Promises, promises, part 2 of ?

An updated list for our pocket. Once again, I bet at least 70% of the people on this list end up supporting Trump by November. Either they will find some justification for their flip-flop (probably pointing to some random thing that Clinton and/or the Democrats did) or they won't explain the change at all. No matter how it goes down, at least 70% will fall in line.

I'll make this a series as prominent GOPers make their #nevertrump pledge and then check my answers in November.

Legal restrictions on NGOs

Just about everyone is doing this these days. Or at least the countries with governments that have a hard time tolerating criticism of their regime are doing it. Aside from China, Off the top of my head, I can think of the following nations that have recently passed or are passing legislation to restrict foreign-funded NGOs from operating in their country: Russia, Kazakhstan, Israel, Venezuela, Vietnam, India.

I would guess there are a lot more (alas, I can't keep up with the politics of most countries) and there definitely seems to be a fad for NGO crackdowns world wide.

Upside-Down

The weird thing about U.S.-Israel relations is that while on the surface it looks like it should be a normal patron state-client state relationship, with the U.S. functioning as the patron and Israel functioning as the client state. After all, the U.S. is the larger and stronger country that gives Israel an enormous military aid package. Usually in such situations, the client state tries hard not to rock the boat with its patron and considers it a political priority to avoid insulting the political leadership of the patron-state for fear of losing the benefits from its patron.

But because of the internal politics of the U.S., that relationship is completely upside-down, with Israel brazenly demanding that its sugar-daddy put more even more sugar on the table. The only reason it gets away with it is because it is unacceptable for an American politician to be anything other than strongly pro-Israel (with "pro-Israel" defined in a way that, in my mind at least, does not actually help Israel in the long term). While most leaders of client states would never dare act like Netanyahu does towards the U.S. President because it would endanger their aid package, Bibi gets away with it because in our political culture it is simply unacceptable for a mainstream American politician to be against Israeli militarism, or to criticize Israel in any serious way. 

"Some"

"With Iraq Mired in Turmoil Some Call for Partitioning the Country" says the headline. But if you read the article, the people calling to partition the country are: Ali Khedery, an American former official, and (of course) U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

Versions of this article have been written hundreds of times in the U.S. media since 2003. But it's really rare to ever see one that quotes an Iraqi citizen who advocates partitioning his own country. (The crazy thing is they could easily find such a person if they just interview some Kurds! At least pretend this is not a purely colonial exercise and get some Kurd quotes!)

This is the usual process for advancing women's rights in the U.S.

Duncan Hunter proposed an amendment that would require women to register for the draft as a "gotcha" amendment, assuming it would be voted down. Instead it passed and, assuming the final bill makes it through, young women and men will be subject to the same draft registration requirements.

This type of thing has happened before. When Congress debated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was originally written to outlaw employment discrimination based on race, color, national origin or religion, a pro-segregation congressmen proposed an amendment to add the word "sex" to that list, assuming that would be a poison pill and the whole bill would go down. Instead, the bill passed and federal law now prohibits sex discrimination in employment.

Cruz-Fiorina WTF?

I know everyone in the world has already remarked about how weird it is for Ted Cruz, a candidate's whose biggest liability is the fact that he is deeply disliked by a whole lot of people, to pick another widely disliked former candidate like Carly Fiorina. It is shaking things up a bit. Tonight he is getting a lot more attention that he would have if he just kept campaigning like everyone else. It seems to have overshadowed Trump's big foreign policy speech (although drawing attention away from the speech might have helped Trump. Whenever a candidate's big promise is "coherence," you know he is setting a really low bar.)

But let me join the crowd. Cruz would get this attention no matter who he named as his Veep. What possible benefit can he get with Fiorina? Her campaign cratered when the media started pointing out that virtually nothing that came out of her mouth was true. So what does she bring to his campaign? An extra dose of bullshit so he can live up to Trump's "lyin' Ted Cruz" label even better than he already is? A failed businesswoman to be the perfect counter to a failed businessman like the GOP frontrunner?

