Category: Uncategorized

The Fed is increasing interest rates in an effort to suppress inflation. You advocate cutting taxes in order to mitigate the impacts of higher interest rates on the economy. What, exactly, do you think this will do to inflation?

If you’re an inflation hawk, you really should be advocating for higher, not lower, taxes; they would suck up some of the excess savings that are fueling the spending that is causing inflation. It is worth noting that no one–particularly, no member of the GOP–has suggested that.

It occurred to me early this morning that the wilder elements of the GOP view today’s political climate in the same way the more extreme Whigs viewed life under the Stuarts in the latter half of the 17th century. An out of touch government holding values that are anathema to the mainstream is using the political and legal systems to impose its will on the public. Essential freedoms are under attack. Conspiracies are everywhere, so conspiracy theories abound.

The problem with the analogy is that none of this is actually happening. Law enforcement has not been weaponized against the right. Biden is not trying to impose a woke agenda on anyone. First Amendment rights are still intact, and there are no Christian re-education camps. The threat to “freedom” from the woke left, to the extent that it actually exists, comes from a handful of activists who will soon find themselves expelled from Twitter. That’s not exactly the equivalent of Judge Jeffreys or the secret Treaty of Dover.

The analogy between the “rigged election” and the Popish Plot, on the other hand, is perfectly appropriate.

It appears that there is something like a genuine crisis at the border. To be honest with you, I don’t really care very much, because it doesn’t affect me. I suspect that most Americans feel the same way.

The reactionary right doesn’t, however; it views illegal immigration as a perpetual existential crisis. How would it solve the problem?

Trump had a clear answer to the question– be as cruel as possible in order to persuade the immigrants to stay home. This included family separations, of course. The mainstream of the GOP was appalled by that, so the policy came to an abrupt end. But what other answer is there, from the right-wing perspective? To will the objective, but to deny the means, is hypocrisy.

There are two realities at play here. First, the only answer to the immigration problem is a deal in which legal immigration is increased, and a path to citizenship is provided, in exchange for significantly more border protection. Everyone knows this is the deal, but it won’t happen for the foreseeable future, because the reactionary base won’t permit it. Second, as a result of that, the GOP has no plausible answers to the immigration problem and does not seek any. The Republican Party just wants to use the issue to bash Democrats–period.

America played a huge role in the creation of the international trade system that governs economic life today. We frequently cite the existence of that system, and its success in bringing increased prosperity to the world over the last 75 years, as the difference between us and the rule-breaking Chinese. Trump did his best to cripple the system, however, and Biden is largely following his lead. It looks like hypocrisy, doesn’t it?

The problem is that the system was not designed to deal with a huge country that openly views its corporations not as independent actors, but as agents of an aggressive, autocratic state. Nevertheless, American violations of the letter and the spirit of trade law need to be limited to transactions which have a clear relationship to national security in order to maintain our moral standing in the rest of the world. Regulations on chip manufacturing meet that standard, but most tariffs do not.

Ross Douthat will admit that a woman who is denied an abortion may suffer economic hardship in both the short and long term as a result. However, he thinks society as a whole is better off, for two reasons. First, we need the additional population to finance our welfare state; and second, the loss of abortion rights is somehow supposed to result in more responsible sexual behavior and more stable relationships. Is he right?

Increased immigration is the obvious answer to the first question, and I don’t really think men spend a lot of time thinking about the availability of abortion when they go out in pursuit of sex, but we’ll put those aside for the moment. The real question is, will women who want abortions agree to put their self-interest aside and take one for the team for the betterment of society as a whole? Of course not! They didn’t in the past when abortion was illegal, and they won’t now.

As I predicted, the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” is starting to impose censorship on his critics on Sewer. I expect the situation to evolve as follows:

1. Inertia will keep left-wing journalists and commentators on Sewer for some time, but ultimately, they will leave. Sewer will become a right-wing swamp.
2. Advertisers will leave, as well. This will cost Musk lots of money.
3. He won’t care. He has plenty of money. What he wants is a loud voice and a higher degree of celebrity. Sewer gives him that in spades.
4. The right, which has howled about censorship for the last few years, will cheer him on. DeSantis will make it clear that his “freedom” agenda is only for his supporters; dissent from the left is to be stifled, not welcomed.

The bottom line is that entrusting what should be public spaces to plutocrats is hardly a perfect solution to the censorship problem, but leaving the issue to the government creates difficulties, too, because there is no agreement on the boundaries of the window of acceptable opinion. Do you want DeSantis to decide what should be tolerated on the internet?

Some commentators have predicted that the DeSantis campaign will falter because the Hungarian Candidate lacks charisma. Are they right?

Let’s put it this way: was Richard Nixon a charismatic figure? He seemed to connect pretty well with the base in his day.

The bottom line is that the GOP used to want someone who reminded them of Reagan, but now they want someone who sounds like Rush Limbaugh. They want someone who will express their anger, not their optimism. DeSantis does a pretty good job at that.

