, but it should be
enough to give you a fright.)
The Democratic presidential campaign thinned out a bit, with
Seth Moulton,
Jay Inslee, and
John Hickenlooper ending their campaigns. Meanwhile,
Joe Walsh will offer Trump some token ultra-conservative opposition.
Some scattered links this week:
Zeeshan Aleem:
Trump advisers are scrambling to sell the idea that a recession isn't
going to happen. I've heard that the "yield curve inversion" has a
perfect record of predicting recessions (10 for 10, no false positives),
but in some ways Larry Kudlow's assurance that there won't be a recession
is scarier. Eric Alterman:
Dear Democrats, the mainstream media are not your friends: "Misplaced
trust in the media has repeatedly led to disastrous debates." Binyamin Appelbaum:
Blame economists for the mess we're in: "Why did America listen to
the people who thought we needed 'more millionaires and more bankrupts?'"
Peter Baker/Aurelien Breeden:
Iranian official makes surprise appearance on sidelines of G7 summit.
Josh Barro:
This is how Trump will tank the economy and his presidency. Zack Beauchamp:
Trump and the fragile belonging of American Jews: "The president's
spree of anti-Semitic comments reveals why Jews can't feel truly safe
in his America." Related: Jack Mirkinson:
Trump is reportedly being a raging anti-Semite because he's mad Jews
don't like him more:
It gives me a stress headache to have to repeat this basic fact, but
thinking that Jews will support you because you do some (terrible)
stuff in Israel is . . . wait for it . . . really anti-Semitic! Not
every Jew thinks that aligning with the far-right in Israel is a
great plan. Not every Jew is (gasp!) even a Zionist or a supporter
of Israel in the first place! It's almost as if Israel and Jewishness
are two different things.
Not that this sort of nuance is ever going to make it through the
Fort Knox-like vault of stupidity surrounding Trump's brain.
Peter Beinart:
Bipartisan support for Israel is dead. That's a good thing. Related:
MJ Rosenberg:
Did Netanyahu just kill Washington's 'Pro-Israel' consensus? I doubt
it, at least beyond repair, but Netanyahu's alignment of his right-wing
policies with Trump and the Republican is increasingly bothering Democrats
who otherwise wouldn't give Israel a moment's critical thought. And this
is a case where the rank-and-file are miles ahead of the political class,
as it's become blindingly obvious that the Israeli right is treating
their minorities with the same contempt America's right threatens. Peter Blake/Keith Bradsher:
Trump asserts he can force US companies to leave China. But they
haven't been "US companies" for ages now. Most are multinationals, with
significant non-American ownership stakes, but I doubt if many of the
nominal US citizens would put their patriotism above their bottom-line
interests, even if they thought Trump represents patriotism in some
peculiar way. As for American equity stakes in China, most of them are
in joint ventures they don't have this sort of control over. Jonathan Chait:
'American Carnage' exposes the Republican slide into Trumpism:
Review of Tim Alberta's book (subtitle: On the Front Lines of the
Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump), which is
on my reading list, probably next up.
The Republican Party's political elite is obsessed with cutting taxes
for the wealthy, but it recognizes the lack of popular support for its
objectives and is forced to divert attention away from its main agenda
by emphasizing cultural-war themes. The disconnect between the Republican
Party's plutocratic agenda and the desires of the electorate is a tension
it has never been able to resolve, and as it has moved steadily rightward,
it has been evolving into an authoritarian party.
The party's embrace of Trump is a natural, if not inevitable, step
in this evolution. This is why the conservatives who presented Trump as
an enemy of conservative-movement ideals have so badly misdiagnosed the
party's response to Trump. The most fervently ideological conservatives
in the party have also been the most sycophantic: Ryan, Mike Pence, Ted
Cruz, Mick Mulvaney, the entire House Freedom Caucus. They embraced Trump
because Trumpism is their avenue to carry out their unpopular agenda.
Trump is melting down because China won't give in on trade.
Trump says Jews should love him because he's almost literally Jesus.
After carefully parsing the tweet, all Trump's really saying is that he
loves being praised by an idiot ("Wayne Allyn Root is a Christian who
converted from Judaism as well as a notorious conspiracy theorist and,
naturally, a huge Trump fan"), which doesn't necessarily mean Trump's
an idiot too (although it's no argument against, either). For more on
Root, see Zachary Pleat/Courtney Hadle:
The extremism of Wayne Allyn Root, who was promoted by Trump. Carrie Dann:
'A deep and boiling anger': NBC/WSJ poll finds a pessimistic America
despite current economic satisfaction. Jason Ditz:
US confirms Israel behind recent attacks in Iraq. Also:
Israel attacked Syria 'to prevent Iranian strike on Northern Israel; and:
Israel planning to attack Houthis in Yemen. Clearly, Netanyahu's
reëlection campaign is in full swing. Also, he clearly has no worries
that Trump will allow the UN or any major Western power to condemn
such flagrant acts of war, let alone impose sanctions or any other
form of punishment. Andrea Dutton/Michael E Mann:
A dangerous new form of climate denialism is making the rounds. James Fallows:
If Trump were an airline pilot: The latest in a circular file of
notes posted when Trump does something dismaying (following his 152
installments on the 2016 campaign, written as
Time Capsules), plus I don't know how many since Trump took office.
I imagine that the only reason Fallows hasn't turned these into book
form is that he hasn't figured out how deep the hole is. He explains:
The one thing I avoided in that Time Capsule series was "medicalizing"
Trump's personality and behavior. That is, moving from description of
his behavior to speculation about its cause. Was Trump's abysmal
ignorance -- "Most people don't know President Lincoln was a Republican!" --
a sign of dementia, or of some other cognitive decline? Or was it just
more evidence that he had never read a book? Was his braggadocio and
self-centeredness a textbook case of narcissistic personality disorder?
(Whose symptoms include "an exaggerated sense of self-importance" and
"a sense of entitlement and require[s] constant, excessive admiration.")
Or just that he is an entitled jerk? On these and other points I didn't,
and don't, know.
However, the last couple weeks seem to warrant further consideration:
But now we've had something we didn't see so clearly during the campaign.
These are episodes of what would be called outright lunacy, if they
occurred in any other setting: An actually consequential rift with a
small but important NATO ally, arising from the idea that the U.S.
would "buy Greenland." Trump's self-description as "the Chosen One,"
and his embrace of a supporter's description of him as the "second
coming of God" and the "King of Israel." His logorrhea, drift, and
fantastical claims in public rallies, and his flashes of belligerence
at the slightest challenge in question sessions on the White House
lawn. His utter lack of affect or empathy when personally meeting
the most recent shooting victims, in Dayton and El Paso. His reduction
of any event, whatsoever, into what people are saying about him.
Ian Frazier:
When W.E.B. Du Bois made a laughingstock of a white supremacist:
"Why the Jim Crow-era debate between the African-American leader and
a ridiculous, Nazi-loving racist isn't as famous as Lincoln-Douglas."
The latter was Lothrop Stoddard, a "versatile popularizer of certain
theories on race problems" -- especially those of Madison Grant, head
of the Bronx Zoo (where he exhibited an African Pygmy), also of the
American Eugenics Society (which 'thought 'worthless' individuals
should be sterilized"), lobbyist for the Johnson-Reed Immigration
Act of 1924 ("which shut down most immigration to the US"), and
author of The Passing of the Great Race (Hitler called the
book "my Bible"). The debate question was "shall the Negro be
encouraged to seek cultural equality," and, well, you can guess
the rest. Well, maybe not: the first thing that popped into my
mind, which was "why stop there?" Du Bois was too erudite and
refined, too much of a gentleman, to belittle his sorry opponent.
Stoddard went on to become a major Nazi apologist, and died in
ignominy. Du Bois survived him, became a Communist, eventually
giving up on the nation he had spent most of his life most so
eloquently trying to integrate and save. Conor Friedersdorf:
When Kamala was a top cop: "If elected, can the candidate be trusted
to hold government officials accountable and oversee a progressive
criminal-justice system? Her past says no." Susan B Glasser:
Mike Pompeo, the secretary of Trump: "How he became a heartland
evangelical -- and the President's most loyal soldier."
Pompeo, an evangelical Christian who keeps an open Bible on his desk,
now says it's possible that God raised up Trump as a modern Queen Esther,
the Biblical figure who convinced the King of Persia to spare the Jewish
people. He defines his own job as serving the President, whatever the
President asks of him. "A Secretary of State has to know what the President
wants," he said, at a recent appearance in Washington. "To the extent you
get out of synch with that leader, then you're just out shooting the
breeze." No matter what Trump has said or done, Pompeo has stood by him.
As a former senior White House official told me, "There will never be any
daylight publicly between him and Trump." The former official said that,
in private, too, Pompeo is "among the most sycophantic and obsequious
people around Trump." Even more bluntly, a former American ambassador
told me, "He's like a heat-seeking missile for Trump's ass."
Long piece with a lot of biographical detail: things I knew, like
his relationship to the Kochs, but with more details and clarification.
In particular, he's always touted himself as this great entrepreneur,
but if he was so great, how come he quit to become a political toady
for a bunch of rich guys? Even in the latter capacity, you'd expect
more money to stick to his fingers. Tara Golshan:
Adam Gopnik:
The prophetic pragmatism of Frederick Douglass. The subject of
a recent biography, David W Blight: Frederick Douglass: Prophet
of Freedom. Henry Grabar:
After ICE: "On Aug. 7, immigration agents arrested 680 factory workers
in Mississippi. Here's what happened next." David A Graham:
Dan Grazier:
Why the $1.45 trillion F-35 still can't get off the ground. Nikole Hannah-Jones:
Our democracy's founding ideals were false when they were written. Black
Americans have fought to make them true. Introduction to a series of
articles published last week as
The 1619 project in The New York Times Magazine. Other essays
in the series:
Needless to say, this series hasn't been warmly received by pundits
on the right, who may have given up on defending slavery and/or Jim
Crow but would much prefer that no one else dredge such subjects up,
let alone suggest that they have any persistent effects.
Heather Hurlburt:
Trump's contradictions dominate and disrupt another G-7. Umair Irfan:
Ed Kilgore:
Today's Republicas use the filibuster just like the segregationists did.
Well, not exactly. Most segregationists could credibly claim that they
only used the filibuster on the one issue that mattered most to them,
whereas Republicans since 2008 use it for literally everything (aside
from their occasional "nuclear option" exceptions used to confirm
racist judges). The key thing to understand about the filibuster is
that it's designed to keep a political majority from doing things
they were elected to do. That was why segregationists embraced it,
and why Republicans have lately adopted it. It should be why Democrats
finally move to get rid of it -- unless, that is, they're not really
serious about changing things.
What if Obama had dropped Biden in 2012? Well, obviously, we wouldn't
have Biden as a serious candidate right now. But Obama's only alternatives
would have been to pick Hillary Clinton (who could have demanded the job
in 2008, but didn't object to Biden) or someone younger designated as his
successor. But Obama never gave any evidence of trying to build a legacy,
or even a party beyond what he needed for his own reëlection. I doubt he
ever thought Biden was a brilliant choice, but he was a safe one, and
hadn't done anything especially scandalous as VP, so caution argued
against making a switch. And if Democrats are so nostalgic for Obama
they're willing to pick Biden over such obvious clones as Booker and
Harris (or for that matter Castro), he's probably better off to remain
aloof.
When Trump talks about Jews, he's really talking to evangelical
Christians. Jen Kirby:
Paul Krugman:
Micole Lafond:
Trump was just being sarcastic about thinking he's the 'chosen one,'
okay? Sure, there are cases where one should admit that Trump was
just trying to crack a joke. We shouldn't take those too seriously,
or risk being charged as humorless scolds ourselves. (Trump's plead
to Russia to hack Hillary's emails is one such case, although the
evident fact that Russia went straight to work and hacked Hillary's
campaign's emails makes the clip awfully tempting.) But surely part
of the problem is that Trump isn't very funny, or more precisely:
he's unable to establish the human bond that clues us in to when
he's being flippant, as opposed to his array of other speech modes.
He brags a lot, alternately praises or disses others, and speaks
in vague and/or confusing terms about all matters of substance.
It's tempting to dismiss all of his utterances as lies, because
further taxonomy isn't worth the trouble (e.g.: is he serious or
ironic? is his untruth ignorance or deceit? are his lies deliberate
or inadvertent?). Jason Lange:
Factory woes grip swing states that flipped for Trump in 2016. Eric Levitz:
Trump is prioritizing the climate's destruction over his own reelection.
Helen Lewis:
How Britain came to accept a 'no-deal Brexit': "The debate over Britain
leaving the European Union has polarized the country and normalized what
was previously unthinkable." Ruth Margallt:
How the religious right transformed Israeli education. I submit
that it's impossible for an American to read this and not be reminded
of the rationalizations for Jim Crow laws, or to not detect the fond
desires of America's Christianist right. No wonder those are Israel's
staunchest supporters in the US. They are full of envy. (Needless to
say, so are the mad bombers; see the Ditz links above.)
Unlike the United States, which enshrined separation of church and state
in its Constitution, Israel is defined, in its basic law, as a "Jewish
and democratic state" -- a muddled term that breeds near-constant battle
over its meaning. Since its founding, Israel has had to rely on a series
of fragile compromises between its secular leadership and its religious
community. . . .
In the past decade, since Netanyahu came into power, Israeli society
has undergone a process so transformative that a new Hebrew word had to
be brought into use for it: "hadata," or "religionization." Manifestations
of hadata appear throughout civic life. On some public buses that pass
through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, women have been forced to sit in
the back, for reasons of "modesty." In the military, female soldiers are
officially given the same opportunities as males, but the presence of
just one religious male soldier in a unit can prevent female soldiers
from serving there. Such discrimination is often done in the name of
supposed inclusiveness: in order to accommodate the strictures of
observant Jews, certain adjustments have to be made. Yet those called
on to "adjust" are almost always women or members of the L.G.B.T.
community. Just this week, Israel's attorney general said that cities
could enforce gender segregation at public events, adding that "the
justification for the separation is greater if the events are attended
by a public that desires to be separated."
Daniel Markovits:
How life became an endless, terrible competition: "Meritocracy prizes
achievement above all else, making everyone -- even the rich -- miserable.
Maybe there's a way out." Author of the book, The Meritocracy Trap: How
America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class,
and Devours the Elite. Could be that this book has come too late,
appearing as it is after Chris Hayes: Twilight of the Elites: America
After Meritocracy, which argues that "meritocracy" is a sham argument
intent on justifying inequality in a rigged oligarchy, and Robert H Frank:
Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy, which
which shows that success hardly ever has anything to do with merit. Still,
ever since I read Hegel's "master-slave dialectic," I've enjoyed the
argument that slavery destroys the master as well as the slave (maybe
not as quickly, but as surely).
Today's meritocrats still claim to get ahead through talent and effort,
using means open to anyone. In practice, however, meritocracy now excludes
everyone outside of a narrow elite. Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale
collectively enroll more students from households in the top 1 percent of
the income distribution than from households in the bottom 60 percent.
Legacy preferences, nepotism, and outright fraud continue to give rich
applicants corrupt advantages.
Jena McGregor:
Group of top CEOs says maximizing shareholder profits no longer can be
the primary goal of corporations: A new statement from the Business
Roundtable says "business leaders hould commit to balancing the needs of
shareholders with customers, employees, suppliers and local communities."
I'll believe it when/if I see it (in particular, when I CEO salaries
dip back toward pre-1980 levels). But by this point, anyone should be
able to see that the exclusive fetish for short-term profit leads to
the looting and pillage of companies, shortchanging both customers and
employees, and any communities foolish enough to grant or lend them
money. PE Moskowitz:
Everything you think you know about 'free speech' is a lie: "How
far-right operatives manufactured the 'crisis' of free speech with
books, think tanks -- and billions of dollars." Ella Nilsen/Li Zhou:
Why Steve Bullock is refusing to help Democrats win a Senate majority.
Anna North:
Joseph O'Neill:
Real Americans: Review of two books: Jill Lepore: This America:
The Case for the Nation, and Suketu Mehta: This Land Is Our Land:
An Immigrant's Manifesto. Damian Paletta/Jeff Stein:
Trump's wild week of tax ideas continues with new promise if GOP sweeps
in 2020. Kelsey Piper:
The surprisingly great idea in Bernie Sanders's Green New Deal: electric
school buses. Andrew Prokop:
David Koch has died at 79. Here's how he changed American politics.
Not much temptation to cut the recently dead some slack in this case,
although I suspect the following writers are giving him too much credit.
It's always been Charles Koch who called the shots, both in business and
in politics, and David's role has always been to support his older brother.
I don't know what David's heirs are likely to do with all that money, but
I'd be real surprised if any of them (unlike the other two Koch brothers)
ever tried to buck Charles. I guess I have a certain grudging admiration
for Charles and what he's accomplished -- not that he ever would have
done so in a fairer and more just society. But David was just a bloke
who was given enormous riches and used them to fortify his ego while
making the world that much poorer.
For more on Koch (and the Kochs):
Emily Atkin:
How David Koch changed the world: Interview with Christopher Leonard,
author of Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate
Power in America. Here's Leonard's reply when asked "what does David's
death mean for everything he worked for on climate change?":
David Koch's tragic passing will have no impact whatsoever on the political
strategies of the Koch network or the operation of the corporation. Charles
Koch has always been the center of gravity for that, not David.
The machine will continue to go forward as it has, even without David
Koch at the forefront.
Jane Coaston:
"David Koch walked the walk": a libertarian on the Koch brother's
legacy: Interview with Nick Gillespie former editor-in-chief of
Reason magazine. Steve Fraser:
How the Koch brothers and other family capitalists are ruining America
(title courtesy of
The Nation). Sarah Jones:
David Koch's monstrous legacy: This is about right:
David Koch died before he could reap the full bounty of his works.
We will not be so lucky. His legacy is poisoned water and dirty air,
decimated unions, and Donald Trump. No amount of arts patronage can
purify that stain. It is likely not coincidental that the small
government the Kochs desire would leave artists and scientists at
the mercy of billionaires' largesse. It's as if he and his brother
wanted to pitch us all on their vision for the world: If we let
their companies gobble as much as they could, they would throw us
a scrap or two. Never enough to live on; just enough to hold us
until the next handout. They would allow us a glimpse of beauty,
a mirage of progress, so that we would readily accept a cage.
Malcolm Jones:
Billionaire David Koch, who reshaped American politics and paved the
way for Trump, has died. Brian Kahn:
David Koch escaped the climate hell he helped create. By the way,
Kahn also wrote:
Bernie Sanders' $16 trillion climate plan is nothing short of a
revolution. Jack Mirkinson:
David Koch, a bad man, has died. Charles Mudede:
David Koch's death reminds us that billionaires are the black holes of
society. Charles P Pierce:
The Koch money was a primary vector for the prion disease that's infected
the Republican Party: "David Koch's worst legacy, however, will be on
climate." Michael Tomasky:
The Koch network replaced the Republican Party. John Quiggin:
Want to reduce the power of the finance sector? Start by looking at
climate change. Adam K Raymond:
Sarah Sanders passes through the revolving door, joins Fox News.
Also: Matt Gertz:
Of course Fox News hired Sarah Huckabee Sanders. David Roberts:
The 6 things you most need to know about Trump's new climate plan:
"It could actually increase air pollution, and it's a pretty bad deal." Yair Rosenberg:
Trump keeps pushing anti-Semitic stereotypes. But he thinks he's praising
Jews. Well, he also thinks he's the "least racist person in America."
He's also a "stable genius." I'm struck by how matter-of-factly Trump's
statements are identified as a racist, and even more so as anti-Semitic.
Aaron Rupar:
Trump's new favorite poll inflates his approval rating by about 10 points.
