The Rise of the Populist Parties

The US isn’t’ the only Western country with political party challenges.  Europe is changing, as well:

Populist parties pit the good, the honest, ordinary voter against the out-of-touch, liberal mainstream political elite,” the writer Jamie Bartlett said in the left-wing New Statesman weekly in Britain. “They claim to represent the former against the latter, an authentic and common sense voice in a world of spin and self-interest.”
“It is not the extreme right that is on the march across Europe,” he said, “but a much wider rejection of mainstream, established politics.”
Via A Challenge to European Political Elite | NYT.com

Post-Attack in Kenya

What will the impact of the Shabab attract be for Nairobi? Jeffrey Gettleman, the East Africa NYT Bureau Chief explains:

I had this sinking feeling that when the Shabab finally gave up any hope of ruling Somalia, they would strike Nairobi. They had been reluctant before, because Nairobi was their back office, where the white-collar Shabab lived, the accountants, financiers and logisticians. The instant they hit here, the Shabab leaders knew, Nairobi’s Somali community would fall under such intense pressure and scrutiny that it would be impossible to do business

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“Zero Problems with Neighbors”

If the Middle East seems hard to understand for Westerners, try being Turkey:

The Middle East is a place of fast-changing fortunes these days. Just ask the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Not so long ago neo-Ottomanism was the vogue phrase to describe Turkey’s expanding regional influence, pursued under a catchy dogma of “zero problems with neighbors.”
Now there are zero neighbors without problems. Syria is first among them. Erdogan’s fulminations over the suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the treatment of the Sunni opposition in Syria have the air of the unbalanced outbursts of a lonely man whose moderate Islamism has morphed into an immoderate fury.

Via Roger Cohen, IHT

A Negotiation Guide for Republicans

Yes, it has the makings of a classic movie Mexican-standoff.  But the debt deal that pits a Tea Party-infused Republican party against a President who talks about negoitating with Putin (but not his opposition party!) have a good bit of work ahead of them.  How to proceed?

In Bloomberg View, Rohit Kumar offers advice to the Grand ol’ Party:

As the former deputy chief of staff for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, I spent many nights and weekends in the Capitol helping broker the last three fiscal agreements between Congress and the Obama administration: the 2010 extension of the George W. Bush tax cuts, the 2011 debt limit increase and the 2013 fiscal cliff deal. These talks have a rhythm, and what we’re seeing now is a predictable pre-negotiation alignment by the two sides.

Obama’s refusal to negotiate is pure posturing, an opening bid. The president seems to hope congressional Republicans will move from their preferred starting position — repealing Obamacare and securing budget savings equal to the amount of the debt-limit increase — to a middle ground that will “force” him to come to the table. Republicans could seek a delay of the individual and employer insurance mandate, the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, or both, instead of a full repeal of the health-care law. The more reasonable the Republicans’ request is, the harder it will be for the president to refuse to engage them.

via How Republicans Can Win Debt Fight – Bloomberg.

The strategy is based on the notion that there is a solid constituency for Tea Party Republicans to do what they say they will do–namely, shrink the Federal government by any means necessary.

And then rather than talk about deficits, Greece, entitlements, and how the size of government is unsustainable, Republicans should go the optimistic route; talking about how the federal government’s loss is the private sector’s certain gain. Indeed, they should talk about how much more we’ll have, including many more Microsofts, Intels, and Apple AAPL +1.15% products that will make the iPad seem dated, if the size and cost of government shrinks. They should talk about how Henry Ford’s quite speedy ability to mass produce the once unimaginable luxury that was the automobile was directly related to his being able to retain Ford Motor F +2.25% Company’s profits in order to re-invest in the perfection of car manufacture. They should talk about how Jeff Bezos, Fred Smith and Warren Buffett are much better allocators of capital than are John Boehner, Harry Reid and Barack Obama.

It doesn’t take a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag to make you appreciate this approach? None other than MSNBC Harball’s Chris Matthews calls the Ted Cruz strategy “genius” for its clarity of purpose and chances for success.

U.N. Climate Panel Endorses Ceiling on Global Emissions – NYTimes.com

The line has been drawn in the sand.  But what comes next is still a question–both diplomatically as well as economically:

The panel, in issuing its most definitive assessment yet of the risks of human-caused warming, hoped to give impetus to international negotiations toward a new climate treaty, which have languished in recent years in a swamp of technical and political disputes. The group made clear that time is not on the planet’s side if emissions continue unchecked.

“Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes,” the report said. “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”

via U.N. Climate Panel Endorses Ceiling on Global Emissions – NYTimes.com.

Have a Nice Day, N.S.A. – NYTimes.com

Brazil’s president pulled a “Dilma Bolada.” Everyone else in the one of the world’s newest rising powers has another strategy to confound the NSA:

It has become something of a joke among my friends in Brazil to, whenever you write a personal e-mail, include a few polite lines addressed to the agents of the N.S.A., wishing them a good day or a Happy Thanksgiving. Sometimes I’ll add a few extra explanations and footnotes about the contents of the message, summarizing it and clarifying some of the Portuguese words that could be difficult to translate.

Other people have gone so far as to send nonsensical e-mails just to confuse N.S.A. agents. For example: first use some key words to attract their surveillance filters, like “chemical brothers,” “chocolate bombs” or “stop holding my heart hostage, my emotions are like a blasting of fundamentalist explosion” (one of my personal favorites, inspired by an online sentence-generator designed to confound the N.S.A.).

via Have a Nice Day, N.S.A. – NYTimes.com.