Sonic Youth Gossip - The Politics Thread

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Quote:

Originally Posted by choc e-Claire

I'd have thought you, of all people, would not like the idea of right-wing mercenaries establishing military government.

isn't it great when psychopaths kill each other though?

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

And just to underline the obvious: Putin has no legitimacy as a democratically elected leader because Russian elections are bullshit; it's not North Korea, but there's nothing "free and fair" about them.

true to all that. however, hot dog man in charge of nukes would likely be WORSE than poot'n.

ideally for me they'd kill each other dead and then someone saner would take over.

but who knows! the russians don't have a history of freedom whatsoever. they're accustomed to gangsters running the show for centuries. seems to be a hobbesian state of nature over there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

isn't it great when psychopaths kill each other though?

[...]

true to all that. however, hot dog man in charge of nukes would likely be WORSE than poot'n.

Yeah, that's basically it - I've mostly been tuning out from this one because there's a lot of interrelated storylines going on that I'm not confident enough to try and untangle. Putin getting taken out would probably be a good thing in a vague sense, but it wouldn't actually make much long-term difference from this given scenario, and if anything could just make it worse for bystanders.

The fuck is a legitimate person, anyways? Goddamn you motherfucker, on top of everything else why do you have to be so fucking ODD?!

ETA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieJwU9bFzW4

And they say Biden says dumb things?

From Zakaria's newsletter:

Quote:

After the Rebellion, What’s Next for Russia?

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion fizzled, and Russian President Vladimir Putin remained in power. Still, some say Putin’s standing has eroded and wonder just what will happen next in Russia.

Keen observers disagree on one point—some say we’ve witnessed the beginning of the end of Putin’s reign; others don’t think so—but consensus among commentators seems to be that in Russia, whatever follows this short-lived rebellion won’t be good.

“What will follow this rebellion is an interlude of distraction, recrimination, and uncertainty, as Putin deals not only with the logistics of getting things back to normal but also with the humiliation he has just been dealt and the revenge he is likely to pursue,” Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage write for Foreign Affairs. “None of this will pass quickly. … The United States and its allies will have to manage and mitigate the consequences of instability in Russia. In all scenarios, the West will need to seek transparency about the control of Russian nuclear weapons … Instability in Russia is unlikely to stay in Russia. It could spread across the region, from Armenia to Belarus.”

Fix, Kimmage and others also agree on something else: If Putin were to lose power, whoever succeeded him might be more aggressive and nationalistic even than Putin.

In another Foreign Affairs essay, Vladislav Zubok adds, grimly, that “in harking back to 1917”—the year of the Bolshevik Revolution, cited by Putin in his speech condemning Prigozhin’s march toward Moscow—“Putin and his critics and adversaries alike were reaching for the wrong historical analogy. What is taking place in Russia right now bears less resemblance to the events of 1917 than to those of an earlier era: the so-called Time of Troubles, or Smuta, which lasted from 1604 to 1613. During this period, the Russian dynasty of the Rurikids came to a violent end, and it took a decade of war and civil upheaval before the Romanov dynasty consolidated monarchical authority. In the meantime, Russia almost ceased to exist as a sovereign entity—a fate that could befall Russia again today because Putin’s personalized autocratic rule has made it hard to imagine an orderly succession.”

… and Wagner …

After fighters with Prigozhin’s Wagner private military group marched toward Moscow, Putin has given them three choices: join the regular Russian military, go home, or go (as Prigozhin has reportedly done) to Belarus.

Detailing Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s self-purported role in negotiating an end to Prigozhin’s rebellion, Le Monde’s Faustine Vincent writes: “Under a triumphant façade, the Belarusian leader now hosts (an alleged) war criminal at the head of a company of mercenaries known for their (alleged) exactions, rapes, murders, and tortures in a number of conflicts.”

Before its role in Russia’s full-fledged war on Ukraine, Wagner had been known for its mercenary activities in Syria and Africa. Has Prigozhin’s rebellion ended that line of business?