Actually, I can think of two things: (1) Fiorina was the only candidate during this endless primary who directly confronted Trump and seemed to benefit from it, and (2) Fiorina has proven that she can win a GOP primary vote in California. In fact, it's the only time she has ever won any election. But it so happens that the CA primary is still coming up and Cruz must do well there if he is going to steal the nomination from Trump.

So for those two reasons maybe it does make a little sense. I still think he could have picked others who didn't have as many negatives as Fiorina has.

ASIDE: Blogger's spell checker keeps suggesting that "Fiorina" be changed to "firing."

Tehran dresses down some random Swiss Diplomat because of what Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote

It is funny to see Iran summon the Swiss ambassador to complain about a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The Swiss, much less the Swiss Federal Department of Federal Affairs (their equivalent to the U.S. State Department), have nothing to do with the United States court system.

When governments are pissed off at each other, one of the ways they express their anger is to summon the other country's ambassador to yell at them. It is a little silly, but that is one traditional way for governments to express their displeasure to another government.

The problem in this case is that the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with Iran. There is no U.S. ambassador in Tehran. In such an ambassador's absence, the Swiss government has agreed to act as an intermediary for the U.S. government in Iran and to provide basic consular services for U.S. citizens in Iran through the foreign interest section of its embassy in Tehran. That leaves the Swiss ambassador to Iran the best stand-in for a U.S. ambassador if Tehran is looking for someone to yell at.

Still, I imagine the yelling could not have been completely satisfying. The Iranians are (to some extent understandably) upset that the U.S. law that will allow their assets to be seized has been upheld, so they want to exercise their right under diplomatic protocol to rant and rave at someone. But instead of a representative of the actual subject of their ire, the world's sole remaining superpower, they have to resort to a representative of a small European alpine nation that has long prided itself at being as inoffensive as possible for pretty much everyone. (Well, everyone except Libyan dictators). As he was being dressed down by the Iranians, I wonder what was going through that Swiss diplomat's head,

Treating minorities like shit is not the best way to quell separatist sentiment

Pan-Turkic advocates get more evidence that life is not good for Turkic people unless they get their own state even though that is probably the opposite of the message that Russian and Chinese authorities wanted to send.

Anyone who is not 100% in favor of all trade agreements is a Communist or a Nazi

Apparently any position other than being in support of every free trade agreement is "extreme."

I'm actually on the fence about most "free trade" agreements--I'm not automatically for or against them and I see costs and benefits on both sides of every trade agreement. Most, if not all, are a real mixed bag, usually with the negatives hitting the least economically insecure harder than they benefit from the positives. Besides, none of these trade agreements are really "free trade" agreements. They generally lower tariffs without eliminating them and include a bunch of horse trading over tariff rates for particular categories of goods. If they were really free trade agreements the treaties wouldn't have to be so long. It just takes a single sentence to reduce all tariffs on all goods to zero.

Welcome to Blog Guilt

I just noticed that I haven't posted here in a while, at least a while for me. I tend to post when I feel like I have a point to make that is bubbling within me, trying to get out. I guess there just hasn't been much bubbling in the last five days. Also, the posts that are currently on the front page here are all pretty long, which meant that, even with my non-posting, that blank space that I am obsessed with has still not appeared on the lower left.

Anyway, it wasn't a posting hiatus or anything. I just had other stuff going on. Also, everyone must listen to Welcome to Night Vale, all 86 episodes as of this writing. It is the bestest podcast ever. It has an ongoing story, so you need to listen to it from the beginning. That gives you about 36 hours of stuff to do if you are looking to ward off the ennui of postless days here at Rubber Hose. I bring this up, because I saw their live show last night and it was amazing.

And by a total coincidence, this post should push the left content down a bit more, saving me from further blog guilt for a while. Suck on that non-existent-blank-space-to-the-lower-left!!!

