Two thoughts:
I am shocked – shocked! – that some rich people and corporations gave to the Clinton Foundation instead of the RNC and the Club for Growth.
The understanding is supposed to be that the troops serve on whatever mission is ordered, and the government doesn’t order them to risk their lives for a political folly.
– Unknown
On May 11 Paul Waldman had a piece in The American Prospect, Should We Relitigate the Iraq War in the 2016 Campaign? You Bet We Should. In it he offered a list of questions for 2016 presidential candidates. I noted it at the time. Waldman’s questions force the issue of how the candidate would act on what they do know and how they would deal with uncertainty. His questions are forward-looking – and that should be a good thing. Unfortunately, we don’t appear to be ready for it. If we were then statements to the effect of “knowing what we know now…” re Iraq would be immediately called out as bullshit by everyone within earshot. They are not. Today James Fallows summed up concisely why saying “knowing what we know now…” is bullshit:
- The “knowing what we know” question presumes that the Bush Administration and the U.S. public were in the role of impartial jurors, or good-faith strategic decision-makers, who while carefully weighing the evidence were (unfortunately) pushed toward a decision to invade, because the best-available information at the time indicated that there was an imminent WMD threat.
- That view is entirely false.
- The war was going to happen. The WMD claims were the result of the need to find a case for the war, rather than the other way around.
He then gets into the details at length.
Wendy Brown interviewed by Tim Shenk, “What is neoliberalism?”:
I treat neoliberalism as a governing rationality through which everything is “economized” and in a very specific way: human beings become market actors and nothing but, every field of activity is seen as a market, and every entity (whether public or private, whether person, business, or state) is governed as a firm. Importantly, this is not simply a matter of extending commodification and monetization everywhere—that’s the old Marxist depiction of capital’s transformation of everyday life. Neoliberalism construes even non-wealth generating spheres—such as learning, dating, or exercising—in market terms, submits them to market metrics, and governs them with market techniques and practices. Above all, it casts people as human capital who must constantly tend to their own present and future value.
Newspeak:
Actually, it gets much worse than just banning (or attempting to ban) words. They act to suppress inquiry in general and the collection of potentially inconvenient information in particular. It was bad before the 2014 election.
and then it got worse
(Many of the links above are directly or indirectly via Mike the Mad Biologist.)
You wonder why I believe contemporary Republicans are essentially Stalinists? Well there you have it.
PS No, both sides don’t do it. This is a Republican problem.
Just how goddamn awful does the TPP have to be for Senator Warren to oppose it?
Ezra Klein interviews economist Adam Posen in Vox, Why one top economist thinks Obama’s trade deal is worth passing. Reviewing Posen’s six arguments:
Barney Frank was on Radio Boston today discussing the TPP. As usual, he was very sharp. He understands both the significance of the TPP and the value of making deals with the opposition party. His suggestion: Get some legislative concessions from Republicans now in exchange for supporting the TPP because you’re not going to get any concessions from them once the TPP passes. Conditional support for the TPP is leverage. Use it.
You can listen to the interview here:
Many of the choices we make as a culture – as a society – disappoint me. We could do much better than we’ve done. That stated, I hold out hope that future generations will make better choices than my generation and our predecessors have and that they will be able to improve upon the world we leave them.
I was running errands today and happened to hear a few minutes of Salman Rushdie’s keynote address at Emory University’s Commencement. His speech captured both my frustrations and my hopes. Hold out for the last minute and a half:
Paul Waldman poses questions for 2016 presidential candidates:
Number 7 is of particular interest to me. “If I knew then what I know now…” is all well and good but how will the candidate approach complex issues where there’s inherent uncertainty? Do they acknowledge downside risk? If so then how do they try to get a handle on it?