#^d 2019-11-10 #^h Weekend Roundup
Another "going through the motions" week, so no introduction. I noted a friend of a friend commenting that people don't realize how much time it's going to take after the 2020 election to undo the damage Trump has inflicted (and is continuing to, no doubt with a special flurry after he gets beat, including a bunch of pre-emptive pardons). This person was citing the difficulties Laura Kelly has faced since becoming governor of Kansas, but it's a general rule. For me, the best election news last week was the defeat of Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell, who spent his term making shady deals with real estate developers. One of those was to wreck McLean Boulevard, which used to hug the river from 13th North to Pawnee (23rd South), but now will have its downtown passage moved so realtors can offer exclusive river views. Unlikely that would ever have passed a public vote, but it's also unlikely that the new mayor will be able to undo the blight. Of course, a big part of Kelly's problem is that the state legislature is still controlled by Republicans. The bigger the Democratic wave in 2020, but more a new president will be able to do. But still, the task list is daunting, and growing every day.
Some scattered links this week:
Sasha Abramsky: Trump throws more red meat to nativists, polluters, and evangelicals.
Meher Ahmad: Austerity blues: "After sixty years of IMF intervention, Pakistan has little to show for it." Also: "The IMF bailout of today is far from what Keynes had envisioned for his lender of last resort: it does less to lift economies than break them in to be fit for Western interaction -- or exploitation."
Robert P Alvarez: Republicans, not Russians, threaten our elections: "When turnout climbs, Republicans lose. No wonder they're closing polling places and purging voters all over the country."
Jillian Ambrose: Fracking halted in England in major government U-turn.
Andrew Bacevich: The Berlin Wall fell and the US learned the wrong lessons. It got us Donald Trump.
Zack Beauchamp: What the right fears about Warren's wealth tax.
Phyllis Bennis: Trump has stolen the anti-war mantle. Here's how to get it back.
Michael Birnbaum: While Washington is checked out, Macron is pushing to lead the Western world. Here's a cluster of articles on NATO, reflecting the decline of American influence and interest. Others:
Ted Galen Carpenter: What's really undermining NATO? Europe's yearning for neutrality.
Jacob Heilbrunn: Emmanuel Macron is right: NATO is over: Starts with Lord Ismay's explanation that the purpose of NATO was to "keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." One might make a sensible argument that none of those things matter much these days, therefore neither does NATO. On the other hand, this veers off into insanity:
The moment has arrived for France and Germany to adopt more than baby steps to make Europe great again. This would require them to establish a Franco-German condominium to assert their interests, including the joint development of new nuclear weapons to deter Russia and China. It would also allow Europe to win an independent footing from an increasingly hostile United States.
Need I remind you that Europe's previous claim to greatness was built on the rape and pillage of the rest of the world, starting with the looting and extermination of the Americas and the enslavement of Africans. I'm always struck by the fact that British rule reduced India's share of world GDP from 20% to 5%. The post-colonial period hasn't been much more generous, as political control was sub-contracted to locals committed to preserving capitalism's property rights.
Jonathan Blitzer: The Trump administration's plot to end DACA faces a Supreme Court test.
Jonathan Chait:
David Daley: Secret gerrymandering files can now be made public, court rules.
Julia Davis: Thanks to Rand Paul, Russian media are naming the alleged whistleblower. Two caveats here: one is that Davis doesn't repeat the unmasking; the other is that she seems to have cultivated a niche in painting Trump as Putin's puppet. E.g., see: Trump's Syria fiasco is part of Putin's to-do list. She filed that one under the tag "Donald J. Subservient."
Jason Del Rey: Amazon tried to buy a new Seattle City Council. It doesn't look like it worked.
Barbara Ehrenreich: The humanoid stain: "Art lessons from our cave-dwelling ancestors."
Ben Ehrenreich: California is burning -- nationalize PG&E.
Benjamin Y Fong/Christie Offenbacher: Medicare for All is a strategy.
Constance Grady: 75 books from university presses that will help you understand the world.
Mehdi Hasan: Bernie Sanders says denying aid because of Hamas is "part of an effort to dehumanize Palestinians".
Adam Hochschild: When America tried to deport its radicals: Emma Goldman, for instance, a hundred years ago..
Sean Illing:
Bullshit jobs: why they exist and why you might have one: Interview with David Graeber, author of Bullshit Jobs: A Theory.
How TV paved America's road to Trump: Interview with James Poniewozik, author of Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America. I'm currently reading this book, and it's helping to connect a lot of dots.
The rot at the heart of American democracy: Interview with Daniel Ziblatt, co-author with Steve Levitsky of How Democracies Die.
Daniel Immerwahr: The center does not hold: Review of Jill Lepore's books: These Truths: A History of the United States, and This America: The Case for the Nation.
Umair Irfan: Virginia Democrats campaigned on their Green New Deal and fighting climate change. And won.
