Speaking of* [90 - 99]

Sunday, March 5, 2023

Speaking of Which

I made some comments about a couple of these pieces back in Monday's Music Week, so I'm revisiting them below (Linker on DeSantis, Babbage on China, neither piece recommended but they expose thinking that needs to be shot down. One piece I do recommend you check out is Spencer Ackerman's.

So I got an early start, but still found myself running out of time and patience. Plus ça change, plus c'est le même chose.

Top story threads:

CPAC: Initials stand for Conservative Political Action Conference, which used to be an annual meeting of the luminaries of the political right, but is increasingly seen as a circus side show -- a transformation which suits Trump fine. But also note that the Koch network's Club for Growth is holding their own confab at the same time, and is easily the bigger draw for Republicans looking for big donor money.

DeSantis, Trump, etc.: Trump went to CPAC, so his speech there tends to land above, while his general inanity (much in evidence in the speech) belongs here.

Inflation: Fed chairman Jerome Powell may or may not be looking at the mixed bag of inflation stats, but seeing employment remain robust still believes we haven't suffered enough.

  • Dean Baker: [02-25] Is Inflation Out of Control, Again?

  • Mike Konczal: [02-28] How the US can stick the landing, beat inflation, and avoid a recession.

  • Paul Krugman: [03-03] Peering Through the Fog of Inflation: And not seeing very much, I'm afraid. He argues that the picture is so unsettled that all the Fed can do is keep raising interest rates. But short of inducing a recession (and causing widespread misery), how does raising interest rates lower inflation?

  • Seth Ackerman: [02-27] Why Joan Robinson Blamed Unions for Inflation While Milton Friedman Did Not: Interesting article on economic theory in a past world -- one where unions exerted significant power over wages and prices, in part because corporations were every bit as concentrated -- although the irony isn't especially important. The residue is that central bankers from Volcker to Powell are stuck in a mindset that blames wages for inflation. The real problem may be that everyone has their own distinct hammer: for unions it is the power to raise wages; for companies, to increase prices; and for bankers, the tool manipulates interest rates, allowing it to suppress employment. In this framework, it is impossible for workers to achieve real wage gains, because each step up will be undercut by the pricing power of firms and interest controls of the bankers.

Israel: Benjamin Netanyahu has presided over right-wing governments in the late 1990s and for most of the last 15 years, but we need a new term for this one, so how about ultra-right? (After the peculiarly Israeli ultra-orthodox, who provide much of the ultra-right's support.) Back during the height of the Sharon anti-intifada, someone asked me what I thought the likelihood of Israel committing genocide was. I thought chances were very small then, but they've obviously increased considerably in the last 20 years (let's say 2% then, more like 20% now, but those are the sort of numbers I'd assign to Germany in 1923 and 1932; and the word "genocide" is a very high bar: the atrocities of the last few weeks are roughly comparable to the first wave of Nazi assaults on Jews, so admitting that it's not genocide yet in no way excuses what's happening).

Of course, whatever Israel does will wind up being different from what Nazi Germany did, or from any of the other well known cases. It's become commonplace to liken Israel's caste system to Apartheid, but one difference stands out: both regimes brutally suppresses any sign of political dissent, but South Africa (like the "Jim Crow" South) still depended on cheap black labor, so there was an economic brake that kept state-sanctioned violence from escalating to genocide. On the other hand, Israel's doctrine of "Hebrew Labor" (which dates back to Ben Gurion in the 1930s) makes Palestinian labor dispensible. For an increasing number of Israelis, the final solution is to drive all Palestinians into exile (as many were in 1947-49, in 1967, and in smaller numbers ever since). A major focus of the new ultra-right government is to strip Israeli Arabs of their citizenship rights and force them into exile, so the mechanisms for massive "ethnic cleansing" are quickly being put into place.

The fundamental logic of expulsion and/or extermination has been baked into Zionism from the beginning, but it's always been tempered by the understanding that Israel is a small country, dependent on the US and Europe for good will and protection, so Israelis took pains to cushion and minimize their frequent atrocities and affronts to public opinion. However, a series of US administrations (you can start with Clinton, who was chummy with the Labor governments, or Bush, who gave it all up to Sharon) have abdicated any possible oversight role, leaving Israelis free to indulge their worst impulses. Ironically, Biden seems even more completely under Israel's thumb than Trump, even as many Democrats are horrified by the ultra-right regime. (Republicans were quicker to recognize Israel as racist, militarist, and fanatically fundamentalist, because those are traits they want America to embrace.)

Of course, the real problem with genocide as a final solution in Israel isn't that the world will object and recognize Israel as a pariah state (although there's a movement to do that), or that the Israelis themselves will develop a conscience (although some have), but that there are just too damn many Palestinians. That's always been the problem. Settler colonies have succeeded only in places where the numbers favored them (America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina). They failed where the settlers weren't able to muster majorities (South Africa, Algeria, lots more). Israel has always been the borderline test case, and while sometimes they appear to have won, their refusal to grant Palestinians rights to coinhabit their territory keeps their project in peril. In recent years, Palestinians have put their faith in mobilizing international sentiment to their cause, and as such have avoided returning to the violence of the second intifada. Israel, on the other hand, appears convinced that the best way to sway the world is to provoke an armed uprising. As the final solution approaches, that will surely happen. We should prepare ourselves for that eventuality, and make sure that blame is accorded properly.

Ukraine War: The St Clair piece, above, includes excerpts from the Biden and Putin war anniversary speech, which are highly revelatory.

  • Blaise Malley: [03-01] Diplomacy Watch: Is this India's moment on the world stage -- as mediator? Grasping at straws, as neither side feels they can admit they did anything wrong, or compromise in any way.

  • Ellen Ioanes: [02-26] Here's what arming Ukraine could look like in the future: "France, Germany, and the UK proposed a new defense plan -- that might be a subtle bid for peace negotiations." Russia's invasion of Ukraine has made it practically impossible to consider dismantling NATO. However, the NATO-backed defense of Ukraine suggests a reform posture that could be better than NATO: the Western nations promise to provide very substantial arms and economic support to repel a Russian invasion, as has happened in Ukraine, but don't require key elements of NATO membership that make the organization appear provocative: no NATO troops would be stationed in the client country (as is the case with Ukraine), the client's troops would not be deployed in other NATO members, and would not be obligated to come to the common defense. This isn't exactly what the troika are proposing, but represents an intermediate position between full NATO membership and neutrality.

  • Tamar Jacoby: [02-22] After Biden's Visit to Kyiv, Ukrainians Welcome US Aid but Plead for More: Zelensky's appetite for arms seems insatiable. After Russia's strategic retreats southeast of Kharkiv and around Kherson, Zelensky seems to have concluded that the only thing holding Ukraine back from driving Russia back to their pre-2014 borders is the need for more arms. At least that's an argument that appeals to Washington, but it's probably unrealistic. Russian defense is likely to become more committed (and desperate) as Ukrainian forces approach pre-2022 borders, where they'd be fighting on home ground (assuming Russian majorities in Crimea and Donbas haven't had a change of heart, which seems like a safe assumption). Moreover, while the supply of arms from the west can well continue indefinitely (assuming US/Europe are still interested in protracting the fight), Ukrainian soldiers are a finite resource, one likely to be depleted faster than the much larger Russia. Moreover, motivation, which was so critical in the defense of Kyiv and Kharkiv, shifts the closer the lines get to Russia. There is also a whole meta-level to the arms requests, not least the excuses they offer for failures. If Ukraine stalls, they can always blame the west for holding back. As failure is by far the most likely outcome of any war, one can view the interchanges as an elaborate blame-shifting operation. In the end, that's all there will be.

  • Christopher Mott: [03-03] Tell me how this ends: If recent history is a guide, not with a knockout blow: "Maximalists look at WWII and think the Ukraine war can take a similar path." It's hard to see how anyone can even imagine such a thing. The insistence on "unconditional surrender" was a consequence of fighting "total wars." The Ukraine War is devastating, but it is also contained within the pre-2014 border of Ukraine (aside from minor, deniable sabotage within Russia; I'm not aware of any similar sabotage in NATO countries). Total war became unthinkable with the advent of nuclear weapons. What I think the maximalists are aiming for here is more like the endings of WWI, when first Russia and then Germany capitulated not so much due to battlefield losses as to popular upheavals against the war governments. (The only similar case in WWII was in Italy, but Germany moved quickly to keep Italy from surrender.) There are certainly Americans who imagine the Russians removing Putin from office, then surrendering. That strikes me as unlikely, but I also have to caution against the lop-sided surrender terms of Russia and Germany in WWI, which may have seemed like a good deal at the time, but led fairly directly to further wars.

    As for Mott's other examples, one fact that stands out in my mind is that neither the US nor the USSR felt they could allow client-state conflicts to fester (especially the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, which were ended -- if not exactly resolved -- within 1-3 weeks). On the other hand, we don't have a superpower (even China) who can bully the US and/or Russia into seeing sense, so we're stuck waiting for Biden and Putin to chill out. That wait has already been a long one.

Other stories:

Spencer Ackerman: [03-05] The Iraq War Unleashed an Age of Grift. We're Still Living in It: "This month marks the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, a giant con that heralded a thousand more." Jim Mattis and Elizabeth Holmes are threads in a broad mosaic:

Obviously, fraud in America didn't begin with the invasion of Iraq. The country that gave the world P.T. Barnum, Ivan Boesky, junk-bond king Michael Milken, and Trump (who pardoned Milken) is no innocent babe constantly committing well-meaning blunders. Iraq belongs in a lineage of wars, American and otherwise, waged on false pretexts, from President Polk's 1846 lie that "American blood has been shed on American soil" to invade Mexico . . . to the inciting Gulf of Tonkin non-event in Vietnam.

Ross Babbage: [02-27] A War With China Would Be Unlike Anything Americans Faced Before: Unfortunately, this article doesn't do a very good job of explaining why -- although he has some fanciful ideas of how China might fight, he misses lots of things, including basic strategy. Worse, he insists "building a stronger deterrence by addressing such weaknesses is the best means of averting war." Deterrence is a fine theory if neither side has any desire to fight the other, as was the case in the Cold War, but it's just daring otherwise, and mistake-prone. Israel, for instance, has used its nuclear deterrence as a shield for low-grade offensive operations against Syria and Iran, confident that isolated, infrequent acts of war won't be reciprocated. Deterrence has limited the war in Ukraine, but didn't keep Russia from invading, and won't force it to withdraw. And if deterrence has worked so poorly against Russia, what about a far stronger opponent like China, where the theory cuts both ways? That's unknown, unfathomable territory?

Liza Featherstone: [02-27] Here's Proof That Gas Stoves Are Overrated: "As the end of a study that gave people induction stoves to try, not a single person wanted their gas stove back." I grew up with a gas stove, but have lived in several places with electrics, and managed to cook some pretty good dinners on the latter -- including Chinese, which really demands the ability to raise and lower the heat dramatically (something electrics cannot do, although induction electrics are better in that regard). So when we remodeled the kitchen in 2008, I shopped around seriously. At the time there was a trend in high-end stoves for gas burners on top and an electric oven -- they were called "dual-fuel ranges." I also read a bit about induction ranges, which had just came out, but I gave them little consideration, partly because I understood that I'd have to buy new cookware (and I was very happy with what I had). So I wound up spending $5,000 on a 36-inch, 6-burner Capital, plus a couple thousand more on a range hood and a second oven (an LG electric -- I was originally considering a warming oven, but got a good deal on a full-size wall unit).

It turns out that I mostly use the electric oven, although the gas is good for large roasts, and the broiler is better. No complaints about the gas range top, other than that it takes a fair amount of work to keep it clean. If there's an air pollution problem, that's never been evident -- although since this controversy flared up, I'm more conscientious about running the hood fan. Since then, I've read good things about induction stoves, and can well see this article's claims being true. If I was redoing the kitchen now, I may wind up making the same choices, but I'd certainly consider induction. (That clean glass top is attractive.) If I were building new houses or apartments, I probably would go electric. But it's no big deal being a bit out of step with the world. Some years back, there was a big push to get people to switch from incandescent to compact fluorescent light bulbs, and there was an idiot backlash against the change. Still, it wasn't long before LED bulbs made compact fluorescents obsolete, and there was hardly any controversy about that. As it happens, we have all three types around the house. The world may change fast, but most of us tend to lag behind.

Kurt Hackbarth: [03-04] No, AMLO Is Not Undermining Mexican Democracy. The last couple weeks have seen a sudden propaganda tirade to scratch Mexico off the list of the world's democracies. Similar broadsides have occurred whenever America's self-appointed guardians of democracy have taken offense at a world leader who has proven insufficiently pliable for global business interests. So it's not easy to get some straight reporting on the subject. For another case where the propaganda got way ahead of the horse:

Richard Heinberg: [03-03] Why News of Population Decline and Economic Slowdown Isn't Necessarily a Bad Thing. Long ago, I read Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, and it's had a long impact on my thinking, even as I came to realize that much of his argument was wrong. The thing he's most often faulted for is not realizing that technology (especially the "green revolution") would create resources that could support much more population. But a bigger error was in his assumption that resource usage would scale with population increase, or conversely that people would all get relatively equal shares of resources. Even then it should have been obvious that resource distribution was extremely inequal, so he was depending on a liberal political reform that never happened. But what brought this home to me was a chart that showed China's population approaching a plateau, while Chinese use of materials and energy continued a steep rise. What happened was that Chinese got richer, and that effect was all the more dramatic because they didn't have all those extra people to support. The most interesting part of this piece is that virtually every nation with a declining population "is seeing stable or rising wages and historic lows in unemployment." Brad DeLong's Slouching Towards Utopia makes this same point, even more globally. Heinberg sees this as a shift to a post-growth economy, and wonders whether China will handle it better than the rest of us.

Jake Johnson: [03-02] 'Time to End the Greed': Sanders Vows Bill to Cap Price of Insulin at $20 Per Vial: After having raised insulin prices "up by over 1000% since 1996," Eli Lilly got a lot of good press last week for pledging to "cut the list prices of its most commonly used insulin products by 70%." This explains why, and why that isn't enough.

Dylan Matthews: [03-01] Joe Biden is pretty good at being president. He should run again. Well, he's been better than I expected (although I'm not very happy with his foreign policy, where he seems to have married the blob, while gently applying the brakes against its worst excesses). He's supported generally progressive legislation. He's avoided appointing some of the Party's worst neoliberal hacks (especially economists who did so much damage to Obama's administration). Still, it doesn't automatically follow that he should run for a second term. Age is the obvious problem: he was gaffe-prone in his 30s, but past 80 every slip up is going to pounced on as a sign of dementia. The Democratic Party could use a leader who can articulate a vision, and he's not really up to that. On the other hand, the question isn't whether he can hang on for another 4-5 years -- that's what the VP and cabinet are for.

The real question is: can he win in 2024? I'm not particularly worried about the election itself -- any Republican will be a fat target that any Democrat should be able to overcome. The real problem is that an open primary will pit the progressives against the neoliberals, and the latter (e.g., Mike Bloomberg and whoever he tabs as his billion-dollar proxy) hate the left even more than they fear Republicans. Biden bridges that gap better than I imagined he could. Still, someone needs to solve his crisis-prone foreign policy. Democrats will be easily preferable on the economy, on rights, on freedom, but they can't afford to be viewed as the globalist war party. Biden needs to settle the Ukraine War, and to reach some accommodation with China. And fixing easily solvable standoffs with North Korea and Iran would be a plus. Some balance on Israel is probably too much to ask for, especially as the current regime seems to be intent on provoking a third intifada, confident that will provide a pretext for massive collective punishment.

Ian Millhiser:

Kim Phillips-Fein: [02-27] The Betrayal of Adam Smith: "How conservatives made him their icon and distorted his ideas." Review of Glory M Liu: Adam Smith's America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism.

Brittany Shammas/Maham Javaid: [03-05] Another Norfolk Southern train details in Ohio.

Maxwell Strachan: [02-21] Companies Can't Ask You to Shut Up to Receive Severance, NLRB Rules: This is good news, but you have to wonder that companies ever thought they had the authority to enforce it. If "freedom of speech" is to mean anything, it has to cover the right to dis a company that did you wrong.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, February 26, 2023

Speaking of Which

Started early, with the Bobert tweet at the bottom, then the Wirestone piece I picked up from Facebook, because I doubted I'd be able to find them come weekend. Then found Responsible Statecraft's anniversary series on Ukraine (starting with the Kinzer piece), and I was off and running. Also note the mini-essay following the MJT nonsense. I've contemplated collecting a few dozen such ideas under an old Paul Goodman title, Utopian Essays & Practical Proposals. Although it would take a constitutional amendment, this is one of the practical ones.

[PS: Added a couple minor notes on Feb. 27. I should add that the Wichita Eagle's top front page story today was Josef Federman: Israeli settlers rampage after Palestinian gunman kills 2 in West Bank. It's important to stress that this is not a single event, occasioned by a single event. Israeli settlers have been attacking Palestinians with more/less impunity for years now, including in the days leading up to the two settlers being killed. The change since the last election is that settlers who have gotten away with crimes against Palestinians in the past have now been elected to the government, and are using their position to encourage further attacks. For another report, see: Israeli settlers rampage through Palestinian towns in revenge for shooting. When officials incited Russian mobs to attack Jews in Tsarist Russia, the massacres were called Pogroms. The same word is completely appropriate here. The only thing new about the "new government" is that they're making no effort to hide or to sanitize their virulence. Hence, even in Wichita people who once admired and supported Israel are now getting a glimpse of just what the cult of Zionism has become.]

Top story threads:

Trump, DeSantis, et al.: Slow week for Trump, while he's awaiting the Georgia indictments. Meanwhile, DeSantis is pranking as usual, and a couple minor figures have entered the 2024 race.

Marjorie Taylor Greene's National Divorce: Her terminology may have been influenced by having just divorced her husband of 29 years. While I wouldn't presume that her divorce was amicable, it was certainly a lot simpler and cleaner than dividing the Federal Government between Red and Blue States -- especially given that said government has a trillion dollar military operating all around the world, with enough firepower to destroy the world many times over. Given that virtually every nation that has/has been divided has done so in war (including the US in the 1860s), the risk is off the charts.

Greene defends her proposal by saying, "Everyone I talk to says this." Obviously, her circle of acquaintances doesn't amount to much. It clearly excludes the 40% or so Democrats in Red States who would be stranded, including majorities in nearly every actual city. It also ignores Republicans who realize that they're much better off in the United States than they would be in the third-world dystopia that Republican policies lead to -- a contrast that will only grow as Democrats gain effective power in the Blue States, finally free of the dead weight of the Red. (Even now, the Federal government sends considerably more money to Red States than it collects in taxes, a net transfer that presumably would end with division.)

So the first thing that needs to be said about her proposal is that there's no reason to take it seriously. It has no political support beyond the small and delusional right-wing faction that Greene has become the public voice of, and a similarly small faction of the left who are sick and tired of Republican obstruction when we are faced with problems that require bold and imaginative action.

Speaking of which, I've had this idea kicking around for a while, on how to restructure Congress so it actually represents virtually all of the American people (instead of a bare majority, mostly selected by a tiny slice of donors). The idea is that within any congressional district, the top two (or possibly more) vote getters would be elected, with the district's vote a fraction, according to how many votes each candidate received. You could sweeten the pot a bit and round the winner up to a percentage point, and the second (and lesser) votegetters down, so the winner of a close race might get 0.51 votes, and the loser 0.49. But the first big advantage of this system would be that 100% of voters would have an elected representative, whereas under the current system, as many as 49% might not.

There are other advantages. Gerrymanders would cease to matter, because all they would do is shift fractional votes from one district to another. This also significantly reduces the importance (payback) of money in elections. Third parties would complicate things, but not that much. It would matter little whether districts got larger or smaller than at present. You could also calculate vote weights based not on percentages but on actual votes, so districts with high turnout would be better served than ones with low turnout. You could also use actual votes to deal with grossly unequal districts, such as states represented in the Senate. (Which would solve that problem, although eliminating the Senate would also work.)

Israel: I wanted to comment on the Parsi article, then found Beinart, then created a section, which (as usual) snowballed. Elsewhere I offer two definitions of "forever war," but Israel suggests a third: a war that you protract endlessly because you're less interested in the goal than the process. This is practicable only when your enemy is incapable of hitting back effectively. As such, this process resembles hunting more than it does war:

Ukraine War: The one-year anniversary of Russia's Feb. 24, 2022 invasion is bringing out a lot of rear-view mirror gazing, as well as fresh rounds of bluster from Messrs. Biden, Putin, and Zelensky. I pretty much said my piece on this war, or at least its historical context, in my 23 Theses piece back on April 19, but I add to a few of those points below, and reiterate most of them. It is important to stress that one year ago, despite a vast history fraught with errors and atrocities on every side, one person could have prevented this war from happening: Vladimir Putin. But a year later, responsibility for continuing the war largely rests on his opposite counterpart, Joe Biden. I fear he isn't up to the task (although I worry more about the company he keeps).

  • Connor Echols: [02-24] Diplomacy Watch: China's peace plan draws mixed reactions: China presented a proposal, which Zelensky at least had the good sense not to reject out of hand (unlike the US). Echols also wrote: [02-21] How the Ukraine war helped the arms trade go boom.

