The Odd Cog

Responses to Incitement

2011-04-05T12:52:00.000-07:00

One might understand from UN envoy Staffan de Mistura’s comments about the recent riots in Afghanistan why the UN consistently gets it wrong.

De Mistura essentially blamed the riots and the deaths that resulted on the act that ostensibly “provoked” it, the burning of a Koran in Florida. De Mistura was unequivocal in his proclamation that “free speech” did not cover offenses to religion.

De Mistura is, of course, wrong. But one might actually understand why he said it: he was afraid for his, and his charges’, lives. Especially when the victims of the riots had absolutely nothing to do with the Koran burning by any degree of separation. One wonders why American troops weren’t targeted: could it be that the rioters feared superior firepower?

Another UN’er who got it wrong was Richard Goldstone, and this week, he admitted it. The Israeli response was notable in its absolute 180 degree divergence from the Afghan response: the Israeli interior minister invited Goldstone to see for himself what actually happens when Hamas terrorizes southern Israel. One can only imagine a parallel invitation from an Imam or other religious figure to one of Pastor Jones’ congregants to see what the “real” community of Koran readers are like. [Then again, it would likely be an invitation to a beheading.]

1989? 1918? 1979?

2011-02-24T14:45:00.000-08:00

We might think—or hope—that the spontaneous uprisings in the Middle East are reminiscent of the Velvet Revolution[s] of 1989. One might even draw a parallel between Nicolae Ceausescu and Col. Khadafy: one leader who actually resisted the uprising ended up paying for it with his life [which many are likely praying for, in this case].

However, aside from the uncertainties inherent in any sudden regime change, especially in areas with no tradition of a truly republican rule of law [never mind democratic], and aside from the fact that Iran waits to fill any power vacuums that develop as a result of the widespread agitation, one might actually find a more salient parallel with the events that took place following World War I.

Following the Great War, when numerous ethnicities agitated for homelands under the principles of self-determination and old empires that had largely been intact for nearly a century crumbled under their own weight, the map up Europe was not only redrawn but its political makeup changed overnight, largely not for the better. In many cases, sclerotic monarchies were replaced either by revolutionary dictatorships [Hungary being one example] or very unstable republics [Weimar]. And, eerily reminiscent of Iran today, the newly formed Soviet Union waited in the wings to take advantage of any power vacuums that would result.

Additionally, the perception that the Middle East has been America’s private oil reserve parallels—however loosely and inaccurately—the colonialism of the post-1918 period. By extension, the ever looming specter of political Islam may be seen as a distorted version of self-determination, as the faith remains the center of the lives of much of the protestors, even as it remains a question as to whether the faith itself has propelled any of the current revolts.

The world—and especially the United States—has convincingly demonstrated that it was not ready for this. And while the endgame probably won’t mimic 1989 or 1918 [and, hopefully, not 1979], it remains to be seen what truisms are shattered and what new ones arise to take their place.

Arizona

2011-01-11T14:47:00.001-08:00

As inappropriately ironic or ironically inappropriate as it may be to say so, the left has shot itself in the foot once again.

They may have had a legitimate—however flimsy—argument about the use of target imagery in politics as perilous if they restricted their argument to issues relating to gun control and gun culture; after all, it was a very loose purchase policy that allowed the murderer in Arizona to acquire his weapon and ammunition with relative ease.

Instead, the left decided to go after the entirety of the debating style of the right to score political points, mostly because they find it hard to shout back effectively.

Interestingly, Fox News chief Roger Ailes has called for a calmer tone from his side and has challenged the left to do the same, pointing out that both sides of the debate use target imagery as ubiquitous political metaphor.

In any case, indications from outlets such as the NY Times and MSNBC are such that they don’t seem to want to let up in this debate irrespective of the what the wishes of Rep. Giffords might be once she wakes up.

South Korea: Pacifism Redux?

2010-11-25T15:50:00.001-08:00

One sees, on occasion, bumper stickers [usually courtesy of Code Pink, but the sentiment probabaly predates them] procaliming that "War Is Terrorism". The unspoken corollary should be "Pacifism is Murder". It might be ironic that another longtime ally of the US, South Korea, has been forced by political consideration involving matters outside of its own security to be forced to sit tight while under direct attack from a historical sworn existential enemy. I guess it isn't just Israel.

One personage who didn't buy into the classic doctriniare pacifist fallacy was Yitzchak Rabin; despite, with great misgivings, having decided to embark on the Oslo process, he realized two things that have eluded other [if not all] peace processors: one, you make peace with your emenies not your friends, meaning that said enemies don;t suddenly become your friends; and, two, peacemaking is, counterintuitively, a messy business [as evidenced by his comment in the immediate aftermath of Oslo that "Arab governments do not operate on Western democratic principles". He knew who he was working with, and wasn;t suffering from the illusion that a "new Middle East" was about to be created.]

Certainly we don't need to be reminded of the fallacies of doctrinaire pacifism and peace processors. But everyone else does.

Corrections

2010-11-06T16:40:00.000-07:00

WE NOW KNOW that the Obama Administration was planning nall along to drag the political center as far left as possible, and when he made overtones during his inaugural about governing from the center, this is what he meant to happen.

WE NOW KNOW that the American people don’t want this, but the Administrsation and its leaders really didn’t care. This was a case, as they saw it, of enacting a program of social justice with or without anyone’s consent.

WE NOW KNOW that the Tea Party may become a force to be reckoned with on par with what the Christian Coalition used to be. Even if it remains an idea more than a movement, without a clear leader or tangible center of gravity [other than Sarah Palin], conservatives ignore it at their peril. Despite the fact that a few of their more visible prominent candidates lost high profile races [specifically, the O’Donnell and Angle losses], Tea Party gains far outweighed the losses.

WE NOW KNOW that Sarah Palin is not necessarily a lightweight on the order of a Dan Quayler, or even a Dubya. She has been positioning herself to run for it all ever since the last election ended, and she’s figured out how to do it…and get rich at the same time.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW yet is whether there is a possibility of an analog to Clintonian “triangulation” occurring, whether Obamans plan to work with the new majority or take the stance of becoming a new party of “no”—that is, “no” to compromising with the new class. [Dick Morris has written that Obama’s program is so far left that no compromise, and hence no triangulation, is possible.]

It might just be right at this moment that Obama believes so strongly in his program that he’s willing to sacrifice his second term the same way he sacrificed 15 percent of his party’s House seats and the Speaker’s gavel. When LBJ passed the Civil rights Act, he commented that the Democrats had lost the South for generations. One wonders whether Obama thinks his program’s element of social justice is as lofty as Johnson’s and therefore worth the political price. Judging from the sympathetic media [CNN. MSNBC, et al] attempts to whitewash the magnitude of the electoral correction, one would think that the media certainly hopes not, but the question would remain when the President would ever get an inkling that he harbors two contradictory concepts in his head: social engineering and further electoral success.

Islamophobia and Ground Zero

2010-08-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

It took a New York Times Op-Ed by Maureen Dowd where she actually praised George W. Bush for not being an Islamophobe and for drawing the distinction between Islam and Islamists that finally brought home how desperately ridden with political correctness the debate surrounding the Ground Zero Islamic erection has become.

It also served to enlighten why otherwise self-described enlightened individuals are neding over backwards to give the benefit of some doubt to a system of belief that promulgates what one might call, er, “universal coverage” in that it purports to extend its theological umbrella toward any and all that will eventually fall under said umbrella.

Much of why this is so is beyond the scope of this writer and this page, and the topic has been ably covered by Paul Berman in his Flight of the Intellectuals and Terror and Liberalism. Suffice to say that America—at least the stringer elements of progressive America—feels that it needs to pay for its sins towards the nonwhite, nonEuropean peoples of the world [even if the bulk of said sins were actually “committed” by actual Europeans, we unwittingly took up that mantle with NATO and the Marshall plan; call it a bizarre form of collateral damage], and that somehow, we will serve to expiate our actual sins of slavery and McCarthyism at the same time.

In what amounts to a kind of historical payback, America did blow a ton of its credibility during the McCarthy era—not because there weren’t communists in high places, and not because communism was something not to fear, but actually because of those very things: a raging alcoholic, otherwise peripheral politician was able to create a nationwide witch hunt in all the wrong places because he cloaked himself in the mantle a patriotism while not knowing what to do about a problem that he really had no idea existed.

Aside from all the “PC” reasons to call anything with a whiff of “Islamophobia” [shouldn’t you be afraid of a creed that preaches world domination and refuses to condemn those who will fly places into buildings and blow themselves up in public places?] a “New McCarthyism”, there always is the danger that another McCarthy will successfully garner our worst fears and impulses and point us in the wrong direction away from our real enemies.

[I, for one, would place fighting Iraq as opposed to Iran in this category. Just sayin’.]

However, what the supporters of the Islamic erection refuse to acknowledge [or know and refuse to give credence to] is that the problem is not an issue of “not allowing one to worship where and how one pleases”, but really a question of perception. As it was their coreligionist who committed the worst instance of mass murder on American soil, it is their responsibility to do what they can to assuage their victims, not assert their privileges in the victims’ faces. The unwillingness to face and acknowledge this perception as genuine and credible, even if not completely accurate [this writer would say that it actually is], not only feeds “Islamophobia”, but makes it even more justified. There are more reasons to be afraid than not.

The House That Rauf Built

2010-08-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

There are obviously larger issues regarding the building of a mosque at Ground Zero beyond the simple declarations regarding religious freedom emanating from Mayor Bloomberg and nthe naked [though, in this case, entirely legitimate] tactic of the mosque’s opponents trying to use a landmarking to prevent the Islamofascist erection.

One does wonder why Bloomberg, possibly the most powerful mayor in this city’s history, couldn’t muster up the courage of his predecessor when he turned down a $10 million check from the Saudis when they insisted on blaming America and Israel for 9/11. While $100 million speaks a little louder, the analog of placing a memorial to fallen SS soldiers next to Auschwitz is an entirely appropriate one.

Additionally, with Rauf’s making disparate announcements for different audiences in different languages as to where the funds are coming from and his unabashed support for hamas and Hezbollah, the question is raised as to why Americans [other than the Obama administration, who have made it policy] insist on, if not giving aid and comfort to our avowed enemies, at the very least refuse to take them at their word, whatever it may or may not be worth.

Beyond that, there are a few things that can be done. One might want to place a call to the extremists who feel compelled to spend their lives picketing in front of abortion clinics; obviously, none of them [or almost none of them, assuming they are associated with the denominations that prop up Operation Rescue] are approving of what they might consider an Islamic takeover of America, of which Rauf’s project would be a significant sign. This would give them something more useful to do [though they may disagree with that notion].

Now, while enlisting one group of fundamentalists in the battle with another may not be the wisest of tactics or alliances, owing to the fact that it makes all opposition to Muslim expansion ipso facto “Islamophobic”, there would actually be a positive side effect which one would hope would become the main one: turning the site into a spectacle. In this case, anything that results in the appearance of desacralizing the site would be welcome, and if those who are attached emotionally to ground zero are pained by it, they will continue to blame the mosque, its builders and its enablers, not the picketers. In fact, the protests on site should begin with the onset of construction; enough pressure could be brought to bear up to the point that some alternative will be broached, in the same way that the 9/11 trials will be moved.

This center should not be welcomed by anyone. If enough forward-thinking Muslims [like Stephen Schwartz in the NY Post] are ashamed by it, and enough pressure was brought about to make the few that exist actually outshout their more fascistically-inclined coreligionists, maybe some real progress will result.

From Republikarma to Barackarma

2010-07-28T15:51:00.000-07:00

He plugs one leak, and a bigger one develops. The President might want to conjure up the spirit of Nixon and call the plumbers.

One can never truly say whether the tide has turned, and whether the various conservative tendencies that used to pop up to bite Republicans in the ass has abated somewhat, and now the Democrats’ almost genetic propensity for political self-destruction will now assert itself in its truest form. The President, who was such a beneficiary of the Republican refusal to play by their own rules and the economic mess that resulted, now has created himself a dual quagmire, almost completely of his own volition.

