Elizabeth Warren Tries to Invent a Foreign-Policy Message for Progressives and the Establishment

When did contemporary American foreign policy first go wrong? In an address at American University’s Washington College of Law on Thursday, Senator Elizabeth Warren offered a surprisingly tidy answer. “In the nineteen-eighties, Washington’s focus shifted from policies that benefit everyone to policies that benefit a handful of wealthy élites both here at home and around the world,” she said. “Mistakes piled on mistakes—reckless, endless wars in the Middle East, trade deals rammed through with callous disregard for working people, extraordinary expansion of risk in the global financial system. And why? Mostly to serve the interests of big corporations, while ignoring the interests of American workers.”

This sounds like a thesis statement for a foreign policy inspired by the wave of progressive populism that will make both Warren and Bernie Sanders formidable Presidential contenders in 2020, should they run. But Warren’s foreign-policy agenda, as described in her speech, differs in subtle ways from the vision Sanders outlined in his own major foreign-policy speech in September. To begin with, for Sanders and most on the hard left, America’s modern history of moral and strategic foreign-policy failures begins well before the nineteen-eighties. In his address, Sanders mentioned not only the Vietnam War but the C.I.A.-supported coups against Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953, and Salvador Allende, in Chile, in 1973. The most Warren said about this era was that America “wasn’t perfect.”

Warren and Sanders both have drawn connections between the problems we face abroad and the triumph of neoliberalism, an economic ideology that she never named in her speech, but nevertheless described succinctly. “Washington technocrats,” she said, “backed austerity, deregulation, and privatization all around the world.” For Sanders and others, the neoliberal turn exposed underlying economic dynamics that are indictments of capitalism itself. But for Warren neoliberalism has been a perversion of a system that could and once did work. “As one crisis after another hit, the economic security of working people around the globe was destroyed, reducing public faith in both capitalism and in democracy,” she said. “Policymakers promised that open markets would lead to open societies. Wow, did Washington get that one wrong.” All told, it was a speech aimed as much at the foreign-policy establishment as at the progressive left—a populist vision tempered for the Blob. Even if Warren doesn’t run in 2020, the balance she’s attempting to strike on this front may be the one the Democratic Party as a whole settles on.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/current/elizabeth-warren-tries-to-invent-a-foreign-policy-message-for-progressives-and-the-establishment/amp

Macron heard warning bin Salman after Saudi crown prince tells him not to worry: 'I am worried'

An extraordinary exchange between Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has been caught on video.

In audio of the conversation, which covered the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the ongoing Yemen war, it is possible to make out Saudi Arabia‘s de-facto leader saying “Don’t worry,” to which the French president responds: “I am worried”.

(Snip)


Later in the one-minute clip posted on Twitter, Mr Macron says: “You never listen to me,” and Prince Mohammed replies: “I will listen, of course.”

At the end of the video, Mr Macron can be heard saying: “I am a man of my word.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/macron-mbs-video-g20-summit-khashoggi-france-saudi-arabia-mohammad-bin-salman-worry-a8661386.html?amp

Climate change town hall

Good job Bernie

I've been opposed to the war in Yemen from the beginning. This shows to me once again he gets it.

The House's Progressive Caucus Will Be Bigger Than Ever In 2019

The liberal wing of the Democratic caucus in the U.S. House is going to be bigger than ever when the new Congress starts in January. It’ll be much larger than the conservative wing, and that has major implications, both for the next two years and potentially for 2021.

“Duh,” you might say, “of course there are more liberal than conservative Democrats.” But the two wings used to be much more equally matched. And 2018 represented a big jump in the progressive ranks.

In 2010, when Democrats last controlled the House, there were 80 House members in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a bloc of the most liberal members of the House and Senate, according to a caucus spokesperson. The Blue Dog Coalition, a group of the most conservative House Democrats, stood at 54 members. And the conservatives rivaled the liberals in influence. The Affordable Care Act, for example, grew more conservative in a number of ways thanks to pressure from conservative Democrats.

But many of the Blue Dogs back then represented more conservative-leaning areas, particularly in the South. Between 2010 and 2016, more than two dozen of them either lost re-election bids or retired from the House (often anticipating defeats). Even amid the Democratic wave this year, the number of Blue Dogs will likely only grow from 18 to 24. (More newly elected members could join the Blue Dogs later.) Meanwhile, the Progressive Caucus ranks held steady during the Obama years (these members tend to be in fairly liberal districts), so the group stood at 78 members before the 2018 midterms. That number will grow to 96 in 2019, according to the group, as a number of progressive candidates won in previously Republican-held districts.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-houses-progressive-caucus-will-be-bigger-than-ever-in-2019/

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Criticized for Dressing Nicely(hosts defending her from some guy)

Part 1
https://m.