Trump is better for down-ballot races than Trump and Cruz

Who knows if I am right, but I think this is good news for the Democrats' prospects in the November election. Hillary Clinton (who I am confident will be the Democrat's nominee) should easily beat Trump or Cruz in the general election. The electoral map simply favors any Democrat in a presidential race. Both Trump and Cruz happen to have even higher negative approval ratings than Clinton, so it should come out in favor of the democratic victory no matter which one runs.

But there is a difference. If Cruz is the nominee, I think there is a not-insignificant chance that Trump would run as an independent or third party candidate. While that would make it even more unlikely for the Republicans to take the presidency (and Trump and Cruz would likely split the red vote), it might hurt the democrats overall compared with the scenario where Trump is the nominee.

If Trump is the nominee, his outrageous and unpopular behavior is going to dog all the Republicans running this year. When Trump inevitably makes some over-the-top sexist remark about Hillary Clinton, all the other Republican candidates are going to be asked whether they support those remarks, which will force them to either criticize their party's nominee in a hard fought presidential race, or endorse something that will hurt them personally. Trump also will be a great motivator for Democrats to turn out in the general election. That increased motivation and turnout is not just likely to help Democrats win the White House, it probably will put them in control of the Senate and to make some gains in the House (although I doubt if it will be enough to put the House back into Democrat's control, though that would be a possibility) It might also pay dividends in various State races, tipping things back a bit from the Republicans' utter domination of State governments.

If Cruz is the nominee and Trump runs as a third party candidate or independent, it will be a lot easier for Republicans to disavow whatever dumb shit that Trump says. While Cruz and Trump will lose the presidency, having two conservative candidates in the general election is going to boost Republican turnout. I think that will blunt democratic gains in the down ballot races.

The People's election campaign

I did a news search for articles about the Presidential race and the top result was an article from People Magazine.

On a related topic, both the Ted Cruz and Donald Trump campaigns have released tax plan they promise to enact if elected. Without googling, does anyone reading this have any idea what those plans say?

Even as someone who has closely followed the campaign, reading multiple articles about the candidates every single day, I can't give an affirmative answer to that question.

Rightwingers don't know what hypocrisy means, part million

It is not hypocrisy for a politician to file his taxes under the existing rules while arguing that those rules are unfair and proposing that they be changed.

Seriously, Jim Geraghty's hypocrisy argument is even stupider than that, because Bernie Sanders has not advocated abolishing deductions for home-mortgages*, local taxes, charities, or job expenses. But even if that is what Sanders had proposed, it would not be hypocritical for him to use the current rules now even if he wants the rules to change later.

(via Memeorandum)

--------------------------
* Sanders has proposed capping the deductions so they only apply up to a dollar figure threshhold for mortgage debt. The details of where that cap would kick in has varied a bit in different things I have read.

The Saudis don't win a U.S. alliance by default

The weird thing this post from Kevin Drum is that he seems to think that Saudi Arabia or Iran are the only options if the U.S. is in the market for an ally in the Muslim world.

First, the "Muslim world" is quite big. There are more Muslims in South Asia and Southeast Asia than in the Middle East. But, second, even if we pretend that the "Muslim world" only means non-Israeli countries in the Middle East (which is what Drum seems to be doing), there are still a lot of countries that could be U.S. allies that are not KSA or Iran. Take Turkey, for example, which already is an ally of the United States, as it is a member of NATO. There are plenty of problems with the current government of Turkey. But, for all its current authoritarianism, those problems don't come close to the problems that I associate with a theocratic absolute monarchy which criminalizes the ordinary behavior of women and religious minorities. As terrible as the government of Turkey is right now, it is way way better than the Saudi government by every measure I can think of, There's Egypt (another currently terrible government that is still way better than the Saudi monarchy), and Jordan. Seriously, the entire region is filled with countries other than the Saudis and Iranians that the U.S. could, and in fact does, work with.

Czech please?

