Gary Legum: Sam Brownback is a harbinger of national doom: Bleeding Kansas' scary lesson for America: Brownback's approval ratings are down to 18%, about where Bush's were when his presidency ended. Crowson put it like this:
Of course, Brownback wasn't much more popular when he was reëlected governor in 2014, but the trick there is to play up the fear of the unknown Democrat -- that plus a mysterious shift where Republicans across the board ran about five points higher than the polls predicted. Brownback's income tax cuts, including a free ride for business owners, passed early in his first term, and immediately blew a $600 billion hole in the state budget, leading to massive spending cuts and tax increases (both state and local, all regressive) to keep government marginally functional. Kansas had gotten through the early stages of the Great Recession relatively well, mostly because there was relatively little real estate bubble to pop, but since Brownback became governor economic growth has lagged in every comparison. This should be no surprise to anyone who knows the first thing about macroeconomics: just as more government spending stimulates more economic growth, less undermines growth (or worse). What's harder to calculate is how much long-term damage this level of economic strangulation will cause -- especially the hardships to be inflicted on a whole generation of students -- but there can be no doubt that harm is being done.
Legum properly sees Kansas as a warning to the nation of what happens when Republicans get too much (or actually any -- his other example is Wisconsin) power, especially when led by an ambitious ideologue. Legum quips: "The biggest mystery about Brownback at this point is that he has been such an awful governor, it's a wonder he's not running for president." Brownback did run for president in 2008 and quit after he couldn't top 2% in Iowa polls. He then decided to give up his Senate seat and run for governor to prove himself as an executive and, well, he simply hasn't done that yet -- in fact, his unwillingness to compromise on rolling back some of his income tax cuts last year shows he's still convinced that they'll pan out eventually. Besides, the early field for governors with hideous records was already overfull with Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal (whose approval rates in Louisiana are even worse), plus his Bible buddy Rick Perry was running -- sure, that niche has opened up with Perry and Walker the first dropouts, but nothing suggests that Brownback would do any better.
Paul Krugman: The Hamptons Hyperinflation Endorsement:
As a public service, some background to Marco Rubio's latest campaign coup. As the Times reports, Paul Singer -- a huge contributor to Republican causes -- has thrown his support behind Rubio.
What it doesn't mention are two facts about Paul Singer that are, I think, relevant.
First, he's most famous for his practice of buying up distressed debt of Third World governments, then suing to demand full repayment.
Second, he's an inflation truther -- with an unusual twist. [ . . . ] But Singer has taken a different tack: he knows, just knows, that inflation is running away because of what it's doing to the prices of the things he cares about:
Check out London, Manhattan, Aspen and East Hampton real estate prices, as well as high-end art prices, to see what the leading edge of hyperinflation could look like.
Even if you only know one thing about economics, it's probably that prices rise on fixed goods when buyers have more money to spend. If the price of Aspen real estate is going up faster than the general rate of inflation, it's because the people who are in the market to buy that real estate are bidding each other up, and what makes that possible is that they have more money to spend. That would be obvious for a commodity, but real estate and fine art are also thought of as assets, so it's easy for buyers to fool themselves into thinking they're worth all they paid. One sign of increasing inequality is asset inflation, and the more the merrier.
Also see Richard Silverstein on Singer: Pro-Israel Hedge Fund Billionaire, Paul Singer, Buys Large Stake in Rubio Inc.. Rubio also appears in Policy and Character, but more importantly Krugman gets to remind you of how prescient he's been in the past, and it's a case worth repeating:
My view here is strongly influenced by the story of George W. Bush. Younger readers may not know or remember how it was back in 2000, but back then the universal view of the commentariat was that W was a moderate, amiable, bluff and honest guy. I was pretty much alone taking his economic proposals -- on taxes and Social Security -- seriously. And what I saw was a level of dishonesty and irresponsibility, plus radicalism, that was unprecedented in a major-party presidential candidate. So I was out there warning that Bush was a bad, dangerous guy no matter how amiable he seemed. [ . . . ]
And proposing wildly unaffordable stuff is itself a declaration of priorities: Rubio is saying that keeping the Hair Club for Growth happy is more important to him than even a pretense of fiscal responsibility. Or if you like, what we've seen is a willingness to pander without constraint or embarrassment.
