-- Andy Borowitz "Obama Squandering America's Precious Supply of Enemies"
This week's featured articles are "Trump is the New Palin" and "So What About Polygamy Anyway?". The previous featured post "You Don't Have Hate Anybody to be a Bigot" has sprinted out to become the third most popular post in Sift history, with over 90K views in its first two weeks. It's been creeping up on 100K in a Zeno-like fashion.
This week everybody was talking about the deal to limit Iran's nuclear program
The criticisms of the deal are all basically of the form: "I would have dictated harsher terms to Iran." The problem is that sovereign nations don't let you dictate terms to them. If you want that kind of power, you'll have to win it in war. Unless and until you do that, you'll have to accept outcomes less appealing than the ones you would have dictated.So the right question isn't: "Does this agreement give us everything we want?" but "Is there any better alternative?" The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg -- in a roundtable with David Frum and Peter Beinart -- summarizes:
I put great stock—sorry, David—in the argument that opponents of this deal should be forced to come up with a better alternative. I haven’t come up with anything. I do think, in the absence of a deal, we would be looking at an Iran soon at the threshold, or at a military operation to delay the moment when Iran could cross the threshold. (Delay, not defeat, because three things would happen in the event of an American military strike: Sanctions would crumble; Russia would become Iran’s partner; and the ayatollahs would have their predicate to justify a rush to the bomb. Only more bombing could stop them, and then, of course, we would be talking about a never-ending regional war.)To me, it looks like the Obama administration has threaded a very difficult needle: The only reason we were able to get any concessions at all from Iran was that the administration -- thanks, Secretary Clinton -- assembled a global coalition around a tough set of economic sanctions. Russia and China were not excited about joining that coalition, and even our NATO allies are not as gung-ho against Iran as we are. But the sanctions held long enough to get Iran to the negotiating table, where they have agreed to hamstring their own nuclear program for 10-20 years.
Critics of the deal (like David Frum) effortlessly project those sanctions (or possibly harsher ones) indefinitely into the future, and argue that Iran should have paid a higher price to end them. But support for the sanctions could have lapsed in any number of ways, and then we'd be nowhere.
The NYT had a good explanation of which issues the negotiations hung on, and how they were resolved.
and the Greek crisis
Greek banks are open again, sort of. But it's not over.and another shooting
This one in Chattanooga.and (believe it or not) still the Confederate flag
The KKK rallied in front of the South Carolina Capitol Saturday to make the point that "the Confederate flag does not represent hate". At least that's what I think the guy making gorilla noises at the black protesters was trying to say. (Don't ask me; I don't speak Gorilla.)The flag issue showed up in a different way in the House of Representatives. Democrats had attached an amendment to the bill funding the Interior Department next year, saying that the Confederate flag would not be flown over federal cemeteries. Republicans were going to try to reverse that amendment, and then John Boehner -- realizing that the Confederate flag is not the hill he wants his party to die on -- decided to pull the bill off the floor instead.
This may not sound like a big deal, but it throws a monkey wrench in Republican plans for another government shutdown come October. Now that they control both houses of Congress, they were able to pass a budget that Democrats hate. The plan was to follow with the 10-12 appropriation bills that fund the government, daring President Obama to veto them. They believe this will put them in a stronger position for a shutdown than they were in 2013, when the House and Senate couldn't agree.
But the Interior bill was one of those appropriations, and if they can't pass it, the plan starts to come apart. In particular, it shows a weakness that will probably undo other appropriation bills: Trying to pass bills with no Democratic support only works if the Republicans are united, and so small numbers of Republican congressmen can hold out for concessions like defending the Confederate flag.
Historian Douglas Blackmon explodes all the "heritage" myths about the Confederate flag:
No, the seeming immovability of that symbol over the past half century has been about something very different from an appreciation of actual history. The modern resurrection and defense of the flag was wholly a product of the civil rights struggles since the 1950s, and the need for a rallying point for defenders of segregation and apologists for white discrimination and white privilege. The flag wasn’t even flying in most southern states until the 1960s, and then it was hoisted with the explicit intention of telling the rest of the country, finally emerging from its own racial dark ages, to go to hell. And wherever that flag was invoked, it was accompanied in those days by explicit defenses of the most virulent racism and ethnic hate.
but I was thinking about the revolving door
The "revolving door" refers to people who work in industries regulated by the government, leave to take a job as a regulator, then return to the industry at a high pay rate. It's a time-honored tradition in this country, and it sucks, whether it's practiced by Republicans or Democrats.The latest high-profile example of the revolving door is former Attorney General Eric Holder, who returned to his partnership at the law firm Covington and Burling. Matt Taibbi sums up in a Rolling Stone article brilliantly titled "Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes in from the Cold"
Here's a man who just spent six years handing out soft-touch settlements to practically every Too Big to Fail bank in the world. Now he returns to a firm that represents many of those same companies: Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, to name a few.