“(I)t seems unlikely that Wagner will up sticks in Africa,” The Economist writes. “The organisation is much more than just one man and it has a vested interest in staying put. Moreover the Kremlin will be loth to lose what has been a source of influence on the continent. Most probably, Wagner will retreat from Africa only if Africans themselves start to see Russia as a weak and unreliable partner. … That points to an irony that will not be lost on many African observers. Russia’s president pitches his country not only as a strong ally for African leaders but something of a model. Yet the very same group that his government has sent to help African leaders fight internal enemies has itself staged an uprising in Russia. That is hardly an advertisement for a regime selling coup protection to autocrats and juntas abroad.”

… and Ukraine?

If there were any winners in Prigozhin’s short-lived rebellion, some have suggested Ukraine is one.

Putin’s war effort has been flagging since it began. “Now, a weekend mutiny by Prigozhin and his mercenary force has further complicated Putin’s pursuit of the war,” political scientist Ronald Suny argues at The Conversation. “He looks weaker, and the most competent fighting force in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is no longer in existence to prosecute the war.”

Wagner delivered Russia its only major battlefield victory since last year—seizing the destroyed Ukrainian city of Bakhmut—but Prigozhin’s rebellion threw into question Wagner fighters’ future presence on the battlefield.

“(B)efore this weekend, Putin seemed to have a chance at sustaining his war in Ukraine longer than the West could sustain its interest,” Elliot Ackerman writes for The Atlantic. “But the loss of the Wagner Group necessitates that Putin rely wholly on the Russian military. This reduces his ability to insulate the Russian population from the costs of war, diminishing the political space for such an approach. … Even if Ukraine hasn’t yet retaken meaningful swaths of territory, it’s taken back something every bit as important: the strategic initiative. The strain Ukrainians placed on Prigozhin’s forces in Bakhmut, Kherson, and a host of other places contributed to this rebellion, and this rebellion is again placing the Ukrainians in the driver’s seat of the war.”

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro barred from running for office for 8 years

See, that's how it's done. Guy who tried to kill democracy can't participate in democracy. Pretty simple. Nothing unthinkable about it. This is what should've happened in the U.S. of A. (the greatest country in the WORLD, you know) in early 2021. Too bad it's the U.S. of A. (the greatest country in the WORLD, you follow).

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

i don't know about this.

i mean about the mode of operation of other countries applied to the american republic.

maybe it's applicable, maybe it's inapplicable, but i don't know about the brazilian justice system.

i know brazil has a long history of military dictatorships and rewriting constitutions, most recently in 1988. here the constitution and form of government have survived with some amendments for almost 250 years in spite of a bloody civil war. they're not the same systems, and they have their own historical reasons.

and i get that they've had pleasant results in brazil now, but i don't know how they run their shit or, again, if their system is applicable here. nothing to do with "the greatest" strawman arguments. just different political realities.

i'm glad for brazil though. just not sure "how it's done" there. results are one thing, process is another thing altogether.

so "that's what is done" okay sure, bar the tyrant. the how is untranslatable to the united states where we don't have this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_Electoral_Court

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i'm glad for brazil though. just not sure "how it's done" there. results are one thing, process is another thing altogether.

so "that's what is done" okay sure, bar the tyrant. the how is untranslatable to the united states [...]

Yes. I think you took my words a bit too literally, but then again, I could've worded things better. I'll post a decent reply... when I'm no so thirsty. I need some of that good ol' Coca-Cola again.

From The New York Times:

Quote:

Dude, where's my recession?

Almost everyone thought we’d get one, and yet here we are

By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

Almost a year has passed since the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which estimates gross domestic product, announced that real G.D.P. had declined over the previous two quarters — a phenomenon that is widely, although incorrectly, described as the official definition of a recession.

Right-wingers had a field day, crowing about the “Biden recession.” But it wasn’t just a partisan thing. Even forecasters who knew that recessions are defined by multiple indicators, and that America wasn’t in a recession yet, began predicting one in the near future. As Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics, one of the few prominent recession skeptics, put it: “Every person on TV says recession. Every economist says recession. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

By late 2022, members of the Federal Reserve committee that sets monetary policy were predicting an unemployment rate of 4.6 percent by late 2023; private forecasters were predicting 4.4 percent. Either of these forecasts would have implied at least a mild recession.

