I was struck by Bloomberg's statements, not regarding the actual accord (I have no sense of how significant it is anyway), but in that he says straightforwardly that the American people, in the form of states and cities, will meet their commitments, in despite of the federal government. This from a serious politician, maybe maneuvering for a presidential bid. It strikes me as signifiant normalization of an attitude that could end in partition.
Honestly, I think that, Trump or no Trump, the US was unlikely to do anything but hinder and undermine everyone's efforts to cut emissions. Maybe our formal withdrawal will leave the rest of the world in a better position to move ahead.
So there was this accord? in Paris?
Don't forget the civics of Pittsburgh.
3: I'm not so sure. I'd been hoping that manufacturers would need to fall in line with world standards in the same way "California emissions" pushed auto manufacturers to pursue efficiency gains. Coal rollers aside, this is where demand will be.
3 is the other thing. The EU and China said today they're going ahead, regardless, India the same. You couldn't have a clearer demonstration of Republicans Making America a Backwater Again.
5 is a good point, but reinforces 1; it isn't America setting or keeping the pace, it's Blue America.
7:It's Blue America
My wife pointed out that any "success" no natter how limited may appear to indicate that there is not a need for Federal-level involvement. But 2.
7: I'm going to say it: that's almost always been the case. Not a lot of innovation coming out of Appalachia. Detroit forgets its mistakes and keeps learning the hard way, but I think even Big Auto knows what they need to do. I mean, it wasn't necessarily thought of as "Blue America," but the liberal coastal elites are pretty much the drivers of innovation in the US.
9: Of course. The difference is Blue America (assuming real policies emerge) openly defying policy set at the federal level. The implication is that Red Americans don't count; if their will, as expressed through the constitution, doesn't agree with the will of Blue Americans, the Blue will go their own way. I don't condemn that attitude, endorse it if anything, just pointing out that its general adoption would be a massive watershed.
Blue America (or coastal America) isn't setting or keeping the pace. It's lagging less far behind than Red America. The end of the American century is 2017. I guess 1947 (I'm starting with the Truman Doctrine because I like round numbers) to 2017 isn't bad for a "century". The security and economic order that has, for better or worse, underpinned the world for our whole lives was killed, deliberately, by people who disproportionately benefited from it and felt exploited because of what they saw on the TV.
I fear that 11 is right, but I hold out some hope that it's too soon to know.
11: That's why I put "keeping" in there. Blue America might be setting the pace in machine learning, keeping the Chinese pace in PV, keeping the German pace in vehicles, whatever. In geopolitical terms, yes, lagging.
Although the sheer level of American dominance means it'll take a long time for the rest of the world to fill the voids in politics.
10: Eh, I'm not sure your characterization as a massive watershed is correct. I'm thinking of Jim Crow or the Runaway Slave Act or even legalization of marijuana. Or California emissions. There have been lots of moments where states or municipalities defied or just sidestepped federal law, with varying degrees of success, on both sides of history.
11 is depressing but I don't disagree.
14: There's a lot of ruin in a hegemon.
I guess if the Russians didn't shoot any nukes in their decline, *maybe* we won't.
Natural resource exploitation autocracies of the world represent!
15: OF course I could be wrong. But the Runaway Slave Act was part of a conflict that led to the Civil War; Jim Crow followed a truce between the major parties in that same conflict; that truce was broken by LBJ with the CRA and VRA; and largely in consequence we have the shitshow we do today.
19: Was reading "massive watershed" as implying a change that was relatively unprecedented or a harbinger of major cataclysm. I don't think it's very different than the way we've been operating for a very long time. It's a rift that exists and will likely continue to exist.
17: But Russian mothers love their children.
It's kinda weird that no one is mentioning the whole problem of mountain top removal wrt the coal question.
14: I'm not worried so much that the void won't be filled but that there will be a huge war to decide who gets to fill it. America is the United Kingdom, China is Germany, France is Spain, Russia is Russia.
23: That's not different from Bush 2. West Virginia really wants to ruin billions of dollars of tourism for millions of dollars of coal.
Spain is Portugal and Portugal is the Azores.