The bizarre-even-by-Trump-standards past 72 hours, explained.
President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to release ISIS fighters
in Europe as a form of punishment for countries like Germany and France;
said he's strongly considering trying to change the Constitution by
executive order (it doesn't work that way); indicated he hasn't ruled
out trying to illegally serve more than two terms; rewrote history
during comments about Russia's expulsion from the G8 that framed the
situation in the most pro-Kremlin manner possible; and, despite five
draft deferments, joked about giving himself the Medal of Honor.
That was Wednesday. And that's an incomplete list of all the outlandish
stuff Trump said on that day alone. . . .
Some of it is laughable. Some of it -- the anti-Semitic tropes, for
example -- is not. All of it is evidence that more than two and a half
years in the role haven't helped Trump settle into his job. In fact, if
the past 72 hours are any indication, things in the White House are
less settled than ever.
Trump echoes NRA talking points, showing that "background checks" talk
was all a charade. Martin Selsoe Sorensen:
In Denmark, bewilderment and anger over Trump's canceled visit. Also:
Rick Noack/John Wagner/Felicia Sonmez:
Trump attacks Danish prime minister for her 'nasty' comments about his
interest in US purchase of Greenland. Amy Davidson Sorkin:
The failure to see what Jeffrey Epstein was doing: "Money offers one
explanation for why people seemed to ignore the obvious. But money, here,
is really shorthand for a range of ways to exert influence." Emily Stewart:
Jonathan Swan/Margaret Talev:
Trump suggested nuking hurricanes to stop them from hitting US. Also
Matt Stieb:
Trump wanted to nuke hurricanes to stop them from hitting US coast.
Slightly different subject, but Stieb also wrote:
In war on the press, Trump allies weaponize bad posts. Matt Taibbi:
Trump 2020: Be very afraid. Reporter goes to Cincinnati, immerses
himself in a Trump rally, loses his bearings and part of his mind.
Hopefully, he'll detox and recover -- if not fully, at least enough
to earn his keep. Cal Thomas:
Socialism never? and
The seduction of socialism. Thomas is worried about the youth of
America being seduced by the aura of socialism, an allure he aids by
spreading the net wide enough to include George McGovern (pictured
at the top of one article) and Che Guevara. He offers McGovern and
Walter Mondale as proof that Americans will never elect a socialist,
while complaining that "people who wear Che Guevara T-shirts are
ingorant of history and of the number of people Guevara killed
during and after the Cuban revolution." I guess I don't know that
number either, or how many people Bautista killed trying to put
the revolution down, but one figure I'm pretty certain of is that
life expectancy in Cuba is much higher now than it was before the
revolution -- despite all the hardships imposed by the US embargo
(you know, the one Obama ended, and Trump restored). Thomas thinks
"socialism has long needed pushback in America from those opposed
to it," as if red scares, smears and McCarthyite witch hunts never
occurred to anyone before. I mention this because I was skimming
through Bhaskar Sunkara's The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for
Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality when I noticed
Thomas' rant. After a rather silly introduction, well over half of
the book sketches out a rather comprehensive history of socialist
(well, mostly communist) political movements, including a frank
disclosure of purges, gulags, and starvation in Russia and China --
the sort of history Thomas wants us shocked with. I knew nearly
all of this, but by the time it was done I found myself wondering:
does anyone really need to know this history? Why not just start
from scratch with current conditions and trends and known and well
reasoned solutions, ditching the historical baggage (not least the
term "socialism")? I had a cousin ask me recently whether I'm a
Republican or a Democrat, so I said Socialist -- not normally how
I identify myself, but my political identity was forged in response
to the Vietnam War, and I've never forgiven the liberals/Democrats
for their authorship of that. My cousin immediately translated
Socialist to Democrat, much to my chagrin but for all practical
purposes she was right, as my socialism and their liberal democracy
are converging these days. On the other hand, the side that really
works hard to bury its history is the one Thomas and his ilk belong
to. Anya van Wagtendonk:
Matt Viser:
Evoking 1968 at town hall, Bidenasks: What would have happened if Obama
had been assassinated? Kenneth P Vogel/Jeremy W Peters:
Trump allies target journalists over coverage deemed hostile to White
House. John Wagner:
Trump quotes conspiracy theorist claiming Israelis 'love him like he is
the second coming of God'. David Wallace-Wells:
The political status quo is no match for climate change. Alan Weisman:
Burning down the house: Review of two recent books on climate change:
David Wallace Wells: The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming,
and Bill McKibben: Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself
Out?. Ken White:
Thirty-two short stories about death in prison: "These stories don't
mention Jeffrey Epstein, but they are about him." Matthew Yglesias:
Fed Chair Jerome Powell says he can't fix trade war's damage to the
economy.
Michael Bennet's plan to prevent and end recessions, explained.
Yglesias is right that there are a lot of good ideas in here. In
particular, this shows that someone has learned from the mistakes
Obama's crew made in crafting their 2009 "stimulus" bill. The fact
is that the main thing that kept 2008-09 from plunging us as deep
as the Great Depression was "automatic stabilizers" -- and thanks
to Republican austerity policies, they've been weakened since. One
idea that hasn't been discussed enough is:
Create a "fast track infrastructure fund" -- a special pool of money
that state and local governments could tap during a downturn if they
do the advance planning needed to get projects off the ground quickly.
Extended low interest rates, the Fed's main tool, should have led
to a major (and much needed) infrastructure project, but the misguided
expectation of a quick recovery and the insistence that public works
projects be "shovel-ready" for immediate impact kept them from being
included. A ready-to-go project list would be a big help in filling
demand gaps, as well as paving the way for wise investmentss. I'd go
even further: since every recession recovery since the late 1980s has
been week, it might be a good thing to plan on a constant long-term
level of stimulus. Even more certain that we need more and better
infrastructure.
America has a million fewer jobs than we thought.
Trump's failed plan to buy Greenland, explained. Minor update to
the previous week's explainer, the main change being the insertion of
"failed" into the title. Brandy Zadrozny/Ben Collins:
Trump, QAnon and the impending judgment day: Behind the Facebook-fueled
rise of The Epoch Times. Li Zhou:
Trump escalates the US-China trade war by announcing tariff hikes -- on
Twitter.
How bad would a recession be for Trump in 2020? 8 experts weigh in.
One thing no one mentions here is that a recession starting near
election time could be bad for Democratic chances of implementing
programs based on higher tax rates and more spending. The argument
would be that higher taxes would further shrink the economy, and
more spending would lead to unsustainable levels of debt. (Sure,
feel free to gag when your hear Republicans saying this, but what
matters is whether the Democrats' econ team caves in, which they
did in 2009.) It's an irony (or perhaps a tragedy) of history that
practically the only times when left-democratic parties gain power
are when they have to set their agenda aside to salvage failing
capitalist systems. As for election results, conventional wisdom
may not be infallible. In 2008, McCain had no effective answers
to the collapse, but the Tea Party turned out to be very effective
politically in 2010. What they offered was total crap, but enough
people bought into it to render Obama and the Democrats impotent,
which is a big part of why the long recovery didn't help Hillary
in 2016. A new recession will regenerate the Tea Party, and Trump
will jump right on that bandwagon.
Mitch McConnell is calling on Democrats to keep the filibuster. He
ignores just how much he's done to blow up Senate rules.
Ask a question, or send a comment.
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Weekend Roundup
Too late to write an introduction now. Maybe I'll add a postscript
later.
Some scattered links this week:
Zeeshan Aleem:
William Astore:
Militarization has become our national religion: "As attitudes toward
war grow dangerously worshipful in the US, quitting our endless wars
becomes all the more difficult." Zack Beauchamp:
Trump's transparent attempt to manipulate American Jews. Peter Beinart:
Jared Bernstein:
Trump's trade policy is a disaster. Here's what the next president should
do. I would stress that the US should switch sides and work against
patent rents rather than furthering them. This is part of what Bernstein
means by "more stakeholders," as rent-seeking corporate interests have
dominated American "trade" strategy. Jamelle Bouie:
America holds onto an undemocratic assumption from its founding: that some
people deserve more power than others. By the way, this piece is part
of something called
The 1619 Project, a set of articles occasioned by the 400th anniversary
of the introduction of slavery in what became the United States. Peter Branner:
The Anthropocene is a joke: "On geological timescales, human civilization
is an event, not an epoch." Well, yeah, but there's more to it than "inflates
our own importance by promising eternal geological life to our creations."
As an event, human activity over the last 10,000 (or for that matter 250)
years has had more impact on more of the earth than just about any "event"
in the geological record -- comparison to the K-T asteroid could go either
way. That it will last for millions of years like past eras and epochs may
be a conceit, but geologists 65 million years from now will find us easier
to find than K-T was for us. It may be a joke, but it's one we're very
much stuck inside of. Ronald Brownstein:
The limits of Trump's white identity politics. Alexia Fernández Campbell:
Damian Carrington:
World's nations gather to tackle wildlife extinction crisis.
Meanwhile, Trump's trying to accelerate it. Zak Cheney-Rice:
Steve King's views on rape are inseparable from his racism. Also:
Tara Goldshan:
Steve King says without rape and incest, there wouldn't "be any population
of the world left"; also Ryan Bort:
Steve King devised an insane formula to claim undocumented immigrants are
taking over America; and Tessa Stuart:
Steve King's view of rape and incest is not abnormal among GOP
lawmakers (I think they mean "unusual"). Jelani Cobb:
How the trail of American white supremacy led to El Paso Jason DeParle:
How Stephen Miller rode an anti-immigration wave to the White House:
"Behind Mr. Miller's singular grip on the Trump anti-immigrant agenda
are forces far bigger than his own hostility toward the foreign-born." Sadanand Dhume:
Modi's decision on Kashmir reveals a brittleness in India. Related:
Krishnadev Calamur:
Modi's Kashmir decision is the latest step in undoing Nehru's vision.
John Feffer:
Is America crazy? "Mass shootings, economic inequality, a racist
president: have we grown dangerously accustomed to a country gone mad?"
The GOP's sinister new nationalism: "The party's assault on "globalists"
and "cosmopolitans" pushes against internationalism when it's needed most."
Conor Friedersdorf:
Trump's hate makes the 'squad' stronger. Jim Golby/Peter Feaver:
It matters if Americans call Afghanistan a defeat. But it will take
years to sort out, not just to see what happens after US/NATO troops
make their long-procrastinated but inevitable departure, but also due
to how various interest groups choose to spin it. It should be easier
to agree that it was a mistake, but even now few Americans recognize
that the post-9/11 decision to overthrow the Taliban was profoundly
wrong. Emma Goldberg:
This is how Israeli democracy ends. Jeffrey Goldberg:
He's getting worse: "Trump is turning the American presidency into a
platform for the wholesale demonization of minorities."
I watched the video recording of the rally in Panama City shortly after
reading the El Paso killer's so-called manifesto. It is a document littered
with phrases and rhetorical devices injected into mainstream discourse by
the president and his supporters -- talk of a "Hispanic invasion,"
accusations that Democrats support "open borders," and the like. As Trump
faces the possibility that he will lose the presidency next year, he may
become more enraged, and more willing to deploy the rhetoric of violence
as a way to keep his followers properly motivated. The Panama City speech
was an important moment in Trump's ongoing effort to make the American
presidency a vehicle in the cause of marginalizing and frightening racial
minorities; the killings are a possible (and predictable) consequence of
such rhetoric.
Michelle Goldberg:
With Trump as president, the world is spiraling into chaos: Attacks
"Donald Trump's erratic, amoral and incompetent foreign policy." Actually,
I find his "amoral" a refreshing change from the sanctimonious posing of
other presidents, both Cold War and later. I think that his ability to
suspend moral judgments has made it possible to negotiate with Kim Jong-un
and the Taliban where others had been unwilling. Sure, he doesn't have
much to show for his efforts -- "erratic" and "incompetent" take a toll.
Also, On the other hand, he seems to have never met a dictator he doesn't
like, he still falls back on spouting moral cant when faced with leftist
governments like Cuba and Venezuela. Tara Golshan:
Bernie Sanders versus the "corporate media," explained. Adam Gopnik:
After El Paso and Dayton, three ways to think about mass shootings.
Everything that Donald Trump does as a demagogue involves, in classic
demagogic fashion, giving license to others to act on their impulses
without shame. And the fact that he, in a classic demagogic move, then
recoils from the consequences of his words does not make them less
empowering. Trump's rote condemnation of bigotry, during his brief
comments at the White House on Monday morning -- seemingly authored
by some other hand, and delivered with his usual insincerity, right
down to his naming the wrong Ohio city -- cannot permit him to escape
responsibility for what his more spontaneous words may have wrought.
But also:
Second distinction: there is a difference between those who fight to
make gun control impossible and those who use guns to kill people.
The majority of the first, much larger group often view weapons as
powerful symbols of personal autonomy. (The deaths of innocents are,
seemingly, a price necessarily paid for that idea of freedom.) . . .
People who oppose gun control at every turn often cite the sense of
control and power that weapons provide, regardless of how false that
sense may be. The vast majority of those people will never shoot anyone,
but they help put lethal weapons in the hands of those who will.
Rebecca Gordon:
How the US created the Central American immigration crisis. David A Graham:
Trump didn't make the storm, but he's making it worse: "The president
didn't put any of the globe's authoritarians in office, but he's encouraged
their worst instincts." He lists a few cases, with Bolsonaro in Brazil a
glaring omission (perhaps because he can't be sure the US had nothing to
do with installing him), or Putin in Russia or Johnson in the UK. Nor does
he mention cases where Trump has tried to destabilize governments with the
aim of replacing them with friendlier autocrats (Iran, Venezuela, Cuba) --
places where Trump clearly is intent on making storms.
Neither a Chinese crackdown in Hong Kong nor Modi's move in Kashmir nor
blocking Omar and Tlaib would have been unimaginable without Trump as
president, but each incident shows how Trump's indifference to democratic
norms, and his sometimes open antagonism toward them, shapes world leaders'
behavior. These recent examples are part of a much longer record. Trump
implicitly endorsed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's antidemocratic
power grab. He has lifted up Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as he
cracks down on dissent and centralizes power. He has ostentatiously refused
to blame Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of the journalist
(and U.S. resident) Jamal Khashoggi, citing the importance of American arms
sales to Saudi Arabia. Trump has declined to speak out against abuses and
outrageous statements like those of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.
He has coddled Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Polish President
Andrzej Duda as they crack down on dissent.
Obama warned Trump -- but he didn't listen: "The 44th president became
a devotee of unilateral presidential actions -- and then saw many moves
quickly reversed once he left office." Many of Trump's executive orders
should prove equally easy to undo, although reversing the effects may be
difficult or impossible (e.g., his pardons). Conn Hallinan:
Rivers of dust: The future of water and the Middle East. Dominic Holden:
Trump's latest proposal would let businesses discriminate based on LGBTQ
status, race, religion, and more. Umair Irfan:
Russian cities are still chocking under smoke from massive Siberian
wildfires. Satellite images show that the smoke has spread into
and beyond Alaska. Neil Irwin:
How the recession of 2020 could happen: "The freeze-up in business
confidence, caused in part by the trade war, could wind up affecting
consumer confidence." Sarah Jones:
The NRA is in trouble, but don't count it out yet. Peter Kafka:
The CBS and Viacom merger, explained. Actually, that's the link
I followed. Title here is different. Isabel Kershner/Sheryl Gay Slotberg/Peter Baker:
Israeli decision on Omar and Tlaib inflames politics in two countries.
Ed Kilgore:
Primary voters are focused on beating Trump, so the candidates are,
too. I appreciate policy wonkery as much as anyone (probably more
than most), but I've been saying all along that candidates need to
distinguish themselves by two things: prove themselves to be the most
effective critics of Trump and his Republican masters and toadies,
and show their commitment not to their personal campaigns but to
rebuilding the Democratic party top-to-bottom. The primaries should
simply be a contest over those two points. It would appear that one
candidate who's belatedly figured (half of) this out is Beto O'Rourke:
see Alexander Burns:
Beto O'Rourke's new approach to 2020: 'taking the fight to Donald
Trump'. Kilgore writes:
One of the many, many neurotic fears Democrats took away from
the 2016 election is that Trump hypnotized Hillary Clinton into focusing
on his unsavory character instead of promoting her own potentially popular
policies and agenda, which undermined her ability to mobilize her base
or to persuade swing voters.
I've often faulted both Obama and the Clintons for putting themselves
above the party and running highly personalized campaigns that left them
saddled with Republican majorities rendering them unable to deliver on
most of their campaign promises. To some extent, this suggested that the
"New Democrats" were ashamed of the party's past -- a concession which
hurt the party but allowed them some distance, which proved beneficial
to liberal donors (and ultimately made the candidates rich).
Unfortunately, Kilgore's buzzword is "electability," which is often
defined as whoever caters most flagrantly to the indecisive center.
That seems to be an even thinner slice of the electorate this year
than usual -- e.g., the latest Fox poll shows Biden to be running
just 2% better vs. Trump than Sanders is. That's not much gain for
sacrificing most of your platform.
Trump's state-by-state approval rating should scare the MAGA out of him.
Do conservative evangelicals like Trump not despite but for his hatefulness?
Well, duh! Of course, we're only talking about those evangelicals who
do like Trump. I've long noted a division among my evangelical brethren
between believers who want to help their fellows and who take delight
in damning those they dislike to hell. The latter have been easy prey
for Republican strategists, but they've long been disappointed by how
little the GOP has delivered. For them, Trump is the Hand of God, set
upon the Earth to vanquish the heathen. For more, see Emma Green:
Why some Christians 'love the meanest parts' of Trump: Interview
with Ben Howe. Green also wrote:
What conservative pastors didn't say after El Paso, and
Trump has enabled Israel's antidemocratic tendencies at every turn.
It's filibuster -- or bust -- for Democrats in the near future. Catherine Kim:
Jeffrey Epstein's death and America's jail suicide problem: "Suicide
is the leading cause of death in jails." Related: Jeanne Theoharis:
I tried to tell the world about Epstein's jail. No one wanted to listen.
Jen Kirby:
Carolyn Kormann:
The Trump administration finds a new target: endangered species. Paul Krugman:
From Trump boom to Trump gloom: "The smart money thinks Trumponomics
is a flop." Eric Levitz:
PR Lockhart:
Why police violence needs to be treated as a public health issue. German Lopez:
The Trump Justice Department's war on progressive prosecutors, explained.
Jane Mayer:
"Kochland" examines the Koch Brothers' early, crucial role in climate-change
denial. The author who reported extensively on the Kochs in
Dark Money: The hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the
Rise of the Radical Right, reviews Christopher Leonard's new book
on the Kochs: Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries
and Corporate Power in America.
Because the Kochs opposed the candidacy of Donald Trump, in 2016,
many have assumed that they are antagonistic to the Trump Administration.
To the contrary, Leonard writes, with the help of allies such as
Vice-President Mike Pence, "the politics that the Kochs stoked in
2010 became the policies that Trump enacted in 2017." Whether announcing
his intention to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, placing shills
from the oil and coal industries at the head of federal energy and
environmental departments, or slashing taxes on corporations and the
ultra-wealthy, Trump has delivered for the Kochs. "Kochland" quotes
Charles Koch telling his allied political donors, in 2018, "We've made
more progress in the last five years than I had in the previous fifty."