To be fair, we don’t know for sure that these predictions will be falsified. But with unemployment in June just 3.6 percent, the same as it was a year ago, and job growth still chugging away, the economy would have to fall off a steep cliff very soon to make them right, and there’s little hint in the data of that happening.

So it sure looks as if economists made a bad recession call. Why were they wrong?

One answer might be to ask why anyone would expect them to get it right. A few years ago the International Monetary Fund did a systematic study of the ability of economists to call recessions in advance, and basically found that they never succeed. As the authors noted wryly, there was little to choose between private and official forecasts: “Both are equally good at missing recessions.”

In a way, however, the I.M.F. study isn’t that relevant to what we’ve just seen. The authors found many examples of recessions that happened but that forecasters failed to predict; what we’re seeing now is a recession that forecasters predicted but failed to happen. So where did this almost unanimous but, as it turns out, unwarranted pessimism come from?

I know that at least some forecasters were looking at a certain financial indicator: the spread between short-term and long-term bonds. An inverted yield curve, in which long-term bonds pay lower interest than short-term, has historically predicted recessions, as becomes clear if you note the years in which that happened in the following chart:

But the meaning of an inverted yield curve is widely misunderstood. It doesn’t cause a recession. It is instead an implicit prediction about future Fed policy — namely, that the Fed will cut rates sharply in the future, presumably to fight a deepening recession. So the inverted yield curve wasn’t really independent evidence, just a market reflection of the same “recession is coming” consensus you were hearing on cable TV.

So where did that consensus come from? Leaving aside all the “Biden’s socialism will tank the economy” takes, I think it’s fair to say that most economists bought into the view that we were seeing a replay of the early 1980s. What happened then was that, faced with high inflation, the Fed sharply hiked interest rates, causing a recession; this recession brought inflation down, and the Fed then reversed course, cutting rates again:

Indeed, the Fed has, once again, raised rates sharply to fight inflation. But events since then have failed to follow the script in two distinct ways.

First, those rate hikes have so far failed to produce a recession. Instead, the economy has been remarkably resilient. Mortgage interest rates — arguably the most important place where the rubber of monetary policy meets the road — have soared over the past year and a half:

Yet unemployment hasn’t meaningfully gone up at all, which isn’t what most economists, myself included, would have predicted. Why not?

Part of the answer may be that housing demand surged in 2021-22, largely as a result of the rise in remote work, and that this increase in demand has muted the usual negative impact of higher rates. This is especially true for multifamily housing, where high rents have given developers an incentive to keep building despite higher borrowing costs.

Another part of the answer may be that the Biden administration’s industrial policies — in effect, subsidies for semiconductors and green energy — have led to a boom in nonresidential investment, especially manufacturing. The numbers here are truly startling:

There may be other factors as well, like all the “revenge travel” Americans have been doing as fear of Covid-19 fades. Whatever the reasons, the economy has shrugged off higher interest rates to an extent few expected.

(continues...)

(cont'd)

Quote:

Now, you might think that this means that the Fed will have to push interest rates even higher. After all, don’t we need a recession to curb inflation? But here’s the other place where things have gone off script: Despite steady job growth and continuing low unemployment, inflation has in fact subsided. This is true even if you look at measures that try to exclude transitory factors. My preferred measure these days is “supercore,” which excludes food, energy, used cars and shelter (because official measures of housing costs still reflect a rent surge that ended a year ago.):

This is the measure I’ll be looking at when new inflation numbers come in tomorrow. (P.S.: The Fed has a different measure of supercore — non-housing services — but when you look at the details of that indicator, it’s a dog’s breakfast of poorly measured components that I find hard to take seriously.)

In any case, something really strange has happened. I can’t think of another example in which there was such a universal consensus that recession was imminent, yet the predicted recession failed to arrive.