This makes no sense to me. As I have remarked before, it is strange that, almost 25 years after Czechoslovakia ceased to exist people still refer to it as if it is still a country. But I don't think changing the name of the Czech Republic to "Czechia" will stop people from calling it "Czechoslovakia." Changing the name again would just add a third name to the mix, which will certainly not clear up the English-speaking public's confusion about what the country is called.

Plus "Czechia" is just a worse sounding name. Everyone who hears that word is going to confuse it with Chechnya. They would be better off calling it Czechistan. Also I don't think there's anything wrong with the "Czech Republic."

His name is on every piece of trash in town

Ready for the presidency

Trump's stunning incompetence and lack of understanding of the basic rules of the nomination process is just more evidence of his outsider status. Nothing shakes up a complacent Washington establishment like spectacular dysfunction borne of an ego so inflated it won't take the time to find out how things actually work.

The convention boondoggle gets worse

Twelve years ago I wrote:

i'm beginning to wonder whether in future years conventions will have a hard time finding host cities. before the DNC, boston projected that the convention would bring in $154 million. immediately after it ended, the city announced that the returns were a far more modest $14.8 million. on npr the other day they noted that the boston nummbers are still being revised downward and probably will result in a net loss for the host city. 

new york is only going to be worse. aside from the fact that everything is more expensive when you do it in new york, the extra security that comes with the heightened terrorism alerts, practically guarantees that this thing will be in the red when it's all over. plus, many people i know in new york (like people in boston last month) are not going to work this week, and many are leaving the city. the loss of productivity alone would be hard for even a high-profit convention to make up. it's not surprising that the new york city comptroller is projecting big losses. 

so what happens if four years from now the two political parties can't find a city that is willing to host their event? will political conventions break their big-city traditions and become more of a rural retreat? or will there always be a city ready to suck up the losses for the national exposure? when i lived in st. louis that city seemed to have a permanent chip on its shoulder about whether it is an important place or not. i would not be surprised if they bankrupted the city just to get a little national limelight. of course, if there is a terrorist attack in nyc this week, even st. louis might have second thoughts 

The extra costs of crowd control is probably making it even worse for host cities. If corporate sponsors stay away, local governments will get saddled with some of the extra costs. Plus if there is violence at the RNC in Cleveland this year, then the city of Cleveland won't get any positive national exposure.

Putin's aircraft carrier moment

Ever since Putin declared an end to combat operations in Syria I have wondered if that means that Russia is really getting out of Syria or if, like the U.S. often does, the announced pullout doesn't mean a complete withdrawal.

"Clinton downplays odds of a contested democrat convention"

AKA Clinton accurately states that there is no plausible scenario in which "neither side wins an outright majority of delegates."

This is so stupid. On the Republican side, nine different people have accrued delegates, with four of them (Trump, Cruz, Kasich and Rubio) each with delegate totals in the hundreds. Trump has a good shot of getting an outright majority before the convention, it is also quite plausible that he no one will get an outright majority because Kasich + Rubio are collectively sitting on a cache of more than 300 delegates.

On the Democratic side, things are completely different. Only two people have accrued any delegates, Clinton  and Sanders, and all of the remaining delegates will go to one or the other. There are 4,765 delegates in all. When there are an odd number of delegates and they are only going to one side or the other, one of those sides will end up with more delegates than the other.

Clinton wasn't "downplaying the odds" she was pointing out that the situation on the Democratic side is completely different from the situation on the Republican side. There is a plausible scenario that the Republicans might still be fighting over their nominee when they reach their convention. There is no such scenario for the Democrats.

White knight to the party, dick move to the competition

I don't think Paul Ryan is going to end up being the GOP nominee this year, but if he did, can you imagine how that would feel to all he other candidates who spent more than a year busting their ass, going to places they didn't want to go, meeting people they didn't want to meet, etc.?

I kinda want it to happen just to see their reaction.