Syreeta McFadden:
What Toni Morrison knew about Trump: "In her 1993 Nobel Prize acceptance
speech, the late author cautioned against the distraction of the 'political
correctness' debate." Bill McKibben:
Don't burn trees to fight climate change -- let them grow. Timothy McLaughlin:
Hong Kong's protests have cemented its identity. Claire Cain Miller:
Why the US has long resisted universal child care. Doesn't really
explain why beyond listing some rationalizations for not having it, but
does point out the costs and loss of opportunity that lack entails. Abdulla Moaswes:
What's happening in Kashmir looks a lot like Israel's rule over
Palestine. Bob Moser:
Texas is bracing for a blue wave in 2020. Yes, Texas. Steven Mufson/Chris Mooney/Juliet Eilperin/John Muyskens:
2°C: Beyond the limit: "Extreme climate change has arrived in America.
Maps plot temperature changes from 1895 to 2018, showing that while nearly
everywhere has gotten hotter, the biggest changes are widely scattered --
these are places where we are already living in the long-feared (and rapidly
approaching 2°C future. Charles P Pierce:
Kansas stepped down as the craziest state there is. Tennessee stepped up.
Not that he doesn't still have things to say about Kansas . . . and
Mississippi. Adam K Raymond:
Truck drives through crowd of ICE protesters outside Rhode Island prison.
Brian Resnick:
The Endangered Species Act is incredibly popular and effective. Trump
is weakening it anyway. Frank Rich:
Trump is panicked that his trade war will start a recession. David Roberts:
Fracking may be a bigger climate problem than we thought.
The GOP's climate change dilemma: "It's Frank Luntz vs. Grover Norquist
in a battle for the GOP's future." Doesn't it always boil down to soundbites
and clichés? Luntz's polling shows that the GOP is losing the public debate
on climate change (plus he "had a come-to-Jesus moment on climate change
when he was forced to evacuate his Los Angeles home in the face of the
Skirball Fire in 2017"), so he's trying to fashion some wording in favor
of a carbon tax (the oil industry's proferred token solution -- not that
they're seriously in favor of it, but at least it's worse for coal).
Norquist, on the other hand, has kept the party hostage to his "no new
taxes" pledge, so he's not having any of it. Aaron Rupar:
Dominic Rushe:
Top US bosses earn 278 times more than their employees. Robert Scheer:
Democracy dies without alternative media: Interview with Peter
Richardson, who wrote
A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine
Changed America and
American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams. Eric Schlosser:
Why it's immigrants who pack your meat.
The immigration raid last week at seven poultry plants in rural Mississippi
was a perfect symbol of the Trump administration's racism, lies, hypocrisy,
and contempt for the poor. It was also a case study in how an industry with
a long history of defying the law has managed to shift the blame and
punishment onto workers.
Daniel Shapiro:
Israel's massive self-own: "Trump's racism and Netanyahu's dependency
have driven a bulldozer through the bipartisan consensus." Matt Shuham:
Richard Silverstein:
Trump is the only reason Netanyahu banned the US congresswomen. They'll
both regret it. Emily Stewart:
Cardi B's very on-brand love for Bernie Sanders, explained. Also,
with Tara Golshan:
Cardi B and Bernie Sanders's video, and her longstanding interest in
politics, explained. Andrew Sullivan:
The limits of my conservatism. More like vanities: like all "Never
Trump conservatives," Sullivan does a lot of whining, blaming the left
for his former comrades drinking the Trump Kool-Aid, and warning that
more good conservatives will turn into vile reactionaries if the left
keeps bullying them. More proof that conservatives always shoot left
even when they recognize that the real enemies are to their right. (On
the other hand, liberals have rarely had a problem with attacking the
left, or with seeking allies among reactionaries for that purpose.)
This gets pretty incoherent (e.g., "many leftists somehow believe that
sustained indoctrination will work in abolishing human nature, and
when it doesn't, because it can't, they demonize those who have failed
the various tests of PC purity as inherently wicked"). Scrolling down,
two further notes on "Are We Rome? Cont'd" and "Trump and Israel: A
Special Relationship" make better reasoned points. Matt Taibbi:
Emily Tamkin:
Ilhan Omar is already changing Washington: "Banned by Isrel and
demonized by Trump, she's been fighting business as usual in Congress'
hidebound foreign policy club." Glenn Thrush:
Obama and Biden's relationship looks rosy. It wasn't always that simple.
Alex Ward:
"A shameful, unprecedented move": Democrats react to Israel blocking Omar
and Tlaib's trip.
The US isn't the only major economy facing a possible recession: "Japan,
Germany, the UK, and Brazil are seeing signs of trouble too." Also mentioned:
South Korea, Italy, Hong Kong, Singapore, Argentina, Mexico, China.
What caused Russia's radioactive explosion last week? Possibly a
nuclear-powered missile. Ben Westhoff:
The brazen way a Chinese company pumped fentanyl ingredients into the
US: Still, reminds me of the Opium Wars, and how what goes around
comes around. Matthew Yglesias:
Trump's plan to buy Greenland, explained.
Pete Buttigieg's plan to use immigration to revitalize shrinking
communities, explained: "Place-based visas could help America's
declining cities." I can add that literally the only places in
Western Kansas that are not shriveling up are towns with a lot of
immigrants (e.g., Garden City and Dodge City). It's also true that
an exceptionally high percentage of doctors in rural Kansas are
foreign-born. On the other hand, immigrants would almost always
be better off moving to areas that are growing and generating new
opportunities. [PS: The map in the DeParle article above shows
significant increases in foreign-born population almost everywhere
in Western Kansas -- not just in areas that haven't lost population.
On the other hand, the map shows relatively little change (<25%)
in many large cities known for immigrants like Los Angeles, Phoenix,
El Paso, and Miami.]
The yield curve inversion panic, explained.
Trump's China tariff climbdown, explained.
Immigration makes America great. Leaving aside the silly matter of
what constitutes greatness, there is little wrong here, and it's useful
to be reminded of these facts periodically. America is fortunate that
there are still people who want to move here.
Ask a question, or send a comment.
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Weekend Roundup
Again, spent a little over two days collecting what seems to be a
bottomless series of links that show various aspects of the same basic
fact: that Donald Trump is like all other conservatives in the sense
that he believes some people (like himself) are innately superior to
other people, and that the political system should be rigged to favor
superior people over inferior ones, but even among conservatives, as
an individual he is exceptionally ignorant, abusive, vain, and corrupt.
Most weeks I take pains to remind you that what's wrong with him is
just a reflection of his political beliefs, and we need to focus on
the broader right-wing and not just on him. Still, this week he was
such a flaming asshole that it's hard to get beyond the horror and
disgust he reeks of.
Some scattered links this week:
Gary Abernathy:
Trump is not a racist. His voters aren't either. Nothing here
convinces me of the title, and I doubt that's even the author's intent.
Rather, he's saying that Trump and many of his voters don't think of
themselves as racists, but the more they're called racists, the more
likely they are to start identifying that way. I can see the logic
here, even relate it to a personal incident. I had a boss once who
complained that I had a "bad attitude" and, well, my attitude got
much more pronounced after that. Still, we have a fair amount of
empirical experience with calling Trump and Republicans racist, and
thus far their response is almost always to deny rather than embrace
it. Sure, they get upset and irritated, and some try to turn the
tables and paint themselves as victims of racists, but as long as
they're defensive they aren't that much of a threat. Moreover, the
real problem with racism isn't that some people identify as racists.
It's that lots more people practice racism, often without giving
it much thought. Those people need to know that they're going to
get called out on their racism when it's evident -- something that
even the President hasn't been immune to lately. For more on Trump's
history of being called racist, see Philip Rucker/Ashley Parker:
The brand label that stokes Trump's fury: 'Racist, racist, racist.' Josh Barro:
The Trump boycotts pose a grave danger to the Equinox and SoulCycle
businesses. Also: Alex Abad-Santos:
SoulCycle instructors are as mad about its investor's Trump fundraises
as its riders are; Lizzie Widdicombe:
Equinox members take a stand against Trump (sort of);
Ilana Novick:.
Billionaire Trump supporter Stephen Ross can't have it both ways. Jo Becker:
The global machine behind the rise of far-right nationalism. Julie Bosman/Kate Taylor/Tim Arango:
A common trait among mass killers: hatred toward women. Perrie Briskin:
Why we should let more foreign doctors practice in America. Jason Burke:
Norway mosque attack suspect 'inspired by Christchurch and El Paso
shootings'. Cristina Cabrera:
CBP chief forced to explain why ICE raids haven't targeted Trump's
companies. Alexia Fernández Campbell:
John Cassidy:
Jonathan Chait:
Zak Cheney-Rice:
The sleight of hand at the heart of Trump's appeal. Helena Cobban:
On "humanitarian intervention". William Cummings:
'Only in the Panhandle': Trump chuckles when audience member suggests
shooting migrants. Cora Currier:
Pushing out the border: How the US is waging a global war on migration.
Chas Danner/Margaret Hartmann:
Everything we know about Jeffrey Epstein's death: A news blip I would
barely have noticed until I needed somewhere to hang the extra links:
Brady Dennis/Andrew Freedman:
Here's how the hottest month in recorded history unfolded around the
world. EJ Dionne Jr:
On guns and white nationalism, one side is right and one is wrong. Kayla Epstein:
Climate change isn't an intangible future risk. It's here now, and it's
killing us. Steven Erlanger:
Are we headed for another expensive nuclear arms race? Could be.
Main problem with this "logic" is that the fix is already in: the
intent to spend more than a trillion dollars to stockpile new bombs,
regardless of whether anyone else shows up for the race. Helena Bottemiller Evich:
'It feels like something out of a bad sci-fi movie': "A top climate
scientist [Lewis Ziska] quit USDA, following others who say Trump has
politicized science." Mary Fitzgerald/Claire Provost:
The American dark money behind Europe's far right.
A recent openDemocracy investigation found that America's Christian
right spent at least $50 million of "dark money" to fund campaigns and
advocacy in Europe over the past decade. (By the measures of US political
financing, this may not seem like a vast sum, but by European standards
it's formidable. The total spend on the 2014 European elections, for
example, by all of Ireland's political parties combined was just $3 million.)
Ben Freeman/Nia Harris/Cassandra Stimpson:
The military-industrial jobs scam: $750 billion for the Pentagon,
a record haul, but the "stubborn truth" is that more money begets fewer
jobs. Also at TomDispatch:
Conor Friedersdorf:
Grace Gedye:
Can journalism be saved from the tech giants? There's a problem
here -- advertising revenues that previously supported newspapers and
magazines have been sucked up by Google and Facebook, undermining the
business viability of a free press -- but I don't see this "solution"
as helping much. The proposal is to allow content-providers to band
together to negotiate better terms with the tech giants. Seems to me
that the real problems are deeper than revenue distribution, starting
with the very model of depending on advertising to support journalism.
We're actually going through a period where the marginal distribution
cost of journalism has dropped to virtually nothing, which should make
it cost-effective to dramatically expand production, but we're stuck
with a business model (advertising + subscriptions) that drags both
consumers and content-producers into a death spiral. The obvious way
out of this is to free distribution while finding some other way to
pay for content creation. In the long run, that way needs to be public
funding, the trick being to come up with schemes that are responsive
to diverse consumers, that are professional, and that are fair and as
free as possible of corruption. That's a tough sell in a period when
virtually everything is politicized, but we've tried commercializing
everything, and have the present political mess to show for it. Shirin Ghaffary:
Trump's executive order on social media bias is a distraction: "Trump
is reportedly drafting an executive order on tech bias against conservatives,
even though there's no proof this bias exists." Tara Golshan:
Joe Biden accidentally said "poor kids" are just as bright as "white
kids": "The former vice president immediately corrected himself
to say "wealthy kids." Or, as Jim Newell put it:
In Iowa, Joe Biden's mouth keeps getting away from his brain; also
Matt Stieb:
Joe Biden gaffes his way through Iowa. Constance Grady:
The Dayton, Ohio, shooter reportedly kept a "rape list" of potential
victims. Joan E Greve:
New York Times changes front-page Trump headline after backlash.
On Trump's Monday teleprompted speech, original headline read "Trump
urges unity vs. racism." Later changed to "Assailing hate but not
guns." Trump objected to the change: Allyson Chiu:
Trump lashes out after New York Times amends 'bad' headline about
his response to mass shootings. Both articles have scans of
both cover pages, and various tweets. As Jamil Smith put it: "This
is the 'Dewey Defeats Truman' of racism." For more: Aaron Blake:
Why the New York Times's Trump headline was so bad. Jeff Halper:
The meaning of Israel's massive housing demolitions in East Jerusalem.
Mehdi Hasan:
These 7 prominent conservatives have nothing i common with white supremacists,
nothing at all: What we used to call "satire." FYI: Ben Shapiro,
Tucker Carlson, Donald J Trump, Stephen Miller, Laura Ingraham, Candace
Owens, John Cornyn. Fred Kaplan:
Trump's new arms race makes the Cold War era look rational and restrained.
"The secretary of defense is keen to test a type of missile that no one
has requested for more than 30 years, without knowing where it would be
stationed or why it's particularly needed." Ed Kilgore:
Is beating Trump the best Democrats can hope to achieve in 2020?:
I don't mind some prudent skepticism, but this guy is trying hard to
be a major killjoy. People, especially Democrats, need to understand
that the difference between even the minimal Democratic agenda and
Trump/Republicans is something that matters a lot, and they have to
get serious about implementing that agenda. That means: first of all
they have to win big, they have to make aggressive use of the power
they gain, and they have to make the Republicans the shadow government
of the super-rich own their failures, so they can build and run again
and again until they succeed. The Democratic candidate should be the
one who makes the strongest case for doing all that, as opposed to
someone who's just marginally better than Trump.
Nadler makes it clear House is already in 'impeachment proceedings'.
Related: Quinta Jurecic:
Impeachment, but without the moral clarity. Jen Kirby:
The Trump administration adds even more sanctions to try to push out
Venezuela's Maduro. Ken Klippenstein:
Leaked FBI documents reveal Bureau's priorities under Trump. Josh Kovensky:
In new interview, Bill Barr sees Dirty Harry, Death Wish as justice done
right. Paul Krugman:
China tries to teach Trump economics: "If you want to understand the
developing trade war with China, the first thing you need to realize is
that nothing Donald Trump is doing makes sense."
Tariff tantrums and recession risks: "If the bond market is any
indication, Donald Trump's escalating belligerence on trade is creating
seriously increased risks of recession."
Trump's China shock.
Trump, tax cuts and terrorism: "Why do Republicans enable right-wing
extremism?" I would say it's because they've found a successful political
strategy in provoking strong, irrational responses from their base, and
they have few if any scruples about anyone acting on those impulses. Race
is just one of those nerve points, but it's been successfully exploited
by Nixon (his "Southern strategy"), Reagan ("welfare queens"), Bush I
("Willie Horton"), and no one's hit it harder than Trump. It's not the
only one, but when you play it and follow with guns and war and general
contempt for law and civility, it's not hard to figure out what happens
next.
But racism isn't what drives the Republican establishment, and my guess
is that a majority of the party's elected officials find it a little bit
repugnant -- just not repugnant enough to induce them to repudiate its
political exploitation. And their exploitation of racism has led them
inexorably to where they are today: de facto enablers of a wave of white
supremacist terrorism.
Michael Kruse:
How San Francisco's wealthiest families launched Kamala Harris. Jason Lemon:
Nearly all of Mexico's gun violence is committed with illegal firearms
coming from US, officials say. Helen Lewis:
To learn about the far right, start with the 'manosphere': "The sexist
world has become a recruiting ground for potential mass shooters." Jonathan Lis:
The only way to stop the catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit? Revoke article
50. PR Lockhart:
Ferguson changed how America talks about police violence. 5 years later,
not much else has changed. German Lopez:
Sebastian Mallaby:
How economists' faith in markets broke America: Review of Nicholas
Lemann's Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of
the American Dream, and Binyamin Appelbaum's The Economist's
Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society.
Dylan Matthews:
Stop blaming mental illness for mass shootings: "It's about the
guns." Dana Milbank:
A worried nation wonders: How can we keep Wayne LaPierre safe?
The longtime head of the National Rifle Association, it turns out, is
worried sick about his personal safety in this gun culture.
After the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, he and his wife bravely waited
out the uproar on the
pink-sand beaches of the Bahamas, part of $542,000 in private jet
trips and personal items the NRA bought for him. And now, thanks to some
delightful reporting by my Post colleagues Carol D. Leonnig and Beth
Reinhard, we know that last year's Parkland massacre left LaPierre so
fearful for his personal safety that he tried to have the NRA buy him
a $6 million French-chateau-style mansion with nine bathrooms in a gated
Dallas-area golf course community.
He told associates he was worried about his safety and thought his
Virginia home was too easy for potential attackers to find.
Ultimately, the financially stressed NRA didn't buy LaPierre the
mansion. That's too bad, because, as the saying goes: "The only thing
that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a French chateau."
Rani Molla:
Trump says Google is biased against conservatives. Here's how search
actually works. One thing that remains unmentionable here is whether
or to what extent advertisers influence Google search results. That's
certainly my impression as a long-time user. Robert Myers:
The 'warspeak' permeating everyday language puts us all in the
trenches. John Nichols:
Beto O'Rourke is doing what Donald Trump is simply incapable of:
"The Texan is demonstrating real leadership in the wake of a horrific
mass shooting by unequivocally condemning racism." I'm less impressed.
I've seen his expletive-filled clip responding to "What can Donald
Trump do?" several times, and while he's fumbling on, the only answer
I can think of is "resign." Ella Nilsen:
Trump's sudden push for a possibly doomed background check bill,
explained. Helaine Olen:
Trump's speech was like a hostage video. Mark Osborne:
Florida white supremacist arrested for threatening shooting at Walmart,
police say. Also: Tom Winter/Dennis Romero:
FBI arrests Las Vegas man who allegedly wanted to shoot Jews, LGBTQ bar
patrons. Keith Payne:
The truth about anti-white discrimination: "Many white Americans feel
that discrimination against whites is on the rise. Experiments suggests
otherwise." By the way, I took a semester of psych during my brief tenure
in high school, and learned a few things there. One key concept was
projection: the tendency people have to impute their own beliefs and
feelings to other people. We see projection everywhere. Especially we
see white racists assuming that non-whites are racist against them. In
50 years since then, I've seen non-whites who were wary and cautious
and sometimes even bitter, but I've never seen any say or do the sort
of things I've seen white racists do hundreds of times. Jeremy W Peters/Michael M Brynbaum/Keith Collins/Rich Harris/Rumsey Taylor:
How the El Paso killer echoed the incendiary words of conservative media
stars. Daniel Politi:
Elderly Washington couple dies in murder-suicide blamed on worries over
medical bills: Another shooting guns weren't responsible for. Tom Porter:
FBI agents are reluctant to pursue white nationalist extremists because
they don't want to target Trump's base, former counterterrorism official
says. Andrew Prokop:
Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok are both suing the Justice Department:
"The two former FBI officials filed separate lawsuits this week, alleging
improper political retaliation."
The polls are in, and here's who won the second Democratic debate:
The most interesting of the polls was one by
HuffPost/YouGov, which offered separate percentages for whether the
debate performance improved or worsened opinion on the candidate. The
difference produce a net change: Warren (+44), Buttigieg (+24), Booker
(+20), Castro (+17), Yang (+13), Sanders (+12), Klobuchar (+8), Gillibrand
(+7), Inslee (+4), Gabbard (+3), Biden (+2), Bennet and O'Rourke (-4),
Harris (-5), Bullock and Williamson (-6), de Blasio (-14), Hickenlooper
(-15), Ryan (-17), Delaney (-30). Compare this to last week's pundit
rankings, which accorded wins to Biden (for not doing as poorly as last
time) and Delaney (for talking a lot even though no one much liked what
he had to say).
Democrats' confusing debate over an "impeachment inquiry," explained.
