Category Archives: Commentary

All written commentary.

AP: “Hungary puts inmates to work on border fence”

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Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

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Last month from AFD: “Border fence politics comes to the EU”

Yesterday, Associated Press: “Hungary puts inmates to work on border fence to bar migrants”

Using materials prepared by inmates in Hungarian prisons, 900 soldiers will build a fence along Hungary’s border with Serbia by December to stem the torrent of migrants, officials said Thursday
[…]
Prime Minister Viktor Orban says Hungary does not want any migrants from outside Europe. But over the past months, 80 percent of the refugees requesting asylum in Hungary have come from war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Most leave within days to richer EU countries like Germany before their asylum claims are settled.

The government’s anti-immigrant billboard campaign and a questionnaire sent to voters linking migration with terrorism have been criticized by the U.N.’s refugee agency, among others.

 
Orbanism Rising.

I wonder where the “Obamacare repeal” bills went this year?

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Remember how Republicans held the House for four years without the holding the Senate and managed to vote more than 50 times in the House to repeal “Obamacare” only to have it die in the Senate?

Anybody else notice it’s now half a year into Republican control of both chambers of Congress and they have yet to send any Affordable Care Act repeal bill to the White House?

Flashback to my December 2013 forecast:

The one good thing about the crushing strength of the American private health insurance industry’s Washington lobby is that they will never allow through these idiotic Republican proposals to replace the Affordable Care Act. That lobby understands two key truths:
1. this law benefits their industry as currently written by providing lots of healthy new customers and,
2. the replacement proposals keep the most popular but most expensive parts in place, while stripping out the money-making purchase mandate that makes it financially feasible to keep the costly parts going.
[…]
Those firms benefiting from this law donate a lot of political money. If you’re a Republican in Congress right now, you don’t want to get into a political gunfight with the health insurance lobby, unless you’re a self-funding candidate.

Even the tea party wing is still dependent upon big business. They can’t afford to cross private health insurers at the moment.

 
Maybe they were all just waiting for the Supreme Court to strike it down for them? Too bad (for them) about that as well.

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If you said it, then you meant it, Oklahoma GOP chairman

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The AP reports that the Oklahoma Republican Party chairman is in hot water over a Facebook post comparing SNAP (food stamps) recipients to wild animals that you shouldn’t feed:

The original message, posted Monday, said 46 million Americans participate in the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program, or SNAP, commonly referred to as food stamps. The post then said the National Park Service encourages people not to feed wild animals because they ‘‘will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.’’

As is usually the case with other like-minded posters in such situations, he thinks everyone just didn’t get it and it’s all a big misunderstanding:

Party chairman Randy Brogdon said on Facebook that the post was intended to illustrate the cycle of government dependency. He apologized ‘‘for any misconceptions that were created.’’

 
Worth noting:

About 604,000 people receive SNAP benefits in Oklahoma, mostly the elderly, disabled, and children.

That’s almost 7% of the Republican-dominated state’s entire population — which is a pretty comparable figure to a Democratic-dominated state like Massachusetts, but not a glowing testament to the dependency-ending benefits of conservative governance.

In predictable fashion, fellow Republicans objected more on the optics than the substance:

‘‘It is not a representation of the party as a whole and it makes the party look uncaring,’’ said state Senator Stephanie Bice, a Republican.

(My bolding.)

However he may have phrased it, that vehement opposition to and dismissive view of food stamps is the mainstream position of the Republican Party. Hard not to “look uncaring” when you are uncaring. Dressing it up rhetorically in a nicer outfit doesn’t fix the underlying problem.

In the immortal words of one Christopher Brian “Ludacris” Bridges in his 2008 commentary, “Politics As Usual”:

Talkin’ slick and apologizin’ for what?
If you said it, then you meant it.
How you want it: Head or gut?

 

Previously from Bill on Similar Topics:

“How the South Really Operates”
“The American South: Take the Money and Run”

United States Census Southern Region

United States Census Southern Region

For pro-reform Egyptians, the terrorists have already won

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Summary | Arab Spring: Massive undirected terror unleashed by foreign fundamentalists and diehard regimes cooled enthusiasm for protest.

An Issue Brief entitled “Egypt’s Next Phase: Sustainable Instability” by Michael Wahid Hanna for The Century Foundation (published on July 1, 2015, just ahead of the second anniversary of the military coup d’état) includes a section making the case that the catastrophic region-wide failure of the Arab Spring — especially its particularly violent self-immolation in Syria, Libya, and Yemen — has deterred Egyptians from seeking new rounds of reform against their reactionary government.

While Egypt’s security situation is deteriorating and its security establishment has proven unsuited to the task at hand, particularly with respect to dealing with the low-level insurgency in the Sinai peninsula, the rising tide of violence, terrorism, and conflict throughout the Arab world have had a profound effect on Egyptian society and have curbed the impulse for political change. In the current regional context, political change and efforts at reform are seen by most Egyptians to be risky endeavors with potentially disastrous unintended consequences.
[…]
This regionalized climate of instability has helped solidify support for the Sisi regime, albeit ambivalent support among certain segments of Egyptian society. The horrifying regional examples of state collapse and civil war have created widespread aversion and revulsion at the prospect of political violence and terrorism. While the proliferation of such violence might damage the credibility of the Sisi regime and its competence over time, it is unlikely to produce widespread public support for radical political change and potential upheaval amongst a cautious and fatigued society.

 

Status and outcomes of Arab Spring uprisings as of February 2015. Map by Ian Remsen for Wikimedia.

Status and outcomes of Arab Spring uprisings as of February 2015. Map by Ian Remsen for Wikimedia.

In 2008, Clinton attacked Obama for gun control support

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But in 2015, Clinton is attacking Bernie Sanders for insufficient gun control support. Let’s track the intense flip-flopping, solely meant to destroy rival Democratic nomination candidates, both times.

Now (Washington Post, July 9, 2015):

“I’m going to speak out against the uncontrollable use of guns in our country because I believe we can do better,” Clinton said Tuesday in Iowa City.

A few days earlier, she said in Hanover, N.H.: “We have to take on the gun lobby. . . . This is a controversial issue. I am well aware of that. But I think it is the height of irresponsibility not to talk about it.”
[…]
Gun control is one of the few issues on which Clinton has a more left-leaning record than Sanders, who represents a rural, pro-gun-rights state and has voted in the past for legislation to protect the firearms industry. Although Clinton has not attacked Sanders by name, by invoking guns she makes an unspoken contrast.
[…]
Despite his mixed voting record, Sanders did support the 2013 background-check bill and ­assault-weapons ban. And on the stump, he is trying to sound more forceful. He notes that “guns in Chicago and Los Angeles mean a very different thing than guns in Vermont and New Hampshire” but says — as he did two weeks ago in Bow, N.H. — that the next president must “come forward with a common-sense proposal on guns.”

In the Democratic field, former Maryland governor Martin O’Mal­ley has the strongest record in favor of gun control. He supported an assault-weapons ban as mayor of Baltimore in the early 2000s and then signed one into law as governor in 2013, along with a suite of gun restrictions that stand as among the nation’s toughest.
[…]
Howard Wolfson, for many years a top Clinton aide before going to work for Bloomberg, said Clinton’s avoidance of guns in 2008 should not be mistaken for a lack of interest in gun control.

 
Then:
In Indiana, “Clinton mailing attacks Obama on guns” – Ben Smith for Politico – May 4, 2008

2008-clinton-campaign-mailer-obama-guns
Hillary Clinton has re-opened her sharp attack on Barack Obama’s position on guns, with a mailer in Indiana that seeks to raise questions about him with both supporters and opponents of gun rights.

The mailing — perhaps the sharpest-edged of Clinton’s five negative mail pieces in Indiana — casts him as a typical politician, saying different things to different audiences. It also revives his damaging comments in San Francisco that small town people cling to guns.
[…]
The piece is particularly striking coming from Clinton, who has been seen for most of her career as a firm advocate of gun control, but more recently has emerged — without dramatically shifting her stance on specific issues — as a defender of the Second Amendment who fondly recalled being taught to shoot by her grandfather in Scranton.

 
So which is it?

Is she now the candidate who “told people” in conservative states she “was for the 2nd Amendment, in order to get their votes” as her 2008 mailer alleged of Sen. Obama?

TG: “Americans Need Better Pay Before Longer Hours”

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Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

The Globalist: “Americans Need Better Pay Before Longer Hours” – George R. Tyler: What Jeb Bush and Scott Walker get wrong about U.S. workers with their war on wages.

Americans have worked harder and smarter since 1979. Productivity is up 66.5% and Americans now work 1800 hours annually on average – 300 hours more than Germans. But the GOP’s vision of America is one where hard work is rarely rewarded with higher wages.

Exhausted employees must wonder at the remarkably rarefied air enjoyed by America’s wealthy, when multimillionaire GOP presidential candidates like former Florida Governor Jeb Bush urge them to work even harder. The Republican answer to wage stagnation is simple: With hourly pay stagnant, the solution is to work more hours.

Read the rest.

 
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Iran deal reached!

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Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

So far this sounds like a really good deal.

Los Angeles Times: “Iran nuclear deal: Who gave up what”

World leaders announced a landmark agreement Tuesday designed to curb Iran’s nuclear program and lift economic sanctions that have left the country isolated for years. U.S. officials say the deal would prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb for at least a decade.

President Obama said that the deal would stop the spread of nuclear weapons to Iran and that it is “not built on trust, it is built on verification.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a televised address announcing the deal that “our prayers have come true.”

LAT summarizes key points as follows (details for each at link above):

– Iran will eliminate nearly all of its uranium stockpile
– Iran will decrease its capacity to enrich uranium
– Iran will allow robust inspection of known and suspected nuclear sites, including military areas
– Iran will need to disclose some information about its past nuclear program
– The United Nations, United States and European Union will lift crippling economic sanctions against Iran
– The Western powers retain the ability to reinstate the sanctions if they suspect Iran is cheating
– The United Nations has set a timeline to lift embargoes on Iran’s ballistic missile and conventional arms trade

 
According to the New York Times, the Obama Administration must now win approval from Congress for the deal (or at the very least win support from more than a third of each chamber to fend off a veto-proof resolution against it).

Israel’s Netanyahu-led far-right coalition government would not have accepted any deal whatsoever, so I don’t take their view into account. This deal remains a critical achievement for global security and stability, including for Israel.

A photo from the early phases of the recent Iranian nuclear talks, which ran from 2013 to 2015.

A U.S. government photo from the early phases of the recent Iranian nuclear talks, which ran from 2013 to 2015.