Once again, started early in the week, spent most of my time here, didn't get to everything I usually cover. Late Sunday night, figured I should go ahead and kick this out. Monday updates possible.
Indeed, I wasted most of Monday adding things, some of which, contrary to my usual update discipline, only appeared on Monday. The most interesting I'll go ahead and mention here:
Alexander Ward/Jonathan Lemire: [03-11] If Israel invades Rafah, Biden will consider conditioning military aid to Israel. There are several articles below suggesting that the Biden administration is starting to show some discomfort with its Israeli masters. I've generally made light of such signals, as they've never threatened consequences or even been unambiguously uttered in public. I've seen several more suggesting that the long promised invasion of Rafah -- the last corner of Gaza where some two million people have been driven into -- could cross some kind of "red line."
I am willing to believe that "Genocide Joe" is a bit unfair: that while he's not willing to stand up to Netanyahu, he's not really comfortable with the unbounded slaughter and mass destruction Israel is inflicting. I characterize his pier project below as "passive-aggressive." I think he's somehow trying (but way too subtly) to make Israel's leaders realize that their dream of killing and/or expelling everyone from Gaza isn't going to be allowed, so at some point they're going to have to relent, and come up with some way of living with the survivors.
I don't recall where, but I think I've seen some constructive reaction from Biden to the "uncommitted" campaign that took 13% of Michigan and 18% of Minnesota votes. So it's possible that the message is getting through even if the raw numbers are still far short of overwhelming. The Israel Lobby has so warped political space in Washington that few politicians can as much as imagine how out of touch and tone-deaf they've become on this issue.
Still, Biden has a lot of fence-mending to do.
I'll try not to add more, but next week will surely come around, bringing more with it.
Initial count: 181 links, 7,582 words. Updated count [03-11]: 207 links, 9,444 words.
Not sure where to put this, so how about here?
Jacob Bogage: [03-08] Government shutdown averted as Senate passes $459 billion funding bill: In other words, Republicans once again waited until the last possible moment, then decided not to pull the trigger in their Russian roulette game over the budget. It seems be an unwritten rule that in electing Mike Johnson as Speaker, the extreme-right gets support for everything except shutting down the government.
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
[03-04] Day 150: Israel is 'engineering famine' in Gaza. "Amnesty International says Israel is 'engineering famine' in Gaza. Organization head Agnes Callamard adds, 'all states that cut UNRWA funding, sold weapons and supported Israel bear responsibility too.'"
[03-05] Day 151: Israel 'campaigns' to end UNRWA in Gaza Strip: "UNRWA's chief says dismantling the agency is 'short-sighted' and will 'sow the seeds of hatred, resentment, and future conflict.' Israeli forces fire at Palestinians seeking aid and food in Gaza City and detain others in southern Gaza."
[03-06] Day 152: Prospect of breakthrough in ceasefire talks remains thin: "Canada will resume funding to UNRWA and pay a pledge of $25m due in April. In Gaza, another Palestinian child dies of thirst and hunger in the north, bringing the number of children to die from malnutrition to 18."
[03-07] Day 153: Over 2 dozen Palestinian captives have 'died' in Israeli detention camps: "At least 20 Palestinians have died as a result of malnutrition and dehydration in Gaza, health officials say. Meanwhile, new reports from Israeli media say 27 Palestinian captives who were being held in Israeli 'makeshift cages' have died."
[03-08] Day 154: Biden's maritime aid corridor to Gaza slammed as 'unrealistic': "Human rights experts say the Biden administration's proposed maritime corridor is a much less effective solution to addressing the dire needs of Gaza's besieged and starving population than a ceasefire and pressuring Israel to open land crossings."
[03-09] Day 155: Deadly aid drop and obstacles to a maritime corridor expose farcical humanitarian response to Gaza famine: "At least eighteen children have died in Gaza from malnutrition, while deaths by starvation have risen to 23. Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced that Biden's proposed floating pier would take two months and 1000 US troops to build.
[03-10] Day 156: Israel deploys 15,000 troops in West Bank as Ramadan starts: "Ceasefire talks falter as Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades spokesperson says Israel is using 'deception and evasion.' Israel deploys thousands of troops in the West Bank and Jerusalem ahead of plans to restrict access to Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan."
Shane Bauer: [02-26] The Israeli settlers attacking their Palestinian neighbors: "With the world's focus on Gaza, settlers have used wartime chaos as cover for violence and dispossession."
Giorgio Cafiero: [03-05] Why Egypt can't and won't open the floodgates from Gaza.
Emma Farge: [03-07] Israel destroying Gaza's food system in 'starvation' tactic.
Noa Galili: [03-10] Strangled by Israel for decades, Gaza's future must begin with free movement.
Imad Abu Hawash: A new surge of settler outposts is terrorizing Palestinians off their land.
Ibrahim Husseini: [03-08] Palestinians expect Israeli crackdown on worship at al-Aqsa during Ramadan.
Ellen Ioanes: [03-07] What the UN report on October 7 sexual violence does -- and doesn't -- say.
Eyal Lurie-Pardes: Journalism out, hasbara in: How Israeli news joined the Gaza war effort.
Khalid Mohammed: Desperate to escape Gaza carnage, Palestinians are forced to pay exorbitant fees to enter Egypt.
Aseel Mousa: [03-08] As Ramadan approaches, Rafah braces for an Israeli ground invasion.
Jonathan Ofir: [03-06] 'We are the masters of the house': Israeli channels air snuff videos featuring systematic torture of Palestinians.
Yumna Patel: [03-05] Palestinian PM's resignation nothing more than 'cosmetic shake up,' analysts say.
Reuters: [03-09] Israeli settlements expand by record amount, UN rights chief says.
Jeffrey St Clair: [03-02] Gaza Diary: Burning all illusions.
Nick Turse: Who could have predicted the US war in Somalia would fail? The Pentagon.
