Too late for an introduction.
Trump, DeSantis, and other Republicans: Seems like a relatively tame week for evil, but there are always examples.
Aaron Blake: [07-15] Indictment paints tale of Chinese interests and 2016 Trump campaign: This doesn't strike me as anything Trump was culpable for, but does offer a lot of juicy details on how influence peddling works in and around political campaigns. That "Individual-1" is James Woolsey just confirms that he's a sleazebag, which you must have already suspected.
Philip Bump: [07-14] The staggering scale of Donald Trump's speaking fees.
Ryan Cooper: The GOP's Tommy Tuberville problem: "The Alabama senator's blockade of military promotions reveals the party's real position on abortion."
David Dayen: [07-14] Jim Jordan misfires in attacks on Lina Khan. Or, per Bradley Blankenship: [07-15] Corporate America really doesn't like FTC chair Lina Khan challenging . . . corporate America.
Ed Kilgore: [07-15] Tucker Carlson hijacks Christian right confab in Iowa.
Joan McCarter: [07-16] Greene owns McCarthy, and he doesn't even realize it: And the picture of them cuddling is much cuter than one I cited a couple weeks ago.
Nicole Narea:
[07-13] The GOP's anti-FBI turn, explained. I have to chuckle a bit. Where where these principled opponents against politicization of the FBI when Hoover was targeting antiwar and civil rights movements?
[07-14] Iowa has implemented one of the strictest abortion bans in the US. The latest poll in Iowa showed that 61% supported abortion rights, but this is what you get when you elect Republicans.
Li Zhou: [07-14] How Republicans turned a must-pass defense bill into an "extremist manifesto". Republicans have this bizarre idea that the US military should be a captive training ground for their future militia soldiers. There certainly are examples of right-wing fanatics with military backgrounds, in part because access to guns is a recruiting tool. But the military is also the most thoroughly integrated organization in America, and the importance of, for lack of a better term, wokeness hasn't been lost on their officers. But also, military service is one of the few occupations where public service is respected and admired, which is one reason many ex-military people are running for office as Democrats. Even the Supreme Court carved out an exception for the military from its recent ruling against affirmative action, citing "national security." For more on this:
Dan Balz: [07-15] House Republicans wage 'woke' culture wars with the military.
Robert Schlesinger: [07-13] Far-right Republicans' radical, bigoted attack on the Defense bill: "Even the military isn't safe from the GOP's war on wokeness."
Tessa Stuart: [07-10] Republicans push to strip abortion access for veterans.
Alex Skopic: [07-13] The Espionage Act is bad for America -- even when it's used on Trump: Sure, I agree. I also think drug possession laws are bad for America, and should be repealed. If somehow the Espionage Act got repealed, I'd be happy to pardon anyone convicted under it, as I would anyone convicted under drug possession laws, including Trump and the Rosenbergs (not that we can bring the latter back to life). Until then, I don't much care. After all, Trump had plenty of opportunity to pardon people convicted under this act (or charged, like Julian Assange), and never did. He was too busy pardoning his cronies and fellow creeps.
Biden and/or the Democrats: Necessarily a grab bag, but we're probably stuck with it.
Eric Levitz: He's one of the better writers at New York Magazine, but I find a lot to quibble with this week:
[07-11] Biden's unpopularity is more mysterious than it looks. Returns to the subject of his previous piece: [07-06] It makes sense that Bidenomics is unpopular (so far), admitting that "the unpopularity of both Biden and his economy are stranger than I'd previously allowed." I find both arguments unconvincing, but I'm not sure I got them right. One problem is that lots of things are only explicable with statistics, but they don't carry the same weight as experience. And even experience is subject to interpretation. By all objective measures, the 1980s were a great decade for me, but I didn't credit Reagan with any of that, and in fact I blamed him for a lot of problems that hadn't really materialized yet, but which seemed all but inevitable given his policies. If you expect the economy to go to hell when a Democrat or Republican takes over, it isn't hard to find evidence that you're right -- especially given that both have primarily given us more inequality.