Christine Blasey Ford: 'I Am Grateful To Have Had The Opportunity To Fulfill My Civic Duty'

The college professor who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault spoke out in a rare post.
By Alanna Vagianos
11/26/2018 02:35 PM ET

In a post on GoFundMe thanking her supporters, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford shared what her life has been like since she accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

“Although coming forward was terrifying, and caused disruption to our lives, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to fulfill my civic duty,” Ford wrote in a post published to the fundraising site last Wednesday.

“Having done so, I am in awe of the many women and men who have written me to share similar life experiences, and now have bravely shared their experience with friends and family, many for the first time,” she continued. “I send you my heartfelt love and support.”

A group of supporters created the GoFundMe page last month to help defray the cost of security and other unexpected expenses Ford has faced since she accused Kavanaugh in September of sexually assaulting her when the two were in high school. The fundraiser easily surpassed its initial goal of $150,000 and, as of Monday afternoon, had raised over $647,000 for Ford and her family.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5bfc3dade4b0eb6d931276cf/amp

Arizona State WR N'Keal Harry declares for 2019 NFL Draft

TEMPE, Ariz. — Arizona State receiver N’Keal Harry will forego his senior season and enter the 2019 NFL Draft, he announced on Monday.

“This has been a great ride. This has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, something that I’ll take with me the rest of my life,” Harry said.

“This definitely was not an easy decision. I truly do love this university. This place has given me opportunities I’ve only dreamt of,” he added. “I really feel like I’m leaving this place as a grown man.”

Harry, who ESPN’s Todd McShay has projected as a first-round pick in 2019, has yet to decide if he will play in the Sun Devils’ upcoming bowl game.

(Snip)

“I always side on the side of the player,” Edwards said. “I’m going to do what’s best for the football player every time.”

http://arizonasports.com/story/1750467/arizona-state-wr-nkeal-harry-declares-2019-nfl-draft/amp/

How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart

When people have a hole in their life, they often fill it with angry politics.

Arthur C. Brooks
By Arthur C. Brooks
Mr. Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute.

America is suffering an epidemic of loneliness.

According to a recent large-scale survey from the health care provider Cigna, most Americans suffer from strong feelings of loneliness and a lack of significance in their relationships. Nearly half say they sometimes or always feel alone or “left out.” Thirteen percent of Americans say that zero people know them well. The survey, which charts social isolation using a common measure known as the U.C.L.A. Loneliness Scale, shows that loneliness is worse in each successive generation.

This problem is at the heart of the new book “Them: Why We Hate Each Other — and How to Heal,” by Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska. Mr. Sasse argues that “loneliness is killing us,” citing, among other things, the skyrocketing rates of suicide and overdose deaths in America. This year, 45,000 Americans will take their lives, and more than 70,000 will die from drug overdoses.

Mr. Sasse’s assertion that loneliness is killing us takes on even darker significance in the wake of the mail-bomb campaign against critics of President Trump and the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, both of which were perpetrated by isolated — and apparently very lonely — men. Mr. Sasse’s book was published before these events, but he presciently described what he believes lonely people increasingly do to fill the hole of belonging in their lives: They turn to angry politics.

In the “siloed,” or isolated, worlds of cable television, ideological punditry, campus politics and social media, people find a sense of community in the polarized tribes forming on the left and the right in America. Essentially, people locate their sense of “us” through the contempt peddled about “them” on the other side of the political spectrum.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/opinion/loneliness-political-polarization.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Colombia has been in a civil war though I think it ended

Ever since this happened.

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala (January 23, 1903 – April 9, 1948) was a politician, a leader of a populist movement in Colombia, a former Education Minister (1940) and Labor Minister (1943–1944), mayor of Bogotá (1936) and one of the most charismatic leaders of the Liberal Party. He was assassinated during his second presidential campaign in 1948, setting off the Bogotazo[2] and leading to a violent period of political unrest in Colombian history known as La Violencia (approx. 1948 to 1958).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Eliécer_Gaitán

I'd have to research more but I think there were a lot of privitazed armies. US taking sides. Venezuela taking sides.