Israel vs. world opinion: Note that Biden's relief scheme for Gaza, announced in his State of the Union address, has been moved into its own sandbox, farther down, next to other Biden/SOTU pieces.
Kyle Anzalone: [03-07] South Africa urges ICJ for emergency order as famine looms over Gaza.
James Bamford: [03-06] Time is running out to stop the carnage in Gaza: "Given the toll from bombing and starvation, Gaza will soon become the world's largest unmarked grave." Actually, time ran out sometime in the first week after Oct. 7, when most Americans -- even many on the left who had become critical of Israeli apartheid -- were too busy competing in their denunciations of Hamas to notice how the Netanyahu government was clearly intent to commit genocide. At this point, the carnage is undeniable -- perhaps the only question is when the majority of the killing will shift (or has shifted) from arms to environmental factors (including starvation), because the latter are relatively hard to count (or are even more likely to be undercounted). Of course, stopping the killing is urgent, no matter how many days we fail.
Greer Fay Cashman: [03-07] President Herzog faces calls for arrest on upcoming Netherlands visit.
Jonathan Cook: [03-07] How the 'fight against antisemitism' became a shield for Israel's genocide.
Richard Falk: [02-25] In Gaza, the west is enabling the most transparent genocide in human history.
Noah Feldman: [03-05] How Oct. 7 is forcing Jews to reckon with Israel. Excerpt from his new book, To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People.
Daniel Finn: [03-07] Slaughter in Gaza has discredited Britain's political class.
Fred Kaplan: [03-06] Four things that will have to happen for the Israel-Hamas war to end: I have a lot of respect for Kaplan as an analyst of such matters, but the minimal solution he's created is impossible. His four things?
In other words, every nation in the region has to bend to Israel's stubborn insistence that they have to maintain control over every inch of Gaza, even though they've made it clear they'd prefer for everyone living there to depart or die. In any such scenario, it is inevitable that resistance will resurface to again threaten Israel's security, no matter how many layers of proxies are inserted, and no matter how systematically Israel culls its "militants." Short of a major sea change in Israeli opinion -- which is a prospect impossible to take seriously, at least in the short term -- there is only one real solution possible, which is for Israel to disown Gaza. Israel can continue to maintain its borders, its Iron Walls and Iron Domes, and can threaten massive retaliation if anyone on the Gaza side of the border attacks them. (This can even include nuclear, if that's the kind of people they are.) But Israel no longer gets any say in how the people of Gaza live. From that point, Israel is out of the picture, and Gaza has no reason to risk self-destruction by making symbolic gestures.
That still leaves Gaza with a big problem -- just not an Israel problem. That is because Israel has rendered Gaza uninhabitable, at least for the two million people still stuck there. Those people need massive aid, and even so many of them probably need to move elsewhere, at least temporarily. Without Israel to fight, Hamas instantly becomes useless. They will release their hostages, and disband. Some may go into exile. The rest may join in rebuilding, ultimately organized under a local democracy, which would have no desire let alone capability to threaten Israel. This is actually very simple, as long as outside powers don't try to corrupt the process by recruiting local cronies (a big problem in the region, with the US, its Sunni allies, Iran, its Shiite friends, Turkey, and possibly others serial offenders).
Sure, this would leave Israel with a residual Palestinian problem elsewhere: both with its second- and lesser-class citizens and wards, and with its still numerous external refugees. But that problem has not yet turned genocidal (although it's getting close, and is clearly possible as long as Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are part of Israel's ruling coalition). But there is time to work on that, especially once Israel is freed from the burden and horror of genocide in Gaza. There are lots of ideas that could work as solutions, but they all ultimately to accepting that everyone, regardless of where they live, should enjoy equal rights and opportunities. That will be a tough pill for many Israelis to swallow, but is the only one that will ultimately free them from the internecine struggle Israelis and Palestinians have been stuck with for most of a century. There's scant evidence that most Israelis want that kind of security, so people elsewhere will need to continue with BDS-like strategies of persuasion. But failure to make progress will just expose Israelis to revolts like they experienced on Oct. 7, and Palestinians to the immiseration and gloom they've suffered so often over many decades decades.
Colbert I King: [03-08] The United States cannot afford to be complicit in Gaza's tragedy: True or not, isn't it a bit late to think of this?
Nicholas Kristof: [03-19] 'People are hoping that Israel nukes us so we get rid of this pain': Texts with a Gazan acquaintance named Esa Alshannat, not Hamas, but after Israeli soldiers left an area, found "dead, rotten and half eaten by wild dogs." Kristof explains: "Roughly 1 percent of Gaza's people today are Hamas fighters. To understand what the other 99 percent are enduring, as the United States supplies weapons for this war and vetoes cease-fire resolutions at the United Nations, think of Alshannat and multiply him by two million."
Debbie Nathan:
[03-03] How Israel quietly crushed early American Jewish dissent on Palestine: Review of Geoffrey Levin: Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978, "delves into American Jewish McCarthyism from the 1950s through the late 1970s."
Wolf Blitzer cut his teeth doing journalism for AIPAC-linked propaganda outlets.
Vivian Nereim: [03-10] As Israel's ties to Arab countries fray, a stained lifeline remains: The United Arab Emirates is still on speaking terms with Israel, but doesn't have much to show for their solicitude.
Ilan Pappé: [02-01] It is dark before the dawn, but Israeli settler colonialism is at an end.
Mitchell Plitnick: [03-07] Replacing Netanyahu with Gantz won't fix the problem.
Rebecca Lee Sanchez: [03-06] Gaza's miracle of the manna: Aid and the American God complex.
Philip Weiss:
[03-07] Zionism and Jewish identity: "American Zionists are not deluded about Zionism. They know exactly what Israel is, and they are actively supporting blatant supremacy, racism, and apartheid. But that is changing, because Zionism is finally being challenged in the left/liberal press."
[03-10] Weekly Briefing: Israeli genocide is 'embarrassing' Biden, at last.
