The Londoner

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.,  announced a bipartisan budget deal  that, if approved, will prevent another possible government shutdown in January. Top Republicans such as House Speaker John Boehner and Democrats such as President Obama and Nancy Pelosi are  saying they will support the bill : "This agreement makes sure that we don't have a government shutdown scenario in January. It makes sure that we don't have another government shutdown scenario in October," Ryan said. "It makes sure that we don't lurch from crisis to crisis." So, a deal is in place ( go here to read a quick breakdown ), ready for approval, and a shutdown can be avoided. Everyone's happy, right? Of course not. The deal has plenty of critics from both  Republicans  and  Democrats . According to U.S. News and World Report : The deal will require both Republicans and Democrats to make concessions on their p

Washington has temporarily halted military supplies moving by ground out of Afghanistan along a key route through Pakistan , according to news agencies, citing safety concerns for its truck drivers. Activists have been staging protests along  key NATO supply routes  in Pakistan since November, after a drone strike killed the leader of the  Pakistani Taliban shortly before peace talks between the militant group and the government began. Some protestors have been detained for allegedly harassing truck drivers, according to  reports . Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan , head of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, has been leading the protests in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province , where his party is in power. On Dec. 3, Khan  told the  Express Tribune  that PTI is also considering blocking supply routes that run through Punjab province and Balochistan. Read the full story here.  Related Posts: 1. Russia and America's New Arms Race - J. Michael Cole, Flashpoints

In response to the first half of the question, and bowing to the contemporary wisdom that anything can be reduced to the length of a tweet, I offer up this definition: American liberalism is belief system that combines egalitarian impulses with a conviction that markets often fail and that the government should seek to address these failures. (Actually, that’s about one and a half tweets, but never mind.) Now to how liberalism is faring . If you’ve been reading some of the articles out of Washington in recent weeks, you may have received the impression that it’s an endangered creed, and that the troubled rollout of the Affordable Care Act might just about finish it off. I’m not just referring to the coverage in conservative outlets like the  National Review , the Weekly Standard , and the op-ed page of the  Wall Street Journal , which have been publishing obituaries of liberalism for decades. In mainstream and even liberal publications, some of the best columnists in Washington

By Sikander Hayat  Finally Iran has agreed to conditions set by the West to freeze the uranium enrichment at a level which is below the weapons grade. There will be full international inspection of Iran’s nuclear plants and if Iran goes back on any of the pledges that it has made to the international community, all sanctions will come into action again. This is wise move by Iran but this is not the final agreement and just an initial understanding. Iran also need to stop harassing its neighbours by supporting Shia groups in these countries. It also has to stop trying to export the shia revolution to other countries. Only once these conditions are met, Iran can become a full member of the international community. International community also needs to help Iran to move towards full democracy and loosen the hold of Mullahs on Iranian nation. A democratic Iran will be a less of a danger for the neighbourhood than the current regime in Tehran. If the West had not conspired agains

By   EDWARD WONG BEIJING — For almost two years, hackers based in Shanghai went after one foreign defense contractor after another, at least 20 in all. Their target, according to an American cybersecurity company that monitored the attacks, was the technology behind the United States’ clear lead in military drones . “I believe this is the largest campaign we’ve seen that has been focused on drone technology,” said Darien Kindlund, manager of threat intelligenc e at the company,  FireEye , based in California . “It seems to align pretty well with the focus of the Chinese government to build up their own drone technology capabilities.” The hacking operation, conducted by a group called “Comment Crew,” was one of the most recent signs of the ambitions of China’s drone development program. The government and military are striving to put China at  the forefront of drone manufacturing , for their own use and for export, and have made an all-out push to gather domestic and intern

By Sikander Hayat Current crisis on the line of control in Kashmir could have been handled well by the Indian establishment but the fact that it did not morph into a full blown crisis augers well for the future prospects of peace but there is an open question of Afghanistan hanging over India & Pakistan relations. If India decides to have a footprint in Afghanistan than Pakistan will fight tooth and nail to keep the eastern & southern Afghanistan in its sphere of influence as it is vital for the security of Pakistan to have these areas in Pashtun hands. USA should have conceded this fact a long time ago and this Afghanistan war could have ended few years earlier rather than going on until now and ending with a potential humiliation for the Western alliance . Pakistan has legitimate interest inAfghanistan and Pakistan has been trying to convey this message since the American invasion nearly 12 years ago. Pakistan & India need to reach a grand bargai

Steep U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan brings substantial risks The Obama administration appears determined to vacate Afghanistan as fast as possible. If the latest leaks are to be believed, officials are willing to leave as few as 6,000 U.S. troops behind after 2014 , concentrated at the Bagram air base and a few other installations around Kabul . The mind boggles at what this would mean in military terms. Consider one simple fact: Kandahar , the city where the Taliban movement started, is 310 miles southwest of Kabul . Imagine that intelligence analysts have identified a “high-value target” — say, a terrorist facilitator with links to both al-Qaeda and the Taliban — in Kandahar. How would the U.S. military capture or kill him without a secure base in Kandahar ? This scenario is, on some level, fanciful, because the lack of a U.S. presence on the ground around Kandahar would make it very difficult to generate useful intelligence. Ho

“A modest man,” Winston Churchill supposedly quipped about Clement Attlee , his successor as primeminister , “but then he has so much to be modest about.” We should say the same about economists, particularly their ability to forecast anything in a useful and timely manner. Those predicting an imminent American economic decline have usually been no exception. This time, though, they may be on to something. Prevailing arguments about when the era of U.S. dominance would end, and which country would supplant it, have been wildly and consistently wrong for half a century. In the 1950s, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was taken seriously when he told Western ambassadors “We will bury you.” Japan was supposedly going to be No. 1; now the question is whether the precipitous decline in its working-age population will generate a fiscal crisis. Today, his country no longer exists. In the 1980s, The Germans -- or Europeans more broadly -- were thought to be on the b