24: Who the hell knows. Filling the vacuum can be constructive, as looks to be happening with Paris, and the world might be better for it, if it ends with initiative and responsibility more evenly distributed.
Re: partition. I fear the right model isn't "antebellum USA" but rather "pre-partition India". B/c there are blue cities scattered throughout the red states, and red rural regions scattered throughout the blue states. Kevin Drum pointed out that Orange County, CA was as bad as the South for decades, until urbanization is only *now* turning it blue. And others have told me that Fresno is pretty atrocious. Then there's the Jefferson part of CA, up by Oregon, and it wasn't so long ago Oregon (outside of the cities?) was KKK land.
If there's a partition, it's gonna be bloody [like it was in India]. Like: takes down the American economy for a decade bloody. Like: worldwide depression bloody.
On the plus side, I could call my novel "Midnight's (EST) Children."
1: It strikes me as signifiant normalization of an attitude that could end in partition.
I don't see this: call me confused about it, then. The US swings back and forth between calls for federalism (states' rights) and, well, otherwise. When the left points out that states have numerous powers and abilities still, it doesn't seem to me to be a remarkable point. It's simply true, for better or worse, pretty much on a case by case basis.
Talk of bloody confrontation seems overblown.
None of that means that the federal government removing itself from the Paris Accord isn't idiotic on any number of fronts, chiefly diplomatic and, um, cognitive, but really isn't it increasingly the case that regional pacts and accords have been gaining traction anyway?
I sound as though I'm minimizing Trump's withdrawal, which I don't really mean to do. The point is more that if the right wants to marginalize the role of the federal government, they're succeeding. Is that the problem? It take it that it is.
In Trump's America, it's the only way to respond, nu?
I drove behind my first coal roller recently. It was terrible! And confusing: I can understand the shove-it-under-the-rug attitude- denying or ignoring the problem seems like a predictable thing for humans to do. But what's going on with the people actively trying to make it worse? They live here (earth) too!
I guess that's also a predictable human thing to do. Cut off your nose to spite your face. I'd enjoy making up an evo psych explanation for that one.
The US swings back and forth between calls for federalism (states' rights) and, well, otherwise. When the left points out that states have numerous powers and abilities still, it doesn't seem to me to be a remarkable point.
I think it's swinging remarkably hard. If US politics moves in waves, I think the water is the same, but the amplitude has increased drastically. Of course that too is a pre-existing trend, and I was wrong to call it a watershed; but I still think it's significant, one more milestone.
I stopped burning crosses. What more do you liberals want? Gotta burn something.
I have a spot that might be perfect for you.
34: Agreed that it's significant, and I do call it a win for the right, alas.
There's a long history of states pre-empting municipal governments. I wonder how long until some state legislatures start passing laws stripping cities of the ability to set their own emissions targets.
I doubt you'll see any requirement to emit more, but who knows in this wonderful new world of rolling coalers? Maybe the US will go to war for the sake of emissions. We can't have an emissions gap!
38.1: You know, I stare daily over my morning cup of green tea at the book on my shelf titled "Small is Beautiful."
And I argue with myself about it. I've actually never read it.
We had a good run at number 1. By GDP, that's from roughly 1890-2020. Four generations isn't bad. Sadly, we just don't want it enough anymore and China will definitely dominate the next century.
There's a long history of states pre-empting municipal governments.
Including recent history. Texas's state legislature has preempted its big cities on guns, immigration enforcement, fracking and other things in recent years.
keeping the Chinese pace in PV
Pokemon victories.
On topic: They so revere the Founding Fathers that they either don't know their names or their histories. Or they are deliberately telling them to fuck off by choice of location.
Immigrants, they get the job done fuck 'em.
You earwormed me just when I'd forgotten that song.
I kayaked eleven miles of beautiful Pittsburgh-adjacent river today and afterwards talked to a retired ex-steelworker who was relaxing by the boat launch. He didn't want to go back to how it was, even though it was good for him. The fact that you can actually fish in the river seemed somewhat mind-blowing to him. It's so frustrating that we're, to the ignorant, a byword for an industrial past we've left behind.
I only just got 4. That was pretty good.
The fuck, is Bret Stephens also writing the story summaries for the Times now?
