Saturday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Alligator wrestling markets in everything.  And MIE: KFC-flavored nail polish.

2. James Palmer on minority survival in China.  And China to test first hybrid power train.

3. I agree with Scott Sumner on Brexit.

4. David Samuels on Ben Rhodes and Obama’s foreign policy, in case you haven’t already read it (NYT).  Interesting along numerous dimensions.

5. “It turns out that we’re very bad at judging who our friends are…”  Paper here.

6. What if you find out your parents are Russian spies?

Comments

Ray Lopez

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There should be more comments here other than my own.

efim polenov

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No ha nacido escridor que no haya escrito demaisado. (Don Colacho - all writers write too much). Not quite true - Spinoza, Sappho, Spenser, and Stevens, just to stick with the S writers, should have written more. To take a parochial view, I have a few friends in real life who I wish would write more. But Don Colacho is interesting on just about every subject he talks about and I choose not to criticize him for his minor inaccuracies.

Dan in Euroland

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RE: Rhodes

So did Obama mandate that his visage decorate his underlings' walls, or did they willingly forgo personal momentos for icons of the leader?

Jan

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Heh, I am pretty sure that is a photo of Ben's daughter in Obama's arms.

JWatts

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Yeah, I thought as much too. And it is weird and sycophantic. How many employees would have giant pictures of their boss holding their young babies made and hung above their desk?

Turkey Vulture

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Weird, but an effective way to both signal his personal loyalty to Obama, and his closeness to Obama to any office visitors.

Jan

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I think it is less weird than having a picture of oneself in their office. A picture of my daughter with the leader of the free world would be pretty friggin' great. Even if it was Bush days. I'd put that up.

RYt

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.....political appointee team-players don't need any prompting to butter up their appointer boss

but why do taxpayers have to fund a President's personal political operatives in the White House?

FDR muddled thru the Great Depression & WWII with just a couple dozen staff. Now the White House staff numbers over 10,000 with billions of dollars expended annually.

Heorogar

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Does it require a staff of 10,000 to screw up everything? I bet a staff of 1,000 could have been equally destructive.

Jan

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What are you talking about? The White House has <500 staff, with under $40 million in salaries.

Jan

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Though I should mention that Nixon doubled the number of WH staff during his tenure.

RYt

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The Federal "Office of the President" includes many more personnel than just the apparent White House staff.

The Executive Office of the President (EOPOTUS/EOP) consists of the immediate Presidential staff AND multiple levels of support staff reporting to the President. Many people who actually work on the President's full time staff are "detailed" from other Federal departments/agencies, and their budgetary expenses are often charged elsewhere; for example, Defense Department staff for the White House Military Office. EOP employs about 2,000 to 2,500 "policy-making" personnel. A huge staff of worker-bees supports the higher level positions.

President Thomas Jefferson had just two people on his staff (secretary and a messenger) -- that he paid for out of his own pocket.

msgkings

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And the world in 1800 was EXACTLY like the world of 2016

JWatts

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"So did Obama mandate that his visage decorate his underlings’ walls..."

Mandating it would be counter productive.

Rob

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If you can't tell who your friends are using the evidence available to you, what practical difference does it really make whether they are or aren't?

Adrian Ratnapala

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Because there is such a thing as the future.

Rob

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That's true, but would become evident enough once enough of the future becomes the past. This whole thing is setting off alarms for me.

1. On that exact point about time, how long had these fellow students known one another? You would expect friendship ambiguity to resolve over time. At a glance probably only a few months as they were simply doing an adult study course together.

2. The figures given don't seem to match up with the fractions that seem to be in each quadrant (>2 vs =2 on the x-axis is <3 on the y-axis. Am I going crazy?

3. Most people in the survey are not friends. So mere regression to the mean, or differences in opinion about the meaning of 'friend' will give you a lot of non-reciprocal friendships.

Rob

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Sorry it seems I can't include a link to the figure. In point 2 'm referring to Fig 1A in the paper linked by Tyler.