Brett Wilkins: [03-06] AIPAC's dark money arm unleashes $100 million: "Amid the Netanyahu government's assault on Gaza and intensifying repression in the West Bank, AIPAC is showing zero tolerance for even the mildest criticism of Israel during the 2024 US elections."
America's increasingly desperate and pathetic empire: I started this section to separate out stories on how the US was expanding its operations in the Middle East, ostensibly to deter regional adversaries from attacking Israel while Israel was busy with its genocide in Gaza. At the time, it seemed like Israel was actively trying to promote a broader war, partly to provide a distraction from its own focus (much as WWII served to shield the Holocaust), and partly to give the Americans something else to focus on. Israel tried selling this as a "seven-front war" -- a line that Thomas Friedman readily swallowed, quickly recovering from his initial shock at Israel's overreaction in Gaza -- but with neither Iran nor the US relishing what Israel imagined to be the main event, thus far only the Houthis in Yemen took the bait (where US/UK reprisals aren't much of a change from what the Saudis had been doing, with US help, for years). So this section has gradually been taken over by more general articles on America's imperial posture (with carve outs for the still-raging wars in Israel/Gaza and Ukraine/Russia.
Ramzy Baroud:
[03-04] To defend Israel's actions, the US is destroying the int'l legal system it once constructed: I'm not sure that the US ever supported any sort of international justice system. The post-WWII trials in Japan and Germany were rigged to impose "victor's justice." The UN started as a victors' club, with Germany and Japan excluded, and the Security Council was designed so small states couldn't gang up on the powers. And when Soviet vetoes precluded using the UN as a cold war tool, the US invented various "coalitions of the willing" to rubber-stamp policy. The US never recognized independent initiatives like the ICJ, although the US supports using the ICJ where it's convenient, like against Russia in Ukraine. The only "rules-based order" the US supports is its own, and even there its blind support for Israel arbitrary and capricious -- subject to no rules at all, only the whims of Netanyahu.
[03-08] On solidarity and Kushner's shame: How Gaza defeated US strategem, again.
Mac William Bishop: [02-23] American idiots kill the American century: "After decades of foreign-policy bungling and strategic defeats, the US has never seemed weaker -- and dictators around the world know it."
Christopher Caldwell: [03-09] This prophetic academic now foresees the West's defeat: On French historian/political essayist Emmanuel Todd, who claims to have been the first to predict the demise of the Soviet Union (see his The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere, from 1976), has a new book called La Défaite de l'Occident. Caldwell, who has a book called The Age of Entitlement, seems to be an unconventional conservative, so even when he has seeming insights it's hard to trust them. Even harder to get a read on Todd. (The NYTimes' insistence on "Mr." at every turn has never been more annoying.) But their skepticism of Biden et al. on Ukraine/Russia is certainly warranted. By the way, here are some old Caldwell pieces:
Brian Concannon: [03-08] US should let Haiti reclaim its democracy.
Gregory Elich: [03-08] How Madeleine Albright got the war the US wanted: NATO goes on the warpath, initially in Yugoslavia, then . . . "the opportunity to expand Western domination over other nations."
Tom Engelhardt: [03-05] A big-time war on terror: Living on the wrong world: "A planetary cease fire is desperately needed."
Connor Freeman: [03-07] Biden's unpopular wars reap mass death and nuclear brinkmanship.
Marc Martorell Junyent: [03-07] Tempest in a teapot: British illusions and American hegemony from Iraq to Yemen. Review of Tom Stevenson's book, Someone Else's Empire: British Illusions and American Hegemony.
Joshua Keating: [03-09] The Houthis have the world's attention -- and they won't give it up: "What do Yemen's suddenly world-famous rebels really want, and what will make them stop?" One lesson here is that deterrence only works if it threatens a radical break from the status quo. The Saudis, with American support, have been bombing the Houthis for more than a decade now, causing great hardship for the Yemeni people, but hardly moving the needle on Houthi political power. So how much worse would it get if they picked a fight with Israel's proxy navy? Moreover, by standing up to Israel and its unwitting allies, they gain street cred and a claim to the moral high ground. For similar reasons, sanctions are more likely to threaten nations that aren't used to them. Once you're under sanctions, which with the US tends to be a life sentence, what difference does a few more make? It's too late for mere threats to change the behavior of Yemen, Iran, North Korea, and/or Russia -- though maybe not to affect powers whose misbehaviors have thus far escaped American sanctions, like Israel and Saudi Arabia. But for the rest, to effect change, you need to do something positive, to give them some motivation and opportunity to change. In many cases, that shouldn't even be hard. Just try to do the right thing. Respect the independence of others. Look for mutual benefits, like in trade. Help them help their own people. And stop defending genocide.
Nan Levinson: [03-07] The enticements of war (and peace).
Blaise Malley: [03-06] Opportunity calls as Cold War warriors exit the stage: "Will Mitch McConnell's replacement represent the old or new guard in his party's foreign policy?"
Paul R Pillar: [03-06] Why Netanyahu is laughing all the way to the bank: "David Petraeus said recently that US leverage on Israel to do the right thing in Gaza is 'overestimated' -- that's just not true."
Robert Wright: [03-08] The real problem with the Trump-Biden choice: This piece is far-reaching enough I could have slotted it anywhere, but it has the most bearing here: the problem is how much Trump and Biden have in common, especially where it comes to foreign affairs: "America First" may seem like a different approach from Biden's, but the latter is just a slightly more generous and less intemperate variation, as both start from the assumption that America is and must be the leader, and everyone else needs to follow in line. Trump thinks he can demand the other pay tribute; Biden possibly knows better, but his pursuit of arms deals makes me wonder. Wright cites a piece by Adam Tooze I can't afford or find, quoting it only up to the all-important "but" after which the Trump-Biden gap narrows. While I'm sure Tooze has interesting things to say, Wright's efforts to steer foreign policy thinking away from the zero-sum confrontations of the Metternich-to-Kissinger era are the points to consider.