The Republican Party's fast journey from debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist is a story of big political money, Democratic hubris in the Obama years and a partisan chasm that grew over nine years like a crack in the Antarctic shelf, favoring extreme positions and uncompromising rhetoric over cooperation and conciliation.
43. It will never have crossed their tiny minds and if you point it out to them they'll say the first thing that comes into their head that's a polite version of fuck you.
Holy shit but are things heating up in my region quickly.
50: What's the context, why are these countries suddenly going all Freedonia-Sylvania?
I mean, I read the stuff about hacking and whatever like all the other chumps, but it seems like there must be something bigger underlying it.
There's a lot to it (probably mainly having to do with differing Syrian rebel factions each has been backing). But Qatar also shares the North Field gas field in the Gulf so there is a level of cooperation there even though Shi'ite presence in the country is minimal compared to Bahrain or even the UAE. This is bad and I lay the lion's share of the blame at Trump's tiny feet. He stupidly have every autocracy in the region license to crack down internally and bought the KSA FP line hook line and sinker. Would be nice to have a functioning State Department now.
There are some deep roots for conflict here KSA/UAE/Bahrain withdrew ambassadors for almost a year in 2014 and there's older bad blood too. Still I don't think any of this would have happened but for the clownshow in the WH.
I don't understand what Trump has to do with this. Isn't whatever is going on strictly between Q and SA? Why would either given even a tenth of a fuck what the Orange Madman thinks? As if he thinks at all.
I guess they're testing the WH how much leeway it allows them going after their own petty rivalries.
Yeah. They saw a green light if they cry TERRORISM.
56, 57 Trump already indicated he saw eye to eye with the Saudis and also that he didn't care about human rights. Almost immediately there were crackdowns in Egypt with the closure of some newspapers and in Bahrain against some human rights groups and an opposition party.
What's any of that got to do with SA and Q? Are you saying that Obama would have said mean things to the Saudis, and he's he's not there to say them, the Saudis are running wild?
I'm trying to think of all the ways that Obama restrained the Saudis wrt Yemen, and it's not adding up to much.
You know when Trump won I joked that Qatar had better build some Trump hotels quickly.
60 Obama definitely has a share of the blame wrt Yemen and there was a significant diplomatic incident between these same GCC countries in 2014 but it's very hard for me to imagine things getting this bad this quickly without that disastrous trip to Riyadh the other week (not to mention previous trip of Abu Dhabi crown Prince to D.C.). And Trumps dysfunctional WH and almost nonexistent State Department has little chance of reigning this in. Kerry would have been on a flight to Riyadh/Abu Dhabi/Doha already.
As I understand it the State Department senior slots for the region are still unfilled. Probably because nobody who accepts the Trump/Breitbart line on the ME is ever going to pass muster with congress due to the deep crazification factor.
Or because Trump is a lazy incompetent prick.
The regime in Qatar is extremely nasty. (I know the link is to Wikipedia, but as a summary I don't think many people would take issue.) The regime in Saudi Arabia is also extremely nasty, and the world would certainly be a better place if the two regimes obliterated one another.
However, what I'm mulling over at the moment is T.May's extraordinary assertion that selling military hardware to SA keeps people on the streets of Britain safer. On its face this is so evidently crackers that I wonder if she has intelligence that the hostility between the two is about to break into open warfare. In which case she may be hoping that the Saudis will take down some of the Da'esh operatives and backers in Qatar in the near future.
On the other hand she may just be parroting her script as provided by the military-industrial complex.
Yeah, the hacking thing is crazy and unclear and also appears to have been a precipitating factor.
62 is true but at least Qatar has an ambassador (a career FSO who once tweeted something slyly about the current administration and I wondered if she would last long) .
64 Qatar just expelled (or kindly asked them to leave) some Hamas reps so which was one demand so they may be ready to concede more demands. Unfortunately I've seen indications that one of the main demands is for Sheikih Tamim to step down and that's not going to happen. Not without it getting a lot worse here.
Sure wish we had a functioning State Department and a halfway competent presidency but I guess you go to war with the administration you elected, not the one you wish you elected.
I really probably should be using a VPN...
This is a pretty good article and I find that Ulrichsen generally knows what he's talking about.
