Kevin Drum

Italian Magazine Giant Steals My Pope Idea

| Wed Mar. 5, 2014 9:24 AM GMT

The New York Times reports today on a new magazine about Pope Francis:



Uh huh. Look, can I call it, or can I call it? Below left is my cover mockup cover from a year ago. On the right is the real thing. I demand royalties.

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The Global Economy Is Not Looking Too Great Right Now

| Wed Mar. 5, 2014 8:58 AM GMT

I post here periodically about declining European inflation and rising European unemployment, and today Paul Krugman draws our attention to an IMF blog post about the threat of actual deflation in Europe. The bottom line is that there's no actual deflation—yet—in most of Europe, but there is in three countries, and there's persistently low inflation across the continent:





It's Time For Republicans to Start Hating the EITC Again

| Tue Mar. 4, 2014 7:59 PM GMT


Maybe so. But this is just a smokescreen. Republicans turned against the EITC long ago, and their occasional recollections that the sainted Ronald Reagan supported it are as fragile as a whiff of smoke in a sea breeze. Jon Chait explains why:

First, there is a perennial pattern in which any time Democrats propose a higher minimum wage, Republicans re-discover the virtues of the EITC as a foil. Second, there is the current political moment of Republican economic reform, in which Republicans are now crafting campaign messages for 2016 designed to avoid the plutocratic trap that snared Mitt Romney.






| Tue Mar. 4, 2014 4:45 PM GMT



Seems about right.

What's remarkable is that Graham's tweet has even sparked some criticism from the right. The only problem is that I can't figure out exactly what their beef is. Michelle Malkin, whose picture is used to illustrate the phrase "over the top" in the dictionary, says that Graham is "an embarrassment to all who truly care about Benghazi. Just stop." But I can't quite parse that. Obviously Graham cares about Benghazi. Nobody has been more rabid on the subject than he has. And conservatives certainly believe that Obama's weak-kneed response in Benghazi was just another in a long line of weak-kneed responses to other global strongmen.1 So what's wrong with Graham connecting the dots to Putin?

Everything, obviously. But what I mean is, what's wrong from the perspective of a Benghazi cultist? I don't get it.


Immigration Reform Is Dead Because of Bizarro Obama

| Tue Mar. 4, 2014 12:04 PM GMT

John Boehner says he really, truly wants to pass an immigration reform bill, but he can only do it if President Obama gives him more help. Steve Benen isn't buying it:

To a very real extent, Obama has already done what he’s supposed to do: he’s helped create an environment conducive to success. The president and his team have cultivated public demand for immigration reform and helped assemble a broad coalition – business leaders, labor, immigrant advocates, the faith community — to work towards a common goal.

But that’s apparently not what Boehner is talking about. Rather, according to the Speaker, immigration reform can’t pass because House Republicans don’t trust the president to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.

What’s Obama supposed to do about this? “I told the president I’ll leave that to him,” Boehner told the Enquirer.



Strange times, no?

Chart of the Day: Why US Economic Sanctions on Russia Won't Have Much Impact

| Tue Mar. 4, 2014 10:48 AM GMT

My view of economic sanctions has been strongly influenced by Dan Drezner, who tells us (if I can oversimplify for the sake of a blog post) that they basically don't work. That's not an ironclad rule, and there are certain situations where they tend to have some effect. However, one of the primary conditions for success is that the sanctions be broadly applied. If it's just one country, they almost never work. The target of the sanctions will simply bear the loss and increase its trade with other partners.

This is especially apropos to our current situation with Russia. Our ability to impose sanctions is limited to begin with thanks to our obligations under the WTO. But that hardly even matters. What really matters is that our trade with Russia is minuscule. Cutting off a piece of our trade would hardly impact them at all. Most of Russia's trade is with Europe and Asia, so no sanctions regime has even a chance of working unless they agree to join in. So far they haven't, and for the obvious reason: they have a lot of trade with Russia. Sanctions would hurt them as much as it would hurt Putin.

The chart below, via Danny Vinik, tells the tale. We simply don't have much trade leverage with Russia. (The export chart looks pretty much the same.) Until Drezner weighs in on this to tell me different, I'd say this is the definitive answer to the question of whether economic sanctions are likely to have any effect on Russia's conduct.

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Please Don't Confuse Me With Facts, Vaccine Edition

| Tue Mar. 4, 2014 9:56 AM GMT

A couple of days ago I watched Othello for the first time.1 By chance, I had never seen or read it before. But good ol' Shakespeare sure had us humans figured out, didn't he? Here is Emilia, responding to Desdemona's plea that she had never given Othello cause to doubt her fidelity:

But jealous souls will not be answer'd so;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous: 'tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself.

