Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid

“[W]hile there were indeed plenty of reasons not to vote for Kamala Harris, war was a big one of them and it was an issue that helped sink Hillary too. In fact, Donald Trump seems to win every time that he can successfully present himself as an isolationist and the Democrats just fucking handed him this costume in 2024. … While Trump may have made his triumphant return to the Oval Office billed as a man who managed the mild miracle of not invading a single country during his first term, the cold hard reality is that every single foreign policy disaster that Biden and Harris have recklessly inflamed was made possible by the policies of the ‘isolationist’ elected before them to make America great again.” (12/01/24)

https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-isolationist-shuffle-how-gop-became.html

Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen

“The statistic that best defines our politics over the past 20 years is this: Nine of the past ten national elections have resulted in a change in power in at least one chamber of Congress or the White House. (The sole outlier is 2012.) Several of those elections were considered at the time to be realignments that would lead to a sustained majority for one of the major parties. After Republicans defeated John Kerry in 2004 and snatched five Senate seats across the South, commentators believed social issues like gay marriage would set an unwinnable trap for Democrats. Hugh Hewitt wrote a book called Painting the Map Red, imagining a permanent conservative majority. Democrats then took the House and Senate in the 2006 midterms.” (12/02/24)

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-12-02-what-is-democratic-party/

Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
by Josh Blackman

“Back in August 2017, President Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio after he was convicted before he was sentenced. At the time, I wrote that the pardon was ‘premature,’ as the ‘preemptive pardon short-circuited the judicial process.’ … Trump’s pardon of Arpaio was criticized because he bypassed the DOJ Pardon Attorney. He unilaterally decided to issue the pardon. Hunter would have never qualified for a pardon set forth by the DOJ Pardon Attorney. Chalk up another victory for the unitary executive. … Trump was widely criticized for issuing a pardon to advance his personal interests. Arpaio was a big supporter of candidate and President Trump. The pardon was largely viewed as payback for a loyal supporter. Biden is in a similar position, though it is in many regards worse. This is not merely a political ally.” (12/01/24)

https://reason.com/volokh/2024/12/01/comparing-trumps-pardon-of-arpaio-and-bidens-pardon-of-biden/

Source: EconLog
by Pierre Lemieux

“This bout of protectionism is absurd. Consider: The president of the United States would force Americans to pay a tax on their imports of many products in order to incite foreign governments to control (including with the death penalty!) their producers of another product (Fentanyl) that many Americans want, or to incite foreign governments to prevent neighboring nationals from approaching American borders even if they are suspected of coming to America to work for Americans. It is not easy to find another sentence so full of economic absurdities. A related point that many people and apparently many high-level politicos do not seem to understand is the following. A tax on imports is also a quasi-tax on domestically produced substitutes — except that the latter tax is not paid to the government imposing it, but instead to the domestic producers of these substitutes.” (11/30/24)

https://www.econlib.org/some-aspects-of-economic-illiteracy/