[07-08] The 'greedflation' debate is deeply confused: Sure, he scores easy points against straw men or hacks -- Robert Reich is an example -- not least by pointing out cases where profits all but automatically rise when external events impact supply. (If you're as old as I am, you may remember the "windfall profits tax" passed in 1973, when OPEC forced oil prices way up, inadvertently making American oil men suddenly much richer.) On the other hand, I don't buy the argument that monopoly couldn't be raising prices now because if it existed, it would have raised prices previously. There are lots of reasons for monopolists not to fully exploit their power the moment they get it, but to do so when others give them cover for rising prices (as well as the incentive kick of raising costs). But also, "greedflation" provides an alternative to the cruel notion that inflation should be fought by taking away people's jobs.
[07-12] The case for Cornel West 2024 is extremely weak. But the case would be stronger if Levitz hadn't made a wrong turn in his first sentence: Cornel West recently decided that the best way for him to advance economic and social justice in the United States . . . thereby marginally increasing the odds of a second Trump presidency." I'm not interested in debating the last part, which as Levitz admits is a very marginal concern. The mistake is in thinking that West's campaign is only about "economic and social justice," and only in the US. If that's all that's at dispute, I'd happily concede that Biden is already making progress in that direction, and that West, no matter how much more he wants to achieve, isn't likely to do much better. If that's all he wants, he, like Bernie Sanders, would be better off working with Biden. But West has another major plank in his campaign, one that is diametrically opposed to both Republican and Democratic leaders, and that is foreign policy, and the almost certainty that current policies will lead to more wars that will eventually prove disastrous both for America and for the world. [E.g., see this interview; also another interview by Chris Hedges.] Not many people understand that, but that's all the more reason for West to stand up and argue the case. My biggest worry for 2024 is that some Biden miscalculation will throw us into a war, that will trigger a rebound for Trump, who is already arguing that only he can save us from world war. The rest of the article consists of minor arguments with a pro-West piece by Lily Sánchez, which pale in importance to this issue.
[07-13] A new order blocking Manchin's pipeline could hurt the climate: "Restricting Congress's authority to exempt energy projects from judicial review would undermine the green transition."
[07-15] Can extremely reflective white paint save the planet? If anyone does come up with a plausible geoengineering scheme for cooling the atmosphere, Democrats (in particular) will happily throw a lot of money at it. This is an example of a small hack that's unlikely to scale significantly, but at least it involves spending more to avoid simply cutting back on energy use -- one solution that no one serious considers plausible.
Nicole Narea: [07-14] Biden's new plan to forgive $39 billion in student loans, explained: "More than 800,000 borrowers are now eligible for student loan forgiveness." Something else for Republicans to try to ruin.
John Nichols: [07-14] Jesse Jackson's politics of peace: "His 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns called for ending military interventions, supported disarmament, and sought deep cuts in Pentagon spending." Not even Bernie Sanders has done that since, which is more evidence of how deeply rutted our thinking is on the military. I've long thought that Jackson would have won the Democratic Party nomination had he run in 1992, but he didn't, to avoid blame for losing a second term to GWH Bush. I also thought that Clinton owed him big time for not making the run, and I expected some kind of payoff for the favor, but never noticed one.
Timothy Noah: [07-12] You'll be very surprised who's benefiting most from Bidenomics: Not really. "Red states, not blue ones, are seeing the biggest income gains." Isn't it always like that? Poor states vote Republican, and better off states bail them out.
Climate and Environment:
Matthew Cappucci/Tamia Fowlkes/Shera Avi-Yonah: [07-16] Relentless heat wave reaching maximum strength. Phoenix hit 118°F; Sardinia 117°F, Sanbao (China) 126°F. Miami has "seen a record 36 days in a row with heat index value above 100 degrees."
Julia Conley: [07-14] Death Valley expected to record highest temp ever on earth as climate crisis roars.
Rachel DuRose: [07-13] There's no such thing as a disaster-resistant place anymore. Photograph is from flooded Montpelier, VT, but other examples abound
Benji Jones/Umair Irfan: [07-12] 3 reasons why this summer is so damn hot: How many ways can you say "climate change"?
