Politics

Bill Kristol unwittingly confirms that there will be no anti-Trump protest candidate:

It’s unclear whether a credible independent candidate will choose to step forward. But there are many more such candidates than are dreamt of by conventional commentators and operatives. Recent attempts to write obituaries for the Never Trump/Never Clinton effort are wildly premature [bold mine-DL]. Something new and different can be difficult to imagine for the old and tired. And our political class and pundit elites are nothing if not old and tired.

Thomas Juneau explained last week that Yemen’s Houthis are not Iranian puppets:

Saudi Arabia claims that the Houthis are an Iranian proxy, leading it to frame the war as an effort to counter Iran’s influence. The Saudis are not the only ones to label the Houthis puppets of Iran. Politicians and media in the West, in particular, also frequently describe them as Iranian proxies.

Jeffrey Stacey is looking forward to how Clinton will conduct foreign policy, which he assumes would have magically remedied almost all current problems overseas:

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

It is not only American generals who are irresponsible and declare on the basis of no evidence whatsoever that “Russia is an existential threat to the United States” and also to the Baltic states, Poland, Georgia, Ukraine, and all of Europe. British generals also participate in the warmongering.  UK retired general and former NATO commander Sir Richard Shirreff, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe until 2014, has just declared that nuclear war with Russia is “entirely possible” within the year.  

When the news hit on May 5 that Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu would unexpectedly stand down from his post as a result of sharply escalating fighting behind the scenes over president Tayyip Erdogan's relentless attempt to rule Turkey with virtually no checks and balances, the market was not happy, and the volatility of the Turkish Lira soared the most in the past decade.