Sarah Jones:
Kentucky voters rejected austerity. You know, in some ways Matt Bevin's win four years ago was a bigger surprise than his loss this week. All the things that made him "the most unpopular governor of any state" were well known then, but Republicans cracked the whip and delivered him a comfortable margin. Harder to do that a second time, although party discipline still made the race extremely close.
A Chilean activist explains the protests: 'people in the streets are experiencing an awakening'.
How can Democrats win back rural America? Related: Annie Gowen: 'I'm gonna lose everything': "A farm family struggles after rising debt pushes a husband to suicide."
Sad billionaire cries because he feels so misunderstood: "Why is everyone being so mean to Leon Cooperman?"
Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein: The tears of the taxed: "Ignore the rich: tax opposition has never been about liberty."
Fred Kaplan: Loyalty vs Democracy: "The impeachment transcripts say Republicans have to choose between Trump and America's political future." No prizes for hed writing here, as Republicans haven't trusted democracy for some time now, and most would be happy if Trump were the future. Moreover, while I'm not going to argue that Democrats shouldn't impeach Trump, the fate of democracy in America depends much more on the outcome of the 2020 elections and the build up of a political movement that is strong enough to overcome Republican obstruction -- something the currently constituted Congress is not able to do.
Nicole Karlis: Thanks to Trump, STD rates hit a record high: "Trump's pro-life policies and attacks on reproductive health care are having repercussions beyond the GOP's intent."
Titled "Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report," the report noted that in 2018, there were more than 2.4 million syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia infections combined -- an increase of more than 100,000 from the previous year.
There was also a 71 percent increase in syphilis cases since 2014, along with a 22 percent increase from 2017 in the number of newborn deaths related to congenital syphilis.
Ed Kilgore:
Bloomberg to follow the not-so-successful Giuliani strategy in the primaries. The former New York City major, after months of first flirting with running for president then publicly deciding not to, filed last week to appear on the ballot in Alabama, just beating the deadline there. Presumably he's just keeping his options open, as opposed to making a strategic bet that there's serious interest in him down there. Still, he got a ton of publicity, even if the bottom line is that he has no chance, even if he floods the primaries with money. That's basically because he's a DINO: maybe his support for gun control makes him a non-starter in the Republican Party, but he doesn't offer any reason for rank-and-file Democrats to give him a moment's thought. His commitment to finance-based oligarchy is as deeply seated as his membership in same. The media may slot him as a "moderate," but his reaction to Occupy Wall Street was as rabid as Bull Connor's to civil rights marches. Hmm, maybe that explains Alabama? But doesn't he know that Connor's ilk are all Republicans now? More links on Bloomberg here:
David Byler: Hey, Michael Bloomberg, no one wants you to run for president.
John Cassidy: A Bloomberg presidential campaign would likely be a costly folly.
Jason Del Rey: Jeff Bezos asked Mike Bloomberg months ago if he's consider running for president.
Eric Levitz: Michael Bloomberg's ego is an agent of socialist change.
Nathaniel Rakish: How seriously should we take Michael Bloomberg's potential 2020 run? There's a good chart here which illustrates Bloomberg's problem succinctly. Y-axis is "net favorability rating" and x-axis is "share of Democrats with an opinion." Nearly everyone is very close to the trendline -- Buttigieg a bit above, Gabbard a bit below, the only ones with more space from the line than their avatar size are Biden (above), and Bloomberg way down and right (i.e., more people had an opinion of him than of Harris, but his favorability came in between Terry McAuliffe and Sherrod Brown). This was "early 2019" -- my guess is that since then Biden has returned to the trend line, the Harris-Booker-O'Rourke cluster has faded some, and Bloomberg has sunk even further.
Matthew Rosza: Bernie Sanders to Michael Bloomberg: "You ain't going to buy this election".
Matthew Yglesias: A Michael Bloomberg presidential run is unlikely to help moderate Democrats' cause.
Three years later, Trump has lost the element of surprise: "Memories of the shock of Election Night 2016 could become a strategic asset for Democrats, who sure won't get over-confident in 2020."
Jen Kirby:
Sharon Lerner: Top US toxicologist was barred from saying PFAS cause disease in humans. She's saying it now.
Nancy LeTourneau: Trump hires a con artist to provide outreach to white evangelicals: Paula White.
Eric Levitz:
Leftism isn't very appealing to nonvoters. But Bernie Sanders is.
The GOP's opposition to impeachment is (terrifyingly) principled: "To many conservatives, Democrats (and/or popular democracy) are a greater threat to America than [XXX]." The actual quote said "Vladimir Putin," but you can fill that in with lots of things -- the author picks on Putin because lots of liberals instinctively regard him as an actual threat, even if the only concrete example they can give was the support Russian hackers gave to electing Trump. The fact is that conservatives have never trusted democracy, and have regularly done everything in their power to game it in their favor.
Martin Longman:
Alan Macleod: Multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi warns "fellow leftists": Medicare for All is a very bad idea. She's also knocking the wealth tax.
