Morning Ed: World {2016.11.10.Th}
Yassin Al-Haj Saleh says that for all of its faults, Daesh is the lesser of evils as far as many are concerned.
The sad fate of refugees refused from Australia. Incidentally, a lot of Aussies are pretty happy about our election’s result.
Also maybe happy, the Governor of Okinawa.
It’s bad form to go to North Korea, fake being famous golfers, and bringing shame to your family.
Toby Orr explains why the Brexit and Africa are best buds.
In addition to the US, Putin may be picking up Estonia.
Welp, Michael Cain called it.
Rip.
Yassin Al-Haj Saleh” Hey that’s cool. But as “I am a secularist and a nonbeliever, an atheist” his head’s going to be on the block. Fine. I am totally cool with doing nothing to support or hinder DAESH. We should have never helped create it.
Australia: In case it’s not clear to the refugees and the rest of the world. Australia doesn’t want you.
Golf: Jebus that’s ballsey. On a related note: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3921156/Miley-Cyrus-posts-tearful-video-Hillary-Clinton-s-loss-begging-President-elect-Donald-Trump-treat-people-respect.html SWEET SWEET schadenfreude!
Cali: Go for it. Good luck getting it through all the 50 states.Report
I’m wondering how many of the celbs that claimed they would leave the US if Trump won actually will? We already ready have one, Amy Schumer, claiming that she was joking.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/305363-amy-schumer-says-vow-to-leave-country-was-a-jokeReport
Have any of the celebrities on either side followed up in the last 10 years? I recall folks on the conservative side saying they would leave if Obama were elected, or reelected, or if the SCOTUS upheld Obamacare. All the conditions for Rush Limbaugh’s promise to move to Costa Rica were met early last year.Report
All the conditions for Rush Limbaugh’s promise to move to Costa Rica were met early last year.
They legalized child prostitution?Report
Rip: put a cork in it?Report
Re Calexit… When California looks at where it gets its energy supplies, both now and in the future, they’ll figure out that they need the rest of the western states to go with them. Some years out, that’s not an overly tough sell — California can offer the western states a better deal than the US east of the Great Plains will be able to. The hard part will be — and it’s always been — convincing the states east of the Great Plains that it’s in their interests to let the West go, or at least not counter to their interests.Report
I still think this is mainly about venting. I also think a Federation with Canada is more likely than independent nations.Report
I already have friends who want the northeast to split off. Obviously it is venting, but then I wonder, how would it work out?
I can see the western states splitting. There would be much difficulty over water and energy, but it turns out they can buy things from their neighbors. Which is to say, the grid is still there. The markets will still exist. The energy suppliers will want to make money from energy consumers.
Water, on the other hand, would be tough. I don’t know the solution to that.
Likewise for the northeast. We are not totally self-sufficient, but the United States stopped being self-sufficient a long time ago. The question is, do we generate wealth? Can we buy things?
Would splitting from “red America” be to everyone’s mutual benefit?
I’m not the first to ask.
Smug prediction: the “coastal” states would do a better job caring for our people. We generate much wealth. We have better politics. We’re not stuck with the basket-case states like the deep south.
The “red states” have a lot of natural resources. They have wealth. But they are burdened with more of the “unnecessitariat,” who in turn seem to have embraced being the (I hate to say it but…) “deplorables.”
So what do you do in a market economy with ample natural resources, but in a competitive environment that rewards “large scale” and “automation”?
Would the midwest want to remain with the south? The great plains? Etc?
Tricky questions.
Meanwhile we smug coastal elites are inventing self-driving trucks…
Will shipping companies in the great plains want to buy them from us?Report
Yes they will. On a heartbeatReport
Good questions all, @veronica-d . Just rambling here…
Today’s it’s almost all venting. In 25 years, it will be more than that (and as I’ve said all along, it will be over issues about how to keep the lights on, not who sleeps with whom). The run-up to the Civil War started 30-35 years before the bullets started flying.
The western states are energy rich. It’s a design and investment problem, not a resource problem. The western states have always had a water problem, but have recently started addressing things more cooperatively rather than just fighting. Eg, the “right” way for western cities to buy water from western farmers is to help pay for the investments that make irrigation more efficient. In these cases, the federal government is, unless it takes considerable care, apt to be more of a wrench than a facilitator: the courts have said the feds can take as much water as they want, when they want, regardless of state interests; and the current federal model for how electricity markets are supposed to work isn’t (IMO) a real good fit to where the western states need to go.