Tom Engelhardt: Campaign 2016 as a Demobilizing Spectacle: No less than a short history of post-WWII America pivoting around the question of when and where the American public is actively engaged ("mobilized") in public affairs, or not. For instance, he quotes Bernie Sanders: "We need to mobilize tens of millions of people to begin to stand up and fight back and to reclaim the government, which is now owned by big money." He ten adds a telling example: "We do, of course, have one recent example of a mobilization in an election season. In the 2008 election, the charismatic Barack Obama created a youthful, grassroots movement, a kind of cult of personality that helped sweep him to victory, only to demobilize it as soon as he entered the Oval Office." He doesn't mention the Tea Party, but that's another reflection of the sense that the government has turned into an alien entity that needs to be "taken back" (perhaps because they view it as something to be destroyed rather than restored as an instrument of the public interest).
The desire to take the American public out of the "of the people, by the people, for the people" business can minimally be traced back to the Vietnam War, to the moment when a citizen's army began voting with its feet and antiwar sentiment grew to startling proportions not just on the home front, but inside a military in the field. It was then that the high command began to fear the actual disintegration of the U.S. Army.
Not surprisingly, there was a deep desire never to repeat such an experience. (No more Vietnams! No more antiwar movements!) As a result, on January 27, 1973, with a stroke of the pen, President Richard Nixon abolished the draft, and so the citizen's army. With it went the sense that Americans had an obligation to serve their country in time of war (and peace).
From that moment on, the urge to demobilize the American people and send them to Disney World would only grow. First, they were to be removed from all imaginable aspects of war making. Later, the same principle would be applied to the processes of government and to democracy itself. In this context, for instance, you could write a history of the monstrous growth of secrecy and surveillance as twin deities of the American state: the urge to keep ever more information from the citizenry and to see ever more of what those citizens were doing in their own private time. Both should be considered demobilizing trends.
The line that stands out there is "No more antiwar movements!" -- most likely because antiwar movements question not just the strategy of a particular war but the material basis that makes it possible to fight wars, and the very morality of starting wars. Also, in the case of the United States, it is very easy to uncover a long list of dubious choices that led to war -- many taken in secret and covered up by the self-perpetuating security state.
Robert Parry: A Glimmer of Hope for Syria: For many years one of the best sources on the Middle East has been Paul Woodward's War in Context blog, but something unfunny happened a few years back when he started giving half or more of his blog to articles that seemed to be promoting western intervention in the Syrian Civil War. That didn't render the blog worthless, but it gave it an off odor. (An example today is Syria's horror shows the tragic price of Western inaction. I wouldn't call any of these things inaction: Obama's speech telling Assad he had to step down, the CIA's many attempts to train and arm "moderate" opposition groups, the "red line" ultimatum on chemical weapons, the arming of Kurdish troops operating in Syria, the bombing of all things ISIS, last week's insertion of Special Forces into Syria. And while I'm not sure what Woodward means by "Western" the US, at least, is at least partly complicit in the acts of its allies like Israel, Turkey (above and beyond NATO), Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar -- the first three have bombed Syria, and the latter two have at least shipped arms and money into the war. If anything there's been way too much action -- a charge I don't exempt Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah from.) Woodward doesn't flinch from the human tragedy the war has wrought, but the notion that some "action" is what's needed to bring the war to a just (or merely sane) close is magical thinking of the most fantastical sort. The only thing that can work is some form of agreement where all sides give up the war. Parry's article gives you some background, and a bit of hope. (The part I don't see as hopeful is that while he posits that Russia and Iran may press Assad to compromise, which is indeed essential, I don't see any comparable pressure to get the US to step down. Indeed, it seems to be a common hope that an agreement on Damascus will make it possible for the US, Russia, and Iran to join forces in demolishing ISIS, which is to say in not ending the war.) Also worth reading along these lines is Jimmy Carter: A Five-Nation Plan to End the Syrian Crisis. Still, even Carter's endgame leaves ISIS fighting:
Mr. Assad's governing authority could then be ended in an orderly process, an acceptable government established in Syria, and a concerted effort could then be made to stamp out the threat of the Islamic State.