The sliding scale of primary-season democracy

The system used by the political parties in the U.S. to choose their presidential nominees has never been completely democratic. Parties are private organizations. They don't have to be democratic. For most of this country's history, the big-wigs of the Democratic Party and Republican Party effectively just chose the nominee.

In the late-20th Century things started to change. Both parties added democratic elements to their nominee-choosing process. As the process looked more and more like an election, the public's perception and expectations about the process also changed. The public began to believe that the process was (and is) an election. Which makes sense. In primary states, the primary is conducted by a secret ballot vote, held in the same polling place used in the general election. In some jurisdictions there's even a real (i.e. non-presidential primary) election going on at the same time, with those candidates chosen on the same ballot as one used for the presidential primary.

But at its heart, the method used by the parties today to choose their delegate is not really democratic. The candidate with the most votes doesn't necessarily win. The race is collect a majority of delegates, not votes. On the democratic side there are superdelegates, who have no obligation to represent the voters. And on both side the rules for dividing the proportionate share of delegates when each state votes varies considerably from state to state and sometime does not reflect how people voted in the primary of caucus. The delegates themselves might switch their votes if there are multiple ballots and, for a lot of states, nothing obligates them to reflect the voters from their state when they vote in ballots after the first one.

Because the process looks like a normal election, there will be outcries about the lack of democracy whenever the contest is close enough for its undemocratic elements to matter. Those outcries put pressure on the powers-that-be to further democratize the process.

In other words, while the process is not a democracy, it is more democratic now than it used to be. And it is likely to get even more democratic in the future. Not that it does anyone whose candidate is losing under the current rules any good right now.

What a weird country

The North Korean government funds Korean restaurants, staffed with real North Koreans, in other countries?

Does any other government in the world do that?

Trump is no more incoherent on health policy than any other Republican

It's amusing for the Times to quote all these Republican health care experts who characterize Trump's health care proposals "an incoherent mishmash that could jeopardize coverage for millions of newly insured people," But are the GOP experts' own ideas any better?

Since the ACA was passed, I haven't seen any coherent alternatives by the Republicans. They keep yelling "repeal and replace" without telling us "replace" means. (The one time they tried they hilariously proposed replacing Obamacare with Obamacare). Maybe the Times should do a similar article looking at Ted Cruz, John Kasich's or any other Republican politician's plan to see if it fares any better.

ADDING (4/10/16): See Jonathan Chait.

What's the deal with this trans-bathroom backlash?

Could someone explain to me what exactly the problem is with transgendered people using the bathroom of the gender they identify rather than the one they were born with? For a lot of issues I can at least understand the argument on the other side, even if I disagree with it. But this one really confuses me. So walk me through it, if you could.

Here's how the Vox article summarizes it:

Behind the Tennessee bill is the bathroom myth: the idea that if trans people are legally allowed to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity, men will take advantage of the policy to enter women's bathrooms to harass and sexually assault women.

Putting aside the lack of statistical evidence that pro-trans bathroom policies lead to more harassment or assault, why would anyone even believe that myth? It doesn't make any logical sense. Sure, if a male-to-female trans person could use the women's room, a bad man could dress as a woman to get into the women's bathroom to target women. But isn't that true even if there is no pro-trans bathroom policy? Couldn't a man in any jurisdiction that doesn't have such a policy do that right now? Hell, a lot of bathrooms are in out of the way places without heavy traffic. I'm sure for plenty of bathrooms a man could just walk in without being spotted even without a disguise.

Actually, isn't it just as likely that barring trans people from using the bathroom of the gender they identify with would make it easier for a man to sneak into a women's room? If female-to-male trans people must use the women's room, that means that people who look like men will be openly walking into women's bathrooms under these policies. No disguises or sneaking would be required. The would-be assaulter, if questioned, would just have to say that he is a former female and he's in.

Seriously, I understand that some people in conservative areas might have a visceral reaction against trans people in general, but focusing on the bathroom under the guise of preventing sexual assault seems really odd to me because it makes no sense.