Fareed Zakaria: [03-08] Amid the horror in Gaza, it's easy to miss that the Middle East has changed.
Election notes: Sixteen states and territories voted for president on Super Tuesday, mostly confirming what we already knew. Biden won everywhere (except American Samoa), even over "uncommitted" (which mostly got a push from those most seriously upset over his support for Israeli genocide). Trump won everywhere -- except in Vermont, narrowly to Nikki Haley, who nonetheless shuttered her campaign (but hasn't yet endorsed Trump). Dean Phillips dropped out of the Democratic race after getting 8% in his home state of Minnesota and 9% in Oklahoma. He endorsed Biden. I'm not very happy with any of the news summaries I've seen, but here are a few to skim through: 538; AP; Ballotpedia; CBS News; CNBC; CNN; Guardian; NBC News; New York Times; Politico; USA Today; Washington Post. One quote I noticed (from CNN) was from a "reluctant Democrat" in Arizona: "It's hard to vote for someone with multiple felony charges; and it's also very hard to vote for someone that is pro-genocide."
Michael C Bender: [03-06] How Trump's crushing primary triumph masked quiet weaknesses: "Even though he easily defeated Nikki Haley, the primary results suggested that he still has long-term problems with suburban voters, moderates, and independents."
Aaron Blake: [03-08] The Texas GOP purge and other below-the-radar Super Tuesday nuggets.
Nate Cohn: [03-07] Where Nikki Haley won and what it means: Inside the Beltway (61%), Home base and Mountain West cities (57%), Vermont (56%), University towns (56%), Resort towns (55%): In other words, the sorts of places that would automatically disqualify one as a Real Republican.
Antonia Hitchens: [03-06] Watching Super Tuesday returns at Mar-a-Lago.
Ro Khanna: [03-07] The message from Michigan couldn't be more clear: Actually, these figures (see Nichols below) are hardly enough for a bump in the road to Biden's reelection -- unlike, say, Eugene McCarthy's New Hampshire showing in 1968, where Lyndon Johnson got the message clearly enough to give up his campaign. What they do show is that the near-unanimity of Democratic politicians in support of Israel is not shared by the rank and file.
Adam Nagourney/Shane Goldmacher: [03-09] The Biden-Trump rerun: A nation craving change gets more of the same: I bypassed this first time around, but maybe we should offer some kind of reward for the week's most inane opinion piece. Wasn't Nagourney a finalist in one of those hack journalists playoffs? (If memory serves -- why the hell can't I just google this? -- he finished runner-up to Karen Tumulty.)
John Nichols: [03-05] Gaza is on the ballot all over America: "Inspired by Michigan's unexpectedly high 'uncommitted' vote, activists across the country are now mounting campaigns to send Biden a pro-cease-fire message." Uncommitted slate votes thus far (from NYTimes link, above): Minnesota: 18.9%; Michigan: 13.2%; North Carolina: 12.7%; Massachusetts: 9.4%; Colorado: 8.1%; Tennessee: 7.9%; Alabama: 6.0%; Iowa: 3.9%.
Alexander Sammon:
[03-09] Katie Porter said her Senate primary was "rigged." Let's discuss! "Her complaint was kind of MAGA-coded. But it wasn't entirely wrong." Adam Schiff had a huge fundraising advantage over Porter, as Porter did over the worthier still Barbara Lee. This is one of the few pieces I've found that looks into where that money came from (AIPAC chipped in $5 million; a crypto-backed PAC doubled that), and how it was used, explained in more depth in the following:
[03-05] Democrats have turned to odd, cynical tactics to beat one another in California's Senate race. Schiff wound up spending a lot of money not trying to win Democrats over from Porter and Lee -- something that might require explaining why he supported the Iraq War (which itself partly explains why he got all that AIPAC money) -- but instead spent millions raising Republican Steve Garvey's profile. In the end, Schiff was so successful he lost first place to Garvey (on one but not both of the contests: one to finish Feinstein's term, one for the six year term that follows), but at least he got past Porter and Lee, turning the open primary into a traditional R-D contest (almost certainly D in California).
Michael Scherer: [03-08] Inside No Labels decision to plow ahead with choosing presidential candidates: "The group announced on a call with supporters Friday plans to announce a selection process for their third-party presidential ticket on March 14 with a nomination by April." More No Labels:
Ed Kilgore: [03-08] No Labels green-lights 2024 bid with no candidates: "The idea of a 'unity ticket' is more popular than a bid with named candidates."
Li Zhou: [03-06] Jason Palmer, the guy who beat Biden in American Samoa, briefly explained.
Trump, and other Republicans:
David Atkins: [03-06] The incompetent malfeasance of today's Republican party: "They're mendacious buffoons, but their lack of political acumen makes them no less dangerous than if they knew how to shoot straight." Laugh as you may, but in much of the country, they're still kicking your ass.
Zack Beauchamp: [03-06] The Republican primary was a joke. It tells us something deadly serious. "Trump's inevitable romp to victory revealed how strong his hold on the GOP is -- and how dangerous he remains to democracy."
Ryan Bort: [03-08] Republicans tap election denier, Trump's daughter-in-law to run RNC: "The MAGA takeover of the Republican National Committee is complete, and the group appears poised to subsidize Trump's legal fights." Michael Whatley and Lara Trump.
Zak Cheney-Rice: [03-09] The normalization of Trump's alleged crimes: "His legal strategy is both buying him time and erasing the accusations against him."
Juan Cole: [03-06] Trump, Like Biden, supports Israeli Campaign against Gaza: "You've got to finish the Problem": Odd turn of phrase, isn't it? (I usually try to standardize case in headlines, but this one was so peculiar, I left it alone.) Most people try to solve problems, but "finish" could have two meanings, one suggesting that it isn't problem enough yet, so needs to be made more complete; the other interpretation, which is more like Trump, is that "Problem" means Palestinians, and "finish" means annihilation (or more vividly, if you know the original German, Vernichtung). I don't quite buy the argument that "Trump's position on Gaza is not any different from that of Joe Biden." Biden may feel powerless to object to Israel, but he's not unaware of the human cost. Trump simply doesn't care. As long as the checks don't bounce, he's good to go. More on Trump's Gaza "problem":
Jake Johnson: [03-07] Trump's answer on Gaza shows he's 'even worse' than Biden on Israel.