  • Gregory Afinogenov: [02-24] Peace in Ukraine Isn't Coming Soon: Something here that you rarely (if ever) read elsewhere concerns the internal restructuring of Ukraine to make it more neoliberal, i.e., a better investment for Europe and America. On the other hand, limiting speech and banning parties isn't a particularly good look for Team Democracy. Better known is how Russia has become more repressive.

  • Daniel Bessner: [02-23] How the war in Ukraine has challenged left-wing restrainers. One of the more problematic pieces this week from the Quincy Institute's Responsible Statecraft, where the idea that the US should exercise considerable restraint in dealing with the world is foundational -- while the website appeals to both left and right, the focus on restraint is intrinsically conservative (even when mouthed by Obama as "don't do stupid shit"). To refer to "left restrainers" is not only infelicitous, it also shortchanges the diversity of opinion on the left. Aside from left-rooted converts to massive armed support for Ukraine (like Bernie Sanders aide Matt Duss, who figures so large in this article -- partly because Bessner's definition of the left is tied to the Sanders campaign -- that if lefties had to have licenses, his would be suspended), I can count at least four left-oriented position groups: the pacifists (Medea Benjamin might be an example), who see all warring sides as wrong, even if they have trouble figuring out how to disengage them; the international law visionaries (Phyllis Bennis is prominent here); advocates of international solidarity (deriving from the old communist left, where the solution to war is revolution by workers on both sides; I don't have a prominent current example); and the anti-imperialists, who see Zelensky as a tool of the same old imperialism, and therefore hope that Putin can thwart the west (Max Blumenthal is an example; if I could, I'd suspend the licenses of this group as well). And, of course, there are hybrids and in-betweeners as well. I draw on all four, but I don't see how the first three allow one any measure of sympathy or support for Putin.

  • Eli Clifton: [02-24] Ukraine War is great for the portfolio, as defense stocks enjoy a banner year: "The top five US weapons firms outperformed major Wall Street indexes in the last year, mostly on the backs of American taxpayers."

  • Andrew Cockburn: [02-22] We were promised 'economic shock and awe' against Russia: "But one year after its brutal invasion of Ukraine, Moscow looks poised to weather the worst of Western sanctions." Just last week Biden was talking about new, even more crippling sanctions. But one clear lesson from the last year is that sanctions have had minimal impact on Russia. Nor is there any reason to expect that further sanctions will make any difference. I was skeptical a year ago, and even more so now. But while sanctions have a miserably poor record of motivating desired political behavior, the one thing they really do is express the desire to hurt a country. So not only did they fail to end the war; they continue to give Russians a reason to fight on.

  • Jonathan Guyer: [02-21] Biden and Putin's dueling speeches show why the end of the Ukraine war is a long way off. Both sides feel the need to show strength and determination, without betraying any doubt as to the rightness of their cause, or allowing the possibility of compromise. Guyer thought about this a bit more, and wrote: [02-24] How Ukraine could become America's next forever war. "Next" is something of a misnomer, given that it's already happening. However, the phrase is telling. It could mean one of two things: one is that you're fighting against a foe that cannot be defeated and will never give up, in which case your only out is to find some accommodation; the other is that you're really confused about your goals, so it's easier to keep fighting than to reconsider. Vietnam is an example of the former; the Global War on Terror the latter. Russia in Ukraine has elements of both: neither side can be defeated, so the war has turned into a game of chicken; meanwhile both sides have gotten so wrapped up in their own propaganda neither can see a way to back down.

  • Ellen Ioanes: [02-26] Here's what arming Ukraine could look like in the future: France, Germany, and the UK have floated a proposal to arm Ukraine on their own, independent of American control.

  • Fred Kaplan: [02-21] The Game Putin Is Really Playing by Threatening a Nuclear Weapons Treaty, on Putin's declaration that Russia is suspending its participation in the New START nuclear arms treaty; and [02-24] How the Ukraine War Is Likely to End. As he rules out a "total war solution," "end" can only mean some sort of agreement, for which he offers little grounds for hope.

  • Stephen Kinzer: [02-21] Putin & Zelensky: Sinners and saints who fit our historic narrative: "Think about why the West wants to invoke WWII and the Cold War here, and then ask whether it's been productive." Actually, the "West" started invoking WWII in the runup to Bush's Iraq War, probably because Vietnam didn't poll so well. I doubt it's a coincidence that two of the loudest anti-Russia hawks in academia (Anne Applebaum and Timothy Snyder) have books to sell you about Stalin's atrocities in Ukraine, while others (like Michael McFaul) have careers in think tanks subsidized by the war machine. Meanwhile, recycling Cold War propaganda against Putin works because he's Russian and no one who matters cares about the differences. Zelensky's Churchill act also works, because he knows it's just a role, so he can ignore most of Churchill's career, and not get called on it. As Kinzer points out: "As far back as 1873, an American cartoonist depicted Russia as a hairy monster vying with a handsome Uncle Sam for control of the world. That archetype resonates across generations. Like most populations, Americans are easily mobilized to hate whatever country we are told to hate. If that country is Russia, we have generations of psychic preparation."

  • Charles A Kupchan: [02-24] US-West must prepare for a diplomatic endgame in Ukraine: The only possible endgame is diplomatic, but that means offering Putin some kind of graceful exit -- something the armchair generals in Washington and Brussels seem to be having too much fun to contemplate.

  • Marlene Laruelle: [02-25] This is far from over: Sobering lessons from Ukraine. These aren't organized very nicely, so let me offer my own:

    • Russia has totally burnt its bridges to the West. NATO is stronger than ever, and while it's not a real threat to Russia, it is an insult, and won't be going away. Russia is presumably still popular in the separatist regions, but they've totally lost the rest of Ukraine. Even if they negotiate an end to sanctions, it will be a long time before they recover lost business with Europe.
    • Ukraine, minus any parts that vote to stay with Russia, will be tightly integrated into the EU.
    • Militarily, there has been a huge home-field advantage, which doesn't bode well for Ukrainian hopes to retake Russian ethnic areas. The big Russian advantages (air power, strategic depth) haven't been very effective, while discipline, morale, and logistic support have been weaknesses. Western arms have allowed Ukraine to move from a guerrilla defensive operation to more conventional operations, but territorial gains have been minor. The result is unwinnable for both sides.
    • The US has so little credibility in the Global South that it has failed to isolate Russia and strangle it economically. The utility of sanctions as a weapon is seriously in doubt.
    • The costs of continued military operations on both sides are high and growing. While the West is better able to afford them, there is no reason to expect that Russia will be starved out of the war any time soon.
    • The toll on the Ukrainian people is, of course, immense, with millions of refugees in Europe and Russia. Much of Ukraine is being turned into a complete wasteland.
    • While the risk of nuclear war is small, it demands respect, and that means that both sides need to curtail their ambitions. We have seen little indication of that in this anniversary's rhetoric.

  • Anatol Lieven: [02-20] Russia was defeated in the first three weeks: Basically true, both militarily and politically. Russia's offensive in the south from Crimea was actually pretty effective, although short of capturing Odesa it made little difference. But their blitzkrieg toward Kyiv and Kharkiv stalled, turning into a "40-mile-long traffic jam" that became easy pickings for Ukraine. I'm skeptical that even had Russia troops captured Kyiv, the west half of Ukraine would have folded, so it was just a matter of time before Putin realized he bit off more than he could chew. And politically, Putin gave NATO something it hadn't had since 1992: a reason to exist. There was never a chance that western hawks who had kept the organization on life support wouldn't jump on the opportunity to fight (especially as they could do so through proxies). The problem since then is that the Russian defeat, which Putin would be hard-pressed not to admit, still hasn't been as total as the victory the resurgent NATO powers crave. If only the warmongers understood that there is no such thing as victory in war. The only decision is when do you cut your losses? And the only answer is the sooner the better.

  • Aryeh Neier: [02-24] Will the West Be Serious About Crimes Against Humanity This Time? "In the 1990s, the Western powers were slow to move against Serbian butcher Slobodan Milosevic. We can't make that mistake again." Yes we can, and sure we will. Milosevic and several of his henchmen are the only ones who had to face the ICC, because they were the only ones who fell out of power with no one to protect them. Putin may be worse, but he'll never face the ICC, because even if Russia puts him out to pasture, he won't be vulnerable like that, and no one else is going to be able to touch him. Same, I might add, for Henry Kissinger, and a long list of others. I came to grips with this with Richard Nixon, who never got anything like the punishment he deserved, but once he was driven from power and shamed, anything more ceased to matter. Besides, if you want to get serious about "crimes against humanity," you have to catch them much sooner than when they get mixed up in war. The time to stop Hitler wasn't when he crossed some line at Wannsee or even Kristallnacht but when (or before) he came to power.

  • Vijay Prashad: [02-26] The global South refuses pressure to side with the West on Russia: Actually, most have voted to condemn Russia's invasion, but very few have agreed to enforce economic sanctions against Russia.

  • William Ruger: [02-23] 'Ukraine maximalists' on the Right still dominate. But for how long? Ever since Arthur Vandenberg in 1948, Democrats could always count on overwhelming Republican support for foreign wars, with some Republicans (like Barry Goldwater and John McCain) reliably overexcited. Meanwhile, the Democratic rank-and-file tended to become more dovish, encouraging Republicans to pile on, painting Democrats as spineless appeasers even as their leaders overcompensated with macho posturing (none more than Hillary Clinton). The prowar consensus has held up on Ukraine, with Democrats especially reluctant to break ranks -- part loyalty to Biden, part because they've been sold the line that Putin (not unlike Trump) is a sworn enemy of democracy. On the other hand, a few Republicans (most notably Trump) are wavering, for various reasons -- the worst being that some (e.g., Josh Hawley) would rather go to war with China, followed closely by the ones who like Putin as a fellow fascist. What worries me is that unless Biden can steer this war toward a diplomatic conclusion, the Democratic Party will be so mired in the war machinery that they'll never be able to deliver on their core promises, and Republican do-nothingism will seem like the saner course.

  • Alex Shephard: [02-23] Republicans Are Ready to Abandon Ukraine: "The GOP is turning against continued support for Ukrainians fighting off a Russian invasion." As I noted above, some are hedging their bets, but most Republicans love the arms merchants too much to throw cold water on their party. Republicans will, of course, abandon Ukraine as soon as the war is over and the US is called on to rebuild a country which sacrificed everything so our war gamers could think they were "degrading" the Russian military threat.

  • Robert Wright: [02-23] The Ukraine Archives: Summaries and links to a remarkable series of pieces on the war, going back to Jan 24, 2022: "How cognitive empathy could have prevented the Ukraine crisis" -- did you know there was a crisis a full month before invasion?

  • Joe Lauria: [02-24] More Evidence Emerges That US Wanted Russia to Invade: Slant here is anti-American (some evidence for that) and pro-Russian (more of a stretch). It is, of course, likely that some American deep state-types decided early on that Putin was less pliant than Yeltsin and should be viewed as a threat (or could be propped up as one), so they came up with a scheme to flip Ukraine and use that as leverage to entrap Putin. I've always thought that pro-western lobbying in Ukraine had less to do with US strategic interests than with European business, as the rewards there were much closer to home, but sure, Victoria Nuland, and all that. Whether 2014 counts as a coup or a popular uprising is open to debate: the presence of plotters (including Nuland) doesn't preclude the latter. One may also debate the extent to which the 2014 separatist uprisings in Crimea and Donbas were spontaneous or orchestrated from Moscow, although it didn't take long before Putin was calling the shots.

    In any case, subsequent elections legitimated the shift in power (no doubt more than would have been the case had Crimea and Donbas not split off). What's much murkier is the political machinations after Zelensky ran on a peace platform, then ultimately emerged as Ukraine's top warrior. In particular, no one that I'm aware of has written up a thorough diplomatic history from Zelensky's election to the invasion, but it's safe to say that the Biden administration encouraged Zelinsky to demand more, and that Putin grew increasingly alarmed. I doubt this was meant to provoke an invasion (as Lauria claims), but it was certainly meant to corner Russia. We've seen some evidence (not provided here) that Putin tried diplomacy before resorting to force: there are reports of the US and UK lobbying Zelensky to reject Russian overtures. The US also went to great lengths to publicize the Russian troop buildup, and to threaten sanctions and other retaliation. At the time, I noted that the US risked goading Putin to attack. I don't know that to have been their intent, but they were surprisingly well prepared when Putin made his move.

    Still, regardless of any American designs -- something one should always be skeptical of, given how poorly past designs have played out -- it was Putin, for reasons wholly of his own, who deliberately walked into this "trap." Lauria concludes, "the question is whether Russia can extricate itself from the U.S. strategy of insurgency and economic war." I doubt that he can, and not because he's ideologically wedded to KGB-recidivism, to atavistic dreams of reviving imperial glory, or the sheer nihilism of ending western civilization, but because bullies can't stand to back-peddle, and because politicians -- and that's what he really is -- get so easily trapped in the rhetoric that initially gained them success. He needs to find a new game, but I doubt he has the imagination for that.

    The real question going forward is whether Biden and/or Zelensky can see clear to let Russia loose. No one can afford a "forever war," no matter how much pleasure you take in making your enemy squirm.

Other stories:

Christine Ahn: [02-22] When Jimmy Carter went to North Korea: "Ever the peacemaker, he met with Kim Il Sung in 1994 and helped freeze Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program for over a decade." The secret of Carter's success was that he met with them personally, and he agreed to reasonable proposals. The Clinton administration was shamed into accepting his fait accompli, but in due course reneged on its promises and sabotaged the deal, which was finally buried by Bush, and in due course by North Korea testing nuclear bombs and missiles. Trump's brief flirtation with Kim Jong Un produced a lull in the testing, which might have been formalized into an end to hostilities, but Trump's underlings (e.g., John Bolton and Mike Pompeo) made sure that didn't happen either.

For more on Korea, see:

Brooks Barnes: [02-23] The Billionaire's Daughter Knows What You're Thinking: Elizabeth Koch, daughter of Charles Koch, the second generation feudal lord of Wichita. Cited because it may be interesting, but I haven't invested the time to tell you why. So I'll pass this over to Ian Millhiser: "A fascinating window into what becomes of a useless person who never had to worry about anything important her entire life. And a strong policy argument for higher estate taxes."

Thomas Floyd/Michael Cavna: [02-25] 'Dilbert' dropped by The Post, other papers, after cartoonist's racist rant. Noted because I've read "Dilbert" for a long time, but only because it was there in the paper. Long ago, it was occasionally clever or observant about office culture, but it started to lose its moorings when Adams quit his day job, leaving him to recycle his clichés. My wife quit reading it years ago, and I doubt I'll miss it much. Should the strip be canceled? That's something I'd almost never do, not least because he doesn't deserve to martyr himself (which may well have been his intent, as he no doubt believes the "woke mob" is out to get him). Besides, his statements, at least as quoted in the article, are more stupid than inflammatory (not that I'm not much of a stickler on either count). How could anyone construct a poll with a question like "are you ok with white people" and expect straight, meaningful answers? On the other hand, how could anyone jump to his conclusions without being a dangerously deranged racist?

[PS: The Wichita Eagle ran "Dilbert" on Sunday, but canceled the strip as of Monday. They replaced it with something called "Pooch Café," which, yes, is marginally funnier. On the other hand, has any comic strip in the last 10-20 years done more than "Dilbert" to make white guys look clueless and/or stupid?]

I didn't go looking for anything to tack onto this, but then there was this:

Shirin Ghaffary: [02-21] Social media used to be free. Not anymore. As Facebook joints Twitter in trying to squeeze more money out of their users, as if they weren't imposing enough already. Granted, the push is mostly aimed at businesses, which are already used to paying for publicity, but at some point the platforms will start to bleed users, and that the value of that publicity will depreciate. Thing is, it would be possible to publicly fund social media platforms that provide the desired connectivity without harvesting data and trying to monetize it through advertising. And they would be less of a drain on society than the current monopolistic rackets.

Clare Malone: [02-25] Watching Tucker Carlson for work: "You don't know Fox News until you are watching it for a job."

Ian Millhiser:

Timothy Noah: [02-21] How the GOP Lost Its Brain: "Today's Republican Party is driven by egos and power rivalries, not ideas. The GOP once had ideas -- lots of them. The problem was that they were unpopular and bad." Isn't the answer obvious? At some point, unpopular and bad ideas become liabilities. And besides, they never were anything but props for hitting on some irrationally emotional point -- one they've since found they can jump to with hysterics endlessly repeated by their propaganda machine. Turns out all those brains were merely atavistic.

Evan Osnos: [02-26] Sliding toward a new Cold War: Russia and Ukraine come up, but this is mostly about China, which is by far the more serious force. Still, this is remarkably short on reasons why China might be considered a threat. They just, you know, are, mostly because we understand so very little about them, or for that matter ourselves. Osnos turns to George Kennan for guidance, quoting a new biography that Kennan "spent the four years from 1944 to 1948 promoting the Cold War, he devoted the subsequent forty to undoing what he and others had wrought." The point should be obvious: starting wars is much easier than ending them.

Nathan J Robinson: [02-23] Why the Right Hates Social Security (And How They Plan to Destroy It): Interview with Alex Lawson, of Social Security Works.

Derek Willis: [02-24] After a Decade of Tracking Politicians' Deleted Tweets, Politwoops Is No More: "Service changers after Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter have rendered it impossible for us to continue tracking these tweets."

Clay Wirestone: [02-09] 'No future!' If Rep. Kristey Williams has her way, there won't be a next generation of Kansans: "Destroying public education will drive parents, students and teachers out of the Sunflower State for good." First, let's dial the hyperbole back a bit, and dispense with the Johnny Rotten analogies. The Republican chair of K-12 Education is pushing a voucher bill, designed to siphon public education money into private schools, with "little or no oversight on expenditures, little to no oversight for student achievement." Choice sounds like a good thing, and one can argue that having to compete for students should make schools work harder to satisfy students and parents. But does it really work like that? For starters, it's the rule rather than the exception that privatization of public services leads to more cost while returning less value. This is part profit-seeking (which includes a strong impulse toward fraud, unless it is checked by regulation, which itself adds to the overhead), and part due to the lost efficiencies of scale (including more specialized teachers, less administrative overhead, shared technology, lots of things, but not necessarily larger classroom size). Second, vouchers divide public support for public schools, worsening current underfunding. Third, if vouchers don't cover the whole cost of private schooling (which isn't likely, given its inefficiency), they increase religious isolation and class-stratification (which has always been a selling point for elite private schools; but they're not the ones driving this agenda, as their clients always have been able to afford paying their own way).

Still, the advocates of voucher programs are remarkably myopic. In looking to exempt their children from the taint of public schooling (be it secular and/or non-elitist), they blithely ignore the others, who they consign to run-down, under-resourced schools that teach little and increasingly resemble detainment centers -- until their inmates escape and struggle to survive in a world that has shown them nothing but disdain. If, then, they turn to crime, they can finally look forward to the public finally spending serious money on them, in the guise of punishment. Even if they don't, most will never gain the skills that we need to run an increasingly complex and fragile economy. What a waste.

By the way, there are specific Kansas angles here, some mentioned in the article. In recent years, Johnson County has grown largely based on the reputation of its public school system (compared to the Missouri suburbs around Kansas City). The author is worried that wrecking public schools in Kansas will reverse that trend, resulting in a mass exodus (although having once fled Missouri, I'm not so sure they want to head back). A possibly bigger problem is rural Kansas, which has already lost so many people that school districts are struggling just to hold on, let alone to adapt to times that require more and better education.

James Thompson forwarded this Twitter interchange:

Lauren Bobert: One thing you can be sure of - I'll never go woke.

Leslieoo7: I'm sure of that. To be woke requires awareness, an enlightened mind, exposure to different cultures and different types of people. It requires maturity to realize that not everyone looks like you or thinks like you and that's okay.

Woke is the antonym of ignorance.

Michael Thrower offered a list of "10 Great Very Short Econ Books" (≤ 200 pages) [thread]:

  1. Diane Coyle: GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History
  2. Albert O Hirschman: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States -- how consumers influence firms
  3. Jesper Roine: Pocket Piketty: A Handy Guide to Capital in the Twenty-First Century
  4. Eric Lonergan/Mark Blyth: Angrynomics
  5. Joan Robinson: An Essay in Marxian Economics
  6. Avner Offer: Understanding the Private-Public Divide: Markets, Governments, and Time Horizons -- argues that state can plan long-term where markets can't.
  7. Alex Cobham: The Uncounted -- how statistics can be distorted by power relations.
  8. Richard A Easterlin: An Economist's Lessons on Happiness: Farewell Dismal Science.
  9. Dean Baker: The Conservative Nanny State
  10. Lee Elliot Major/Stephen Machin: Social Mobility: What Do We Know and What Should We Do About . . . ?

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, February 19, 2023

Speaking of Which

As usual, this is assembled piecewise as I find the pieces, kind of like an Easter egg hunt. As such, the bits accumulate somewhat randomly, although given the present political situation some topics inevitably recur.

PS [02-20]: I added a comment on the Washington Post Ukraine editorial.

Top story threads:

Top stories for the week:

DeSantis and Trump: For a primer on these two asshole clowns, consider how they interact: [02-18] Inside the collapse of the Trump-DeSantis 'alliance of convenience'.

Other Republicans:

Flying Objects: It's open season, although it's gotten so silly that even Biden wants 'sharper rules' on unknown aerial objects.