Highly suspicious they will follow through

Because we all remember how President McCain was elected because of the PUMAs.

Any way you slice it, the U.S. would pay for Trump's wall

Wouldn't prohibiting wire transfers of money to Mexico violate NAFTA? Which means that if President Trump actually did bar remittances from traveling across the border, Mexico could then theoretically sure the U.S. under the NAFTA dispute resolution procedures to get the U.S. government to make up for the cost of all the blocked remittances. Of course if Mexico gets a judgment against the U.S., President Trump could simply refuse to pay. But if that happened Mexico would be allowed to retaliate against the U.S. and erect trade barriers against American goods, which would also cost the U.S. money.

We have no idea what Libya would have been like if NATO had not intervened

I think Shadi Hamid's argument is pretty weak. Sure, it's fun to #slatepitch, and with the current mess in Libya, the 2011 NATO intervention is ripe for an alternative spin.

While I agree with Hamid that to assess whether the Libyan intervention was a success, we should not compare Libya today to an ideal, and that instead "we should compare Libya today to what Libya would have looked like if he hadn't intervened." But how do we know what that would look like? We really have no idea.

It is worth pointing out that Libya was already descending into civil war before NATO intervened. A lot of people who criticize the decision to intervene in Libya do seem to forget or miss that fact. In that sense, the Libyan intervention was not like the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The U.S. brought war to Iraq, but that is not the case with NATO's bombing operation in Libya. Libya had already descended into violence without the U.S. or its allies help.

But that doesn't mean that Libya would be just as bad today without NATO's intervention. The intervention clearly changed the dynamic of the already existing war. Maybe the rebels would have ultimately overthrown Qadhafi without the backing of American bombers, or maybe not. But I think it's clear that the bombing made Qadhafi's overthrow and death happen sooner than it would have without outside assistance.

But beyond that, I really have no idea what would have happened in Libya. Counterfactuals are hard. Without the NATO bombing maybe Libya would still be in the midst of a civil war like Syria's. Or maybe not. Maybe Qadhafi would have been able to successfully put down the rebellion, recapture Banghazi (which fell into rebel hands in February 2011, roughly one month before the NATO intervention) and regain control of the entire country. Or maybe not. I don't know which scenario is right, and neither does anyone else.

Hamid's argument that the country would have been worse off without the NATO intervention is just an argument. For him to assume his story to be true, Hamid is essentially doing what he criticizes. Like those who wrongly compare the current state of Libya to some imagined ideal of what it would be like without the 2011 intervention, Hamid is comparing the current state of Libya to his imagined dystopia of what Libya without intervention might have been.

There's always more to "ethnic conflict" than ethnic conflict

It's not clear to me how much of the current flare-up is being fueled by the current bad blood between Turkey and Russia.

The Armenians and the Azeris have plenty of reasons for conflict on their own. But the 1994 ceasefire has mostly held over the past few decades. With their two patron states at odds, that's one less avenue to help diffuse the tension.

Could have been worse

Terrible, but not as bad as I thought.

One thing about the Palmyra site is that it's huge (as I remarked when I visited). I have been to a bunch of ruins of Roman cities before, but Palmyra was the first one that really felt like I was in the ruins of a city--with blocks and blocks of ruined buildings--as opposed to most sites where only a small portion of the original ancient city survives. So while ISIS could knock down the most famous buildings like the Temple of Baalshamin, really destroying the whole site would take a lot of work.

Also, Palmyra is really three archeological sites: the Roman City, the pre-Roman tombs, and the Crusader-era castle. I don't know what the tombs are like now. The NYT photoset stuck to the Roman City, but a year ago there were reports that ISIS was demolishing all the towers. The castle you can see on the bluff between the two columns in the fourth-from-bottom picture.

Have I mentioned that I am really really glad I got to visit Palmyra before the Islamic State got their chance to wreck everything? You can look at the photos I took here.

Donald must respond to everything

I am looking forward to whatever unhinged response Trump tweets about this.