It was really irritating to see a thousand tweets from people looking at flightradar24 and similar sites pointing out how all the air traffic from Qatar to Europe was going over Iran instead of Saudi as a sign of the latest developments when that's how it always goes.
drop me a line if you want practical endorsement of 65 last
68.1 good for background. Events have moved on since then.
It really doesn't matter what Trump does for policies. Possibly it didn't even matter that he won if he had gotten the same percentage of the popular vote but lost in the electoral college by a few votes. The United States no longer has a sufficient domestic political consensus to play the role which it has played in the international political order since 1947. The people most attentive to this sign are people who nasty dictatorship and the people who live next door to those dictatorships. The average American voter won't notice until some big event happens.
68: this is because so many Americans think Iran is basically North Korea. Also, great circle navigation is counterintuitive if you don't really believe the world is a globe:-)
If the world really were a globe, there's no way it would stay on the backs of the turtles.
72 Both true. The Zagros mountains are quite beautiful from the air. And I'd thought of pointing out great circle navigation on the twitters but you know, sciency.
I can see, after reading a few things, why the smaller states are going after each other here - it's a game of "who can make the US love them the best", including by pointing to the links between rival countries and terrorists (which charges are probably all true to some extent) and hoping to make someone in DC say "why are we supporting these guys again?" and change things up, with all the material and moral support for power and crackdowns that implies. It seems in particular UAE would like to get the Qatar US base switched to them.
It seems that was probably the impetus for the dispute back in 2014 too, because even without Trump or even GOP in charge, our foreign policy VSP are wont to this-is-somethingism on that level. And I can see how with no hand on the wheel at the moment they'd feel their oats and try the same again.
What I don't get is why KSA is joining in the whole kerfuffle. They have all the validation and support they could want. Do they have other beef with Qatar?
75.1 I'll become really alarmed if the US decides to move Udeid and the forward elements of Centcom out of Qatar to the UAE. I hope Mattis has more sense than that.
75.last Muslim Brotherhood backing as well as support for rival factions in Syria.
The weird thing is with the Saudi economy going south, and the Saudi's cutting their spending on public services, welfare benefits for citizens (but not all those thousands of useless princes), you've been seeing a lot of Saudis coming to Qatar for work the last couple of years. Guess they'll all be having to go back. There are a lot of Egyptians in Qatar too, they practically run everything. I wonder what's going to happen there too.
the world would certainly be a better place if the two regimes obliterated one another
Isn't it the general consensus that as bad as both are, each is probably way better than whatever would replace them?
I once flew from Dubai to Los Angeles. There's a lot of great scenery on that route.
I'll become really alarmed if the US decides to move Udeid and the forward elements of Centcom out of Qatar to the UAE. I hope Mattis has more sense than that.
Alarmed in that it may portend your city being bombed, or alarmed in that you think that would be a bad idea on the merits?
The United States no longer has a sufficient domestic political consensus to play the role which it has played in the international political order since 1947.
Nitpicking: the US didn't actually have that consensus until 1950. The Republicans in Congress wouldn't vote sufficient funds to make containment work until the Korean War broke out. As in, they voted only a third of the budget the Army needed for its established strength, which was itself half or less of what was needed given US commitments. Which suggests again that Republican destructiveness tracks back to the New Deal rather than Nixon, as VW said the other day.
As I said, "I'm starting with the Truman Doctrine because I like round numbers."
Honestly, 1948 probably would be a better date, because of the Marhsall Plan I don't think you can go by U.S. military spending back then because the Soviets didn't have the bomb until 1949. And I think the key wasn't the military commitment but rather sufficient aid to rebuilt European economies so that they wouldn't have a large group of people who saw communism as an attractive option.
Or rather, I don't think the military commitment was sufficient without the economic component.
83: The Marshall Plan was crucial, but so too was NATO, which at the time was paper without adequate US military commitment. And the Soviet threat wasn't just the bomb, much more than that it was conventional; they had massive conventional superiority in Europe from 1945 on , and Republicans were ignoring that.
Which suggests again that Republican destructiveness tracks back to the New Deal rather than Nixon
You could go beyond the New Deal, to the rejection of the League of Nations in 1919.