The first irony involves BP. No one can blame him directly for the disaster, and the culture of deregulation and corner-cutting that led to it is a particularly conservative invention; but, Republicans will not be blamed for it, because even when the disaster reached the proportions that it did because they did not see the need to perform any mea culpa for it [it helps immensely that they were the minority power]. Instead, the President looked both impotent and hypocritical, because he couldn’t stop the leak faster and he was loath to actually punish BP too publicly, oil companies—even foreign ones—being not only too big but too important to fail. This despite the fact that he was considered to be a true environmentalist president.

The second irony involves the Afghanistan war and the leaks surrounding both this and the previous Administration’s conduct thereof, which seems to be reminiscent of the incidents surrounding the Pentagon Papers’ revelations of a Democratic administration’s prosecution of a war they believed to be unwinnable. If this the moment where the President has truly assumed ownership of this war, it was certainly not in the way he intended: he will be saddled with the responsibility of things he had no control over at the time [Bush’s policies] because the current leaks indicate he has no control over events now, if he ever did. Attempts to blame the previous administration—which even Nixon realized wouldn’t work in 1971, which was why he tried to quash the Papers—will not only backfire; it would remind the public that there was another war that everyone was making a fuss about that seems to have been forgotten about will continue to be forgotten about, and Obama will find out just how recursive karma is.

In short, Obama has succeeded in taking what might have been once been considered two major conservative-created failures and making them his own. At this point, Republicans might actually best be advised to rest on their laurels to a point, because if they don’t and they continue their infighting, they might remind the electorate of why they became the minority party in the first place. Instead, if they sit back and let the Democrats continue to fail the way Rush hoped they would, they might reap the greatest benefit come November 2010, and maybe 2012.

There Will Be Peace--When:

2010-07-08T06:26:00.000-07:00

I mostly—no, completely--disagree with Nick Kristof’s take on the Arab-Jew conflict. And I definitely disagree with his conclusions drawn in his column in today’s NY Times.

However, I found one paragraph particularly instructive, if counterintuitively so.

I reprinted the particular paragraph as it was, then replaced “Israel” with “Islam” and “Palestinian” with “Jew”.

When a salient paragraph can be written the second way, there MIGHT be peace in the Middle East.

Kristof:“The most cogent critiques of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians invariably come from Israel’s own human rights organizations. The most lucid unraveling of Israel’s founding mythology comes from Israeli historians. The deepest critiques of Israel’s historical claims come from Israeli archeologists. This more noble Israel, refusing to retreat from its values even in times of fear and stress, is a model for the world. “

Me:“The most cogent critiques of Islam’s treatment of Jews invariably come from Islam’s own human rights organizations [sic!]. The most lucid unraveling of Islam’s founding mythology comes from Islam’s historians. The deepest critiques of Islam’s historical claims come from Islam’s archeologists. This more noble Islam, refusing to retreat from its values even in times of fear and stress, is a model for the world. “

Shul Cake

2010-07-01T14:01:00.000-07:00

Shul cake, for those of you who haven’t had the experience of going to a Kiddush, is generally the cheapest sponge cake available next to the schnapps and herring. Sometimes one can sing “Happy Birthday” to the cake. Personally, I love Shul Cake. But not the kind I’m about to describe.

In this pages I’ve definitely been critical of all three of the “great” monotheisms. From the outset, I have not spared my own co-religionists, especially when it comes to “washing dirty laundry in public” when trying to give the impression that one’s laundry never gets dirty in the first place.

At the risk of employing another cliché, it seems certain groups of Rabbis want to eat their cake and have it too. [Talmudic of me; that actually is the way the statement is supposed to go]. Two incidents in the news this week underscore the salience of said cliché.

The first story has to do with the brouhaha surrounding the synagogue in Syracuse that had the “temerity”, as an Orthodox congregation, to appoint TWO women as president of the lay synagogue board. Not, mind you, Rabbis, or Rabbas, or any other perceived hidden equivalent: this was the lay board. It seems in response, the National Council of Young Israel has decided to expel the congregation, and in thesponse to THAT, there has been a vote of no confidence tabled by nearly 150 member congregations of the council.

Now, I’m not one to raise issues of Jewish law unless they seem to be absolutely clear, and this isn’t one of those cases. I personally believe there shouldn’t be a problem with this even from the perspective of Orthodox law, but I could be wrong. However, what the NCYI has done is to avoid the question and claim that the expulsion has to do with unpaid dues. This is one of those cases where, for whatever the reason, those in charge of the Council should be forced to stand up and state their position and not hide behind technicalities. If you believe this is wrong, you’ll endure the dissolution of your organization, like Rabbi Naftali Berlin did when the Russian authorities tried to take over the Volozhin Yeshiva; he closed it. You can’t eat your cake and have it too.

More disturbing was the next story, that the Rabbinical Board of Queens—the “Va’ad”—allowed a member under a cloud of suspicion that he has “inappropriate contact” with students was allowed to resign—in October!!!—without any reference to said “cloud” hanging over him. A prominent religious psychologist accurately called out the Va’ad on this by claiming that they had “protect[ed] one of their own” by “g[iving] him a hekhser and ma[king] him kosher”. No further explanation is necessary. No one should give credence to any reason given for allowing this rabbi to stay on; if the board wants to avoid a defamation suit, it can pay him to do nothing, like the rubber room teachers.

My reasons for publiczing events like this and contributing to the pressure upon these bodies—aside from possible personal reasons, as I was victimized as a child by staff in two different right-wing Orthodox settings—is that Orthodoxy MUST be morally consistent, and they MUST learn to adjust to the fact that their behavior will be placed under a microscope, because their way of life announces automatically that its adherents are held to an ostensibly “higher” standard of conduct.

There would be nothing wrong if there would be an admission that some of our co-religionists stray from even basic human standards; it happens. But when disingeuousness is the order of the day, the very goal of the religious behaviors are not only short-circuited, they are re-presented as the height of hypocrisy. Adding fuel to the fire are then accusation emanating from clerical quarters that the bad press is simply the result of a hostile culture and media, almost as if these issues would go away of the media and culture would go away. Well, they’re not, and in this case, they may be part of the solution if they force certain powers that be to pay attention.

No cake for you.

Oil, Water, and Other Strange Bedfellows

2010-06-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

The ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has given rise to all sorts of “obvious” conclusions to be drawn, specifically that America’s addiction to oil is a proximate—if not THE proximate—cause of all environmental and natural despoliation, and only drastic legislative measures to curb said hankering for fossil fuels will ensure the continued survival of the human race.

More specifically, if there was a more propitious opportunity to pass so called “climate-change” legislation, one might be hard pressed to find it.

Really, one shouldn’t have to overtax one’s mental faculties to discern reasons why this ain’t necessarily so. However, in case one might need some sort of “learning aid” to help one clear the muddy [if not oily] waters of such thinking, consider the recent rumors that the “Oracle” of environmentalism—former Vice-President Al Gore—has taken the notion of “common cause” to its most logical conclusion with fellow traveler and Gulfstream environmentalist extraordinaire Laurie David, the woman who fought the scourge of the SUV from her private jet.

It seems as if Gore, whose carbon footprint is notoriously nearly as wide as David’s, has finally provided a salient analog for his purported “environmental science”: it’s as solid as his 40-year marriage to Tipper. Then again, one might wonder whether the Gore’s ill-advised PDA at the 2000 Democratic National Convention also provided a prescient analog to oil spills: the ick factor.

In any case, the Obamans—ostensibly the most pro-environment and anti-corporate administration in US history—have progressively more tightly bound their already rather securely tied hands until mere attempts indignant wringing have induced sympathy arthritis in even the President’s most avowed political enemies. Said spectacle really serves to illustrate two notions which are, nevertheless, as elementary as they are contradictory.

One is that, as much as we NEED our oil, there’s a LOT of it out there [for once, we can’t seem to get it to stop flowing], and much of it rather inconveniently located [hello—Middle East?] There is no reason—even in the face of the current environmental tragedy [and let’s face it, that’s what it is, and you can be a global warming “denier” like this writer is and still understand that]—that we not make any and all attempts to locate and drill for oil wherever we can find it in places other than the Fertile and Golden Crescents…IF—and this is a big IF—

--we figure out how to REGULATE, how to actually implement required legal safeguards and basic procedures, which by all accounts, seem to have been blatantly discarded by BP which directly led to the current mess.

As previously noted in these pages [“Oil-As-Food”], Big Oil is going nowhere. Alternative energy strategies will be pursued when we have no other alternative, pace Churchill’s observation that Americans do the right thing when they’ve exhausted all other possibilities. However, if Big Oil were smart, they could turn this crisis somewhat to their advantage by working with legislators to allow some semblance of independent regulation and monitoring into the industry by throwing BP under the bus, by saying, in effect, “We don’t want this to happen again; who wants to waste all that oil? What BP did was greedy AND stupid. We may be greedy, but if keeping the landscape clean will save our profits, we’re all for helping clean this up. Do to BP what you want; we’ll help make sure this never repeats itself.” If the public is actually prepared to expect and accept this level of disingenuousness, it may be the first step towards an eventual win-win: more oil and less disaster.

It won’t happen any other way.

A Proportionate Response to Helen Thomas

2010-06-07T23:40:00.001-07:00

Lost in the dark cloud of the unjustifiable brouhaha surrounding the terrorist-supporting Gaza-bound flotilli [if that sounds bacterial, even better] is the silver lining of the swift retribution meted out to that erstwhile pillar of the Fourth Estate, Helen Thomas, for her revealing antisemitic ramble.

One might actually take heart [warily, to be sure, but still] in the fact that some diatribes aimed at Jews, Israel and their supporters are still considered out of bounds enough that said diatribes and their utterers are stigmatized and that a measure [however insufficent] of opprobrium is elicited.

Following a modicum of give and take on my facebook stati regarding my rather draconian ill wishes for Ms. Thomas, based loosely on Yiddishist sentiments ["She should live to 120. And spend every second of those 30 years in endless pain and agony"] and the subsquent commentary ad loc regarding the apparently disporoportionate nature of my statements and wishes, I finally arrived at a formulaic response to Ms. Thomas' comments:

Helen Thomas should get the HELL out of this country and go back where SHE came from, which, I think, is Lebanon.

I'm sure her commentary will be much appreciated there.

If Anyone Else Did That....

2010-06-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

Were I a true professional, I would have said everything that appears in the following article by Jonathan Kay about the "humanitarian" flotilla that tried to run the Gaza blockade.

As it is, I have only one thing to add: the Hamastan entity in Gaza--a theocratic, fascist, Judeo-cidal [if not non-Muslicidal] quasi-state that would be more accurately described as a gang territory--is in a state of DECLARED war with anything Jews and Jewish, never mind its stance toward Israel. Therefore, as the blockade of the Gaza coast is a defensive response to said posture, any attempt to run the blockade is tantamount to an act of war on the part of the runners, no matter whether they are state actors, NGO's, or "humanitarians". The boats were legally subject to a summary sinking, not a seizure. We all know why the Israelis don't do that, but the "activists" are lucky all their lives weren't automatically forfeit. As Kay points out, one can only imagine what would happen if "activists" tried a mass seaborne humanitarian mission to the 3 million starving citizens of North Korea.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/05/31/jenin-on-the-high-seas/#ixzz0pc5cf2MR

Jenin on the high seas
By Jonathan Kay

If Israel truly had wanted to “massacre” the Hamas sympathizers and fellow travellers aboard a six-ship Gaza-bound flotilla, the operation would not have been complicated. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) would have used the trusty North Korean solution: Torpedo the ships and watch them sink to the bottom of the sea.

Even Israel arguably would have been within its rights to seize and destroy a ship being sent toward Gazan waters in defiance of an embargo, especially after giving abundant warnings to the leaders of the largely Turkish-based Free Gaza Movement, which had sent the flotilla, that they would not be permitted to sail to Hamas-controlled territory.

But that’s not how Israel operates. Instead, it sent commandos to seize control of the ships and bring them safely to Israeli waters. Israeli officials had even prepared air-conditioned accommodations for the activists, and had made arrangements to deliver legitimate aid supplies to Gaza.