Jennifer Rubin:
Democratic candidates grasp the moral seriousness of this moment. Aaron Rupar:
Sigal Samuel:
Rosa Schwartzburg:
The 'white replacement theory' motivates alt-right killers the world
over. Somini Sengupta/Welyl Cal:
A quarter of humanity faces looming water crises. This strikes me
as an even more acute threat to humankind than climate change, not that
the latter doesn't have something to do with it. Also: Christopher
Flavelle:
Climate change threatens the world's food supply, United Nations warns.
Also by Sengupta:
Earth's food supply is under threat. These fixes would go a long way.
Matt Shuham:
'Ruthless': How it feels when the Trump administration guts your agency.
Richard Silverstein:
Expanding fight against Iran, Israel opens new military front in Iraq.
Ali H Soufan:
I spent 25 years fighting jihadis. White supremacists aren't so different.
Emily Stewart:
David Swanson:
Long after Hiroshima: Last week marked 74 years since the people
charged with "thinking about the unthinkable" cavalierly went ahead
and just did it. Maybe the bigger number next year will motivate some
attention, like the 75th anniversary of D-Day (although it's harder
to spin Hiroshima as a day to celebrate American chauvinism). Maybe
the scuttling of arms control treaties and the trillion dollar scam
to "renovate" America's nuclear bomb arsenal will bring out some
protest. Matt Taibbi:
Who's afraid of Tulsi Gabbard?. Giacomo Tognini:
Here are the Democratic presidential candidates with the most donations
from billionaires: Buttigieg (23), Booker (18), Harris (17), Bennet
(15), Biden (13), Hickenlooper (11), O'Rourke (9), Klobuchar (8), Inslee
(5), Gillibrand (4), Delaney (3). Warren has 2, tied with Bullock. Sanders
has 0 (tied with Castro, De Blasio, and Ryan). One each for Gabbard, Yang,
and Williamson. Not listed is Tom Steyer, who like Donald Trump is his
own billionaire. (See: Jessica Piper:
Billionaire Tom Steyer spends more than $7 million on ads in first
month.) Peter Wade:
Alex Ward:
Richard Wolffe:
Trump could renounce white nationalism -- but he can't pretend he
cares. Personally, I couldn't care less whether "a president
can offer comfort at times like these." I think it's stupid and
wasteful for the president to scurry around to disaster zones --
in fact, that it causes more problems than it solves. Of course,
it's even worse with a guy who's stupid, arrogant, and incapable
of empathy. Embarrassing is the word -- one that applies to Trump
literally every day. Matthew Yglesias:
Trump's Twitter rant about the Federal Reserve and the dollar,
explained.
Billionaire Trump donor explains he's in it for the tax cuts, not the
racism.
Trump's designation of China as a currency manipulator, explained.
As is typically the case with Trump administration moves, it's not
entirely clear what the administration is trying to accomplish here,
in part because the administration doesn't do briefings in a well-organized
way and in part because various players in the administration are often
not on the same page. . . . And in this particular case, it's extremely
unlikely the IMF will do anything, because China is not, in fact,
manipulating its currency in any traditional sense. It's essentially a
policy of the US government stamping its feet while it figures out what
it wants to do next.
Joe Biden's rivals should attack him with some "Republican talking
points": Obviously, not the one about Biden being too far to the
left, but: "Joe Biden is old"; "Joe Biden is very establishment";
"the Biden family has made money off of politics."
Video games don't cause violent crime: "Research indicates that,
if anything, it's the opposite." Stephen Zunes:
Biden is doubling down on Iraq War lies.
Not news, but let me note in passing a few more historical links on
intellectuals who had some influence on me:
Ask a question, or send a comment.
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Weekend Roundup
Starting this early (Friday), hoping to avoid the last-minute crunch.
Not really news, but CNN's Democratic presidential debates got a lot of
attention from the punditocracy this week. As usual, I didn't watch in
real time (although my wife did, so I overheard some), but caught the
"highlights" later (among the comics, Colbert was most informative).
Let's group the links here, rather than clutter up the main section:
David Axelrod:
Elizabeth Warren is running a brilliant campaign. Zack Beauchamp:
4 winners and 3 losers from the second night of the July Democratic
debates: With German Lopez, Dylan Matthews, and Andrew Prokop.
Winners: Joe Biden ("Well, this one's complicated"); Elizabeth Warren
and Bernie Sanders ("weren't there, but they loomed large anyway");
Cory Booker; single-payer activists. Losers: Kamala Harris; CNN,
again; the DNC.
3 winners and 4 losers from the first night of the July Democratic
debates: With German Lopez, PR Lockhart, Dylan Matthews, and
Ella Nilsen. Winners: Elizabeth Warren; John Delaney; the Republican
Party ("several of the major issues were framed by the moderators in
terms Republicans would love"). Losers: the policy needs of black
voters; CNN; Beto O'Rourke.
Marianne Williamson isn't funny. She's scary. Picks on her views
on depression and illness, which are not exactly tangential to either
her career as a "self-help guru" or her political aspirations. As for
funny, my take so far (and I know or care nothing about her career)
is that she does a nice job of filling a niche in the Democratic Party
that no one even imagined before: a soft focus on morals and emotions,
like Ben Carson among Republicans. That role is unimagined because
most Democrats try hard to be rational and grounded in reality, but
sometimes she seems to be onto something at a primal, instinctive
leve. Of course, much of what she says is, as Beauchamp puts it,
"extremely vague and hard to parse, but managed to at times banal
and at other times deeply weird." Ryan Bort:
Jake Tapper and CNN totally botched the health care discussion. Alexia Fernández Campbell:
What Biden doesn't get about immigration.
Democrats aren't going to win working-class voters this way, says labor
union president: "Democrats have to speak about how they are going
to take the shitty jobs that exist in this economy and make them good
jobs." Isn't that usually just a matter of making them pay better?
When Robert Reich was auditioning to become Clinton's Secretary of
Labor, he came up with the rationalization that it didn't matter if
American factories shut down, because unemployed workers could always
be retrained to become high-paid "symbol manipulators." Ever since
then, the only answer neoliberal Democrats had to declining working
wages and standards was to offer more education (and debt). But no
matter how much money we plow into education (and I don't doubt that
we should spend a lot more than we've been doing), we'll still have
shitty jobs we'll need people to do. But we can decide whether we
respect and value the people who do those jobs enough to accord them
a decent wage and fair and equal rights -- a status we used to call
"middle class." Interview with Mary Kay Henry. John Cassidy:
Tim Dickinson:
Can Joe Biden sell 'no we can't'? "The triumph of the progressives
on night one of the Detroit debates portends trouble for the former
vice president." FiveThirtyEight:
John F Harris:
Democrats are veering left. It might just work. Cites Stanley
Greenberg, who wrote a book about how Reagan "captured many working
class Democrats who believed their party's liberalism was out of step
with their lives. But now he "believes that the urgency voters feel
for shaking up the status quo means there's less risk for candidates
and the party in going too far than in not going far enough." For a
contrary point, Harris cites Rahm Emanuel, whose fear and loathing
of the left is even greater than his readiness to sell out Democratic
voters. Greenberg has a book coming out in September: R.I.P. G.O.P.:
How the New America is Dooming the Republicans. Umair Irfan:
2020 Democrats are getting more confrontational with the fossil fuel
industry. Sarah Jones:
John Judis:
The Democrats need to get their act together. Ed Kilgore:
Gravel '20 is done.
Why you can't ignore Marianne Williamson: "Mock her all you want, but
Marianne Williamson speaks to people horrified by Trump who aren't satisfied
with policy papers."
Trump outperformed his popularity in 2016. That might not happen in 2020.
As I mentioned somewhere else here, many voters saw Trump as a solution
to a very tangible problem in Hilary Clinton. Maybe they hated whatever
it was they thought she stood for (and there was grounds for that from
the right and also from the left), or maybe they just didn't want to
subject themselves to four years of pompous clichés, inane backbiting,
and petty pseudo-scandals blown way out of proportion. Maybe they even
recognized the unfairness of the vitriol, but still, the only way to
make it go away was to vote her down. But since 2016, he's dominated
public consciousness, becoming the source of our public embarrassment
to a much grosser extent than she ever was or could be. There will, of
course, be a block of people that loves him no matter what, and another
that despises him, but in between there's a slice that can break one
way or another. If in 2016 they broke for Trump because they wanted
to flip off the status quo and avoid its scandals, those exact same
rationales suggest they'll break against him in 2020. That's probably
not enough to seal his fate. I can imagine at least one other slice
breaking the opposite way: people who support the status quo, even
as it's been warped by Trump's malign rule. Moreover, I expect Trump
will have a lot more money, and a much more professional campaign
behind him this time, in lockstep with a pretty unified Republican
Party. But still, the tables have turned on those last-minute impulse
voters. Jen Kirby:
Pete Buttigieg says he'd withdraw troops from Afghanistan in his first
year. Eric Levitz:
Here's who won (and lost) the second Democratic debate, night two:
In rank order: Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tulsi Gabbard,
Andrew Yang, Julian Castro, Michael Bennet, Jay Inslee, Bill de Blasio,
Kamala Harris.
Here's who won (and lost) the second Democratic debate, night one:
In rank order: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Marianne Williamson,
Pete Buttigieg, Steve Bullock, Amy Klobuchar, John Delaney, Tim Ryan,
Beto O'Rourke, John Hickenlooper.
What Andrew Yang gets wrong (and right) about robots. German Lopez:
Robert Mackey:
Josh Marshall:
Obama looms over the primary in invisible ways. Dylan Matthews:
The presidential debates wasted too much time talking about stuff only
Congress can do: "The president has a lot of power -- so why wouldn't
the candidates talk about it?" Ella Nilsen:
Jay Inslee points to Democrats' real problem: Mitch McConnell:
"Even if the Democrats win the Senate, the filibuster stands in the
way of their big plans." Anna North:
Joe Biden's 1981 views on child care haven't aged well. Gillibrand called
him out on it. Charles P Pierce:
Andrew Prokop:
Max Read:
Is Andrew Yang the doomer candidate? Frank Rich:
The Democratic debates were built to fail. Rolling Stone:
Winners and losers on night 2 of the second Democratic debates.
Winners: Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jay Inslee, Andrew Yang.
Losers: Michael Bennet, Bill de Blasio, Tulsi Gabbard. Treading water:
Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro.
Winners and losers on night 1 of the second Democratic debates:
Winners: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Marianne Williamson ("go
ahead, laugh"), Steve Bullock. Losers: John Delaney, Hickenlooper,
Beto O'Rourke, Amy Klobuchar. Treading water: Pete Buttigieg, Tim
Ryan. Aaron Rupar:
"Your question is a Republican talking point": CNN frames debate questions
around right-wing concerns: "Republicans weren't onstage during the
Democratic debate -- but were living rent-free inside moderators' heads."
Dylan Scott:
The messy health care discussion at the second Democratic debate,
explained. Emily Stewart:
Benjamin Wallace-Wells:
At the Democratic debate, Joe Biden defends the party's past. Alex Ward:
The 2 veterans on the Democratic debate stage made a big promise about
Afghanistan: That would be Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Buttigieg, who
want out. Lawrence S Wittner:
The Democratic debates need more questions about nuclear war. Matthew Yglesias:
The weird controversy over Democrats "criticizing Obama" at this week's
debate, explained.
Democrats are skipping the most important health care debate: "should
this even be the priority?"
Personally, I think the Medicare-for-all people are 100 percent correct.
The current American health care system is bad and wasteful, and replacing
it with something like the Canadian system would be a good idea. But the
policy world is full of good ideas, and not every good idea can be your
top priority. Prioritizing health reform has not, in the past, been an
extraordinarily successful strategy for new presidents.
I agree with the first line here, and would add that any presidential
candidate who disagrees is not just wrong (in all their arguments and
rationalizations) but a coward to boot. On the other hand, if I was in
charge and didn't have the votes, I'd write up a good single-payer bill
and hold it in reserve, while trying to pass a bunch of less ambitious
reforms to the ACA framework. If the reforms are thwarted, either by
politics or by the courts, you can always fall back on the single-payer
bill, and that case would become more compelling. Meanwhile, there is
a lot that can be done, and not just by throwing more money at the
blood-sucking insurance companies. The long-term answer is not just
single-payer (cutting the for-profit insurance companies out of the
system) but reducing the profit motive in the provider system. (You'll
never wring all the profit-seeking out of the system, but non-profit
hospitals were a lot more cost-effective than HCA is.) One thing that
could be done would be to build up government-supported non-profits
that could compete against the profit-seeking companies. (The "public
option" under ACA is one example, but non-profit options wouldn't have
to be directly under government bureaucracy.) One might, for instance,
change bankruptcy law to allow failed hospitals and service providers
to be reorganized with public support and employee control. Another
idea I've been kicking around would be to offer a bare-bones universal
insurance (e.g., through the Medicare provider network) that would
cover an initially small set of emergencies and illnesses. This would
make private insurance supplemental (rather than primary), reducing
its cost while allowing it to fit more customized needs. (You can see
how this works with Medicare supplemental plans. Medicare at present
does most of the heavy lifting, but still leaves a lot of deductible
nonsense that makes supplemental insurance attractive. That could
change if Medicare-for-All improved a lot, but that's going to be a
hard battle to fight -- especially all at once.)
3 winners and 4 losers from the Democrats' two-night debate extravaganza:
Winners: Cory Booker (Yglesias thinks "neoliberal shill" is a compliment);
Joe Biden; the Great Winnowing. Losers: knowing what powers the president
has; comprehension of what is in these health care plans; all these housing
plans; policy criticism of Donald Trump.
America deserves a debate between Joe Biden and his main progressive
critics: "Elizabeth Warren versus John Delaney is not the drama we've
been craving."
Elizabeth Warren's vision for changing America's trade policy, explained.
Lots of non-campaign news this week, but Donald Trump's flagrant
racism caught the most attention, climaxing with two mass shootings
which, despite pro forma denials, appear as the proof in the pudding.
Checked my Facebook feed shortly before filing this, and was rather
surprised to find as many/maybe more pro-gun memes than anti, not
that the former make any sense. One, for instance, links to a piece
titled "Every Mass Shooting Shares 1 Thing in Common, NOT Guns": I
didn't follow, but the picture shows a pile of pills. I doubt that,
but even if lots of mass shooters popped pills, by definition every
single one used a gun. All of those were forwarded by acknowledged
friends. (Of course, I do also have anti-gun friends. They may even
be in the majority, but lose out in this comparison because they tend
to post their own thoughts instead of just propagating someone else's
propaganda.)
Some links on this and other stories:
Tim Alberta:
'Mother is not going to like this': The 48 hours that almost brought down
Trump: "The exclusive story of how Trump survived the Access Hollywood
tape." An excerpt from the book, American Carnage: On the Front Lines
of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump. Ends
with this memorable debate exchange:
Donald Trump: If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to
get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. Because there
have never been so many lies, so much deception.
Hilary Clinton: Everything he just said was absolutely false. It's
just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is
not in charge of the law in our country.
Donald Trump: Because you'd be in jail.
Trump later claimed "that debate won me the election." It was a lucky
punch, but it landed because more people wanted to see her fail than so
feared Trump they were willing to live with her constantly in their minds
for the next four (or eight) years. It was not a moment American voters
would be proud of. AP:
Police: Rookie Texas officer shoots at dog, kills woman. David Atkins:
Andrew J Bacevich:
Dean Baker:
Peter Beinart:
The real reason so many Republicans love Israel? Their own white supremacy.
Related: Jonathan Ofir:
Racism is at the center of Israeli settler-colonialist venture: a
review of Ronit Lentin's book, Traces of Racial Exception: Racializing
Israeli Settler Colonialism. Ofir also wrote this update on changing
alignments in Israeli politics:
Israeli pols merge parties, and the right-wing seems stronger than
ever. Phyllis Bennis:
What the House anti-BDS resolution reveals about the Palestine solidarity
movement. Related: Omar Barghouti:
Why Americans should support BDS. Jared Bernstein:
We can't fund the progressive agenda by taxing the 1% alone: "The
tricky politics of taxing the 1%, the middle class, and everyone in
between." Basic point here is well taken. To do everything we'd like
to see the government do requires that tax revenues be increased.
While current tax rates leave a lot of leeway for increasing taxes
on the very rich, that's not necessarily enough -- especially moving
forward, especially if we do other things to diminish inequality.
It may also be easier to increase a range of taxes by a small amount
than it would be to increase one tax (income) by a lot. For instance,
the easiest way to fund the sort of basic health insurance I outline
elsewhere here would be to tack it onto the payroll tax that already
funds Medicare, even though that's the most regressive tax we use
these days. It would also be good to implement a small VAT (basically,
a national sales tax), which is also regressive but could be scaled
up to raise significant revenue as needed. One fact worth recalling
is that not every tax has to be progressive -- you can compensate
with more sharply progressive tax rates on incomes and estates,
which is all you really need to bring the 1% back into mainstream
America. Democrats need to be wary of falling for Republican talking
points, which is what they're doing when they deny any tax increases
on the middle class. They need to convince people that the returns
on their taxes will be worthwhile -- which is basically what FDR did
when he designed the payroll tax to fund Social Security. Max Blumenthal:
Behind the guise of adversarial journalism, CNN's Jake Tapper is taking
America to war. Barbara Boland:
Unqualified UN Ambassador is the perfect weak link: "Don't be
surprised if Kelly Craft's lack of experience is exactly what Bolton
and Pompeo wanted for their war cabinet." Bryce Covert:
Right-wing troika: "The Republican Party's 50-state strategy."
Review of Alexander Hertel-Fernandez's book, State Capture: How
Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped
the American States -- and the Nation. Chas Danner:
Jesse Eisinger:
How Trump's political appointees overruled tougher settlements with big
banks. Henry Farrell:
Don't ask how to pay for climate change. Ask who. Tara Golshan:
Rep. Will Hurd's retirement reflects GOP's biggest electoral struggle
in the House: Trump. Benjamin Hart:
Trump seems thrilled that someone broke into Elijah Cummings's house.
Sheldon Himelfarb:
The next election will require a new kind of vigilance.
The 2020 race has now begun in earnest, with the Democrats having their
first primary debates last month [June]. Lurking in the background is
something that once seemed inconceivable in modern-day America: the
threat of election-related violence.
As the Southern Poverty Law Center said earlier this year in an annual
report, there has been a rise in domestic terrorism, hate crimes, and
street violence. It's no surprise, then, that on June 26, Reddit -- the
fifth-most trafficked website in the U.S. -- announced it was "quarantining"
a popular message board with 750,000 followers because of active discussions
involving violence against political figures. . . .
Perhaps the biggest harbinger of election violence is the proliferation
of disinformation, rumors, and hate speech. All of which are spreading
further and with greater velocity than at arguably any other moment in
American history.
Rachel Hodes:
What 'abolish ICE' really means: "It's about asking whether we need
an immigration system that terrorizes the least dangerous people in this
country." Related: Emily Ryo:
How ICE enforcement has changed under the Trump administration. Eric Holthaus:
Greenland is melting away before our eyes. Umair Irfan:
- b>Ellen Knickmeyer/Brady McCombs:
Opponent of nation's public lands is picked to oversee them.
Markos Kounalakis:
Donald Trump's dangerous empathy deficit. Paul Krugman:
Trump's trade quagmire (wonkish).
Why was Trumponomics a flop? "Neither tax cuts nor tariffs are
working."
But why has Trumponomics failed to deliver much besides trillion-dollar
budget deficits? The answer is that both the tax cuts and the trade war
were based on false views about how the world works.
Republican faith in the magic of tax cuts -- and, correspondingly,
belief that tax increases will doom the economy -- is the ultimate policy
zombie, a view that should have been killed by evidence decades ago but
keeps shambling along, eating G.O.P. brains.