Amanda Marcotte:
Dylan Matthews:
The Trump Foundation was a sham. We have no idea how many other foundations are, too.
Why the left should worry more about AI. Refers to Kelsey Piper: The case for taking AI seriously as a threat to humanity. Also: Sigal Samuel: Some AI just shouldn't exist. Also, an interview with Virginia Eubanks, author of Automating Inequality (2018).
Katie Mettler: Nobody is buying Mark Halperin's book. The disgraced journalist's publisher lambastes 'cancel culture.' First week's sales of How to Beat Trump: America's Top Political Strategists on What It Will Take totaled 502. Halperin gained some fame when he co-wrote (with John Heilemann) a big book on the 2008 election (Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, but he's now viewed as the very definition of a hack political journalist -- qualities you can get for free any time you turn in a cable news panel. "Disgraced" refers to his "#MeToo" reputation, which can't have helped him, but he was a sinking ship anyway.
Ian Millhiser:
The controversy over "ethnonationalism" and a Trump judicial nominee, explained: On Steven Menashi, nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Ellen Nakashima/Greg Bensinger: Former Twitter employees charged with spying for Saudi Arabia by digging into the accounts of kingdom critics.
Nicole Narea: State Department officials warned Trump not to revoke protections for immigrants.
Ella Nilsen: Jeff Sessions announces a Senate run -- by telling voters he's still loyal to Trump. Also:
Hamilton Nolan: Why did Amazon spend $1.5m in Seattle's local elections?
Anna North:
Andrew Prokop:
Steve Bannon just testified for the government at Roger Stone's trial.
Fiona Hill's testimony gives her account of a disturbing White House meeting on Ukraine.
Prosecutor: Roger Stone lied because "the truth looked bad for Donald Trump".
Gordon Sondland's revised testimony is still very difficult to believe.
Nathaniel Rakich: What Virginia, Mississippi and Kentucky can tell us about 2020.
Hope Reese: The Cambridge Analytica whistleblower on how American voters are "primed to be exploited".
Jennifer Rubin: How a former senator and defense secretary explains Republican spinelessness: "I think it's either fear or complicity." He's being too generous. Strikes me more as Führerprinzip. Having accepted Trump as their leader, they now have no option but to follow.
Aaron Rupar:
Louis Sahagun: Trump team has a plan for national parks: Amazon, food trucks and no senior discounts.
Tim Shorrock: South Koreans are pleading for a breakthrough in the US-North Korea talks.
Amy Davidson Sorkin: Trump's frantic fight for immunity: "As public impeachment hearings begin, Trump's Presidency is still defined by his belief that he cannot be held to account."
Keith A Spencer: There is hard data that shows that a centrist Democrat would be a losing candidate. This is largely based on a paper by Thomas Piketty, based on French and British data as well as American, which is only one of many reasons why the conclusions might not apply. More intuitively, I'd say that centrist Democrats face two major risks: one is that they spend so much time and effort discounting leftist proposals they're lose the ability to convince voters to trust them; the other is that their "centrism" is largely defined by their willingness to favor business, which makes them appear corrupt. Leftists face other obstacles, but they do have an edge in authenticity and integrity, which given Trump may be important.
Emily Stewart: We get it, rich guys are not into Elizabeth Warren: "From Bill Gates to Jamie Dimon to Leon Cooperman, billionaires have lots of thoughts and feelings about Elizabeth Warren."
Jennifer Szalai: In A Warning, anonymous author makes case against re-election: New book attempts to expand on last year's op-ed attributed to an anonymous but "senior Trump administration official." The idea then was to reassure us that sane conservatives are working stealthily to limit the damage of Trump's petulant insanity, but a year later the author is more pessimistic, admitting that "just a wet Band-Aid that wouldn't hold together a gaping wound." Related:
Charles P Pierce: The Anonymous White House bookwriter can anonymously bite me: "I am not interested in someone's heartfelt account of their near-collision with actual integrity."
Res Thebault: Visit to Arlington Cemetery reminded Donald Trump Jr of all his family's 'sacrifices,' he writes. He has a new book with his name on the cover, under the ridiculous title Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us.
Jake Thomas: Migrant children are being given to an adoption agency linked to Betsy DeVos. Probably over the top to accuse DeVos of human trafficking, but the anti-abortion movement has a long association with adoption agencies, and the latter seem to be happy to take children wherever they can find them.
Yeganeh Torbati: How Mike Pence's office meddled in foreign aid to reroute money to favored Christian groups.
Alex Ward:
White House official says Trump made a quid pro quo "demand" of Ukraine's president: Alexander Vindman.
Why Democrats think the benefits of open impeachment hearings outweigh the costs.
Why James Mattis couldn't contain Trump: Interview with Guy Snodgrass, author of Holding the Line: Inside Trump's Pentagon With Secretary Mattis.
Matthew Yglesias: