A New U.S. Paradigm for the Middle East: Ending America’s Misguided Policy of Middle East Domination

No more cartes blanches for partners

Unconditional U.S. support for regional security partners has tended to disincentivize them from diplomatic efforts to peacefully resolve tensions with neighbors. For instance, overt U.S. backing of the Saudi regime has often encouraged greater belligerence than when the Saudis have been less sure that the U.S. would intervene on their behalf. Unquestioned U.S. support for Israel has facilitated its continued occupation of Palestinian territory and reduced incentives to pursue a peaceful resolution of the conflict. A significant reduction of U.S. troops in the Middle East will help instill greater restraint and reduce the tendency toward destabilizing behavior among partner governments.

Link here.

COVID-19 cases and State & local partisanship

NATIONAL REVIEW IS TRYING TO REWRITE ITS OWN RACIST HISTORY

"Most students of American political history are probably scratching their heads at how Scully could attempt to deny that Republicans exploited racial grievance to build its base of white voters in the South. Here, again, the real history of the National Review is instructive. Linking the business wing of the GOP with the racist wing of Democratic Party was not the easy task it seems in hindsight, but required decades of effort to help these disparate camps find their shared interests and fuse together."

Link here.

How the US financial system works

The Federal balance sheet (spending and deficits) and lower corporate tax rates are used to create money and direct it to corporations to jack up stock prices.

QE lowers interests rates which increases stock valuations (discounted cash flow) and lowers returns on bonds, a competing asset class.

QE also provides a way for banks and companies to issue dodgy debt and then have it end up on the Fed's balance sheet during downturns, where losses don't matter.

The military/intelligence/homeland security industrial complex has become a ongoing bipartisan Federal stimulus program; spending beyond defense needs to boost the economy and jobs.

The "funnelling" effect of directing money to corporations and the wealthy has become very effective, as evidenced by the multi-year decrease in money velocity and increase in the GINI ratio.

Sounds right

Conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories flourish when society cannot provide a common narrative that aligns with the everyday experience of most of its citizens.  In the absence of a shared societal narrative, other actors will step in to fill the void.  Their attraction is the promise of revealing of "truth" to those who believe.

The DNC meets Blade Runner - laughter ensues

The Blob Attacks: Gaslighting Or Just Gasbagging?

"This is a closed club that offers only gradations of diversity just like Democrats and Republicans during the war: No one argued about “liberating” Iraq, only about the tactics. That was why it was so easy for Hillary Clinton’s Nat Sec team in-waiting to create the Center for a New American Security in 2008 and transition to an Obama think tank shop in 2009. Plug and play one for the other, counterinsurgency under Bush? Meh. Under Obama? Let’s do this! They all had a plan for staying in Afghanistan, and they made sure we were, until this day.

This doesn’t even include the orbit of research centers like RAND and the Center for Naval Analysis, which actually get government funding to churn out reports and white papers, teach officer classes, lead war gaming, and put on conferences. Do you really think they call for less funding, killing programs, eliminating lily pads, or egads, pulling out of entrenched strategic relationships that might not make sense anymore? Never. The same players get the contracts and produce just what the government wants to hear, so they can get more money. If they don’t get contracts they don’t survive. It’s how the swamp works."

Link here.

A Post-Democratic Primary Update to the Bitecofer Model

Now, are there some realigning Republicans, disgusted by the Trump GOP, who are telling their liberal friends and neighbors they voted for a Democrat in 2018? Absolutely. But I deal in data, and the data tells a different story about the forces that powered the 2018 wave. Yes, it captures a massive shift of independents moving to the Democrats after voting for Trump in 2016, but the myth of the disaffected 2018 Republican appears to be just that, a myth. Instead, the 2018 suburban transformation was largely powered by millennials and Gen Z voters, voters of color, and college-educated women, many of whom had been lazy about voting prior to the election of Donald Trump but now see their votes as America’s last line of defense. It was the surge to the polls by these voters, Democrats, but also independents, that my 2018 model anticipated and it’s these voters who power the 2020 version, too.

Link here.

There is no such thing as a "free market"

A "free market" presupposes:

1) Consumer choice

2) Complete and accurate information

3) Rational decision-making

Corporations are against the first two and engage in advertising to subvert the third.

The Cost-of-Thriving Index: Reevaluating the Prosperity of the American Family

As an alternative to inflation adjustment, this paper proposes the development of a “Cost-of-Thriving Index” (COTI) that tracks the cost of a basket of major items that a family of four would likely seek to buy. A comparison over time between the cost of that basket and a median weekly wage indicates whether economic trends are easing or compounding the challenge of making ends meet.

In 1985,[2] the COTI stood at 30—it would require 30 weeks of the median weekly wage to afford a three-bedroom house at the 40th percentile of a local market’s prices, a family health-insurance premium, a semester of public college, and the operation of a vehicle. By 2018, the COTI had increased to 53—a full-time job was insufficient to afford these items, let alone the others that a household needs.

Link here.

Any belief system purporting to know "the truth" . . .

Is wrong and dangerous.  People espousing those belief systems impede the evolutionary potential of mankind.

To End Forever War, End the Dollar’s Global Dominance

"But in its laser focus on military restraint, the present debate about endless war largely overlooks the financial architecture of U.S. empire. As the Iraq case illustrates, the dollar is a linchpin of U.S. military dominance, motivating and enabling its expansion around the world. To curb America’s imperial adventurism—and the president’s personal ability to engage in it unilaterally—it is essential not only to draw down the nation’s enormous global military presence but to reduce the dollar’s centrality to international trade and finance."

Link here.

The Standard Model: Beyond the Atom

Fundamental Particles and Interactions

Original size here.

AT WAR WITH THE TRUTH

U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found.

Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.

“Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,” Bob Crowley, an Army colonel who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to U.S. military commanders in 2013 and 2014, told government interviewers. “Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone.”

John Sopko, the head of the federal agency that conducted the interviews, acknowledged to The Post that the documents show “the American people have constantly been lied to.”

Link here.