Quick hits

Consumer expectations of inflation are plunging.

So are business expectations.

The case for a soft landing.

But pulling soft landings off isn’t easy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Yes. I think you took my words a bit too literally, but then again, I could've worded things better. I'll post a decent reply... when I'm no so thirsty. I need some of that good ol' Coca-Cola again.

i did exploit a turn of words in the idiom to point out an actual difference in government institutions, but it wasn't just a rhetorical gimmick, i tried to make an honest point that i think truly matters.

the brazilian process cannot be replicated in the usa context, the "how" absolutely matters, as (among other things) we lack a judicial devoted solely to elections and we have a house of representatives enthralled by a maniac.

note that bolsonaro may be under investigation etc etc but he's not in jail for any crimes. he's presently only in "electoral jail" for 8 years (pending appeal).

but ultimately the corruption of the republican party by trumpers is what's really to blame here. but then again, no fourth separate power to appeal to.

brazil has a lot more parties, but... they were illegal until... 1979 or something? i wouldn't make the tradeoff.

i hope the system eventually works here. but the system is the system... and it's very slow to change for many historical and ideological reasons.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

From Zakaria's newsletter:

i do remember uncle joe saying firmly in some recentish interview (2nd quarter maybe? ) THERE WILL BE NO RECESSION.

i mean everyone saw a recession coming for a long time but he said no.

independent of what he said, the pent-up demand has kept things going, and there has been more stimulus at some local levels. plus wages have risen.

at the same time, the loosening of supply has a disinflationary effect. more money in the economy is only inflationary when supply can't match. otherwise no problem.

i've seen consumer prices fall, for sure. not fall to cheap, just fall back to "normal" (if there is such a thing).

my worry with this situation is that the wall street consensus (just saw it on bloomberg last week) is that for them there "must" be a recession and unemployment in order to bring inflation down. their ideology does not give a fuck. their first reflex is tamping down the wage-price spiral, workers be damned, like cattle to the slaughter. fucking alix steel talking tough like she's not just a journalist.

the progressives on the other hand will only accept full employment with high wages, inflation be damned... in their dreamworld with no tradeoffs.

but a soft landing can be accomplished. it is very fucking hard though. but the powell fed seems to have employment foremost in their agenda, unlike tough-talking journalists.

last year(?) when lizzie warren tried to scold powell for raising rates, powell shut her up swiftly by reminding her of the consequences of runaway inflation for all. eta: found it: https://youtu.be/hrJj8sydGFU

the fed could have raised rates more aggressively, and they still will probably keep raising rates, but they are being extremely careful to do so, and their more recent pause was telling.

here's hoping for a soft landing and another 4 years of democrats in power. they are not perfect, but fuck, the alternative is a true nightmare.

holy shit! i didn't know the nanny had a real voice

https://youtu.be/J4SAPOX7R5M

very good speech. i don't know the technical details actually. but wow, she surprised me, in a very good way.

anyway, unanimous vote for strike!

i don't know how this will play out in an age of replayable everything, but it will be interesting to watch

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

holy shit! i didn't know the nanny had a real voice

https://youtu.be/J4SAPOX7R5M

very good speech. i don't know the technical details actually. but wow, she surprised me, in a very good way.

Not her first time:

https://wapo.st/3ru5lpK

;):)

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Not her first time:

https://wapo.st/3ru5lpK

;):)

hahahaha!

great

Wow, 1-2 punch today (DOJ & Michigan), and that's on top of Georgia's Supreme Court ruling yesterday...

We all know he's an idiot and a clown. But he's also evil as all fuck. This is horrifying:

Inside the DeSantis Doc That Showtime Didn’t Want You to See

Vice put together an in-depth documentary exploring DeSantis’ time at Guantanamo Bay. Showtime suddenly shelved the documentary one day after DeSantis declared for president.

ETA: The authenticity of the documentary's transcript has been "independently confirmed" by The Daily Beast, which "quotes it here at length in the interest of transparency, as well as out of consideration for the segment’s journalistic merit and value to the public discourse".