Monday, a Saudi-led and US backed coalition air strike hit a livestock market in a suburb of Aden in southern Yemen, killing at least 45 people. This is all part of the Yemeni Civil War. There are three parties fighting: the Revolutionary Committee (led by the Houthis) and the Hadi government — both of which claim to be the Yemeni government — and Ansar al-Sharia. The United States supports the Hadi government, which I suppose is as good a choice as any. Being against Ansar al-Sharia, is a no-brainer, because they are allied with the Islamic State. But Aden is controlled by the Revolutionary Committee. And why exactly we attacked a livestock market is unclear.

I’m sure Saudi and US officials will say it is a mistake and war is messy and collateral damage blah, blah, blah. But The Guardian reported that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) say that “the Saudi-led coalition was failing to adhere to international law and was not taking the necessary precautions to prevent civilian casualties.” Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International released a statement that said, “The cases we have analysed point to a pattern of attacks destroying civilian homes and resulting in scores of civilian deaths and injuries.” Sarah Leah Whitson of HRW said, “These attacks appear to be serious laws-of-war violations that need to be properly investigated.”

In addition to being killed outright, there are currently 20 million Yemenis without access to clear drinking water. That maybe doesn’t sound too bad, but Yemen only has a population of 26 million. So we are talking about the vast majority of the people in the country. What’s more, over a million have had to flee their homes. According to Reuters, “The United Nations last week designated the war in Yemen as a Level 3 humanitarian crisis, its most severe category, and the United States and the European Union have endorsed calls for a humanitarian suspension of hostilities.” We would hope.

But the American involvement in this is typical shortsighted and juvenile policy. Basically, this is a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. So, without any thought to what is best, we just go with Saudi Arabia because they are our “ally” and they are fighting against our “enemy” Iran. Meanwhile, the instability in the region allows the Islamic State to get a very good foothold in Yemen. There is a very good case to be made for supporting the stable governments of the Middle East — especially after our spectacular move to destabilize the region with the Iraq War. But we don’t. America still can’t get over 4 November 1979.

In the mean time, civilians die. I was really struck by an eye-witness of Monday’s bombing who said there was “blood from people mixed with that of the sheep and other livestock at the market.” So the United States is calling for a humanitarian suspension of hostilities. But for three and a half months, we’ve been providing support for the bombing of civilians. According to The Wall Street Journal back in April, US Widens Role in Saudi-led Campaign Against Houthi Rebels in Yemen. Part of that widened roles was “vetting military targets.” Well, we did a great job on Monday.

We could have used the last few months to push for a peaceful settlement to this. But that isn’t the way we operate. It’s all about our supposed strategic interests. Humanity be damned.

Despite my tutoring, even managing to inspire my father to a full Democratic vote in the 2014 general election, he continues to watch Fox News one hour every weekday. It is Special Report with Bret Baier, and I know why he watches it: Charles Krauthammer. My father is a sucker for soft spoken, apparently thoughtful people. He is, interesting, also fond of Noam Chomsky. My father has never been that good with consistency of thought. Regardless, last night he asked me about Americans who run off to join ISIS. He wanted to know if they were crazy. I try to respond to such questions with sensitivity towards him.

You see, my problem is with the question itself. So I want to respond with something like, “Why do people engage in autocannibalism?” Because I’m pretty such that more Americans are explicitly eating parts of their bodies than are flying off to the Middle East to join ISIS. Back in February, US intelligence officials estimated that a whopping 150 people may have gone to Syria or attempted to do so. That’s less than 0.00005% of the population. There are about 16,000 homicides in the United States each year. Over half of those were committed with guns. Are these people crazy? Some percentage of them certainly are. If just 1% of them are crazy, then that’s more than all the Americans who have tried to fight for ISIS.

The problem is not just Fox News, of course. Every time I see some mainstream news, I’m horrified. Did you notice that we got through Independence Day without a terror attack? This should be big news after last week, when television news was filled with warnings about a threat focused on the holiday. Of course, those reports always came with a disclaimer at the end, “Government officials say they have no actual evidence of any plots.” In other words: there was no reason to be reporting about these concerns. I’m sure that government officials are worried every day that there will be a terrorist attack.

But there is no doubt that Fox News is the king of this kind of fear mongering. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters wrote an article for Salon over the weekend, Fox News Can’t Bear the Truth: Right-Wing Terror Groups Are America’s Gravest Threat. He noted something that relates to this directly, “Media Matters has also been shining a spotlight on the fact that not only does Fox News downplay homegrown acts of right-wing, anti-government and white supremacist violence, treating them as rogue, isolated events (if covering the events at all), they also hype beyond proportion and common sense attacks by Muslims in America.”