The requisites for a U.S. secretary of state , along with intelligence and judgment, are a knowledge of foreign policy, an understanding of domestic politics, and, ideally, first-hand experience of what President Dwight D. Eisenhower called the “brutality and stupidity” of war. Senator John Kerry , who was tapped by President Barack Obama to succeed Hillary Clinton , checks off all those boxes. He has been an engaged diplomat, a successful politician with gravitas and a decorated combat veteran. Much of his 28-year Senate career has focused on national security. He was among the few young Americans of privilege who fought in Vietnam . Clinton , though unlike most modern-day secretaries of state, he understands how U.S. politics affects foreign policy on issues from the Middle East to China . Massachusetts Democrat has won six statewide races. He knows how Washington works. Like The 69- year-old “Senator Kerry was the most prominent choice of most people o

Wayne LaPierre and the NRA : so defensive it was downright offensive The leading gun rights lobbyist gave a performance so tone-deaf that only he missed why 'put more guns in Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice-president, called reporters 'irresponsible, duplicitous and dangerously dishonest'. Photograph: Christian Gooden/AP Wayne LaPierre, executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association , came to the podium Friday with the pursed lips and furrowed brow of a banker anxious over accounting errors . Throughout the press conference, he seemed to be reaching for an emotional range that would reflect the horror and sorrow so many felt in the wake of the Sandy Hook killings . But the most effective expression he could muster was that of someone trying to remember his lines. I would like to believe that LaPierre was as anguished and confused by the events of last week as the rest of us, but the man clearly suffers from constip

Progressive tax rates have always puzzled me because they assume that government has different value for citizens based on their incomes . Break government down to the basics and it is essentially a provider of services — defense, transportation, the legal system, schools , etc. — that customers want or need and are willing to pay a price to obtain. In that way, it's little different than a private sector business. Except in the private sector, goods and services have a set value; all customers pay the same. You don't have to scan your 1040 at the gasoline pump to set the price per gallon. Only in government does every customer pay a different price for the same thing. Reader Jon Taub sent me a note last week putting the difference between government and private sector pricing in perspective. Taub, a corporate lawyer for a Detroit business, notes that the top 1 percent of earners pay for 38 percent of the general fund services delivered by the federal governme

Michael Tomasky : The GOP Brings Politics to a Crisis Point by Michael Tomasky Dec 23, 2012 4:45 AM EST With their refusal to vote for Boehner’s Plan B , Republicans have definitively shown that they’d rather sabotage democracy than govern. How can they be stopped? Really, what is to be done about this Republican Party ? What force can change it—can stop Republicans from being ideological saboteurs and convert at least a workable minority of them into people interested in governing rather than sabotage? With the failed Plan B vote, we have reached the undeniable crisis point. Actually we’ve been at a crisis point for years , but this is really the all-upper-case Undeniable Crisis Point. They are a direct threat to the economy, which could slip back into recession next year if the government doesn’t, well, govern. They are an ongoing, at this point almost mundane, threat to democracy, subverting and preventing progress the American peo

Sen. Barrasso : Obama sees a ‘political victory ’ in going over the cliff Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Sunday he thinks President Obama wants to dive over the so-called "fiscal cliff." "I believe the president is eager to go over the cliff for political purposes," Barrasso told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday. " "He senses a political victory at the bottom of the cliff." The senator also said he believes the nation will go over the cliff, with the deadline just nine days away. Barrasso said he thinks Obama is eager to blame Republicans if Congress cannot reach a deal by the end of the year. Polls have indicated that Americans would blame Republicans more than Democrats if talks fail. Barrasso also pointed to a report in the Wall Street Journal late last week that said during negotiations, Obama threatened Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that he would use the presidential bully pulpit to heap blame on the GOP

How 'Cliff' Talks Hit the Wall Behind Scenes, Boehner Failed to Sell Republicans on Taxes , While Obama's Spending Plans Rankled WASHINGTON— Congressional leaders and President Barack Obama called Friday for a return to negotiations to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, a day after talks cratered in a very public fashion when Republicans abandoned House Speaker John Boehner 's backup plan. In truth, talks to secure a big deficit-reduction deal had already broken down Monday afternoon in the office of Mr. Boehner (R., Ohio), a Wall Street Journal reconstruction shows. Mr. Boehner had been negotiating a deal with the White House to let tax rates rise for upper-income people. Mr. Boehner, irritated with the White House, was finding it hard to keep his troops in line as details of his negotiations with Mr. Obama leaked out. In the speaker's office just off the Capitol's majestic rotunda that afternoon, he told his top lieutenants that

America’s Baby Boom And Baby Bust Cities At this most familial time of the year, as recent events make us hold our children even closer, we might want to consider what kinds of environments are most conducive to having offspring. Alarm bells are beginning to ring in policy circles over the decline of the U.S. birth rate to a record low . If unaddressed, this could pose a vital threat the nation’s economic and demographic vitality over the next few decades. In contrast to last week, when we examined the nearly uniform aging of America’s biggest cities over the last decade , the decline in the country’s youth population has been in relative terms. In 2000, roughly 21.4% of Americans were under 15; in 2010, that percentage had dropped to 19.8%. However, unlike in parts of Europe and East Asia , the number of American children did not decline – there were over a million more in 2010, a 1.7% increase. Yet since children are by def