I suspect that Karl Rove’s assessment of the primary results on Super Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal:

We’ve never seen two candidates wrap up their nominations this early. What could have been contests have turned into coronations. Yet both Messrs. Trump and Biden aren’t only weak contenders but massively flawed, old and declining, despised by much of America. In my lifetime there have been lower points in our nation’s politics, but it is hard to recall them just now.

sums up the views of quite a number of Americans. What concerns me even more is how many people will tie themselves into knots to convince themselves that wasn’t the case.

I think there’s one really telling passage in E. Wayne Merry’s consideration of European countries rearming themselves at 1945:

Most NATO members regarded their militaries and defense industries more as jobs programs than as national security because, after all, defense was the responsibility of the Americans.

Where could they have possibly gotten that idea? The answer is simple: we’ve been telling them that for the last 75 years.

Does no one see a conflict between defense being the responsibility of the Americans and Europe paying its share? Apparently not.

Here’s a fun little graph illustrating French, German, and British defense spending as a percentage of GDP:

In case you’re wondering here’s a graph of the GDPs of those country also from the World Bank:

It looks to me as though their real spending had declined. Clearly, they’ve believed us.

The editors of the Washington Post agree with the unanimous Supreme Court decision removing control over whether Donald Trump may appear on the ballot in 2024 out of the hands of state governments:

No, there is no one weird trick to keep former president Donald Trump off the ballot and out of the White House. That is the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court, which ruled Monday that the 14th Amendment does not authorize states to disqualify presidential candidates from seeking the office based on alleged oath-breaking and insurrection. This settles a legal controversy whose answer ought always to have been clear, leaving primary responsibility for preventing Trump 2.0 in the hands of voters.

I’ve read complaints about the decision on the grounds that the 14th Amendment should be self-executing but none of them have been accompanied by an explanation of that reasoning. Once again I think they’re trying to turn American jurisprudence into a civil code system.

At The Motley Fool Sean Williams points out something interesting—the M2 money supply is declining for the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s:

M1 consists of money in circulation plus demand deposits. M2 adds savings accounts, money market accounts, and certificates of deposit (CDs) below $100,000. Mr. Williams observes:

Since a growing economy requires more cash and coins in circulation to complete transactions, rising money supply is something economists and investors tend to take for granted and assume is a given.

But on rare occasions, U.S. money supply contracts in a big way — and that’s historically portended bad news for the U.S. economy and stock market.

In July 2022, U.S. M2 money supply peaked at an all-time high of roughly $21.7 trillion. Based on the Feb. 27 data release from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, M2 stood at $20.78 trillion, as of January 2024. All told, we’re looking at a year-over-year drop of 1.44% and an aggregate decline from the July 2022 peak of 4.21%. This is the first significant drop in M2 since the Great Depression.

It may be that after the astronomical increase in the money supply during COVID this is merely a reversion to the trend but that may not make any difference.

Fingers crossed that this development does not portend a deflationary recession. We may be running into a perfect storm.

As you presumably are aware the United States Supreme Court has reversed the ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court barring Donald Trump from that state’s Republican primary. Frequent commenter PD Shaw’s prediction of that outcome was materially correct. The decision was reversed and it was reversed on the grounds that the provision of the 14th Amendment is not self-enforcing.

The decision also satisfied my aspiration in that the justices agreed unanimously in the reversal (although there were differences of opinion in other respects). The big news is that it was 9-0. Although it should I doubt that will deter those who disagree with this decision from condemning it.

I want to call attention to Nate Silver’s most recent comments about Joe Biden’s polling data:

Democrats usually assume that they win elections though turnout rather than persuasion. It’s not a crazy proportion, by any means. But it looks like a losing approach for 2024.

Read the whole thing. You may find it interesting.

IMO Joe Biden’s problem is not only that the media has become more partisan but that Americans, generally, are becoming increasingly disenchanted with both political parties. Maybe securing an ever-higher percentage of a decreasing percentage of the population is a winning formula but I doubt it.

And maybe that’s one of the risks of both of our political parties becoming gerontocracies (rule by the old). Their reflexes are off. They may have worked 30 years ago but maybe not so well today.

I’m of sharply mixed mind about our air-dropping aid to Gaza. On the one hand I think our motives are good. However, I’m concerned that it’s a kneejerk response that hasn’t been thought out very well.

There are many factors behind that reaction. For one thing I think that either the Israelis have erred in their tactics in Gaza or it is their intention to remove or exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza, neither of which is morally defensible. What they’ve done was not the only approach to accomplishing their stated goals that was available to them.

For another thing I can see no moral justification for entering into Israel’s war against Hamas on Hamas’s side and there is danger of our doing that. A state that provides medical and/or material support for a belligerent “indiscriminantly”, to use the phrase being applied to Israel’s bombing of Gaza, is in a sort of gray area of the laws of war. Again, I think we’re well-intentioned but not particularly thoughtful.

One of the things that concerns me about the aid we’re providing to the Gazans it that I’m afraid that President Biden is trying to make a course correction. He was too supportive of Israel at the outset of the war and he may be too supportive of the Gazans now. As is not uncommon it’s harder to correct mistakes after they’ve been made than not to make them in the first place.

So, what should we think?

Last week there was one day in which no one was shot in Chicago: February 28. It’s the first such day I can recall.

I really, truly try to avoid sticking my nose into other countries’ political squabbles but sometimes I just can’t resist. So here it is. I won’t talk about it a lot.

I think what’s referred to as a “two-state solution” for Israel and Palestine is nonsense. IMO there is no solution to the problem between the Israelis and the Palestinians. A “one-state solution” in which Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank are all incorporated into Israel is neither just nor sustainable. Why? Simple—the number of Muslim Arabs would be greater than the number of Jewish Israelis. If the Muslim Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank get the vote, Israel would quickly cease being a Jewish homeland, liberal, or democratic. If Muslim Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank do not get the vote, Israel would cease being liberal and democratic by definition.

To understand why the “two-state solution” is nonsense just consider the situation of Gaza over the last couple of decades. There has been a de facto two-state solution in place over that period. Have the people of Gaza flourished economically, politically, or socially? No. Gaza has been an incubator for Islamist extremism. Why would a de jure two-state solution be any different? I don’t see it.

I think the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is what’s called a “wicked problem” but it’s not our wicked problem. We need to be a little less full-throated in our support for Israel than we have been.