The record is actually awesomely consistent. Bill Clinton's tax hike
didn't cause a depression, George W. Bush's tax cuts didn't deliver a
boom, Jerry Brown's California tax increase wasn't "economic suicide,"
Sam Brownback's Kansas tax-cut "experiment" (his term) was a failure.
A racist stuck in the past: "In Trump's mind, it's still 1989."
Krugman picked 1989 because "that was the year he demanded bringing
back the death penalty in response to the case of the Central Park
Five," but for most of us that was just one year in a long continuum
of viciousness (racist and otherwise). Bess Levin:
As deficit explodes, GOP demands emergency tax cut for the rich:
"Twenty senators have urged the Treasury to give the wealthy another
tax cut via executive order." Gideon Levy:
What Israel's demolition of 70 Palestinian homes was really about. Dahlia Lithwick:
It's never "too soon" to talk about preventing mass shootings. It's
always too late. Martin Longman:
How to campaign when nothing is possible. I suppose if I was a
do-nothing "moderate" I'd take some comfort from this, realizing
that even such a committed and principled radical as Bernie Sanders
would preserve more status quo than another four years of Trump.
If the Republicans maintain their majority in the Senate, the new Democratic
president will not be enacting one iota of their top shelf legislative
agenda. There will be nothing major on health care or college loans or
immigration or climate change. Even judges will be only confirmed in the
most belated and begrudging manner, and only if they've never said anything
on the record that conservatives find irritating. All legislative progress
that can be made will come as the result of leverage over must-pass bills,
and the leverage will only be truly significant so long as the Democrats
retain control of the House of Representatives. But navigating government
shutdowns and threats of national default in order to attach a few things
to appropriations bills is not going to turn many of a candidate's
campaign promises into reality. . . .
Yet, even if the Democrats win the trifecta and eliminate the legislative
filibuster, they'll still have huge problems passing legislation. Even
assuming that Nancy Pelosi can push the president's agenda through her
chamber (and this is doubtful for some of the policies the candidates
are pushing), there are senators (like Michael Bennet of Colorado, for
example) on the record opposing much of the progressive candidates'
agenda. . . .
I absolutely understand that people are hungry for change. People are
sick to death of Congress and want to break this gridlock. But it's a
problem that is beyond the power of any candidate or any rhetoric to fix.
On the other hand, while a left-committed candidate like Sanders or
Warren might not get much more accomplished than mediocrities like Biden,
Klobuchar, or Bennet, they would try, and be seen as trying, and their
frustation and dedication would sustain the Party's slow drift to the
left. And that would generate more creative discussion of real problems --
the solution to which is only to be found further left.
Business leaders flock to Trump for protections against socialism.
Cites his previous piece,
What if big business falls in completely with Trumpism? Annie Lowrey:
Andrew Marantz:
The El Paso shooting and the virality of evil.
The national conversation will now turn, as it should, to gun control,
to mental illness, and to the President's practice of exacerbating
racial tensions, which has been one of his avocations for decades and
now appears to be his central reëlection strategy. But there's also a
more specific question: what can be done about the fact that so many
of these terrorists -- in Pittsburgh, in Poway, in Christchurch, in
El Paso -- seem to find inspiration in the same online spaces? Each
killer, in the moment, may have acted alone, but they all appear to
have been zealous converts to the same ideology -- a paranoid snarl
of raw anger, radical nationalism, unhinged nihilism, and fears of
"white genocide" that is still referred to as "fringe," although it's
creeping precariously close to the mainstream.
Hilary Matfess:
The progressive case for free trade. Related: Daniel Block:
Free trade for liberals. This piece focuses more on European problems,
and vainly posits that an alliance with American liberals would help
"protect democracy, fight inequality, and save the environment." Lots
of problems here, starting with the fact that US trade policy -- even
under Democratic presidents -- has always been the province of business
interests, and while those interests may like to tout "democracy" as a
propaganda riff, fighting inequality and saving the environment never
really was their thing. Moreover, any "Atlantic Alliance" is at present
bound to reek of those nations' colonial/imperial pasts. On the other
hand, other alliances have always been possible: internationalism was
the hallmark of the labor movement at least since 1848, and could be
again. But it will take some kind of political revolution before the
US and Europe can see trade as a tool for promoting the welfare of all
people. Anna North:
The movement to decriminalize sex work, explained. Richard Parker:
When hate came to El Paso. Charles P Pierce:
Elaina Plott:
'We're all tired of being called racists'. I'm getting tired of
having to call them racists, too. Maybe they should do a better job
of keeping their racism to themselves? Daniel Politi:
Nicholas Powers:
When Trump calls people "filth," he's laying the groundwork for genocide.
Andrew Prokop:
From condemning "white terrorism" to condemning video games: Republican
responses to El Paso shooting. Jennifer Rubin:
There is no excuse for supporting this president. Looks like the
Washington Post is piling on; e.g. EJ Dionne Jr:
On guns and white nationalism, one side is right and one is wrong;
Max Boot:
Trump is leading our country to destruction. Needless to say,
Trump's holding up his end of the feud. See: Jonathan Chait:
Trump directs government to punish Washington Post
owner. Philip Rucker:
'How do you stop these people?': Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric looms
over El Paso massacre. Also: Ayal Feinberg/Regina Branton/Valerie
Martinez-Ebers:
Counties that hosted a 2016 Trump rally saw a 226 percent increase in
hate crimes. Coincidence? Aaron Rupar:
Adam Serwer:
White nationalism's deep American roots: "A long-overdue excavation
of the book that Hitler called his "bible," and the man who wrote it."
That would be Madison Grant, author of the 1916 book The Passing of
the Great Race.
Raja Shehadeh:
The use and abuse of international law in the occupied territories:
Review of Noura Erakat's book, Justice for Some: Law and the Question
of Palestine. Matt Shuham:
Kobach used private border wall's email list to fundraise for Senate
campaign: "This email could run afoul of campaign finance laws."
Richard Silverstein:
Trump donor, Elliott Broidy, paid Dennis Ross $10,000 to publish pro-Saudi
op-ed in The Hill. Matt Simon:
The bizarre, peaty science of Arctic wildfires. Danny Sjursen:
US troops are back in Saudi Arabia -- this will end badly. Jordan Smith:
As Trump fans the flames of anti-abortion rhetoric, Kansas offers a
cautionary tale. Yves Smith:
Hospitals squeal over Trump proposal to disclose insurance company
discounts. Felicia Sonmez/Paul Kane:
Republicans struggle to respond in wake of El Paso, Dayton shootings.
Matt Taibbi:
The rise and fall of superhero Robert Mueller. Nick Turse:
Violence has spiked in Africa since the military founded AFRICOM,
Pentagon study finds. Alex Ward:
Will Wilkinson:
Conservatives are hiding their 'loathing' behind our flag: "The molten
core of right-wing nationalism is the furious denial of America's unalterably
multiracial, multicultural national character." Robin Wright:
The rhetoric and reality of Donald Trump's racism. Matthew Yglesias:
Today's budget deal proves once again Republicans never cared about the
deficit. Nothing really new here: I still recall when Nixon declared
himself a Keynesian. With their tax giveaways, Reagan, Bush, and Trump
didn't even have to admit as much. They merely understood that the rules
are different when the Republicans are in power or in opposition. That's
only hypocrisy if you pretend there's a general principle involved.
The critical thing, however, is that if not for hypocritical Republican
opposition, we could have been running these higher deficits in 2011,
2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. And if we had done that, the economy could
have recovered faster from the Great Recession, the unemployment rate
could have fallen more rapidly, and hundreds of billions of dollars of
national income that is now irretrievably lost could have been earned.
The Federal Reserve's interest rate cut, explained.
America's dual housing crisis, and what Democrats plan to do about it,
explained: "A crisis of low incomes and a parallel crisis of tight
supply."
Trump is approving an anti-competitive merger that will cost you money:
"But he seems to have made money off the deal personally." The merger
of Sprint and T-Mobile, currently the 3rd and 4th largest mobile phone
networks. Li Zhou:
The new bipartisan Senate bill aimed at making Big Pharma lower drug
prices, explained.
Ask a question, or send a comment.
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Weekend Roundup
Lots of links below -- probably more than usual, although as always
I feel like I'm leaving a lot of stuff untouched. Some topics I only
decided late in the game to break out (Boris Johnson under Mackey,
impeachment under Reich, Iran under Simon/Stevenson) could have picked
up more links had I acted earlier and more consciously. I meant to write
more on Mueller under Alksne when I first found the piece, but by the
time I got to it I had scattered Mueller links all over the page.
Some scattered links this week:
Cynthia Alksne:
No knight on a white horse: "House Democrats have spent the last two
years waiting for someone else to solve the Trump conundrum." Josh Barro:
The T-Mobile/Sprint merger remedy makes no sense. David Barsamian:
Noam Chomsky: Life expectancy in the US is declining for a reason. Zack Beauchamp:
Russell Berman:
Robert Mueller kept his promise:
Democrats can't say Robert Mueller didn't warn them.
For months, the former special counsel told them in every way he could --
in private negotiations, in his sole public statement on his investigation,
through letters from the Justice Department -- that he did not want to
testify before Congress, and that if he did, his appearance would be a
dud.
Today, Mueller fully delivered on that promise.
Alexia Fernández Campbell:
Puerto Ricans pushed out a sitting governor for the first time in history:
"The massive protests worked." Related: Zeeshan Aleem:
Puerto Rico's week of massive protests, explained. Leticia Casado/Ernesto Londono:
Under Brazil's far right leader, Amazon protections slashed and forests
fall. Also: Alexander Zaitchik:
Rainforest on fire: "On the front lines of Bolsonaro's war on the
Amazon, Brazil's forest communities fight against climate catastrophe."
For a comment, see David Wallace-Wells:
Could one man single-handedly ruin the planet? John Cassidy:
Jonathan Chait:
Zak Cheney-Rice:
Gareth Cook:
The economist who would fix the American dream: "No one has done
more to dispel the myth of social mobility than Raj Chetty. But he has
a plan to make equality of opportunity a reality." Adam Federman:
How science got trampled in the rush to drill in the Arctic. Related:
William deBuys:
The 'drill, baby, drill' crowd wants access to this arctic reserve. Crystal Marie Fleming:
The composure and civility of "the Squad" against Trump's attacks. Kathy Gilsinan:
Dan Coats spoke truth to Trump. Now he's out. Oh? Now? Gilsinan
also wrote
Don't expect Mark Esper to contain Trump (you know, the new Secretary
of Defense), and
The impossible job of speaking truth to Trump. Coats' replacement is
John Ratcliffe, a Texas Congressman in the press last week for
his attacks on Robert Mueller. James Gleick:
Moon fever: On the Apollo 11 moon landing, 50 years ago. Danny Goldberg:
Goodbye to free-thought icon and merry prankster Paul Krassner. Tara Golshan:
David A Graham:
Ali Harb:
How Iranian MEK went from US terror list to halls of Congress. William D Hartung:
Trump's Saudi arms vetoes, deconstructed. Nathan Heller:
Was the automotive era a terrible mistake? Edward Hellmore:
'Unprecedented': more than 100 Arctic wildfires burn in worst ever season:
"Huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia and Alaska are producing plumes of smoke
that can be seen from space." Umair Irfan:
108 degrees in Paris: Europe is shattering heat records this week.
Sarah Jones:
An other person has died after rationing insulin. Jones had previously
warned (Jan. 31, 2019):
Rising insulin costs are a life-or-death political crisis.
I've been rather
taken aback by these stories. My first wife had diabetes. I never
remembered any particular problem with insulin expense, but she died
over 30 years ago, so I've been out of touch. Best explanation I've
found for recent insulin pricing is here:
8 reasons why insulin is so outrageously expensive. The big one
here is patents, which is the public's way of saying: rape me, pillage,
take it all. There's no good reason why governments should create or
even allow patents. Take them away, and the problems with biologics
and biosimilars will become purely technical -- real, but much more
manageable. And if private industry cannot find the motivation to
bring the price of insulin back to a reasonable level, governments
could finance non-profit manufacturers aiming at the lowest possible
cost. Moreover, the cost savings go way beyond direct costs. Failure
to properly regulate blood sugar levels leads to all kinds of further
expense -- my wife being an especially dramatic example of what all
can go horribly wrong. Ben Judah:
The millennial left is tired of waiting: "Saikat Chakrabarti,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, is working to build a
generational movement." Peter Kafka:
Facebook will pay the US government a $5 billion fine for privacy failures --
but it won't have to change the way it does business. Ed Kilgore:
Catherine Kim:
The Trump administration is bringing back federal executions. Natalie Kitroeff/David Gelles/Jack Nicas:
The root of Boeing's 737 Max crisis: A regulator relaxes its oversight.
Ezra Klein:
The case for a universal basic income, open borders, and a 15-hour
workweek: Interview with Rutger Bregman, author of Utopia for
Realists.
How "Medicare Extra" gets to universal coverage without single-payer:
Didn't make much sense of this in a quick read. I'm skeptical that you
can actually achieve universal coverage while requiring so much paperwork,
and using a means-tested sliding scale that guarantees pinch points. Or
I suppose you could pitch this as system that defaults to single-payer
but allows people to opt out to select inferior private insurance -- with
the added costs of public subsidies to the private insurance companies
(if not direct, then at least by allowing them to piggyback on universal
negotiated pricing). But then you have to ask yourself: why go through
this charade of pretending that private for-profit insurance companies
can compete meaningfully against a non-profit single-payer service. Lucas Koerner/Ricardo Vaz:
Western media losing enthusiasm for failing coup in Venezuela. Paul Krugman:
Trump's secret foreign aid program: "He's giving away billions to
overseas investors." Amanda Cohen Leiter:
Justice John Paul Stevens and the slow evolution of the law. Christopher Leonard:
How an oil theft investigation laid the groundwork for the Koch playbook:
"In the late 1980s, Charles Koch faced a federa probe, rallied all of his
resources to fight it off and came away with lessons that would guide the
Kochs for decades." Leonard has a book coming out Aug. 13: Kochland:
The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.
Daniel Lippman:
'It's a disaster over there': Commerce reaches new heights of dysfunction:
"Under Secretary Wilbur Ross, the department is chaotic and adrift."
Related: Matt Stieb:
Wilbur Ross is falling asleep in Commerce Department meetings. Martin Longman:
Robert Mackey:
Donald Trump praises Boris Johnson, who once called him "unfit to hold the
office of President of the United States". Also on Johnson:
Chase Madar:
Ilhan Omar's anti-semitism is becoming a load-bearing myth for American
politics. Madeline Marshall:
How Trump took over America's courts. Jonathan Martin/Maggie Haberman:
Trump relies on populist language, but he mostly sides with corporate
interests: Trenchant reporting from the New York Times. Jane Mayer:
The case of Al Franken. - Middle East Eye:
Israel destroys Palestinian homes in biggest demolition push since
1967. Also: Michelle Nichols:
US blocks UN rebuke of Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes.
Alec MacGillis:
Jared Kushner's other real estate empire in Baltimore. Related:
Beatrice Dupuy:
Jared Kushner's family company faces more than 170 Baltimore violations.
George Monbiot:
From Trump to Johnson, nationalists are on the rise -- backed by billionaire
oligarchs. Anna North:
Al Franken needs to stop comparing his resignation to death. Ilhan Omar:
It is not enough to condemn Trump's racism. Andrew Prokop:
Robert Reich:
The real reason we need to impeach Trump immediately: Actually, he
offers close to a dozen, but they're just examples of a more fundamental
contempt Trump holds for law and order:
Every child in America is supposed to learn about the Constitution's
basic principles of separation of powers, and checks and balances.
But these days, every child and every adult in America is learning
from Donald Trump that these principles are bunk.
More impeachment talk:
David Roberts:
Ohio just passed the worst energy bill of the 21st century: "A corrupt
bailout for dinosaur power plants that screws renewable energy in the
process." Also: Ryan Grim/Akela Lacy:
Ohio Republicans balked at a nuclear bailout, so the industry elected new
Republicans -- and walked away with $1.1 billion. Jacob Rosenberg:
"Love it or leave it" has a racist history. A lot of America's language
does. I've always heard "love it or leave it" as "be complacent, or
get banished," because you're not entitled to your own opinions, or in
any way to criticize your government, and if you dissent, you're not
entitled to keep living your life where you grew up. Racism is one of
many things that we weren't allowed to question (and the "back to Africa"
movement was largely a concession to this dictate), but there are a great
many more things that triggered this demand -- in my time, most memorably,
America's imperialist war against Vietnam. Aaron Rupar:
David E Sanger/Catie Edmondson:
Russia targeted election systems in all 50 states, report finds:
I don't doubt Russian machinations, nor excuse them with the fact that
the US routinely and methodically attempts to interfere and influence
elections in Russia and damn near everywhere else. But one should bear
in mind that Republicans are much more active underminers of democracy.
And that the common interest that Russia and Republicans share is their
dedication to oligarchy. Kori Schake:
The bill for America First is coming due: "Two of America's closest
treaty allies have announced military efforts explicitly designed to
exclude the US." As Trump's foreign policy becomes more arbitrary and
erratic, it's inevitable that other countries will go their own way --
in this case, UK and Australia, reverting to their basest imperialist
roots. Not a good sign, although anything that reduces the American
bootprint on the world's neck can't be all bad. Schake directs a UK
security think tank, IISS, and her recent pieces offer various hints
at how Trump's vacuous foreign policy is perturbing America's former
clients. For example, see:
A Middle East peace plan built in un-American principles, and
Worse than Obama's red-line moment: taunting Trump for not bombing
Iran ("Trump has now shown himself just as willing as President Obama
to make empty threats that damage American credibility").
Eric B Schnurer:
Facebook doesn't just need to be broken up. It needs to be broken into.
"To create real competition, let other social networks operate on the
architecture Mark Zuckerberg built." I haven't digested this yet, but
my general response to proposals to attack web service monopolies is to
provide public funding to stand up open source alternatives. This subject
is worth a much deeper discussion. Adam Serwer:
Steven Simon/Jonathan Stevenson:
Iran: The case against war. More recent pieces on Iran:
Danny Sjursen:
Could Donald Trump end the Afghan War? Maggie Stevens/Derek Willis:
How conservative operatives steered millions in PAC donations to
themselves. Emily Stewart:
Elizabeth Warren sees "serious warning signs" of an economic crash.
Warren's piece:
The coming economic crash and how to stop it. Another important
Warren piece:
End Wall Street's stranglehold on our economy. Yves Smith
writes about this latter piece:
Elizabeth Warren seeks to cut private equity down to size. Matt Taibbi:
The Iowa circus: "Clown Car II: The Democrats. God help us." He wrote
a great campaign book once, but it wasn't his 2016 effort (Insane Clown
President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus -- it was his 2004-based
Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches From the Dumb Season). But clearly
he's just running on auto-pilot now, not even considering whether to
revamp his circus metaphors -- it's like he's forgotten that there's a
distinction between a sequel and a parody.
Banks sued for LIBOR collusion -- again!.
The myth of Robert Mueller, exploded. Siva Vaidhyanathan:
Anya van Wagtendonk:
Katrina vanden Heuvel:
The transpartisan revolt against America's endless wars. Alex Ward:
Peter Wehner:
George Will changes his mind -- but stays true to his convictions:
Proving his convictions were always the problem with him. While it's
tempting to admire people who are so consistently dedicated to wrong
principles that they occasionally stand up against more opportunistic
evils, they're ultimately not that useful, and never reliable. This
turns into a puff-piece interview, not unlike Wehner's previous
David Brooks's journey toward faith. Wehner's own mission is to
rescue evangelical Christianity ffrom the shame of association with
Donald Trump. That's a decent and noble endeavor, but misses the
problem in favor of a bogus solution. Kelly Weill:
MAGA bomber's lawyers blame Trump, Sean Hannity for his radicalization.
