It was awfully hard to take this guy seriously at the beginning, when it was reported he had even hired actors to applaud his announcement of his candidacy.[1]
Betsey Stevenson’s ideas[2] might help if employers weren’t absolutely thrilled with a status quo that enables them to treat human beings as infinitely replaceable.
To me the world is such an awful place that I tend to favor any change that I don’t know enough about. This even though probably every U.S. president since Nixon has been worse than he was—among other things, he actually eventually got us out of Vietnam, the Environmental Protection Agency was created, and the social safety net was expanded—and I’m pretty sure that, if elected, Hillary Clinton will be even worse than Barack Obama. And so it is with the Turkish coup.
That President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sucks is not much in dispute[2] at least outside the plurality consisting largely of rural religiously conservative Turks who support him.[3] But enough people apparently feared the alternative offered by the coup enough that they helped prevent a coup that doesn’t look like it could have succeeded anyway—Juan Cole labeled it a “poorly planned junior officers’ coup”—from succeeding.[4]
A lot of the reporting is rushed—see especially the Wall Street Journal story whose final paragraph isn’t quite a final paragraph—and there are more questions than answers. Like why the coup plotters launched their coup without being sure of full support from the military and what kind of training they’re getting that lets them think they could have succeeded. Like why authorities bothered to cut power to Incirlik Air Base when the base can continue and is continuing to operate on internal reserve power. And what, since the U.S. uses and has a major presence on this base to launch attacks against the Islamic State, U.S. and allied forces were doing if this base was in fact a center of coup activity.[5] (Apparently unsubstantiated “reports that the United States was actively plotting to depose Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan” surfaced a few months ago.[6] Like what the specific grievances of the plotters—whoever they really are (“Erdogan blamed the coup attempt on Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, and called on the United States to extradite him”[7] but it looks to me like Gulen denounced the coup before it was clear that it would fail[8])—are (their statement[9] seems noble enough but no one seems to be taking it seriously). This is all incredibly sloppy reporting, I’m guessing I might never see answers to these questions, and I’m really pretty fucking disgusted about that.
Updated for background on the Turkish coup attempt[1] and again as reports continue to say the coup attempt is not over but it appears to be failing.[2]
Jack Ohman, July 15, 2016, via GoComics, fair use.It’s over. Really, it’s over. Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president. But even having failed to get even a quarter of the Republican Convention Rules Committee (the proportion needed to at least bring the matter up for a vote on the floor) to free delegates to vote their ‘conscience,’ Committee Senator Mike Lee “told Buzzfeed that people shouldn’t ‘assume the problem’s gonna go away,’ leaving the possibility open for some sort of last-ditch delegate action on the convention floor.”[3]
That’s getting a lot harder. Elaine Kamarck claims that defeats in the Rules Committee rule out three of four possible last-minute scenarios for stopping Trump.[4] I’m not quite clear on which three; from her description, it appears to me that two remain theoretically possible.
McClatchy‘s David Lightman sheds little additional light. He claims that “[t]he NeverTrump idea survives, barely, because if supporters can gather enough support, they can force the convention to vote on their proposal,”[5] but Kamarck seems to have ruled out this possibility.[6]
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has selected Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his vice presidential candidate.[7] The move appears to shore up support with functionalist conservatives and social conservatives. Pence appears to be well-enough liked by authoritarian populists and may even peel off some neoconservatives.[8] As such it should help to isolate remaining neoconservatives who are most prominent in the #NeverTrump movement. On the other hand, Daniel Larison’s praise at the American Conservative for the choice is sufficiently backhanded[9] as to raise doubt that Trump will have swayed any traditionalist conservatives and I suspect that capitalist libertarians who normally vote Republican and are thus resigned to ideologically “impure” candidates will be more tempted than in most years by the Libertarian Party ticket.
Polls are seeming especially noisy this year. I would advise treating any margin less than twenty points skeptically.