Scaling the civil war back to just ISIS vs. the world would be preferable to the status quo, but certainly isn't optimal.
The US Spends $35 Billion Helping Out the World . . . But Where Does All This Money Really Go?: Well, the graphic says it all:
I doubt this factors in the money the Defense Department and the CIA spend -- Afghanistan would be much larger -- but it does seem to count some money not destined for established governments (e.g., Syria, but where is Libya?). Of course, Israel you know about, and its two neighboring dictatorships, primarily tasked with keeping Palestinians pent up on their reservations in Gaza and the West Bank. One thing this shows is the extent to which "economic aid" has been reduced to a slush fund for America's imperial ventures. Another is that the US is becoming increasingly entangled in Africa.
DR Tucker: The Dawn of Darkness:
This Wednesday marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of one of the great tragedies in American history, a moment of indelible shame, a choice that harmed so many in this country and around the world: the defeat of President Jimmy Carter at the hands of right-wing former California Governor Ronald Reagan. [ . . . ]
Reagan's economic agenda literally took from the poor and gave to the rich. His race-baiting on the 1980 campaign trail and his demonization of civil rights as president laid the foundation for reckless Republican rhetoric on race during the Obama era. His illegal wars in Central America and his irresponsible invasion of Grenada served as the model for George W. Bush's Iraq misadventure. His scorn of environmental concerns put us on the painful path to a climate crisis.
Amen. I'll add that while the full horror of those points only became clear over time, even back when Reagan was president I frequently noted that under him the only growth industry in America is fraud.
David Atkins: Will the Press Recognize the Existential Threat and Fight Back, or Buckle Under?:
It should astonish even the jaded that Republicans are calling CNBC, that stodgy home of supply-side Wall Street cheerleading, an agent of the left.
Still apoplectic at being asked some basic questions at the debate, Republican candidates are doubling down on their freakout.
Ted Cruz is flat-out calling CNBC debate moderators "left-wing operatives" and demanding that right-wing radio hosts moderate their debates, instead.
Donald Trump, who openly lied during the debate about what is on his own website, called debate moderator John Harwood a "dope" and a "fool."
All of this after Republican candidates spewed forth one of the most embarrassing explosion of lies ever witnessed during a television presidential debate.
The press is facing an existential threat. With Republicans increasingly unashamed to tell grandiose lies and respond to any press criticism with derogatory insults and whines about media bias as well as blackmail threats to cancel appearances if the questions are too tough, the press must decide how to respond on two fronts. First, it must decide how to present an objective face while acknowledging that both sides do not, in fact, behave equally badly. Second, it must determine whether it will continue to ask the tough questions that need answers regardless of the threats made by the GOP, or whether it will meekly submit to the demands for kid-glove treatment.
Atkins also argues that Debate Questions Naturally Lean Left Because Mainstream Voters and Reality Do. One piece of evidence here is how often the right starts to dissemble when they plan on doing something unpopular -- like when Bush dubbed his giveaway bill to the timber industry the "health forests initiative." Brownback moved heaven and earth in 2014 to try to convince Kansans that he was the education governor, after years of underfunding schools and attacking teacher rights. This doesn't necessarily mean that voters lean that far left -- all they need to do is come in left of the Republicans, which isn't hard to do: a little decency and integrity suffices.
The fact that Republicans have more unpopular positions and a weaker track record of success isn't the fault of debate moderators. It's the fault of Republican candidates and their ideology.
Israel links:
Adam Horowitz: Netanyahu: 'We need to control all of the territory for the forseeable future': "meaning endless conflict and bloodshed."
Annie Robbins: Israeli military tells Palestinian refugee camp, 'We will gas you until you die': Also on this story, Richard Silverstein: Echoing Nazi Tactics, IDF Patrol Threatens to Exterminate Palestinian Refugee Camp with "Gas".
Philip Weiss: 'Most-read' article at Washington Post calls Israel 'savage, unrepairable society': the article referred to is by Israeli novelist Assaf Gavron: Confessions of an Israeli traitor