According to the IDF, not all of the activists on board the ships were the pacifists they claimed to be. Though the Free Gaza leaders said they would not resist Israeli enforcement of the embargo, some of them fought the Israeli boarding parties with iron clubs — as confirmed by video that has been made available to the media. More seriously, it is claimed that at least one of the activists took two handguns from the Israelis and fired at the soldiers. In the melee, at least 10 activists were believed to have been killed, and several Israeli commandos wounded.

“They beat us up with metal sticks and knives,” one Israeli commando told the Los Angeles Times. “There was live fire at some point against us. … They were shooting at us from below deck.” Based on the same source, the Times also reported that “activists tossed some of the soldiers from the top deck to the lower deck and the soldiers jumped in the water to save themselves. Activists grabbed some soldiers and tried to hold them hostage, stripping them of their helmets and equipment.”

If this narrative stands up, then every drop of blood spilled on Monday morning rests on the hands of those activists who initiated the deadly exchange. When you attack Israeli soldiers — or at any soldiers — with lethal force, they will respond in kind.

As for the events that unfolded after the deadly exchange commenced, we don’t know how much of the ensuing bloodshed was avoidable. Like all civilized nations, Israel likes to conduct its anti-terrorist operations in a measured, deliberate fashion. But that’s difficult in the close confines of a crowded ship, where combat takes place at the range of a few metres — especially, in the case of the Free Gaza flotilla, which was populated by a diverse mob spanning the gamut from naive Jewish grandmothers to full-fledged Islamist radicals.

For most of the world, of course, these facts won’t matter: Like the bogus Jenin massacre, this episode will be used as just another stick to beat the Jewish state — even by those same pundits and activists who can’t be roused to say a single word when genuine “massacres” unfold in other parts of the world, such as the slaughter of more than 90 members of the Ahmadi sect in Pakistan. On sea, as on land, this is the double-standard that Israel always must battle when it acts to defend itself against terrorists and their media-savvy enablers.

jkay@nationalpost.com

Taking the Fifth with a Fifth

2010-05-21T15:01:00.000-07:00

Conservatives, who more often than not sing the praises of the Consititution, “original intent”, and “strict constructionalism”, seem to want to take the concept of self-incrimination to its furthest possible conclusion.

Once upon a time “watch what you say” was a Republican mantra, attributable most famously to Ari Fleischer in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

While the stakes certainly are different now, and the issues in which conservatives are ignoring their own advice cannot be truly raised to that level of importance, it might behoove them to pay more attention, if only because they might stop their own tendencies to political self-destruction once more endemic to their opponents.

The recent primary victory of Rand Paul in Kentucky and the immediate aftermath of his commentary on Rachel Maddow are a case in point. While there might be some truth to the assertion that the “liberal”/”MSM” would like nothing more than to portray tea-partiers as inveterate racist corporatists, it doesn’t help when the conservative quarry walks right into the trap. Sarah Palin can [almost] be forgiven for the “ambush” perpetrated upon her by Katie Couric re Supreme Court decisions, names of periodicals, etc. No one else has an excuse.

Its possible that questions about the Civil Rights Act were legitimate would be laughable—if Paul hadn’t tried to allow for the notion that it MIGHT have been at cross-purpose with his political principles. If he felt compelled to open his mouth and muse aloud that it might not have been the greatest idea, only he can be held responsible for the ensuing opprobrium, as he invited it. Similarly, when he feels compelled to defend corporate interests such as BP and the mining industry at a time like this, while he might be the victim of bad timing, any defense of those interests are ill considered, and he then pays a political price for defending them, it’s no one fault but his. Unfortunately for conservatives, their interests will only further suffer as a result.

In a similar vein, conservative carping about “affirmative action” regarding the first-time crowning of an Arab-Muslim woman as Miss USA are truly fighting the wrong battle. For one thing, if there’s any chance of the emergence of a “moderate” Islam, this is where it was going to come from: where a self-identified religio-ethnic fully participates in an event according to the rules of THAT EVENT. I’m sure al-Qaeda and the mullahs aren’t overly heartened by a bikini-clad co-religionist serving as the icon of everything they profess to be wrong with the world. [Funny, they haven’t blamed the Jews yet].

Now, if Miss USA had either a] worn a chador and insisted that she still be allowed the same chance to win, or b] had manifested some other sartorial item that served as an iconic support of Dar-al-Harb [say, a sword, Islamic flag, or dynamite vest], then accusations of affirmative action might have been salient.

On that note, it behooves a true Judeocentrist like this writer to weigh in on the controversy surrounding the purported offensiveness of Comedy Central’s I.S.R.A.E.L. robot/game. Until someone at Comedy Central has the brass to develop a suicide bombing robot game called I.S.L.A.M., the Jews are right.

If you target everyone equally, you may be funny. If you don't, or can't, you're either racist or spineless. Or both.

The Real “Boobs”: Jon Stewart and James Jones

2010-04-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

Reknowned physicist Stephen W. Hawking has attempted to put a damper upon any future intergalactic ecumenicism by making two declarations about the purported existence of extraterrestrial life: that “aliens” likely do exist and are either less evolved, unintelligent, or both; and, more recently, that it would likely not be a good idea to attempt to make contact with them, as their intentions toward us would likely be simultaneously hostile and predatory.

One might be forgiven for thinking that Hawking might have been making a more general statement of principles about erstwhile “intelligent” life on this planet.

Emblematic of the week’s events was “Boobquake”, blogger Jen McCreight’s successful uniting of irreverence and scientific method as a satirical rejoinder to a prominent Iranian cleric’s claim that immodest dress was responsible for the recent spate of tremors. One has to give real credit where it is due: first of all, the purported levels of “immodesty” on display for the project might actually qualify as demure—or even straitlaced—in some contexts; but, more importantly, McCreight’s project was laudable in two respects. The first was that it was simultaneously brainy and yet didn’t take itself too seriously, as might otherwise be expected from an otherwise atheistic-driven irreverent response to any religious sentiment; she avoided what might have otherwise been another knee-jerk anti-clerical response that was just as “fundamentalist” as her targets. The second was that she had the audacity to make her primary target an Islamic cleric; there were certainly no shortage of outrageous emanations from religious eminences following the Haiti earthquake, most of whom were not Muslim; however, McCreight avoided the usually strong leftist impulse to grant a pass to Islam while excoriating more “Western” faiths.

Sadly, Jon Stewart had an opportunity to make a similar statement when he discussed the recent controversy surrounding the censorship of a depiction of Mohammed on South Park. Watch the video: he seems to be spending most of the 10 minute segment trying to make up his mind as to whether a] making fun of Islam is a good idea and b] whether he has to come to terms with a certain level of discomfort in even entertaining the motion, because, in the current liberal-progressive zeitgeist, Islam is in need of protection from its bigoted and religiously [if not ethnically] biased enemies. Even the “montage” of cuts lacerating all faiths at once fell way short: Islam was at the receiving end of one barb [although other non-Western faiths received more, which should put the lie to notions that any attack on Islam is ipso-facto ethnically motivated]. The segment closer—Stewart leading a “gospel choir” in an obscene chant—was, again, a cop-out: by forcing equivalences between Islamic threats and other religious radicalism, Stewart further contributed to the general cultural blindness to the fact that contemporary Islam is unique among said radical faith groups in going beyond making egregious statements to making—and carrying out—assorted felony murders. Stewart “hinted” at the idea that Islam was getting a “free pass”—but couldn’t bring himself to actually issue a condemnation.

While one comic was failing in his satirical duties, an very high ranking official in a government responsible for the promulgation of appeasing Islamism made a bumbling foray into comedy. It needs to be said that the issue isn’t necessarily the “offensiveness” of the joke, which was mild at best [I actually laughed initially]; the question, of course, is one of both timing and credibility. In addition to the fact that General Jones is working for an administration whose courage in issue like standing up to Iran doesn’t measure up to the Boobquakers who took them on directly, Press Secretary Gibbs’ statements to the effect that Jones should be given a pass because his remarks weren’t in the written text [i.e., he didn’t write ‘em, so he didn’t say ‘em], indicate something more sinister at work: an attempt of the administration’s part to raise the question of “dual loyalty” and attach that stigma to supporters of Israel who are critical of White House policy.

So maybe let’s reframe the “Special Relationship” between the US and Israel, at least for as long as our current President is in office. Let’s assume for a moment that the “common attributes” of Westernism and democracy that are ostensibly shared between the two countries are overplayed somewhat. Let’s even assume for a moment that, yes, even if only for economic reasons, US and Israel’s interests don’t necessarily always coalesce. [At least a personage like the late Texas Governor and Senator John Connally was forthright enough to state publicly that the spectre of dead Jews was problematic for American energy policy. In this administration’s case, they might even be willing to tolerate dead Americans. But that’s a separate issue.]

Instead, let’s take Connally’s approach and turn it on its head: US support for Israel—at least in the monetary sense—is predicated upon the US covering its ass so that the business it does do with the sworn mortal enemies of Jews doesn’t leave the entire basis of the US economy on blood money, from the blood of dead Jews; because the US [never mind the UN and the rest of the international community] has sat in its hands more than once while known genocides were in progress, against Jews and others.

Should the spectre of dual loyalties are raised, the counter-spectre of Jew murder should be the response. The US needs to keep its business partners and the Islamist friends it seems to be chasing from engaging in the mass murder they repeatedly threaten to commit. Therefore: it is a distinct US interest to be seen as not willing to tacitly condone a second genocide, or, at the very least, the US should be forced to see that it become one: e.g., in one specific case, the US has to decide between a genocidal nuclear Iran and a possible economic crisis that would result from an Israeli peremptory strike.

Transcendent blackmail isn’t a good way to make friends; however, the time to assume that the Jewish people haven’t been “de-friended” by this administration may be long past. The question of actual anti-semitism on the part of the President and his advisors—regardless of Jones’ and Gibbs’ behavior--is almost irrelevant: the two Presidents who arguably did the most for Jews and the Jewish state—Truman and Nixon—also arguably harbored the most anti-semitic personal sentiments of any White House occupant while serving in office. However, whether the result of transcendent blackmail or some genuine moral sense they were willing to draw the line at wholesale massacre of Jews.

I don’t care if this administration “likes” Israel or the Jews. But it is my right—if not duty—to remind them of the possible moral consequences of their likes/dislikes, and embarrass them into compliance.

Dowd’s Dilemma and the Four Sons

2010-04-08T08:54:00.000-07:00

Most people familiar with Jewish traditions are familiar with the “Four Questions” to be asked at the Passover Seder, a role usually reserved for the youngest child.

Less immediately familiar is the tradition regarding the allegory of the “Four Sons” recited at the Seder, which usually correspond to four distinct stereotypes: the “Wise” child, simultaneously familiar with but still intellectually curious; the “Wicked” child, who more or less demonstrates a mind that will stay made up in the face of inconvenient facts; the “Simple” child, whose query[s] haven’t yet progressed beyond “What Is This”?, and the “One Who Does Know How To Ask”, who, the complier of the Seder Haggadah, needs to be prodded in the right direction.

It occurred to me over the course of the past Passover that, in light of the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, I might be able to draw a parallel between these four traditional children and four players from the more contemporary scene [after all, what was the Exodus other than the first Middle East crisis involving the Jews?]

The first two players—“Wise” and “Wicked”—came almost right away: General David Petraeus and Vice-President Biden, respectively. After the brouaha surrounding the Biden visit to Jerusalem; he had apparently told Netanyahu that “what you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan”. Knowing the current administration’s policy inclinations, there was some surprise at the tone of the admonition, but less so at the fact that it was delivered. There was, however, some worry when some reported that this concern was shared—and directly addressed—by General Petraeus, hinting that U.S. support for Israel directly hinders America’s national security interests. Petraeus himself put the lie to this: “There is no mention of lives anywhere in there. I actually reread the statement. It doesn’t say that at all.” He said the only point was that moderate Arab leaders are worried about a lack of progress in the peace process.