How rich the NE urban corridor actually is is a really interesting question. Enormous amounts of money pass through Washington, DC at the south end (taxes) and NYC at the north end (trading and investments), and a certain percentage sticks as it goes by. Post any partition, a lot less money flows through. What’s the impact of that?
I’ve never been shy about the fact that I love the Great Plains geography and ecologies, much as some people love the mountains or the beaches. But the Great Plains is emptying out, and except for a couple of places where there’s still oil and gas, that trend is speeding up, not slowing down. The Poppers generally have the right of it: the greatest failed agricultural experiment in American history. The GP future is a 500-mile-wide buffer between East and West. As long as the interstates are there, shipping companies on both sides of the GP will cheerfully buy self-driving trucks to haul things across that stretch.
Other than Richard Florida (and Kim), who wants the Rust Belt?Report
I assume that DC would remain in the “red” United States. I’m thinking we’d get New England down to Pennsylvania.
I see no reason that NYC would cease to be an international finance hub. But more, it would remain a cultural mecca. People want to live there. They bring their passion and talent.
The taxes flowing into DC would be much less. But we’d still get our own taxes, which are not insubstantial.
Boston/Cambridge still has MIT. We still have biotech.
NYC has the second largest Google office. The office in Cambridge (where I work) is pretty large.
We have a lot of smart people. Smart people want to come here. Would that change?Report
I assume that DC would remain in the “red” United States. I’m thinking we’d get New England down to Pennsylvania.
The “natural” east-west partition is easy, and follows close to existing state lines — the center of the GP, where population and infrastructure networks from both directions peter out to almost nothing. By accident of history, Texas got El Paso, on the west side of the GP, and which looks a whole lot more like New Mexico than it does like the Texas Triangle (El Paso’s a bit closer to San Diego than it is to Houston). Some friends in Texas tell me that if there were a partition, Texas would probably be happy to let El Paso go.
To be honest, I have no idea if an “Eastern States of America” would hold together after a hypothetical east-west split. Light-hearted discussions of that subject here have brought out all sorts of opinions (many of which require splitting states). No question that NYC would remain a dominant force in whichever piece of a partition it is in. Would it dominate an independent WSA that includes California? My guess would be not, particularly in finance. Wouldn’t be allowed to, if there were “westbucks” and a new central bank to manage the currency.Report
Oh by “east,” I mean the “northeast,” by which I mean (roughly speaking) the Acela corridor, but maybe not all the way to DC.
I don’t fucking want North Carolina. Nor do I really care how “red” America splits up.
It’s just, all the states I cannot safely visit, why pretend they are my country. They are not. They hate me.Report
We have grown used to energy all around us. So much that we are like wet fish, ignorant of water being all around.
Because I know what is involved in producing it and transporting it, I cannot explain my awe that there is electricity to plug my screen not three feet away from where I sit. The grid is the most impressive feat of mankind (the conquest of America (All of it) by a bunch of XVI century guys crossing jungles on foot in barely 60 years being the second most impressive).Report
Right there with you on the grid. Given the constraints likely to exist in the near future (25-50 years), keeping the grid going is one of the fundamental questions for the 21st century.Report
The Huffington Post ending editor’s note that called Donald Trump ‘racist.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/11/the-huffington-post-ending-its-editors-note-about-donald-trump-231044
Why stop now if they truly believe it?Report
So here is Sandifer’s response to the events of the day: http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/site-editorial-111016/
I’m not going to endorse every word, but yeah, that’s pretty much how I see it.
[…]
These are not nice thoughts, but they are true, and far more energizing than (for example) Jaybirds facile notion that I just need to be nicer to those who hate me.Report
Yeah, keep going with that whole embody-the-stereotype thing. Because that has never ever turned out wrong in the history of humanity.Report
Funny, I just saw a party take control of the federal government doing that.Report
Christie is OUT as Trump’s transition chairman. Trump apparently understands the distinction between fishing and cutting bait when it comes to litigation (he’s a winner, he WINS!) and chose to catch-and-release Christie to the already chummed shark infested Bridgegate waters.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer … wait, he replaced him with PENCE!!??Report