I think there are two problems: First, I’ve been hearing for a while that survey-takers are facing increased difficulties in getting a random sample. People have changed their communication habits and solutions which worked in the past simply don’t anymore. But on top of that, I’ve heard that response rates have been declining precipitously because so many so-called ‘surveys’ are in fact marketing or fundraising ploys—people are ignoring even legitimate surveys. Both of these problems introduce skews, which I’ve heard poll-takers claim they can correct for. I think they’re overconfident.
By this standard, Hillary Clinton probably should worry about how the public perceives her handling of classified emails.[10] But the Democratic politicians worried about her standing against Donald Trump[11] are probably relying on unreliable information.
The dust has not settled. Historically, the military in Turkey has served as guarantor for the country’s secular constitution.[12] Recep Tayyip Erdogan had succeeded in moving Turkey a long ways to being a religious state but was a heavy-handed autocrat disliked by urban youth.
It happened I was teaching on the day that Barack Obama was first inaugurated as president in the U.S. As I was lecturing, I hadn’t actually seen a report that the inauguration had happened. I wound up asking my class if anyone knew whether the inauguration had actually transpired. It had, of course, and two terms later, it’s easy to forget the fear that some on the left felt that George W. Bush might cling to power through some means even as his term expired and to dismiss that fear as paranoia.
In evaluating that fear, it’s important to place it in context. Bush had presided over war crimes; two invasions, at least one of which was illegal, and neither of which was accompanied by a declaration of war; passage of the Patriot Act; and what was then suspected to be and what Edward Snowden would later confirm to be mass surveillance of U.S. residents. He had advanced the neoconservative, neoliberal, and social conservative agendas; rationalized all of it with a smug self-righteousness; and governed under a doctrine of the “unitary presidency” that, in essence, alloted dictatorial or at least near-dictatorial powers to the president.[1] He ignored Supreme Court rulings regarding habeas corpus rights of detainees at Guantanamo.[2] He had dismissed the U.S. Constitution as nothing more than a “piece of paper.”[3] On top of all that, he had been awarded the presidency by a Supreme Court decision halting the recount in Florida in 2000, and reelected in 2004 in part by disenfranchising Blacks, notably with an insufficient number of balloting locations in urban precincts in Ohio which were expected to swing Democratic. He was not a person the left could trust to abide by the Constitution, especially when it came to relinquishing power.
As it turned out, Obama embraced and extended many of these policies, but it’s important to take note of transitions when they occur. They shouldn’t be taken for granted. Even when they occur in less suspicious circumstances.
Updated for a story on cops arresting people for criticizing cops following the Dallas killings.[1] Updated again for a story on Hillary Clinton not having been investigated for violations of the Federal Records Act.[2] Updated yet again for Robert Scheer on Bernie Sanders’ capitulation to endorsement of Hillary Clinton[3] and for a Reuters/Ipsos survey suggesting that Clinton is widening her lead over Donald Trump.[4]
Jonathan Turley, now back from Alaska, has finally commented on the decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her mishandling of classified information via email. It’s not a legally substantive post, but rather one that comments on the political ramifications.[5] Simply put, I don’t care about Turley’s political analysis; that’s not at all what I was looking for.
In the meantime, a Hill story quotes Attorney General Loretta Lynch acknowledging that Clinton was not investigated for violations of the Federal Records Act.[6]
Candorville, by Darrin Bell, July 12, 2016, via GoComics, fair use.
Reports of two polls are reported here. The results starkly contradict each other and I’m inclined to believe the Reuters/Ipsos poll over the NBC News poll but I have not dug into the methodology to confirm my suspicions about sampling in the latter poll.
Cops kill Black men and go unpunished. Hillary Clinton mishandles classified information and goes unpunished. The Bush administration not only illegally invaded Iraq but committed war crimes and goes unpunished. Bankers plunge the country into the worst recession since the Great Depression and go unpunished. But Barack Obama “insist[s] that we are not as divided as we seem.”[7] This is Obama’s legacy before anything else: He took care of the powerful and left everyone else to twist on the vine.