Tununak

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Over time I have inadvertently (1) revealed to someone that (from my viewpoint) they had been my closest friend at one time in my life and gotten a clear impression that they did not share that viewpoint, and (2) had someone else reveal to me that (from their viewpoint) I had been their closest friend at one time in their life -- a viewpoint that I did not share. So this does not surprise me. It is an interesting observation and makes me wonder how many other of our perceptions about our relationships are similarly suspect.

derek

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A few thoughts on the Rhodes article.

So the first reaction to 9/11 was to feel sorry for an Arab guy? And the first thing you did when able was to systematically dismantle a stable and relatively peaceful situation that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of sad Arabs, with no end in sight? You also actively promoted and assisted the turmoil in Syria, and much of North Africa, then walked away. At least that fool Bush had the moral courage of his convictions to propose the surge, run an election on it, and successfully carry it out.

I'm certain the Arabs being shot by Persians feel your love.

Essentially to cut the power structures of the presidency of at the ones you simply ignore Twitter.

The feckless and useless Republican Senate deserves everything that is coming with the Trump movement. They were rolled.

I get the exact same thing from this article as I did from the Atlantic interview with Obama. Mind meld indeed. Despite everything we said and did, including the results, we are obviously brilliant and the smartest around.

derek

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The stagnation in comment editing continues. Off at the knees.

anon

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That is a curious reading. "Arab guy" was presumably overcome by the tragedy that day, and more to come. Or that is what Rhodes read into him.

On the rest, you seem to tangle all the tragedy in the middle east, and blame not the idiots who broke it, but those who want out.

I want out. That is better for me than the incomprehensible position that Iraq was a mistake, but let's go do it again in Iran or Syria.

WTF, you think a beacon of democracy in Syria is a slam dunk?

The Original D

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"incomprehensible position that Iraq was a mistake, but let’s go do it again in Iran or Syria"

Just as only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could speak the truth about Iraq.

anon

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"Donald Trump would deploy up to 30,000 American soldiers in the Middle East to defeat the Islamic State, he said at Thursday night’s debate."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/trump-iraq-syria-220608

Troll me

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I personally never viewed the invasions allowed by Bush to have been particularly related to "moral courage" or any such thing. Like, sure, it was a shocker, whatever/whoever it was that was responsible for 9-11. But "with us or against us"? It's just begging for the middle finger, no matter if you might want to help out.

I'm glad Canada had a PM with the independence to give the middle finger. At least in Afghanistan, there was some hope that the little girls would get to go to school, or something.

TMC

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But the Iraqis thrown through the wood chippers inspire nothing?

Troll me

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Through a UNSC-approved intervention with a concrete roadmap for a political solution following the intervention, maybe. Pulling the rug out from an entire political system doesn't tend to improve things.

The "with us or against us" sort of mentality was really troubling. At the time i was mentioning a report in a Taiwan newspaper that I'd picked up while transferring flights there a day or two after the invasion started, and it reported on a British security official who made a statement that it was already known that the "evidence" was baloney. I was told by several people that I'd better stop talking about such things. My concern at the time was that if the US would start wars based on fabricated "evidence", then who knew how long until they might set their sights on Canada's resource wealth.

Like ... everyone basically thought Saddam had nukes, right?

Canada's willingness to stump up lives and resources when serious threat to world peace are at play has rarely been in doubt. But we are not liable to be dragged into retarded wars.

TMC

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Intervention WAS UN approved. All the different countries spy agencies DID think he had a nuclear program (we found tons of yellowcake), but the main reason we supplied for WMD was chem weapons, which we found thousands of. Any other piece of history you completely unfamiliar with?

Joey_33

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I don't agree with you generally, but I agree with you that Mr. Rhodes seems to have over-read the lessons of Iraq. Yes, Iraq happened, but so before it did Bosnia. Concluding from Iraq that American military intervention can never do good, or that the foreign policy establishment's consensus generally is incorrect, surely is a mistake.

