Forthcoming in the Post: "Why we should do another invasion in the Middle East" by Michael O'Hanlon
Pretty encouraging to see Schumer treating Summers the way the fictional Summers treated the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network
I also think Schumer is 100% right that this is at least as much about Summers being contrarian to prove that he's The Smartest Guy in the Room as any actual ideological or economic dispute
Transactional party pols like Biden have upsides and downsides, but one thing about them is that they like winning, and Biden has definitely been considering what happened in 2010 when they listened to "deficit hawks" about what to do
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This "Donald Trump was grossly corrupt so we need to invent new arbitrary ad hoc standards to declare that prominent Democrats are also corrupt" genre of quasi-journalism needs to die in a fire
This is a laughably incoherent and unworkable standard. Countless books every year are published based on contingent fame, who gives a shit
Taken at face value, the "but for election outcomes" standard would mean that it was corrupt and unethical to publish *Mary* Trump's book. I don't think anybody actually believes this
There is no reasonable defense for permitting indoor dining under COVID, and there is no reasonable defense for dining indoors under COVID lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/02/there-…
Re-upping this @hels piece. It's critical to recognize that while the *primary* responsibility here belongs to policymakers at all levels who have failed, individuals still have a responsibility to think of the health of their communities: newyorker.com/culture/annals…
And we should also be clear that (dubiously enforced in any case) capacity caps are empty hygiene theater as surely as frequent sanitization, etc. Unmasked indoor interaction is fundamentally unsafe, period. lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/02/the-6-…
The idea that if events have multiple causes nobody can be held responsible for them is the last refuge for contrarians who want to defend the indefensible
Michael Kinsley has been paid ENORMOUS amounts of money to write/talk about American politics over the last 40 years. True story
Remember when James Bennet pulled Kinsley out his nostalgia file to do some smarmy anti-anti Trumpism? That went...extremely badly lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/05/time-g…
Guy who is always wrong: "what if the Democrats tried more austerity like we did at my urging in 2009 again?"
Politico Playbook: [redacted for family website] lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/02/politi…
Look, when Larry Summers AND some unnamed if not apocryphal "liberal wonks" cited by a professional "this is excellent news for the Republican Party" website favor something, this is an excellent indication to run screaming in the other direction
Democrats should err on the side of austerity to keep their powder dry for other priorities than on one hand they could still pass and on the other hand can't be passed under current Senate rules, a Very Serious argument
Senate Democrats to use the same procedural mechanisms Republicans use to pass bad and unpopular legislation to pass popular and urgently needed legislation lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/02/party-…
Correct, and correct
Senate Dems seem to be taking the claims of Senate Republicans who rushed a party-line vote to put a life-tenured justice on the Supreme Court while RBG's body was still warm about the need to bipartisan collaboration with precisely the level of contempt they merit
To state the obvious, the REAL question is how serious the REPUBLICANS are about bipartisanship, and the answer made clear by this feeble counteroffer is "not remotely"
Democrats: win, offer package of policies with broad bipartisan popular support
Republicans: lose, offer 30 cents on the dollar, limiting or stripping out many popular provisions
Beltway media: why don't Democrats believe in compromise?
This combination of incredulity and contempt for the idea that the preferences of mere *voters* could be a meaningful consideration is pretty much the definitive manifestation of Beltway Pundit Brain lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/02/beltwa…