Related, from Oct. 27, 2018: Rick Wilson:
Of course Donald Trump inspired Cesar Sayoc's alleged terrorism. Philip Weiss:
Ilhan Omar's case for foreign influence is more convincing than
Mueller's. Matthew Yglesias:
New GDP data confirms Trump's tax cuts aren't working. Seems to me
they're doing exactly what they were intended to: help the rich get even
richer, and weaken the government by piling up debt, which they can later
use as a cudgel against spending by a future Democratic government. Sure,
tax cut propagandists trotted out a few macroeconomic rationalizations,
but they were such obvious horseshit at the time that their thorough
debunking here offers no surprise and scant comfort. Or, as
Eric Levitz reviews the same issue:
The Trump tax cuts worked (as a scam):
In the Trump era, Republicans have become masters of rationalizing the
indefensible. But even they couldn't defend running up the deficit (and
clamping down social spending) to boost corporate profits at a time when
such profits were already high. Thus, they insisted that the president's
tax cuts would neither increase the deficit nor benefit the wealthy much
at all. . . .
There was little empirical evidence to support this argument when
Republicans were making it two years ago. There is even less today. In
May, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) found no sign that the
Trump tax cuts made any discernible contribution to growth, wages, or
business investment. Corporations did not plow their windfalls into
exceptionally productive and innovative ventures. Instead, they mostly
threw their handouts onto the giant pile of cash they were already
sitting on, and/or returned it to their (predominantly rich)
shareholders. . . .
If you take Republicans at their word -- and assume that they earnestly
believed they could massively increase business investment by slashing
corporate rates -- then the Trump tax cuts have been a miserable failure.
If, however, you assume that the party's goal was always to prioritize
the bottomless avarice of its megadonors over the pressing needs of the
American people -- without paying a huge political price -- then the
president's signature legislation has worked like a charm.
Democrats should run on the popular progressive ideas, not the unpopular
ones.
Mueller's testimony matters even if he doesn't say anything new.
Al Franken did the right thing by resigning.
Ask a question, or send a comment.
Monday, July 22, 2019
Weekend Roundup
We spent much of the past week arguing not about whether Donald Trump
is a racist -- some might prefer not to discuss it, but hardly anyone
doubts or denies such an abundantly settled fact. A week ago we faced
what struck me as an artificially inflated schism between Party leaders
like Nancy Pelosi and the more determined reformers in "the squad," but
that division vanished instantly thanks to their common enemy -- Trump,
for starters, and the racism he and his party so naturally indulge in.
Pelosi may be jealous of the squad's popularity with the Democratic base,
and she may be overly concerned with her reputation as a Washington power
broker. But the fact is that since the 2018 election, the right-wing
media has been most obsessed with raising alarms over the squad. Given
that context, Trump's tweets strike me less as recurring racist bluster
(to which he's certainly prone) than as confirmation that the Republicans'
campaign strategy for 2020 will be to try to turn every local election
into a referendum on Ilhan Omar. Pelosi knows that better than anyone,
because Republicans have tried for years to make her the public face of
Democratic-Socialist-Liberal dread.
Most important piece below is Matthew Yglesias's
Trump's racism is part of his larger con. I didn't quote from it,
but could have quoted the entire piece. Just read it.
Some scattered links this week:
Peter Beinart:
By Republican standards, almost nothing is racist.
Jared Bernstein:
What economists have gotten wrong for decades: "Four economic ideas
disproven by reality." This starts with the so-called "natural rate of
unemployment" ("NAIRU" to its fans):
The natural rate of unemployment that AOC questioned is one such idea
(more on that below). There are three others worth singling out:
- that globalization is a win-win proposition for all, an idea that
has deservedly taken a battering in recent years;
- that federal budget deficits "crowd out" private investments; and
- that the minimum wage will only have negative effects on jobs and
workers.
Economists and policymakers have gotten these ideas wrong for decades,
at great cost to the public. Especially hard hit have been the most
economically vulnerable, and these mistakes can certainly be blamed
for the rise of inequality. It's time we moved on from them.
By the way, not every economist bought into these ideas, even in
their heyday.
George P. Brockway (1915-2001) was especially critical of NAIRU
(see his short collection Economics Can Be Bad for Your Health
as well as his masterpiece, The End of Economic Man). John
Quiggin wrote about much of this in Zombie Economics: How Dead
Ideas Still Walk Among Us (2010). By the way, when Joe Biden
became Vice President, he picked Bernstein as his economic adviser.
I'm not a Biden fan, but that was a smart and gutsy pick at a time
when Obama was hiring economists like Larry Summers. Back in 2008,
before his appointment, Bernstein wrote an insightful book called
Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic
Mysteries).
Jamelle Bouie:
The joy of hatred: "Trump and 'his people' reach deep into the
violent history of public spectacle in America."
Aleia Fernández Campbell:
The House just passed a $15 minimum wage. It would be the first increase
in a decade.
John Cassidy:
There is nothing strategic about Trump's racism.
Jonathan Chait:
Welcome to the post-post-corruption era of the Republican Party.
Takes a detour from its original subject -- Labor Secretary Alexander
Acosta's temporary and more permanent replacements (the former a Jack
Abramoff associate, the latter Antonin Scalia's son, Eugene) -- to
review the Party's checkered history both for and against corruption.
Conservatism never fails, Rick Perlstein archly observed at the time;
it is only failed. . . . It is almost impossible to overstate how much
weight conservatives placed on corruption as their diagnosis of failure.
This conviction led straight to their Obama-era posture as a "reformed"
party of pure fiscal conservatism. . . . Pizzella may not lead the agency
for long, and by Trump-era standards, of course, his offenses barely
register as scandals at all. The Trump administration is shot through
with corruption, from petty grifts like Cabinet members abusing their
expense accounts to legislation written by and for lobbyists. The
president himself is taking payoffs from corporate lobbyists and foreign
governments through his Washington hotel and other properties.
The party's whole post-Bush backlash against corruption and deficit
spending, and the notion that those values are antithetical to conservatism,
has been forgotten. ("Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore," Rush
Limbaugh casually declared. "All this talk about concern for the deficit
and the budget has been bogus for as long as it's been around.") Having
fulfilled its use by giving Republicans a reason to absolve their ideology
of any role in Bush's failure, they discarded it.
Republicans baffled why Trump keeps saying racist things.
Jane Coaston:
The Trump racism spin cycle.
Jelani Cobb:
Donald Trump's idea of selective citizenship.
Chas Danner:
Trump shows yet again that he can't even pretend to reject racism.
Tom Engelhardt:
Planet of the surreal: Turning 75 in the Age of Trump.
Eric Foner:
The Supreme Court is in danger of again becoming 'the grave of liberty'.
Masha Gessen:
The weaponization of national belonging, from Nazi Germany to Trump.
By turning unspoken assumptions into hateful rally chants, Trump is not
merely destroying the norms of political speech but weaponizing them. He
is cashing in on the easy trick of saying out loud what others barely
dare to think. But his supporters are also enforcing the prohibition on
his opponents' taking part in the conversation -- as when House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi was reprimanded for calling Trump's speech "racist" on the
House floor. Trump has initiated a radical renegotiation of belonging in
this country and then monopolized it. This is what happens first: a
political force seizes the power to define themselves as insiders and
certain others as intruders. This is done in the name of protection of
the motherland, which the newly marginalized are said to hate. Everything
else follows.
Trump, Pelosi, and the Squad are fighting over who belongs in government.
Susan B Glasser:
"I'm winning": Donald Trump's calculated racism.
Michelle Goldberg:
Tara Golshan:
Mark Sanford is willing to run against Trump for president if people start
talking about the debt.
Emily Holden:
Trump drilling leases could create more climate pollution than EU does
in a year.
Caroline Houck:
Mark Esper, President Trump's pick for defense secretary, explained:
Key point: "former top lobbyist from Raytheon."
Ed Kilgore:
Trump's racism is pushing away the voters he needs in 2020. I don't
really buy this. Past history shows that Trump's economic beneficiaries
(almost exclusively stock and business owners) care very little about
his race messaging. On the other hand, people who have no economic stake
in his policies but support him for cultural reasons need reinforcement,
which comes not so much because they identify with racism as that they
fear and loathe the sort of people who get offended over such. That's
in a nutshell why his support figures have increased (marginally, for
sure) as nearly every Democrat/Independent has been blasting him.
Susan Collins's approval rating dives as reelection contest approaches.
Catherine Kim:
New polling indicates Republicans actually like Trump more following
racist tweet controversy.
Jen Kirby:
Paul Krugman:
Eric Levitz:
PR Lockhart:
The racism in Trump's attacks should be impossible to deny.
German Lopez:
Cory Booker's latest criminal justice reform bill takes aim at life
imprisonment.
Ella Nilsen:
House votes to hold AG Barr and Commerce Secretary Ross in contempt of
Congress over census citizenship question.
Anna North:
How 4 congresswomen came to be called "the Squad".
Jeremy W Peters/Annie Karni/Maggie Haberman:
Trump sets the 2020 tone: like 2016, only this time 'the Squad' is here.
Charles P Pierce:
Andrew Prokop:
Jonah Raskin:
Paul Krassner, 1932-2019: American satirist. I should note that I
started reading The Realist shortly after I dropped out of high
school, so Krassner played an outsized role in my discovery that there
are other ways of understanding the world than had been drilled into
my tiny brain by the official guardians of virtue.
Aaron Rupar:
Jeffrey D Sachs:
America's economic blockades and international law: I'm not sure who
Sachs thinks has been calling Trump an isolationist, but at least he
rejects that label. What's different about Trump isn't the degree the US
engages with other countries but the terms of alliance and intervention.
From FDR through Obama, the US has generally tried to find agreement on
areas of mutual interest, often trading economic help for joint security.
Trump's intent is to put American (by which he often means his personal)
interests first, reducing everyone else to paying tribute for some degree
of privilege within the US-directed world order. If it seems like little
has changed under Trump, that's mostly because the US position at the
top of the informal world order has, at least since WWII, been rooted
in the relative size and wealth of the American economy (although these
days it has largely transformed itself into global financial networks,
which nation states have little effective power to regulate). Where his
predecessors preferred to build alliances based on mutual interest, all
Trump sees is the power to extract profit. In the past, NATO was presented
as a trade: member countries would open themselves up to global capitalism,
and in turn would receive security guarantees. (Indeed, the "carrot" of
capital investment was probably more decisive to expansion of NATO into
Eastern Europe than fears of Russian aggression.) On the other hand, Trump
views NATO as a protection racket, and wants to do what any gangster/boss
would do: raise the tribute. As an authoritarian, Trump much prefers his
sticks to carrots, much as he'd rather be feared than befriended (not that
he minds having friends, as long as they are properly submissive). Short
of risking his bloated military, the most powerful stick he has at his
disposal is the economic blockade (sanctions), which he's employed more
aggressively than ever before (e.g., North Korea, Iran, Venezuela). So
far, nothing disastrous (for the US, anyway) has come of this. None of
the targeted countries have submitted, but few (if any) nominal allies
have yet decided to buck US authority and circumvent the sanctions, so
Trump appears to be in control. However, you have to wonder how long
China, Europe, Russia, India, Japan, etc., will continue to kowtow to
a thin-skinned, thankless bully like Trump.
William Saletan:
Is Trump a racist or a narcissist? Here's a puzzle even Saletan can
solve: "He's both." But aren't those just facets of an even broader and
deeper sociopathy?
Theodore Schleifer:
A plan to fix inequality would target CEOs who make 100 times more than
their employees: CEO pay has been a useful metric for measuring
inequality for several decades now, but the most one can hope for by
narrowly targeting it is to muddy the metric. CEO's represent a small
sliver of the very rich, and as such a small sliver of the money that
a more general program could tax. I think it's long been clear that
the main reason boards have moved so strongly to increase CEO pay has
been the desire to make CEO's act more like owners and less like
managers: to focus more on short-term profitability, while allowing
more risks to long-term stability.
Emily Stewart:
Elizabeth Warren's latest Wall Street enemy: private equity.
Matt Taibbi:
CNN's debate lottery draw is a new low in campaign media: "If you
cover elections like reality shows, you will get reality stars as
leaders."
Robin Wright:
Iran's eye-for-an-eye strategy in the Gulf.
Matthew Yglesias:
Ask a question, or send a comment.
Sunday, July 14, 2019
Weekend Roundup
Fairly large (7.3) earthquake in
Halmahera,
Indonesia today. It's in a fairly isolated corner of the nation,
an island with about 450,000 people, north of Ceram and midway
between the outstretched peninsulas of New Guinea and Sulawesi.
Probably not much news on this, unlike last week's similar-sized
earthquakes near Ridgecrest, California.
On the other hand, quite a bit of news attention to
Hurricane Barry, slowly moving today through north Louisiana
and into Arkansas, dumping a lot of rain over already flooded
terrain. Two things worth noting here. One is that this is still
very early in the season (nominally June 1 to November 30). For
a record fifth year in a row, the first named storm (Andrea)
appeared before the season officially started. June was quiet,
but it's still very rare to have hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico
in July. Odder still, where most hurricanes start as low pressure
zones over West Africa, then pick up strength crossing the width
of the subtropical Atlantic Ocean, this one started in Tennessee,
then curved in a clockwise motion through Georgia and Florida
before intensifying over the Gulf. I've never seen a storm follow
that trajectory, or for that matter one that spent so little time
over water developing to hurricane level. Granted, it only briefly
achieved level 1 strength, but that doesn't bode well for later
storms that traverse much more of the still warming Gulf (currently
86°F). [PS: The Wikipedia page suggests several similar hurricanes,
but the only one that comes close is
1940 Louisiana hurricane, which formed in early August off the
coast of Georgia, crossed Florida and covered a much longer stretch
of the Gulf before making landfall in southwest Louisiana. It is
regarded as "the wettest tropical cyclone in state history," with
a peak rainfall of 37.5 inches. Barry is forecast to produce up
to 25 inches of rain. Actual rain so far appears to be much less -- see
Barry downgraded to a depression but still brings risk of flooding from
Louisiana to Arkansas. This article also notes that the average date
for first hurricane of season is August 10, and that this is the first
July hurricane in continental US since Arthur in 2014, and only the 4th
in Louisiana history according to records going back to 1851.]
Some scattered links this week:
William Astore:
The riptide of American militarism. Aaron Blake:
Donald Trump's origin story suffers another severe blow:
The new report by Kranish also recalls perhaps the biggest revelation
undercutting Trump's self-published origin story: how he became wealthy
in the first place. While Trump has claimed he got only a $1 million
loan to start out with, the Times detailed how the younger Trump
"received at least $413 million in today's dollars from his father's
real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s." The
paper said these tax dodges included "instances of outright fraud."
And when it comes to Trump's education, he has apparently gone to
great lengths to obscure the record and seems to have tapped powerful
connections in the process, as The Post's Marc Fisher detailed in March.
The New York Military Academy, which Trump attended before college,
moved its Trump files to a more secure location amid pressure from
wealthy Trump allies. Around the same time that was revealed, former
Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who flipped on Trump and pleaded guilty
to several crimes, released a 2015 letter he wrote threatening Fordham
University with legal action if Trump's records were released.
The combined picture is one of a president who may not have been
able to attend Penn or assemble anywhere close to such a fortune
without familial connections.
Jonathan Blitzer:
Trump is poised to sign a radical agreement to send future asylum seekers
to Guatemala. Frank Bruni:
Joe Biden, Closet Republican: "He's the liberal Bob Dole, the looser
Mitt Romney, the supposedly safe bet who's owed a shot." I'm not a Biden
fan, but this is pretty unfair. For starters, it vastly understates how
despicable the vast majority of Republican politicians have become --
ironically, a trait that Biden and Bruni seem to share. Biden has been
a reasonably successful politician during the 40-year Reagan-Bush-Trump
era, at least in part because he's often been willing to bend with the
wind. That bending may have helped lend credence to the Republicans, and
that's reason enough to doubt him as a candidate. Still, there's a big
gap between Democrats like Biden and supposedly respectable Republicans
like Dole and Romney. Bruni's not doing us any favors by papering over
that chasm. Cristina Cabrera:
Trump launches racist attack against 'progressive Democrat
congresswomen'. Related: Peter Wade:
Of course, Fox News delighted in Trump's racist tweet. The question
Fox raised on the screen was "DEMOCRATS DIVIDED?" Actually, the reaction
there was pretty united: it speaks volumes that the one thing every
Democratic politician in America agrees on is that Trump is a racist,
and that it's fair game to put it that explicitly. Jonathan Chait:
President Trump says only Trump supporters deserve free speech. Ryan Devereaux:
Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost was a member of secret Facebook group.
Brian Feldman:
FTC fines Facebook $5 billion over Cambridge Analytica scandal. Ryan Gallagher:
How US tech giants are helping to build China's surveillance state.
Same deal here:
Middle East dictators buy spy tech from company linked to IBM and Google.
Masha Gessen:
Tara Golshan:
David A Graham:
The best way to get fired by Trump: "The president's new strategy
for getting rid of scandal-tainted aides: Quickly accept their resignations,
but heap praise on them as they leave." Ryan Grim:
Amy McGrath is challenging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. She's
everything wrong with the Democratic Party. Yeah, but if I was
misfortunate enough to be represented by McConnell, I'd cheerfully vote
for her anyway. Note that she wound up correcting her faux pas on the
Kavanaugh question. Neil Irwin:
The Fed's new message: The economy can get a lot better for workers:
"A rejection of what had been a consensus view of the relationship between
the jobless rate and inflation." Ed Kilgore:
Jen Kirby:
Michael Klare:
It's always the oil: The missing three-letter word in the Iran
crisis. Ezra Klein:
What Donald Trump got right, and Justin Amash got wrong, about
conservatives: "Conservatism is an identity more than an ideology,
and Trump knows it." Carolyn Kormann:
The case for declaring a national climate emergency.
While Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez's calls for a climate-emergency declaration
are not solving any problems, they are providing the language that needs
to dominate the national conversation. And that matters. The United Nations
recently warned that climate disasters are happening at the rate of one per
week. This past June was the hottest on record. At the end of the month,
a freak storm buried Guadalajara, Mexico, in hail, and on Thursday morning
news outlets reported that freak hailstorms in Greece killed seven people.
A month's worth of rain fell on Washington, D.C., in an hour on Monday
(while Trump completely ignored the climate crisis in his speech on the
environment), then more flash floods drowned New Orleans, which is now
preparing for a tropical storm that could dump another twenty inches of
rain and test the city's levees. The warming that happens over the next
few decades could kill all of the world's coral reefs, lead to even more
severe storms and wildfires, and set off the sorts of tipping points that
most concern scientists -- specifically, the irreversible dissolution of
the Greenland ice sheet, where, in June, a heatwave set off melting
across half of its surface.