There are your first two players: the “Wicked” child who insists upon a version of events that are not in consonance with the facts—or even his closest military advisers. With the series of clarifications that had to be issued by the General, it became increasingly clear that Biden was merely a stand-in for the rest of the Administration and its appeasement bent, and was willing to sacrifice the crediblity of those who actually are defending the country.

One caveat: With all respect due General Petraeus, he doesn’t go far enough. While I certainly would argue as a matter of opinion that American and Israeli interests coalesce, I would not be so bold as insist that that statement be raised to the level of a doctrine; to a degree, I would almost hope that that was not automatically the case. However, as long as he demonstrates a belief that there are “moderate” Arab leaders, and that he must account for their illegitimate pretensions to involvement in anything having to do with Israeli politics, he still hasn’t used the power of his office to do what should be done for American interests, NOT Israeli. Then again, the Haggadah does state quite clearly that even the Wise child hasn’t learned everything yet.

But—if we have our wise and wicked children, what about the other two? It turned only one actor was needed for both roles: Maureen Dowd.

Over the course of approximately the past six weeks, Maureen Dowd wrote a series of four or five columns devoted to two subjects. The first involved a series of treatments of the ostensible [inevitable?] Westernization of Saudi Arabia; the second was the ongoing scnadal of pastoral pedophilia that persists in the Roman church.

The apparent motivation behind Dowd's willingness to print the claim of Prince Saud al-Faisal that “we are breaking away from the shackles of the past…we are moving in the direction of a liberal society” seemed to be juts so she could ascribe equal credibility to his claim that “what is happening in Israel is the opposite”. There was your “One Who Does Know How To Ask”: willing to take a patently absurd assertion at face value, even as she simultaneously attempted to qualify it: “[P]rogress is measured by a sundial in this stunted desert kingdom”.

That said, from a typical “liberal” perspective, however, I have to at least grudgingly congratulate her on mainitaining a modicum of consistency on another front: having proven that, like most “secular progressives”, she is more inclined to favor a cultural system of non-Western origin [i.e., Saudi Wahhabiism] over one tagged as “Western” [Israel], Dowd might be even more critical of the leadership of the Catholic faith in which she was raised for their ongoing refusal to see their pedophilia crisis for what it is, or in the parlance of the Simple Child, “What Is It [?]”.

Ironically, Dowd has spent so much time holding herself up as an expert in Islam, Islamists and Middle East crises, when she can actually focus on an area where her credibility might do some good. However, at the very least, one must say that she at least is as [if not more] critical of another “Western” religion as she is of Judaism/Zionism; and, one that happens to be her own, at that.

[Dowd also made a point of criticizing the Vatican spokespersons who compared the pressure being applied on the Church to Holocaust-level anti-Semitism. While the insanity of such an analog should be obvious to those who don’t consider the entire crisis engulfing Rome to be a Jewish plot, I wonder if Dowd is subtly trying to deflect the inevitable questions of anti-Zionist—if not anti-Semitic—bias that would attach to her fawning treatment of Wahhabi Saudiism. AS far as this writer is concerned—should one have questions about my biases and an ostensible willingness to bury the “sins” of my co-religionists—a perusal of my early entry Dirty Laundry? should lay that notion to rest.]

The Dowdian dilemma, then, might illustrate what happens when those not equipped to reach certain levels of wisdom think too hard: they confuse themselves. To conjure up a holiday that Dowd might find more familiar: forgive them, for they know not what they ask...or how to.

The Rest Is Details

2010-03-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

In 1967, two days before the beginning of the Six Day War between Arabs and Israelis, French president General Charles de Gaulle decreed an arms embargo that disrupted what had been strong military cooperation between France and Israel since the Jewish state was created. Five months later, in a televised news conference, De Gaulle described the Jews as "this elite people, sure of themselves and domineering".

That was one turning point in Israel’s history of alliances. We may now be witnessing a new one.

In case anyone needed a clear indication that this administration is hostile to the Zionist project [which is ALWAYS ongoing], the events surrounding the recent Israel visit of the Vice-President and the resulting “insult” should remove all doubt. The rest is just details.

Now for some of the details. These include:

…the only reason to possibly be critical of Israel in this event at all: contrary to the conventional wisdom, the issue is not really a question of the timing of the housing announcement more than whether Netanyahu was truly “blindsided” by the announcement. If the housing minister “pre-empted” Netanyahu—either for reasons of pandering to a political constituency or for a misperceived “religious obligation” to further cement the Jewish claim to Jerusalem—one hopes that Netnayahu gets onto that page, presents a unified front to the US, and deals with the local political fallout later.

…that the real “apartheid” state in the region would be a newly created “Palestine” [to go with the other 21—or 22—non-Jewish states in the Fertile and Golden Crescents], due to their insistence on a state that is “Judenrein”, or that this [or any] US administration cares about this. With the State Department in the lead—as it always has been—the Administration has increasingly seized upon an outmoded, but persistent, combination of “self-determination” and pan-Arabism to inform its position. These are the positions that need to be attacked before questions of antisemitism are addressed, no matter how plausible those claims are.

…whether this Administration is truly going out of its way to present itself as pro-Arab and/or –Muslim. If Obama’s Cairo speech wasn’t enough, Biden’s blunt claim that the a Jewish presence in [East] Jerusalem “undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan” is a further indication of whose side the Administration would like to be on, even if it isn’t quite there yet. The last time something like this happened was during Gulf War I, when Israel was forced to restrain itself from responding to Iraq’s Scud attacks. Twenty years later, Israel’s enemies are much more equipped to commit genocide, and this Administration seeks any excuse to sideline itself [and Israel] from a legitimate defense.

…whether one even needs to raise the question of antisemitism, especially as increasing numbers of Israel’s enemies turn out to be Jewish [e.g., Tony Judt, Naomi Klein, et al]. Rather, one should raise issues of inconsistencies in the purported ideologies of these critics, especially as they bend over backward to support polities and belief systems that run the gamut between theocratic and totalitarian, if not both. Not that one should ever expect to win conversions from those in that camp, who are as ideologically rigid and fundamentalist as the worst Islamists [even if they don’t kill anyone directly]; however, some “independents”—if there are any left—might be enlightened.

…whether or not this President is “foreign”, or “Muslim”, or otherwise “unfit” for his office. For reasons of credibility, use of that notion should be avoided as a political tactic by Israel and her allies. There are enough plausible lines of attack on policy issues to not have to resort to ad hominem attacks [although it might actually not be that bad an idea to remain “neutrally silent” when such attacks emanate from the further reaches of the Right, analogous to the “neutral silence” on the left when Islamist atrocities are perpetrated.]

…and, finally, whether there would be any truth to the notion that the only real obvious black mark against this Administration is its now undoubted hostility toward Zionism. There might have been a two-day window when there was some truth to that sentiment [though it would be hard to ascertain exactly when that might have been]. At this point, however, it no longer matters. Even “liberal” supporters of Israel who were loath to ask questions about this Administration should start now.

“The Politics Will Catch Up”—Part I

2010-03-04T16:15:00.000-08:00

Is the President so dissatisified with his guaranteed historical electoral legacy? Could he be trying to cash in on an instant political legacy at the expense of his party, and even his reelection prospects?

Conventional historical wisdom holds that the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 turned the American South into permanent republican territory. Legend has it that he put down his pen after singing the 1964 Act, Lyndon Johnson told an aide ''We have lost the South for a generation." Similarly, the political price of forcing the legislation of a federally mandated system of health care has become increasingly clear to anyone with any political sensibility. However, a modicum of foresight might indicate the inevitablity of some kind of electoral “correction” to the current Democratic supermajority, as may or may have not been heralded by the special election of Scott Brown.

When White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs hopes that “that the politics will catch up”, he seems to have an eye on the above analog, if he is not praying that health care legislation ends up with the historical import of civil rights. However, a more directly relevant and/or accurate analog might be embodied in Senator Mitch McConnell’s claim that the Democrats “want to pass this anyway just to basically ignore the opinion of the American population and go ahead with this bill.”

In that vein, it might be more useful to employ another historical analogy. In the past century, there have been three instances of Democrats seizing control of Congress, and then the White House, in direct reaction to Republican crises: the 1930 midterms and 1932 general elections—in response to the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression; the 1974 midterms and 1976 general elections—in response to Watergate; and the 2006 midterms and 1980 general elections—in response to Katrina, Foleygate, Abramoff/Neygate, and finally, the housing crash. The question would seem to be: would one find that the contemporary situation mirrors 1930-2 or 1974-6 more closely?

One would obviously hope that the Great Recession “stays” a recession, which is actually mostly likely; as related in Liaquat Ahamed’s “Lords of Finance”, one of the reasons for the Depression’s severity was that the Federal Government of the 1920’s and 1930’s simply wasn’t equipped—read: big enough [!]—to handle the consequences of out-of-control economic indicators. Similarly, no one would compare any of the aforementioned “-gates” to the original, other than doctrinaire “W. Was The Worst President Ever” types [and, in that case, the politics will almost certainly catch up, eventually.]

To answer the questions I posed at the top of this post, this incessant drive to pass any type of “health-care reform” may simply be a case of the President’s personal inability to delay legacy gratification. This might be a direct side effect of the undeniable historical moment of his election and his possibly suffering a sort of withdrawal from the “high” of that moment; he needs to recapture that moment as fast as he possibly can with the least amount of effort and cement it forever.

Ironic, then, that it’s going to take health care for him to get his fix. [I'm sure someone came up with that before, but still...]

Neither Rahm Nor Rush Need Repent

2010-02-06T17:33:00.000-08:00

The apology wars have resurfaced, ensnaring—however briefly—Rahm and Rush.

Rahm’s use of the word “retarded” and Rush’ reference to “people on Wall Street [who] are Jewish” started their own respective brouhahas.

As an ex-special educator [MA, Teacher’s College, Columbia, 2002; eight years in the field] the Palin-Emanuel imbroglio struck a chord with me; however, it was not the way one might expect. I don’t particularly find the term “retarded” offensive, and apparently, neither do the fields of special education, psychology, medicine, or any other service oriented toward the betterment of individuals with developmental and related challenges. I found it particularly funny when one of my charges—a 20-year old fellow with Down’s syndrome—called me a “retard” in crowded room once years ago. [For reasons, I can’t explain, I was the only one in the room who seemed unafraid to laugh.]

I will admit through increasingly easing but still clenched teeth that Sarah Palin is remaking herself as a viable Presidential candidate—after all, this country put Dan Quayle and George W. Bush into high office—and, since I have nothing to lose this early in the cycle, I will predict that her VP choice will come down to Newt [as a Cheney foil] or Scott Brown [for ticket balance and the Obama mirror that Palin was supposed to be, but wasn’t, for John McCain]. However, she is going to have to learn to become more thick skinned as she undergoes her well-funded media training. She may understandably be sensitized to the indiscriminate use of the “retarded” owing to her toddler Trig’s condition [I’m still waiting for Daily Kos-types to say “We’re not talking about Trig. We’re talking about her.” I certainly won’t have been the first or last]; however, aside from the fact that she has been she also will have to learn to remain somewhat more socio-culturally. Her family foibles have become public fodder precisely because they present as contradistinct from her professed worldview, and when said worldview is grounded in fundamentally conservative—or conservatively fundamentalist—values, especially religious ones, the margin for error vis-à-vis inconsistency or hypocrisy is necessarily narrow.

Furthermore, her taking offense places her in a political “tradition” that is definitely not one her side of the political fence. One of the reasons [there are many] that I ended up leaving the special education was that there was an institutional leaning towards theories of individuals such as Thomas Szasz, who assert that all disability exists only in the minds of those who consider themselves “normal”, and therefore the problems experienced by individuals with “challenges” are truly ours, not theirs. This is certainly qualifies as a far-Left perspective; and, while assigning certain stigmas to anyone—especially those will “challenges”—is never appropriate, the denial of the existence of said “challenges” is equally inappropriate. Obviously, this is not what Palin intends—but again—her credibility, such as it is, will be inexorably tied to her ability to remain consistent. Unfair, perhaps, but if she aspires to the Presidency [and I might vote for her, as my interests align less and less with Obama administration policy, if they ever did in the first place] she will have to find a better way to deal with all this than to agitate for apologies and resignations when they are completely unwarranted.