James Risen: On Israel, Trump is even worse than Biden.
Connor Echols: [03-04] Would Trump 2.0 be a hawk or a dove? "It's the advisers, stupid."
Dan Diamond/Alex Horton: [03-07] Navy demoted Ronny Jackson after probe into White House behavior: "Trump's former physician and GOP ally is now a retired captain, not an admiral."
Jesse Drucker: [03-09] How Trump's Justice Dept. derailed an investigation of a major company: "The industrial giant Caterpillar hired William Barr and other lawyers to defuse a federal criminal investigation of alleged tax dodges."
Michael Gold: [03-10] Trump vilifies migrants and mocks Biden's stutter in Georgia speech.
Jessica M Goldstein: The right-wing war on abortion has nothing to do with babies: "Coverage of the recent controversy over IVF has made a perilous omission: This is a battle over body autonomy." Related:
Aubrey Hirsch: [03-07] IVF is popular -- and imperiled.
Alex Isenstadt: [03-11] Ralph Reed's army plans $62 million spending spree backing Trump: "Faith & amp; Freedom plans to spend big registering and turning out evangelicals and handing out 30 million pieces of literature at churches."
Josh Kovensky: [03-09] Inside a secret society of prominent right-wing Christian men prepping for a 'national divorce'.
Paul Krugman:
Eric Levitz:
[03-05] Republicans' voter suppression obsession may end up helping . . . Democrats? "The GOP convinced itself it could only win with a smaller, whiter electorate. The polls show that's just not true."
[03-06] Republicans just passed up the chance to win a historic landslide: "If Republicans ever figure out how to nominate a normal human, Democrats could be in trouble." You might think that, but Romney and McCain, who were about as close as Republicans get to normal these days, lost to Obama, and Bush didn't fare much better, leaving office with the lowest approval rating at least since Nixon. Republican policies are moving disasters, many so obviously defective even they don't dare campaign on them. The only option, other than betraying their base(s), is to deflect and dissemble, which they do mostly by generating rage. Even that doesn't always work, but Trump was credibly crazy in 2016, and pulled off a miracle, and when he did, he raised the stakes about what winning meant. As long as he has a chance of winning -- and he does have enough polls to keep that fantasy going -- he's the horse the base wants to bet on, because he's the only one promising to fulfill their fantasies. Until he loses as bad as Landon in 1936, or at least Mondale in 1984, Republicans have little reason to recalculate.
Daniel Lippman: [03-09] Kellyanne Conway advocating for TikTok on Capitol Hill: Trump failed to "drain the swamp," but his aides are learning to earn there.
Alexandra Marquez: [03-10] Lindsey Graham: Biden has 'screwed the world up every way you can': I can't help but wonder how many people actually fall for this sort of vague but indiscriminate line, which has become default for most Republicans. Graham spouts more on foreign policy, where it's most clear that he wants to "screw the world up" in ways even Biden hasn't tried.
Stephanie Mencimer: [03-08] Lara Trump is all about meritocracy: "That's why she got the top job at the RNC."
Mary Jo Murphy: [03-07] This book about Trump voters goes for the jugular: Another review of Tom Schaller/Paul Waldman: White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. And another:
Nathan J Robinson: [03-04] Are rural white people the problem?
Nicole Narea: [03-06] Mark Robinson, the North Carolina GOP nominee for governor, is off the rails even by MAGA standards: "North Carolina has seen a politician like Robinson before: Jesse Helms." More:
Dan Merica: [03-11] Mark Robinson on ACA: It's an effort to 'enslave everybody'
Steve M: [03-06] New York Times sanitizes sewer-mouthed GOP gubernatorial nominee: Mark Robinson. Many links here, including one from 2023 called North Carolina's Lt. Governor is a Facebook brawler whose posts railed against Gays, Blacks, and Jews.
Anna North: [03-04] Fetal personhood laws, explained: "The anti-abortion legal theory that could jeopardize IVF around the country."
Charles P Pierce: Many recent short posts, not all of which apply to this slot, but the first couple do, and easier to keep them together, with more respect for their author:
[03-11] The Kansas Attorney General doesn't want to replace lead pipes?
[03-11] I no longer believe the Republican Party will ever return to normalcy: "The MAGA-backed recall effort directed at Wisconsin's Assembly leader Robin Vos over the 2020 election is just more proof."
[03-09] Cheers to Rep. Barbara Lee, and her remarkably principled career: "She's managed to turn her loss in California's 'jungle primary' into a well-deserved victory lap."
[03-07] Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton have pulled the wool over the eyes of Texas: "Tuesday's primary results are showing the fruits of their revenge campaigns."
[03-05] I, Kyrsten Sinema, am too dedicated to the ideals of politics and government to remain in Congress: "because she was . . . too good at . . . compromise?"
[03-05] No Labels? More like no candidate . . . (sorry): "At this point the 'party' is just a vehicle for ratfcking Democrats."
[02-29] The US has enabled Netanyahu long enough. Actually, way too long. Like since his failure to implement the Wye River Accords, that long, at least.
Greg Sargent: Trump's angry rant about Biden's speech showcases MAGA's ugliest scam.
Charles Sykes: [03-05] Donald Trump, the luckiest politician who ever lived.
Ishaan Tharoor: [03-08] Trump, Orban and the GOP's deep obsession with foreign demagogues: This column includes an interview with Jacob Heilbrunn, author of America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators. The century is just enough time to go back to Mussolini, lionized as the guy who got the trains to run on time.