What's odd is that Mr. Rhodes seems to have drawn a fairly simplistic lesson from Iraq, while he reached the perhaps correct conclusion from his time with the Iraq Study Group - "that the decision-makers were morons."

The foreign policy establishment came to support the Iraq War because the Bush administration willfully misled us into war (that's not an exaggeration, as, for instance, Dick Cheney's interactions with Dick Armey should make clear). I don't think our political and intellectual systems are set up to deal with something like that. It's great that some were able to see through it, but I don't really blame the legislatures and other officials who went along with the war based on the misinformation they were provided.

For Mr. Rhodes to conclude from this that American intervention generally cannot do good, or that the foreign policy establishment generally does not know what it is doing, is, to me, a mistake.

Zeitgeisty

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What’s odd is that Mr. Rhodes seems to have drawn a fairly simplistic lesson from Iraq, while he reached the perhaps correct conclusion from his time with the Iraq Study Group – “that the decision-makers were morons.”

This is the 21st century: liberals decide that the decision-makers are morons and entrust geopolitical decisions to a would-be novelist. Then some other people conclude that the decision-makers are still morons, and that they might as well entrust geopolitical decisions to Donald Trump.

Troll me

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On the one hand, I can understand forgiving people for making decisions on the basis of low grade (in fact falsified, or at best an isolated report which was factually incorrect) intelligence.

However, I believe it is the job of legislators to ensure that they have good quality information before making a decision to go to war. The military establishment and the executive are authorized to respond to emergency situations, for example an incipient invasion of the US or a NATO ally. There was precisely no good reason to rush in Iraq. When elected legislators can get so easily played on the basis of such low grade (false) information, this is very concerning.

However, I think the lesson was learned. When reports of chemical weapons use by Assad against civilians started to surface, there was an interest to ensure that the reports were accurate before a decision would be made.

It is easy to forgive mistakes when literally minutes or hours are available before a "deadline", applies, for example "Gadaffi is about to start bombing civilians with military jets and we need to act NOW" (whether or not this was accurate is debatable, but there was immediacy to the situation). Whenever possible, it is best to take the time to make good decisions instead of fast decisions. Rushing a decision to go to war is inherently suspect.

JWatts

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"3. In the end, I see the Brexit vote as being part of an epic global struggle of narrow-minded nationalism versus enlightened cosmopolitan neoliberalism. "

What's narrow-minded about nationalism? And what makes cosmopolitan neoliberalism enlightened?

Doesn't this basically come down to a cost benefit analysis? It's a calculation of gains and loses both economically and culturally. And it's clear that Sumner can't point to a decisive advantage of one over the other:

"There are lots of good arguments on both sides, and I have mixed feelings on the question. ...From a libertarian perspective, there are strong arguments on both sides."

It seems as if Sumner's mood affiliation is strongly anti-nationalist and thus his emotions carry his argument. Personally, I'm not particularly vested in this issue and don't much care. But if I did, Sumner's emotional argument wouldn't persuade me to his point of view.

He concludes with this:

"If they fail, they can always exit at a later date, say if the EU decides to adopt a fiscal union."

Wouldn't Britain's leaving the EU curtail it's ability to effectively Federalize? It would be seen as a loss as those in favor of tight Federal control. The resulting EU would be substantially smaller and the precedent would have been set of a dissatisfied participant country exiting. So, wouldn't the voices against tight Federal control would hold more sway after a Brexit?

Also, couldn't you just as easily say, that Britain could always decide to rejoin later, if the EU decides to loosen its policies?