Josh Kovensky:
Rudy Giuliani, Joe Lieberman team up for Albania MEK conference. Eric Levitz:
Why the GOP might learn to love putting price controls on drugs. German Lopez:
How to dramatically reduce gun violence in American cities: Based
on a new book by Thomas Abt: Bleeding Out. Robert Mackey:
Dylan Matthews:
AOC's policy adviser makes the case for abolishing billionaires:
Interview with Dan Riffle. Joan McCarter:
How Trump swallowed the GOP whole and exposed Paul Ryan's craven moral
failings. Refers to a forthcoming book by Tim Alberta: American
Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise
of President Trump. For more, see:
Rani Molla:
Conservatives pretending to be suppressed by social media dominated
social media. Suzanne Moore:
Of course Boris Johnson wants a royal yacht. He's the king of
fake-it-till-you-make-it. Dina Nayeri:
Why they fear Ilhan Omar: "Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson don't
think she's dangerous. They hate that she's full of potential." Anna North:
Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta has no good answer for cushy Jeffrey
Epstein plea deal. Acosta wound up
resigning, after Trump swore,
"I'm with him". For more, see:
Amanda Petrusich:
Going home with Wendell Berry: Interview. Sample quote I should save
and maybe use some time: "Every generation is a bridge between something
that's past, and something that's coming." Charles P Pierce:
Nancy Pelosi's leadership now constitutes a constant dereliction of
duty. Pierce is the kind of pundit I'd expect to go to the mat
defending Party leadership like Pelosi, so I'm impressed first of all
that he snapped, second that he snapped this direction. What this
shows is that AOC and her "gang of four" have struck a chord that
extends even to middling Democrats. Maybe that's because they're
scoring points while Pelosi, Schumer, Hoyer, et al. look like mere
bystanders. Another non-radical suddenly soured on Pelosi: Andrew
Sullivan:
Hey, Nancy Pelosi: Please stop coddling Donald Trump. Gareth Porter:
Lies about Iran killing US troops in Iraq are a ploy to justify war.
Andrew Prokop:
Trump's census citizenship question fiasco, explained. Related:
Michael Wines:
The long history of the US government asking Americans whether they are
citizens. Gabriela Resto-Montero:
David Roberts:
Coal left Appalachia devastated. Now it's doing the same to Wyoming.
Aaron Rupar:
Matt Shuham:
House report shines light on multiple infants under one separated from
parents. Tierney Sneed:
How Trump doubled down on the crazy claim he's immune from oversight.
Paul Sonne/Karoun Demirjian/Missy Ryan:
Sexual assault allegations complicate confirmation of Trump's nominee
for military's No. 2 officer: Air Force Gen. John E Hyten, commander
of US Strategic Command, nominated to be vice chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. Matt Taibbi:
Ross Perot had the last laugh. The business mogul and third-party
presidential candidates (1992/1996) died last week, at 89. Alex Thompson:
Elizabeth Warren shuns conventional wisdom for a new kind of campaign:
Key sentence: "She's largely rejecting DC's consultant class." Marc Tracy:
As the world heats up, the climate for news is changing, too. Alex Ward:
"Trump is quite easy to buy off": how Trump is putting American foreign
policy up for sale: "Want to understand Trump's foreign policy? Just
follow the money."
Biden releases video blasting "the Trump Doctrine" of foreign policy.
Defines "five core elements of what Biden calls 'The Trump Doctrine'":
- Embrace dictators
- Threaten war
- Rip up international agreements
- Launch trade wars
- Embarrass the US
Lots of problems here, starting with the assertion that what Trump's
doing is coherent and consistent enough to imply a "doctrine" (especially
when no such thing has been stated). He's pretty selective about which
dictators he "embraces," favoring those who align with his worldview,
especially those who cater to his personal finances. And while he has
no personal interest in democracy, international law, and/or concern
for human rights, he's willing to slander his enemies (and only his
enemies) for their shortcomings there. Similarly, his treatment of
international treaties and trade agreements is unprincipled, riding
almost exclusively on his personal (and partisan) economic interest.
He's a committed bully, and feels that by virtue of its wealth and
power America is entitled to threaten and cajole the little countries
around, but he has yet to act as recklessly as his rhetoric suggests.
Of course, he's a huge embarrassment. But aside from being somewhat
less of an embarrassment, one wonders what Biden would do differently.
US foreign policy has been remarkably consistent across parties, both
in the Cold War and post-Cold War eras, as if presidents don't actually
have many real options. In his long career, Biden has very dependably
gone along with whatever the prevailing "wisdom" dictated, so there's
little reason to think he won't continue to serve the same interests
US foreign policy has long followed.
The US has a risky new plan to protect oil tankers from Iranian attacks.
New leak claims Trump scrapped Iran nuclear deal 'to spite Obama'.
Ask a question, or send a comment.
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Weekend Roundup
I paid rather little attention to the Democratic Party presidential
debates this week: Laura watched them, I overheard some bits, saw some
more (not so fairly selected) on Colbert and Myers, and read a few odd
things. Some links here, including a few non-debate ones that highlight
various candidates, but no attempt at comprehensive:
Kate Aronoff:
Jay Inslee just dropped the most ambitious climate plan from a presidential
candidate. Here's who it targets. Zack Beauchamp:
4 winners and 2 losers from the two nights of Democratic debates:
For instance, he counts "Bernie Sanders' ideas" as a winner, but Sanders
himself as a loser. Robert L Borosage:
The second Democratic debate proved that Bernie really has transformed
the party. Ryan Bort and others:
A report card for every candidate from the first Democratic debates.
Laura Bronner and others at FiveThirtyEight:
The first Democratic debate in five charts. David Brooks:
Dems, please don't drive me away. My gut reaction is that there's
nothing I feel less interest in than mollifying the vain egos of "Never
Trump" conservatives. I'd take his polling reports with a grain of salt
("35 percent of Americans call themselves conservative, 35 percent call
themselves moderate and 26 percent call themselves liberal"), and also
doubt his self-characterization as "moderate," but I'll quote his stab
at articulating the "moderate" viewpoint:
Finally, Democrats aren't making the most compelling moral case against
Donald Trump. They are good at pointing to Trump's cruelties, especially
toward immigrants. They are good at describing the ways he is homophobic
and racist. But the rest of the moral case against Trump means hitting
him from the right as well as the left.
A decent society rests on a bed of manners, habits, traditions and
institutions. Trump is a disrupter. He rips to shreds the codes of
politeness, decency, honesty and fidelity, and so renders society a
savage world of dog eat dog. Democrats spend very little time making
this case because defending tradition, manners and civility sometimes
cuts against the modern progressive temper.
Actually, the further left you go the more sharply moralistic the
critique of Trump becomes, but despite his "savage world of dog eat
dog" line Brooks can't hear this because he only recognizes morality
as the imposition of conservative order, where inequality is a given.
Brooks' "moderates" are closet conservatives. While there are many
Democrats (not just moderate- but also liberal-identified) who agree
with most of Brooks' verities ("politeness, decency, honesty and
fidelity"), Brooks' knee-jerk anti-left instincts prevent him from
joining any democratic movement he can't dictate to. In particular,
he cannot conceive of the need to lean a bit harder to the left than
he'd like in order to get back to the center he so adores. [PS: Just
found this, but not yet interested enough to read: Benjamin
Wallace-Wells:
David Brooks's conversion story. Alexander Burns/Jonathan Martin:
Liberal Democrats ruled the debates. Will moderates regain their voices?
Pieces like this are annoying, and are only likely to become more so,
and more strident, as the election approaches. A better question is:
will "moderates" find anything constructive to say? Their most succinct
declaration so far is Biden's assurance that "nothing would change"
under a Biden presidency. I suppose that's more honest than the "hope
and change" Obama campaigned on in 2008, let alone Bill ("Man from Hope"
Clinton's populist spiel 1992, but at least Clinton and Obama waited
until after the election to hand their administrations over to crony
capitalists and sell out their partisan base. Left/liberals dominate
the debates because: the voters recognize that most Americans face
real and immediate problems; the left/liberals have put a lot of
thought into how to deal with those problems, and the only credible
solutions are coming from the left; having been burned before, the
party base is looking not just for hope/change but for commitment.
It's going to be hard for "moderates" to convince people to follow
without promising to lead them somewhere better. John Cassidy:
Joe Biden's faltering debate performance raises big doubts about his
campaign. Alvin Chang:
Kamala Harris got a huge number of people curious about Joe Biden's
busing record. Zak Cheney-Rice:
Kamala Harris ends the era of coddling Joe Biden on race. Maureen Dowd:
Kamala shotguns Joe Sixpack. Favorite line here, and you can guess
the context: "In my experience, candidates with advisers who belittle
them on background do not win elections." I rarely read Dowd, finding
her longer on snark than analysis, but you may enjoy (as I did) her
Blowhard on the brink. Again, you can guess the context. David Frum:
The second debate gives Democrats three reasons to worry: The
view of a Trump hater who hasn't really changed any other of his
right-wing views: "the weakness of former Vice President Joe Biden";
"the weakness of the next tier of normal Democratic candidates --
especially Harris -- in the face of left-wing pressure"; "the
unwillingness and inability of any of the candidates -- except,
quietly, Biden -- to defend their party's most important domestic
reform since the Lyndon Johnson administration: Obamacare." Abby Goodnough/Thomas Kaplan:
Democrat vs. Democrat: How health care is dividing the party: "An
issue that united the party in 2018 has potential to fracture it in
2020." What united the party was the universally felt need to defend
ACA against Republican attempts to degrade and destruct it. Looking
forward, I think there are very few Democrats who don't see the main
goal as comprehensive health care coverage, as a universal right. The
differences arise over how to get there from where we are now. One way
to do that would be to expand Medicaid and private insurance subsidies
under the ACA, and one thing that would help with the latter would be
to offer a non-profit "public option" to ensure that insurance markets
are competitive. One way to provide that public option would be to let
people buy into America's already-established public health insurance
option: Medicare. Many candidates have proposals to allow some people
to do that. I expect that a Democratic Congress and President to move
quickly on implementing some of those proposals to shore up ACA. It's
not the case that proponents of a true government-run single-payer
system will cripple ACA to force us to take their preferred route
(e.g., Bernie Sanders voted for ACA). But there is one major problem
with ACA: the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot force
everyone to participate in a scheme that requires some people to buy
private insurance. That's a bad ruling, but fixing the Supreme Court
is likely to be a harder sell than Medicare-for-All -- especially
given that the latter promises better coverage for less cost than
any private/public mix of competing insurance plans. You may wonder
why some Democrats are against Medicare-for-All. The main reason is
they believe the insurance companies are too powerful to fight, but
one thing you'll notice is that the people saying that (e.g., Ezekiel
Emmanuel) are mostly beneficiaries of insurance industry payola.
That preference for ACA over Medicare-for-All is seen as a sign of
"moderation" only shows that "moderates" don't have the guts, the
stamina, or even the imagination to fight for better solutions.
Put Democrats who stand up for their principles and their people
in the White House and Congress, and the "moderates" will start
compromising in the direction of progress. Until then, why should
we listen to anything they say? [PS: For some diagramming, see:
Dylan Scott:
The 2 big disagreements between 2020 Democratic candidates on
Medicare-for-all.] Jeet Heer:
Elizabeth Warren's ideas dominated the debate more than her stage
presence. Umair Irfan:
Climate change got just 15 minutes out of 4 hours of Democratic debates.
Caitlin Johnston:
Kamala Harris is everything the establishment wants in a politician.
Proof of point is no matter how hard the author tries to attack Harris,
she only winds up making her look more formidable (which is something
we desperately crave, isn't it?). Sarah Jones:
Elizabeth Warren thinks we need more diplomats. Jen Kirby:
Foreign policy was a loser in the Democratic debates. Michael Kruse:
The 2008 class that explains Elizabeth Warren's style. Dylan Matthews and other Vox writers:
4 winners and 3 losers from the second night of the Democratic debates. Anna North:
Kirsten Gillibrand gave her opponents a history lesson on abortion
politics at the debate. Ilana Novick:
Why are Democrats afraid to end private health insurance? Andrew Prokop:
This wasn't the way Joe Biden wanted the first debate to go. Gabriel Resto-Montero:
Democrats rally behind Kamala Harris following Donald Trump Jr.'s
"birther-style" tweet. Frank Rich:
Kamala Harris's debate performance should scare Trump.
There may be no word that Trump fears more than "prosecutor," and no
professional expertise that the Democratic base is more eager to see
inflicted on him. At a juncture when Trump defends himself against a
charge of rape by sliming women who are not his "type," Harris's
emergence could not be better timed. She is not his "type," heaven
knows, and, not unlike her fellow San Franciscan Nancy Pelosi, she is
not a "type" he knows how to deal with at any level, whether on Twitter
or a debate stage.
David Rothkopf:
Hey Dems, take it from this ex-centrist: We blew it. Author is
one of the guy who made the Clinton Administration a money-making
machine for Wall Street, so that's where he's come from.
As the first round of debates among Democratic candidates for president
clearly showed, the intellectual vitality of the Democratic Party right
now is coming from progressives. On issue after issue, the vast majority
of the candidates embraced views that have been seen as progressive
priorities for years -- whether that may have been a pledge to provide
healthcare for all or vows to repeal tax cuts benefiting the rich,
whether it was prioritizing combating our climate crisis or seeking
to combat economic, gender, and racial inequality in America.
Indeed, as the uneven or faltering performance of its champions
showed, it appears that the center is withering, offering only the
formulations of the past that many see as having produced much of
the inequality and many of the divisions and challenges of today.
During the debates and indeed in recent years, it has been hard
to identify one new "centrist" idea, one new proposal from the center
that better deals with economic insecurity, climate, growth, equity,
education, health, or inclusion. You won't find them in part because
the ideas of the center are so based on compromise, and for most of
the past decade it has been clear, there is no longer a functioning,
constructive right of center group with which to compromise.
Aaron Rupar:
The Democratic debates helped demonstrate the dubiousness of online
polls: "Gabbard and Yang were the big winners -- on Drudge, at
least." Dylan Scott:
Kamala Harris's raised hand reveals the fraught politics of
Medicare-for-all. This refers to one of the more weaselly moments
in the two debates, where the moderators asked for a show of hands of
those who would "abolish private health insurance." The only candidates
who raised their hands were Bill de Blasio, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders,
and Elizabeth Warren. The framing was designed to split the ranks of
Democrats who believe health care should be a universal right, but have
different ideas about how to get that from where we are now: creating
a public option under Obamacare would help, and/or allowing individuals
or various groups to buy into Medicare, are approaches that have broad
support. Moreover, nearly everyone who supports those schemes (and for
that matter who opposes them) believes that a public insurance program
would ultimately drive for-profit private insurance companies out of
the arena, even if they were never explicitly prohibited. But the other
thing that's confusing about the question is that many (if not most)
of the current users of Medicare have private supplemental insurance
policies, which pick up most of the co-payments and shortages that
current Medicare sticks you with. Sanders' plan would fill in those
holes, truly eliminating the need for supplemental insurance, but to
most people the words "Medicare for all" leaves open a role for some
kind of private supplemental insurance. Danny Sjursen:
The Tulsi effect: forcing war onto the Democratic agenda.
Misleading to say "she is the only candidate who has made ending the
wars a centerpiece of her campaign," as several others are leaning
more or less strongly in that direction, but her scrap with Tim Ryan
is worth recounting. I don't give her military background anything
like the special weight she claims. I'd rather people not have to
learn lessons the hard way, but it says something when they do.
The Democratic Party can't escape its own militarism: Mostly on
Beto O'Rourke, who seems to be hitting this theme hard. Sjursen, like
Andrew Bacevich, is an ex-military anti-war conservative, which gives
him some peculiar opinions (like favoring bringing back the draft)
and no sympathy whatsoever for liberal Democrats. I think at least
part of the reason so many of the latter feel so warm and cozy with
veterans is that they're desperately trying to bring back a social
ethic of public service and common good, and they think that the
most undeniable example of that is the people who join the military.
I doubt that's a general rule, but there are people who fit that
bill, and Democrats have been eager to run them for office. David Smith:
No country for old white men: Kamala Harris heralds changing of the
guard. Cute title, but unfair to group Biden and Sanders in the
photo. Harris attacked the former, but held her hand up with Sanders
on the public health care insurance question. I rarely get bent out
of shape when people generalize about "old white men" (or "straight
male Caucasian") but here it ignores the fact that Biden and Sanders
have virtually nothing else in common, and that Sanders has had to
work very hard and overcome a lot of adversity to earn a spot on that
stage (wasn't Biden first inept run for president in 1988?). Even
today he's more likely to be attacked for who he is than anyone else
in the candidate roster (not that anyone makes a point of his being
Jewish). The only reason he didn't make Smith's "standouts" list --
other than prejudice -- is that he's been outstanding for so long
that reporters are starting to take him for granted. Matthew Yglesias:
A quiet Joe Biden debate moment that deserved more attention: "He
cited a bad deal with Mitch McConnell as a legislative success story."
This was the 2012 "fiscal cliff" resolution where the Democrats, with
Biden playing a major role, gave in to making most of the 2001 Bush
tax cuts permanent while cutting spending through a "sequester" and
extending unemployment benefits. Michael Bennet, "one of only two
Senate Democrats to actually vote no on the deal," described it as
"a complete victory for the Tea Party." [PS: I tried looking up the
vote on this, and found 3 D's opposed: Bennett, Carper, and Harkin.
Surprised that Sanders voted yea, after initially filibustering --
his long speech was published in book form as The Speech. Five
R's voted against, including Tea Party favorites Mike Lee and Rand
Paul, not disproving Bennet's characterization so much as reminding
you that even in victory the Tea Party was insatiable.] For more
on this: Ryan Grim:
Joe Biden says he can work with the Senate. The last time he tried,
Mitch McConnell picked his pockets badly. By the way, Grim also wrote:
Joe Biden worked to undermine the Affordable Care Act's coverage of
contraception.
Elizabeth Warren proved she's ready for the big show. Li Zhou:
14 political experts on why the first Democratic debates were
history-making.
You might also find these links useful:
One of my right-wing Facebook friends posted a meme from Fox News
with a picture of Bill de Blasio and a quote: "There's plenty of money
in this world. There's plenty of money in this country, it's just in
the wrong hands. We Democrats have to fix that." Only thing my friend
ever posted that I agreed with, and this time completely. The comments
validated my suspicion that the poster expected readers to react with
horror. I was tempted to comment, or to just give it a big love emoji,
but lost the opportunity.
Beyond the candidates and debates, some scattered links this week:
Josh Barro:
Democrats obsess over health insurers when they should fight doctors and
hospitals. Sure, if it was just about costs, and if you could tackle
the problem on all fronts at once. I often worry that people think that
health care will be fixed as soon as single-payer is implemented, but
that's really just the first step -- the low-lying fruit, expendable
because insurance companies are parasitical obstacles to health care.
On the other hand, lots of countries adopted single-payer insurance
while leaving doctors and hospitals to operate as private businesses,
and all of those countries achieved significant cost savings (at least
relative to previous cost trends). E.g., Switzerland had the second
most expensive health care system in the world (12% of GDP, vs. 14%
for the US at the time) when they implemented single-payer. A decade
later they still had the second most expensive system, but it had
held at 12%, while the US system expanded to gobble up close to 20%
of GDP. Andy Beckett:
The new left economics: how a network of thinkers is transforming
capitalism. Maysam Behravesh:
'Alarm bells': Saudi Arabia's nuclear ambitions cast shadow over the
region. Charles M Blow:
Is Trump a rapist? Miranda Bryant:
Alabama: pregnant woman shot in stomach charged in fetus's death.
Related: Katha Pollitt:
Marshae Jones is proof pro-lifers don't care about life.
Greg Magarian commented on Facebook:
Alabama (1) imposes excessive criminal liability on (2) an African-American
woman for (3) the death of her fetus from (4) shooting by a "law-abiding
gun owner" whom the state isn't charging due to (5) its
stand-your-ground law. Congratulations, Alabama -- you've hit right-wing
lunatic bingo.
Lee Camp:
Trump's military drops a bomb every 12 minutes, and no one is talking
about it. Jonathan Chait:
Trump thinks Putin's attack on 'western-style liberalism' was about
California.
