Deja Vu

GAZA CITY — The nine-day battle between Hamas militants and the Israeli military has damaged 17 hospitals and clinics in Gaza, wrecked its only coronavirus test laboratory, sent fetid wastewater into its streets and broke water pipes serving at least 800,000 people, ...

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Violence “Erupts” in Jerusalem

Some readers may have noticed that over time my posts on Israel/Palestine have become increasingly infrequent.  That relative quietude reflects not indifference but despair. I’ve come to conclude that this is one of the many instances in which, contra Martin ...

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The Scott Stringer Problem

I haven’t followed the NYC mayoralty primary race closely, but from early on I have assumed that my choice would be Scott Stringer.  He’s a strong and principled progressive with clear ideas about how he would make the city a ...

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Biden Speaks

Joe Biden gave a good speech last night.  Clearly he sees the current crisis as the most critical this country has faced since the Great Depression, and he means to use the crisis to be the most transformational Democratic president ...

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The Problem of Police Racism (II)

Yes, I wrote about this topic in a series of posts years ago, and I don’t generally like to repeat myself. But whether I like to or not, history does seem to insist on repeating itself, so here I go ...

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Gloom & Doom in ’22?

I’ve heard some grim forebodings from friends on the political prospects for 2022.  The Republican juggernaut will be overwhelming—a combination of voter suppression, gerrymandering and the typical pattern of midterm election losses for the party in the White House make ...

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Capitalism, Socialism and In-Between

I recently came across a stimulating essay by Northwestern political scientist Andrew Koppelman that prompted my realization that in all of these years of blogging I’ve never explicitly presented readers with a succinct statement of my ideology—an ideology being a ...

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Big government is back!

The passage of the administration’s huge Covid rescue package is a very big deal, not only because it aggressively addresses the current public health and economic crisis but also because of the political markers it lays down.  It marks a ...

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Foreign Policy Short Takes

American domestic politics have been so preoccupying that it’s a long time since I’ve written anything much about foreign policy. The Biden administration’s most pressing challenges are at home, with COVID relief in the forefront, but issues of foreign policy ...

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Limbaugh

I’ve been putting it off but I feel obliged to say something about this unpleasant topic.  Limbaugh was an awful human being, but an enormously consequential figure: as Michael Tomasky notes, he did more to poison American politics than anyone ...

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