There are roughly three million Muslims in the United States. So if we assume that only Muslims are going over to Syria to fight for the Islamic State, that represents 0.005% of all Muslims. If anything ought to be dismissed as isolated events, it should be young Muslim men heading off to the Middle East to fight for… Actually, I don’t know what they go over to fight. It is a war between different Muslim groups, so it isn’t even a “Muslim versus the world” thing.

I don’t especially care that Dylann Roof is a bigot. Even without a well organized white supremacy subculture, angry young men like him will find a casus belli. But what’s important is that no one really questions that running off to join the global jihad is something that appeals to certain young Muslim men. It is not in any important way different from young socialists and fascists in the 1930s, running off to fight in the Spanish Civil War. The problem with Fox News — and to a lesser extent the whole of mainstream news — is that it doesn’t want to admit Dylann Roof is also part of a long standing narrative in the United States. Roof didn’t have a race war he could run away and join. So he tried to start his own here at home.

So are men who run off to fight wars crazy? From my perspective, they look like it. But in a country like the United States that is so warlike and that so fetishizes the military, the impulse itself can’t be considered crazy. It must be considered rational, given the assumptions of the young man. Those assumptions can noble or vile. But the act itself is not outside what we think of as acceptable behavior, as long as we agree with the cause. As a nation, we do not agree with the jihad cause. But we are more ambivalent about the white supremacy cause. And that’s what should really concern us.

One of the first things that the Republicans did during this term of Congress was to change the way that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “scored” proposed changes to the budget. The Republicans have long been upset that the CBO does not use “dynamic scoring.” This is when stimulative effects are taken into account. An example will help to explain it.

If you ask a Republican, she will very likely tell you that tax cuts pay for themselves. The proposed mechanism works as follows. If you cut taxes, the government will have less money coming in as a direct result — no one questions that. But given that people will have more money, they will spend it. This will stimulate the economy. The increased economic activity will increase tax revenues. There is no question that this does, in fact, happen: if you cut taxes by $100, it will hurt the budget by something less than $100. But no reasonable person thinks that the stimulative effect will end up with the full $100 in taxes being replaced. And the reason no reasonable person thinks this is because we have lots of experience with Republicans cutting taxes, saying it will pay for itself, and ending up with a big gaping hole in the budget.

But I’m not against dynamic scoring — as long as it is done reasonably. Part of the problem with introducing dynamic scoring in the CBO estimates is that it is hard to say exactly how much of this indirect effect will be produced. And that means that the whole thing can be politicized. But it doesn’t look like the CBO is turning into some kind of crank outfit that is going to say that cutting the top marginal tax rate to 25% would be a-okay because of stimulative effects.

But the Republicans have stacked the deck. That is clear from the CBO’s recently released report, Answers to Questions About Dynamic Analysis. You might be wondering, “If tax cuts partially pay for themselves, doesn’t government spending partially pay for itself because of its stimulative effect?” Yes it does! In fact, the mechanism is more direct. If you give out food stamps, they must be used. A tax break could just be hoarded. And in fact, some percentage of it will be. So anyone arguing for dynamic scoring who is being the least bit intellectually honest would call for the process on both taxing and spending sides of the ledger. But of course, that is not what the Republicans have instructed the CBO to do.

The CBO gives a special stimulus for tax cuts but not for extra spending. In an e-mail, Dean Baker told me that the base CBO model does include “some very modest productivity impact of public investment” — but that limited form of spending is “certainly on the low end of what research indicates.” The whole point of it is to weight the debate so that things like welfare programs look extra costly and tax cuts look extra thrifty. The whole thing is so frustrating. I really don’t mind that conservatives have different ideas on how best to create a booming economy. But this is just pure deception. And I don’t know of any liberals doing the same thing. In fact, liberals tend to under-sell their policy ideas.

But of course you won’t be hearing about any of this on the mainstream news. And I understand: it is too technical for most people. But CBO budget projections will continue to be quoted in mainstream news, as though they are the same as ever. And they won’t be the same as ever. There will now be a conservative thumb on the scale. And will be there at least as long as the Republicans control Congress.

There has been a lot of attention paid to the Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin article in The New York Times, Scott Walker’s Hard Right Turn in Iowa May Hurt Him Elsewhere. It’s about how a “growing number of party leaders” are unhappy with Scott Walker highlighting his extreme social conservative views. When I first saw it, I smelled a rat. But it would seem that most commentators are buying it. At No More Mister Nice Blog, Steve M wrote, Scott Walker Finds a Horse’s Head in His Bed. And Jonathan Chait wrote, Obama Picks a Labor Fight With Scott Walker.