The same applies, in a more limited sense, to Abraham Foxman. I appreciate, as an identifying Jew, that there is a professional watchdog keeping an eye out for any kind of antisemitic activity. No, we can’t be too careful. However, I think Foxman is off the mark here; Limbaugh seems to have gone out of his way to clearly distinguish between the fact that there are bankers who are Jews, as opposed to using a “Jewish banker[s]” stereotype. It really is no more offensive than him pointing out that Jews were overwhelmingly Obama voters. I don’t like that he implied the stereotype was being employed by the Obama administration; however, while the implication might be unfair, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it offensive.

To be sure, antisemitism does exist on the right and I have written extensively here and elsewhere about how any firm alliances with the religious, if not political Right, will not work as much in Jews’ favor as Jewish conservatives wish. However, one must note that the variety of antisemitism prevalent on today’s Right [with the possible exception of individuals like Pat Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos] is generally eschatological, so it deals with far-off future events that may never happen. The Left’s antisemites are more pernicious because a] they deny their bias, and mostly get away with the denial; b] they lend aid and comfort to movements that are openly eliminationist [I would include the PLO in this category], whether directly or indirectly. Rush’s statements don’t come close to fitting any of the above categories.

Sarah and Harry

2010-01-15T08:06:00.000-08:00

As I’ve mentioned repeatedly, I’ve had an axe to grind with Sarah Palin, and it has nothing to do with her politics, per se. It’s a combination of how more credible conservatives like Peggy Noonan view her [as she was caught saying on an open mike after the VP nomination] and the fact that I was smitten with her until I saw the Couric interviews.

Sarah Palin is now going to Fox, exactly where she belongs. She’s showing a lot more initiative than W. ever did in 1999 and 2000; not that she’s any less “incurious”, but this is the smartest, if not the only way, for her to polish herself and her skills for 2012. She got burned in the only campaign arena than mattered; she’s gearing herself up for it. [OK, I joked about her “writing” her book. Just to be fair—JFK won a Pulitzer for a “history” book he admitted he never wrote. And no one “writes” their own “auto”-biography.]

In theory, she also in a way redeems herself for her abrupt resignation of the Alaska governorship, if she becomes the first pundit to actually go [back] into public service. Conservatives might be heartened if some of their more popular pundits [e.g. Rush, Beck] start to follow her example and try for Washington.

[BTW, stop with the Palin “hotness”. Anne Coulter is a lot “hotter” than Palin—and a lot smarter and more educated [Princeton vs Idaho? Helllooo?] Would you really want to see Palin in Coulter-length minis? By 2012 Palin will be as “hot” as Hillary Clinton was in 1992. All feminist tenets aside, there are a lot of reasons that shouldn't be a factor.]

Speaking of the only arena that matters in politics, Michael Steele has to say what he did about Harry Reid’s comments about Obama’s skin tone and articulation, but even he knows better than to try to force parallels with Trent Lott. Reid’s comments were descriptive and plaintive; Lott’s were prescriptive and nostalgic. Conservatives have been trying to force a “Well-If-A-Democrat-Had-Said-It” analogy, but despite all truisms about the “liberal media”, it really doesn’t apply here.

The Aughts vs. the Tweens: Stating The Obvious

2010-01-10T10:20:00.000-08:00

According to most historians, the 20th century began in earnest with the commencements of WWI, when Europe’s monarchical balance-of-power system in place since the Congress of Vienna collapsed upon itself, and ended in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the end of the Cold War. Similarly, a history professor at Penn, Dr. Thomas Sugrue, opined in a class I took that the 60’s really began in 1954, with the fall of Dien Bien Phu [the real beginning of the Vietnam War], and ended in 1974, with Watergate and the Nixon resignation.

A similar discussion could be discerned in some ostensibly less “discerning” publications [see the end-of year issues of Rolling Stone and New York] regarding what to call the “00’s”; “the aughts” seemed to be the general consensus. In that spirit, I’ve decided that the most appropriate term for this new decade—at least right now—would be the tweens. My rationale, aside from the aforementioned examples of history not being limited to actual chronology, is that the century seems to be in that period where it hasn’t even begun its adolescence yet, even if one might think that circumstances should have forced us to “grow up” faster.

As if that weren’t enough, conventional wisdom holds that adolescence is usually prolonged during recessions, as more people go to--and stay in—school [as I am, currently, on my second masters and third career change]. This, in addition to what another Penn history professor, Michael Zuckerman, referred to loosely as a general cultural zeitgeist of an across the board adolescence [in case you haven’t figured it out, I was a history major at Penn]. In the middle of the previous decade, Time magazine referred to these hybrids as “Twixters” or “kidults”, New York magazine as “grups”. “Tweens” describes the new decade perfectly.

In keeping with the spirit of a general refusal to grow up, I have discovered that some of the most salient observations one can make in a socio-political or cultural sense are, counterintuitively, the most obvious ones. Addditionally, it is sometimes the most obvious points that need to be reiterated, especially in a cultural setting where the general population needs to have everything explained, diagrammed, powerpointed, mapped out and illustrated with cartoons.

Obvious point number one:
Big Government is not going anywhere. Whether of a conservative bent—one requiring a strong defense and military-intelligence apparatus; or of a more liberal bent—requiring funding of all various elements of a “welfare state”—all government, especially the Federal branches, will never get to the point where one can “drown it in the bathtub”, as Grover Norquist would have it.

Obvious point number two:
By extension, the welfare state isn’t going anywhere either. One can debate whether governmental welfare goes to the “undeserving poor” or “’rapacious corporation”—but the fact of the matter is, the government will always be doling out funds to somebody. Just realize that the arguably most liberal administration in American history began its tenure by bailing out the banking and automotive industries. If that wasn’t corporate welfare, what is?

Obvious point number three:
Government and business/finance are inexorably tied, and ever have been since at least the creation of the Federal Reserve; and when government gets involved in business, there will be—and should be—regulations. Regulating business is NOT a socialist concept, no matter how much the Sarah Palin wing of the Republican party screams that it is [not to mention that Palin probably understands less finance and economics than I do.] The New Yorker’s most recent issue—which includes a treatment of the schisms becoming evident in the Chicago School of economics, heretofore ground zero of fundamentalist deregulationary free-market orthodoxy—better illustrate this point.

Obvious point number four:
Even if a stubborn unemployment rate and a questionable recession persists through the 2010 midterms and beyond, its actual impact on the political fortunes of the Obama administration will be limited—though there may be some shakeup in Congress, which is to be expected; one might call it a “correction” not all that unlike when a market “corrects” itself. It will remain a truism in the forseeable future that economic misfortunes are the fault of conservatives and Republicans.

Obvious point number five:
Similarly, the Democrats have not earned themselves any credibility vis-à-vis national security. It might be that they don’t care, that they are so bent toward another “correction”, that of America’s image in the Muslim world. However, the reaction to the underwear bomber indicates that Obama and his minions know that they can’t turn a complete blind eye to the danger without suffering political consequences. A series of further Northwest Airline flights and Fort Hoods will start to do to the Democrats what Lehman Brothers did to the McCain campaign.

Obvious point number six:
Sarah Palin is, right now, politically salient in a way that is all out of proportional to her personal talents and intelligence. That not only may not matter; it may almost help, especially with a base that has serious misgivings with anyone smarter than they are. To be fair—and I personally haven’t been, because my falling for the pre-Couric interview Palin cost me a ton of credibility—Palin is probably closer to a female Dubya than a hybrid of Dan Quayle and Jessica Simpson, as I had previously described her. There is a less-than-subtle difference.

Obvious point number seven:
Despite the series of leaked emails from East Anglia, the truism that there is a phenomenon called “global warming” and that it is caused primarily by our consumption of coal and oil will hold for some time into the future, irrespective of how the “real” science bears out. It also may be equally true that no one country is going to be willing to give up their consumption privilieges. I personally wish this aspect of the environmental movement many more Copenhagens.

Obvious point number eight:
I am biased. So is everyone else.

Happy decade.

Jets-Colts 40 Year Redux

2009-12-28T14:28:00.000-08:00

I’ve generally avoided writing about sports on this blog unless there I thought there was a useful political metaphor; in my approximately 16 months at this, I’ve probably written about five or six pieces that feature sports prominently. The temptation would be even greater than doing pieces that are blatantly pro-Jewish or pro-Israel, owing not only to the fact that in my more obviously Judeocentric pieces I’ve usually been quoting someone else directly [who would say what I wanted to better than I could] but also because I know how out-of-hand my lifelong obsession with the New York Jets [which would explain a lot] can get. I didn’t want to end up writing only about the Jews and the Jets.

This season, it turns out there may be even stronger parallels between the two. [Now, just in case any of you want to get REALLY self-righteous about this, no, there’s no comparison. Just call it a VERY loose illustration. And if you’re really offended, don’t read any further. Or read my Morally Offended and get a clue.]

Anyway…anyone familiar with Jewish and Jetish history will recognize the common thread of suffering that runs between the two, sometimes involving a certain degree of self-infliction. However, can anyone deny an element of Divine intervention after Sunday’s game in Indianapolis? [Here’s my foray into self-righteousness: I don’t believe in “football gods”. G-d can do this all by Himself.]

In either case, some [football] issues need to be addressed:

The only person who was cheated out of anything here was Peyton Manning. The guy deserved a shot at a perfect season, particularly since, as was proven Sunday, the only reason the Colts were anywhere near that precipice was because of him. As I’ve written before The Convention: Regular Season Begins I have a bias against the Miami Dolphins and Don Shula bordering on xenophobia [owing to the Mud Bowl/’83 AFC Championship] which was one reason I rooted for the Pats in SB XLII [aside from my almost equal bias against the Giants, for winning SB XXI when 1986 should have been the Jets’ year.] But while watching the Colts self-destruct in a Jet-like manner, I had this epiphany about the Fish' perfect 1972 season: while they might not have beaten any playoff teams—and only one team with a record over .500 [the Giants, who finished 8-6 that year]—I suddenly remembered that, of Miami’s 17 wins in ’72, the quarterback of record in 11 of them was a 38-year-old backup, Earl Morrall. I suddenly had a grudgingly newfound [short-lived, to be sure] respect for the job Don Shula did that season.

Now, as far as others who think that this is an earth-shattering event:

Colts fans DO have reason to boo. And they’ll be REALLY mad if this turns out to actually cost them playoff momentum and/or the Super Bowl, like it may have in ’05. However, recent NFL history is inconclusive: just look at the ’04 Colts, who rested everyone in the last game at Denver and got blown out 33-14, and then came back against the same Broncos the next week in the wildcard game in Indy and won 49-24. [Jet fans like me were really angry: that game almost cost the Jets a playoff spot, though they may have deserved to lose it after going 5-6 following a 5-0 start.] There’s also the classic case of the ’96 Broncos who started resting vets in week 14 after clinching the top seed and lost their playoff opener to the expansion Jaguars. [Having learned his lesson, Mike Shanahan won the two Super Bowls after that.] As far as the ’07 Pats playing for perfection, we’ll never know because they lost the Super Bowl, but that had more to do with the nature of the Giants’ blitz than any veteran fatigue.

So, Peyton was cheated out of a piece of history. No one else deserves it. And, as Rex Ryan put it, “this football team beat 14 teams, so they earned the right to play it the way they wanted to”.

I also refer back to the ’04 Colts-Broncos finale because apparently fans of five other teams are up in arms that both the Colts and Bengals are laying down for the Jets. Grow up. If the Jets hadn’t found ridiculously creative ways to lose in SIX of their seven losses—[pick sixes and dropped field-goal snaps come to mind]—no one would be having this conversation. The breaks finally evened out.

This especially goes for Dolphins fans. Yeah, you guys swept the Jets this year. Remember all those seasons the Jets swept the Fish and still finished behind them in the standings? 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1993, 1999, 2000, 2001…and in four of those seasons, the Fish made the playoffs and the Jets didn’t. So go jump into Biscayne Bay, Fishfaces. Payback’s a bitch, especially when she’s a New Yorker.