On Khamenei and Putin and Xi.

Their people just want to be free.

But the leaders say no.

Will they be forced to go?

Will they outlast the people? We’ll see.

The mob overwhelmed the Capitol Police before they could give any effective warning of what was to come. The House and Senate chambers were taken by the rioters, who demanded that Congress vote to keep Trump in office. No one was permitted to enter or leave the rooms. It was a classic hostage situation.

Hawley, Cruz, and a few others were only too happy to go along with the rioters, but the vast majority of the members refused their demands. With the military now closing in, the mob leaders threatened to start using their weapons on the Democrats, starting with Pelosi. Denied any satisfaction, they killed Pelosi and Schumer. The military then stormed the two chambers. The riot was quashed, but there were scores of casualties in the chaos, including both GOP and Democratic members of Congress. Trump watched it all on TV and did nothing.

There was never any serious danger of a successful coup, which would have required far more coordination with extreme right-wing political, law enforcement, and military leaders all over the country. In that sense, the whole episode was every bit as shambolic as it appeared at the time. That said, it could have been a whole lot worse than it was, and the scars would be even deeper. We shouldn’t forget that.

A note to my readers: I will be out of town most of next week. Regular posts will resume next Saturday.

Imagine that you are J.D. Vance. You began your life as a public figure as a harsh critic of Trump. You then decided you wanted to be a GOP politician, and that the best way to get there was to suck up to Trump at every opportunity. It worked; you won the Ohio primary with Trump’s support, and you are now a U.S. senator. But now the winds are blowing in a different direction; it is far from clear that Trump will be the nominee in 2024. What now?

The answer to that question is likely to be pretty embarrassing.

I don’t normally read books about Trump, but I bought and read “The Divider” because I thought it might tell me something about the man on golf cart that I didn’t already know. It did; I learned that Trump tried to force the sale of CNN to Rupert Murdoch by abusing anti-trust law.

Putting the MSM in reliably right-wing hands to quash any meaningful dissent is a critical part of the Orbanization process. If the GOP wins the 2024 election, look for more of this kind of activity early in the new president’s term.

The new right-wing Israeli government consists of two parts: a moribund mainstream party that has turned into a personality cult for its ethically challenged leader; and a motley crew of extremists that wants to make life as miserable as possible for people that aren’t, in their view, “real Israelis.” Is this ringing any bells?

Imagine a second Trump government with Rudy as AG, Michael Flynn as Secretary of State, Kris Kobach as the Secretary of Homeland Security, and Ron DeSantis as the head of a new agency–call it the Department of Cultural Affairs–tasked with rooting out all vestiges of wokeness in America. That’s about what this government offers.

It seems fairly clear that a majority of the Court intends to reject the Eastman version of the “independent state legislature theory” in favor of a standard which permits the federal courts to overturn only outrageously wrong state court decisions at the request of the legislature. That should eliminate at least some of the danger of a soft legislative coup after presidential elections, which is a good thing.

My concern is that the new standard (I will call it the “due process standard”) will be nebulous enough to permit the Court to authorize extreme gerrymanders in red states and overturn them in blue states. It will look like the completely contrived “major questions” doctrine in practice: a license for the Court to help Republicans whenever it sees fit, which experience tells us will be almost always.

That’s a different danger to the system, but a serious one, nonetheless.

As I’ve noted many times before, a stable liberal democracy requires a reasonable and constructive center-right party, and today’s GOP isn’t it. How would the party have to change to meet my standards, and how do we get to Point B from Point A?

As to the first question, here is the list:

1. The GOP has to break from its anti-democratic, authoritarian wing;
2. The GOP has to stop demonizing blue America and relying solely on its base in order to win elections; and
3. The GOP has to give up the notion that tax cuts are always the answer, regardless of what the question is.

The only way the party will reform itself is if it continues to lose elections, preferably by large margins. There is a glimmer of hope on that point after the midterms. There is no sign, however, that Trump has lost his hold on at least a substantial portion of the reactionary base. Until that happens, there is little reason for optimism about the health of either the GOP or our political system.

I’m guessing that Biden thinks the relatively favorable outcome of the midterms provides support for a re-election campaign and a second term. If so, I don’t agree. The viability of a re-election campaign, in my eyes, is tied completely to the likelihood that the GOP will nominate Trump. Running a man in his eighties against DeSantis would be a disaster.

That said, the decision will apparently come early next year. When, exactly, should he announce, and will he face a primary?

Most commentators believe (and I concur) that DeSantis will announce shortly after the end of Florida’s regular legislative session. Biden probably should make his decision no later than then. As to the likelihood of a primary, the answer is no. The challenge logically would come from the left, but Biden embraced virtually all of the progressive agenda in his first two years, so the left has no reason to be dissatisfied with him. In any event, with a GOP majority in the House and an unfavorable Senate playing field in 2024, the agenda is going nowhere for the foreseeable future, so what’s the point?