Or so says VOX's Zack Beauchamp-HT to Paul Waldman. My first thought on reading the title: well, that doesn't seem true but let's hope it is. Of course, I appreciate anything coming out of VOX seeing how much the conservatives hate it; man that Obama interview with Ezra Klein got them mad.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/02/president-obama-outvoxes-them-all.html
I wonder if that interview is part of what makes even my good conservative friend, Morgan Warstler, hate Ezra Klein so much.
https://medium.com/@morganwarstler/vox-com-uses-anti-federalism-to-make-americans-hate-each-other-327187201683
You know I see his point if we had kept the Articles of Confederation we would never have had slavery or segregation. Oh wait...
Look, I like Morgan, and I sincerely think he's about as smart a conservative as you'll meet-Sumner is pretty smart too-but at the end of the day they both have the same problem: they make unilateral demands. The first thing Morgan says with his GI 'This is how it's going to be and there's no negotiations.'
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/02/morgan-warstlers-cyb-or-let-them-eat.html
Morgan likens his stand to Milton Friedman walking away from a negative income tax if it wasn't done exactly his way-basically the end of welfare. Well, exactly: in other words Milton's proposal didn't happen and neither will Morgan's with that attitude.
The one thing that might help Sumner in spite of himself is Ken Duda who agrees with me that you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Sometimes you got to take second, third, or fourth best policy-heck, I'd take seventh best if it's a marked improvement over the status quo.
Sumner though is different from Morgan in that he has 2 basic tenets and as much as he might like to, there's no way he can stop us ultimately from using one but not the other.
1. Replacing inflation targeting with NGDP targeting
2. Monetary offset
Basically, lots of liberal-Keynesain types already have embraced 1 but of course have no interest in 2. For Morgan-and Scott himself-the real appeal is 2. Without 2, Morgan certainly wouldn't be interest in Market Monetarism.
Ok so ISIS is losing? It doesn't seem that way and at least ZB concedes that:
"If you want to understand what's happening in the Middle East today, you need to appreciate one fundamental fact: ISIS is losing its war for the Middle East."
"This may seem hard to believe: in Iraq and Syria, the group still holds a stretch of territory larger than the United Kingdom, manned by a steady stream of foreign fighters. Fighters pledging themselves to ISIS recently executed 21 Christians in Libya."
"It's certainly true that ISIS remains a terrible and urgent threat to the Middle East. The group is not on the verge of defeat, nor is its total destruction guaranteed. But, after months of ISIS expansion and victories, the group is now being beaten back. It is losing territory in the places that matter. Coalition airstrikes have hamstrung its ability to wage offensive war, and it has no friends to turn to for help. Its governance model is unsustainable and risks collapse in the long run."
"Unless ISIS starts adapting, there's a very good chance its so-called caliphate is going to fall apart."
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/23/8085197/is-isis-losing
Well, c'mon! No wonder the conservatives hate Vox so. How could it be that the President's foreign policy is working? Isn't it obvious that Obama is feckless, just the most feckless in the world. I mean who knows if he even loves his own country? He sure isn't passionate about it the way Bush was. If Bush were President ISIS would be over! What shows that you love your country are bellicose threats of war.
"Believe it or not, Iraq is looking better than anyone could have hoped six months ago"
"One year ago, ISIS was soon to launch the offensive in Iraq that, in June, would sweep across northern Iraq and conquer the country's second-largest city, Mosul. Today, the Iraqi government is prepping a counter-offensive aimed at seizing Mosul back, which the US believes will launch in April."
"In that year, the situation has changed dramatically. After ISIS's seemingly unstoppable rampage from June to August of 2014, the Iraqi government and its allies have turned the tide. Slowly, unevenly, but surely, ISIS is being pushed back."
"There's really nowhere where [ISIS] has momentum," Kirk Sowell, the principal at Uticensis Risk Services and an expert on Iraqi politics, told me in late January.
I just wanted to highlight some potential good news to start with. That the shrill GOP narrative of how ISIS is gaining everywhere may be overdone. One thing that's clear is ISIS surely isn't winning any friends among the Arab and Muslim countries either when you see the reaction in places like Egypt and Jordan.
UPDATE:It should be pointed out that the good news is about Iraq where evidently, most serious analysts agree that ISIS will lose in Iraq within 2 years.
http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/iraq-after-the-islamic-state-politics-rule/?singlepage=1
It's a different picture in Syria.
"Syria is a different story. ISIS has a firm hold on the Syrian city Raqqa and its environs; it's stronger there than it is anywhere in Iraq. No faction in Syria is in a position to challenge ISIS's core holdings, at least in the near term."
UPDATE:It should be pointed out that the good news is about Iraq where evidently, most serious analysts agree that ISIS will lose in Iraq within 2 years.
http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/iraq-after-the-islamic-state-politics-rule/?singlepage=1
It's a different picture in Syria.
"Syria is a different story. ISIS has a firm hold on the Syrian city Raqqa and its environs; it's stronger there than it is anywhere in Iraq. No faction in Syria is in a position to challenge ISIS's core holdings, at least in the near term."
"Still, ISIS's months of progress in Syria have stalled. And that bodes poorly for the group's long-term prospects."
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/23/8085197/is-isis-losing
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