Turkey Vulture

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I've come to think that trying to structure the world on "enlightened cosmopolitan neoliberalism" is a Utopian project like any other, religious or political. Its adherents look at the world as it is, and the human raw material that compose it, and say "It should be thus! Let us begin our work!" But I don't think humanity is quite so malleable. Nationalism itself is a rather remarkable achievement compared to our tendency towards tribalism, and I think it works only because we are able to delude ourselves into thinking that the Nation is much like we would think of our tribe - a bunch of people who live like us and believe like us. We successfully expanded our moral circle because we could buy the fiction that we really are just one big family. I don't think that can be successfully expanded to include all of humanity, short of discovering (not necessarily hostile) alien civilizations that we can interact with. I think a key part of expanding the circle is that there still need to be outsiders against whom we can compare the in-group, and find the in-group closer to us than the outsiders.

Additionally, it is a view that allows the elite in each country that is part of the global neoliberal system to justify their status, pat themselves on the back for their enlightenment, and look down on the vast unenlightened swathes of humanity continuing about their ridiculous, racist, immoral little existences. And if the people in one country start to say "Hey, you said this system would be the most efficient, but that you would make it up to us after the fact by making us better off than before. But it looks like you're rich and we're worse off," the elite can flee to another polity before the redistribution happens.

The Original D

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I don't know that we will ever collectively believe that all of humanity is one big family, but the evidence is we can use trade to bribe ourselves into pretending.

Troll me

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With a fair few serious hiccups, it's been trending in that general direction for a few thousand years. So long as it doesn't imply monoculture, I think it would be good to continue in that general direction. But this seems to be rather more a hiccup period than on trend.

Henrico Otto

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Although nationalism has recently been linked with a decrease in liberty, I suspect in the current round, globalism is the real risk. Nationalism may preserve our liberty. Do we really think Europe will have greater liberty once fully globalized? When social trust is eroded, watch out. When all you have to tie things together is force, you will get more force.

Troll me

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I don't think the European project is any sort of threat to cultural diversity in Europe.

Horhe

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I think we've fooled Western European peoples and their offshoots throughout the world to view humanity as one big family, with disastrous results once the other guys caught on that there was a buck to be made in taking advantage of this. Or at least we've made it the moral and virtuous thing to do which, while being paid lip service as an ideal by other people, is really an option only for people who are rich enough to care about such displays of status... i.e. the richer Europeans.

Adrian Ratnapala

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Nothing in Sumners' sentence actually implies there is no such thing as "broad-minded nationalism" -- it's just that he sees Brexit as involved in the other kind.

But he is wrong. In his very next sentence he must admit that not all Brexit fans are narrow-minded nationalists. Indeed I it looks to me that movements for Brexit, as well as the Scottish and Catalan independence are all driven by internationalists who just don't like existing geopolitical structures.

For example: We don't see Brexiters making protectionist arguments tyr ing to keep out EU products. Rather they argue that some kind of post-exit trade deal can be done, while opponents retort that Britain would be snubbed. Sumner actually posts a long quote from FT showing that Britain would be in a strong negotiating position here.

Art Deco

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#3: Cowen and Sumner do not have Britain's welfare in mind. They're antagonistic to political movements which puncture their cosmopolitan delusions.

Nigel

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And you do ?
Or maybe that's one of your personal delusions ?

Art Deco

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I do, in an idle sort of way.

1. We're talking about the welfare benefits of one sort of liberal trade regime with another liberal trade regime that might have some extra barriers. Please note Bela Belassa's calculations regarding the welfare benefits of trade (static and dynamic) and recall he was an enthusiast of liberal trade regimes. Have a gander at Switzerland, which is not an EU member. The benefits of being in the EU rather than re-affiliating with EFTA are quite small.

2. As of now, salient blocs of binding legislation originate from Brussels, which is animated by the views of the Eurotrash nomenklatura. Nothing the locals in Britain can do about that (and large swaths of their own elite assent to Brussels initiatives and wouldn't want to have to defend them to a British electorate).

3. Britain is unnecessarily centralized as is (though this does not seem to bother the English public much at all, go figure). There is ample room to devolve decision-making to regional authorities (hypothetical Northern, Midlands, West Country, &c. alongside Scotland and Wales); there is ample room to enhance the discretion of local authorities. One way would be to end prescriptive grants to local government. Just have revenue sharing meant to create a riser for impecunious localities to stand upon, and allow them to use that revenue for whatever purpose they choose which is congruent with the locality's enabling legislation.