Why do I mention this? Because of Aaron Carroll's tidy little summary of some Brendan Nyhan research on how to persuade people that the MMR vaccine is safe:

When they gave evidence that vaccines aren’t linked to autism, that actually made parents who were already skittish about vaccines less likely to get their child one in the future. When they showed images of sick children to parents it increased their belief that vaccines caused autism. When they told a dramatic story about an infant in danger because he wasn’t immunized, it increased parents’ beliefs that vaccines had serious side effects.

Basically, it was all depressing. Nothing was effective.

So that's that. They believe not for cause, but believe just to believe. 'Tis a monster begot on itself, born on itself. Of course, it's possible that Nyhan simply didn't find the right intervention. Or that an intervention from a researcher has no effect, but the same intervention from a family doctor might. Still, Carroll is right: it's all kind of discouraging. It's nothing new, but still discouraging.

1It was the 1965 movie version with Laurence Olivier in blackface. Kind of disconcerting. But Frank Finlay was great as Iago.

UPDATE: More here from Dan Kahan, including a reminder that (a) vaccination rates in the US actually haven't declined over the past decade and (b) freaking out about a nonexistent problem is genuinely unhelpful. Also this:

The NR et al. study is superbly well done and very important. But the lesson it teaches is not that it is “futile” to try to communicate with concerned parents. It’s that it is a bad idea to flood public discourse in a blunderbuss fashion with communications that state or imply that there is a “growing crisis of confidence” in vaccines that is “eroding” immunization rates.


Much more at the link.

Putin Lets It All Hang Out at Press Conference

| Tue Mar. 4, 2014 9:06 AM GMT

Julia Ioffe says Angela Merkel was right: Vladimir Putin has lost his marbles. Here is her reaction to his televised press conference earlier today:




Other sources aren't quite as scornful as Ioffe, but they're close. The Guardian described Putin's remarks as "impromptu and occasionally rambling." The New York Times said he was "clearly furious." Adam Taylor of the Washington Post called it "a series of half-truths, circular reasoning, and bravado."

In any case, the main actual news of the press conference is that Putin said he saw no need to send forces into eastern Ukraine "yet," but reserves the right to do so in the future. So that's the latest.

Obama's Response to Russia Begins to Unfold

| Mon Mar. 3, 2014 10:51 PM GMT

As near as I can tell, every single Ukraine hawk agrees that we shouldn't even think about a direct military response to Putin's incursion into Crimea. Every single one. Instead they want a diplomatic response: economic sanctions, aid to Ukraine, asset freezes, visa restr—

Oh wait. What's this?

The United States prepared Monday to impose sanctions on high-level Russian officials involved in the military occupation of Crimea, as the escalating crisis in Ukraine prompted turmoil in global markets, pounding the Russian ruble and driving up energy prices....If Moscow does not reverse course, officials said they would ban visas and freeze assets of select Russian officials in the chain of command as well as target state-run financial institutions.

Hey, it looks like the weakling-in-chief is doing exactly what the hawks have been clamoring for him to do. But how about those economic sanctions?


And, um, how do the Europeans feel about this?

German officials emphasized the need for diplomacy, while Dutch diplomats ruled out sanctions for now. A British document photographed by a journalist said the government of Prime Minister David Cameron would not support trade sanctions or block Russian money from the British market....“It’s particularly important for the United States to bring Europe along,” said Julianne Smith, a former national security aide to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “To the extent that the United States tries to put economic pressure on Russian industry, they won’t feel the impact as much as they would if we had Europe standing with us. That’s easier said than done.”

Look: it's obvious that none of this stuff can be done overnight. So maybe the peanut gallery on the right should hold off on the sophomoric name calling for another day or two. Obama is already working on the unilateral actions that are open to him, and other, broader sanctions simply won't have any serious effect unless and until the Europeans go along. No president can make that happen with a snap of his fingers.

Right now, the catcalls from the right are little more than transparent political opportunism. Obama's "weakness" didn't provoke Putin's military incursion into Crimea. If anything, it was provoked by Putin's feeling that the West was gaining influence in Ukraine and he was losing it. Nor is Obama refusing to respond decisively. He is refusing to give in to hysteria, but he plainly intends to make Putin pay a price for his adventurism. The fact that this can't be done instantly is just a feature of the world, not a sign of fecklessness on Obama's part. It's time for everyone to stand down a bit and see how he plays his hand.

UPDATE: Turns out that Michael Cohen already said all this and more here. It's worth a read.

What's the Endgame for Israel?

| Mon Mar. 3, 2014 7:49 PM GMT



GOLDBERG: You sound worried.