I doubt Theresa May’s prospects are quite so bleak as Zack Beauchamp believes.[1] First, while the economy is important, even assuming that economists’ dire predictions are correct, it isn’t everything. However ephemeral and despite May’s second wave feminism, the coalition May seems to stitch together within conservatism appeals to traditionalist conservatives as well as the authoritarian populists who supported Brexit and the neoconservatives who vociferously opposed it and who have been running things at least since Margaret Thatcher. In the U.S., traditionalists are pretty weak politically but immensely influential in ideology. To whatever extent this is also true in the U.K., it offers May a substantial political base, probably more substantial than the one David Cameron could ever have called upon.
[T]he most intriguing political comparison is arguably not with Thatcher, but with Gordon Brown, the last political figure dominant enough to become prime minister basically by acclamation. Two serious-minded children of religious ministers, steeped in moral purpose, both possessed of an iron need to control. May is a famously reluctant delegator, needing to know exactly what her juniors are doing and to chew over every detail of decisions – a micromanagement style she cannot hope to apply to an entire government – and like Brown, she demands unswerving loyalty. (Although unlike him, she generally won’t say behind your back what she wouldn’t say to your face).[2]
Second, while Beauchamp focuses on the dilemma May faces, he neglects to consider the corresponding dilemma that European Union leaders face as well.[3] I’m betting that E.U. leaders need a deal as well and diplomats have hundreds of years of experience in painting lipstick onto a pig. They’ll come up with something; it may be fraudulent as hell, but it will allow both sides to claim they have achieved their goals.
Will it be enough? For all this, Beauchamp might still be right. First, the U.K.’s experience with migration may be different from that of the U.S. Where in the U.S., we hear a lot about unauthorized migrants, who often work low-level jobs and undermine worker leverage,[4] we hear more about refugees in the U.K. who may come with different skillsets. “[T]he data shows that immigrants haven’t stressed the UK economy and in fact have contributed to its growth,” explains Beauchamp,[5] and while economists routinely (and probably wrongly) dismiss the impacts of migration on less-educated workers in the U.S.[6] that situation may well be different in the U.K. And all the lipstick in the world on that pig might yet fail to persuade voters.
Fig. 1. Candorville, by Darrin Bell, July 11, 2016, via GoComics, fair use.I believe Darrin Bell (figure 1) errs in implying an analogy between the elections of Barack Obama and the possible election of Hillary Clinton. Obama faced nothing like the challenges that Clinton does and has never been distrusted (except among conservatives who distrust any Democrat) to the extent that she is. If she nonetheless prevails, it will likely be because Donald Trump has proven an even worse candidate than I ever imagined.
Given political polarization, economic insecurity, and racism, all driving a level of anger in the citizenry not seen since at least 1968,[2] important questions arise as to whether either major party candidate is the person to deliver needed change. Do we really think that conservatives will be any more accepting of Hillary Clinton than they were her husband or Barack Obama? Do we really think Donald Trump can mend the fences between Blacks and the criminal justice system? Do we really think either of them will reduce economic inequality or even ensure a basic level of financial security for people in the U.S.? Do we really think either of them can bridge the ideological divides in this country?
The problem with the 2016 election isn’t just that both major party presumptive nominees are so intensely disliked.[3] Given available governing ideologies, the problems facing the country would be difficult even with far better candidates than the ones on offer. So first, it isn’t just a question of which candidate a plurality of voters dislike the least, or second, even whether either of presumptive nominees is even remotely capable of rising to this particular occasion, but third, whether the needs of this country are so far beyond the realm of the possible that even a far better candidate than the ones we have on offer could rise to this particular occasion.
When I took a social inequality class a few years ago—I was still attending California State University, East Bay, at the time—the instructor explained that systemic racism is about how racism can exist even if none of the players is themselves racist, that, among other things, it can exist in the laws or regulations that are enforced. That’s a rather abstract definition and, at the time, I didn’t really see a concrete picture of how this works in practice.