In conclusion: forty years ago, the Jets were going up against a Colts team that was being touted as the best ever. The Jets had no chance. [And the Colts starter was their backup—Earl Morrall.]

We know how that game turned out. And it was played in Miami.

See how this all works out?

Almost All Apologies

2009-12-27T03:56:00.000-08:00

It’s too easy to say that Jimmy Carter’s “apology” to the Jews is due to his not wanting to throw up any obstacles to his grandson Jason Carter’s budding political career. It is, however unquestionable that he is being disingenuous. All the evidence one needs to that effect is his rather tortuous explanation of the meaning behind the title of his tome Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid [“The former president said that he had attempted to conflate into a single title his belief that Palestine, not Israel, should control the West Bank, and that apartheid, not peace, would prevail were that not to happen. Apartheid was a predictor, he said, not a description; such an outlook was not inconsistent with Israeli leaders and pro-Israel groups.”] THAT should pretty much serve as an indicator of how gullible he considers Jews who are otherwise completely supportive of his political weltanschuung and how little he cares about those who don’t, Jewish or otherwise.

As far as I’m concerned, Carter is about as genuine about his regret as Henry Ford was about his in 1927, after he’d practically single-handedly made the Protocols of the Elders of Zion an international best-seller. One should also remember that long after said apology was issued—and the publication of The Dearborn Independent, the American version and forerunner to Der Sturmer, ceased publication under pressure—Ford was awarded accepted the highest medal that Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle was In July 1938. Not for nothing did Adolf Hitler tell a reporter "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration" two years before he became Chancellor. I would predict that similar public accolades for Carter from terrorists and their supporters will not cease because of this “apology”. Some of them actually read history too, before they revise and deny it.

In the meantime, as Rosner from the Jerusalem Post puts it: “1. Jewish organizations have to congratulate him and pretend to believe him. Jewish writers don't. 2. Jewish politicians and Israeli politicians have to act as if he means what he says. Jews with no political aspirations don't.” That—and the timing of the apology with the Jason Carter’s budding political career—should serve, for now at least, as a positive sign: that the idea that some “criticisms” of Israel are disingenuous and motivated by anti-semitism are still politically trenchant enough that they have to be reckoned with.

Which is why the appointment of Hannah Rosenthal as President Obama’s “Anti-Semitism Czar”—and her immediate jumping into the fray by publicly siding with the J Street version of Israel “support”—is, to be sure, at least mildly alarming, but certainly not surprising. As I’ve said before, Obama plan to govern from the center by dragging the center to the left and making that the new “center”, and this fits his plan perfectly. Like Carter, she has said some of the right things [see her Ha’aretz interview] but her belief [which is essentially the J Street outlook] that when sacrifices for “peace” have to be made, it’s the Jews that are going to have to be doing the sacrificing, because that is our destiny. This is why is this case Rosner is wrong when he writes that “Instead of being an asset to Obama, she's a burden”, because when he writes right before that “Rosenthal is now officially a member of the look-at-them-and-you'll-know-why-we-don't-trust-Obama team”—he’s absolutely correct. Rosenthal is the embodiment of the Obama House Jew. [He’s got lots of those.]

I don’t think Obama is an anti-Semite. While he may be a lot more sympathetic to Islam [and Islamists, and even terrorists] than is politically healthy to let on [for him], one could posit [albeit, in a somewhat strained manner] that: a] the Islam he grew up with in Indonesia is not necessarily the same as the Wahhabi/Taliban version and b] he’s as religious a Moslem as Reagan was a Chrisitian [e.g., openly supportive of their political agenda while not ever going to services himself]. However, even given that possible allowance—and like I said, it’s both generous and strained at the same time—Obama’s attempt to realign the US interest with international Islam and other elements of Edward Said-influenced political correctness and have that rebranded as centrism is certainly fraught with peril for all Americans [if not everyone else]. Rosenthal’s appointment fits into that program perfectly.

All Yours, Now

2009-12-23T00:12:00.000-08:00

I have written ["W. Doesn’t Care. He Doesn’t Have To."] that Obama’s predecessor didn’t understand enough to care about his legacy. I was somewhat wrong, to a degree; a closer examination of a number of his policy moves after the 2006 midterms indicate that he came to a belated realization that history wasn’t on the RNC payroll. This administration seems to have learned from W.’s mistake and decided to starts chasing its historical legacy right at the outset; apparently the election wasn’t enough, or it’s undisputed historicity convinced anyone in the administration—especially the President—that his legacy was already assured enough that anything he did would be automatically as historic. This kind of self-delusion has finally come full circle, as his policy centerpieces all coalesced into a perfect storm.

It started with Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech and his insistence—in the face of a “constituency” that professes a strict, if disingenuous, pacifism—that there are such things as “good wars” and that someone has to decide when and where to fight them. Obvious to us, the sentiments expressed might have served to reverse the may have served as the final salvo in Obama’s battle with the further-out left wing of his party who were disgruntled by his stance on Afghanistan. In one fell swoop, he now attached his Administration to an unpopular war, almost in the way Vietnam’s crown of thorns passed to Nixon once he bombed Cambodia. So now he acknowledges owning the war.

Soon after, Obama was in Copenhagen in an attempt to give the US a leading role in regulating carbon footprints—this after the East Anglia emails began to reveal the “science” behind global warming to be a hoax on the level of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It’s no accident that Obama’s “science czar”, John Holdren, made his reputation as an evangelist for extreme measures in world population control, as a follower of now-discredited theories in line with Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb”. In truth, any conservative criticism of liberal politicization of science is, right now, disingenuous, as long as they continue to insist on science in the service of corporate ends [as in the think tanks promoting oil and coal as non-pollutants and smoking as non-addictive] or religious ones [as in any support for “intelligent design” theory in science curricula]. However, when the time arrives that the discrediting of so-called “science” of climate change becomes the consensus position in the scientific community, the liberal progressives will be saddled with this in perpetuity.

Finally, there’s health care legislation. This is certainly going to be historic, but like what will eventually happen with climatology, it might be for the wrong reasons. Now, despite all available evidence, I am still not convinced that there are better alternatives to Keynesian economics and the existence of a welfare state, to a reasonable degree. Additionally, if no one in Congress has gotten around to reading any of the 2,000-plus pages of the bill, none of them can really comment with any accuracy about the bill, so I’ll take the high road and demur. However, despite the appearance of party unity on both sides of the divide—as evidenced by the strict party-line votes in the Senate at every stage—the infighting among Democrats surrounding the elements of the bill, including the reluctant dropping of the public option by Socialist Bernie Sanders, is probably more telling: that is, if the Republicans have become the party of “No”, the Democrats are living up to their reputation as the party of ”Anything”.

It might be that someone in the administration realized that, despite the failure of Great Society legislation and the fiasco of Vitenam [from either political vantage point], the legacy of LBJ and his administration was assured forever with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act [which also, to be sure, split the Democratic party]. In their rush to secure the historical legacy that had almost been handed to them just by virtue of the election, they have invested way too much political capital insuring that this health care legislation will simply pass and be counted as an equivalent, maybe even for doing nothing and worse. Instead, its passage—as an exclusively Democratic bill—will secure the moment that the automatic legacy unraveled, and when [hopefully] the partisan criticisms leveled at the administration finally began to gain credibility.

Sarah Palin and the Other Christian Scientists

2009-11-29T12:17:00.000-08:00

Yes, Palin is Evangelical and not a Christian Scientist, and [as certainly has been proven, at the very least, by Mary Baker Eddy’s tenets] Christian Science is a contradiction in terms. It’s also easy to be intellectually consistent when you don’t have much of an intellect to start with. Yet, it’s Palin’s W.-like intellectual incuriosity which may ultimately prove itself to be ultimately less malign than true intellectual dishonesty rampant in more rarefied quarters.

In case you have actually followed my blog history and noticed the absolute 180 I did on Palin—it was because of the Couric interviews, when I realized what Peggy Noonan had intuited: that Palin’s vacuity and absolute enthrallment with her newfound celebrity presented the worst possible public image for conservatives and conservatism, at the worst possible time. Especially for me: I was so depressed by what I saw that I couldn’t write anything for a month and a half, much less bring myself to vote for McCain; I sat out the vote]. So I have no love lost for her—because she made ME look bad just as I was starting out and I blame her for MY loss of credibility.

However, a hybrid of Dan Quayle and Jessica Simpson is an easy sell in today’s US; and, despite the general consensus [with which I agree] that even the perception of Palin as the Republican front-runner is ultimately not good for conservatism [1], the events surrounding a certain series of emails emerging from the University of East Anglia [2] actually indicate how much more dangerous intellectual dishonesty is when individuals that actually possess a certain degree of intellectual acuity misuse it for partisan ends.

In a certain sense it might be hard to fathom why the scientific community has thrown its considerable weight behind the notion that the West—particularly the US—owes reparations to everyone else, and has chosen the vehicle of reducing our reliance on technology and industry so that anyone who hasn’t been as fortunate can benefit. It also isn’t the first time that “hard” science has prostituted itself for blatantly dubious political ends, most notoriously in the first half of this century when the scientific community essentially spearheaded eugenics and was almost directly responsible for widespread racial murder. [Many a Nazi commented that they were simply picking up where Cold Spring Harbor left off.]

One wonders whether this is their convoluted way of making up for it. In the process, however, they’re in danger of becoming just a fundamentalist as Palin, turning science into Christianity. And they don’t have her excuse.

1. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124716984620819351.html

2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6636563/University-of-East-Anglia-emails-the-most-contentious-quotes.html

The Death Penalty: A Rebirth?

2009-11-16T09:47:00.000-08:00

"There won’t be a lot of guilt-innocence maneuverability there."--THOMAS H. DUNN, a former defense lawyer for the Army, on possible defense strategies for Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is accused in the Nov. 5 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex.

Mr. Dunn’s quote was almost somewhat reminiscent of Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ head coach John McKay’s comment about his team’s execution: “I’m all for it.”

Take that comment, the recent execution of John Muhammad in Virginia, and the upcoming decision to try some of the highest-value terror detainees in open court, and we may have to reset the playing field vis-à-vis the death penalty debate in this country.

Just in case, a review: From the “Right”, you hear the usual admonitions to be “tough on crime” and that the death penalty serves as the ultimate deterrent. [Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is no true “religious” consensus, at least in the US, regarding the death penalty; usually, the more Evangelical and Fundamentalist strains are in favor, the “mainline” churches less so, the Catholics inalterably opposed, and most Jewish denominations—even, as will be evidenced below, some very salient Orthodox streams—also opposed.]

From the “Left”, the usual arguments you hear have to do with the inequitable application of the penalty and the impossibility of correcting mistakes; and that’s before you arrive at the pacifist argument that taking a life at anytime for any reason by anyone is immoral. [1]

[The “duty-to-retreat” law--which was the legal default position before the “Castle Doctrine” for all intents and purposes codified the right of self-defense through use of deadly force--while not truly “pacifist”, nevertheless indicates the difficulty of legally formulating a concept of “justifiable homicide” outside of warfare, which was a way of…”life”.]

On the eve of his inauguration as Governor of New York in 1995, George Pataki was the recipient of a unique message from the Jewish sage Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik regarding the death penalty, which Pataki had promised in his campaign to place back on the books in New York State:

“…you have the written law mandating the death penalty and the oral law, saying, in effect, that you can never apply it…Now, the death penalty should be there for use in extraordinary situations, in extraordinary threats to the public order…but if [Pataki] acts on the death penalty, he will be the leader of a bloody government.” [New York Magazine, “The 100 Smartest New Yorkers”, Jan. 30, 1995, p. 52].

Fort Hood, TX and Greenville, VA brought the penalty renewed credibility, and that was before the decision to move the terror trials to New York. While the Obama Administration’s intent is mainly to demonstrate [forcibly?] that there is no “conflict between our security and our ideals”--[to paraphrase the President’s inaugural address]--these trials, along with the Muhammad execution and upcoming Fort Hood case, may result in finally viewing how our legal system might actually work in cases where a true threat to public order is at stake, one on the level with Rabbi Soloveichik’s admonition.