I guess 84 means comity. But you can't put a clean date on the US world order. 1948 is a good date, but so too is 1944, when crucial things like Bretton Woods happened, or even 1940 with the Atlantic Charter. AFAIK 1950 is the best date because that's the year when a bipartisan majority decided to fund adequately the commitments America had already made.
86: It was more complicated then. I seem to remember reading a book about this.
I find it really hard to fault the Republicans for wanting to demilitarize after World War II, especially when they were (mostly) supportive of things like the Marshall Plan or the United Nations. The United States had no tradition of a large standing army.
But you can't put a clean date on the US world order.
August 6, 1945
Except then nobody was sure the U.S. wasn't going to do what it did after WWI.
89: Fair point, but America had no tradition of far flung mutual defense treaties either. If the Republicans signed onto those, as they did, then they were obliged to meet America's obligations under those treaties. The budgets they passed before 1950 didn't do that.
Evidently I've confused my facts, since the Democrats won both houses in 1948; but this implies that Democrats as well as Republicans were inadequately funding defense, implying again a lack of domestic consensus behind the world order. So I'll hold onto that claim, but withdraw what I said about Republicans.
Of course, the Democrats of 1948 were drawing on the same base of southern racist power that Republicans are today.
I don't really think southern racist power had much to do with the United States cutting defense spending after WWII. It was, understandably and probably in general for the best, hard get a democracy to vote to conscript in peace time before it had released the men conscripted for the last war (and the occupation).
79 I can't imagine it ever getting that far, also they've entangled a lot of their sovereign wealth fund with a number of important European powers interested in their long term stability as well as all of long-term LNG contracts they've signed, the latest being that huge Rosneft/Qatar so now Russia has serious interests there. Still without US buy-in in the form of Udeid they'd be much more exposed to being pushed around by KSA/UAE.
80 Given that my last bid to leave for a job at one of the other regional antagonists failed, yes; I intend to stay.
Ok, based on the US budget timeline a pre-NATO budget was in effect when Korea broke out. So maybe I'm comprehensively wrong. Except for 94.
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying you're looking back with hindsight and expecting too much foresight.
Great. My graduate schooling worked.
Shit. If only I hadn't dropped out.
But seriously, what do you mean?
I mean, yes, the United States was too slow to build up it's military in the late 40s. The Pusan perimeter shows that. But it's understandable that people were slow to see the need until the Chinese volunteers poured over the border and such. Given that the United States was actively paying large sums of money to rebuilt both allies and former adversaries, I don't think you can blame the slow return to a war footing on U.S. isolationism or shirking. It was just a relatively harmless (or positively praiseworthy compared to the over-eagerness of parts of the Cold War) desire to not see a threat until you absolutely had to.
104: Ok. I wouldn't call it harmless though, relative to anything. ~3m people died in Korea, which might not have happened if a serious US defense had existed. Also Korea was maybe intended by Stalin as a diversion preparatory to invading Europe. Understandable, maybe, but still I think negligent.
Anyway, the alternative wasn't a sober assessment of U.S. security concerns as needed to augment diplomacy. It was a cheese-head shouting "The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list."
I'm assuming, without definite historical evidence, that he wore the cheese hat when he gave his speeches.
I f you hadn't clarified there I would have gone to my grave assuming Wisconsin people snort grated cheese.
Run on food at grocery stores here. I usually do take out or delivery. Had to wait over an hour for delivery from a place that's usually here in 20-25 minutes. They were doing a lot of business.
Keep liveblogging Barry. Sooner or later I'll need your notes over here.
||
OT the story about the Turkish NBA player who has been outspokenly opposed to the Erdogan is getting worse.
With a warrant out for his own arrest in Turkey, Oklahoma City Thunder center Enes Kanter said Friday that his father, Mehmet, has been arrested by the Turkish government.
...
"My father is arrested because of my outspoken criticism of the ruling party. He may get tortured for simply being my family member," Kanter said. "For a second please think and imagine, if something like this is happening to an NBA player, what is happening to the people with no voice or podium to speak on? There could be hundreds of thousands of people that are detained, tortured, or murdered that we are not hearing about."