Liz Theoharis: [03-10] The great unwinding: "The failing battle for health and healthcare in these all too disunited states." Republicans are responsible for this, and need to own it: "Since March 2023, 16 million Americans have lost healthcare coverage, including four million children, as states redefine eligibility for Medicaid for the first time in three years." This is one of many areas where Democrats were able to expand the safety net to ameliorate the horrors of the Covid-19 pandemic, but as Republicans recovered from the panic, they've killed off these much needed expansions as soon as possible.
Peter Wehner: [03-10] If there's one thing Trump is right about, it's Republicans: They'll follow him anywhere:
Mr. Trump is a human blowtorch, prepared to burn down democracy. So is his party. When there's no bottom, there's no bottom.
The next 34 weeks are among the more consequential in the life of this nation. Mr. Trump was a clear danger in 2016; he's much more of a danger now. The former president is more vengeful, more bitter and more unstable than he was, which is saying something. There would be fewer guardrails and more true believers in a second Trump term. He's already shown he'll overturn an election, support a violent insurrection and even allow his vice president to be hanged. There's nothing he won't do. It's up to the rest of us to keep him from doing it.
Biden's band-aid folly: Unveiled in Biden's State of the Union address, q.v., but for this week, let's give it its own section:
Alex Horton: [03-08] How the US military will use a floating pier to deliver Gaza aid: "Construction will take up to two months and require 1,000 US troops who will remain off shore, officials say. Once complete, it will enable delivery of 2 million meals daily."
Jonathan Cook: [03-10] Biden's pier-for-Gaza is hollow gesture.
Kareem Fahim/Hazem Balousha: [03-08] Biden plan to build Gaza port, deliver aid by sea draws skepticism, ridicule. Sounds like they had a contest to come up with the most expensive, least efficient method possible to trickle life-sustaining aid into Gaza, without in any way inhibiting Israel's systematic slaughter.
Miriam Berger/Sufian Taha/Heidi Levine/Loveday Morris: [03-05] The improbable US plan for a revitalized Palestinian security force: Because the US did such a great job of training the Afghan security force?
Noga Tarnopolsky: [03-09] The Biden plan to ditch Netanyahu: "The 'come to Jesus moment' is already here, according to Israeli and US sources." I don't give this report much credit, but it stands to reason that eventually Biden will tire of Netanyahu jerking him around just so he can further embarrass both countries with what is both in intent and effect genocide. I do see ways in which Biden's initial subservience is evolving into some kind of passive-aggressive resistance. Rather than denounce Israel for making reasonable aid possible, Biden has challenged Israel to spell out what they would allow, and agreed even as these schemes are patently ridiculous. It's only a matter of time until Israel starts attacking American aid providers. For another piece:
Zack Beauchamp: [03-08] Are Biden and the Democrats finally turning on Israel? "Biden's new plan to build a pier on the Gaza coast seems to say yes. The continued military aid to Israel says otherwise."
Biden's State of the Union speech: A section for everything else related, including official and unofficial Republican responses:
Zack Beauchamp: [03-08] Biden's State of the Union got one big thing right: "The president dodged the 'norms trap' by going straight after Trump on democracy."
Chas Danner:
Tim Dickinson: [03-07] Fired-up Biden takes aim at his 'predecessor' in rousing SOTU.
Moira Donegan: [03-08] Biden's State of the Union: raucous, strident and insistently optimistic: "His remarks were designed to demonstrate Biden's vitality. They succeeded."
Susan B Glasser: [03-08] So much for "sleepy Joe": On Biden's rowdy, shouty State of the Union.
Margaret Hartmann:
Sarah Jones: [03-08] When motherhood is a weapon: "Senator Katie Britt of Alabama knows her place."
Ed Kilgore:
[03-07] Biden's State of the Union address: Right in Trump's face! Just an aside here: one thing I've always hated about SOTU is having to watch the VP and Speaker over the President's shoulders. Harris actually put on a fairly good show this time, which was a relief, as she usually comes out super glum. Johnson, however, was clearly miserable while trying to look invisible, and that didn't help anyone. It's rare to have speakers framed like that, and really unnecessary.
[03-08] Katie Britt's America sounds scary, but not as scary as Katie Britt.
Eric Levitz: [03-07] Biden to nation: Republicans like rich people more than they like you.
Branko Marcetic:
[03-08] Biden's state of the union showcased a president in denial. Note that Marcetic was one of the few to take Biden seriously enough to write a book on him going into the 2020 campaign, and it was critical: Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden. Marcetic also wrote:
[03-07] Support for "uncommitted" runs deep enough to threaten Biden.
Tori Otten: One line in Biden's SOTU is about to show up in every GOP attack ad.
Andrew Prokop: [03-08] The media's coverage of Biden's age needs a rethink.
Nikki McCann Ramirez/Asawin Suebsaeng: [03-08] 'What the hell am I watching': Republicans torch their own SOTU rebuttal: "Alabama Sen. Katie Britt was panned after delivering the most bizarre State of the Union rebuttal in recent memory."
Bill Scher: [03-08] The oldest president in history just gave the fiercest state of the union address in history.
Biden and/or the Democrats:
Perry Bacon Jr: [03-07] Biden is failing at the most important task of his presidency. Bacon's definition: "Biden has failed at the most important task for a Democratic president in the 2020s: eliminating or at least drastically reducing the chances of Trump or someone who shares his radical beliefs being his successor." That may have been the job, but it's really hard to see how he could have done it. When I saw the headline, I filled in my own answer, which is that Biden simply isn't a very good communicator. But Obama was, technically at least, pretty much all you could hope for in a communicator, and who listened to him? Bill Clinton was also pretty good. But both were hobbled by a hostile media that relentlessly amplified Republican countermessaging, and by the muddle created by their own willingness to conform to conservative framing of issues -- is it any wonder that they were more successful at persuading donors than voters? Franklin Roosevelt was the great communicator among all presidents, but we no longer live in a world where nominally Republican farmers (like, say, my grandfather) would tune in to listen to him explain how banking worked, and believe a word he said.
