Dilettante's call to populate and conquer rural opposition to urban majority rule

Alec McGillis' “Go Midwest Young Hipster” seeks to moderate rural over representation in Washington by convincing young hipsters to go populate the hinterlands with their urban sensibilities and votes.  Unfortunately there is a population trend back toward the cities because of their economic and intellectual stimuli, which make this appeal futile.  For example, General Electric moved its headquarters from a rural campus in Fairfield Connecticut to Boston, Massachusetts to be close to the high tech hipsters it needs to invigorate the corporation. Taxes were not the issue because the move was to Taxachusetts, as the neighbor to the north is colloquially called.  Fairfield is suburban nevertheless too isolated to attract the young techies GE wants to work and innovate with so that intelligent hipsters will not hear the call of a political dilettante to populate and conquer rural opposition for an urban majority’s vision.

Invite Sunni Turkey's invasion to support Sunni Arabs to take and administrate Raqqa

U.S. Planning to Start Assault on Raqqa Soon to keep the pressure on ISIS as the battle of Mosul proceeds in Iraq. But the tactic of using the Kurdish pesh merga as an imperial force to conquer a Sunni Arab city is contrary to the region's move toward a balkanizing of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish tribes into their respective states.  Better to invite Sunni Turkey to invade Syria and give Sunni Arabs support to take and administrate Raqqa because it does't conflict, in other words not trying to unite allies "who essentially loathe each other", with the regions ethnic separation.

Political evangelicals mixing church and state don't recognize they are in league with the Devil

David Brooks states in his editorial that "Moral capital is the set of of shared habits, institutions and values that make common life possible" and that "This year Trump is dismantling those restraints one by one." His declaring "Hillary must hate Catholics" at the Al Smith dinner was a particularly cringing, I can't watch this, moment which brings up the point that it's church leaders who are failing us most. Ralph Reed, a politically motivated evangelical, has yet to cede the point that Trump is the Devil, a not particularly artful one at that with his unconvincing last minute expedient conversions. Jerry Falwell Jr.'s unconditional support for Trump shows his father's moral force was just politically motivated and Liberty University is now a shameful place to seek a Christian education. The founding fathers separated church and state for a reason. Its mix this year has put us down a moral rat hole which makes clear why they did it, for the good of The Church and The State.

Calling Putin a war criminal is diplomacy guaranteed to lead to a poor result and increased tensions

Behind Putin's Combativeness is the need to stay on the wire in an act where there is no end point to step off.  Secretary of State John Kerry is particularly obtuse on this point.  The way to motivate him is to make him look good. For example when Bashar al-Assad crossed Kerry / Obama's red line with chemical weapons it was Putin who forced his client toward the good result of eliminating them to general acclaim, though not from the U.S. press. Calling Putin a war criminal is diplomacy guaranteed to lead to a poor result and increased tensions. Putin's motive in Syria is to keep Russia's only naval base on the Mediterranean safe with a local leader beholden to him. There is no possibility of Putin abandoning his client. But from Bashar's last visit in Moscow its apparent there is little respect for him. Putin could be convinced to contain him in his Shiite Alawite region of Syria, which of course also has the naval base, because of the doubt that he can ever regain and control the Sunni Arab and Kurdish regions. Of course this negotiation would require the U.S. to give up the pipe dream of a unified Syria. This result gives Putin the image in the World's eye of a disciplining parent of an errant child in pursuit of a real peace and saves him from further insulting Sunni Muslims in Russia and other in his sphere of influence.      

Gulf of Tonkin like resolution demanding we enter Yemen to settle what?

Strikes as Proof of Role of U.S. is an example of how a a careless friend can entangle you in fight you have no business being in. Yemen has Islam's divide between Shia and Sunni. The Houthis being Shiite are the logical clients of Iran as the majority Sunni population is logically supported by Saudi Arabia.  The Saudi's escalated the turmoil in Yemen with gross use of American built F15 fighter bombers. That Iran counters by supplying missiles is natural.  What isn't is our taking sides in Islam's internecine divide by using our Navy to keep the missiles out and support Saudi's air strikes. The next step is for a Navy Vessel to be in an incident with a Gulf of Tonkin like resolution demanding we enter Yemen to settle what?  

Deutsche Bank's distress is symptomatic of malaise from too big to fail banks

Deutsche Bank's distress is symptomatic of malaise from too big to fail banks. Assets locked up in derivatives, best described by Warren Buffet as weapons of wealth destruction, and stagnant loans, mostly ordered by the government to support Greece and other Euro deadbeats. Germany doesn't need another Bundesbank. It shouldn't help out Deutsche weather its permanent malaise but break it up so it does something useful rather be the rug all the problems are swept under.

Preverse effect of Dodd Frank's compliance costs is to create more Too Big To Fail banks

Property Loan Scrutiny Puts Chill on Local Banks is an example of the inexorable push toward consolidation generated by Dodd Frank's compliance costs. For example "at Ocean City Home Bank have gone up 50 percent because of the Dodd-Frank Act. When two other banks approached Ocean City Home Bank, Mr. Brady saw an opportunity. “We had the same rules and regulations as Chase, but we didn’t have the scale to do it.”" To stop the consolidation  the regulations should apply only to the trillion dollar financial institutions that the Act was dreamed up to counter. The small local banks on the other hand were not the problem and were well regulated by the FDIC before the crisis. If their compliance costs could be brought back to previous levels then the need to scale to spread these costs would diminish and thereby reduce the Act's perverse effect of creating more too big too fail banks.