4. Social self-defense for Britain strongly suggests strict border controls and the adoption of a low immigration regime which incorporates preferences to the Queen's overseas subjects. Immigration streams during America's low immigration eras amounted to annual admission flows equal to 0.125% of the stock of population. That would amount to 80,000 settler's per year with admissions of temporary residents balancing verified departures. Disentangling Britain from the EU's regime regarding cross-border traffic is a must. Blow up the chunnel.

Art Deco

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While we're at it, why is local government a 'personal delusion'? You do realize the implication of the line of The Economist and Robert Samuelson is that a country with 63 million people and $2.8 tn worth of production every year is some sort of politico-economic cripple if its not enmeshed in an unaccountable supranational structure? You ever read the Mercatus crew when they start enlarging on community and society?

Ed

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He's the sort of anti-cosmopolitan that cares deeply about the welfare of people in other countries and cultures.

Art Deco

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Another set of social psychologists using a mis-specified model to sell what social psychologists are invariably selling: 'you are stupid meat and need social psychologists to tell you how to understand the most banal things'. Can we gin up a program to improve the intellectual seriousness of arts and sciences faculties by firing these people en bloc?

anon

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1. re KFC nail polish

African American women markets in everything?

Jan

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Asian markets in everything. Ever been to Asia? They looove that shit.

Trimegistus

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That Chinese "Hybrid" train is just a bog-standard diesel-electric with an overhead pantagraph for external electric power. Hardly revolutionary; I believe the French were using something like that back in the 1970s.

People's Daily is about as trustworthy as some Communist regime's official news outlet . . .

JWatts

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Well the article mentioned batteries which would be something new, though not particularly revolutionary. The article didn't mention if the batteries were substantial enough to matter, though.

Ryan Cousineau

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I'm suspicious the story garbled a description of a conventional diesel-electric drivetrain: they use an electric motor as the final drive, and a diesel motor drives a generator. I gather there's a small battery or capacitor bank in some designs.

Diesel-electric exists (mainly in ships and trains) because conventional power transmissions at that scale are tricky. The electrical system can be thought of as serving as a replacement for the transmission.

Yes, you can call this a "hybrid", but as mentioned above, it's an old technology.

Albigensian

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It's not at all clear what is "hybrid" about this train, other than it can source power from an overhead wire, an on-board engine or on-board batteries.

IF this train works like a parallel-hybrid car (does it?) the big gain would be for commuter rail, where regenerative braking would improve fuel economy and battery power could improve acceleration without requiring a larger, heavier on-board internal combustion engine.

I'd expect it might be difficult to justify the extra cost for inter-city service, however.

Massimo Heitor

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3. "In the end, I see the Brexit vote as being part of an epic global struggle of narrow-minded nationalism versus enlightened cosmopolitan neoliberalism.”

Sumner, Caplan, Tabarrok, and Cowen disagree with Obama on petty policy details, but on the big one, the "epic global struggle" as Sumner says, they are 100% aligned with Obama and opposed to the counter movement with Trump. They are basically one issue voters, and will align perfectly with Hillary Clinton.

Note that Bryan Caplan accuses nationalist voters as begin "irrational" for voting for nationalist candidates that align perfectly with their policy preferences.

"Now is the time for the British people to stand up for globalization, liberalization and openness"

We must resist this temptation to give in to toxic nationalistphobia and xenophilia.

The Obama + Hillary Econ crowd wants to remake specifically the nations of Europe, US, Canada, and Australia into these open, globalist societies and remove any trace of their current (or recent) ethnic character.

Art Deco

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Now is the time for the British people to stand up for local control, and to tell professional class dweebs to get stuffed.

Jan

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You forgot the Muslim mayor of London. Stand up for your rights. Curry and bigotry!

Ed

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Still railing against your betters?

