My first reaction when I read this opening sentence fragment:

President Obama is dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to the Middle East…

was “We’re doomed!”

Nate Silver’s latest numbers find the Senate increasingly coming within Republicans’ grasp:

The FiveThirtyEight forecast model gives Republicans a 65.1 percent chance of winning the Senate with the new polling added, similar to the 63.5 percent chance that our previous forecast gave them on Friday.

But the path to a Republican majority is becoming a little clearer — and the problem for Democrats is that it runs through six deeply red states.

while Stuart Rothenberg sees a Republican wave forming:

While the current Rothenberg Political Report ratings don’t show it, I am now expecting a substantial Republican Senate wave in November, with a net gain of at least seven seats.

But I wouldn’t be shocked by a larger gain.

Rothenberg Political Report ratings reflect both where a race stands and, more importantly, where it is likely headed on Election Day. Since early polls rarely reflect the eventual November environment, either in terms of the candidates’ name recognition and resources or of the election’s dynamic, there is often a gap between how I categorize each race (my ratings) and what I privately assume will happen in November.

That gap closes as Election Day approaches, of course, since polling should reflect changes in name identification, candidate and party spending, and voter attitudes as November approaches.

Right now, for example, the Rothenberg Political Report/Roll Call Senate ratings suggest Republican gains in the mid-single digits. My newsletter has the most likely outcome of the midterms at Republican gains of 5 to 8 seats, with the GOP slightly more likely than not to net the six seats it needs to win Senate control.

Things must look very different in the six “battleground states” than they do in Illinois. My vision is clouded on this and I’m still seeing slight Republican gains but no wave.

Former Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker lays out his argument in favor of “defeating IS” and his strategy for doing so. I think he does a pretty fair job of making his case that the “Islamic State” should be confronted:

It is hard to overstate the threat that this organization poses. I call it al Qaeda Version 6.0. The Islamic State is far better organized, equipped and funded than the original. They are more experienced and more numerous. Several thousand carry Western passports, including American ones. All the terrorists have to do is get on a plane and head west. But perhaps the most important asset they possess is territory. For the first time since 9/11, a determined and capable enemy has the space and security to plan complex, longer-range operations. If we don’t think we are on that list, we are deluding ourselves.

but his case that it endangers us and that it should be confronted by us isn’t nearly as strong. HI strategy is:

• Increase the pace of airstrikes.
• Strike IS targets in Syria.
• “…continue an intensive, high-level political effort to help the Iraqis form an inclusive government that will bring Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds into a unified front to confront a common enemy. We will have to ensure that they have the weapons to prosecute a successful campaign. “

and that we should avoid supporting the Iranians or Assad and support “moderate Sunni forces” however they may be identified.

I am left with an enormous number of questions.

• Can ISIS be defeated by U. S. air power alone?
• Who is more threatened by ISIS? Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Europe, or the U. S.?
• Who should be most motivated to confront ISIS?
• What actions or ours would encourage and promote those priorities in confrontation and what would discourage them?
• What is the evidence Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Kurds in Iraq will ever unite to oppose ISIS? What should we do in the absence of such unity?

for a start.

Peter Beinart responds to the same Robert Kagan op-ed op-ed I commented on a couple of days ago:

For Kagan, the 1990s were “our version” of the 1930s too. “At the end of this bloody century, we all should have learned that appeasement, even when disguised as engagement, doesn’t work,” he wrote in a 1998 critique of Clinton’s China policy. “The word that best describes Clinton administration policy,” he wrote in an editorial with William Kristol the following year, “is appeasement.”

The analogy was bizarre then. The supposedly appeasement-minded Clinton administration went to war in the Balkans twice, the second time without UN approval. It extended NATO into Eastern Europe, spent more on defense than the next nine nations combined, and in 1998, bombed Iraq for almost three days straight, once again with no mandate from the UN.

And the analogy is bizarre now. “In the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” writes Kagan near the beginning of his essay, “it is the U.S. that seems to be yearning for an escape from the burdens of power and a reprieve from the tragic realities of human existence. Until recent events, at least, a majority of Americans (and of the American political and intellectual classes) seem to have come close to concluding not only that war is horrible but also that it is ineffective in our modern, globalized world.”

I think a couple of points need to be made. First, as I’ve noted before, I think it is clearer, just as was the case with the Bush Administration, to think in terms of a first term foreign policy and a second term foreign policy. The examples of Obama hawkishness Mr. Beinart submits as evidence were part of President Obama’s first term foreign policy. His self-described second term foreign policy is “don’t do stupid sh*t”.

Second, I do not fault the president for what he is not doing in Syria, Ukraine, or Iraq. I disagree with what he’s saying. I don’t think he should set rhetorical red lines and then walk them back or say that he would pursue miscreants to the gates of hell (or equivalent) unless that is what he intends to do. As I have said any number of times, I think the president should identify and prioritize U. S. interests, argue for that analysis and persuade people to agree with him, and take actions that would further those interests sufficient to the end.

It may be that the president’s not saying what he really thinks or that he knows that he’d get severe pushback if he were to say what he really thinks. But that’s the job.

Just so you don’t get the impression that my life is a bed of roses, let me give you a schedule of my typical day.

4:00am Rise. Clean up, prepare and eat breakfast.
7:30am Walk to where I’m picked up for work.
7:45am Picked up for woek
8:30am Arrive at client’s office
12:00pm Walk to Tessco (equivalent of 7/11—it beats the roach coach) for lunch
8:15pm Return to Bath with ride
9:00pm Find a place that’s still open for dinner
10:00pm Return to apartment, try to get to sleep.
11:30pm Sleep

When I read this:

The Chicago Sun Times, according to a poll released on September 1, shows that Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, may be in serious trouble in Illinois, a solidly blue state. The poll shows that Durbin is only seven points ahead of Republican Jim Oberweis. More troubling for Durbin, this establishment Democrat boss in a Democrat state polls only 47% of the vote, well below the 50% margin usually considered healthy for incumbents. Even worse for Durbin, the Libertarian candidate, Sharon Hansen, polls over 4% of the vote so that Durbin, if Oberweis woos those voters to his right, polls only two points behind Durbin.

