John Cassidy's Blog, page 47

Flags and Guns: Change Versus Inertia

Having already written a couple of posts about the aftermath of the Charleston shootings, I’ll keep this one brief. The picture above shows Dylann Roof, the alleged shooter, posing with an object that many Americans associate with hatred and violence, but many other Americans venerate.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The G.O.P.’s Ties to Extremism Go Beyond the Confederate Flag
Charleston, and the Next Time
Equality and the Confederate Flag

The G.O.P.’s Ties to Extremism Go Beyond the Confederate Flag

If Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and the other serious contenders for the Republican nomination haven’t yet contacted Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, to thank her for what she did on Monday, it’s time for them to get on the horn. In calling for the Confederate flag to be taken down from the state capitol in Columbia, Haley didn’t just do the right thing by the victims of last week’s mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston; she also helped to lance a boil that was threatening to infect her party.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Flags and Guns: Change Versus Inertia
Equality and the Confederate Flag
“WTF” with Barack Obama

From Columbine to Charleston: Will America Ever Learn?

After living in this country for almost thirty years, I confess I find it hard to write about gun massacres. They are just too familiar, and too depressing. An alienated post-adolescent, almost always white, gets a gun, or guns, and exorcises his demons by killing as many people as he can. Then follows an equally predictable media outpouring, with round-the-clock coverage on cable, lengthy accounts in the serious papers, harrowing profiles of the victims, and why-oh-why editorials aplenty. Flags are flown at half-mast. Politicians, especially those who represent the area in which the massacre occurs, say that something needs to be done about gun control.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
“WTF” with Barack Obama
Finding Refuge at the Whitney
Comment from the June 29, 2015, Issue

Tiger Woods: How Low Can He Go?

At one point during his horrendous first round at the U.S. Open on Thursday, Tiger Woods found himself on the side of a steep hill with his tee ball—which he had carved at least fifty yards offline—sitting in deep fescue grass, about a foot below his feet. He crouched down, head forward, looking more like a sumo wrestler than the winner of fourteen major championships, and took a mighty whack. The ball took off at a strange angle and landed in some more tall stuff on the other side of the fairway. As Tiger followed through, the club, a short iron, came out of his hands and flew over his left shoulder, ending up about twenty or third yards behind him.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The 2015 Masters: The Jordan Spieth Show
The 2015 Masters: Why Is Jordan Spieth So Good?
The 2015 Masters: The “New Tiger” Avoids Embarrassment

Greece and Europe: The Endgame

On Tuesday, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras addressed Greece’s parliament about stalled talks with the European Union to extend the country’s financial bailout. “I would say the real negotiations are starting now,” he said. What, then, has been going on for the past four and half months, since Tsipras’s Syriza government was elected on a platform of ending the austerity policies that were imposed as part of the original bailout, in 2010, and a revised version, in 2012?

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Migrant Crisis on Greece’s Islands
Sidelining Varoufakis Won’t Solve Greece’s Real Problem
Who’s Afraid of a Feminist Foreign Policy?

Trump’s Circus Will Damage the G.O.P.

As you probably saw, Jeb Bush gave a big speech a couple of days ago, in which he formally entered the Republican primary, vowing to “take command of our future” and “get events in the world moving our way again.” It wasn’t the greatest piece of oratory, but Bush is still the strong favorite to be the G.O.P. candidate, and he finally showed a bit of vim and vigor, bounding onto a stage in Miami like the late Chris Farley doing an impression of an eager, over-amped preppy. Forty-eight hours later, the Republican Party and its media supporters are busy debating Bush’s proposals, which included pledges to boost the economy’s growth rate to four per cent, simplify the tax code, and “clean up the mess in Washington.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
ISIS Confused by Trump’s Hotel Analogies
Jeb’s Big Day
A Day at the Races

R.I.P., Free-Trade Treaties?

The debate in the economics community over the Trans-Pacific Partnership continues. In Monday’s Washington Post, Lawrence Summers, who promoted a series of free-trade agreements during the nineteen-nineties, when he worked in senior posts at the Treasury Department, said, “The repudiation of the T.P.P. would neuter the U.S. presidency for the next 19 months.” Summers also provided a series of reasons to be skeptical of the treaty, however, writing, “A reflexive presumption in favor of free trade should not be used to justify further agreements. Concerns that trade agreements may be a means to circumvent traditional procedures for taking up issues ranging from immigration to financial regulation must be taken seriously.” He later concluded, “Our challenge now is less to increase globalization than to make the globalization we have work for our citizens.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Rand Paul at Bat
Jeb’s Big Day
Apple Versus Google

Hillary Clinton Goes Populist—Up to a Point

If there was ever any doubt that Hillary Clinton was going to run a populist Presidential campaign, she dispelled it on Saturday with her speech on Roosevelt Island. Seeking to move beyond the controversies surrounding her family’s charitable foundation and her deleted e-mails, she spoke about the great disjuncture in the modern U.S. economy, and portrayed herself as an indefatigable battler for ordinary Americans.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Why Joe Biden Should Run
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, June 11th
How Will the Economy’s “Lost Decade” Play Out in 2016?

The Godfather of Clickbait

The death of Vinnie Musetto, a former editor at the New York Post who wrote the famous headline “HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR,” has already attracted quite a few notices, including complimentary pieces in the Times, the Guardian, and the Post itself. Vinnie, whom I got to know a bit when I worked at the Post for a couple of years in the early nineties, would have been happy about that. An aging hippie who wore his hair long, dressed in black, and, in the later part of his career, also reviewed movies, he saw headline writing as an art form, albeit a rough-and-ready one.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Times, Bloomberg News, and the Richest Man in China
“Clinton Cash” Attacks Could End Up Aiding Hillary
Survival Strategies for Local Journalism

How Will the Economy’s “Lost Decade” Play Out in 2016?

When will the Fed start to raise interest rates? Who will win the 2016 Presidential election? Obviously, these are two very different questions, but they are also connected. Without wanting to sound too much like the great historical materialist James Carville, I’ve always believed that politics is the flip side of economics, and vice versa, because they share a common framework.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, June 4th
Bernie Sanders: A Man With a Cause
Daily Cartoon: Monday, June 1st