Jonathan Chait: [03-05] Good riddance, Kyrsten Sinema, plutocratic shill: "She killed her career by blocking bipartisan ideas that threatened the rich." The Democrat-turned-independent from Arizona finally decided not to run for a second term. Presumably she'll reap her rewards as a lobbyist, not that she's likely to have much influence over anyone. More:
Chris Lehman: [03-06] Kyrsten Sinema does us all a favor.
Jim Newell: A singularly arrogant Senator make a very appropriate exit.
Timothy Noah: The stealth budget cuts imperiling the Biden antitrust agenda.
Evan Osnos: [03-04] Joe Biden's last campaign: A long New Yorker profile on Biden, by just about the only writer who managed to get a biography of Biden together before the 2020 election (and just barely).
Andrew Prokop: [03-08] The media's coverage of Biden's age needs a rethink: "There's been too much focus on trivialities."
John E Schwarz: [03-01] Democratic presidents have better economic performances than Republican ones: This has been true for so long you'd think everyone would be acknowledging it.
Astra Taylor/Eleni Schirmer: [03-05] The Biden administration has a chance to deliver student debt relief. It must act.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells: [03-06] Can Joe Biden fight from behind in a rematch against Donald Trump?
Legal matters and other crimes:
Elie Honig: [03-08] Biden's looming nightmare pardons: Ever since this "former federal and state prosecutor" started writing for Intelligencer, his pieces have sounded like stealth briefs from the Trump legal team, even if not things they would actually want to own. This one at least assumes things not yet in evidence: that Trump is actually tried and convicted and sentenced to jail time -- the power may be to pardon, but all he's asking for is commutation of prison time, not full pardons. As that's increasingly unlikely before November, the assumption may also be that Biden wins then, so has some breathing room before having to consider the issue, which would leave plenty of time for this discussion, unlike now.
Josh Kovensky: [03-05] Feds slap 12 new counts on Bob 'Gold Bars' Menendez: Senator (D-NJ).
Ian Millhiser: [03-10] Do Americans still have a right to privacy? "With courts coming for abortion and IVF, it's hard not to wonder what the Supreme Court will go after next."
Climate, environment, and energy:
Kate Aronoff: Inside Big Oil's plot to keep their emissiosn confidential.
Evan Halper: [03-07] Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power: "AI and the boom in clean-tech manufacturing are pushing America's power grid to the brink. Utilities can't keep up." I suspect there's a scam or several in here somewhere, most obviously the push for more "clean nuclear power." Also noted here:
Elizabeth Kolbert: [03-09] The obscene energy demands of AI: "How can the world reach net zero if it keeps inventing new ways to consume energy?"
David Wallace-Wells:
[03-06] John Kerry: 'I feel deeply frustrated': An interview with Kerry, as he is stepping down from his "post as America's top climate diplomat," having achieved, well, not enough.
Ukraine War:
Blaise Malley: [03-08] Diplomacy Watch: Chinese diplomat shuttling to Russia, and Ukraine. Turkey is also making efforts to mediate the conflict.
Francesca Ebel/Robyn Dixon: [02-29] Putin threatens nuclear response to NATO troops if they go to Ukraine.
Francesca Ebel/Serhiy Morgunov: [03-08] Russia's opposition and Ukraine find it impossible to unite against Putin.
Mark Episkopos: [03-08] What will more aid to Ukraine accomplish? "There are limits to what Kyiv can do, even with an indefinite flow of Western assistance."
Valerie Hopkins: [03-01] Thousands turn out for Navalny's funeral in Moscow.
Daniel Larison: [03-05] Victoria Nuland never shook the mantle of ideological meddler: "Blurting out F-ck the EU' typified her blunt, interventionist style throughout three presidential administrations."
Emily Rauhala: [03-07] Sweden finally joins NATO in expansion spurred by Putin's Ukraine war.
Lauren Wolfe: [01-16] Putin's history lessons: Review of Yaroslav Trofimov: Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence, which is somewhat tangential to the subhed argument that Putin's rhetoric about the unity of Russia and Ukraine has laid "the rhetorical groundwork for a forever war."
Amanda Yen: [03-11] Hungary's Viktor Orban: Trump 'won't give a penny' to Ukraine if elected. One of the stranger recent political dynamics is that as Trump digs in more as the anti-war (and especially, anti-world-war) candidate, Democrats are trying to rally support for Ukraine as necessary to spite Trump here in America. Why they think that's a winning strategy is beyond me. They could argue that unified support for Ukraine would help them negotiate a better deal to end the war, but first they need to be open to negotiating, which so far doesn't seem to be the case. America has a bad history of never negotiating reasonable exits from conflicts. Rather, in Vietnam and Afghanistan, they negotiated deals where they just slipped away, leaving their supposed allies to collapse, or in Korea, where they signed a ceasefire but refused to call it an end to the war. A reasonable deal with Russia is possible, and it could lead to further reasonable deals in the future, in the long run ending a conflict that the US has done as much or more to fuel as Putin has. Trump may pull out, but he won't negotiate a real deal, because he doesn't know how, and he doesn't care. But even the bad deals I've mentioned were better for Americans than the hopeless, pointless wars they escaped from. So even if that's all Trump is promising, many people will see it as better than Biden and the Democrats pouring endless resources into a stalemate.
Around the world:
Nicholas Ford: [03-07] The IMF's policies are destroying Kenya, again.
Ellen Ioanes: [03-05] Don't ignore Sudan's horrific conflict: "More than 8 million people have been displaced during the war, and more than 13,000 people have been killed."
Michelle Alexander: [03-08] Only revolutionary love can save us now: "Martin Luther King Jr's 1967 speech condemning the Vietnam War offers a powerful moral compass as we face the challenges of our time."
