Read Washington Monthly editor-in-chief Paul Glastris’s editorial on the Olympics in the Washington Post.
North Carolina is interesting right now because the Attorney General is running to defeat the governor, and the governor needs the Attorney General to appeal rulings that have gone against him in things like reinstating Jim Crow-style voter suppression laws and making it legal to discriminate against gays. Needless to say, the Attorney General is not being very helpful in that regard.
Someone (Assad? Putin?) is lobbing chlorine gas (or something toxic, anyway) out of helicopters on civilian towns in Syria.
I feel like we’ve been waiting to see an effort to liberate Mosul for a very long time. It sounds like we still a long time, yet, to wait.
It seems like a lot of Turks are convinced that the United States is responsible for the coup attempt there and the government is encouraging folks to take that view. I honestly don’t think the U.S. was behind it, but we do have the guy who is supposedly responsible for the uprising living in Pennsylvania, so unless we’re going to turn him over I don’t expect America to be too popular there for the foreseeable future.
The Japanese are concerned that North Korea is getting pretty advanced both in their missile technology and in their ability to miniaturize nuclear weapons down to a point that they can be mounted on their missiles.
Will anti-trade sentiment sink an effort by Australia and Indonesia to strike a free trade deal?
Amid persistant unrest, Mali extends its State of Emergency until April 2017.
The Pope is setting up a panel to investigate whether or not women can serve as deacons but still is not even considering whether they can serve as priests. Baby steps, I guess.
Have a pleasant evening.
LA Times – Low humidity, difficult terrain hamper Soberanes fire fight
Nothing amusing about wildfires. But the article points out a risk to human life that may not have been previously reported.
Back in 2001, Dubya demanded that Afghanistan turn over Osama bin Laden, and refused to provide any evidence that he was behind the 9/11 attacks.
So I guess by that logic Turkey is justified in invading the Poconos to snatch Gűlen.
The power of a mighty military force does have its privileges. Landing/refueling rights for such a mission should take it off the table for Erdogan unless he goes with the Pearl Harbor option.
That would be like a Chihuahua biting a Pit Bull.
Don’t underestimate a Chihuahua, but it’s not 1941 and Ergodan isn’t in the same league as a Chihuahua.
An Erdogan accomodation with Putin, for example, would disable NATO and upend Europe.
true. not necessarily bad things. but how likely?
Russia and Turkey are historic adversaries for pretty obvious geographical reasons. An accomodation now would require one of them totally changing policy in Syria, probably desirable but I’d be happy to wager against it.
From today’s post:
Read on. This is the energy ‘Great Game’ which has been playing out in Central Asia for three decades, about whom holds Europe hostage. Watch this space. Erdogan has been blackmailing Europe by design since the refugee crisis began and this is just escalation; all while European money remains trapped in Turkish investment projects.
Hmmm…
And this is the player Trump thinks he can get in the game with. Sad!
And this is the player that Hillary thinks she can beat.
Not many people remember that. The Taliban’s response to the US request was diplomatic: sympathy for 9/11, a statement that they didn’t think OBL was behind it because he takes credit for a lot of stuff he didn’t actually do, but given evidence they’d turn him over to the US or, for partial evidence, an independent commission like in Brussels.
Oh well, most people think today “at least now we know OBL was behind it.” But I question that. The Taliban statement was right in that OBL did take credit for a lot of stuff he wasn’t involved with, like the bombings in Spain a couple years later. The whole of the evidence we have are his bragging statements and confessions of others under torture at Gitmo. It’s entirely possible that the operation was organized and bankrolled out of somewhere else – Saudi Arabia comes to mind as a possibility since 15 of the hijackers were from there. But of course, that’s a government the US has a strong interest in propping up.
Osama got all his money from Saudi Arabia. I don’t believe he ever worked any where. It is really a shame he went around bragging about 911 because he ended up owning it.
One of the delights of the 2012 election was Hunter’s Mittens and Mr. Bus pieces. This year, Billmon has intermittently posted Hillary and Bill campaign strategy conversations. Today:
Roy Cooper does not defend blatantly unconstitutional laws in Federal Court. There are numerous precedents from other states for his position.
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On Syria, the Syrian rebels are trying once again to get the US to suppress Russian-supported Syrian regime troops with accusations of use of chemical weapons. Under the circumstances, this looks like a desperation move to stop the Russian/Syrian momentum in re-establishing regime control in Aleppo. When Aleppo is in regime hands, Assad will have re-established control of the major population areas of Syria. Remaining action will be re-establishment of order and a return to a semblance of postwar normal life.
The US is cutting off the relocation of a pretend caliphate to Sirte in Libya. Daesh is on the ropes; that is why they are threatening Russia; the Russian-born Daesh fighters are likely already drifting back into Russia.