Umair Irfan: [07-13] It's even hot in Antarctica, where it's winter. Map shows "record-low early winter sea ice around Antarctica."
Viviane Callier: [2020-04-08] The Story of More: Five Questions for the Lab Girl, Hope Jahren: I recently read the paleobotanist's memoir Lab Girl, so when I saw she had a book subtitled How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go From Here, I dug up this interview, and eventually ordered the book.
Nathan J Robinson: [07-14] The world needs many new climate activists right now: Interview with philosopher Henry Shue, author of The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now, who likens the task to "the World War II generation's duty to stop fascism."
Ukraine War: Conspicuous by absence is any news on how well Ukraine's "counteroffensive" is going, which suggests it isn't. On the other hand, NATO met, and continues to rack up milestones, which as usual mostly involve arms sales. Wake me when we see some diplomacy, because once again nothing else matters. The Gessen piece is historical, stuff you should know. It doesn't mean that Putin's invasion was in any way justifiable, or that sending arms to help Ukraine fend off that invasion is bad policy, but understanding America's deep culpability for the conflict would go a long way toward negotiating a way out of it. Conversely, not recognizing how this all went wrong prevents us from understanding the chief lessons of this war: that deterrence and sanctions are more likely to provoke war than to prevent it; and that not just the combatants but the world cannot afford for wars like this to go on and on.
Connor Echols: [07-14] Diplomacy Watch: Sweden gets NATO, Turkey gets F-16s? Hard to see how anything accomplished at the Vilnius NATO summit last week brings us an inch closer to peace in Ukraine, while the continued posturing gives Russia all the more reason to hold out.
George Beebe: [07-14] America's strategy for the NATO alliance is failing.
Keith Gessen: [06-12] How Russia went from ally to adversary: A valuable bit of history, referencing on several recent books: Vladislav Zubok: Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union; Mary Elise Sarotte: Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate; Philipp Ther: How the West Lost the Peace: The Great Transformation Since the Cold War; Philip Short: Putin; and William Hill: No Place for Russia: European Security Institutions Since 1989, where the argument is that Russia was too big to integrate into Europe, so had to be pushed outside. These books cover ground I know well enough to have jumped ahead and wrote the following based on one anecdote, but the piece both confirms what I already knew and adds more telling detail.
This starts with what we might view as the original disconnect: Gorbachev decided that the Cold War was a stupid and dangerous waste, so he offered not detente but cooperation; Bush saw Gorbachev's offer as a surrender, and demanded spoils, starting with East Germany. Americans saw the Cold War as not only justified but as victorious. When the Soviet Union dissolved, Americans saw more opportunities to press their advantage. Well into the Putin years, Russia tried to accommodate American hubris, but eventually they realized that American ambition was insatiable, and that it was increasingly directed at painting Russia as their enemy. That, after all, was key to NATO's eastward expansion. The pro-West coup in Ukraine in 2014 was the event that snapped Putin's tolerance, and the pro-Russian revolts in Crimea and Donbas allowed Russia to push back. This led to a significant rethink of how Russia could reassert its dignity, the invasion in 2022, and the current war quagmire. Of course, in the minds of Americans and their European allies and clients, this only confirms their fears and their commitment to deterrence as the only way to contain Russia. As this history makes clear, it didn't have to wind up like this. But the whole history of the Cold War was based on equally spurious assumptions and misreadings, lessons which given the vogue of triumphalism Americans have still refused to learn.
Jen Kirby: [07-12] What Ukraine did -- and didn't -- get from the NATO summit.
Anatol Lieven: [07-11] The case for Ukraine's NATO membership is the zombie that won't die: Written pre-Vilnius. Also Ivan Eland: [07-11] Ukraine should never be admitted to NATO.
Suzanne Loftus: [07-13] Rise in German far-right reflects growing sentiment against Ukraine war: This should be accounted as a risk of continuing the war, of not moving as quickly as possible toward a negotiated agreement. Even if the far right only favors Russia as a fellow fascist, it is a bad look for the left to be seen as warmongers.