That’s changing. Daniel Denvir’s article explains how “broken windows” policing disproportionately affects economically displaced Blacks.[4]Mother Jones had an article last year that they reposted in light of recent unrest about how police departments driven to raise revenue turn to the most vulnerable in society.[5] I don’t imagine for a second this is a complete picture, I know I have more pieces at hand, and some of this requires me to give the matter some thought and put some of those pieces together. It’s harder for me, a white, because I can never really walk in a Black man’s shoes. But I’m getting closer.
I have very little to say in response to the latest police killings of Black men that I have not previously said. These two incidents are part of an ongoing carnage, occurring at least in part because police have become revenue agents[1] and unmask yet again that law enforcement is directed primarily against the poor and against people of color.[2]
These particular killings appear to have gained widespread attention because in each case, someone had the presence of mind to video record them.[3] Which is almost to raise a rather disturbing question of whether such killings occur if no one is around to video record them. Of course they do, but our attention to the issue too often seems limited to when such recordings “go viral.” That yields distorted coverage as, at least from my perspective, it appears that the killing of five (a number that, as far as I know, may yet still rise) police officers at a protest against this carnage (one of many that occurred nationwide) in Dallas by two or more snipers,[4] one of whom Dallas Police Chief David Brown said “wanted to kill officers, and he expressed killing white people, he expressed killing white officers, he expressed anger for Black Lives Matter,”[5] gains more attention than the ongoing carnage itself.[6]
At all points, as we go back in the history of relations between whites and Blacks in the United States, a history that connects slavery, lynchings, and the death penalty,[7] we must remember that even if oppressors should not be totalized as oppressors and victims should not be totalized as victims, that there have always been oppressors and victims, and that the oppressors have overwhelmingly been white and that the victims have overwhelmingly been Black. Sympathy for police, who have far too often sided with the oppressor, distorts that narrative.
Corrected to add a citation and an article listing regarding the Bryan Nishimura case the Wall Street Journal cites to suggest that Hillary Clinton is getting special treatment from the FBI.[1] Updated to add a column from John Kass.[2]
As most of you know, I hold our system of government in very low esteem. As such, I don’t often advocate signing petitions. The worthy ones are invariably useless. And undoubtedly this one to charge Hillary Clinton under applicable law for mishandling classified information will similarly prove futile. I signed it anyway.
[James] Comey noted that while a law exists, passed in 1917, that allows for indictments to be handed down in cases of “gross negligence,” it’s only been used once since then, in an espionage case.
“No reasonable prosecutor would bring the second case in 100 years focused on gross negligence,” Comey said.
“That’s just the way it is. I know the Department of Justice,” said Comey, a former U.S. attorney and deputy attorney general. “I know no reasonable prosecutor would bring this case.”[3]
But, says capitalist libertarian lawyer Sean Rosenthal, “People with fewer political connections have been punished for far less substantially mishandling classified information than she did.” He does not cite any such people as examples[4] but one such case, according to the Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman, might be that of Bryan Nishimura,[5] who
caused [classified briefings and digital records that could only be retained and viewed on authorized government computers] to be downloaded and stored on his personal, unclassified electronic devices and storage media. He carried such classified materials on his unauthorized media when he traveled off-base in Afghanistan and, ultimately, carried those materials back to the United States at the end of his deployment. In the United States, Nishimura continued to maintain the information on unclassified systems in unauthorized locations, and copied the materials onto at least one additional unauthorized and unclassified system.[6]
But where Hillary Clinton transmitted or received classified information via email, “[t]he [Nishimura] investigation did not reveal evidence that [he] intended to distribute classified information to unauthorized personnel;”[7] and while Clinton is running for president, Nishimura was “sentenced to two years of probation and a $7,500 fine” and barred from ever holding a security clearance ever again.[8]