Collectively, the decisions he made while in office saved those firms a sum that is impossible to calculate with exactitude. But even going by the massive rises in share price observed after he handed out these deals, his service was certainly worth many billions of dollars to Wall Street.Even if you give Holder the benefit of the doubt and assume that all of his decisions as Attorney General were made in good faith, by going back to work for Wall Street he has undermined the public's confidence in the government, and shown all future prosecutors which side their bread is buttered on.
and Bernie Sanders
Here's the worrisome thing about Sanders as a presidential candidate: When he faces hostility, he gets preachy. He talks louder and talks down to the audience. As quickly as he can, he goes back to his talking points. For example, look at his presentation at the Netroots Nation conference this week.Read Eclectablog's account:
At times he plunged on, talking over the protesters as if they weren’t there. While he is largely a supporter of civil rights and is, in general, right on the issues of the Black Lives Matter movement, he came across as a self-important know-it-all who has better things to do than to listen to uppity black kids who are disrupting HIS speech. In the end, he took off his microphone and left the stage without as much as a wave to the audience.For the record, I disagree with the tactic of trying to shout speakers down, so I don't support the audience interruptions. I also agree with the talking points Sanders is trying to get back to.
But recall how skillful politicians like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama have handled situations like this. You're never going to satisfy the kind of people who come prepared to shout you down, but at the same time you want the people who agree with the shouters to feel like you at least heard their concern and want to respond to it.
Sanders doesn't communicate that. And that lack of skill is especially going to hurt him when he reaches out to the black and Hispanic communities, as he must if he's going to mount a serious threat to Hillary Clinton. (It will also hurt him in debates, if an opponent can taunt him into exposing his preachy side.) Blacks in particular will be watching how he interacts, not just listening to what he says. It's not going to be enough to quote proposals from his platform, no matter how good they might be. He'll need to get across that he respects the non-white communities and is listening to what they say, even when he disagrees.
When I saw him in Portsmouth in May, the room was enthusiastically on Sanders' side, so his argumentative side didn't show. But look at this clip from a townhall meeting that went off the rails last summer.
Here's an issue (Israel/Palestine) where I disagree with Sanders, and I come away feeling that he didn't hear the audience concerns at all. Their rudeness made him mad, so he talked louder and talked down. ("As some of you may have noticed, there's a group called ISIS." Really, Bernie? That had completely gotten past me. Thanks for pointing that out.)
A skillful politician understands that he's not just arguing with the people who are shouting at him; he's talking to the whole world, including people who agree with the shouters even if they deplore the rudeness. Sanders doesn't seem to get that.
So while I agree with Sanders on most issues, and I want somebody to put progressive economics on the 2016 agenda, I question whether he has the skills to run a successful presidential campaign. I'm leaning towards voting for him in the New Hampshire primary, because the early primaries are the time to be idealistic and issue-oriented. But if I were a delegate to the Democratic Convention next summer, I think I'd prefer Clinton, because she'll run a better general-election campaign. I'm not willing to go down to defeat just to maintain ideological purity. The damage that a Republican president could do in four years -- to ObamaCare, to the Iran deal, to immigration reform, to the Supreme Court -- is too great.
you also might be interested in ...
The real news: Bloom County is back.Don't miss John Metta's essay "I, Racist".
White people and Black people are not having a discussion about race. Black people, thinking as a group, are talking about living in a racist system. White people, thinking as individuals, refuse to talk about “I, racist” and instead protect their own individual and personal goodness. In doing so, they reject the existence of racism.
But arguing about personal non-racism is missing the point.
Despite what the Charleston Massacre makes things look like, people are dying not because individuals are racist, but because individuals are helping support a racist system by wanting to protect their own non-racist self beliefs.
Is this the year when ObamaCare rates sky-rocket? A lot of people want to convince you that it is, but probably not. By and large, rates will increase, but by modest amounts.
By a 4-2 vote, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has ended an investigation into Scott Walker breaking election laws during his 2012 recall election. TPM explains why this is such a disturbing precedent.
Collectively, those four justices have thus far received just under $6 million from Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and about $2 million from Wisconsin Club for Growth – the two groups being investigated for wrongdoing and who, along with the Walker campaign, launched the case against their prosecution.
The groups helped pick the judges. Then one of the groups was allowed to rewrite the state’s rules so those judges could sit on cases where they are a party. Then the groups persuaded those judges to shut down an investigation into whether they broke campaign finance laws by declaring those laws unconstitutional.
and let's close with a prank
What's in a single letter, anyway?
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