In Answer to a Trumper

I'm a poor straight white man. Why should I support your party's class warfare schemes when come the revolution I will be shoved to the bottom of the intersectional dung heap? – @AndrewStallard8 on Twitter

Because Trump and the Republican leadership have the utmost contempt for you and will take everything you have left. 

Look it up. Trump routinely stiffed people like you. 

If you're willing to be in the middle, not at the top or the bottom, we have a place for you.
https://twitter.com/AndrewStallard8/status/1209627317410107393?s=20

Second Thoughts

What the USA might do about the war with Iran: sit tight, remove Trump, apologize, negotiate. 
What the USA will probably do instead: escalate.
Fkity fkity fkity fk.

First Thoughts On Iranian Missile Attacks On US Bases

Feathered brothers and sisters, we eat tonight!
(There, got that done. As to the politics…)

I've been thinking over how the USA might best respond, if de-escalation is the goal. These are first thoughts based on very little research:

1. To begin with, stand our ground. The Iraqi Sunnis do not want to be part of Iran in all but name. I wonder if most of the Iraqi Shia do.
2. Iran is not likely to attack Israel with missiles; they know the Israelis will respond with overwhelming force. Hezbollah might undertake terrorist acts. I don't know if Iran is willing to target Dubai.
3. If a counterattack is to be mounted, it would be best to target the Iranian missile bases, but it must be a well-planned one; no bases can be left functional.

Do I think Donald Trump is likely to do the sensible thing? Nah. I think he will either escalate, or cower.

And a long loud series of raspberryish croaks to all the armchair warriors who were certain Iran would not respond, and another one to all the US politicians who didn’t grasp that Trump’s assassination of Soleimani was a de facto declaration of war.

Further Notes On The Assassination Of Qassem Suleimani

1. Soleimani was more of a general than a terrorist. He was a hero to many Iranians. He is now a martyr.
2. Many Americans writing about this war assume that Iran can do no harm to the United States. In this they are wrong.
3. Many Americans are believe that this war will end at the discretion of the United States. This is false.
4. The next US President will inherit a war. Any domestic policy agenda will be subordinated to the need to, at least, defend the USA.

World War I started because a tiny faction of the German leadership wanted a war. (See, for instance, David Fromkin's account in Europe’s Last Summer.) The German leadership most likely believed that their war would lead to a rapid victory over France, similar to that in the Franco-Prussian war. As Josh Marshall comments (paywall), “The one lesson that shines through most vividly from these events a century ago is the immense danger caused when one power believes it is running out of time to secure the advantages it believes it can secure only or most easily through war.” US hawks are now in that position, trying to consolidate foreign policy gains made during the Trump administration.

Cohen the Barbarian on a Proper King

“Look at history. Whenever you come across a king where everyone says, ‘Oo, he was a good king all right,’ you can bet your sandals he was a great big bearded bastard who broke heads a lot and laughed about it.

"But some king who just passed decent little laws and read books and tried to look intelligent…‘Oh,’ they say, ‘oh, he was all right, a bit wet, not what I'd call a proper king.’ That's people for you.” – Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

Initial Notes On The Assassination Of Qassem Suleimani

1. The assassination of Qassem Suleimani is a de facto declaration of war on Iran.
2. Trump does not understand Iran well enough to know who to target, so who told him to target Qassem Suleimani?
3. The Senate now faces a choice: impeach Donald Trump or abdicate its constitutional authority to declare war to the Presidency.
4. The House now may impeach Donald Trump for declaring war without the consent of the Senate.
5. “Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and I discussed the decisive defensive action @realDonaldTrump employed in Baghdad to protect American lives. I emphasized that de-escalation is the United States’ principal goal.” – Secretary of State Pompeo, tweet.
6. People are talking about preventing war with Iran. It's too late. There is going to be a response, probably not a conventional military response, but something brutal. At best, we can prevent escalation.
7. It is not clear to me that any peace with Iran can be remade. It may be Trump has entangled us in war for years to come.

The Best Green Future May Be Socialist

Writing the last two posts has been a wrenching experience. I knew, abstractly, just how big a task we face in decarbonizing the US economy, let alone the global economy, but laying out the problem with natural gas in the USA – only one fuel in only one country – brought home the scale of the problem. Hundreds of millions affected. 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas consumed in 2018. (Or, if you like, 850 billion cubic meters.) 7.5 billion barrels of petroleum. And we are to make a significant dent in this in just ten years?

Just dropping fossil fuel subsidies and eliminating hydraulic fracturing (fracking) within the USA would raise the price of natural gas significantly. Before fracking became a routine practice, natural gas cost roughly 2.75 times its current price. Abandoning fracking and subsidies would perhaps raise the price to 5 times its current level. There would be knock-on effects. Roughly 35% of US electric power comes from natural-gas fueled plants. But doing that alone would simply lead to a shift to petroleum, which is priced on an international market. So there have to be other changes: tariffs on imported petroleum to maintain parity with still-subsidized imported fuels as a start. This would raise energy prices overall. Plastics are made from natural gas and petroleum byproducts and those prices would also be affected. In turn, the prices of products made from plastics will rise.

Wind and solar energy might, if brought online fast enough, fill much of the gap in energy production, but those technologies have their limits. (I’ve written about this before, in several posts. Start with The Green New Deal: Running the Numbers.) And there are sure to be problems, because there are always problems.

The cascading changes and the need to respond to unexpected consequences demand a managed economy. Not managed in minute detail, no, there is no need to pre-calculate exactly the number of each type of widget a factory is to produce, but management that responds to gross systemic needs as they emerge. This is exactly what conservatives have been fighting against, all these years. In their fight, they rejected every moderate solution, until a managed economy is the best hope that remains.

If this is not quite the moneyless planned economy of communism, it is at least Keynes’ “somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment” and nearer to planned state socialism than anything that has previously been attempted.

The best green future may be socialist.