  • Ellen Nakashima/Shane Harris/Jason Samenow: [02-14] US tracked China spy balloon from launch on Hainan Island along unusual path: This report says the balloon "may have been diverted on an errant path caused by atypical weather conditions." It also suggests that, given the balloon was tracked from its launch on Hainan (a large island in the South China Sea) that the panic that ensued once the balloon was seen by civilians in Montana was unwarranted. Biden could have simply announced that we knew about the balloon, had tracked it since its launch, and considered it harmless.

  • Chas Danner: [02-18] Did an F-22 Blow Up an Illinois Club's Hobby Balloon? Perhaps the doubt is because when a $150 million F-22 shoots a $472,000 AIM-9X Sidewinder at a $100 "pico" balloon there isn't much debris left to analyze.

  • Jonathan Guyer: [02-13] Why the balloon and UFO affairs are a Sputnik moment: "As all these objects fall, a new space race is rising." The problem starts with the phrase "Sputnik moment": the original event was turned into fodder to fuel an arms race that resolve nothing; do the same thing here and you'll get the same stupid results (or worse).

  • Fred Kaplan: [02-15] The Very Serious Lessons We Should Learn From the Balloon Fiasco: Starts by citing the Nakashima post (above), then adds that both China and the US blew this incident up into something ridiculous, with their instinctive claims of innocence, macho posturing, and faux rage. The net effect was to add fuel to a conflict that neither side really wants. Not that there aren't factions in the US stupidly spoiling for a fight (most conspicuously among Congressional Republicans, not that Democrats, some, following Obama's "pivot to Asia," aren't also encouraging).

Hot Rails to Hell: Mostly on the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Also see Jeffrey St Clair's latest "Roaming Charges" (below) for a pretty detailed summary.

Ukraine War: The war is approaching its first anniversary, with a minor Russian offensive near Bakhmut, and not much more news to report, other than a lot of posturing about how both sides are resolved to fight on indefinitely, regardless of the costs.

  • Blaise Malley: [02-17] Diplomacy Watch: Is the Biden team laying the groundwork for talks? They still seem to be under the delusion that pre-negotiation posturing will make a real difference when the only thing that will work is finding a mutually tolerable agreement -- one that all that posturing, with the suggestion of bending the enemy to your will, only makes less likely.

  • Luke Cooper: [01-30] Ukraine's Neoliberal War Mobilization: "Low taxes, privatization, and pared-back labor protections could undermine Ukraine's fight against Russian aggression." One fact that's rarely been mentioned is that Ukraine's economic performance since independence has been worse than Russia's. That's a big part of the reason it can make sense that some parts of Ukraine -- especially ones where Russian is the first language -- might prefer reunification with Moscow to continued rule from Kiev. Since the war started, Zelensky has been pulled toward the US and Europe, mostly by his insatiable demand for weapons, but nothing comes with no strings attached. He may be hoping that after spending so much, the west will help Ukraine rebuild, but in Washington the redevelopment choices are neoliberal and even worse.

  • Francesca Ebel/Mary Ilyushina: [02-13] Russians abandon wartime Russia in historic exodus. "Initial data shows that at least 500,000, and perhaps nearly 1 million, have left in the year since the invasion began."

  • Nicholas Kristof: [02-18] Biden Should Give Ukraine What It Needs to Win: Some rather huge hidden assumptions here, starting with the notion that the war can be won, that Ukraine can win it, that there is a finite recipe of weapons (and other aid, although Zelensky mostly just wants to talk about weapons) that can do the trick, and that Biden has it within his power to deliver them. Also that winning would be a good thing.

  • Anatol Lieven: [02-14] Austria should buck the West and welcome Russia to key security meeting.

  • Anton Troianovski/Valerie Hopkins: [02-19] One Year Into War, Putin Is Crafting the Russia He Craves: I don't know whether that's an accurate headline, but the images and descriptions of the propaganda barrage Russia is mounting to bolster support for the war are unsettling. It's hard to tell how effective this is, but the idea that defeating Russia in Ukraine will cause Putin's house of cards to crumble is far from certain. It's just as likely that, having been brought up on such propaganda, Putin's successors will be even more gung ho than he is.

  • Erin Banco/Sarah Anne Aarup/Anastasiia Carrier: [02-18] Inside the stunning gnrowth of Russia's Wagner Group: The obvious question this raises is how does Wagner compare with the mercenary outfits the US uses, like Blackstone?

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [02-16] The Sy Hersh effect: killing the messenger, ignoring the message. Remember: means, opportunity, motive. Hersh may not have every detail right, but can you spin a more plausible story? The main argument against the US having blown up the pipeline is that it would have been a really stupid thing to do (if you ever get caught). Again, I may spend too much time watching crime fiction, but the maxim at work here is: "criminals do stupid stuff." Ergo, stupidity is not a defense. It's practically a necessity.

  • Timothy Snyder: [01-23] Why the world needs Ukrainian victory: The author, an historian of the conflicts in 20th century eastern Europe, the study of which has left him with an outsized hatred of Russia (although at least he never was a Nazi symp; he started out as a protégé of Tony Judt, who was perhaps overly excited by the emergence of democratic movements following the Cold War). I can't imagine what a "Ukrainian victory" might look like, but I'd be happy to see Russian troops pushed back to pre-2014 borders (probably what he has in mind), or even to the separatist borders before last March. Still, the cost of doing so has already been huge, and will only get worse, so one has to doubt the value is of protracting the war, especially given the stalemate of the last six or so months.

    Perhaps I might agree that "the world needs a Russian defeat," but hasn't that already happened? And hasn't history taught us that defeats (and for that matter "victories") are often poor predictors of future peace? Perhaps "an utterly defeated people" (to cite a phrase Israelis have used to describe the goal of their plot against the Palestinians) isn't the best answer? Still, Snyder is not just claiming that defeating Russia will be a good thing in itself. He's arguing that Ukrainian victory will save and redeem European civilization. And without having the slightest wish to defend Putin, he's wrong on nearly every point. Quotes are from his piece (answers to "why does the world need a Ukrainian victory?"), followed by my brief notes:

    1. "To halt atrocity. Russia's occupation is genocidal." Not true. Brutal? Impossible to justify? Sure.
    2. "To preserve the international legal order." There is no such thing. Maybe there should be, but there are too many counterexamples, including the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
    3. "To end an era of empire." Does this presume that the US, UK, etc., will dismantle their empires (remember that the US has over 800 military bases abroad) if Russia fails in Ukraine? How does one cause the other? I don't doubt that some Russians harbor nostalgia for lost empire, and I don't approve, but fighting to defend fellow Russians who accidentally found themselves on the wrong side of an arbitrary border from threats they regarded as existential (one might say "genocidal," but let's not), is rather limited compared to, say, the European partition of Africa.
    4. "To defend the peace project of the European Union." Ukraine is not part of the EU, so this seems out of bounds. The notion that Russia is really fighting "against the larger idea that European states can peacefully cooperate" is specious.
    5. "To give the rule of law a chance in Russia." Russia has no shortage of "rule of law," nor is this likely to change regardless of the outcome of the war. It is true that states at war tend to become more repressive and less free (as Americans should know, from our own experience), but what helps is ending the war, not whether it is counted as a victory or defeat.
    6. "To weaken the prestige of tyrants." We're so gullible that we need a war for this? "Fascism is about force, and is discredited by defeat." Us so-called "premature antifascists" think fascism is discredited by its acts. Are you suggesting that fascism would be vindicated by victory?
    7. "To remind us that democracy is the better system." This assumes that Russia isn't a democracy, which is the stock propaganda line, but by most measures it's not much different from Ukraine: both have elections and multiple parties, with both significantly corrupted by oligarchs. Ukraine has been more volatile, partly because US and EU interests have lobbied more there. But unless the war is settled by some kind of referendum, there is no reason to think that its outcome will be determined by differences in political system. [*]
    8. "To lift the threat of major war in Europe." The only reason the threat exists in the first place is the exclusion of Russia from Europe, which is defined by NATO and the EU. Defeating Russia in Ukraine may make Russians meeker, or may make them more bitter and vengeful. Only cooperation lifts the threat.
    9. "To lift the threat of major war in Asia." He means "a Chinese invasion of Taiwan." This would take a long explanation, but in short that doesn't follow.
    10. "To prevent the spread of nuclear weapons." More faulty reasoning. He plays fast and loose here, drawing a conclusion from "if Ukraine loses," whereas supposedly he's arguing for "Ukrainian victory," as if there is no middle ground.
    11. "To reduce the risk of nuclear war." Partly derived from previous, but also depends on a tautology: a Ukraine victory only happens if Russia accepts defeat without resorting to nuclear arms, hence the risk removal is defined into the proposition. Real problem is that the proposition is the risk. Perhaps reasonable people might conclude that if the use of nuclear weapons is worse than accepting defeat, possessing nuclear weapons has no value. But are we dealing with reasonable people, on either side? And if, perchance, the taboo against using nuclear weapons is broken, the long-term risk of nuclear war elsewhere will most likely increase.
    12. "To head off future resource wars." There is no reason to think that frustrating this kind of war in one place will dissuade others from trying it elsewhere. More often than not, the failure of one war just encourages warriors to try harder next time.
    13. "To guarantee food supplies and prevent future starvation." Another case of overgeneralization. Ukraine may be a powerhouse granary, but pales compared to the threats posed by climate change.
    14. "To accelerate the shift from fossil fuels." To some extent the war has already done this, but it is tangential to the outcome, and in any case is something that should be decided on its own merits, rather than as a side-effect of war gaming.
    15. "To affirm the value of freedom." So why not end with something totally vacuous? Seems par for the course.

    [*] When comparing democracies, you might want to consider Julia Conley: [02-17] Due to Wars and Climate Destruction, US Ranks Worse Than Peers on 'Impunity' Index: "A democratic system of government is insufficient to fend off impunity." If you're unfamiliar with the concept: "Impunity is the growing instinct of choice in the global order. It represents a dangerous world view that laws and norms are for suckers." As best I can tell, Russia ranks worse than China, which ranks worse than the US, which is somewhere close to the median on a list of 160 countries.

  • Washington Post Editorial Board: [02-18] How to break the stalemate in Ukraine: On reading the title, my first thought was the way must be to press harder for a ceasefire and a sensible settlement, since that's the only way the war can possibly end. But no, they insist that "the West's overarching goal must be ensuring that the Russian tyrant gains nothing by his aggression. To allow an outcome that rewards the Kremlin in any way would be a moral travesty." As opposed to their alternative, which prolongs and intensifies the destruction and slaughter. They then go into a long shopping list of weapons systems they want to send Ukraine. And they insist the US should throw caution to the wind: "But a principal lesson from the past year is that the risk of escalation is overblown."

    Nuclear weapons? "As for the Russian autocrat, he has nothing left to escalate with other than manpower and nuclear weapons. If the West adequately arms Ukraine, he cannot win with the former and is very unlikely to resort to the latter, which would alienate his most important ally, China. A tactical strike by Russia would be one of history's greatest acts of self-immolation, cementing Russia's pariah status for decades." The logic here is hard to fathom, especially given that nuclear deterrence depends on the mutual understanding of logic and nothing more. If the West doesn't respect Russia's nuclear threat, and no longer shows that respect by limiting its military response, why shouldn't Russia follow through on its threat? If Russia is rational enough not to use nuclear weapons, why isn't it rational enough to negotiate? After all, it will only be "self-immolation" if the US decides to retalliate massively -- a separate decision which should make the US even more of a world pariah than Russia. After all, wouldn't a US strategic nuclear attack on Russia also be self-immolation?

    Thus far, both Biden and Putin have been sane enough not to paint themselves into a corner where they have to follow through on the dismal logic of their war strategists. Still, they have to endure insanity like this editorial.

Other stories:

Peter Beinart: [02-19] You Can't Save Democracy in a Jewish State. Of course, it's only ever been a slogan. From 1949-67, Palestinians within the Green line were able to vote, but subject to martial law, and Palestinians who fled the atrocities (like the mass murder at Deir Yassin) were denied re-entry as their homes and land was confiscated. After 1967, martial law was relieved, but reinstated in the occupied territories, where Palestinians were denied even the vote. As settlements encroached on Palestinian lands, a two-tier system of (in)justice was implemented. Now the right-wing wants to be able to strip citizenship and force into exile those few Palestinians who still have it, and they want to prevent the courts from reviewing whatever they do. Yet still zionists liked to brag that Israel was "the only democracy" in the region. Given that "democracy" is one of those slogans the US is supposedly fighting for in Ukraine and elsewhere, you'd think the loss of it in Israel might matter, but to the folks to direct US foreign policy, it doesn't.

Ryan Cooper: [02-17] Elon Musk Shows How Oligarchy Poisons the Speech Commons: "Free speech is not when one rich guy gets to shout 1,000 times louder than anyone else." And not just any rich guy: the one who now owns the platform had Twitter tweak its algorithms to promote Musk's own tweets. By the way, the least free speech in America is still advertising, where the volume is simply scaled by money, and the motives are always suspect, and often downright fraudulent. For an example, see: Christian Downie/Robert Brulle [02-19] Research Finds Big Oil's Trade Group Allies Outspent Clean Energy by a Whopping 27x.

David Dayen: [02-03] Amazon's Endgame: "The company is transitioning to become an unavoidable gatekeeper in all commerce." It's really hard to get a handle on how many angles a company like Amazon is playing to get control over virtually all consumer spending. ("The real danger from Amazon is that is invisibly takes a cut from everybody: consumers, businesses, even governments.") The other thing that's hard to get a grip on is that while this works mostly due to proximate monopoly power, it's based on network effects and efficiencies of scale that are impossible to compete with, so traditional antimonopoly remedies (divestments, standing up competitors) won't work. What might help would be to treat those parts of the business as natural monopolies and strictly regulate them. Or one could create public utilities to compete with them while eliminating many of the most onerous aspects of the business (like the capture and sale of personal data). Of course, a regulatory regime that would expose Amazon's side-dealing would help make alternatives more competitive.

Huntger DeRensis: [02-15] How a Super Bowl whitewash of Tillman cover-up was a helpful reminder. I've long felt that the only reasons people join the military are delusion and desperation. NFL star Tillman wasn't desperate. There is some evidence that his delusions were lifting before he was killed by other American soldiers, but that fact itself should disabuse one of some of the most common delusions, including the notion that the military serves the nation in any substantive way, and that joining it is somehow heroic. much of what I know about Tillman specifically comes from Jon Krakauer's book, Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, who takes the whole macho/hero thing very seriously.

Lauren Fadiman: [02-13] How a For-Profit Healthcare System Generates Mistrust of Medicine. I haven't been looking for support on such an obvious point, but did stumble across this:

Steve Fraser: [02-16] The Spectre of "Woke Communism". Explains that DeSantis's rant about "woke corporations" isn't a particularly novel idea: irate right-wingers have a long history of conflating "Bankers and Bolsheviks." Also at TomDispatch:

  • Andrew Bacevich: [02-12] Tanks for Nuttin': Or "Giving Whataboutism a Chance." Tipped me off to the silly Snyder piece above. As for "whataboutism": "When the Russian president embarked on his war in 2022, he had no idea what he was getting into, any more than George W. Bush did in 2003." Also: "Classifying Russia as a de facto enemy of the civilized world has effectively diminished the urgency of examining out own culture and values."

  • Julia Gledhill/William D Hartung: [02-14] Merger Mania in the Military-Industrial Complex: Hartung is a long-term critic of Defense spending, with several books on the subject, going back to And Weapons for All (1994), and How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy? A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration (2003). So I'm a bit surprised that in looking at the latest scandals, they don't mention the wave of defense contractor mergers in the 1990s (like Boeing-Douglas and Lockheed-Martin). Those were supposedly guided by the Defense Department on the theory that post-Cold War they wanted to reduce the number of competitors for a shrinking pie. (Given the infamous "revolving door" take that assertion with a grain of salt.) Of course, thanks to the CIA's backing of Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan, and the neocon plot to "garrison the world," the pie actually expanded, and the megacorporations spawned by the mergers became even more politically influential than ever -- leading to this latest round of mergers.

    While it made sense during WWII to temporarily convert industry to war production by guaranteeing high, low-risk profits (contracts were typically "cost + 10%"), it was foolish to build a permanent arms industry on that basis, specifically because it created a huge independent political force lobbying for more war. The result is that US foreign policy is now largely subordinate to the continued profit of the arms manufacturers. Absent this corrupt influence, a sensible foreign policy would focus on the need for peace, fairness, and cooperation between all nations, instead of splitting the world into permanent conflict zones. One example is the Abraham Accords, where Israel and its former Arab enemies puy aside their differences so that both can freely buy American arms to use against their own people. Another is the expansion of NATO with its vilification of Russia, eventually prodding Putin into creating the current Ukraine bonanza. And then there's the militarization of what are basically trade disputes with China. The latter hasn't blown up like Russia, but if/when it does the consequences could be far worse.

    Also relevant here is Stephen F Eisenman: [02-17] The Insecure Superpower.

Amy Goldstein/Mary Jordan/Kevin Sullivan: [02-19] Former president opts for home hospice care for final days: Jimmy Carter, 98. I've listed him among the short list of era-ending one-term presidents, along with Buchanan, Hoover, and Trump (a slightly looser definition of era might also pick up John Adams, and maybe even John Quincy Adams). Of those, Carter most resembled Hoover: an extremely talented technocrat who faced bad times and made them worse through dumb choices. When I look back now, the thing I'm most struck by is how many of his choices anticipated turns toward disaster that we now associate mostly with his successor, Ronald Reagan. He appointed Paul Volcker, who crashed and burned the economy to smash unions and slay inflation. He kicked off the fashion for deregulation. He exacerbated the Cold War with his Olympics shenanigans, and more seriously by arming jihadis in Afghanistan. He misplayed Iran, leaving a conflict that festers to this day. He paved the way for the neoliberal turn in the Democratic Party, a dead weight that still exercises undue influence.

On the other hand, give him credit for actually doing something constructive about Israel (even if he mostly rationalized it as countering Soviet influence in Egypt). He negotiated the Begin-Sadat accord that guaranteed that Israel would never again have to face a united front of Arab enemies. Less known is how he backed Israel down from intervening in Lebanon in 1978. Four years later, Reagan gave Begin the green light, leading to a 17-year occupation that failed in every respect, leaving Hezbollah as the dominant power. Carter has often been maligned for being critical of Israel (especially for his 2006 book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, which is worth scanning through, even though the reality now is worse than apartheid), but he was a truer friend to Israel in 1978-79 than any of his more popularly obsequious successors.

Also give Carter credit for a remarkable post-presidency, a record of public service unique in American history, one that worked on many levels, ranging from the mudane (Habitat for Humanity) to high diplomacy. (His mission to North Korea, which Clinton's people subsequently bungled, could well have nipped that conflict in the bud.) I had hopes that Clinton and/or Obama might have followed suit, but they opted instead to hobnob with the rich and grow their fortunes (with the bad faith effectively killing Hillary Clinton's political ambitions). At root, that's because Carter was a fundamentally different kind of person -- one rarely seen in American politics. As one recent piece put it, The un-celebrity president: Shunning riches, living modestly in Georgia.

Laurie Hertzel: [02-15] Is owning a lot of books a mark of middle-class smugness? This popped up in the wasteland of bits that is my morning newspaper, and rubbed me bad enough I decided to save the link. Smug? Sounds like someone is insecure.

Ian Millhiser:

Ashley Parker/Justine McDaniel: [02-17] From Freddie Gray to Tyre Nichols, early police claims often misleading: "Misleading" is putting it mildly.

Andrew Prokop:

  • [02-19] Can the Republican establishment finally stop Trump this time? As someone who regards the "Republican establishment" as even more malevolent than Trump, this is not a contest that interests me, but you're welcome to consider it. Sure, based on the four years when Trump was president, you could counter that Trump = the Republican establishment (for policy, admin, and judges) + a media-obsessed dose of crazy and extra risk of volatility, and that combination of risk probably makes him worse. But don't lose sight of how bad the other blokes are (or their handlers and donors).

  • [02-18] A juicy new legal filing reveals who really controls Fox News: "As Trump spread his stolen election lies, Fox was terrified of alienating its own audience, emails and texts show." This comes from Fox internal email collected by the Dominion Voting vs. Fox lawsuit. Also: Erik Wemple: [02-17] Fox News is worse than you thought; and Matt Ford: [02-18] The Fox News Text Messages Prove the Hosts All Know They're Craven Liars; and Ben Beckett: [02-18] Fox News Knew Donald Trump's Election Fraud Claims Were False. They Broadcast Them Anyway. Texts uncovered in the Dominion Voting lawsuit against Fox.

  • [02-15] The rise of the Trump-Russia revisionists: Latest summary of the latest analyses of the public reporting of Trump-Russia entanglement, if you still give a whit. I've said my bit many times over. For this one, note the chart comparing pre-2016 election search interest in "Trump Russia" with the alleged Clinton scandals (email, foundation, wikileaks). Even if Trump was maligned unfairly, the effect was much less than the insinuation of scandal re Clinton -- something both the FBI and mainstream media should be ashamed of (and not just because it tipped the election to Trump, a more disastrous outcome than the mainstream media, despite all their hyperventilation on Russia, prepared us for). The other thing that should be noted is that if reporters had a realistic concept of how political actors work, they could have dismissed 80% of the bullshit out of hand, instead of breathlessly repeating it for amusement.