Bryan Metzger: [07-13] Here are the 70 House Republicans who voted to cut off all US military aid to Ukraine. Lest you think that Republicans are turning to pacifism and/or isolationism, consider Kwan Wei Kevin Tan: [07-13] Matt Gaetz is back on the anti-Ukraine hamster wheel and floating the suggestion that Russia, not Ukraine, should be part of NATO so the organization can become an anti-China alliance.
Nathan J Robinson: [07-11] Biden's provision of cluster bombs to Ukraine is illegal and immoral. So is the use of those same weapons, and for that matter mines, by Russia and Ukraine. That none of the three have signed international treaties banning their use is no excuse. But the US sending such weapons into a war zone does make it hard for the US to condemn Russia's use of them.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos:
[07-12] Riddle this: How many casualties are there, truly, on both sides of Ukraine war? Estimates are all over the place, and none of them are credible.
Around the world: But mostly Israel, again.
Basel Adra/Juval Abraham: [07-10] The destruction of this Palestinian community was green-lighted by Israel's Supreme Court.
James Bamford: [07-07] In Jenin, as elsewhere, Netanyahu knows he can count on Washington's complicity.
Jonathan Guyer: [07-11] The Biden administration's remarkably unambitious approach to Israel: "What we learned from Ambassador Tom Nides's exit interview with the Wall Street Journal."
Mitchell Plitnick: [07-14] As the US-Israel relationship is questioned, its 'shared fictions' remain strong. Refers to a column by Thomas Friedman: [07-11] The US reassessment of Netanyahu's government has begun.
Jeff Wright: [07-16] Israel has turned all of Palestine into 'an open-air prison' to further annexation plans: So concludes the UN Special Rapporteur.
Kai Bird: [07-07] Oppenheimer, nullified and vindicated: Co-author of the biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Bird explains the campaign to get the federal government to admit that they erred in 1954 in revoking Oppenheimer's security clearance, thus excluding the director of the Manhattan Project from any further role in atomic weapons planning. The vindication didn't come until December 18, 2022, and serves as another example of something Biden's administration has done that Obama's was too chickenshit to venture. I will quibble with the assertion that Oppenheimer was "the chief celebrity victim of the national trauma known as McCarthyism." Sure, he was the bigger celebrity, but the execution of the Rosenbergs was a graver miscarriage of justice. But Oppenheimer is a clearer example of how McCarthyism worked: it meant that anyone with a vaguely leftist past could be crucified as a traitor, and hardly anyone would dare come to their defense -- especially liberals who could themselves be tarred as "fellow travelers."
Jonathan Chait: [07-11] In defense of independent opinion journalism: "The 'hack gap' between right and left has been closing." I'm not convinced. I won't deny that there are hacks on the left, but they differ significantly from hacks on the right. For one thing, they're not all aligned against their partisan enemies. Take Chait, for instance, who only seems truly happy when he's attacking people to his left -- a considerable number, given his support for the Iraq war, his pimping for charter schools, and his "Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination." But even when leftists slip into hackdom, they still start with commitments to truth and justice that are utterly alien to the right. Then, by the way, there is the deeper problem of objectivity, which is impossible, making it a claim one should always be suspicious of.
Bob Harris/Jon Schwarz: [07-04] Carl Reiner's life should remind us: If you like laughing, thank FDR and the New Deal: "Their comedy descends directly from the Works Progress Administration." The WPA did a world of good for America, but much of what they did, especially in the arts, would be considered too frivolous, and in many cases too controversial, for "taxpayer" funding these days. Until that attitude changes, we're stuck with a government distinguished mostly by misery: how miserable its workers feel, and how miserable they make the rest of us.
Noasm Hassenfeld: [07-16] Even the scientists who build AI can't tell you how it works: Interview with Sam Bowman.
Oshan Jarow: [07-14] Poverty is a major public health crisis. Let's treat it like one. You'd think that such an argument would make people more inclined to support anti-poverty measures, but Republicans have aligned themselves pretty firmly against public health (or at least doing anything about it).