Turkey Vulture

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"Note that Bryan Caplan accuses nationalist voters as begin “irrational” for voting for nationalist candidates that align perfectly with their policy preferences."

I think this is the part that rubs me wrong in a lot of what Tyler and others among this group say. It isn't enough for them to say that their political opponents are wrong. They have to try to dehumanize them by ascribing their policy preferences to an irrational process, in contrast to the perfectly rational, reasonable economist, who comes by all his views after years of careful consideration of every competing argument. They thus enjoy their moral superiority, in part, by suggesting that the commoners can't even reason about moral issues, as they are brutes governed by their irrational passions.

Troll me

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I do not believe that trade must be ever freer to be ever better. Presumably we reach a point where it is enough. But I think the view that nationalist voters are "irrational" is based on the view that protectionist policies would be damaging to the economy, and not help the people who are expecting to benefit from such policies. Also, consider that economists use the word "irrational" rather differently than just about anyone else, at least most of the time.

Barkley Rosser

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I think Sumner's use of "neoliberalism" is the first positive use of that term I have seen since the 80s in Washington when DLC types were running around waving Charles Peters's 1083 (and largely forgotten) "A Neoliberal's Manifesto," whose ideas kind of got glommed onto the more general use of the term later thanks to the Washington Consensus, which those folks supported.

There is more going on with this Ben Rhodes story than appears on the surface. I think this is him mostly advertising himself as a big deal for post Obama era. As it is, it feeds into a highly misleading story that the WaPo story by Paul Farhi today is pushing and will become a meme for critics of the Iran nuclear deal. Ohhhhh! Obama and Rhodes lied about Iran nuclear deal, oooooooh, so it must be bad!

Now to the extant these reporters that Rhodes was feeding this line to about negotiations only having started after Rouhani came in believed it, then they are idiots, and the part about the end of foreign bureaus leading to foreign affairs reporting being done by junior ignorant fools may be correct, and that is a story. But I, at least, was fully aware of the early negotiation by a Hillary aide in Oman with Iranian reps not that long after it happened. If one was paying attention, one knew that backdrop.

More importantly, in fact one wanted to have them negotiating with Khameini's people, although apparently Rhodes and crew thought they could not tell the American people that for selling purposes, which just says that the American people are ignorant fools along with these dumb reporters. Khameini was and is ultimately in charge of foreign policy, so if you wanted to really make a deal, and they did, and they pulled it off, which was very hard (and those details that Rhodes dismisses that Kerry negotiated were very difficult, the big picture he was so proud of was relatively easy), you had to have Khameini on board, and they did. This was really not something to hide, but something to be proud of, something that was necessary.

Regarding the story about the Russian spy parents, indeed this is the model for the show "The Americans," which Tyler is a fan of, as am I. I expect things will not end up quite as well for the people in the show as they did for the real life people.

Troll me

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I tend to consider "neoliberal" as econ 101 transformed directly into policy. As such, it can be easily defended, but is full of holes for a variety of circumstances. Most especially, "ever freer trade is always better for everyone" (50% to 70% went well, so the evidence is in, 90% would be better) and "ever lower taxes are always good for everyone" (60% to 40% went well, so the evidence is in, 20% would be better). It is also accompanied by a rather ideological view that outcomes are assured to be worse if the government is ever involved, largely justified on the basis of "market discipline", which lacks in the public sector, but without considering that the private sector plain and simply underprovides some goods to the extent that an inefficeint public supply is superior to the non-existent private supply. .

I do not use it in the perjorative when I use the word because I think it nicely summarizes a specific package of economic views. But when I refer to it as a point of reference, it is only ever as a starting point to introduce more nuanced treatment of a subject.

TMC

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Sumner has had some stinkers lately. I say this as a fan of his. His "narrow-minded nationalism versus enlightened cosmopolitan neoliberalism" should be narrow-minded nationalism versus pig headed cosmopolitan neoliberalism."

