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The odds of moving up — or down — the income ladder in the United States have not changed appreciably in the last 20 years, according to a large new academic study that contradicts politicians in both parties who have claimed that income mobility is falling. …

The story of many on the left is that America was humming along nicely until Reagan rigged the system for the rich.  Carter’s loss ended the hopes of the working class.  It was a convenient story, but now we know it’s basically false.

Within the bill is a significant shift in the types of farmers who are now benefiting from taxpayer dollars, reflecting a decade of changing eating habits and cultural dispositions among American consumers. Organic farmers, fruit growers and hemp producers all did well in the new bill

An emphasis on locally grown, healthful foods appeals to a broad base of their constituents, members of both major parties said.

hile traditional commodities subsidies were cut by more than 30 percent to $23 billion over 10 years, funding for fruits and vegetables and organic programs increased by more than 50 percent over the same period, to about $3 billion.

Before Asians, Hispanics and all the other groups can be won with economic plans, they need to feel respected and understood by the G.O.P. They need to feel that Republicans respect their ethnic and cultural identity. If Republicans reject immigration reform, that will be a giant sign of disrespect, and nothing else Republicans say will even be heard.

This is what so many on the right just don’t understand. Their very arguments against universal healthcare and gay marriage and immigration reform are all made as if the working poor, gays, and illegal Latino immigrants were not in the room.

we are not dealing with actual conservatives, prepared to negotiate or reform the bill for the better. We are dealing with what Richard Hofstadter called “pseudoconservatives” – alienated, paranoid, visceral loathers of any concession to the party that just won popular vote majorities for House, Senate and the presidency.

Mr. Xi has indicated that proposed economic reforms would not be accompanied by any significant political relaxation. He has instead repeatedly stressed his loyalty to party traditions and political orthodoxy

Chinese state-run news media featured a commentary from the official Xinhua news agency that warned that if China embraced democratic ideas promoted by liberal intellectuals, it would succumb to turmoil worse than that in the Soviet Union after the collapse of Communism.

How big a deal is the surprise primary defeat of Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader? Very. Movement conservatism, which dominated American politics from the election of Ronald Reagan to the election of Barack Obama — and which many pundits thought could make a comeback this year — is unraveling before our eyes.

For around three decades, the conservative fix was in; but no more.

the strategy famously described in Thomas Frank’s book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” in which Republicans would mobilize voters with social issues, but invariably turn postelection to serving the interests of corporations and the 1 percent.

With the government’s budget year having concluded at the end of September, the Congressional Budget Office now estimates that the deficit for 2014 was 2.8 percent of G.D.P., down from 4.1 percent last year

The deficit is now smaller than its average over the past 40 years of 3.1 percent.

The deficit has declined in each of the past five years, and is now markedly smaller than the deficit (9.8 percent) registered in the 2008-09 fiscal year.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi travels to Berlin on Tuesday, where German leaders are ready to roll out the red carpet for the ex-general despite his government's abysmal human rights record.

But with much of the Middle East plunged into violent chaos in the years since the Arab Spring uprisings, Western nations have once again come to see many of the region's autocrats as partners for stability.

Just this past Sunday, Egypt's state-sanctioned rights body criticized the practice of detaining suspects for extended periods pending the filing of formal charges and trial. It said that at least 2,600 people were killed in violence in the 18 months following Morsi's overthrow, nearly half of them his supporters.

He basically put together every modest, centrist, reasonable-sounding idea for public investment aimed at job creation and economic growth that anyone has ever uttered; and he did so at the exact moment that the GOP has abandoned the very concept of public investment altogether. He’s thrown into relief the fact that Republicans no longer seem interested in any government efforts to boost the economy, except where they offer an excuse to reduce the size and power of government.

for everybody else, the contrast between a Democratic president with a lot of small, familiar ideas for creating jobs and growth, and a Republican Party with just one big idea, is inescapable. It’s a vehicle for the “two alternate futures” choice which Obama will try to offer voters in 2012.

However wrongheaded you believe your ideological opponents to be, laying “all that ails the world” at their feet represents an absurd politicization of human affairs, and a spur to the most self-deluding sort of utopianism. After all,

what ultimately ails the world is its inherent imperfectibility — its fallen character, if you’re a Christian; its irreducible complexity and tendency toward entropy and dissolution, if you’re a strict materialist.

Particularly in a liberal democracy like ours, where the range of policy disagreement is relatively narrow by historical standards and nobody’s actually a Nazi or a theocrat, the beginning of political wisdom is the recognition that only a small fraction of existing human suffering can possibly be relieved by voting in one party or the other.

What is a neoconservative? From the etymology of the word, it should refer either to someone who has newly become conservative—having been born a little liberal—or to someone who has revised conservatism into something new, without causing it thereby to cease to be conservative. It should, perhaps, refer to a political perspective that takes il Gattopardo’s maxim, “everything must change so that everything can remain the same,” very much to heart and to whatever lengths necessary.

In 1976 Kristol asked, “What is a ‘Neoconservative’?” and answered, in so many words, someone who wants to make liberalism work. Someone with a preference for incorporating market mechanisms into regulatory policy rather than operating by bureaucratic fiat. With a hostility to the erstwhile “counterculture” and a preference for art or “quality.” Who believes in providing equality of opportunity rather than mandating equality of result. And who holds to a conviction that a world hostile to American values will also be hostile to American interests.

“Neoconservatism … had no program of its own. Basically, it wanted the Republican Party to cease playing defensive politics, to be forward-looking rather than backward-looking … the substance of any specific agenda may not have much to do with neoconservatism, but the moving spirit does.”

