Politico: Trump’s better deal with Iran looks a lot like Obama’s

At times, analysts and former officials say, it sounds like Trump wants to strike a deal that essentially mirrors the agreement that his White House predecessor inked — even if he’d never be willing to admit it. Iranian officials seem willing to egg him on, saying they’ll talk so long as Trump lifts the sanctions he’s imposed on them and returns to the 2015 Iran deal. And as European ministers warn that the existing deal is nearly extinct, Trump may feel like he is backed into a corner and running out of options. [...]

He’s said he’s “not looking for war,” wants to talk to Iran without preconditions and isn’t interested in regime change. He called off a military strike on Iran over its downing of an unmanned U.S. drone, overriding the advice of several top aides. His main public demand is that Iran not build nuclear weapons. In return, Trump has offered to help revive Iran’s sanctions-battered economy. [...]

Several European officials express astonishment at the audacity of the Trump administration demanding that Iran adhere to the deal when the U.S. the one who breached the agreement in the first place. Some said they were not surprised that Iran may have taken actions in the Persian Gulf as payback for the U.S. abandonment of the deal. 

Europeans “know that the original sin causing the current escalation in the Gulf is the U.S. violation of the Iran nuclear deal,” said Nathalie Tocci, an adviser to European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. “At the same time, they are terribly concerned about the escalation and the threat it poses to the Middle East and to Europe itself.” [...]

Perhaps sensing this, Trump on Tuesday went out of his way to note that he didn’t want to oust the government in Tehran. “We're not looking, by the way, for regime change because some people say [we are] looking for regime change,” he said. “We're not looking for regime change.”

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UnHerd: Who’s afraid of the feminists?

The actual polling is not online, for some reason, but it’s been covered in the press and the charity sent me their report. It finds that significant percentages of every age group, including 33% of 18- to 24-year-olds, agrees that feminism makes some men feel marginalised. More men (42%) than women agreed, but a quarter of women did too. The charity themselves described it as “staggering”, and linked it to far-right YouTubers.

You might find it surprising, given that – on gender equality, as with almost all measures of social attitudes – Britain has, for decades, been getting more liberal. The 2018 British Social Attitudes survey shows that, in 1984, 43% agreed and just 37% disagreed with the statement “a man’s job is to earn money, a woman’s job is to look after the home and family”. By 2017, those numbers had changed to 8% and 72% respectively. Shifts towards more liberal, feminist attitudes are seen in all groups – older, younger, male, female. Sometimes men have more “feminist” attitudes than women: for instance, men are more likely than women to say that it is “always” or “usually” wrong for men to comment on women’s appearance in the street. [...]

So how does that fit with the idea that a third of the population thinks that feminism is making men feel demonised? Well: easily, I’d say. That Survation/Fawcett Society poll – which, remember, found that 83% of people support “equality of opportunity for women”, surely the key goal of feminism – found that just 7% of people “describe themselves” as feminist. The 2015 YouGov poll found a higher number, 31%, who would “consider” themselves a feminist, but it’s still a definite minority. Another YouGov one in 2018 found 26%. [...]

My own suspicion, for what it’s worth, is that while “gender equality” is an ideal that is easy to get behind, “feminism” is a label that is attached to specific, identifiable people. And, because any large group of people contains at least some who are stupid and/or unpleasant, some prominent people to whom the label “feminist” is regularly attached will be stupid and/or unpleasant. One hates to call out individuals in this situation, although I will link to this with no further comment.

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CityLab: The Hidden Winners in Neighborhood Gentrification

But without data to explain the changes happening underneath the very visible signs of gentrification—lofts, e-scooters, farmers’ markets—it isn’t easy to describe the costs, or who bears them. According to one just-released study, original residents gain more from gentrification than the traditional neighborhood narrative lets on. And the harms of gentrification, while hard to fully gauge, may not be so severe for original residents, especially for those who stay but even for those who choose to leave. What if the conventional wisdom about gentrification is kind of wrong? [...]

The study looks at original residents of low-income, central-city neighborhoods of the 100 largest metro areas using census data from 2000 and American Community Survey data from 2010 to 2014. Using the earlier data as a base, researchers Quentin Brummet and Davin Reed tracked changes in educational achievement and household status among less-educated renters and homeowners as well as more-educated renters and homeowners. While some of these neighborhoods saw gentrification, not all did, providing a basis for comparison.

For less-educated renters, who are among a neighborhood’s more vulnerable demographic groups, gentrification drives out-migration by 6 percentage points. Migration among renters is high whether a neighborhood becomes fancy or not: The research finds that 68 percent of less-educated renters and 79 percent of of more-educated renters move over the course of a decade. So, on average, gentrification spurs around 10 percent of moves for less-educated renters (and much less so for renters with more education). [...]

Not all the changes wrought by gentrification count as improvement! The paper acknowledges that rising property taxes can be difficult for existing homeowners to afford, for example—although the researchers still put higher values in the win category for homeowners. While moving from a gentrifying neighborhood may not lead to observably worse outcomes, the act of displacement itself, leaving behind family and community, packs negative social and psychological effects, as the researchers recognize. Culturally, gentrification involves neighborhood changes that can lead original residents to feel that they don’t belong.

