Source: Eunomia
by Daniel Larison

“The president published another strange op-ed tying the wars in Ukraine and Gaza together. His immediate goal was to urge Congress to pass a bill funding more military aid for Ukraine and Israel, but to do that he insists on linking the two wars together as if they are comparable and equally worthy of support. This is the same line he has been pushing for months ever since he decided to try to use Congressional support for Israel to get more funding for Ukraine last year. It was a strained and unpersuasive argument six months ago, and now it is just insulting.” (04/18/24)

https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/bidens-moment-of-truth

Source: Beat The Press
by Dean Baker

“I am not ordinarily a celebrant for the state of the economy, but the media have been so over the top in pushing the economic doom story during the Biden presidency, that I feel the need to put some reality into the picture. One of the central lines among the doomsayers is that we are spending a larger share of income on housing and that for many it has become altogether unaffordable. I will agree that housing is a serious problem. … but a big part of that story is that we are spending a much smaller share on other things. … In 1947 we spent 23.0 percent of our income on store-bought food. This had fallen to just 7.1 percent last year. The share of income going to buy clothes fell from 10.3 percent to 2.6 percent. The share for buying household furnishings dropped from 5.5 percent to 2.5 percent.” (04/17/24)

https://cepr.net/in-the-good-old-days-one-fourth-of-income-went-to-food/

Source: Libertarian Institute
by Ted Snider

“Iran’s chosen response to the fatal strike on its embassy seems not to have been about retaliation nor escalation. If it had been, they would have fired more missiles than drones, and they would not have announced the drones as soon as they were launched nor declared the operation ‘concluded’ before they arrived. They would not have shared in advance the details and timing of the operation with Saudi Arabia, other Gulf countries, and Turkey, a member of NATO, who then, predictably, shared it with the United States. The chosen response was about re-establishing deterrence.” (04/17/24)

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/this-weekend-iran-changed-everything

Source: Reason
by Eric Boehm

“Just four days ago, the Biden administration launched a new line of attack against former President Donald Trump and his campaign trail promise to hike tariffs if he is elected in November. Those higher tariffs would be ‘inflation-feeding welfare for the rich’ that would raise prices for consumers, according to an Axios summary of a White House memo. The shift in messaging, The New York Times reported, was an attempt at ‘recalibrating’ Biden’s economic message in the face of stubbornly high inflation and the persistent sense among voters that the economy is not doing well. In effect, this is an attempt to remind voters that Trump’s economic plans include the deliberate goal of artificially inflating prices — because that’s what tariffs do. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden called for hiking tariffs.” (04/17/24)

https://reason.com/2024/04/17/bidens-call-for-more-steel-tariffs-is-economically-ineffective-political-pandering/

Source: In These Times
by Alex Han

“The Left in the United States is arguably at a point of greater political power today than at almost any time in the past century. More than 100 open socialists hold office across the country, from Tacoma, Wash., to St. Petersburg, Fla., from school boards to the halls of Congress. But no advance comes without a counterattack, and the same context that has opened the space for a resurgent Left over the past decade also holds the conditions that could close that space for a generation. We look back at the post-war era as the moment that created the modern world order, and the deep contradictions involved then are reasserting themselves as we travel into uncertain times — with new economies and politics buttressed by broken institutions on a crumbling foundation.” (04/16/24)

https://inthesetimes.com/article/political-coalition-left-win-war-protest