The movement on Raqaa by Kurdish and Syrian rebel factions with US support is slowly continuing.
Mosul will be the last to be placed under siege and likely after other population centers under Daesh control have been cleared.
At that point, the pretend caliphate in Iraq-Syria is effectively kaput, but the ability of Daesh to conduct terrorist attacks is not ended.
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On Turkey, the blast from the past is that I believe that Sibel Edmonds major expose a decade ago was about Turkish lobbying in DC around the time of 9/11.
The base at Incirlik is the purported center of the coup, and Turkish military on the base as well as Turkish intelligence operatives in Ankara have been implicated in the coup attempt.
What is clear at this point is that Turkey is a key contested space between the US and Russia. With NATO expansion to the Russian border in northern Europe threatening closure of the Russian Baltic fleet and the attempt to shut down Sebastapol on the Black Sea, Russia must be very anxious to ensure free passage through the Bosporus. Flipping Turkey from NATO to a closer alliance with Russia would aid Russian national security. Turkey already is a dialogue partner with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a hedge for it’s long-delayed (over the Cyprus issue) membership in the European Union. At the moment, for Erdogan neither NATO nor the European Union look like good relationships given the xenophobia in European countries and the failure of the European Union to deal adequately with the refugees that NATO wars in Turkey’s neighborhood have created.
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Japan is wise to be worried about the North Korea that hamhanded US policy has emboldened. Recognition, trade, and diplomacy are in fact the only way to get a grasp on the actual situation with regard to North Korea. Need we a reminder that embassies come with CIA stations of some sort.
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Mali extends state of emergency for eight months. Area of concern is in northeast Mali near Niger and Algeria border. Another possible safe have for Daesh fighter displaced from Syria and Iraq? Are we getting international cooperation in closing all of the havens before the siege of Mosul?
Haven’t heard a word about the grey wolves. Anyone know if they’re still around, still active or maybe got a name change? And whose side are they on these days?
Turkey was flirting with Russia when the EU blocked the South Stream, and were talking about a Turkish Stream. As Daesh crumbles the plan for a Sunni gas pipeline across Syria is fading. In a sense the better Assad does against the rebels the more Erdogan’s long-term benefits might more coincide with Russia. Of course, considering the decades of NATO insinuation into the Turkish military, it would be an almost impossible task to clean the stables. On the other hand, if Erdogan does have evidence that the US was behind the coup plans he can’t really afford to stick with NATO. Interesting times, eh?
About pipeline realpolitik, now Erdogan and Putin have common cause and Erdogan has shaken free from US constraints in post-coup confusion, perhaps created for this purpose. I assume both see fellow tyrants with whom they can do business.
The “term” tyrant is filled with a lot of extra emotion than maybe is needed here. How is Erdogan more of a tyrant than, say, Obama, who is bombing and droning around the world, throwing coups, etc. Because he seems like a nice guy? Was Saddam a tyrant when he was our tyrant?
One main goal of US foreign policy is isolating Russia from Europe. Russia and Europe had been actually doing well together as trading partners over the last decade. There was no problem about Europe being “dependent” on Russian gas until disruptions in Ukraine. When Russia tried first a southern pipeline and then a duplicate northern pipeline and were deterred by NATO, ie, American pressure, the money motive was revealed.
I think that the neoliberals (and remember, the neoliberals are fighting the wars for our energy corporations) rightly see that Europe drifting to the east will weaken US hold on Europe. But between NATO and the banking class the EU and the US have failed working class people across Europe.
In a sense, the US is playing a modified Germanic strategy from the 19th and 20th centuries, while Russia and China can see the basis for a big Eurasian alliance. Russia providing China with energy and raw materials, China supplying stuff back. Iran is the perfect energy partner for India. Of course, all of that would leave the US in the lurch.
Not that it’s necessarily bad if the US isn’t landing a division in every energy-producing country around the world.
While the US is still quite adept at stirring up regional hatreds (all of the reactionaries put into power by the NED) over the last couple of decades there comes a point when economic reality trumps hatred.
For ex, a lot of right-wing Poles really hate Russia. They spent something like a billion for an LNG terminal, but the economics of boating in natural gas from the US or elsewhere is way more expensive than opening a spigot on the Russian pipeline (North Stream) and paying what the Russians charge. Plus, the wave of trade restrictions against Russia by the US/EU has hurt European farmers. Poland used to ship a lot of apples to Russia. They lost all that trade in the embargo.
Every Turkish head of state will forever have the problem of the Kurds. The US has used the Kurds to disrupt things there over the last half century,
Anyway, interesting times.
United Health, Humana, now Aetna have left the exchanges, from Mayhew at Balloon Juice. Says it’s legitimately bad news for the competition model.
Yes, I don’t know why its not working but the ACA model is broken. I’m going to guess that in fact the healthy younger people who typically don’t get insurance either still aren’t doing so or are buying insurance so cheap that the overall pool is more expensive to cover than the providers anticipated.