According to Anadolu, Mehmet Kanter is being sent to Tekirdag province for questioning. In Turkey, people are detained, then prosecutors may seek an arrest pending trial or release the detainee.
...
Last summer, Mehmet Kanter told the Daily Sabah, a pro-government newspaper in Turkey, that his family had disowned Enes Kanter because of his political views.
"I apologize to the Turkish people and the president for having such a son," Mehmet Kanter wrote.
Enes Kanter said recently that he has not spoken with his father in almost two years.
Last week, the Turkish government issued a warrant for Kanter, claiming he was part of a terrorist group. He was briefly detained by airport officials in Romania on May 20 after having his passport revoked by the Turkish government. Kanter was able to return to the United States on May 22 with a green card. But due to the warrant, he will likely be unable to travel internationally.
During interviews after returning to the U.S., Kanter said his father, a former college professor, had been spit on at the grocery store because of his son.
"Right now, even if I try to communicate with my parents, my mom or dad or brother or sister, [the government] will probably listen to their phones and as soon as they are in contact with me, they will put them in a jail -- and the jails are not fun," Kanter said at a news conference. "Right now, my family can't even go out to eat. My brother told me that my dad went to the supermarket and they spit on his face."
|>
I looked it up and if it comes to cannibalism, they can't eat you, even as a non-Muslim, unless you're an enemy fighter or adulterer. So, horror-movie survival rules.
From this week's police report for my neighborhood:
Actor called victim claiming to be from Homeland Security. Victim was told there was a problem with their visa and to send $2,600.00 in iTunes gift cards to resolve the issue. Victim did as instructed and gave actor numbers from the gift cards.
On the one hand, I think you can blame Trump for giving immigrants and visiting students a reason to fear. On the other hand, how can you be that stupid and have successfully gotten to the airport and flown to a different country?
Policy-wise, they aren't as important the Article 5 non-endorsement, but Trump's tweets at Mayor Khan after the London Bridge attack are about a shitty of a thing as I call recall a president doing to an ally.
shitty of a thing as I call recall a president doing to an ally.
I think it was shitty, but not quite on par with burning Israeli spies to the Russians.
117: They're from a country with a much higher rate of police corruption? Anyway, didn't realize they put this out with that much detail. Feels weird to follow the police on Facebook.
Thinking you might be under serious tax investigation is pretty terrifying for most people, and these scammers have professional scripts that aggressively up the terror, so as to suspend rational thought.
Suspending ration thought is one thing. Getting up, walking out of the house to clean out all the iTunes cards from the Giant Eagle, and then reading the numbers from those cards over the phone seems a bit more than a suspension.
+ al.
If you'll be my bodyguard....
OMFG this shit-gibbon's latest tweet. I'm honestly scared for the first time or maybe second but this is far worse than anything before. WTF is wrong with this asshole I know is the question we've all been asking for a long time now but it just got personal.
If I wanted to use a tax scam to get people to send me iTunes gift cards, I would trick them into thinking they were using the cards to bribe me. That way, a suspension of rational thought isn't necessarily required, and at the same time the mark becomes a conspirator in the "crime" - thus preventing them from going to the authorities.
But they did go to the authorities. That's how I know about it.
Well, the plan isn't foolproof. Probably works a lot of the time, though.
OMFG this shit-gibbon's latest tweet. I'm honestly scared for the first time or maybe second but this is far worse than anything before.
It is kind of astonishing. Trump goes to Saudi Arabia:
- "You guys need to stop funding ISIS. Bigly."
- "No, it wasn't us. It was Qatar, our regional rivals."
- "Oh, in that case.... hey, nice orb!"
If I said you had a beautiful orb would you hold it against me.
And the fucker just doubled down.
Only vaguely related to 128, the bartender at my local watering hole told me about a young lady who'd been kicked out of the bar permanently. Her offence was going on dates with guys from Tinder and then giving expired cards to the staff when it was time to settle up. She'd go through a few cards until her date ended up paying for the food and booze. Apparently it took seven rounds of this to catch her. I have to believe that there was a lot more to what she was getting out of this than just the free food and booze. There must be some sort of high from the deception and manipulation.
They're just lucky she didn't try for their kidneys.