Nathan J Robinson: [02-16] The Apocalyptic Delusions of the Silicon Valley Elite: Interview with Douglas Rushkoff on "how the super-rich plan to escape the world after they've destroyed it." Rushkoff is what you'd call a social critic, with a dozen-plus nonfiction books (plus some novels) since 1994, most related to tech. His latest is germane here: Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires. By the way, I've picked up a copy of Robinson's new book Responding to the Right. You can read an overview here.

Jeffrey St Clair: [02-17] Roaming Charges: Train in Vain: Leads off with a lengthy report on the East Palestine, Ohio train disaster -- probably the best piece to read on the subject. Also includes significant sections on the Seymour Hersh pipeline piece, which he doesn't accept at face value but also doesn't reject out of hand ("the lack of any follow-up reporting from the New York Times or Washington Post, to either confirm or discredit Hersh's story, is one of the more shameful episodes in a dismal couple of decades for American journalism"). And some pertinent comments on the art of shooting things down, as well as more statistics and details about prisoning America. One stat I basically knew is that we're running more than one mass shooting per day in 2023. One I didn't realize is that there have been over 1,000 train derailments (basically, 3 per day) for many year running. Also includes a link to L7, about assholes and their wars.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, February 12, 2023

Speaking of Which

Started Friday, but various things distracted me along the way, and this feels exceptionally jumbled at the moment. For what it's worth, I started with the Jonathan Chait pieces, and only decided to include the bit on the Turkey/Syria earthquake very late. Also appearing late was the Thomas Friedman Biden-to-Israel column. You'd have to look back at past weeks to get the context.

Top story threads:

Biden's State-of-the-Union Address: I never watch speeches like this (or like anything, actually), but I've seen bits since, and for once the coverage helped. The Sanders quotes in the Kilgore piece are especially jaw-dropping.

  • Bill Scher: [02-08] Biden Concedes Nothing in His State of the Union Address: "A deft, defiant Democratic president outfoxes the Republicans in front of the nation and smartly stresses antitrust and consumer rights." Scher contrasts this with Clinton in 1995 and Obama in 2011, who proposed spending cuts to placate new Republican majorities in the House. Part of the reason may be that the Republicans' narrow win has been widely spun as a failure, so Biden feels less need to triangulate. But also Democrats are sick and tired of the imperious demands of the right, and have resolved to fight back, not least because they have started to have confidence in their own plans, rather than thinking all they have to do is offer something slightly more palatable than what the nihilist Republicans are demanding.

  • Jonathan Chait: [02-10] Joe Biden Is a Mediocre Liberal: "But he's proved to be a successful president anyway." This is kind of a silly article, but at least is less pretentious than another one that I can imagine: that someone slipped Biden a book on the New Deal, and he decided to adopt FDR's penchant for just trying things, going whichever direction seemed to work best. Of course, his options have been limited, given lack of majority support in Congress. The fault there is in thinking that he's acting according to some plan. Nothing in his history suggests anything but opportunism, but that's left him flexible enough to adapt to the times.

  • David Dayen: [02-10] The Twilight of the Deficit Hawks: "Democrats have stopped being the willing partner in a great conspiracy to slash social insurance." Looks at a deficit hawk group called Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, where the board is amply stacked with has-been Democrats who've long been willing pawns in schemes to cut social welfare. "The problem for Republicans is that they have always wanted Democrats as willing partners, in no small part because then they could try to pin the blame on Democrats. In terms of actual principles, of course, the GOP doesn't care about deficits; under every Republican president for the last 40 years, it has happily supported giant deficit-busting tax cuts. Democratic rejection of deficit politics leaves Republicans politically exposed."

  • Ed Kilgore: [02-08] Sarah Huckabee Sanders Showed That the GOP Is Truly Not 'Normal'. The quotes from Sanders' rebuttal speech are so disconnected from reality it's hard to decipher them as anything but a catechism: words repeated from memory as a testimony to a faith that is way beyond experience or perception. She says "the dividing line in America is no longer between left and right. The choice is between normal or crazy." She came down clearly on the side of crazy.

  • Paul Krugman: [02-09] War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Democrats Are Radicals: "Delivering the Republican response, Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that the United States is divided between two parties, one of which is mainly focused on bread-and-butter issues that matter to regular people, while the other is obsessed with waging culture war. This is also true. But she got her parties mixed up."

  • Frank Bruni: [02-07] Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Queen of Having It Both Ways.

  • Paul Waldman/Greg Sargent: [02-08] Sarah Huckabee Sanders's strange "woke" rant reveals a big GOP problem: Republicans like to rant about "woke," but how many people have any idea what it means? (I mean, other than bad people? Ones true patriots should fear and loathe?)

  • Eric Levitz: [02-08] The GOP's Heckles Were a Gift to Biden's Reelection Campaign.

  • Harold Meyerson: [02-08] Biden Forges a New Democratic Paradigm: "The president repudiates the neoliberal ideologies of the past and puts the party on solid economic and political ground."

  • Timothy Noah: [02-09] And Now, the Republicans Are the Party of Defending Businesses That Rip People Off: "Biden was right to talk about junk fees in his SOTU. And Republicans are playing into his hand." Nor is it just junk fees. Once Republicans disposed of the idea of there even being such a thing as a public interest, they opened the door to all kinds of profit-seeking, even fraud. Their push to deregulation basically encourages companies to take all sorts of profitable liberties. And their efforts to cripple enforcement, not least by the IRS, appear designed to promote financial crime even in cases they're not able to explicitly legitimize.

  • Paul Waldman: [02-10] Sorry, Republicans, no one should trust your word on Social Security. Democrats have long accused Republicans of wanting to kill Social Security and Medicare, and they've always been able to produce evidence to support their case, but somehow the charge has rarely had much impact. The charges don't stick because most people doubt that Republicans would be so foolish as to dismantle such popular programs. But while there are cranks who want nothing less, serious Republican efforts aim to merely knick, cripple, and ultimately eviscerate the program. And often, as with Bush's 2005 privatization ploy, they are hyped as plans not to kill but to save the programs. That one failed not just because it was unpopular but because there was no way to make it work. But many other ploys have slipped into law: higher eligibility ages, reduced cost-of-living adjustments, increased co-payments on Medicare -- each designed to make the program less appealing, and therefore less popular. And no less ominous are the scams like Medicare Advantage, which add cost to the program, making it less efficient, and presumably untenable in the long run. What Democrats finally seem to be wising up to is that to protect Social Security and Medicare, they need to improve the benefits -- and watch Republicans squirm to resist, instead of just issuing denials and carrying on as usual.

    By the way, one thing that helps Republican denials of intent to destroy Social Security and Medicare is their ability to get the "liberal press" to editorialize on their behalf. See Dean Baker: [02-05] The Washington Post Wants to Cut Social Security and Medicare (Yeah, What Else Is New?).

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [02-07] Biden speeds through Ukraine, China in soaring State of the Union: "Just 200 words out of a 7300-word speech devoted to a war consuming our attention -- and $113 billion in resources -- for the last year." What's the opposite of "wag the dog"? Arthur Vandenberg's prescription was that in order to sell a massive military outlay, you first have to scare the hell out of the people. But for Washington today, it's so reflexive you scarcely have to mention it.

The Republican House: And elsewhere, basically anywhere they are given license to plunder and a voice to spew their nonsense.

Trump and DeSantis: We might as well combine their latest stunts and blunders, as the differences rarely matter.

Death to Flying Things: That was the nickname of a 19th century infielder, Bob Ferguson (1845-94), supposedly for his skill at catching pop ups and line drives, but before long Joe Biden will be laying claim to it. [PS: And then Biden and Justin Trudeau ordered a third object shot down over Canadian airspace.]

Ukraine War: Both sides appear to be planning offensives, confident enough they can ignore the dire need for ceasefire and a negotiated settlement. Meanwhile, big story was Seymour Hersh's article on the NordStream pipeline sabotage. Beyond the White House issuing the expected denial, I haven't seen much commentary, particularly from the Europeans most directly affected.

  • Connor Echols: [02-10] Diplomacy Watch: Lavrov shores up support for Russia in Africa.

  • Luke Cooper: [01-30] Ukraine's Neoliberal War Mobilization: "You can't fight wars with neoliberal economics," but austerity programs have led to fracturing and war elsewhere (e.g., Yugoslavia). While Ukraine is fighting for its independence from Russia, it is increasingly indebted to the US and Europe, whose future generosity is by no means assured: in fact, the economic regimes long pushed by the US and Germany have more often led to stagnation and impoverishment.

  • Dave DeCamp: [02-09] GOP Resolution to End Support for Ukraine War: Actually, it's just Matt Gaetz and ten of his cohort, so no one but Kevin McCarthy is likely to get bent out of shape over this threat. They call it "The Ukraine Fatigue Resolution," which should make for amusing op-ads. Blaise Malley [02-09] also has the story: Gaetz introduces 'Ukraine Fatigue' resolution.

  • Chris Hedges: [01-29] Ukraine: The War That Went Wrong. I'm merely noting this, not having read much by him recently. While his railing against US imperial hubris is well-founded, it's not clear to me that his detailed understanding of Ukraine is. I also glanced at Hedges' [02-05] Woke Imperialism, which reveals him to be a strange bedfellow in the anti-woke pile on. I'd say that the ability to recognize and the desire to oppose one form of discrimination (racial) would make one more likely to identify and oppose others (even class).

  • Seymour Hersh: [02-08] How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline. Detective stories have drummed into us the critical trinity of means, opportunity, and motive. People were quick to point the finger at Russia, but they could have produced the same effect by closing the valve, without the enormous future cost of repairs, so that never made any sense. Ukraine probably had the most motive, but means? Only the US checks all three boxes (especially with Norway's collusion), but you'd think exposure would be awfully embarrassing, especially in Germany. Jeffrey St Clair addresses this in this week's "Roaming Charges" (link below).

  • Anatol Lieven: [02-10] Crimea Is a Powder Keg. I've been saying all along that there needs to be an honest referendum on where the people of Crimea want to align (with Russia or Ukraine). Same for other contested oblasts, although refugees complicate things, especially in areas which have seen the most intense fighting. (There are also border issues: do you hold a referendum over all of Donetsk, or just the portion -- either now or before the 2022 invasion -- controlled by Russia?) I've also been saying that Ukraine would be better off without the breakaway territories. That doesn't sit easily with those who want to inflict the maximum defeat on Russia, but haven't they been indulged enough already? Lieven's review of Crimean history just underscores my position.

  • Eve Ottenberg: [02-10] The Leopard's Tale: US Weapons Makers on a Marketing Spree.

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [02-10] Pentagon wants to revive top secret commando program in Ukraine. Much unexplained here, including the word "restart." It's hard to see how US control of missile targeting intelligence falls short of US direction of Ukrainian forces.

Other stories:

Dean Baker: [02-05] Ending the Cesspool in Pharmaceuticals by Taking Away Patent Monopolies, and [02-07] The NYT Tells Us that Drugs Are Cheap, Government-Granted Monopolies Make Them Expensive. Baker has been almost alone in flogging this horse, but it's an important point, and even more important than he seems to recognize. The problem with patents isn't just that they grant companies legal power to fleece the public. (One's tempted to say "tax," given the word's arbitrary overtones.) They also reflect a worldview where all wealth derives from property, as they create new classes of property the wealthy can exploit. But they also have the exact opposite effect of what their proponents claim: they stifle innovation, by hacking up public knowledge and assigning exclusive control to companies motivated by mere profit-seeking. The elect claim them, then exclude others from developing them further. In a patent-free world, anyone could take an idea, develop it, making it public for others to develop further, as the knowledge developed would be gratis everywhere. Perhaps nowhere do we see the corrosive effects of patents than in world trade talks, where rich countries insist others submit to their market discipline and pay tribute to their arbitrary property grants. Pharmaceuticals are simply one of the most morally hazardous products: patents give companies the power to demand: "your money or your life." The Covid-19 pandemic shows how short-sighted this is.

Jonathan Chait:

  • [02-06] Michael Lind, Case Study in the Perils of Discourse-Poisoning: "How an intellectual talks himself into believing the GOP is the left-wing party." What occasioned this was a piece by Lind called The Power-Mad Utopians, which argues "America needs a broad popular front to stop the revolution from above that is transforming the country." Chait summarizes Lind's complaints about what he calls "the 'Green Project' (support for clean energy), the 'Quota Project' (affirmative action), and the 'Androgyny Project' (transgender rights)." Chait points out that while there are factions on the left pushing such arguments, the actual policies Democrats push fall far short. And he wonders why Lind seems to have abandoned his earlier focus on class to embrace culture war reaction. Those of us who have followed Lind know that he occasionally has solid insights -- he pointed out that libertarianism has indeed been tried, as what we now call feudalism; his 2004 book on Bush, Made in Texas, was one of the period's sharpest critiques, building as it did on his disillusionment with neoconservatism -- he has also on occasion proved remarkably stupid (as in his 1999 book, Vietnam: The Necessary War). For what it's worth, I think there is some value in critiquing utopian tendencies on the left (as on the right). But I'd say that the way to do that is to elect sensible Democrats who focus on real problems and how to mitigate or even solve them, as opposed to naysayers and outrage merchants who have nothing to offer but force and collateral damage. And I have to point out that sometimes Lind's cleverness gets the better of him (e.g., what can "The Trump presidency was the Thermidorian Reaction to the radical Bush revolution" possibly mean?).

  • [02-09] Columbia Journalism Review Had a Different Russiagate Story -- and Spiked It: Chait complains that Jeff Gerth's CJR essay "worked backward from the conclusion that Trump had been vindicated and used a parallel to the media's coverage of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. . . . Proceeding from the premise that Trump had been smeared by the press, Gerth attacked the media's coverage of the issue." He then impugns CJR's motives by citing "a very different Russia story" they "commissioned, and killed": one that looked into The Nation's "pro-Russian stance" (attributed largely to editor Katrina vanden Heuvel and her late husband, Stephen F. Cohen). I'll leave it to you to sort out the conflict in Chait's mind.

    But I will note that I've always been sympathetic to Cohen's opposition to efforts to gin up a new cold war against Russia, which was always central to his critique of the "Russiagate" hysteria. True, I thought he sometimes tried too hard to sympathize with Putin, who I've long regarded as a very repellant political figure -- my worries about regenerating cold war hysteria have more to do with the damage such attitudes cause to American domestic and foreign policy, not least the risk of prodding Russia into war, as has now happened. (While I blame Putin for intervening in Ukraine both in 2014 and invading in 2022, I seriously doubt that would have happened absent the long drum-roll of American arms propagandists.)

    What bothered me about Russiagate was never the truth or falsity of the charges -- a mixed record, as far as I can tell -- but the subtexts: the desire to reconstruct Russia as an enemy worthy of massive defense budgets (as noted above), and the lame excuse it provided for Hillary Clinton's 2016 political loss, to which we may now add the effective submission of the Democratic Party to the anti-Russia hawks (and in most cases to the anti-China hawks).

    On the other hand, I should note that I turned off the Russiagate hysteria almost as soon as it got cranked up. There was never any shortage of legitimate reasons to despise Trump, and even he soon got boring, as focus on his personal outrageousness distracted from the many horrible things his administration did (and the even worse things they clearly wanted to do). Perhaps if journalism was my profession, I might have felt more like Matt Taibbi (or maybe not, as he's always compensated for his independence with a veneer of both-sidesism). But on balance I'd say the media has been far more solicitous of and generous to Trump, and much less critical, than is objectively merited.

Thomas L Friedman: [02-12] In 46 Words, Biden Sends a Clear Message to Israel: I doubt the statement is either as clear or as weighty as Friedman thinks, but let's start with it:

The genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they are both built on strong institutions, on checks and balances, on an independent judiciary. Building consensus for fundamental changes is really important to ensure that the people buy into them so they can be sustained.

This misses two key points to focus in on the narrow point of the value of having an independent judiciary (which is arguably the least democratic part of US government). The first is that the real genius of American democracy is that it trends toward equal rights for all people (imperfectly, fitfully, but each expansion is ultimately one that we are proud of). On the other hand, Israeli democracy is built on the systematic exclusion of a large class of people, who are denied political rights within Israel and human rights in general. And this has gone on for 75 years, with the full blessing of the "independent judiciary" Friedman and Biden are so concerned over.

Bob Hennelly: [02-08] "Cover-up": Workers "know the truth" about the derailment disaster -- why are they being ignored? In Ohio, a train with 150 cars (20 carrying "hazardous materials") derailed and caught fire.

John Herrman: [01-30] The Junkification of Amazon: "Why does it feel like the company is making itself worse?" It is. And it's not alone. It's tempting to attribute this to monopoly leverage, but it's working at smaller granularity with greater speed than ever before. Google is another example: they started out offering a fast, relatively high quality search engine. Now they're basically sucking you into a maze of insider deals of marginal utility. Amazon started out as a place where you could buy discounted books your local retailer couldn't bother stocking. Now it's, well, some kind of insidious racket.

Ed Kilgore: [02-12] What Would 2024 Look Like for Democrats If Biden Retired? Not a subject that particularly interests me, but since his SOTU address helped unify all factions of the Democratic Party behind his presidency, I suppose one could offer a few observations. Clearly, his age will be an issue. Health past 80 is always a worry, but also he's always been prone to gaffes, and from here on they'll all be attributed to his age. He's never been an especially persuasive speaker, but it would be nice if Democrats had one for that role. On the other hand, administrations are team efforts, and a charismatic leader is hardly needed to micromanage. The key question won't be who can run government better, but who can win in 2024.

Biden has one big advantage in that regard. He has proven willing to work with the democratic wing of the Party, but he is still acceptable to the neoliberals who, like the Gold Democrats of 1896 and the Democratic Hawks of 1972 would rather throw the election than see their party move toward the left. You no doubt recall that when Sanders took the lead in 2020, Bloomberg put $500 million into the primaries, making an ass of himself but stampeding Democrats away from Sanders and Warren to . . . well, Biden was their sensible compromise choice, one that despite his many weaknesses kept the party united enough to defeat Trump. If he can do that again (or whoever the Trump-wannabe du jour is), I'll be happy.

Of course, Democrats should be developing a deep bench of potential leaders. Republicans are able to do that because they are all interchangeable ciphers with agendas set by their donors. Democrats have a tougher time, because the money people who ran the Clinton-Obama period did such a poor job of delivering gains to the party base that the people revolted (Sanders was a catalyst, and by no means the only one, but he proved that small donations could compete with the PACs). Consequently, there is a great deal of unresolved distrust among Democrats, which tends to get papered over with the more pervasive fear of Republicans.

Kilgore is mostly responding to a piece by Michelle Goldberg: [02-06] Biden's a Great President. He Should Not Run Again.

David Lat/Zachary B Shemtob: [02-12] Trump's Supreme Court Picks Are Not Quite What You Think. Marginal distinctions, but they know better than anyone that they never have to answer to his sorry ass again. It's possible that what kept Scalia and Thomas so tightly bound to right-wing lobbies is keeping their kin on the payroll.

Louisa Loveluck: [02-10] In earthquake-battered Syria, a desperate wait for help that never came. The worst-hit part of Syria is in territory that isn't under control of the government in Damascus, and while the US and others have pumped arms into the area, it's not really stable enough for outside aide to get in, either. Nothing constructive can happen in a war zone. People need to realize that's a good reason to settle conflicts, even if not optimally. Also note that even in Turkey, which is much more stable, politics still gets in the way: see Jenna Krajeski: [02-09 Turkey's earthquake response is as political as the conditions that increased the devastation. [PS: Death toll from the 7.8 earthquake has topped 33,000.]

Stephen Prager: [02-09] Republicans Are Starting to Discuss Which Groups to Cast Out of Democratic Society. Sounds like something they'd do, but most of the article is still on voter suppression, which is not a surefire method (not least because it stinks).

Nathan J Robinson:

  • [02-06] AI Is About to Bring Us Into a Very Creepy New World: "The ability to defraud and deceive is about to massively escalate." I think that trust is going to become extremely important in future politics, and that it's going to be impossible to achieve in a world that puts the profit motive above all else.

  • [02-11] I Have Now Destroyed All of the Right-Wing Arguments at Once: Robinson has a new book out, Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments. I probably know all of this already, but ordered a copy for future reference. Also ordered his 2018 essay collection, The Current Affairs Rules for Life: On Social Justice & Its Critics, which covers similar ground, calling out a number of right-wing intellectuals. I skipped over his Why You Should Be a Socialist, initially because Amazon didn't offer a paperback (they were too busy pushing Audible and Kindle). Turns out there is a paperback, for a couple bucks less than the hardcover, but I don't see much practical value in calling yourself a socialist, and I see lots of worthwhile things that can be done short of the label (although not short of getting called names by Republicans and other fascists).

    Robinson notes that right-wingers have their own primers on how to argue their talking points, like Gregg Jackson's Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies (2006), and Larry Schweikart's 48 Liberal Lies About American History (2008). Looking at the latter list, roughly one-third are certainly true (like "The Reagan Tax Cuts Caused Massive Deficits and the National Debt"), one-third are worded vaguely enough to be debatable (like "The Early Colonies Were Intolerant and Racist" -- well, they did execute women for witchcraft, and they did practice race-based slavery, but there were occasional exceptions), and one-third are things no liberal has seriously argued (like "John F. Kennedy Was Killed by LBJ and a Secret Team to Prevent Him from Getting Us Out of Vietnam").