Who Scott Walker is has never been a mystery — most especially for “party leaders.” Walker’s political problem — in both the primary and the general election — is that he looks very much like the candidate bought and paid for by the oligarchs. Remember back in April when David Koch said that he and his brothers supported Walker? This was immediately walked back, but no one doubts that Walker is the Kochs’ boy. And this is not just a problem among liberals. Remember: the Republican base goes along with the economic policy, but its focus is on social policy — most especially hating fags, spics, and welfare queens. Although easily manipulated by the power elite, the Republican base doesn’t like to see itself as the plaything of the rich.

So I see the Haberman and Martin article as part of an establishment campaign for Scott Walker, not a warning to him. This is a way for them help what looks day by day to be a flagging campaign. Walker has seen his polling drop from roughly 22% in April to less than 18% today. And given that Wisconsin boarders Iowa, it is expected that Walker will win big in the state. If he doesn’t, it means real problems for his campaign. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz — the man who Walker is supposedly chasing — has 6% in Iowa now — the same he had back in February. In addition, Mike Huckabee has seen his support go way down.

What this all means is that Walker is not catching on. Slipping support for other candidates — most especially social conservatives — are not benefiting Walker. Since Walker being very clear that he too hates immigrants and loves Jesus isn’t doing the trick, the power elite have stepped up their faux attacks, “He’s too much of a social conservative! This won’t play in a general election!” I’m sure they are just sad that Walker doesn’t star on a television show so that they could fire him to make him seem all the more authentic.

One of my biggest complaints about the Republican base is not that it is vile, because to a large extent it really isn’t. My complaint — similar to Thomas Frank’s — is that it is easily manipulated. No one understands this better than the Republican establishment. They understand what it takes to win elections. And they know that once in office, Walker will do just what they want him to — cut their taxes, savage the social safety net, destroy regulations. As much as Scott Walker’s hateful personality is a problem in a general election (and it really isn’t all that much), they know it can be whitewashed with a nice narrative about his being the son of a Baptist minister.

Maybe Haberman and Martin and Steve M and Jonathan Chait are right about the donor class freaking out about Walker. But I think this is naive. It seems much more likely that the oligarchs are trying to create a narrative about him being independent of themselves. And that’s exactly the kind of message the oligarchs would want to push about a politician who is absolutely a servant of the oligarchs.

Greek voted no to the austerity plan that the Troika was forcing on it. I’m a little surprised that it went down to such a stunning defeat, “Greeks voted by more than 60% to 40% in support of the prime minister.” This is much different from what the polls showed, which was that it was a tight race and that the margin would be razor thin. I’m thinking that the polling was skewed toward the rich. But it hardly matters. This is a good result, even for those who thought Greek should agree to decades more of crushing austerity. At least the current Greek government has a mandate.

Of course, I’m glad for the no vote because I think it was the right decision on the merits. I discussed this earlier today, The Shortsighted Viciousness of the Greek Haters. And it is the right decision in so many ways. But I think the most important way is that the no vote was a vote for democracy. If the Greeks had voted yes, they would have been admitting that democracy doesn’t exist. Or at least that democracy doesn’t exist if the Troika doesn’t like the government. Of course, this isn’t over. And the Troika will now do everything it can to make the Greek people regret this vote.

But we should be clear about what cannot be done. On Friday, James Galbraith wrote, Nine Myths About the Greek Crisis. His first myth was, “The referendum is about the Euro.” He noted that a lot of people had been talking about how a yes vote would make Greece exit the euro and the EU. Syriza — the Greek government — has always maintained that it is committed to both. It has been those who want to control Greece that have made claims otherwise. As Galbraith noted, “And legally, according to the treaties, Greece cannot be expelled from either.”

That doesn’t mean that the Troika won’t do everything it can to push Greece out of the euro. The European Central Bank (ECB) has already pursued policies designed to bully the country. In February, it stopped direct funding of Greek banks, only providing so called emergency liquidity — which was very expensive. And then a couple weeks ago — after Syriza backed out the negotiations and called for a referendum — the ECB capped support causing a bank run requiring the initiation of capital controls. It’s only going to get worse.

I must admit to being confused as to where things go from here. What I assume will happen is that the Troika — and really, pretty much all of Europe — will see this referendum as just another example of how terrible Greece is. And this will lead to the Troika doing everything in its power to harm the country. And it may just get to the point where Greece has no practical alternative to leaving the euro. I certainly think that’s the best thing for Greece in the long run. But it’s going to be very difficult — and dangerous — in the short term. I wish them the best. And I certainly hope that the Troika comes to be seen widely for the brutal and incompetent minions of the power elite that they have shown themselves to be over the last five years.