In other words, these should be the exceptions that prove the rule: on the books for use in extraordinary threats to the public order. If we learn to restrict the use of the penalty to these situations and these situations alone, the country will be better off.

1. http://www.theroot.com/views/dc-sniper-should-die-not?GT1=38002

Turning Points?: The Elections and Fort Hood

2009-11-06T01:47:00.000-08:00

As a conservative [no matter how reluctant I am to admit it], I was definitely happy with the GOP taking the New Jersey and Virginia statehouses this past Tuesday. I was even more gratified by the fact that such a die-hard conservative as Virginia Governor-Elect Bob McDonnell being smart enough to downplay any ties with his ostensible comrades [sic]-in-arms Ralph Reed and Sarah Palin, realizing that gaining credibility may even be more important than electoral gains.

In contrast, the response to the loss of the the 23rd Congressional district in New York—and the assertion that “we won even thought we lost”—indicates that the Republicans seem to have forgotten even how to deal with any success.
It is to be expected that conservatives may be reluctant to handle any kind of success in the current econo-political climate: already being held responsible for the mess as it is, they’re extremely reluctant to assume any more responsibility than they have to. In a sense, what this indicates is a continuing ideological purge occurring among conservatives and the GOP, which may be more analogous to a Stalinist rather than McCarthyist ideology.

Of course, one might trace this fear of success and the concomitant loss of credibility all the way back to--“Mission Accomplished”. Never mind that the wrong country may have been invaded for either manufactured or misread reasons. The simple notion that the work was done once the Iraqi army was routed may itself have been the root of the former administration’s attitude of entitlement and invincibility, and the surprise and consequent lack of preparation for everything that followed.

Add that to the “Vietnam syndrome” once again rearing its ugly head as the Penatgon dithered as the conflict went on, and the McCarthyism hurt the important cause of anticommunism a lot more than it had helped it, and the conservative attitude problem may be more trenchant than anyone thinks. I can only hope that Virginia and New Jersey would serve as the start of the tides turning. Unfortunately, the GOP is acting as if the tides have been in their favor all along.

Today’s atrocity at Fort Hood, and the media’s—and even possibly the Army’s—response to it may partially be reflected by the aforementioned paralysis and fear of responsibility, which is not restricted to conservatives, but has become an inexorable part of how important parts of the country functions. The first was demonstrated by the conflicting reports coming out of the Army regarding what happened to the shooter and the heroic woman who actually may have stopped the massacre from going too far along; the second was the Army’s reluctance to make any reference to the possible motivation of the shooter, which, when you take the historical forces attributed to Vietnamism, McCarthyism, and the political correctness paralysis that resulted, has kept the Army from even hinting at his possible ethnically and/or religiously driven “grievances”. [That was left to the “fair and balanced” Fox news.]

I’d go a step further: the major reason that Americans can no longer identify their most mortal enemy [remember that even after 9/11 President Bush was referring to the faith of the hijackers as a “religion of peace”] is that we blew our credibility so many times in the past that “bleeding hearts” with any historical consciousness can remind us of our past “sins” often enough that we who know better are either paralyzed by it or motivated to work against our own interests.

One can only hope that Fort Hood might change this particular reluctance and saddle knee-jerk Saidist/Chomskyist progressivism with the same degree of lack of credibility that the GOP currently suffers from. Unfortunately, the forces militating against that go back further than we realize. 9/11 didn’t change it; this probably won’t either.

"Fuzzy" [!]: Bring Back Jayson Blair

2009-10-27T04:20:00.000-07:00

In my “Gaza, Again” post [December 27, 2008], as Israel "Cast Lead", I wrote:

[Operation Cast Lead is] Rice’—and this [the Bush] Administration’s—fault, because they insisted upon the imposition of "democratic" elections before a fully functioning society was running in the Strip. This terror-ridden failed-state Hamas-driven entity was chosen by its people, and they bear the responsibility for the actions of their leaders, which they undoubtedly approve of wholeheartedly. The war IS with the Gazan population, and the Israelis have nothing to lose by saying so.

Writing about Gaza in today’s New York Times, Ethan Bronner records this startling exchange with a Gaza local:

Many of the professionals here reject Hamas’s ideology, although some voted for the party in 2006 out of rage over the corruption in Fatah…“Hamas won by a slim margin, and it was because of people like me,” said Mohamed, who comes from a Fatah family and works for a charity. “I regret voting for them. I wanted to punish Fatah.” Like nearly all in Gaza who spoke about politics, he asked that his identity be hidden for fear of what the government might do. The rules of political dissent remain fuzzy. “Israel is saying, ‘Because you elected Hamas, you should have no life,’ ” he said. “Yet people elected Hamas because of Fatah corruption. I believe in peace with Israel, but I wanted desperately to get away from the corruption. I didn’t expect Hamas to win. Next time, I won’t vote at all.”
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/world/middleeast/27gaza.html?th&emc=th]

If the Gaza locals are willing to even to BEGIN to THINK about taking responsibility for their own mess—why are their Western “allies” so insistent upon convincing them otherwise? Something to do with a “soft bigotry of lowered expectations”, perhaps? Somewhere there is a profound disconnect between the beliefs that comprise the doctrines of political correctness and the actual belief that all human beings are truly “equal”. [But we knew that already….]

Plus—does anyone buy that Bronner really believes that in Gaza “the rules of political dissent remain fuzzy”? FUZZY? Even Walter Duranty, in all his extensive "coverage" of Stalin's Moscow for the Times, was never so disinegenuous. Where's Jayson Blair when you need him? He would have been the perfect Times Middle East correspondent.

And he and Howell Raines might still both have their jobs.

The Goldstone Chronicles

2009-10-26T14:31:00.000-07:00

It was once said of Henry Kissinger that he wasn't anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, or even really a self-hating Jew; his real religion was "self-promotion". Seems that "Justice" Richard Goldstone's career parallels Kissinger's closely in this regard.

http://www.rferl.org/content/Who_Is_Richard_Goldstone/1856255.html

Who is Richard Goldstone?
By R. W. Johnson
Radio Free Europe

The UN Human Rights Council has endorsed Judge Richard Goldstone's controversial report accusing both Israel and Hamas of war crimes during the 2008-09 conflict in the Gaza Strip. The council has asked the UN Security Council to refer the report's conclusions to the International Criminal Court if the two sides fail to conduct their own investigations.

Goldstone's report has been dismissed as hopelessly one-sided not only by the Israelis but by many neutral observers, with both the European Union and United States dissenting both on its substance and its suggestion that alleged Israeli war crimes should be judged not by Israeli courts but by the International Criminal Court.

Even many Jews outside Israel are asking how Goldstone, himself a Jew, could lend himself to such an obviously biased mission mandated by a Human Rights Council that is itself full of human rights violators as well as habitual Israel-haters. Both Martti Ahtisaari and Mary Robinson turned down the mission for that reason, after all.

Goldstone's behavior will not surprise those who have followed his career. As a young advocate in South Africa he drew criticism for the way he privately entertained the attorneys who might bring him cases: this was seen as touting for custom. Similarly, his decision to accept nomination as a judge from the apartheid regime drew criticism from many liberal lawyers who refused to accept such nomination because it meant enforcing apartheid laws.

ANC's Favorite Judge

Then, as the political situation changed, so did Goldstone. Entrusted by President F. W. de Klerk with a commission to investigate the causes of violence, Goldstone publicized much damning evidence against the apartheid regime but refused to investigate any form of violence organized by the African National Congress (ANC). This naturally made him the ANC's favorite judge.

Moreover, Goldstone, issued a dramatic press statement suggesting that the military were involved in illegal partisan behavior. De Klerk had to dismiss 23 senior military figures, though the evidence for their guilt promised by Goldstone was never actually forthcoming. The officers sued De Klerk, who had to back down and apologize.

De Klerk was furious at Goldstone's sensational use of untested evidence and, knowing that Goldstone was ambitious to succeed Boutros-Boutros Ghali as UN secretary-general, referred to him as "Richard-Richard Goldstone."

The effect of these high profile actions was to give Goldstone international fame as an icon of political correctness. Hence his appointment as prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Cutting Corners In The Hague

At the ICTY, Goldstone was a man in a hurry. "They told me at the UN in New York: if we did not have an indictment out by November 1994 we wouldn't get money that year for 1995," Goldstone admitted. "There was only one person against whom we had evidence.... He wasn't an appropriate first person to indict.... But if we didn't do it we would not have got the budget."

Indeed, it was so inappropriate that the judges in The Hague passed a motion severely censuring Goldstone. After only a year in office, Goldstone offered his job to the Canadian jurist, Louise Arbour.

Throughout his career Goldstone has been criticized for cutting corners out of excessive ambition, but in the eyes of many Jews his Gaza commission has set a new low. That a Jewish judge, barred from entering Israel for accepting a commission deliberately biased against the state, should write a report based largely on interviews with Hamas activists in order to pander to anti-Zionist opinion has meant, for many, that he has simply stepped outside the pale.

R.W. Johnson is a South African journalist and historian and the author, most recently, of "South Africa's Brave New World: The Beloved Country Since The End Of Apartheid."

Three Strikes: Euro, White, Jew

2009-10-22T03:18:00.000-07:00

It seems that some corners of the mainstream media have actually begun to take notice of the double standard they consistently apply to Israel and its enemies in the Arabs’ war against the Jews.

[Actually, it might be more accurate to call said double standard a single one: the Arabs are always right, the Jews are always wrong. But I am about to elaborate on that very point.]

This week, the New York Times published an Op-Ed by Human Rights Watch’s chairman emeritus, Robert Bernstein [1] , in which he asserts that the organization he founded has “lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields.” He also asserted that the lobby had wasted its political capital by refusing to criticize the closed societies that were responsible for the majority of human right violations in their zeal to focus on Israel.

In the Guardian, usually a realiably Judeophobic publication, a piece by Harold Evans [2] asserted that, amidst the “the sickening spectacle of Britain failing to stand by Israel, the only democracy with an independent judiciary in the entire region”, that “poor Judge Goldstone now regrets how his good name has been used to single out Israel. The Swiss paper Le Temps reports him complaining that "This draft [UN human rights council] resolution saddens me … there is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report. I hope the council can modify the text."

Of course, the Guardian had to reclaim its progressive bonafides the next daym publishin a piece by Antony Lerman [3] praising the efforts of J Street to take back the debate from AIPac despite J Street being characterized as “urging Israel to make ‘further unilateral concessions to neighbours pledged to its annihilation’, as ‘self-hating Jews’ as they ‘stand at the vanguard of global efforts to demonise and delegitimise the Jewish state’; and its “appalling core premise: that Israel is to blame for Arab terror – the age-old calumny of blaming the Jews for their own destruction”; and “the Goldstone blood libel" which is "part of the UNHRC's strategy of delegitimising Israel to soften up the world for its eventual destruction".

Lerman, unfortunately, may be right when he claims: “We can dismiss this ranting”; he may be closer to the pulse of the debate because I will assume right off that he [and J Street, and Judge Goldstone] are being completely disingenuous—and that Evans and Bernstein are missing that point.

Re Evans claims regarding Goldstone’s “complaints”, they are intended to provide a façade of “neutrality” [which ostensibly fit with the predictable Israeli refusal join the proceedings], but his policies are informed by a cross between Gandhi-ism and Orientalism: that the Israelis are settlers, the Palestinians are natives, and, no matter how fascist or genocidal the Palestinians are, the “original sin” remains the “imposition” of Jews in the area. [That claim has been proven to be in and of itself historically fallacious, on two counts: one, that the “Palestinians” were actually “native” to the area; and two, that the assumption that all geographical areas have a salient exclusive ethnicity “native” to a particular area [which was the inherent flaw in Wilsonian “self-determination”]]. As Goldstone is a South African progressive Jew, these have to be unshakable core beliefs on Goldstone’s part, which he will always reflexively act upon, and will be unwilling or unable [or both] to entertain the notion that there are actually legitimate criticisms of his philosophy.