Walter Shapiro: [02-09] The Democrats Lost the House by Just 6,675 Votes. What Went Wrong? Some case studies, if you want details.

Jeffrey St Clair: [02-10] Roaming Charges: Killing in the Name Of . . . : "The US is home to less than 5 percent of the world's population, but holds 20 percent of the planet's prisoners." Also: "Through the first week of February, police in the US had killed at least 133 people -- a 20% increase over the same period last year." Further notes on ICE border jails, and an in-depth review of the Seymour Hersh article and reservations.

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Sunday, February 5, 2023

Speaking of Which

One of the big stories this week was the saga of a Chinese weather balloon that at 60,000 feet got caught up in the jet stream and drifted across Alaska and western Canada, dipping into Montana and cutting a path through North Carolina and into the Atlantic. There, having completed its spy mission (if that's what it was), Biden ordered it blown up -- an act of pure spite and bloody-mindedness. Reports say he didn't act earlier because he was worried about debris landing on Americans, but odds of that happening in eastern Montana were pretty slim. Rather, he gave Republicans and the press three days to play up their China loathing -- fueled in part by Blinken canceling a visit to Peking in protest -- then jumped to the head of the line.

As you may recall, this incident comes about a week after Air Force General Mike Minihan predicted war with China in 2025, a prospect he (and therefore the United States) is currently planning for -- a plan that House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul heartily endorses. With so much sabre-rattling in the background, you'd think that Biden would work harder at smoothing over the tensions, but having been taunted into action, he scarcely had the resolve to resist.

Some further reading:

Top story threads:

Sometimes it's hard to find the right lead-in piece for what you know will be a cluster of links.

Debt Limit: Stealing a page from 2011, Kevin McCarthy (or whoever's pulling his strings) is willing to crash and burn the economy just to watch Biden squirm. So far, Biden's not falling for it:

  • Paul Krugman: [02-02] Republicans and Debt: Blackmailers Without a Cause.

  • Eric Levitz: [02-02] The GOP Can't Remember Why It Took the Debt Ceiling Hostage.

  • Li Zhou: [02-01] The lessons of the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, explained by the negotiators who were there: "Democrats and Republicans took different, sometimes contradictory, lessons from the last standoff." Democrats realized that Republicans couldn't be trusted, and didn't care how much damage they'd do, confident that the media would blame Obama. Republicans thought they had won a victory, not so much in imposing their will as in turning the discussion in their favor, by making debt and spending seem like bigger problems than the sluggish economy they were helping to stall. Pretty much the same calculation this time, except that in the meantime Trump's tax cuts blew a hole in the budget, and Biden is less inclined to give debt reduction the oxygen it needs to derail every other issue he has campaigned for.

    As it happens, right after linking to this piece, I read this from Ryan Cooper's How Are You Going to Pay for That?, where he minces fewer words on the 2011 doomsday negotiations:

    All told, this gruesome incident was a world-historical episode of moronic policy incompetence. It's as if your house were on fire, and the mayor and the fire department were arguing furiously about which grade of gasoline should be sprayed on the blaze.

    Cooper's book is very good, but I don't care for his coinage of the term "propertarianism" as a substitute for terms commonly used on the new left ("neoliberalism") and old left ("capitalism"). All of these terms refer to the notion of putting property rights ahead of human needs, but the problem is not so much property itself as a particular form of property: capital (as opposed to personal property, which means something you have exclusive use of, but not necessarily that produces income or rent). Neoliberalism is slightly different: an ideology aligned with capital, but couched in the idea of individual freedom, with contempt for notions of labor and society. Also note that neoliberalism was another neologism, designed at cross purposes: its advocates wanted to lay claim to tenets of classical liberalism, yet dispose of elements like New Deal support for unions (same tactic used by New Democrats and New Labour).

Trump: I'm sorry to inform you that as the only declared candidate so far for president in 2024, he's back in the news, and already stimulating horserace coverage for primaries that supposedly face him off with this year's favorite media goon, Ron DeSantis.

Other Toxic Republicans:

Ukraine War (Continued):

  • Blaise Malley: [02-03] Diplomacy Watch: Second thoughts on Ukraine retaking Crimea? Very little to report here. Elsewhere, there is a story that Biden Offered Putin 20% of Ukraine to End War, but all sides deny that (no one wants to look reasonable).

  • Helene Cooper/Eric Schmitt/Thomas Gibbons-Neff: [02-02] Soaring Death Toll Gives Grim Insight Into Russian Tactics. "The number of Russian troops killed and wounded in Ukraine is approaching 200,000, a stark symbol of just how badly President Vladimir V. Putin's invasion has gone, according to American and other Western officials." These figures are clearly wild guesses, exaggerated for propaganda purposes. I referred back to these number after reading much smaller figures cited by Jeffrey St Clair below. The difference is that to St Clair, the numbers (which focused more on civilians) demanded a ceasefire and negotiated settlement; here they're just another excuse for further punishing Russia, even when suggesting that Ukrainian losses are comparable.

  • Bruno Marcetic: [02-03] Diplomatic Cables Prove Top US Officials Knew They Were Crossing Russia's Red Lines on NATO Expansion. Of course, one could argue that the "red lines" were stupid. One could also argue that the US was daring Russia to do something stupid. The one thing that's inarguable is what Putin finally did was profoundly stupid.

Israel: As the Palestinian Authority, despite its legendary corruption, has found it impossible to do business with the new fascist government, Biden sent Secretary of State Blinken to kiss the ring, to reassure Netanyahu that nothing he can do will shake American fealty to the Zionist regime. Meanwhile, efforts in the US and UK are heating up to police any discussion of Israel's crimes. One of the few sources still reporting on Israel is Mondoweiss.

Other Stories:

Kate Aronoff: [02-03] The Biden Administration Has Been Very Good for Big Oil: "Despite climate legislation passed by Democrats last year, oil companies are securing loads of drilling deals and posting huge profits."

Rachel DuBose: [01-31] What can the world learn from China's "zero-Covid" lockdown?

Constance Grady: [02-03] The mounting, undeniable Me Too backlash: This has less to do with the ebbing of the "Me Too" moment a few years back than with the long reaction against the women's liberation movement in the 1970s, which has scored some recent purely political wins recently, like overturning Roe v. Wade. Hence, re-reading Susan Faludi's 1991 book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. I will note that while this reaction is inflicting real damage, it is not especially popular. So perhaps instead of relitigating points that have sense become common sense and embedded in popular culture, we should look at the political anomaly that has given such power to, well, Republicans -- one can add adjectives to reinforce one's sense of disgust, but doing so suggests that there are other, more decent Republicans, and there's little to no practical evidence of that.

Ezra Klein: [02-05] The Story Construction Tells About America's Economy Is Disturbing: Declining productivity, ever since the 1970s.

Paul Krugman: [01-30] Will Americans Even Notice an Improving Economy? That's a good question. Part of the problem is statistics: few people are aware of them, and fewer still have any idea how they relate to their own lives. (Statistics are the only way to make sense of massive amounts of data, but we'd prefer anecdotes we can relate to. But also there is the problem of gauging the significance of variations that are smaller than we normally perceive. This is a big problem with climate change: each degree warmer is a really big deal, but every day we experience temperature swings 10-20 times as great.) Part of the problem is the political bubbles we all live in: as far as I'm concerned, the Bush and Trump economies were disasters, even if the nature varied from time to time; Republicans, with far greater experience at denying reality, thought those times were peachy keen, only to be devastated by Obama and Biden (despite much higher top line statistics). But one other source of confusion is that under both parties, fortune favors the already rich. This is especially true with the Fed, which supposedly tries to manage employment and inflation, but actually implements its policy decisions to giving rich people (via bankers) more or less money at any given point. So it's quite possible that the economy is going gangbusters, but none of it is trickling down to you. Conversely, the vacuuming up, whether through inflation or taxes, is something everyone feels personally, which makes it relatively easy to exploit politically.

Eric Levitz: [02-03] The Fed Can Stop Choking the Economy Now: But they keep missing Powell's target figures for unemployment (er, reducing inflation).

Megan McArdle: [01-29] The $400K conundrum: Why America's urban rich don't feel that way: Refers back to the Todd Henderson case, the guy who in 2010 claimed that it's hard to get by on a meager $450,000 per year. I wrote a bit about this back then. The thing that struck me about Henderson's budget was that most of the money went for things that a decent modern social democracy would provide for most people: health insurance, schooling, retirement. Of course, for his extra money, he's also getting exclusivity: private instead of public schools. And maybe his children need the extra leg up his high income provides. McArdle refers to such people as "broke 2-percenter" -- so close to the 1-percent, yet they keep coming up just short.

Louis Menand: [01-30] When Americans Lost Faith in the News. "The press wasn't silenced in the Trump years. The press was discredited, at least among Trump supporters, and that worked just as well. It was censorship by other means." Menand tries to sketch out the origins of public distrust in the press. Those origins weren't in the 1950s, when journalists were all too happy to shill for the CIA, but the more "bad news" -- riots and anti-war protests -- they reported, the more suspect they became. Nixon may not have coined the phrase "fake news," but as so often in arts Trump perfected, Nixon was the originator, his practice of shooting the messenger only ending when the messengers shot back. Menand wades through various books, finally Margaret Sullivan's "memoir slash manifesto" Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) From an Ink-Stained Life.

Ian Millhiser:

Eve Ottenberg: [02-03] Egalitarian Paradise Lost: David Graeber and the Pirates of Madagascar. Review of the late anarchist anthropologist's second posthumous book, Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia.

Eric Reinhart: [02-05] Doctors Aren't Burned Out From Overwork. We're Demoralized by Our Health System. It's a big slide from the heyday of the AMA, when doctors organized as a business racket, to today, when doctors are talking about the need for unions.

Dylan Scott:

Jeffrey St Clair: [02-03] Roaming Charges: See No Evil: "There have been at least 52 people killed by police in the US since the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols on January 7th. In 2021, there were 1055 people killed by police in the US. In the same year, 31 people were killed by police in all of Europe. . . . Most of the people killed by police in 2022 were killed by officers responding to mental health calls, traffic violations, disturbances, other *non-violent* issues and situations where no crime was alleged." Examples follow. Behind a paywall, St Clair also wrote: [01-29] The Murder of Tyre Nichols and the Death of Police Reform.

Zeynep Tufecki: [02-03] An Even Deadlier Pandemic Could Soon Be Here: Actually, H5N1 avian flu is already here. It just hasn't broken out as a pandemic in humans yet. In 2005, Mike Davis took the threat seriously enough to write a book: The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu. We should have learned from our Covid-19 experience how better to face such threats, but a powerful bloc of nihilists (aka Republicans) drew the opposite lessons, and are working hard to make sure public health officials never again have the tools to protect public health. Note that David Quammen, who has followed these threats for decades and recently wrote Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus, wrote a piece about this back on [2022-10-31]: A Dolphin, a Porpoise and Two Men Got Bird Flu. That's a Warning to the Rest of Us.

David Wallace-Wells:

  • [02-02] Why Are So Many Americans Dying Right Now? Covid, but that only explains about half of "excess deaths" since April 2022. The author, by the way, has written extensively about the pandemic: e.g., [01-04] 9 Pandemic Narratives We're Getting Wrong (although it's not always clear what he's debunking, let alone whether he's right -- my takeaway from the Operation Warp Speed narrative is that the economic incentives that motivated Pfizer and Moderna aren't very trustworthy, and probably aren't the best approach in the long run), and [2022-12-01] China Has an Extraordinary Covid-19 Dilemma (China is often viewed through strange political blinders; I'm not sure this piece is immune, but it's far from the worst).

  • [01-25] Britain's Cautionary Tale of Self-Destruction: Starts off talking about the death toll from Covid-19, then noting how the entire post-Brexit economy and political system are ailing. For instance, economists were asked whether the slowdown in productivity was unprecedented. They did manage to find a worse case, but that was 250 years ago. Then there's: "Liz Truss failed to survive longer as head of government than the shelf life of a head of lettuce." Part of this problem was touched on by Eshe Nelson [01-09]: Britain's Economic Health Is Withering With Sick Workers on the Sidelines. Also: Ellen Ioanes: [02-04] The labor strikes in Britain are years in the making: "Austerity, Brexit, wage stagnation and a cost of living crisis have pushed British workers to the brink."

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Sunday, January 29, 2023

Speaking of Which

I thought I'd spend this last week of January wrapping up my music review of 2022, and indeed I'm giving myself an extra day, so don't expect Music Week until Tuesday, probably late. But I had a few tabs open, and made the usual rounds, and this is what I came up with.

Maggie Astor: [01-25] G.O.P. State Lawmakers Push a Growing Wave of Anti-Transgender Bills: Subhed describes this as "part of a long-term plan," but I don't see much planning. Rather, it feels like a combination of latching onto any sort of bigotry that still seems credible, and using that to hype up fears that have no basis in reality. I also suspect they've gotten a boost by overly aggressive transgender supporters -- clever of them to latch onto the much more popular LGB bandwagon -- where both sides get blown out of proportion. True, I am surprised at how often I run into trans or non-binary performers in music, but I've never even heard of an actual case the "save women's sports" might apply to.

Jelani Cobb: [01-29] Ron DeSantis Battles the African-American A.P. Course -- and History: "The state's intent seems to be to provide white Floridians, from a young age, with a version of history that they can be comfortable with, regardless of whether it's true." More DeSantis:

Dave DeCamp: [01-29] Air Force General Predicts the US Will Be at War With China in 2025. This is pretty chilling. I don't see it happening, but this sort of planning can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also on China:

Connor Echols: [01-27] Diplomacy Watch: Switzerland weighs break with policy of neutrality. Germany and US agreed to send tanks to Ukraine. Switzerland agreed to allow re-export of Swiss-made weapons to Ukraine. Estonia and Latvia withdrew their Moscow ambassadors. None of these moves offer hope of a ceasefire and negotiated peace. Echols also wrote: [01-26] US weapons makers report 'all-time record orders' since Russian invasion: Just in case you've wondered, cui bono? More on the ongoing war:

  • Hrair Balian: [01-28] Will the war in Ukraine inevitably freeze? "With the conflict more likely than not headed for stalemate, how long can the US maintain support in the absence of negotiations?" Proposes four scenarios that could push the US into suing for peace, but I don't see any of them as more than remotely likely (Russian battlefield gains; nuclear war becomes imminent; China moves against Taiwan; Republicans defund the war to spite Biden). No one around Putin will admit it, but Russia is much more likely to find the war insupportable, if not this year than somewhere down the road. What the US needs to realize is not that the war isn't affordable but that it is hopeless and unnecessary. Still, that realization needs to sit in on both sides before much progress can be made. Meanwhile, both sides desperately try to impress the other with their stubborn determination.

  • Dave DeCamp: [11-25] Lockheed Says It's Ready With F-16s If US and Allies Choose to Send Them to Ukraine. And now that Ukraine is getting US and German tanks, Zelensky has already moved on to requesting F-16s. Cheering him on: [01-28] At the Pentagon, push to send F-16s to Ukraine picks up steam.

  • Charles W Dunne: [01-29] Arab, Israeli positions on Ukraine continue to frustrate US: Turns out America's "closest ally" isn't much help here. Similarly, America's closest Arab allies have business interests more closely aligned with Russia. I wouldn't say that support on Ukraine should be a litmus test of alliance, but non-support should tone down the hyperbole.

  • Jen Kirby:

  • Anatol Lieven:

  • Blaise Malley: [01-27] New senator JD Vance leads GOP effort to put Ukraine aid under a microscope: Given the amount of money the US is putting into Ukraine, and given that the organizations involved have never been very good at accounting, I doubt they'll need much of a microscope' to find evidence of waste and corruption. Of course, had they paid attention to Afghanistan and Iraq, they would have found plenty, but those wars didn't break along partisan lines, and the waste and corruption was easily written off as cost of doing business. That's harder to do once it gets mentioned, which is the point of this notice.

  • Branko Marcetic: [01-29] Ukraine's Postwar Reconstruction Has Big Business Licking Its Lips: Good. Maybe we've finally found a business lobby that can compete with the arms merchants, to at least make the idea of negotiating an end to the war more palatable. After all, if we've learned one thing from Iraq and Afghanistan, it's that it's impossible to rebuild a country while it's still wracked by war.

Eric Foner: [01-23] The Constitution Has a 155-Year-Old Answer to the Debt Ceiling. The 14th Amendment specifies that: "The validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned." Republican efforts to force the government to default on its debt are, therefore, illegal under the Constitution. By the way, there is more in the 14th Amendment that Republicans should study up on. Also:

Lawrence B Glickman: [01-21] The Real Origins of the "Democrat Party" Troll. It first sounds like a verbal tic, but you hear it so often, it finally registers as an easy way to identify that the speaker is under the spell of the Republican Party. "Perhaps the answer lies in the face that many critics of the New Deal were also critics of democracy." And perhaps that's why the slur has become ever more common: Republicans have given up on even giving lip service to democracy.

Jonathan Guyer: [01-27] Why violence in Israel and Palestine has spiked in the last 48 hours. Only thing surprising here is that it's not just Israelis on the warpath. More on Israel:

Robert Hunziker: [01-27] Doomsday Clock Jitters and "How to Fix a Broken Planet": The latest update of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' "doomsday clock" was played for laughs on late night shows. There are fundamental problems with it, which you'd expect atomic scientists, of all people, to figure out. The first is that "doomsday" is not very well defined. Even in its original context -- nuclear war -- does it mean total annihation, or would more localized outbreaks suffice? If the latter, did Chernobyl or Fukushima cross that threshold? If not, why not? They are comparable to nuclear bombs: in some ways less destructive, in others worse, but on the same qualitative scale. They do have the advantage of looking like accidents, so are unlikely to cascade like the actual use of nuclear weapons could, or like war between nuclear-armed powers with conventional weapons might. The main reason they advanced the clock to its most alarming level ever is that we're experiencing such a war between NATO and Russia -- albeit, for now, with Ukraine as a buffer. Still, the closer you get to "midnight," the more dubious the scale seems. The unveilers as much as admitted this point by pausing in silence for more than the 90 seconds they allowed us to survive -- looking ridiculous when we were still here. All this proved was that the clock mataphor, with its linear gradations, wasn't the right model for the risk they wanted to represent.

I'd be more inclined to come up with some kind of wave function or probability matrix, which you could then reduce to a single number only at the expense of missing the point. Wouldn't it be nice to come up with some way of calculating how the likelihood of various bad events happening varies as you alter input today? There's no standard method, but we've been doing something like that with climate change models for quite some time now: what's lacking is the ability to get people in policy positions to understand how they work and what they mean. The doomsday clock folks thought they might help by trying to factor climate change into their calculation, but that turned out not to help: the scales and probabilities are fundamentally different, and the disaster-point is very ill-defined (and worse, many definitions would throw the clock on the wrong side of midnight).

By the way, Hunziker's piece is actually a review of a book by Julian Cribb, How to Fix a Broken Planet. It outlines all the usual threats not to the planet itself but to human life and culture on the planet, so it's probably good as far as it goes, until it starts scolding individuals for the failures of states and organization that claim to be acting in our best interests.

Ben Jacobs: [01-28] Trump struggled with identity at his first public campaign stop: "Trump tried to cast himself as both a great Republican leader and the ultimate outsider." He may think he can play it both ways, but to be a serious contender, he has to win back the outsider rail, because his opponents are so vulnerable to that kind of attack. Still, it will demand a lot of credulity from his voters, although he can blame many failures of his administration on Pence and the people Pence installed. More Trump trivia:

Mike Konczal: [01-27] Do We Need a Recession Because Wages Are Too High? 5 Responses Answering No.

Dylan Matthews: [01-26] FairTax, the GOP plan for a 30 percent national sales tax, explained. Not noted here, but worth pondering, is the extent to which Sam Brownback's budget-busting tax "reforms" incorporated FairTax principles: he raised sales taxes, while exempting business income from income taxation. True, nobody got a rebate to soften the blow. And while Kansas sales tax became one of the nation's highest, Kansas income tax was never more than a small fraction of federal, so the biggest beneficiaries still complained a lot.

Ian Millhiser: [01-25] Trump's worst judge is now a dangerous threat to press freedom: "An unhinged case brought by anti-vaxxers will be heard by one of the biggest reactionaries in the federal judiciary."

Sara Morrison: [01-24] Google's bad year is getting worse.

Nicole Narea: [01-27] The brutal, politically motivated attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, explained.

Nicole Narea/Sean Collins/Ellen Ioanes: [01-28] The fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, explained: "Five Memphis police officers are facing murder charges over Nichols's death." Related:

Tori Otten: [01-27] Marjorie Taylor Greene Says Biden "Abused His Power" by Lowering Gas Prices: "Do Republicans even want lower gas prices or not?" Nothing in their administrative history suggests that they do, which shouldn't be much of a surprise given how skewed donations from oil companies are in their favor. Nor is this just Greene saying something stupid. See: [01-27] House GOP passes bill to curb Biden's use of oil reserve. After ranting nonstop about gas prices, they're upset that Biden released oil from the US Strategic Reserve to reduce prices (and undercut their campaign messaging). A normal person, concerned first and foremost about solving the problem, would have applauded Biden's move. But there's nothing normal about Republicans any more. Even worse are Republican efforts to make sure public health officers can't order lockdowns or mask requirements when the next pandemic hits.