Indivar Dutta-Gupta/Korian Warren: [03-04] The war on poverty wasn't enough: "While Lyndon B Johnson's effort made some lasting impacts, the United States still has some of the highest rates of nonelderly poverty among wealthy nations." As the article notes, Johnson's programs brought big improvements, but the Vietnam War hurt him politically, and his successors lost interest: e.g., Nixon's appointment of Donald Rumsfeld to run the Office of Economic Opportunity. And while Republicans deserve much of the blame, Democrats like Daniel Moynahan and Bill Clinton were often as bad, sometimes worse.
Henry Farrell: [02-27] Dr. Pangloss's Panopticon: A very thoughtful critique of Noah Smith's "quite negative review of a recent book by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology & Prosperity. There are complex issues at dispute here, many much more interesting than those that dominate this (and all recent) posts. Dr. Pangloss (from Voltaire) stands in for techno-optimism: the idea that unfettered innovation, accelerated as it is through modern venture capitalism, promises to deliver ever-improving worlds. Panopticon (from Jeremy Bentham) is an early form of mass surveillance, a capability that technology has done much to develop recently, with AI promising a breakthrough to the bottleneck problem (the time and people you need to surveil other people).
Luke Goldstein: [02-23] Crunch time for government spying: "Congress has a few weeks left until a key spying provision sunsets. Both reformers and intelligence hawks are plotting their strategies."
Oshan Jarow: [03-08] The world's mental health is in rough shape -- and not getting any better: "Guess where the US ranks?"
Sarah Kaplan: [03-06] Are we living in an 'Age of Humans'? Geologists say no. A recent proposal for delineating a stratigraphic boundary for the Anthropocene, based on "a plume of radioactive plutonium that circled around the world" in 1952, was proposed recently and, at least for now, voted down. More:
Sigi Samuel: [03-07] Why did geologists reject the "Anthropocene" epoch? It's not rock science. "The battle proves that time is political, any way you cut it."
Alvaro Lopez: [03-08] The making of Frantz Fanon: Review of Adam Shatz's new book, The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon. Also:
Erik Linstrum: Frantz Fanon's conflicted vision for decolonization.
Rick Perlstein: [03-06] The spectacle of policing: "'Swatting' innocent people is the latest incarnation of the decades-long gestation of an infrastructure of fear."
Dave Phillipps: [03-06] Profound damage found in Maine gunman's brain, possibly from blasts: "A laboratory found a pattern of cell damage that has been seen in veterans exposed to weapons blasts, and said it probably played a role in symptoms the gunman displayed before the shooting." Robert Card was a grenade instructor in the Army Reserve for eight years. He went on to shoot and kill 18 people and himself. Something not yet factored into the "Costs of War" accounting. Another report:
Annabelle Timsit/Jennifer Hassan/Joanna Slater: [03-07] Maine shooter who killed 18 had traumatic brain injury, study says.
Jeffrey St Clair: [03-08] Roaming Charges: Too obvious to be real.
I ran across a link to this David Brooks [02-08]: Trump came for their party but took over their souls. A normal person would have little trouble writing a column under that headline. Even Brooks hits some obvious points, like: "Democracy is for suckers"; "Entertainment over governance"; and "Lying is normal." But the one that really upsets Brooks is: "America would be better off in a post-American world." The other maxim that Brooks castigates Trump for is "Foreigners don't matter." This leads to his rant against "isolationism," which inevitably devolves into invoking the spectre of Neville Chamberlain.
Brooks celebrates the triumph of Eisenhower over Taft in 1952, when "the GOP became an internationalist party and largely remained that way for six decades" -- glorious years that spread capitalist exploitation to the far corners of the globe, transforming colonies into cronies ruled by debt penury, policed by "forever wars" and, wherever the occasion arose, ruthless counterrevolutions and civil wars.
Meanwhile, instead of enjoying the wealth this foreign policy generated, America's middle class -- the solid burghers and union workers who, as Harry Truman put it, "voted Democratic to live like Republicans" -- got ground down into their own penury. The Cold War was always as much about fighting democracy at home as it was about denying socialism abroad, much as the "war on terror" was mostly just an authoritarian tantrum directed against anyone who failed to submit to America's globe-spanning military colossus.
Sure, it is an irony that blows Brooks' mind that it now seems to be the Republicans -- the party that most celebrates rapacious capitalism, is most devoutly committed to authoritarian rule, and whose people are most callously indifferent to the cries of those harmed by their greed -- should be the first give up on the game.
Of course, they weren't. The left, or "premature antifascists" (as the OSS referred to us in the 1940s, before "communists and fellow travelers" proved to be a more effective slur), knew this all along, but that insight came from caring about what happens to others, and solidarity in what we sensed was a common struggle. It took Republicans much longer to realize that globalized capitalism, under the aegis of American military power, not only didn't work for them personally, but that it directly led to jobs moving overseas, and all kinds of foreigners flooding America. And since Republicans had put so much propaganda effort into stoking racism and reaction, not least by blaming Democrats (with their "open borders" and focus on wars as "humanitarian") for loving foreigners more than their own people.
I was pointed to Brooks' piece by a pair of tweets: Simon Schama linked, adding: "Heartfelt obituary by David Brooks for the expiring of last vestiges of the Republican Party. No longer has supporters but 'an audience.' Lying normalised. Total abandonment of internationalism." To which, Sam Hasselby added:
People have really memory-holed the whole Iraq catastrophe which is in fact what normalized a new scale of lying and impunity in American politics. It was also a lie which cost $7 trillion dollars, killed one million innocent Iraqis, and displaced 37 million people.
Yet Iraq War boosters like Brooks still have major mainstream media gigs, while Adam Schiff trounced Barbara Lee (the only member of Congress to vote against the whole War on Terror) in a Democratic primary, and Joe Biden became president -- finally giving up the 20-year disaster in Afghanistan, only to wholeheartedly embrace new, but already even more disastrous, wars in Ukraine and Gaza.