Trump's riff encapsulates the comic and sinister aspects of his political
rise. As demographic change has made the U.S. population more progressive,
Republicans have embraced more authoritarian methods to preserve their
minority rule. . . . But Trump, rather than being grateful for their
efforts to create a rationale for his authoritarianism, is completely
ignorant of them. His contempt for democratic norms is sub-ideological,
a pure product of his narcissistic fear of disobedience and innate belief
in natural hierarchy. He hates democracy deep in his soul, but does not
understand why.
Sahil Chinoy:
What happened to America's political center of gravity? Stephen F Cohen:
Will US elites give détente with Russia a chance? No other piece
I've seen on this meeting got behind the dumb/vile things Trump said
to Putin about election hijinkss and fake news, and Putin's comments
about "Western liberalism." E.g., Fred Kaplan:
Trump's dictator envy isn't funny anymore. Chas Danner:
Laura Tillem took exception to Elizabeth Warren's tweet on Trump's DMZ
meeting. Warren wrote: "Our President shouldn't be squandering American
influence on photo ops and exchanging love letters with a ruthless
dictator. Instead, we should be dealing with North Korea through
principled diplomacy that promotes US security, defends our allies,
and upholds human rights." I'm not so bothered here, because in the
end she does call for principled diplomacy, and I believe that she
could do that if given the chance. I'm a bit bothered by the clichéd
"US security/allies/human rights" litany, but I think she's smart
enough to realize that no human right is as important as avoiding
nuclear war, and the only real way to do that is to reduce conflict
and normalize relations (something that the US has been loathe to
do for nearly 70 years). The first line is more troubling, as it
appears to prejudice the diplomacy against success (something baked
into all previous American negotiation efforts). In particular,
there is nothing diplomatic about referring to Kim as a "ruthless
dictator." The rest is pretty ridiculous: Trump isn't squandering
anything; his schmoozing is a limitless resource, and it's not as
if there's anything better he can do with his time. This is simply
his way of doing diplomacy, and while it's not very constructive
or effective, there's no reason to think that turning it over to
underlings like Mike Pompeo is going to work any better. Trump
can plausibly claim to have made more progress at reducing North
Korea's nuclear threat posture than any of his predecessors,
precisely because he stopped treating Kim with personal contempt
and let himself be seen jerking him off in public. It hasn't been
pretty, but it's a good deed -- practically the only one Trump
can claim. Emma Green:
Imagining post-Trump nationalism: "The small conservative magazine
First Things aims to reclaim what has become a dirty word in the
Trump era." Not clear what that word is -- the first one in quotes is
"bigotry," which doesn't quite seem right, although one could argue that
the point of First Things is to defend the God-given right of
Christian conservatives to attack those they see as unfit and unworthy --
a practice we often describe as bigotry. But then not much comes clear
when conservative intellectuals try to ruminate on their conceits and
prejudices. Mark Hannah/Stephen Wertheim:
Here's one way Democrats can defeat Trump: be radically anti-war.
Jemele Hill:
Megan Rapinoe is on to him, and Trump can't stand it: "In his
rambling screed against the soccer star, the president revealed a
lot about his worldview." Umair Irfan:
113 degrees in France: why Europe is so vulnerable to extreme
heat. Carolyn Kormann:
How rogue Republicans killed Oregon's climate-change bill. Related:
Zoë Carpenter:
Behind Oregon's GOP walkout is a sordid story of corporate cash. Scott Lemieux:
5 takeaways from the Supreme Court's just-ended term: "Liberals
should brace themselves for the next one." George Monbiot:
Shell is not a green saviour. It's a planetary death machine. Gabriel Resto-Montero:
Federal judge blocks new stretch of the US-Mexico border wall. Adam Serwer:
Matthew Yglesias:
Finally, some book reviews/notes:
Ask a question, or send a comment.
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Weekend Roundup
The week's biggest, and most ominous, story was the Trump administration's
decision to launch a "limited" missile attack on Iran, then the reversal
of those orders minutes before execution. Here are some links:
Michael D Shear with others:
Peter Baker/Maggie Haberman/Thomas Gibbons-Neff:
Urged to launch an attack, Trump listened to the skeptics who said it
would be a costly mistake: E.g., Tucker Carlson, who pointed out
that "the same people who lured us into the Iraq quagmire 16 years ago
are demanding a new war, this one with Iran." Zack Beauchamp:
John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are the hawks behind Trump's Iran policy.
Peter Beinart:
Bolton keeps trying to goad Iran into war. Barbara Boland:
Media, war boosters slam Trump for 'chicken' response to Iran: "The
hawks are in their element today, screeching for air strikes and promising
cake walks." Max Boot:
In Iran crisis, our worst fears about Trump are realized. Marjorie Cohn:
Iran had the legal right to shoot down US spy drone. David Ignatius:
Iran must escape the American chokehold before it becomes fatal:
Not someone I look to for sane opinions, but this offers a sense of
how Trump's administration has cornered Iran, leaving their leaders
with few (if any) good options, and thereby ratcheting up pressure
for greater violence. I didn't say "war" there because that implies
that war is a future threat. Ignatius makes clear that the US has
already started war with Iran, but for now is playing a "long game"
by using ever-tightening sanctions to weaken and finally strangle
Iran's leadership. Jen Kirby:
US-Iran standoff: a timeline: Start with Trump's withdrawal from
the Iran nuclear deal on May 8, 2018, and Pompeo's "12 demands for a
new agreement for Iran" (May 21, 2018), and the imposition of a new
round of sanctions, aimed at applying "maximum pressure" to cripple
Iran's economy. Taly Krupkin:
Jim Lobe:
Trump has a $259 million reason to bomb Iran: An accounting of
campaign donations from known Iran hawks. Aaron David Miller/Richard Sokolsky:
Why war with Iran is bad for Trump -- and America. Trita Parsi:
America's confrontation with Iran goes deeper than Trump. Elham Pourtaher:
For Iranians, the war has already begun: "In Iran, US sanctions
are producing a level of suffering comparable to that of wartime." Jason Rezaian:
Iran is outmatched in its latest game of rhetorical chicken. But it
might be too late. Greg Sargent:
Trump's Iran reversal exposes one of his most dangerous lies. Matt Taibbi:
Next contestant, Iran: Meet America's permanent war formula. Michael G Vickers:
To avoid a wider war, Iran must be deterred with limited US military
strikes: Argues that Trump should be ordering more air strikes,
citing Reagan in the late-1980s as an example of forceful deterrence
(e.g., shooting down civilian Iranian airliners). Anya van Wagtendonk:
Trump called off a military strike against Iran. The US targeted its
computer systems instead. Contrast this with
Iranian cyberattacks against the US are on the rise. Both sides
at least given some consideration to consequences when it comes to
shooting off missiles. Iran, for example, stressed than when they
shot down a US drone, they allowed a manned aircraft accompanying
it to pass safely. But neither side seems to worry about cyberwar
turning into full-scale war. That strikes me as reckless ignorance:
the fact is we know very little about the risks and consequences of
attacking and terrorizing computer networks. It also seems pretty
obvious that when the US attacks Iran, Russia, China, and others,
the response will be counterattacks against civilian computers. As
no one has more potential targets for cyberattacks, cyberwarfare
puts Americans at far greater risk than anyone else. Given this,
you would think that it would be in the interest of most Americans
to negotiate protocols against cyberwarfare, but the war planners
can't think that far ahead. They'd rather just press what they see
as carefree advantages, regardless of future blowback.
After cancelling a retaliatory strike on Iran, Trump warns: "If they
do something else, it'll be double". Andrew Ward:
Why Iran is fighting back against Trump's maximum pressure campaign:
Interview with Afshon Ostovar.
Iran shoots down US military drone, increasing risk of war: Update
of the previously unreported story: "US flies military drones over Iran,
increasing risk of war."
9 questions about the US-Iran standoff you were too embarrassed to ask:
The questions aren't that unreasonable, although the answers could be
sharper. Ward is only partly right that the run-up to war against Iran
is different from Iraq. With Iraq, Bush led the propaganda campaign
from the top, with his entire administration in lockstep, and they had
very ambitious goals of invading, seizing power, and reconstructing
Iraq under US control. Under Trump, the pro-war faction is smaller and,
of necessity, more furtive and disingenuous. They haven't articulated
clear goals (least of all a plan to invade and seize power -- Iran is,
after all, a much more daunting target than Iraq and Afghanistan, and
neither of those adventures are remembered as successes). Their more
limited goal has been to sow discord and cultivate enmity, applying
pressure to increase tension and provoke reaction in the hope that
incidents like we've seen this past week will convince Trump to
escalate hostilities.
Trump plans to nominate Mark Esper, a former combat veteran and lobbyist,
as Pentagon boss: "He was a former classmate of Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo [at West Point]." And, more recently, a lobbyist for Raytheon,
and continues as an advocate of high-tech weapons systems aimed at China
and Russia. Brett Wilkins:
The exceptionally American historical amnesia behind Pompeo's claim of '40
years of unprovoked Iranian aggression'. Robin Wright:
What will follow Trump's cancelled strike on Iran? Ardeshir Zahedi/Ali Vaez:
The US should strive for a stable Iran. Instead, it is suffocating it.
Some scattered links this week:
Zeeshan Aleem:
Benjamin Netanyahu just unveiled Israel's newest town: "Trump Heights".
Peter Baker/Maggie Haberman:
Trump campaign to purge pollsters after leak of dismal results. Alexia Fernández Campbell:
Congress has set the record for longest stretch without a minimum wage
increase. Igor Derysh:
Joe Biden to rich donors: "Nothing would fundamentally change" if he's
elected. Glynnis Fawkes:
Nineteenth-century novels, with better birth control. Tara Golshan:
Bernie Sanders's free college proposal just got a whole lot bigger:
"Sanders wants to cancel all student loan debt."
Are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders the same? The debate, explained.
Not all that satisfactorily, but the two candidates offer a lesson in how
distinct political traditions can converge on similar answers given our
current set of political and economic problems. Early in the 20th century,
people who thought that the system had to be changed could be divided up
as progressives and socialists. (The populist party pre-dates this split,
and had elements that went both ways, but isn't a very useful distinction
these days. Later liberals liked to malign populists as bigots, which is
why the term is sometimes applied to bigots like Trump today, who lack
any affinity to populism.) With her focus on expanding the middle class
and her near-obsession with policy reforms, Warren fits pretty clearly
into the progressive tradition. Sanders, on the other hand, identifies
with the working class, and still likes the idea of revolution (always
qualified as "political" -- i.e., non-violent). Still, the practical
effect of either winning is likely to be very similar, both because
they agree on the key problems (much more equality, an end to war),
and because their scope will be limited by more conservative Democrats
in Congress. I should probably add that within this household, Warren
is deemed less trustworthy on war and the military -- she did, after
all, vote for Trump's military spending increase -- which is something
that presidents have a lot of leeway to act directly on. Golshan doesn't
see that much of a gulf there but, well, this is something we're pretty
sensitive to. Umair Irfan:
Rebecca Jennings:
Taylor Swift's "You Need to Calm Down" wants to be a queer anthem. It
also wants to sell you something. You might find the video link
inspiring, or at least amusing. I noted the "Get a Brain Moran" sign --
a thought I've had before, although to be fair the Jr. Senator from KS
has more on top than most of his caucus (e.g., just voted against arms
sales to Saudi Arabia). Sarah Jones:
E. Jean Carroll: "Trump attacked me in the dressing room of Bergdorf
Goodman." He's just one of many featured in Carroll's
My list of hideous men. Related: Anna North:
E. Jean Carroll isn't alone. That matters. Also: Laura McGann:
Donald Trump is trying to gaslight us on E. Jean Carroll's account of
rape. Ed Kilgore:
Jen Kirby:
Sam Knight:
The empty promise of Boris Johnson: A portrait: "The man expected
to be Britain's next Prime Minister makes people in power, including
himself, appear ridiculous, but that doesn't mean he'd dream of handing
power to anybody else." Hard to believe that whoever wrote that line
wasn't also thinking of Trump, who may not be as sui generis as he'd
like to think. Article mentions that Johnson is one of ten candidates
in the race for Conservative Party leader. That field has been reduced
to two now: Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, with Johnson still heavily favored.
[PS: Or maybe not: Rebecca Mead:
Will Boris Johnson's "late-night altercation" sink his bid to become
Prime Minister?. Ari Kohen:
The GOP doesn't actually care if you call them 'concentration camps':
"This bad faith criticism isn't based on a great deal of care for the
feelings of Jews or a deep understanding of the Holocaust." Related:
Caitlin Dickerson:
'There is a stench': no soap and overcrowding in detention centers for
migrant children. Isaac Chotiner:
Inside a Texas building where the government is holding immigrant
children Masha Gessen:
The unimaginable reality of American concentration camps. Anna Lind-Guzik:
I'm a Jewish historian. Yes, we should call border detention centers
"concentration camps." EJ Montini:
Joe Arpaio ran a self-proclaimed 'concentration camp' for years. Where
was GOP outrage? Andrea Pitzer:
'Some suburb of Hell': America's new concentration camp system. Peter Beinart:
AOC's generation doesn't presume America's innocence, where he
notes that "for the first time in decades, the left is mounting a
serious challenge to American exceptionalism." He admits that the
1960s new left did that too, even citing Noam Chomsky's 1969 book
American Power and the New Mandarins, but he doesn't seem
to have registered that Chomsky has written
more than 100 books since then. [PS: for his latest, see
Noam Chomsky: The real election meddling isn't coming from Russia.]
While the Vietnam War did much
to make Americans aware that their government habitually lied about
its good intentions and covered up its misdeeds, even then one could
not avoid awareness that the government had systematically oppressed
Native Americans and African-Americans ever since the first Europeans
arrived, or that the US had waged brutal wars of conquest against
Mexico and the Philippines. Indeed, the historiography on all of
these issues has grown steadily since the 1960s. Beinart's assertion
only makes sense if, like him, you assume that the leading lights of
"the left" in recent decades were the "liberal interventionists" of
the Clinton and Obama administrations: people like Madeline Albright,
Samantha Power, and Beinart himself (temporarily, at least, as when
he wrote his first book, The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only
Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror). Between Vietnam and the
War on Terror, many Americans worked hard to forget their "barbaric"
past (as Beinart quotes George McGovern putting it), which is what
allowed the Clintons and Obama to try to reclaim the lost moral high
ground. That those claims increasingly ring hollow is not just because
the left has resurfaced as a force that can be talked about. It's also
because the right, especially since Cheney started bragging about
"taking the gloves off," has become perversely proud of American
atrocities. Eric Levitz:
10 takeaways from the Times' interview with 21 Democratic
candidates: My takeaway from the article is "Elizabeth Warren is
definitely to the right of Sanders on foreign policy." David Lightman/Ben Wieder:
Trump states and rural areas grab bigger chunk of transportation grant
funds: Something reassuring about this bit of old fashioned pork
barrel politics. I don't even mind the increased rural road funding,
although the cuts elsewhere probably affect more people. PR Lockhart:
Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates gives Mitch McConnell a thorough history lesson
on reparations. Related:
Here's what Ta-Nehisi Coates told Congress about reparations. Lili Loofbourow:
The genius of Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Sanders didn't just defend the president from the effects of his own
statements; she offered herself as a kind of prosaic presence whose
function it was to act like anything Trump did, no matter how shocking,
was no big deal. She exemplified the stolid approval Trump wanted for
everything from family separations to tax cuts for the rich. As her
tenure ends, we can now see how much her reliance on reassuring phrases
like "make a determination" -- and unblinkingly calling lies differences
of opinion and hush payments not worth discussing -- provided a kind of
muted laugh track to the terrible show being forced upon America. Rather
than laugh at unfunny jokes, she loyally normalized despicable conduct.
David Nakamura/Holly Bailey:
'There's no accountability': Trump, White House aides signal a willingness
to act with impunity in drive for reelection. Ella Nilsen:
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders had 2 very different answers to Trump's
official 2020 campaign launch. Alex Pareene:
Give War a Chance: "In search of the Democratic Party's fighting
spirit." Title is a sick joke -- Democrats have given war plenty of
chances, and for a long while counted warmaking as one of their "core
competencies" (as the MBA's like to put it). Subtitle is closer to
the intended mark, but I still don't care for the imagery. (Fittingly,
Elizabeth Warren, author of books like A Fighting Chance and
This Fight Is Our Fight, is featured in the graphic.) What
should be clearer is that Democrats need to find and stick to some
principles ("worth fighting for" is a cliché hard to avoid here),
instead of always trying to broker compromises with an opposing
party that seeks nothing less than abject surrender. Pareene makes
Biden out to be the poster boy for gutless, guileless surrender --
a task that Biden himself made easier last week in touting his
ability to "work with" rabid racists like James Eastland and Herman
Talmadge (see
Jeffrey St. Clair for "a taste of the rhetorical stylings of
James Eastland"; he also quotes a Biden "love letter" thanking
Eastland for his help "to bring my ANTIBUSING legislation to a
vote"). Kelsey Piper:
Death by algorithm: the age of killer robots is closer than you think.
Andrew Prokop:
Frances Robles/Jim Rutenberg:
The evangelical, the 'pool boy,' the comedian and Michael Cohen:
How Jerry Falwell Jr. fell in love with Donald Trump. Aja Romano:
Curtis Flowers was tried 6 times for the same crime. The Supreme court
just reversed his conviction. Related: Jeffrey Toobin:
Clarence Thomas's astonishing opinion on a racist Mississippi
prosecutor. Aaron Rupar:
Timothy Smith:
How Republicans stopped worrying about the right to vote: "The GOP
launched a four-pronged plan in 2008 to undercut the American tenet of
'one person, one vote.' We're now entering the final phase." Tierney Sneed:
Will a Trump trade move create an election mess for overseas US voters?
That's actually just one aspect of Trump plans to withdraw from the Universal
Postal Union. William Spriggs:
We're less prepared for the next recession than we were for the last:
You may recall that the economy entered a steep decline early in the 2008
recession very similar to the one in 1929, but unlike the Great Depression,
the free-fall was stopped by "automatic stabilizers" like the unemployment
compensation system that saved many families from ruin. Those automatic
stabilizers have not been maintained during the post-2008 austerity, and
that will let the next collapse hit even harder. Matt Stieb:
Six takeaways from Hope Hicks's House Judiciary testimony: One I
believe is "Hicks said Trump's 'Russia, if you're listening' line was
a joke." Matt Taibbi:
Trump kicks off re-election campaign: Get ready for 'Billionaire Populist
II: The Sequel'. David Wallace-Wells:
Disaster upon disaster: Sample paragraph, relatively close to home
(and by no means the most harrowing):
Last month, in the Midwest, 500 tornadoes swept through the region in
just 30 days -- an average of 20 every day. The region is still underwater
from historic flooding earlier in this spring, with some places deluged
by seven feet of water and others issuing multiple disaster declarations
in a single week. The Mississippi River has been flooding for three
straight months; in Baton Rouge, the river rose past "flood stage" the
first week of the year, according to Weather.com, 'and has been above
that threshold ever since." In March, major flooding began in Iowa,
Missouri, and Nebraska -- and in Nebraska alone, damages are expected
to reach $1.3 billion. The whole Midwest, the New York Times wrote, "has
been drowning," and farmers are so far behind in their planting -- with
only a fraction of corn and soybean crops actually in the ground -- that
the whole year's harvest is in peril.
Li Zhou:
Felt like making a rare political
tweet today (tortured
into fitting their character count limit, depending heavily on the
reader's "cultural literacy"):
Another way Trump isn't Hitler: you can't imagine the latter
announcing then postponing Kristallnacht two weeks. Real fascists made
the trains run on time. Poseurs and wannabes flirt with evil, then
make nice, like "good people on both sides." Vile, at least.
Other tweets I felt like saving:
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