Durbin’s problems are aggravated by a deep and wide malaise among Illinois Democrats. Governor Quinn is losing his battle for re-election, and the polls show increasingly that this race will likely become a Republican landslide. Quinn’s administration is generally considered a flop.

I could only think what in the world is he smoking? I would not vote for Oberweis for local school council let alone the Senate. The only reason that Oberweis is closing is that Durbin has barely started campaigning yet.

I believe that the only circumstance under which Durbin would lose is a Republican wave election so broad and deep that the Republicans gain ten seats or more in the Senate and twenty or more in the House, something nobody is predicting.

My prediction is the same as it has been for months: Democrats narrowly hold the Senate, Republicans increase their House majority slightly and nothing I’ve seen lately has dissuaded me from that.

Hidden beneath ten pounds of verbiage there is this kernel in Lawrence Summers’s lates Washington Post op-ed:

Why has supply potential declined so much? This will be hotly debated for years to come. Part of the answer lies in the effect of past economic weakness. Part of it is the brutal demographic realities of an aging population, the end of the trend toward increased women’s labor force participation and the exhaustion of the gains that could be won from an increasingly educated workforce. And part is the apparent slowing of productivity growth.

The emphasis is mine. Get it? The jig is up!

Here’s the Reader’s Digest summary of the op-ed: growth continues to be slow, the output gap between where we might have been and where we are now is large and growing, and the solutions are Keynesian pump-priming, immigration reform (presumably meaning accepting 10 million more unskilled workers and 1,000 more skilled workers), family-friendly workplaces (!?), pumping more oil and gas, and bringing our corporate tax system more into line with those of other OECD countries.

Let’s see a show of hands. Does anybody believe that those actions in aggregate will reduce the output gap?

This is the view from the apartment we’re staying in in Bath towards the main street.

And here’s a view of the garden.

Let’s take this column from Tom Friedman on how to defeat ISIS as a point of departure:

The way you defeat such an enemy is by being “crazy like a fox,” says Andy Karsner, the former assistant energy secretary in the last Bush administration and now the C.E.O. of Manifest Energy. “We have one bullet that hits both of them: bring down the price of oil. It’s not like they can suddenly shift to making iWatches.” We are generating more oil and gas than ever, added Karsner, and it’s a global market. Absurdly, he said, the U.S. government bans the export of our crude oil. “It’s as if we own the world’s biggest bank vault but misplaced the key,” added Karsner. “Let’s lift that export ban and have America shaping the market price in our own interest.”

But that must be accompanied by tax reform that puts a predictable premium on carbon, ensuring that we unite to consistently invest in clean energies that take us beyond fossil fuels, increase efficiency and address climate change. Draining our enemies’ coffers, enhancing security, taxing environmental degradation — what’s not to like? And if we shift tax revenue to money collected from a carbon tax, we can slash income, payroll and corporate taxes, incentivize investment and hiring and unleash our economic competitiveness. That is a strategy hawks and doves, greens and big oil could all support.

which invites a little thought experiment. How high a tax on oil would you need to impose to put pressure on Russia, Iran, and other nogoodnik oil exporters? What would the implications of such a tax be?

I think the first question has several components. As I understand it the price elasticity of demand for oil, that is the degree to which the demand for oil responds to increases in price, is generally thought to be quite small but not nonexistent. IIRC the short term price elasticity of gasoline is around -.09 and the long term is around -.3. In other words in the short term if you doubled the price of gasoline demand would decrease around 9% and in the long term around 30%.

Right now the price for WTI is around $95 a barrel. For an oil-based strategy to work you’d need to lower the net price of oil worldwide to $75 a barrel or below.

I submit that a tax on oil in the United States would have no impact whatever on the worldwide consumption of oil because Europe and North America aren’t the only major markets any more. There is a global market for oil and it is incredibly efficient with changes in behavior reflected in the markets everywhere practically instantaneously. China is a major consumer. So is India. If whatever we do actually lowers consumption, they’ll just step in to fill up the loss of demand. For such a tactic to work it would require the cooperation of all of the major consumers. In other words, I think it’s a futile tactic. It’s perfectly suited to the world as it was 35 years ago.

But let’s keep thinking about it, anyway. In the U. S. (just talking about at the federal level), people in the lower half of income earners pay FICA (payroll tax) and excise taxes (mostly the gas tax). People in the next 45 or so percentages in income pay FICA, excise taxes, and income taxes while people in the top 5% or so pay excise taxes and income taxes. Most of their income isn’t subject to FICA because of FICA max. In other words FICA and excise taxes are very regressive and while the income tax is mildly progressive.

The only tax you can lower without making our system even more regressive is the payroll tax. IMO it was obviously foolish to reinstate the tax once it had been suspended. How much of FICA actually falls on the bottom 50% of income earners? Not much as it turns out. I’ll have to dredge up the numbers but since FICA is a percentage of income and the lower 50% of earners don’t have that much income you’re limited to about 8% of that.

All of this is a formula for a tax increase on the poor and a tax cut for the rich. Like banks, it’s where the money is.

It doesn’t take a lot of that before commuting to work stops making sense. Or, said another way, we won’t stop until the last job is wrung out of the economy.

Update

If we really wanted to cut the price of oil, the best strategy we have for that not on the demand side but on the supply side. If that’s what we wanted to do, we should be producing a lot more oil.