It’s not working because the model of for profit private medical care and health insurance doesn’t work anywhere in the world. (Japan’s is only nominally private. It’s highly regulated and profit from health care is culturally foreign.)
You hear a lot about young people skipping out, but the reality is that the rates by age aren’t far off from usage by age, so young people skipping out isn’t the problem. The problem is healthy people skipping out, whatever their age.
What seems to be killing the margins for the insurers is people gaming the system. If somebody needs medical care, they can arrange a life event to allow getting coverage. Then, once they get treatment, they stop paying premiums. Not everybody cheats the system, but enough do to make the companies lose money.
I’ll add that the subsidies aren’t generous enough, and people in their late 30s-early 50s are in a bit of a coverage gap. I know LOTS of people who simply can’t afford it.
I for one am putting off changing my residency til after the election, because as a PA resident I have Medicaid and in TN I won’t.
Is there some non right wing trash site I can go to to keep tabs on this?
I don’t know about bad news for “the competition model” but Obamacare is for sure bad news for a lot of consumers. my bill went up 11% last year and the prediction is an even larger increase this year.
I saw somewhere where Obamacare will require all of everyone’s wage by 2027. I don’t know the figures behind that, but apparently there are reports about the system’s eventual demise, which should make the Republicans happy. The problem is that going back is pretty much going to destroy the medical industry. It can’t sustain itself. The smart thing would be to work on getting single-payer back in the discussion. Either that or private medicine with even more massive government subsidies, and that isn’t sustainable either.
Interesting times.
Whoever said that businesses were interested in competition?
Aetna is seeking a merger. So is Cigna.
The ultimate private merger would result in a monopoly–voila! Single payer.
It seems to me that the Affordable Care Act is doing exactly what it was designed to do. But Bernie Sanders’s mucking about with the medical cost ratio sucked some of the guaranteed profit out of it.
If’n the grand bargain nonsense is over and this election is not Trump’s, possible that single-payer is reality by 2020.
Labor shakeout will no longer be a block by then. The private sector will do the layoffs sooner rather than later.
Single payer = BCBS you mean. You are not going to get Medicare For all from Hillary.
That the tower from which issued the incessant drumbeat of fictional, dystopian nightmare which ultimately propelled Trump to the nomination has collapsed on it’s architect just as the party faces its existential reckoning. We are witnessing the utter destruction of the GOP as we know it in real time.
Just wow. I wouldn’t have missed this for quids.
Huelskamp is gone.
And the GOP retains the seat. (No Democratic challenger in the general election.)
But Ryan’s first scalp, no?
Or money? Appears to be more local than national to me, but the factors involved aren’t obvious.
Huelskamp was removed from the Budget and Agriculture committee in late 2012 and yet, he defeated his 2014 primary (with only 55%) and general election opponents. He has opposed the Farm Bill which would seem to be a big deal in Kansas.
He’s been obstreperous since he got to DC; sort of like a House Ted Cruz. And Cruz backed him in this election. As did the Kochs.
The presidential primary results in KS CD-1 wouldn’t have predicted Huelskamp’s loss:
Cruz: 49%
Trump: 25%
Rubio: 15%
Kasich: 10%
Perhaps this is nothing more than a demonstration that a halfway decent candidate with plenty of money can defeat an unpleasant and ineffective incumbent. (TX Republicans might want to take note for their 2018 senate race.
From Politico:
Do those in the House Freedom Caucus ever put down their knives? They got a scalp in taking out Cantor; so, turnabout seems like fair play. Plus Cantor was a big shot among establishment pols and Huelskamp was at best a marginal player.
…so little time. But one jumped out at me. This glib interjection:
Sounds serious to me. We should get right on it.
Gee, the articles I saw said the chlorine was fired from artillery.
They need to get the stories straight!!!
From Russia Today:
On August 2, 2016 at 19 hours 05 minutes militants from the Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki group, considered by Washington as `moderate opposition’, launched poisonous materials from the Sukkari district towards the eastern part of Aleppo,” the ministry said.
It added that the territory is under rebel control and that shells were fired towards “the residential area” of the Salah-Eddin district.
Moscow informed Washington of the use of toxic shells on Monday, Lieutenant-General Sergey Chvarkov, head of the Russian Reconciliation Center in Syria, said.
On Tuesday evening, Syria’s state-run SANA news agency reported that Syrian officials said an attack using poisonous gas had occurred in Aleppo. A “terrorist attack” on the Old City of Aleppo with “shells containing toxic gas” led to the deaths of five and suffocation of eight more civilians, the outlet quoted the city’s health director, Mohamad Hazouri, as saying.
+++
The default setting in MSM media is that Putin done it.
Well, it worked for the rebels the first time….