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The Conversation: Ursula Von der Leyen: why controversial choice for EU top job may actually have been the right one

MEPs themselves are to blame for the demise of the Spitzenkandidaten system. Had they managed to unite behind a candidate, it would have been difficult for the council to override their decision, despite having legal authority to do so. But none of the lead candidates – Frans Timmermans, Margrethe Vestager and Manfred Weber – was able to command a majority. [...]

Eastern European countries opposed Timmermans because he had led inquiries into rule of law violations in Hungary and Poland. But Timmermans also failed to win the EPP’s support. As the largest parliamentary party group, the EPP fought to select one of their own, even if it meant sacrificing the Spitzenkandidaten system in the process. Vestager had announced her candidacy late and was unpopular in Italy as well as the Visegrad countries (albeit not as unpopular as Timmermans).

Technically, those who refused to back Weber and Timmermans could have been overruled by other member states in the council, because none had a blocking minority (representing more than 35% of the EU population). In fact, a key reason why the Lisbon Treaty increased the use of qualified majority voting was to facilitate the EU’s ability to take decisions without the burdensome requirement of unanimity. However, council members chose not to take that route. Instead, the council members stuck with the informal norm of unanimous decision making because they worried that overriding the objectors might provoke them to resort to obstructive political tactics. [...]

Had von der Leyen failed to garner sufficient votes, it would have plunged the EU into crisis as there is no obvious alternative candidate who could have commanded a majority in the European Parliament. In Berlin, the grand coalition of Christian Democratic Union (CDU/ CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) might have fallen apart. The SPD would have had a hard time explaining to German voters why it torpedoed the first German Commission president in over 50 years, thereby blocking the first woman to lead the Commission (a woman who, unlike her main male rival, has held senior executive public office for 15 years).

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The Guardian: Do our pets ever really love us – or do they just stick around for the food?

Studies of brain chemicals add further weight to this relationship. In dogs and humans (in fact all mammals) the behaviours that bond individuals are maintained through a cocktail of molecules that are absorbed in different ways by the brain. Many of these are regulated by brain hormones that include vasopressin and oxytocin, the (dramatically over-hyped) “love” molecule. In all mammals (including humans) production of this hormone spikes when individuals are sexually aroused, while giving birth and while nursing offspring. It also rises when we see those that we love, particularly close family members. Interestingly, dogs respond with an oxytocin surge not only when interacting with one another, but also (unlike nearly all other mammals) when interacting with humans.

A similar phenomenon occurs with cats. One small-scale study suggests that cats do receive an oxytocin boost upon being petted by their owners, so there may be love there, but it reflects one-fifth of the amount seen in dogs. If anything sums up cats, it’s this. [...]

Birds, however, are another story. Birds are far more likely to feel a warmth for their owners that you could term eros. A parrot that is tenderly stroked in the wrong places by its minder, for instance, will often misread friendship signals as foreplay and begin producing sex hormones. Should you wish not to sexually excite a parrot, try not to stroke down its back or on, or under, its wings. These are the areas that males and females preen in the early stages of their courtship in the wild. A stroke like this is like the kiss and a cuddle that readies them for sex. Upon discovering this fact, I realised I had more than once inadvertently sexed up a parrot.

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The Guardian: Here's the real reason Trump is attacking 'the squad': he's scared of their politics

As the 2020 election campaign begins, Trump and the Republicans have not been coy about their strategy. They intend to foment hatred of “the other” among their predominantly white base, to weaponize false accusations of antisemitism against progressive politicians, to pour kerosene on the fires of the culture war and fight – against women’s rights, LGBT rights, reproductive rights – with renewed vigor. [...]

These proposals are popular, and not only among liberal Democrats, but across a wide swath of the American public. A poll conducted earlier this year found that 60% of independent voters supported Ocasio-Cortez’s 70% top tax-rate proposal, as did 45% of Republicans. Polls consistently show a clear majority of Americans back Medicare for All. Even as sweeping a proposal as the Green New Deal enjoys more support than opposition among likely voters, Obama-to-Trump voters, and moderates. There is an obvious desire among the broader public for the kind of transformational politics that the members of the Squad have brought to Congress.

Indeed, while much of the media coverage of the various Squad members have focused on their identities, their appeal goes far beyond matters of representation. Of course, representation is important, and the Squad, comprised of women of color, represents not only important “firsts” – the first Muslim-American congresswomen, the youngest ever member of Congress, the first black female representative from Massachusetts. They represent what America looks like today far better than the pale, greying gerontocracy that rules the country. At 45, Pressley is the oldest member of the Squad; Nancy Pelosi, for comparison, is 79, and Trump, 73.

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Associated Press: Trump voters cringe and shrug at tweets while Democrats rage

Across the country, in states critical to Trump’s reelection, the reaction to Trump’s racist tweets exposed two vastly different views on race politics in America. In interviews with nearly 50 voters across seven states, many people — most of them Democrats — found Trump’s willingness to lodge racial attacks appalling and unforgiveable. For many others, particularly Trump voters, the tweets were a mere sideshow.

Trump voters who spoke to The Associated Press were a mixture of indifferent, bemused and mildly irritated, saying it comes with the territory in the unconventional Trump presidency. They voiced appreciation for his candor and ability to speak plainly while rejecting that he is a racist. His views on race were not what mattered most to many of them. [...]

“He shouldn’t be doing it. He needs to be more presidential, stick to the things that matter,” said Scott Wood, a Republican who voted for Trump in 2016 and would need to see a “standout” alternative before he’d vote for someone different next year.

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