BC

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#6) There is a link in the article to a video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pt1OpIYr2s] of the former spy, now a Russian analyst. Maybe, it's because I now know he is Russian, but his speech doesn't sound very Canadian, despite the article's author's claim. (It's possible that Bezrukov is not deliberately trying to sound Canadian and had a different accent when he was undercover, but the author claims that Bezrukov sounds "North American" in the video.)

From a profiling perspective, should we now subject white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant married couples with children to more scrutiny and screening? I know that the broad majority of those of Northern European descent are good people, but if just one spy gets through screening, then the results could be disastrous for national security. Can we really take such chances just to be politically correct? Alternatively, maybe we can just go back to treating Northern European descendents, Muslims, and Syrian refugees as individuals instead of holding them guilty by association.

Thiago Ribeiro

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Why not deporting them and allowing them back when we find out why they hate America?

Li Zhi

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This list is forcing me to consider the possibility that TC is a whole lot smarter and a bit more subtle than I've been giving him credit for. At least for me, the juxtaposition of the Brexit/nationalism stuff with the "don't know who are friends are" research is quite suggestive. It's fairly obvious that the psychology (and human nature) of the "us" vs "them" categorizations has profound effects at the personal, familial, local, national and international levels. ... I wonder if we're as bad at identifying our enemies as our friends? The icing on the cake: the ambiguous "friend" status that those two non-Canadian sons-of-Russina spies. Why can't nationality be (legally) self-identified? It is not rational to behave as if everyone is your friend, nor it it rational to believe everyone is your enemy. Religion, Ethnicity, Nationality, tribe - we continue to repeat ourselves in our behavior towards others. Is embracing diversity a stable long-term civilization builder or does it destabilize? If the U.K. brexits, it won't be long before there are border guards between England and Wales, and visas required to visit Scotland from London. The natives are restless.

A B

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4: Some ad-hoc experience discussing the NYT article: People against the Iran deal are naturally even more furious than before. Mostly, supporters of Obama are silent and still digesting the information, but a few venture that 'all politicians lie.' Perhaps this is my bias, but during the 'Bush Lied, People Died' phase, I recall arguments over whether he lied or maybe was misinformed. But I don't recall any Republicans arguing 'Whatever. All politicians lie. Get over it.'

Until you're the one who lost because the other side lied, it's hard to understand how deeply angry it makes you. And then to brag about it? This is not over traffic camera policy. I have many many relatives who have become significantly more endangered from the Iran deal. A policy that sprung out of the conceptions of a President who had contempt for the huge number of experts that thought his ideas were insane. He then lied and manipulated the press to help push his policy. I guess I hope he's right. But as a President and as a human being, Obama is absolutely contemptible.

Moreno Klaus

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If you are selling arms to Saudi Arabia, whats the problem of making deals with Iran?

Troll me

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Cold War alignments persist. Also, historical ties between UK and Saudi elites (much rumour, few facts, but unquestionable historical observations of the facts on the ground), which probably imply various linkages within intelligence agencies, military complex, etc.

Iran has its own problems, but I don't think there's much doubt that Saudi values, laws, etc. are far more antithetical to American values than those of Iran.

Zeitgeisty

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Mostly, supporters of Obama are silent and still digesting the information, but a few venture that ‘all politicians lie.’

Supporters of Obama mostly do not care whether the admin lied, whether Obama's foreign policy is engineered by an ignorant novelist, whether the MSM is a passive mouthpiece for the White House, or whether Iran will develop or use nukes.

What's important to supporters of Obama is that no matter what was done, it was in consonance with Obama's progressive value system - which they defer to.

msgkings

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These sentences are exactly true of the other side (Bush and perhaps soon Trump). To the letter. Partisanship is the worst.

Adi Turcu

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#4 Tyler's "Be suspicious of simple stories" Ted talk comes to mind. It's telling and sad that Obama so much relies on a story teller actually using narrative strategies. Kind of puts Trumps "lunacy" into perspective.

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