Kim Phillips-Fein: [01-24] The Change We Want: "What does it take to build a political majority?" Review of Timothy Shenk's Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy. The book appears to be a sweeping history of American politics told through a dozen or so individuals regarded as uniquely influential (Madison and Hamilton lead off; I'm more suspicious of Barack Obama at the end, but not every example need be successful to make a point).

Christopher Reeves: [01-21] Voters told them no, but Kansas Republicans are advancing wild new anti-abortion legislation anyway. Normal people would think that the referendum, where nearly 60% of Kansans voted to protect abortion rights, would have settled the issue, but Republicans aren't normal. They stick to their demented principles and pursue their obsessions with no concern about public opinion, using whatever power than can usurp.

Rebecca Robbins: [01-28] How a Drug Company Made $114 Billion by Gaming the U.S. Patent System.

Nathan Robinson: [01-23] Rush Limbaugh's Toxic Legacy: A review of the late right-wing icon's "new book" -- actually, as the title (Radio's Greatest of All Time) makes way too obvious, a tribute assembled by family of his most outrageous rants (a 500-page "timeless collection of Rush's brilliant words" and "authoritative body of Rush's best work"), larded with photos of Limbaugh hobnobbing with his politician fans, who provide their own tributes. Nor do the paeans end there: "Many of the transcripts printed in the book are from callers who claim that Limbaugh changed their lives in one way or another."

Jeffrey St Clair: [01-27] Roaming Charges: The Ugliest Thing in America. "Mass shootings are an unimpeachable proof of American exceptionalism."

Joseph Stiglitz: [01-10] Milton Friedman Set Us Up for a 21st Century Version of Fascism: "In 2023, market fundamentalism is fostering authoritarianism -- in the United States and abroad."

Michael Stavola: [01-25] Authorities name Wichita man killed in hunting accident when dog stepped on gun.

Asawin Suebsaeng/Patrick Reis: [01-27] Trump's Killing Spree: The Inside Story of His Race to Execute Every Prisoner He Could: "Before 2020, there had been three federal executions in 60 years. Then Trump put 13 people to death in six months."

Gary Younge: [01-23] Heavy Is the Head: "The British Royals in the age of streaming." A review of The Crown, which is an interesting and entertaining, albeit somewhat peculiar, chronicle of the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II, starting with her wedding in 1947, before her coronation in 1952. The recently concluded 5th Season covers 1991-97, ending just after Tony Blair succeeded John Major as Prime Minister, and just before the recently divorced and deposed Princess Diana perished in a Paris car wreck. Showrunner Peter Morgan clearly wants to refocus England's history around a public-service monarchy he sees as deeply interwoven into the fabric of national life (its imperial conceits conveniently ignored after the first two episodes), yet their self-centeredness and irrelevance can help but rise to the surface. By season five they've become such a disgrace that the series is largely given over to Prince Charles' Trust and his vain blatherings about how as King he would make the monarchy relevant again. You can say that he's trying to humanize the monarchy, except that the monarchy doesn't make for very good humans. As Younge notes, "History has already delivered its verdict on those who inherit power and remain unaccountable; The Crown merely illustrates the degree to which the institution doesn't even work for the people who run it."

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Sunday, January 22, 2023

Speaking of Which

Plenty below. No need to pad it out with an introduction. I do want to note that so far I'm very impressed with Ryan Cooper's book, How Are You Going to Pay for That? Smart Answers to the Dumbest Questions in Politics.

House Republicans: Expect this to be the main story for the next year or two, as Republicans use their five-seat margin in the House to repeatedly remind us why they should never again be trusted with any power whatsoever in Washington. This week's stories:

  • Robert Kuttner: [01-17] Turning the Debt Ceiling Crisis Against McCarthy's Republicans: "Biden needs to play serious hardball, or he will get rolled." I could cite a dozen pieces on this issue, but it really comes down to a political test of will: a question of whether the Republican faction which McCarthy surrendered to can intimidate Biden and the Democrats into agreeing to the first tranche of insatiable demands. Control of the House gives Republicans a lot of leverage if they really want to cut the budget going forward, but that's not what they're demanding here: they want to undo already passed budgets, and they want to force Biden to do their dirty work for them. Do they have the power to do this? Not really, given that there are workaround solutions (e.g., the platinum coin, "a silly solution to a silly problem"). More importantly, will this brinkmanship help or hurt them politically? Past experience says it will hurt them. So why are they doing it? Mostly because they don't care. They believe they'll never be held responsible for the mischief they wreak.

  • Eric Alterman: [01-20] Deal-Making Republican 'Pragmatists'? Like, Who? The eternal search for the "adult" Republicans who are willing to break from the crazies when nothing sort of disaster looms. (One of the hopeful scenarios in Kuttner, above.)

  • David Dayen: [01-20] McCarthy's 21 Republican Defectors Didn't Get Much: "That's because the party already agreed with them."

  • Pablo Manriquez: [01-10] Here's the First Salvo in House Republicans' War on Transgender People: "They're reversing a rule Democrats passed in 2021 calling for gender-neutral pronouns."

  • Timothy Noah: [01-20] Go Ahead, Republicans, Pass a National Sales Tax. How many people really want to pay a 30% sales tax just so rich people can escape being taxed on income, dividends, capital gains, and estates? True that many people are poor judges of self-interest, but this one will be hard to swallow.

  • Areeba Shan: [01-18] GOP rages at McCarthy over committee as MAGA extremists score key assignments.

  • Peter M Shane: [01-20] Jim Jordan's Reckless New Committee: He's actually calling it the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It is, of course, the weaponization of congressional investigative authority for purely political ends. "It will start with overheated demands for information. . . . The Biden administration will comply with some requests while resisting others. Republicans will denounce recalcitrance as a coverup. Fox News, for its part, will condemn any lack of transparency as Democratic hypocrisy." Yes, you can write it all up now, not least because we've seen it all before (remember Benghazi!?).

  • Alex Shephard: [01-20] Actually, George Santos Has Been Pretty Good for the Republican Party: "It may not last forever, but the scandal-plagued congressman is helpfully distracting attention from the House's bona fide extremists and their weird ideas."

  • Abby Zimet: [01-21] Mogadishu Redux: Bring in the Malignant Clowns.

And beyond the House, Republicans don't get any brighter (or saner, let alone more civil):

William Astore: [01-15] Imperial Dominance Disguised as Democratic Deterrence: Reading the Pentagon's latest NDS (National Defense Strategy) paper, which identifies five threats, prioritized: 1. China; 2. Russia; 3. the War on Terror; 4. North Korea and Iran; 5. climate change -- and proposes that the only way to deal with these problems is to spend more money on arms and bases straddling the world. Astore goes on to list seven things "you'll never see mentioned in this NDS":

  1. Any suggestion that the Pentagon budget might be reduced. Ever.
  2. Any suggestion that the U.S. military's mission or "footprint" should be downsized in any way at all.
  3. Any acknowledgement that the U.S. and its allies spend far more on their militaries than "pacing challengers" like China or "acute threats" like Russia.
  4. Any acknowledgment that the Pentagon's budget is based not on deterrence but on dominance.
  5. Any acknowledgement that the U.S. military has been far less than dominant despite endless decades of massive military spending that produced lost or stalemated wars from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq.
  6. Any suggestion that skilled diplomacy and common security could lead to greater cooperation or decreased tensions.
  7. Any serious talk of peace.

For more, see:

Dean Baker: [01-21] Biden has earned a solid 'A' halfway through his term. A bit of boosterism from an economist who's normally quite critical, but compared to whom? Baker argues that Biden managed to wring more positive legislation out of Congress than any president since LBJ, with a razor-thin margin in Congress (unlike Clinton or Obama in their first two years, which brought us NAFTA and ACA/Dodd-Frank). He doesn't dwell much on the executive orders, which reversed much (though by no means all) of the damage Trump wrought. He also doesn't have anything to say about Biden's foreign policy, which allows many newspapers to pair his piece with Meaghan Mobbs: Joe Biden deserves a 'D' for his administration's foreign policy. I don't know her political affiliation, but she's a West Point grad, former Army captain, and well established in the pro-military think tank racket. She blames Biden for getting out of Afghanistan (that alone should bump the grade to 'B'), and more generally for not being militant enough everywhere: "President Joe Biden and his administration speak harshly against our adversaries while failing to follow through with the necessary hard actions." I'm critical too, but for opposite reasons. Biden has pretty much everywhere focused on rebuilding military alliances -- which he saw Trump as undermining -- while failing to mitigate tensions and pursue diplomatic breakthroughs, including some that were obviously there for the taking. I'm uncertain how much to grade him down for those shortcomings -- and sure, there have been some of those on the domestic side as well, but the foreign policy ones are more glaring because he supposedly has more autonomy there -- but on a curve that goes back at least to Reagan, he looks pretty good.

Baker also wrote:

Irin Carmon: [01-20] What the Supreme Court Left Out of Its Dobbs-Leak Report: After Roberts' huffing and puffing when the leak occurred, the report didn't find the culprit, suggesting that the real answer was one that Roberts didn't want to hear.

Chas Danner: [01-22] 10 Dead in Lunar New Year Shooting in California: What We Know. Third mass shooting in California so far this year, 33rd nationwide (that's about 1.5 per day).

Lawrence B Glickman: [01-21] The Real Origins of the "Democrat Party" Troll.

Jonathan Guyer: [01-20] Israel's new right-wing government is even more extreme than protests would have you think: "It's also not a huge departure from previous ones."

Margaret Hartmann: [01-20] Did a $1 Million Fine Teach Trump a Lesson About 'Frivolous' Lawsuits? Remember the one he filed in March "accusing Hillary Clinton, former FBI director James Comey, the Democratic National Committee, and many others of orchestrating 'a malicious conspiracy'"? Well, it's not only been thrown out. Trump and his attorneys have been sanctioned for filing it. And one day later, Trump prudently dropped another "similarly dubious lawsuit": see Samaa Khullar: [01-20] Trump rushes to withdraw frivolous lawsuit against NY AG after a stark warning from judge. Speaking of frivolous lawsuits by thin-skinned billionaires meant to stifle criticism, see Jordan Uhl: [01-20] A Texas Billionaire Is Suing to Stop Free Speech Against Billionaires.

More Trump trivia:

Jeet Heer: [01-17] Why Biden and Trump Are Both Trapped in Secret-Document Scandals: "The real problem is the national security state's love of classification." Also:

  • Jason Linkins: [01-21] Biden's Document Screwup Is an Ethical Opportunity: "Rather than follow the Beltway's cynical damage-control playbook, the president should put on a master class in how to take responsibility for a mistake." Not that doing so will get noticed with the Republicans and their media idiots demanding blood.

Heather Souvaine Horn: [01-19] Davos Still Sucks: "How can the World Economic Forum earnestly pretend to address global crises while being funded by the corporations that fuel these crises?" I skipped over a bunch of articles on Davos, as none seemed to convey the true story. This one merely sums it up briefly. Also includes a picture which shows their logo, which reads "Committed to improving the state of the world." One article I skipped was about a high-five between attendees (of course they are) Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. They proved their commitment by repeatedly torpedoing Democratic bills over the last two years. But most likely what they're actually doing in Davos is prospecting for their post-Senate payouts.

Jill Lepore: [01-09] What the January 6th Report Is Missing: "The investigative committee singles out Trump for his role in the Capitol attack. As prosecution, the report is thorough. But as historical explanation it's a mess." Point taken, but the report's antecedents are hardly better. Part of the blame may be that to get the cooperation of Cheney and Kinzinger the Committee spared any Republican who wasn't directly tied to Trump. Beyond that, one thing the Committee didn't want to do was to offer any sort of mitigating circumstances, which is what a history of Republican voting schemes would have provided. Sure, Trump was not the only one, but he went farther than anyone else ever, so it's not such a surprise that he got singled out.

Blaise Malley: [01-20] Diplomacy Watch: White House signals that retaking Crimea is in the cards: "Officials say it has been US policy all along." One thing that all sides have managed to do is to hold fast to their maximalist demands without suggesting that they might be willing to settle for anything less. That makes some sense as a public stand, but it makes negotiation, and therefore any chance of ending the war, hopeless. I suppose it's possible that somewhere there's a secret channel where some kind of compromise can be negotiated, but the harder the public proclamations, the less credible that is. Key quote here is: "the Biden administration does not think that Ukraine can take Crimea militarily . . . but, officials said, their assessment now is that Russia needs to believe that Crimea is at risk." The fuller quote suggests that the US is angling toward eventual negotiations, which is to say they recognize that no military solution is possible, but in trying to psych out Russia, aren't they also building up false hopes for Zelensky? The recent rush to give Ukraine tanks seems to promise a spring offensive to drive Russia back toward the pre-2014 borders. But Russia's big tank advantage back in March soon turned into a liability. Is there any reason to think Ukraine can better defend their tanks?

More on Ukraine:

  • Chas Danner: [01-20] Ukraine's Latest Arms Haul: Thanks but No Tanks. Germany is balking at sending tanks, at least unless the US agrees to send some, which hasn't happened yet.

  • Fred Kaplan: [01-21] The Clash Over Whether to Send German Tanks to Ukraine Is a Pretty Big Deal. One point here is that US reluctance to send its M1 Abrams tanks partly technical, as the M1 is a "maintenance nightmare; it runs on jet fuel and sucks up three gallons per mile (not the other way around); a separate, massive supply line would have to be set up, manned, and defended, just for these tanks."

  • Anatol Lieven: [01-19] Six questions Western defense chief never seem to raise but should today. Lieven followed this up with: [01-20] Germans remain adamantly opposed to sending any Leopard tanks to Ukraine. [PS: Later: [01-22] Germany won't object if Poland sends tanks to Ukraine, foreign minister says.]

  • Suzanne Loftus: [01-21] No one will win a protracted war in Ukraine.

  • Trita Parsi: [01-20] No, Weakening Russia Is Not "Costing Peanuts" for the U.S. "Some analysts argue that America is getting a great deal for its money. But there are a lot of strategic costs that don't show up on the balance sheet." The Pentagon is notoriously incompetent at accounting for the money it spends directly, and everyone involved is extremely myopic (often plain blind) to the indirect costs occurred by others. (Economists have since estimated that the total costs of the Iraq War exceed $3 trillion. You may recall that when it was launched, some sales pitches estimated that it would pay for itself.) But I would start by questioning the premise: that degrading Russia's military forces, and embarrassing its political leaders, thus destabilizing the state, is a positive outcome. I'm not talking about who deserves what: that Putin should fail in his invasion is proper and just, but once the war ends, so should the further hostilities with Russia. (The failure of the elder Bush to accept the end of the Gulf War, leaving Saddam Hussein in power, almost guaranteed that the younger Bush would return to "finish the job," and make the situation even worse.) Anyone who doubts that this war is a massive tragedy for all sides has no business anywhere near power.

  • Jordan Michael Smith: [10-17] The Neocons Are Losing. Why Aren't We Happy? This chronicles a factional shift in the Republican Party that unlike the neocons who dominated the GW Bush administration, are less inclined to threaten the world with devastation, and who tend to see American interests as focused within the nation's borders. Still, there is considerable variation among the people profiled here -- few are antiwar where the enemy threatens American business class interests, and some (not least Donald Trump) are so full of bluster they could stumble into a war backwards. To group them together as Jacksonian seems wrong -- although I suppose it allows for the bluster and bigotry, but it strays a bit from the Quincy Institute watchwords of realism and restraint.

Ian Millhiser: [01-22] The coming legal showdown over abortion pills.

Madeleine Ngo: [01-19] The US just hit the debt limit. What happens now?

Kelsey Piper: [01-18] Operation Warp Speed was a huge success. So why is the US turning away from it? Rather than simply proclaiming Operation Warp Speed as "one of the biggest accomplishments of the Trump administration," perhaps a little critical distance is in order. It was Congress that put up the money, and the federal bureaucracy that implemented the program -- both subject to the usual corruption and political wiles, which were hardly unmitigated blessings. At best, Trump -- and, let's face it, he was rarely at best -- was a cheerleader. In the end, he was ambivalent about taking credit, because the anti-vax culture war cut deep into his base, leaving its leaders to catch up (something Ron DeSantis has done far more energetically than Trump). The problem isn't that "Democrats are loath to admit Trump did anything right" -- they just don't see any mileage when Trump himself is reluctant to take credit.

There are legitimate questions one could ask: Did this need to cost so much (e.g., elevating drug company moguls to billionaires). Why wasn't it more effective? Why wasn't it better distributed beyond the US? How can you speed up the process even more? Unfortunately, the Republican political thrust isn't how to do a better job, but how to avoid even being this effective ever again?

Luke Savage: [01-21] If America Had Fair Laws, 60 Million Workers Would Join a Union Tomorrow.

Dylan Scott: [01-20] When hospitals merge, patients suffer. Study is in the UK, but the profit motive amplifies the effect in the US.

More on health care:

Jeffrey St Clair: [01-20] Roaming Charges: The Specter of Equity and Other Evils.

George Tyler: [01-20] Ron DeSantis symbolizes that it's Richard Nixon's Republican Party now. Although, in a sign of the times, he admits that "in contrast to Nixon, DeSantis' cruel streak is already evident to voters." It took a while to realize that Nixon's malice wasn't just opportunism -- and many people continue to be shocked at Republican cruelty, even as evidenced by someone as sociopathic as Trump. I'm old enough to still regard Nixon as the most loathsome creature in American political history. In his calculated efforts to out-Trump Trump, DeSantis is aiming for Nixonian notoriety.

More DeSantis:

Dan Zak: [01-11] The boring journey of Matt Yglesias: "The Washington ur-blogger's slightly contrarian, mildly annoying, somewhat influential, very lucrative path toward the political center." During his time at Vox, Yglesias was the first person I checked every week, and most often provided the structure for my own blog posts. I had followed him as he maneuvered the blogosphere, but his paywall at Substack was one step too many. Still, by then I was beginning to have doubts. He got entered in, and won, a poll for "neoliberal shill of the year," and took unseemly pride in the fact. He never was as bad as most of the people friends on the left castigate as neoliberals, but he did seem to get up on a few ideas I found obnoxious, like "congestion pricing." (Even if you wanted to, how would that work? And what does it say about our values?) Then he wrote a big book called One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, which looked and smelled like a bid for the Thomas Friedman market. Nowadays, the only time I read him is when one of his Bloomberg columns gets syndicated in my local paper. Few are memorable, but he has enough command of his subject he's not useless. And while he seems politically more centrist than ever, the bigger problem may be that he's just not very deep. Consider this:

Perhaps it's instructive to think about two topics that bookend his public life. At age 21, Yglesias was laying out the logician's case for the invasion of Iraq, because how could the most powerful, informed men on Earth be so stupid? In May of this year, Yglesias declared that Bankman-Fried "is for real," because why else would wealthy people risk their money? . . .

This is Matt Yglesias coddling the powerful, his critics would say, and exposing a gullible dilettantism. And yet plenty of people view him as an early, sensible and stalwart voice for incremental progress on key issues of the 21st century, such as marijuana reform and same-sex marriage.

I wouldn't call those "key issues of the 21st century" -- they fall far short of war, inequality, labor rights, a very distorted system of justice, climate, sustainability, etc. Even his strong pro-immigration stance is based on his romanticism around growth.

Memorable tweets:

Connie Schultz:

Word of warning for parents supporting these book bans: As a child, I found a way to read every book someone told me I could not read. You see how I turned out. Think this through.

Context is notice that "Virginia's Madison County School Board approved banning 21 books from its high school library." The list includes four books by Toni Morrison, three by Stephen King (including 11/22/63), and The Handmaid's Tale.

I could offer myself as another example: I instinctively hated (and in some cases refused to read) required literature, and sought out pretty much everything that was banned or condemned. And yes, see how I turned out. My brother followed suit, and got kicked out of school for turning in a poetry notebook which opened with "Howl." Both of us were sent to see a shrink (who, by the way, thought the whole affair was hilarious).

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, January 15, 2023

Speaking of Which

Still feeling indifferent about continuing this column, but hadn't gotten into anything else at the moment, so had some time to fiddle. Then, of course, it got late, and I had to cut it short.

Lots missing below, including the six-year-old child who shot his school teacher, and another story here in Wichita where a toddler shot a mother. A wee bit, but not much, on the Biden classified documents snipe hunt, which reads like a comedy of errors, and is mostly significant for allowing Republicans to run around screaming bloody murder -- a thought that never occurred to them when Trump was hoarding top secrets, in part because they were so busy painting him as a victim of the politically woke FBI. Meanwhile, Democrats are scrambling to point out how different the cases are (although at least one writer has observed that the Biden case is is "really like Hillary's"). Few people have stressed the obvious: that way too many government documents are classified, which both makes them easy to lose and encourages their users to get sloppy.

As much as I'd enjoy Trump being sent to prison, it's hard to get excited about the legal jeopardy he seems to be in. Classified documents are basically bullshit. I wouldn't put whistleblowers like Reality Winner and Edward Snowden in jail, nor do I care much about people who sold secrets to Russia or China or Israel (many of whom, unlike whistleblowers, eventually get repatriated anyway). I don't see how Trump can complain about the Mar-a-Lago raid, given how much the FBI found, but he's probably right that if they prosecute him, it's mostly political. And, let's face it, the Feds have prosecuted lots of people for politics, most much more worthy of sympathy than Trump is.