Jess Lander: [07-13] What led to Anchor Brewing's downfall? Sapporo, some workers say. America's oldest craft brewer is going out of business, supposedly a victim of Covid or maybe bad marketing, but I'm suspicious of two ownership changes: in 2010, owner Fritz Maytag, who had rescued the brewery after prohibition, sold to Griffin Group ("a local beverage consulting company," which smells a lot like private equity even if they're not a big name), and in 2017 Griffin pawned the carcass on to giant Japanese brewer Sapporo. It's easy enough to say that the latter didn't understand American craft brewers, and to illustrate this with various marketing blunders, but the deeper truth is that they simply didn't care, especially after the workforce unionized in 2019. After all, it's not unusual for big companies to buy up small ones only to shutter them, leaving the larger company with one fewer competitor (even if, as in this case, one that barely mattered).
Back when I worked for a high-tech startup, where most employees owned a small sliver of stock, I concluded that the world would be much better if employees owned a controlling share of stock, thus resolving conflict with management. (Unions, valuable as they are as a balance against management power, usually increase conflict, especially when they lack legal rights, as is often the case in the US; on the other hand, in Germany, where "co-determination" gives workers a stake in management, unions align more closely with management.) I'd like to see many policies that help facilitate employee ownership. One of the most obvious ones would be to allow employees to claim defunct businesses, wiping out the company's previous debt obligations, and providing funding for a fresh start. I have no doubt that a company like Anchor could be revived, if handed over to workers who care about the product and the customers, and about their own jobs.
Shira Ovide: [07-14] We must end the tyranny of printers in American life: "Printers cannot be reformed. They must be destroyed, once and for all." I had to include this because my latest printer purchase, a HP OfficeJet Pro 9010, is the biggest purchasing mistake I've ever made. They insisted that I use a wireless connection, and while it is recognized by my Linux computers, I'm not able to send any jobs from them to be printed. (At one point, this worked, but even then scans couldn't be uploaded, at least not using sane.) One main reason for the wireless connection is the need to reorder ink as part of a subscription program that was originally offered for $2.99/month, then immediately raised to $4.99/month. Of course, they haven't sent me any ink, because I haven't been able to print. I've owned several HP printers going back to their LaserJet II in the 1980s, but they've never pulled anything like this before. At last, as Ovide will be happy to hear, I'm learning to live without printing. Now I need to figure out how to stop paying for nothing.
Kelsey Piper: [07-12] Stop looking to Mother Nature for answers to resource questions: "The silly way we think about resource scarcity." Followed, sad to say, by an equally silly answer. While it's true that we haven't discovered every earthly resource we might eventually manage to exploit, that's mostly because people keep assuming that only very short terms matter: a "50 year" phosphorus find may be a big deal for 50 years, but 50 years is a pretty short time frame.
Sigal Samuel: [07-11] Scientists unveil the key site that shows we're in a new climate epoch: Title has it backwards: some scientists decided we are in a new climate epoch, then looked for a geologic site that could be used as a marker between the old Holocene epoch and the new Anthropocene. They found one, but it's not based on climate change. Rather, what it marks is the appearance of fallout from nuclear bombs testing, which increased significantly around 1950. On the other hand, human impact on the geostratigraphic record goes back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, eventually becoming dramatic enough to justify the term Anthropocene (much like the Cambrian is sometimes called the age of trilobites).
Jeffrey St Clair: [07-14] Roaming Charges: Clusterfuck in Vilnius. He's in a bad mood, starting with cluster bombs for Ukraine.
Two subjects I didn't want to say anything about are No Labels and RFK Jr. -- among other things, do I file them under Republicans, who they effectively work for, or Democrats? -- but if you want some well-reasoned analysis, turn to No More Mister Nice Blog:
[07-16] Be very afraid of No Labels (unless you're Donald Trump).
[07-16] I hope the mainstream media is proud of all the attention it gave RJF Jr.; also [07-14] Among dangerous bullshitters, game recognizes game; and [07-10] RFK Jr. doesn't have to try very hard to out-debate David Remnick.
An old piece I ran across, still worth mentioning:
Alex Pareene: [2017-04-05] The long, lucrative right-wing grift is blowing up in the world's face.
Rick Perlstein: [2012-11] The long con: Mail-order conservatism.