“Strategic patience†is out as the US approach to North Korea, and “strategic accountability†is the new term of art. That’s according to an op-ed article by Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “The object of our peaceful pressure campaign,†they write, “is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.†While I heartedly approve of finally ...
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Why bother even expecting Trump to condemn Nazis?
Briefly, before he went wildly off-script at Trump Tower, we lived in a world where the 45th president of the United States had finally managed to condemn Nazis. And let’s ask ourselves: Did that make us feel any better? Did the sight of Donald J. Trump glumly reading off a teleprompter remarks obviously written by someone else convince anyone that ...
Read More »How technology could be getting out of control
Humanity has a method for trying to prevent new technologies from getting out of hand: explore the possible negative consequences, involving all parties affected, and come to some agreement on ways to mitigate them. New research, though, suggests that the accelerating pace of change could soon render this approach ineffective. People use laws, social norms and international agreements to reap ...
Read More »It’s past time to bury the Confederacy for good
They may call themselves “white nationalists,†but the adjective nullifies the noun. In Charlottesville, Virginia, few of them hoisted American flags. They marched under banners the United States took up arms to fight. Their stated cause was preserving a statue of a man who committed treason against our country: Robert E. Lee. Confederate flags, statuary and memorials have defenders who ...
Read More »The shouters win town hall battles, lose the war
I spent part of last week following a congressman around the sun-baked precincts of West Texas. I watched Will Hurd meet with constituents, deliver his stump speech, and wax lyrical about the Dairy Queen Blizzard. I listened to voters tell me how much they admired Hurd, a moderate Republican in the only competitive district in Texas. I also watched the ...
Read More »The Dow Jones is useful, if underused, roadmap
President Donald Trump likes to tweet about the performance of stocks this year, most recently noting at the start of the month that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was on the cusp of reaching 22,000 and another record high. The implication is that the gains are a direct result of Trump’s performance and policies. But do US presidents really drive ...
Read More »The new Virginia is a multicultural success story
The alt-right and neo-Nazi protesters seem to have chosen Charlottesville, Virginia, as a gathering point this past weekend because of the controversy over the town’s Confederate statues and memorials. Whether they knew it or not, there is another reason the state is important: If Virginia can be shown to look like a hotbed of conflict and prejudicial discontent, the message ...
Read More »Does permanent treaty with N Korea make sense?
After weeks of belligerent rhetoric, North Korea took a pause. But where is the mercurial Kim Jong Un headed next? US officials are debating whether he may want direct talks with Washington about a formal treaty to replace the 1953 armistice agreement that ended the Korean War. The US has been pursuing a dual path, threatening military conflict (semi-believably because ...
Read More »Democrats shouldn’t fear fight over Confederate monuments
Last Tuesday Donald Trump said that some of the people marching with neo-Nazis were “very fine people.” By Thursday, Trump shifted to talking more about monuments to the Confederacy—and so did many Democrats. And that drove a whole lot of people nuts, including several Republican anti-Trumpers who I think were quite sincere about it. Why, they wanted to know, were ...
Read More »BOE caution is justified. What about when it isn’t?
Britain’s labor market is powering ahead, and inflation exceeds the Bank of England’s target. Is it hot in here? Don’t expect Governor Mark Carney to cool things off. Here’s a major economy where price increases have not only picked up, but at 2.6 percent easily top the 2 percent target. Unlike in the US, the euro zone and Japan, a ...
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