The Georgia phone call is another mostly bullshit case. At what point does imploring someone to commit a crime become criminal? It depends a lot on who you are, and who you're talking to, which is why such cases do occasionally do get prosecuted when some Muslim is entrapped by an undercover FBI operative. I also don't care about the defamation suit brought by a woman who alleges Trump raped her. Defamation suits are almost all bullshit moves brought by people with too much money and too many lawyers -- the sort of move that Trump actually specializes in. (James Zirin has a 2019 book on this: Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits.)

Trump already dodged one bullet this year in avoiding getting indicted for the massive fraud at The Trump Organization, letting his CFO take the fall. It'll cost him some money, but the fine strikes me as pretty light, something he can easily afford. Maybe Trump's tax returns will catch up with him, but again that will probably just be a big fine (and not enough to satisfy Eddie Murphy's proposition in Trading Places: "the best way to hurt rich people is to turn them into poor people").

As for seditious conspiracy, that's most often another bullshit charge, usually directed against powerless people who never were real threats. (The first time I ran across the charge was in 1989, when Robert Mueller prosecuted members of the Ohio 7, most still serving long jail terms. My friend Elizabeth Fink was a defense lawyer, and got Patricia Levasseur acquitted.) I'm willing to consider that Trump is the rare case where there's actually some substance that should be redressed -- if what he did wasn't technically illegal, it's only because Congress couldn't imagine how far he would go -- but I don't expect it to happen. Justice in America may be some kind of ideal, but it's rarely practiced, no matter how people like to sound sanctimonious about it.

Of course, if Trump does somehow manage to get prosecuted and convicted and jailed, I won't mind. He seems to have a unique knack for screwing up and letting crises get out of hand. He also seems to have insanely poor choice in lawyers (although he has yet to embrace the cliché of representing himself).

House Republicans: Now that a Speaker is elected, and rules have been passed, House Republicans can get down to implementing their warped agenda. That leads to stories like these:

  • Jake Johnson: [01-14] House GOP Says Pentagon Budget Is Safe -- but Social Security and Medicare Aren't.

  • Ed Kilgore: [01-12] McCarthy Is Open to Expunging Trump's Impeachments.

  • Paul Krugman: [01-12] Why Republican Politicians Still Hate Medicare. Curious lines here: "Advocating a welfare state for white people might well be politically effective. But in America, it's a road not taken." Perhaps Krugman should read Ira Katznelson's When Affirmative Action Was White. Admittedly, Republicans mostly opposed those programs, even with their racial discrimination, but the more such programs benefitted non-whites, the more racist innuendo they have worked into their denunciations. A better piece here is Jamelle Bouie: [01-10] The Less Talked About Part of Kevin McCarthy's Deal With Republican Radicals.

    But left untouched by a democratically accountable state, the free market is just another arena for the domination of the many by the few, of the subordination of labor to the dictates of capital.

    Social insurance and the welfare state are more than a ballast against the winds of capitalism; they are part of the foundation of self-government and the cornerstone of democratic citizenship as we now understand it, where individuals are as free as possible from the arbitrary domination and authority of others.

    Extreme opposition to social insurance and the safety net is, in that case, a natural fit for an authoritarian movement that tried to overturn the constitutional order and now wants to use the power it has to clean up as much of the scene of the crime as it can manage.

    It is, for that matter, a natural fit for the entire Republican Party. Even after you exclude the MAGA radicals, you find a political party whose hostility to a broader, more equitable democracy is deep-seated and profound.

  • Amanda Marcotte: [01-13] House Republicans want to make smoking great again: "Masculinity gets toxic -- literally!"

  • Norman Solomon/Jeff Cohen: [01-13] The dangerous myth of the "moderate Republican" keeps pushing the media rightward.

  • Kenny Stancil: [01-12] 11 New GOP Picks for House Financial Oversight Panel Took Over $6.1 Million From Wall Street.

  • Kenny Stancil: [01-14] As Debt Ceiling Alarm Sounded, GOP Accused of Plotting 'Terrorist Attack on the Economy': Headline could be sharper. What Republicans are threatening is morally equivalent to terrorism, but its ramifications are far greater, affecting many more people (and businesses, and through them even more people). Dean Baker's quote is: "They have the tiniest majority of one house and they are prepared to use it to get concessions they know are incredibly unpopular." Left unsaid, but key, is how Republicans are convinced that if they do their damage while a Democrat is president, they'll be able to deflect blame for their acts. Where common terrorist attacks betray a desperate, even pathetic limit of power -- "if we can't do anything else, at least we can make you hurt" -- Republicans are deliberately hoping to leverage their power to cause much greater economic harm. Nor is this new with the nihilist rump of the Party: Republicans have repeatedly tried to tank the economy every time the president was a Democrat (at least with Clinton, Obama, and now Biden).

  • Marcus Stanley: [01-11] House creates controversial new select committee on China: One thing that argues against Republicans flipping on war and defense spending is their deep-seated hatred for China. There is a huge body of literature on current and coming civilizational clashes between the US and China, claiming that China aspires to dominate the globe like the US and the UK have before, which includes not just the usual militarist flunkees like Lindsey Graham but extends deep into MAGA ranks (thanks largely to Peter Navarro).

  • Peter Wade: [01-15] GOP House Oversight Chair Can't Explain Why He's Investigating Biden Classified Docs But Not Trump's. Wade also wrote this, not about the House, but they say state legislatures are the "laboratories of democracy": [01-15] Wyoming GOP Considers Declaring War on Electric Vehicles to Protect Fossil Fuels.

Ezra Klein: [01-15] Three Reasons the Republican Party Keeps Coming Apart at the Seams:

  1. Republicans are caught between money and media.
  2. Same party, different voters.
  3. Republicans need an enemy.

The Republican Party has long consisted of two factions in an uneasy equilibrium: plutocrats, who may think of themselves as libertarian but are only concerned with freedom for the rich to increase their power and wealth; and culture warriors, who see America at great risk of moral collapse unless they can impose their values on everyone else. As long as the latter let the former slide, which may entail embracing wealth as a virtue, the two sides can work together, defined primarily by their shared enemy (the secular left).

Two more pieces on Republicans beyond the House:

Andrew Koppelman: [01-12] Forced Labor: Why the Thirteenth Amendment Protects Abortion Rights: "Roe v. Wade was built on a less-than-compelling Constitutional argument. But the right to choose is solidly grounded in the amendment that abolished slavery."

Rebecca Leber: [01-11] The gas stove regulation uproar, explained. I grew up with a gas stove, and have been a partisan all my life. I've rented places with electric stoves, and hated them. When I rebuilt our kitchen, the first thing on my shopping list was a big, fancy gas stove. (I bought a 36-inch Capital with six full-power burners, and a very expensive range hood which was a bear to vent outside. At the time, I saw a bunch of arguments that electric was better for baking, so I bought an electric wall oven as well, which I use more often than the gas oven, but each has its advantages, and it's nice to have both.) I didn't panic when this news came out, but was curious about the evidence -- not really answered here (but I guess I'm running my exhaust fan more regularly). Also:

  • Margaret Hartmann: [01-13] The Gas-Stove Ban Freak-out Is the Story We Need Right Now: "It's stupid and low-stakes." One thing I didn't know here is that gas stoves are much more common in Blue States (CA, NY, NJ, IL, NV), and are generally more preferred (well, at least owned) by Democrats than by Republicans. Also some stuff on induction ranges. I had heard about them when I bought my gas range, but was under the (possibly mistaken) impression I'd have to buy new cookware.

  • Alex Shepherd: [01-13] How Right-Wing Gasbags Cooked Up a Fantastically Dumb Culture War: "The incredible story of how conservatives took a consumer product warning about stoves and fried their brains to a crisp."

Matt McManus: [01-11] Why Conservatism Can Never Be "Populist". Review, based on Paul Elliott Johnson's I the People: The Rhetoric of Conservative Populism in the United States. As Johnson points out, it is "important to stop waxing nostalgic about conservatism's reasonable past."

Blaise Malley: [01-13] Diplomacy Watch: Are European countries diverging on Ukraine aid? "As Poland preps to send tanks, Italy delays its latest package of weapons and financial assistance to Kyiv." Once again, little here. For more:

  • George Beebe: [01-13] Laying the foundations for a settlement in Ukraine.

  • Ed Kilgore: [01-13] Republican Opposition to Ukraine Is Reaching Tipping Point. Democrats have been notably united behind arms aid for Ukraine. Republicans are more conflicted, but opponents are scattered, with varied rationales ranging from ranging from culture war sympathies for Putin (a key member of the fraternal order of fascists Steve Bannon has been courting) to anti-spending hawks to neo-isolationists to pure snark (e.g., Donald Trump Jr.'s dismissal of Zelensky as an "ungrateful international welfare queen"), but the numbers have been small -- the only rationale anywhere near a "tipping point" is the reflex to oppose anything that Biden endorses. Still, Ukraine is a bonanza for the arms merchants, and while they've always been expert at lining up bipartisan majorities, most Republicans have always bent over backwards to please them. But I worry that Republicans could flip and take a stronger anti-war position than Democrats -- especially with Biden so wedded to the security wonks (and to the arms industry). Trump flirted with this, but couldn't do anything as long as he preferred to project machismo and/or prostrated himself to the military class.

Ian Millhiser: [01-10] The legal loophole that could arm mass shooters with makeshift automatic rifles.

Nicole Narea: [01-12] Why a special counsel is looking into Biden's classified documents: "Any time classified materials go to a place they're not supposed to go, there is almost always an inquiry into how they got to that place." And what never happens is any investigation of why we have so much classified shit in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised to find that 80% of it all is pure bullshit: not stuff the government is trying to hide from the public, but the habitual use of secrecy markers and clearance levels to establish rank and privilege in the security bureaucracy (where the main privilege is excluding others from questioning your authority). The sheer ubiquity of classified markings ensures that documents will get lost or stolen, resulting in periodic hysteria and vendettas. That someone as sloppy as Trump seems inevitable. As for the special counsel, Garland probably just wanted to duck the inevitable questions about equivalency, even if it should be obvious that President Biden needs a level of access that ex-President Trump doesn't.

Alan Rappeport/Jim Tankersley/Jeanna Smialek: [01-13] The U.S. May Finally Breach the Debt Ceiling. Here's Why That Would Be Very Bad. I'm not sure how bad it really would be, but I am sure it would be stupid and totally unnecessary, a crisis contrived by a Republican Party that has no concern for anything other than their own political power.

Nathan J Robinson: [01-12] There Are No Good Royals: "If a member of Britain's degenerate ruling family doesn't like attention, he should go away and do something useful with his life." But where's the evidence that he could even imagine doing "something useful." He can't even grasp the concept of going away. I have no interest in doing so, so I can't fault Robinson for saving us the dirty work of reading Prince Harry's book, but I'd be inclined to dissect it somewhat differently. For instance, instead of dwelling on Harry's boast of long-distance murder in Afghanistan, I'd wonder what made him want to be a soldier in the first place. It's not a common choice for rich folk who have lots of other options -- especially in a third-rate power whose foreign policy consists of nothing but supplication to American power (perhaps his marriage to an American is another dimension of servility?). It takes a degree of priggishness that is hard to imagine outside of the British royal cocoon.

Robinson makes clear that the book is a considered, ghostwritten PR ploy, and notes how briskly it has sold, but what does that tell us? Clearly, the context is the "vicious coverage [of the royal family] in the British tabloid press," but are they looking for sympathy, or just playing the role of fools who regularly justify our instinct to bring them down with ridicule?

Bill Scher: [01-11] Democrats Need an Immigration Strategy Before They Turn on Each Other: Title seems obvious enough, and the problem is true enough: there is a vocal faction which supports everyone's right to immigrate any time they see fit, which makes it hard to settle on any approach that limits immigration, especially for refugees. Republicans have their own divide on immigration: the larger faction is nativist and exclusionary, but there's also a business-oriented faction that likes the idea of importing cheap foreign labor, kept powerless by special work permits. My own take has long been that the top priority should be in clearing up the backlog of undocumented immigrants (especially from the 1990s, when NAFTA dislocated Mexican workers and farmers, and the process was largely tolerated). To do that, I'd be willing to accept lower numbers of legal immigrants (as well as more enforcement against new illegals, although we've already spent tons of money on that). (I'm not personally bothered by higher numbers, but it looks to me like promoting more immigration is a losing political issue, and distracts from the more important one of providing better public service for the people who are here now.) But, as I said, it's hard to get any sort of consensus among Democrats, and Republicans would rather just campaign on being hard and mean and, in most cases, cruel. Still, one thing I was struck by in this article is this:

As Bier explained, before 2021, we had almost no southern border crossings originating from countries outside Mexico and Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. In 2000, only 6,271 people from outside those four countries were arrested for crossing illegally. By 2020, that number ticked up to 43,715. But in 2022, just through October, the number exploded to 947,054, with the bulk coming from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

The obvious point here is that Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are problems caused largely by US foreign policy, and which could be fixed by changing policy to help those economies rather than hinder them. It always seem ironic that people should seek to immigrate to the very countries that are responsible for their local plights, yet there is a certain logic to it. Perhaps those who get so upset when refugees arive should think a bit more about how to prevent such calamities from happening, instead of simply thinking they can beat every problem to death.

Jeffrey St Clair: [01-13] Roaming Charges: Woke Me When It's Over.

Brett Wilkins: [01-11] New study blows up myth that Russian bots swayed 2016 election for Trump. "Blows up" is a bit strong: the study is limited to Twitter, which was probably less significant than Facebook (not that a study there wouldn't correlate, but there are differences in how the two platforms are used); and it basically quantifies the limits of how much influence Russian bots could have had (not much, as they were mostly viewed by small numbers of pro-Trump Republicans). In any case, the bots were only one small part of the broader "Russiagate" story, which always had a political charge behind it, but one may say the same about many detractors. I always minimized the claims that Russia sabotaged Hillary Clinton, for three reasons: from the start, the story was floated to shift blame from Clinton for losing to Trump, when there were many other reasons to be critical of her campaign; given the massive investment of the Republican propaganda machine (including Fox and their ilk), it's hard to imagine how Russia could further tip the scales; and the whole campaign was clearly intended to inflame anti-Russian sentiment by playing up Cold War themes, and this played into militarist plans to challenge Russia's borders and temperament (the Ukraine War being a self-fulfilling prophecy of such hawks, a cult that counted Clinton as a charter member). On the other hand, anyone (like Matt Taibbi) who has claimed that Russiagate is the biggest journalistic fraud of recent history has either a very selective memory or a strange political agenda. Such people see this report as vindication on everything, because to them it's all one vast conspiracy.

Also see:

  • Luke Savage: [01-13] It Turns Out Hillary Clinton, Not Russian Bots, Lost the 2016 Election. Sure, the "Russian bots" story has been greatly exaggerated by Clinton supporters -- people my wife likes to calll Hillbots -- it's also been strangely fixated on by people who want to drive home the point that Clinton, saddled as she was with neoliberal entanglements, was a uniquely bad candidate. I basically agree as far as Clinton goes, but I don't think that "Russian interference" has anything major to do with her loss. I suspect her vulnerabilities lie elsewhere (and not really in being a woman, although being the wife of a widely reviled former president complicates that question). The key fact of 2016 was that she lost to Donald Trump, which is unforgivable but also unnecessary. Lots of people had many good reasons for opposing Trump, but the one that she chose came off as smug and priggish, reinforcing the public's view of her as an elite political insider, bound to all the corruption and dysfunction of such elites. Trump's promise to "drain the swamp" was always bullshit, but she didn't expose him for that. She seemed to be saying that Trump wasn't good enough for the swamp, and that just reinforced what Trump was saying. Of course, her failure was embarrassing, which led to all manner of blame shifting -- Russiagate was just part but flourished because it was easy to play off Cold War tropes.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, January 8, 2023

Speaking of Which

After hustling to get the 17th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll posted on Friday, including my essay at Arts Fuse, I was pretty uncertain as to what to do next. Making matters worse was that same day the dog we inherited from the late Elizabeth Fink breathed her last. I was, at the time, figuring it'd be at least a week before I'd bother with a Music Week, much less a Speaking of Which, column. But lacking any other inspiration, I sat down and started collecting this. I had very little news exposure over the last month, first coming down with a fairly mild but disconcerting case of Covid, then finding our internet connection increasingly flaky. The latter was finally cured by a new cable modem, so as I started collecting this, I was pleased to find the system as solid and even faster than ever.

Of course, even without my usual news sources, I was aware of the comedy/horror show in the US House, mostly through the late night shows, which emphasized the comedy side. Still, I didn't see any lasting value in citing articles while the votes were going on. Now, of course, we can not only look back on the debacle, we can look forward to the dysfunctional future.

Eric Alterman: [01-06] George Santos a Liar? Small-Time When Compared to His Fellow Republicans.

Bernard Avishai: [01-07] Netanyahu's government takes a turn toward theocracy. Religious parties have often been part of ruling coalitions, but they've never been so prominent before, or as demanding. One obvious flashpoint is Itamar Ben Gvir, who's often run afoul of Israeli law, yet now is in charge of (selectively) enforcing it. More on Israel:

Jonathan Chait: [01-04] 'Reactionary Centrism,' the Left's Hot New Insult for Liberals: "New jargon just dropped." I'm not much for jargon, let alone insults, but the definition offered here is a recognizable type: "someone who says they're politically neutral, but who usually punches left while sympathizing with the right." The first clause is pretty exactly how self-proclaimed centrists describe themselves. But centrism seems to extend to people who are not politically neutral -- who align with a major political party, which since the GOP purge mostly means Democrats these days -- but who recognize and try to balance multiple interests. If such people are honest, they should be arguing equally with both sides in favor of the other. In practice, though, a lot of them seem to relish fighting with the left, while letting all but the extreme right-wingers off the hook.

Hence there is a need to qualify centrist with some adjective other than fair or honest: reactionary might do the trick, but one should beware that it has two meanings. The root meaning is someone who reacts adversely (perhaps even violently) to change. That may apply to many centrists, especially those who worry that any change or challenge might rock the boat, leading to an even more vicious right-wing backlash. The other meaning, which is why the word is problematic, refers to that backlash itself.

Reactionaries are generally distinguished from conservatives because where the latter merely want to preserve their system and privileges, reactionaries want to radically change the system to restore their own expected privileges. On the left, we often refer to reactionaries as fascists, since that's the more vivid example. Chait is concerned, because he feels vulnerable as a centrist (albeit a Democratic one). I'd be inclined to cut him some slack, but the whole article seems like an excuse to kick the left for impolitic terminology, rather slight grounds that kind of make the point he's arguing against.

It seems to me that we would be better off trying to figure out real, viable solutions to problems, than simply mapping out who is left or right of whom. Not every left solution is ideal, but there are many to choose from, which isn't something you can say about a right that has drifted so far into its fantasies that centrists need to wake up and recognize that they're actually well left of center, and need to treat their comrades with more respect.

Neel Dhanesha: [01-06] California's deadly floods won't break the megadrought: "Atmospheric rivers are dumping rain on California. That's not a good thing." I'm pretty sure that the first time I ever heard "atmospheric river" was in Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, which was "science fiction" two years ago. For more:

Connor Echols: [01-06] Diplomacy Watch: Russia takes aim at Western resolve: Aside from Russia announcing a 3-day ceasefire around the Orthodox Christmas -- a ploy that Ukraines were quick to dismiss -- very little to report here, devolving into the propaganda trope about "Western resolve." Little reason to fear there: American foreign policy seems largely under the thumb of the weapons cartel, who are having the time of their lives, feeding a voracious war without American casualties. While Ukraine still has dreams of regaining ground, Russia's war has largely become one of attrition, which despite inflicting real damage only intensifies Ukrainian resolve. (The German Battle of Britain is an example, although the hardship here may well be a bit worse.) More:

  • Connor Echols: [01-05] How Western tanks could change Ukraine's war effort. Recent arms promises to Ukraine have shifted toward tanks, both from France and the US. The thinking, at least on paper, is that tanks could lead a breakthrough in regaining occupied land. But a big tank advantage didn't help Russia much early in the war, and tanks have rarely been effective without sufficient air coverage, which Ukraine still lacks, so this may mostly be for show.

  • Jen Kirby: [06-06] Putin's so-called Christmas ceasefire, explained, or rationalized away, since Ukraine is unhappy to play along.

  • Paul Krugman: [01-06] What Ukraine Teaches Us About Power: I'm not sure I agree with his argument that there were no decisive battles in WWII -- what about Stalingrad? El Alamein? Midway? -- but he is quite right that in the end, it was economic power that prevailed. The key chart here is the one that compares GDP: while Russia towers over Ukraine, the Russian economy is but spare change compared to Europe and the US, which is what allows NATO to fund Ukraine without breaking a sweat.

  • Anatol Lieven: [01-06] Where the war in Ukraine could be headed in 2023.

  • Condoleezza Rice/Robert M Gates: [01-07] Time is not on Ukraine's side: Talk about people I have no interest in weighing in on anything! Title suggests a note of caution, that it would be good to negotiate sooner rather than later, but they're really urging escalation now to counter Putin: e.g., "For Putin, defeat is not an option. . . . Count on Putin to be patient to achieve his destiny." Perhaps they worry because they understand that Americans aren't very patient people. After all, they spent much of their public disservice prolonging wars most people had realized had gone sideways. What's missing is even the rudiments of a theory suggesting that their push for more weapons will do any good. Rather, they cite 1914, 1941, and 2001 as lessons that "unprovoked aggression and attacks on the rule of law and the international order cannot be ignored." And finally they resort to quoting Zelensky channeling Churchill: "Give us the tools, and we will finish the job." Surely they know that Churchill needed a lot more than tools (Lend-Lease) to defeat Nazi Germany. You'd also expect them to know that taking direct aim at a country with the "strategic depth" and nuclear arms of Russia is a fool's errand. But these two didn't get to the pinnacle of the US war machine by virtue of their grasp of reality (or history).

