News digest / Catching up on news (09.07.2014)

Here's more good stuff from my mailing list that I didn't have time to re-post on TILIS:

"Russia sees a military solution in Ukraine even if the West doesn’t." By Editorial Board, September 5, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://wapo.st/Yj13ir  

"To recline your seat or not? Stop arguing. Capitalism already won this stupid war." By Oliver Burkeman, September 3, 2014, Guardian. URL:http://gu.com/p/4x9fj  

"The Senate Republicans’ foolish fight over ambassadors." By David Ignatius, Septmeber 2, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://wapo.st/1w4aflz

"A second Sunni Awakening?" By Fareed Zakaria, September 2, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://wapo.st/1lz1QpE

"Putin's Trap: Why Ukraine Should Withdraw from Russian-Held Donbas." By Alexander J. Motyl, September 1, 2014, Foreign Affairs. URL:http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141946/alexander-j-motyl/putins-trap  -- A CONTROVERSIAL POINT OF VIEW; BUT IF THIS PAINFUL OUTCOME IS TO HAPPEN ANYWAY, SHOULDN'T UKRAINE TAKE THE INITIATIVE?

"Why does Putin wage war with Ukraine?" By Boris Nemtsov, September 1, 2014, Kyiv Post. URL: http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/why-does-putin-wage-war-on-ukraine-362884.html

"Labor Day: The Beginning of a Breakthrough." By Robert Kuttner, August 31, 2014, Huffington Post. URL: http://huff.to/1Chs0SW

"We need to tell the truth about what Russia is doing in Ukraine."  By Wesley Clark, August 31, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4x6hh

"A Market Basket of dignity." By E.J. Dionne, August 31, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://wapo.st/1owAqLW  -- AT LEAST ONE CEO NOW GETS IT; I GUESS WE JUST HAVE TO FIRE THEM ALL SO THEY WILL UNDERSTAND

"Russian nationalism and the logic of the Kremlin's actions on Ukraine." By Henry E. Hale, August 29, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4x5tq  -- REMEMBER, IN UKRAINE NATIONALISM IS CALLED 'FASCISM'; IN RUSSIA IT'S PATRIOTISM

"Why Russia Wants the Federalization of Ukraine." By Alexander Motyl, August 28, 2014, Huffington Post. URL: http://huff.to/1tH7Uxu

"NC Pension Deal: How Wall Street Ends Up Getting Cash Meant for Main Street." By David Sirota, August 26, 2014, International Business Times. URL:http://www.ibtimes.com/nc-pension-deal-how-wall-street-ends-getting-cash-meant-main-street-1669174

"Subverting the Inversions: More Thoughts on Ending the Corporate Income Tax." By Dean Baker, August 26, 2014, CEPR. URL:http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/subverting-the-inversions-more-thoughts-on-ending-the-corporate-tax

"Donetsk POW March: When Is A Parade A War Crime?" By Carl Schreck, August 25, 2014, RFE/RL. URL: http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-pow-march-war-crime/26548667.html  -- OF COURSE IT'S A WAR CRIME BUT FAT CHANCE IT'LL BE PROSECUTED

"Hawks Crying Wolf." By Paul Krugman, August 22, 2014, New York Times. URL: http://huff.to/1BJIHpT  -- I BELIEVE THAT 'CHICKEN LITTLE' IS THE MORE APT FAIRY TALE HERE.

"If this is real religion, then you can count me as an atheist." By Giles Fraser, August 22, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4xx22  -- TAKE NOTE, CONSERVATIVE XENOPHOBES: MODERATE MUSLIMS ARE SPEAKING OUT

"Never an excuse for shooting unarmed suspects, former police chief says." By Joseph D. McNamara, August 19, 2014, Reuters. URL:http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/19/idUS212937500020140819  -- IT WORKED IN THIS MISSOURI TOWN, AND GEE, ALL THROUGHOUT GREAT BRITAIN WHERE POLICE AREN'T EVEN ARMED!

