One reason Congress is broken? Negative ads cripple even the winners.

By David B. McLennan – These ads matter — but not in the ways that the candidates and their campaign consultants hope they do. When the negative barrage of ads is over, the winner will likely emerge with an approval rating well under 50 percent.

Majority of winning candidates take office without the majority support of the citizens they represent. They can no longer legitimately cite the “will of the people” in proposing legislation — because they are not in a position of strength when it comes to public support. Elected officials now often have little or no honeymoon period – even with the voters who supported them. more> http://tinyurl.com/l6vox44

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama makes case for war

By Dana Milbank – This is how a Nobel Peace Prize laureate goes to war.

He admits his country’s own flaws, praises “the path of diplomacy and peace,” and asserts that lasting gains cannot be “won at the barrel of a gun.”

“No god condones this terror. No grievance justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning, no negotiation, with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.” more> http://tinyurl.com/qhpbnd7

Afghanistan’s Failed Transformation

By Ahmed Rashid – John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, apparently is the only official in Washington who dares speak truth to power.

In a Sept. 12 speech at Georgetown University, he said that Afghanistan “remains under assault by insurgents and is short of domestic revenue, plagued by corruption, afflicted by criminal elements involved in opium and smuggling, and struggling to execute basic functions of government.”

His comments were largely ignored by the American media.

And yet anything less than a heavy dose of honesty and fresh thinking by Afghans and their Western supporters will almost certainly mean the relapse of Afghanistan into civil war and the emergence of groups even more extreme than the Taliban, as has happened in Iraq and Syria. more> http://tinyurl.com/qz7uuwb

The U.S. Tax Code Is Highly Uncompetitive

By Kyle Pomerleau & Andrew Lundeen – The recent string of corporate inversions—where U.S. companies move their headquarters to a new home—is a symptom of this problem.

The U.S.’s tax code, which is far out of line with other nations’, is driving investment overseas, reducing our economic potential.

Unfortunately, many politicians, instead of searching for solutions to improve the tax code, are looking for ways to make it worse. more> http://tinyurl.com/mf5nr3r

Which candidate should you vote for this fall?

By Matthew Yglesias – Most of American politics can be explained with a single liberal-conservative axis, but that at certain points in time — notably the middle of the 20th century — a second axis related to racial equality issues was also very important.

During the time when the racial axis was scrambled, the parties were not perfectly sorted around liberalism versus conservatism.

A lot of southerners with conservatives views on economics were in the Democratic Party for reasons related to white supremacy, and some northerners with moderate views on economics and liberal views on race were Republicans. more> http://tinyurl.com/pvxv7hb