    And just to nitpick, why 1914 but not 1939, or 1941 but not 1917? And why 2001 instead of 2003? The latter was the war they wanted in 2001, but had to postpone until they could snow us. And while Iraq fits their "unprovoked aggression" line to a tee, note that no other nation raised the alarm and came to Iraq's defense, and the aggressors failed anyway.

  • Ishaan Tharoor: [12-14] Ukraine's resilience sets a global standard. Not that I'm unimpressed, but I thought the global standard was set by Vietnam from before 1954 to 1975. I can give you other examples, including Finland and Afghanistan against Russia (as well as Afghanistan against the UK and the US). I'd also like to note that Ukraine's resistance against invasion was most impressive in the early days, before the US offered any significant weaponry, back when the US wanted to offer Zelensky "a ride," so he could become a propaganda tool, like Juan Guaidó.

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [01-06] What foreign policy elites really think about you: "If public opinion doesn't match up with the Washington program then it must be wrong, misunderstood, or worse, irrelevant." US foreign policy has always been tightly controlled by special interests, and usually ignored by parties struggling over the domestic economy. That didn't change with WWII, but before it was mostly trading companies, with resource (especially oil) companies gaining ground after 1900. What did change with WWII was the creation of the military-industrial complex, which shifted focus away from peace and stability to war and chaos. Since 2001, hardly any of the self-organized elites bothers to pretend otherwise. Anyone who thinks otherwise is ridiculed or worse. One of the clearest measures of this is US support for Israel, which has significantly lessened among the public, but if anything has hardened and become more reflexive among the elites. For more on their thinking, see:

  • Gregory Foster: [01-02] The zombification of US national security: "Time to drive a stake through the heart of these establishmentarian ideas, which are super dysfunctional but never seem to die." Sub-heds: The Fetishization of .mil-ism; The Enduring Gluttony of Defense Spending; The Canonization of Military Essence; The Delusion of Military Autarky; "The Capabilities-Commitments Conundrum; The Great Power Competition Subterfuge.

Thomas Geoghegan: [01-06] The Constitutional Case for Disarming the Debt Ceiling: "The Framers would have never tolerated debt-limit brinksmanship. It's time to put this terrible idea on trial. Related:

Luke Goldstein: [01-06] FTC Ban on Noncompetes Sets Up Huge Legal Fight. Having had my own bitter experience with a noncompete dictate, I'm very happy to see this rule. In my case it was a rare requirement only demanded of top management, and we were presumably compensated for our loss of freedom (though I'd argue I wasn't). It still left a great deal of bitterness, which probably capped any possibility I had of further advancement. Still, that's not what this is about. Rather, companies have since started demanding noncompete restrictions on even bottom-rung employees. Had that been in effect in my day, most of my job changes would have been prohibited. No surprise that groups like the Chamber of Commerce are up in arms over this rule. Employers are still nostalgic for the days when they had complete power over their workers.

Melissa Gira Grant: [01-03] Welcome to Ron DeSantis's 2024 Campaign Against "Wokes": One of the most important planks of Trump's 2016 campaign was the revolt he led against "political correctness." It worked because pretty much no one likes having their speech corrected, especially the object isn't a notorious slur and the substitute is awkward and tortured ("differently abled" is one I've been hit with). (Bill Maher, who may be a jerk but isn't a right-winger, made political incorrectness his calling card.) However, I'm not sure that attacking "wokes" (or even the more abstract "wokeness") is going to be such a winning strategy. The difference is that it's one thing to say that you have the right to be a bigot and to hold opinions many of us deem ignorant, and another to say that if you're not a bigot, and take offense at bigots, you're evil, and need to be throttled -- which is basically DeSantis's position. DeSantis doesn't stop at hitting liberal columnists for their "wokeness"; he's gone after big corporations that simply don't see the profit in racism.

Margaret Hartmann:

Ellen Ioanes: [01-07] North Korea's nuclear escalation, explained: The author seems more puzzled, but the right-wing turn in South Korea -- after the attempted thaw was largely sabotaged by Trump lieutenants like Bolton -- and also by the Biden administration's indifference to the issue. Despite occasional bouts of panic, North Korea's nuclear arsenal has never been, and will never be, a serious threat to the US (not that it couldn't annihilate South Korea and cause a lot of damage to Japan). From a military standpoint, nuclear weapons have never been worth a hill of beans, as the US has repeatedly found out in the series of military blunders that actually started in Korea. What is dangerous is trying to keep North Korea bottled up, when its leader have been trying so frantically for decades now to signal that they just want to be respected and treated decently.

Ben Jacobs: [01-07] How Kevin McCarthy (finally) became speaker of the House: "McCarthy was able to sway several far-right members of his party by agreeing to extraordinary concessions that will rewrite the politics of the House." Of course, there was never a chance that he wouldn't cave in to the far right, because he's not fundamentally opposed to them. While it was fun watching Republicans make fools of themselves, McCarthy's own demeanor during the ordeal suggests he was in on the scheme, which allowed him to shift effective power to the nihilists -- at this point, even "far right" doesn't do them justice, and "MAGA" isn't quite fair to Trump (not that he deserves any better) -- and also blame, when it all blows up. Jacobs has been covering this story in real time, so his older pieces are already dated: e.g., [01-03] Kevin McCarthy's once-in-a-century House speakership failure.

David Cay Johnston: [12-31] Trump's Taxes Are the Best Case Yet for Putting Him in Prison. Author also wrote [12-27] Trump's Brazen Tax Cheating Revealed.

Whizy Kim: [01-04] The ultrarich are getting cozy in America's tax havens at everyone else's expense. One serious problem that hardly anyone talks about is how having multiple state and local tax jurisdictions creates intense competition to carve out tax loopholes, which are now so widespread and so lucrative that they drive many business decisions. Every carve-out is ultimately compensated by taxpayers with less leverage, either in higher taxes or in reduced services. I don't know how you could go about doing this, but a single national taxation system, when they distributes money down to state and local governments (which, if they have nothing better to spend it on, could ultimately rebate it to citizens), would wring the incentive for this out of the system, and in doing so would end much of the system's inherent corruption. As I recall, Nixon made a start back around 1970 with his "revenue sharing" program. It's strange that no one talks about this, even though a lot of federal money is routinely transferred to states and on down the line.

Ezra Klein: [01-08] The Dystopia We Fear Is Keeping Us From the Utopia We Deserve. Features a book of "reactionary futurism" by J Storrs Hall, Where Is My Flying Car?. The argument is that we got sidetracked in trying to conserve energy (or at least utilize it more efficiently), when we should have been figuring out how to create much more, enough to enable the wonders of a set of formerly futurist inventions like the flying car.

Robert Kuttner: [01-03] Who Will Talk Jay Powell off the Ledge? "He has committed the Fed to an interest rate course that will create a needless recession, and he refuses to admit that inflation is subsiding on its own." Again, Biden made a bad mistake appointing this Republican to a second term (much as Obama did with Bernanke, and Clinton with Greenspan). For what it's worth, I'm not terribly upset that he raised interest rates up off the floor: that's helped cool down house prices, and perhaps most important, it's slowed down speculative gambling on futures, which now seems to have been the main thing driving oil prices up. When several left-of-center economists were lobbying for Powell to get that second term, they pointed to his changed views. I can't tell you now what they thought he was thinking, but he seems to have clung to the hoariest of old views: that the only proof that inflation is declining is that unemployment is rising.

Ian Millhiser:

Charles P Pierce: [01-04] Given the Choice Between Free Money or Sicker Residents, Republicans Chose Sickness: "Their refusal to expand Medicaid is making it impossible for rural hospitals to stay in business." His examples are elsewhere, but this is particularly a problem here in Kansas -- where a significant majority want Medicaid expansion, but the Republicans they foolishly elect think it's smart politics to discredit Obamacare by turning away people who would benefit from it. Pierce, by the way, kicks out 2-3 useful posts every day.

Andrew Prokop: [11-02] Will 2023 be the year Donald Trump is indicted? I suspect, the less it matters, the more likely it becomes. Also on Trump:

Nathan J Robinson: [12-06] Let ChatGPT Convert You to Socialism. I got interested in AI back in the 1980s, but haven't followed it since. One idea I had back then was to write a program that could crank out weekly letters to my mother. I would feed it a couple bullet points if I had any actual news, and it would mix them in with semi-random swatches of boilerplate. I was quite certain that she would be delighted, and none the wiser. That sort of thing is probably much closer to reality today, but will more likely be used by spammers trying to defraud you. On the other hand, I can imagine smarter programs that read your mail for you, sort out the dangerous and the merely crappy. Still, any arms race is likely to ultimately blow up. The best solution is to refashion the world to make predatory behavior less likely.

I haven't rekindled my interest in AI, so I know very little about where it's gone and how it's being used (other than my impression of badly). My nephew is pretty seriously into AI image generation: he's a graphic artist, and wants to see if he can use it to generate his style of art more efficiently. Robinson has done some of that too, but has focused more on ChatGPT, which he reports on here.

Jeffrey St Clair: [01-06] Roaming Charges: No Speaker, No Cry. "There are 100 members of the 'Progressive Caucus,' who capitulated within seconds to nearly every demand Pelosi made, and 40 members of the Freedom Caucus who don't mind waterboarding their own leader in public to get their way & ditching him if they don't." Also: "The problem is McCarthy himself is endorsed by Trump and the neo-fascist Marjorie Taylor-Greene, along with Freedom Caucus hardliners Jim Jordan and Louis Gohmert. In the face of a MAGA raid on the Capitol, McCarthy still voted to overturn the 2020 elections and boasted: 'I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it.'"

Eric Topol: [01-08] The coronavirus is speaking. It's saying it's not done with us.

New York Times: [01-08] Live Updates: Brazilian Authorities Clear Government Offices of Rioters, Official Says: Right-wing Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro lost his re-election bid a couple months ago, so now as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has taken office, Bolsonaro's mob has decided to throw their own January 6 riot. For more, see Ellen Ioanes: [01-08] Bolsonaro supporters storm Brazil's seat of power.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Speaking of Which

Long time, many delays, most significant of which was coming down with Covid a week ago. It followed a couple days of socializing, something I'm clearly ill-practiced at. The wife of a cousin died the previous week. I missed the funeral, but went out to the farm to see some of the family, who had all been at the funeral. Then, next day, I fixed our usual latke holiday dinner, for a rather tightly packed crowd of nine. Two days later I tested positive. I've had all three booster shots, and got a 5-day run of paxlovid. As illnesses go, I've suffered worse, but in this politically charged time, this one feels both sad and infuriating. And there have been many compounding hardships, from record cold that broke an appliance to a dog sadly on her last legs. Plus fear of infecting my wife, which so far hasn't happened, and as such remains a constant struggle.

Still, the main side-effect has been a huge sense of disinterest in everything I've been doing, or wanting to do. The most immediate victim is the Francis Davis Jazz Poll, which won't come out on time, because I haven't gotten it together. My usual Music Week post is also delayed, perhaps indefinitely. (Certainly no guarantee it will appear tomorrow.) For some reason, this post framework has been easier to get back into than anything involving music. It started just jotting down links, and most of the ones I grabbed early are still pretty bare (and I'm unlikely to return to them). But over several days, a few comments started to form. Still, I figure this is still mostly an exercise to file away bookmarks, in case I ever feel like revisiting the history.

Beware that Covid-19 cases have been rising steadily since new cases dropped under 37,000 on Oct. 30, to 70,425 (+90%) on Dec. 22 (numbers around Christmas bounce due to reporting fluctuations).

Ben Armbruster: [12-16] Diplomacy Watch: Is the Overton window of the Ukraine war's end game shifting? Also: Connor Echols: [12-23] Diplomacy Watch: Sketching the uncomfortable path to peace. Both titles sound more optimistic than there seems to be evidence for.

  • Connor Echols: [12-21] Zelensky addresses Congress, makes push for advanced weapons.

  • Masha Gessen: [12-22] Volodomyr Zelensky's critical visit to Washington, DC: I have a major bone to pick here: the notion that, "The United States and its allies have not done enough to stop the war in Ukraine." The context here is Ukraine's demands for ever more powerful weapons, which the US (or as Biden shifted responsibility, the European "allies") have slow-pedalled for fears of provoking Russia into a broader war (something Putin has repeatedly, if not all that convincingly, threatened). Gessen finds this caution "obscene." But there's no reason to think that more (and fancier) weapons would "end the war." That's only going to happen in negotiation. And while one can fault the US and Europe for not doing enough to bring about negotiations -- not least by fueling fantasies that Ukraine might regain all Russian-occupied territory -- Biden et al. (especially Zelenskyy) have done one key thing, which is to show Putin that the only way out is through negotiation. Adding Patriot missiles to the mix is a big win for Raytheon, but not an essential step toward ending the war.

  • Jonathan Guyer/Li Zhou: [12-21] Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy's unexpected visit to the US, explained.

  • Jonathan Guyer: [12-16] This DC party invite shows all the money to be made off the Ukraine war: "A Ukrainian Embassy reception, sponsored by America's biggest weapons makers."

  • Ben Freeman/William Hartung: [12-23] New Ukraine aid is a go -- and it's more than most states get in a year: "Congress just passed a $45 billion assistance package for Kyiv on the way out of the door for the holidays. We put this spending into context."

  • Fred Kaplan: [12-22] The Power of Volodymyr Zelensky's Charm Offensive: "The next Congress can't slash support for Ukraine now." As Kaplan notes, Zelensky "knew all the right buttons to push." Kaplan also wrote: [12-16] Henry Kissinger Wrote a Peace Plan for Ukraine. It's Ludicrous. Actually, the "peace plan" isn't so bad. Kaplan's probably right that it isn't something Putin can accept, but I don't agree with the posture (which Kaplan seems to have adopted after his own proposals fell into history's dustbin) that until Putin is ready to sue for peace, there's no need for anyone to sketch out a possible compromise. The piece's other point is that Kissinger and his worldview, largely formed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, is ludicrous.

  • Greg Sargent: [12-23] Tucker Carlson's rage at Zelensky caps a year of getting things wrong. Bizarrely fascinating to watch right-wing jerks like Carlson lose their minds, as they try to apply old attack tropes to new cases that fit even worse -- like characterizing Zelensky at a "welfare queen." Still, the first thing this reminded me of was the counterexample of Reagan proclaiming the Afghan mujahideen as "like our founding fathers." Which led me to:

  • Cathy Young: [12-22] Putin's Useful Idiots: Right Wingers Lose It Over Zelensky Visit. A term often attributed to Stalin, but vastly exercised by right-wing pundits to ridicule liberals as soft-in-the-head fools, still, it literally works in this case: the targets are certifiable idiots, and their rage and sputterings serve little purpose other than to comfort Putin. I don't doubt that one can make a case that Ukraine is corrupted by oligarchs, tainted by collaboration with fascists, and far from a liberal democracy; also that anti-Putin Democrats are having way too much fun watching Ukrainians die just to spite the guy they blame for Hillary Clinton losing to Trump in 2016. One could go deeper and critique the deep direction of US foreign policy ever since globalists started promoting US hegemony in the early 1940s. But these jerks aren't saying anything like that. They want to see Ukraine safely under Putin's illiberal thumb, and they want to see Washington's "democracy promoters" -- which, frankly, has mostly been a propaganda ploy to spread American hegemony -- rebuffed at every turn.

Dean Baker: [12-16] We Don't Need Government-Granted Patent Monopolies to Finance Drug Development: Quite frankly, they do much more harm than good.

Doug Bandow: [12-21] Ending the Syrian war, getting US troops out, and lifting sanctions: "The status quo is doing more harm than good. Let's admit failure before more people are hurt and put in harm's way." I would have been quite happy had Assad been driven into exile, or even strung up, but that didn't happen, despite the efforts of at least a dozen other countries to intervene. Realism suggests the need to reach some sort of deal where the US offers to normalize relations (including removing troops and ending sanctions), provide humanitarian aid, and use its influence to dissuade its "allies" from attacking and/or trying to subvert the Assad regime (Turkey being the most immediate threat, but Israel regularly bombs Syria), in exchange for agreement not to punish dissidents and to allow political prisoners to go into exile. Note, however, that the US has never negotiated such a deal, as it always seemed politically expedient to perpetuate "cold war" hostilities, and in the end the US never cared that much about the people it supposedly entered the conflict to help -- most were left to their own devices, then begrundingly allowed to immigrate if they made it that far.

Dave Barry: [12-25] Dave Barry's 2022 Year in Review: Getting old here, and there. Old enough I can remember a time when he was genuinely funny. Probably because less seemed to be at stake then.

Matthew Cooper: [12-22] Charlie Peters, Washington Monthly Founder and Mentor to Leading Journalists, Turns 96: Peter founded Washington Monthly in 1969. I started subscribing shortly after that. For a while, I suppose I could have followed two different political paths: one into reform-minded Democratic Party politics, which was influenced significantly by reading the policy-wonky articles in Washington Monthly, and the other into more radical left movements. Peters was a guru of the former path, but I probably stopped reading him before the McGovern loss crushed my faith in elections. But while the new left offered a convincing critique of liberal capitalism, I never found a practical politics there. I stopped subscribing to Washington Monthly after a few years, so I didn't notice when Peters was one of the first to expound a new notion of neoliberalism. I've never been clear how much his adoption of the term has in common with the "New Democrats" who made neoliberalism a dirty word. The last thing I read by him was a lament on how his native West Virginia abandoned the Democratic fold.

Shirin Ghaffary: [12-16] Elon Musk's Twitter journalist purge has begun.

Melvin Goodman: [12-23] How the New York Times Mythologizes US-Israeli Relations. Something they're not alone in, but have been at the forefront of, at least since . . . well, the earliest examples in this article are from the 1950s.

Margaret Hartmann: [12-16] 7 Great Things About Trump's Incredibly Dumb NFT Announcement: You know the bar's low when the article starts with: "NFTs are the least harmful thing Trump could have announced." Other Trump trivia pieces (see Prokop below for the Jan. 6 criminal referrals, and Narea for his taxes):

  • Olivia Nuzzi: [12-23] The Final Campaign: "Inside Donald Trump's sad, lonely, thirsty, broken, basically pretend run for reelection. (Which isn't to say he can't win.)" You can compare this with Nuzzi's July 14 piece: Donald Trump on 2024: 'I've Already Made That Decision': "The only question left in the former president's mind is when he'll announce." Not why? Or: do I have a chance? Or: how stupid will I look? The only thing he seems to understand is the graft another campaign makes possible.

Ben Jacobs: [12-23] Did George Santos lie about everything? And how incompetent was the media in failing to figure him out before the election? Same for whoever was supposed to do "oppo research" for the Democrats. Too little, too late, but the New York Times has more: [12-23] George Santos's Early Life: Odd Jobs, Bad Debts and Lawsuits. On the other hand, while journalists aren't much good at discovering, they are pretty adept at piling on: Joe Perticone: [12-23] George Santos's Problems Are Just Getting Started.

Ed Kilgore: [12-14] Democrats Came Shockingly Close to Keeping the House: Going into the election, my working assumption was that Democrats would win the popular vote for the House, but could lose control due mostly to gerrymanders. But it appears now that Republicans actually won the popular vote (50.6% to 47.8%, a margin of 2.8%) while winning the House by somewhat less (222-213, a margin of 2.0%). I don't know what this means, but one effect of gerrymandering is to suppress turnout by making elections less competitive ("safe" seats were often won by 70% or more), but also slanting competitive seats toward Republicans may have boosted R turnout more than D.

Siobhan McDonough: [12-22] Why are American lives getting shorter? "US life expectancy got worse during Covid-19, and then kept getting worse."

Ian Millhiser:

Brian Murphy: [11-09] Ernie Lazar, who quietly amassed huge FBI archive, dies at 77: Late tip here from Rick Perlstein, a beneficiary of his research.

Nicole Narea: [12-21] Trump's tax returns are about to become public. What happens now?

New Republic: The Scoundrels, Ghouls, and Crooks of 2022.

Timothy Noah:

Andrew Prokop: [12-19] The January 6 committee's case against Trump.

Dylan Scott: [12-15] Ron DeSantis's vaccine "investigation" is all about beating Trump.

Dan Secatore: [12-19] What I Learned Curating Presidential Theater for Obama: "A former Obama advance man on how the hollow pageantry of political stagecraft legitimizes bad policy and distracts us from more substantive political discussions."

Stephen M Walt: [12-13] The United States Couldn't Stop Being Stop Being Stupid if It Wanted To. The "realist" blames liberals, for thinking that the rights and liberties we expect at home should be available to everyone else, but what kind of liberalism is one that extends its values at gun point? Granted, Americans like to talk about liberal values when they go to war, but that's only because it sounds better than admitting to crass imperialist aims.

Brett Wilkins: [12-20] UN Experts Decry Record Year of Israeli Violence in Occupied West Bank: "Israel's deplorable record in the occupied West Bank will likely deteriorate further in 2023."

Also, a golden oldie: Rick Perlstein: [2021-10-26] A Short History of Conservative Trolling.

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