Dionne: No matter who wins, Tea Party already lost

It's a Wa-Po twofer today.

Here's the best line I've read in a while:  "Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the conservatives are forgiving Romney because they think he is lying [about his moderate stances], what should the rest of us think?"

Dionne points out that the Tea Party made election gains in an off-year when people were demoralized, distracted and too tired to show up.  It was no revolution.  Nobody wants to buy what the teabaggers are selling except that waning white sliver of conservative Republican "purity" that's shrinking visibly by the day.

The tea party is over

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

October 25, 2012 | Washington Post

The right wing has lost the election of 2012.

The evidence for this is overwhelming, yet it is the year’s best-kept secret. Mitt Romney would not be throwing virtually all of his past positions overboard if he thought the nation were ready to endorse the full-throated conservatism he embraced to win the Republican nomination.

If conservatism were winning, does anyone doubt that Romney would be running as a conservative? Yet unlike Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, Romney is offering an echo, not a choice. His strategy at the end is to try to sneak into the White House on a chorus of me-too’s.

The right is going along because its partisans know Romney has no other option. This, too, is an acknowledgment of defeat, a recognition that the grand ideological experiment heralded by the rise of the tea party has gained no traction. It also means that conservatives don’t believe that Romney really believes the moderate mush he’s putting forward now. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the conservatives are forgiving Romney because they think he is lying, what should the rest of us think?

Almost all of the analysis of Romney’s highly public burning of the right’s catechism focuses on such tactical issues as whether his betrayal of principle will help him win over middle-of-the-road women and carry Ohio. What should engage us more is that a movement that won the 2010 elections with a bang is trying to triumph just two years later on the basis of a whimper.

It turns out that there was no profound ideological conversion of the country two years ago. We remain the same moderate and practical country we have long been. In 2010, voters were upset about the economy, Democrats were demobilized, and President Obama wasn’t yet ready to fight. All the conservatives have left now is economic unease. So they don’t care what Romney says. They are happy to march under a false flag if that is the price of capturing power.

The total rout of the right’s ideology, particularly its neoconservative brand, was visible in Monday’s debate, in which Romney praised one Obama foreign policy initiative after another. He calmly abandoned much of what he had said during the previous 18 months. Gone were the hawkish assaults on Obama’s approach to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel, China and nearly everywhere else. Romney was all about “peace.”

Romney’s most revealing line: “We don’t want another Iraq.” Thus did he bury without ceremony the great Bush-Cheney project. He renounced a war he had once supported with vehemence and enthusiasm.

Then there’s budget policy. If the Romney/Paul Ryan budget and tax ideas were so popular, why would the candidate and his sidekick, the one-time devotee of Ayn Rand, be investing so much energy in hiding the most important details of their plans? For that matter, why would Ryan feel obligated to forsake his love for Rand, the proud philosopher of “the virtue of selfishness” and the thinker he once said had inspired his public service?

Romney knows that, by substantial margins, the country favors raising taxes on the rich and opposes slashing many government programs, including Medicare and Social Security. Since Romney’s actual plan calls for cutting taxes on the rich, he has to disguise the fact. Where is the conviction?

The biggest sign that tea party thinking is dead is Romney’s straight-out deception about his past position on the rescue of the auto industry.

The bailout was the least popular policy Obama pursued — and, I’d argue, one of the most successful. It was Exhibit A for tea partyers who accused our moderately progressive president of being a socialist. In late 2008, one prominent Republican claimed that if the bailout the Detroit-based automakers sought went through, “you can kiss the American automotive industry good-bye.” The car companies, he said, would “seal their fate with a bailout check.” This would be the same Mitt Romney who tried to pretend on Monday that he never said what he said or thought what he thought. If the bailout is now good politics, and it is, then free-market fundamentalism has collapsed in a heap.

“Ideas have consequences” is one of the conservative movement’s most honored slogans. That the conservatives’ standard-bearer is now trying to escape the consequences of their ideas tells us all we need to know about who is winning the philosophical battle — and, because ideas do matter, who will win the election.