71 percent of Republicans in the poll agree that President Obama is a socialist. But 75 percent of them don’t think that the government should end Social Security. 78 percent think that ending Medicare would be a bad idea. And 61 percent say the same about Medicaid (health care for the poor).

Perry’s famously stated that Social Security is a “ponzi sceme,” and has consistently defended that assessment. But only 33 percent of those polled thought was an accurate description of the program, versus 53 percent who didn’t. That means there is significant group, a 16 percent gap, between people who agree the program is a crime (ponzi sceme) but support eliminating it, which was the position of only 17 percent. In other words, despite the fact that Social Security is a federal offense, we should keep it anyway.

on the fight between the science and anti-science sets of the Republican party, 27 percent think that global warming exists, but 27 percent also believe that natural disasters are caused by God, as Michele Bachmann “joked” at a campaign apparence.

the problem with Greece is much more profound than most politicians and analysts have so far calculated. In stark reality, and far more dangerously than its present financial crisis threatening the euro project, Greece looks like a failed EU state, which, as such, puts at risk the stability of the entire European project. This is why a European political, rather than simply economic, plan for rescuing Greece must become a most urgent priority.

failed states, according to the definition provided by the Crisis States Research Centre of the London School of Economics, can no longer reproduce the conditions of their own existence and, therefore, are under threat of imminent collapse.

Greece’s increasing difficulty in coping with border security as tens of thousands of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers enter each year from Turkey.

In the first round of the French municipal elections on Sunday, the answer was not complicated: disenchantment with the Socialist administration of François Hollande, the most unpopular in modern times; fatigue with political scandals; and deep pessimism that either of the traditional parties of Left or Right is capable of addressing France’s structural and social ills.

The National Front fielded candidates in fewer than 600 of 36,000 municipalities, and won about 5 percent of the total vote, compared with 47 percent for the center-right Union for a Popular Movement and 38 percent for President Hollande’s Socialists.

Let me put this as baldly as I can. The US fought two long, brutal wars in its response to the atrocity of September 11, 2001. We lost both of them – revealing the biggest military machine in the history of the planet as essentially useless in advancing American objectives through war and occupation. Attempts to quash Islamist extremism through democracy were complete failures. The Taliban still has enormous sway in Afghanistan and the only way to prevent the entire Potemkin democracy from imploding is a permanent US troop presence. In Iraq, we are now confronting the very same Sunni insurgency the invasion created in 2003 – just even more murderous. The Jihadism there has only become more extreme under a democratic veneer. And in all this, the U.S. didn’t just lose the wars; it lost the moral high-ground as well. The <img class="alignright wp-image-138319" src="https://sullydish.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/troopsjoeraedlegetty1.jpg?w=398&h=265" alt="" width="398" height="265" />president himself unleashed brutal torture across all theaters of war – effectively ending any moral authority the US has in international human rights.

These are difficult truths to handle. They reveal that so many brave men and women died for nothing. And so we have to construct myths or bury facts to ensure that we maintain face. But these myths and amnesia have a consequence: they only serve to encourage Washington to make exactly the same mistakes again

This is not just a Republican fixation. It’s a function of the hegemony reflexively sought by liberal internationalists as well.

Few in Republican Party politics believed when Trump launched his improbable White House bid in June that he'd still be a factor -- much less the factor -- at the end of the year.

topped national polls since he entered the race, and in the latest CNN/ORC poll last week he was at 39%, double his nearest challenger.

He's not like the normal Washington crowd because he says things most people are afraid to.

A brawl erupted after Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was dragged from the podium, which led to other members rushing in to join the scuffle.

The prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, had been answering questions at the rostrum and apparently angered a member of Parliament, Oleg Barna, with one response. Mr. Yatsenyuk had deflected a criticism of his cabinet’s energy policy by noting the energy minister is a member of Mr. Barna’s party.

Mr. Barna handed the bouquet to the perplexed Mr. Yatsenyuk, then set upon him, apparently trying to lift and carry off the prime minister, who resisted only by clutching the wooden rostrum. The brawl ensued as supporters of Mr. Yatsenyuk rushed to his defense, and then fought with backers of Mr. Barna.

Does Mr. Romney really think that his party would look more favorably on Obamacare if it worked even better than it has, if it cost no money at all? If so, he’s delusional. After all, the great majority of Republican-controlled states have turned down free money, refusing to let the federal government expand Medicaid (and in so doing pump money into their economies).

from the point of view of the Republican base, covering the uninsured, or helping the unlucky in general, isn’t a feature, it’s a bug. It’s not about how much it costs in taxpayer funds or economic impact: the base is actually willing to lose money in order to perpetuate suffering.

Turnout has been high in Tanzania's most competitive general elections, officials say, as a new opposition coalition tries to end the governing party's 54-year grip on power.

Opinion polls have put the governing Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party ahead, but the result is expected to be close.

President Jakaya Kikwete, who is standing down after two terms, has called for peace ahead of the election, adding that "anyone who tries to cause trouble will be dealt with".

In the 1990s, the central political institutions radiated confidence, derived from an assumed vision of the post-Cold War world. History would be a slow march toward democratic capitalism. Nations would be bound in peaceful associations like the European Union. The United States would oversee a basic international order.

This vision was materialistic and individualistic. Nations should pursue economic growth and a decent distribution of wealth. If you give individuals access to education and opportunity, they will pursue affluence and personal happiness. They will grow more temperate and “reasonable.”

Since 2000, this vision of the post-Cold War world has received blow after blow. Some of these blows were self-inflicted. Democracy, especially in the United States, has grown dysfunctional. Mass stupidity and greed led to a financial collapse and deprived capitalism of its moral swagger.