Bernstein likewise doesn’t realize that he [unwittingly, for certain] created a monster. HE may have wanted his organization to go after “closed” societies; BUT, if said societies are non-white, or third-world, or former colonies, they are ispo-facto absolved from any criticism of their political [and other] conduct. THAT is THE operative “human rights” truism. “Democracies”, because they can never be perfect, and are overwhelmingly run by individuals of European descent, are therefore fair game [if not the only game in town.]

The irony is that for centuries—at least in Europe and America—Jews tried to hard to be accepted as “white people”.

Now we are.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20bernstein.html

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/20/israel-goldstone-palestine-gaza-un

3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/22/j-street-jewish-lobby

Pass Rush?

2009-10-14T00:59:00.000-07:00

Rush Limbaugh's ill-advised comments about Donovan McNabb subsequent forced resignation from ESPN’s NFL GameDay in 2003 prompted acclaimed sportswriter Allan Barra to write a piece defending Limbaugh's comments on sports grounds [1]. [Barra later ruefully noted that many of his friends wouldn’t speak to him for weeks.] In any case, Barra and Limbaugh were both wrong regarding McNabb, even sportswise.

Consider that when Limbaugh made his comments, McNabb’s Philadelphia Eagles were 2-3 at that point in the 2003 season. From that point until the Eagles loss in Super Bowl XXXIX, McNabb’s record as a starter was 21-5 [including playoffs, not including games he missed in 2004 with a broken ankle.] Even prior to Limbaugh’s comment, McNabb was 40-20 in games he’d started since 2000, his first full season as the Eagles starter. Plus, he’d taken the Eagles to the previous two NFC Championship games--and would go to the next two. The last quarterback to take his team to that many consecutive conference championship games was Kenny Stabler [five, with the Raiders, from 1973-77. The fact that he lost four of the five didn’t lead anyone to believe he was overrated.] Consider also that McNabb hadn’t been anointed as the coming of the black Johnny Unitas, John Elway, or even Brett Favre—those accolades were reserved for Michael Vick. [If only Rush had picked on him; an "I told you so" might have been slightly more credible.]

Whether Limbaugh’s comments about McNabb truly qualified as race-baiting—and he’s said worse, when discussing issues more salient than sports—was actually irrelevant; he made the mistake of thinking that he could turn a theoretically politically-neutral setting into a forum in which he could project his politics, and he thought either a] he would get away with it or b] become a martyr of free speech. [He also forgot from his previous foray into television that his act didn’t translate as well onscreen]. Instead, he was—to the extent he actually could possibly be—humbled. [The news regarding his Oxycontin addiction that followed not long after McNabbgate didn’t help his image any.]

However, Rush’s politics certainly should not serve as an automatic barrier to his entry to the NFL as an owner. If that were the case, I’d have some serious questions about Dallas' Jerry Jones’ associations with the likes of Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar, who touts himself as the #1 Cowboy fan, paints his private jet metallic blue and silver in tribute, and can be seen on the Dallas sidelines in telecasts of Super Bowl XXVII. Does that make Jerry Jones a terror-supporter? Doubtful. [Maybe Rush could use that soundbite in making his case.]

It is equally legitimate, however, for uber-demagogues Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to pressure the NFL not to allow him into their ranks, even if their characterizations of him as another Marge Schott are—well—wide right. In America—where pro football is now the quintenssential American sport [if not “pastime”] and the adversarial system governs everything, Limbaugh should be at least grudgingly supportive of a free market of ideas, no matter how intellectually dishonest and vapid [accusations which at time can be lodged at him with some degree of accuracy], and no matter how they affect his pocketbook or business.

He can also do what he does best: take his case to the media and see if they are equally as “desirous that he succeed”.

Failing that, he can try suing the NFL. Good luck with that.

1. http://slate.msn.com/id/2089193/

“It’s Not You”

2009-10-09T06:30:00.001-07:00

Potential is a French word that means you aren’t worth a darn yet—Jeff Van Note

When I wrote about “teachable moments” this week following the awarding of the 2016 Olympics to Rio and the snub of Chicago, I made two aaumptions: one, that some sort of turning point had been reached in how the public at large related to the President; and two, that both sides of the political spectrum might change their tactics and point to this moment as the impetus.

That moment came and went faster than the President’s pretensions to “centrism” in his inaugural address . Unfortunately, I addressed the possibility of said “teachable moments” to both sides of the political spectrum in this county only. I forgot how much internationalist influence can really be brought to bear on this Administration, or, conversely, how bending to said internationalism is a, if not the, linchpin of how this Administration conducts its business.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama is, when you think about it, not that much of a head-scratcher. A real skeptic would wonder what took the Nobel committee so long; why didn’t they just hand it to him after he won the election? [Better yet, why not split it up among all those who voted for him?]

As it stands, the Europeans—the ones who consider appeasement and abject prostration before all perceived and self-proclaimed victims of “Orientalism” [and others who have a stake in the promulgation of said political philosophy as the quasi-religion it has become]—wanted to make sure that Barack and the Dems stay the course.

The fear that Obama may take the Chicago “snub” personally was more trenchant than anyone could have realized, so this was someone’s way of making up for it.

The message?

“We still don’t like your country…but it isn’t your fault. We love YOU and what you’re trying to do. We can’t, and won’t, give your country any succor if we can help it…but take this instead, and you can consider yourself one of us.”

I can only hope that Obama is as smart as he’s been made out to be and sees through the ruse. But that would mean that I’m assuming that he’s been able to sift our country’s interests from everyone else’s [or his], and that may be giving him too much credit.

Why I Changed The Name

2009-10-07T15:51:00.000-07:00

I discovered accidentally that there are two other "Cognitive Dissident"'s out there: 1) a band; 2) a group of bikers [who have a facebook group].

I didn't Google "Cognitive Dissident" when I started the blog because I was pretty sure I had come up with the name first, having coined the term in an essay I wrote in January of 1994 when I was auditioning for a column in the Daily Pennsylvanian [I didn't get it.]

However clever Cognitive Dissidents is/was, it's a mouthful, and in today's day and age, brevity is certainly the better part of valor, besides being the soul of wit. [Now if I could translate that skill to the essays...]

Just for the record: "Odd Cog" is a combination of a shortened synonym for "Cognitive Dissident", as well as a play on the Talmudism "Ad Ca'an", roughly translated as "The End", or "end quote", which I once Anglicized to Odd Con prior to this transformation. [It's also the name I record under. One day I'll release something.]

Chicago Loses: A Teachable Moment?

2009-10-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

When Ronald Regan took office in 1980, it was obvious that America was wallowing in an economic and foreign policy morass. Regardless of his Administration’s actual reversal of their predecessor’s policies, it was obvious that the outgoing Admininstration was at fault. A near perfect mirror-image of that historical moment existed, certainly after September 15, 2008 and continues to this day, despite conservatives’ insistence to the contrary.

Yet Obama may finally have overplayed his hand. One can understand how he has continued to forcefully insist on forcing “health-care reform”, having latched onto that particular policy as his legacy linchpin; despite his discovery that Congress is not an ACORN South Side Chapter community meeting, he still can at least portray to the public that he maintains a semblance of control over his domestic centerpiece.

However, his having found himself caught between the rock and the hard place of a nascent Iranian revolution and Iranian nuclear power, and simultaneously being unable to even pretend to disengage himself from the one element of the Bush Doctrine he can’t publicly disavow [nation building in Afghanistan, which is even less of a nation than Palestine], he finally takes his first real public humiliation when he goes to bat for his adopted hometown’s Olympic bid in an attempt to cash in on his ostensible international standing…and was rejected.

In theory, this was the teachable moment that conservatives might have been waiting for: the President who disingenuously assured us in his inauguration speech that he was governing from the center but instead pandered abroad to an array of international interests in the hope that sycophancy would yield a desired result instead finds that approach only leads to ridicule, and we get a chastened recentered President, a la Bill Clinton circa 1995.

This, however, is highly unlikely. And it will be conservatives’ fault.

The first is that, unlike Clinton in 1992-4, there is no semblance of a viable opposition that wants to do anything except froth at the mouth. Which is a shame, because this Administration seems intent upon somehow embarrassing itself into compliance, and it night happen if the “entertainers” in the opposition would shut up for five minutes. [Yes, Chairman Steele is right; say what you will about Al Franken, he had the brass to actually run for public office. Limbaugh/Beck/Palin et al probably don’t want to part with their lucrative paydays.]

The second is that, also unlike 1992-4, this Administration’s margin for error is HUGE; specifically, because of their unter-supermajority in both Houses, it would take a true catastrophe to make any immediate electoral impact, in 2010 or 2012. No matter how low the approval numbers sink, this country remembers the alternative all too well: the one they took 2 election cycles to vote out.

Either way, it seems the Limbaugh/Beck/Palin wing of the party will get at least half its wish: the President will fail. The other half? That he will actually get reelected, and the failures pile up—as does Limbaugh’s bank statements.

One begins to wonder if an inability or refusal to learn is a prerequisite for political [or, at least electoral] success.

Megan Fox

2009-09-28T22:39:00.001-07:00

This girl is nothing more than the next Denise Richards.

And Richards at least got to play a Bond Girl [as a nuclear physicist, no less].

Political Prisoner’s Dilemma

2009-09-28T22:35:00.000-07:00

One wonders if the major players on the Left or Right would remember Psych 101, they’d recall that the “Tit-For-Tat” method of “Prisoner’s Dilemma” called for the first move to always be to “Cooperate”, and that every move thereafter mirror their counterparts’ move[s] [see: http://www.gametheory.net/dictionary/TitforTat.html]. Yet the Left seems to never get out of “cooperate” mode, and the Right demonstrates an inability to even consider the possibility of making that move.

Re the Left, Iran provides the most important illustration. Ironically, this Administration’s new foreign policy seems to have worked too well, particularly the combination of the insistence on merely suggesting condition-free dialogue with Iran in combination with going to Cairo and publicly TL’ing International Islamism, among other reason to come to terms with the fact that that it was going to stick around, whether or not it deserved to. Instead, the pseudo-theofascist Persia has responded to his overtures by amping up their misbehaviors. Complicating the situation—and further diminishing any reason for cooperation on anyone’s part with the regime—is the Iranian populace’ reaction to the recent stolen election. Ironically, as statements issued from people involved with the “negotiations” indicate, the Administration realizes its “cooperate” move is empty, but the increasingly fear the consequences of a “defect” move, even thought the consequences of delaying such a move increase the cost of its execution [and the likelihood of an Israeli attack].

[Which, to be fair, I would lay the lion’s share of the blame at the feet of the previous Administration for invading the wrong country. As I’ve said here repeatedly, I would agree with everything Dick Cheney has said about our conduct of the War on Terror—IF we had invaded Iran instead of Iraq. Instead, the invasion and subsequent messes allowed for the possibility that the “game” could be reset to “start” long enough for the incoming Administration to at least present ab initio a salient case for “cooperation”.]

Re the right, events [thankfully] beyond their control may be shaping up in a way that start the political winds blowing at least mildly in their direction...IF they manage to quelch their penchant for dontopedalogy for five minutes. [As prominent examples—and for later discussion—Glenn Beck misreads history, Sarah Palin continues to proudly display that she doesn’t know history, and Rush Limbaugh is laughing all the way to the bank.] In addition to the Iran corner he has backed himself into, Obama has overreached spectacularly on health care to the point that his own party has forced him to abandon the “public option”, at least publicly. Yet the Right continues to assume that stoking its most reactionary and least savory elements will increase the chances of Democrats self-immolation; instead, it allows bankrupt progressive policy to appear at least somewhat credible. If the Republicans were smart, they’d realize that self-destruction is in Democratic DNA and will show up sooner or later.

Failing that, maybe they should give the Israelis a call.

Bill Maher, Ronald Dworkin, And The Real Health Care Debate

2009-09-02T19:39:00.000-07:00

Bill Maher and Ronald Dworkin’s recent essays on Obamacare probably best illustrated where the real ideological positions are staked out: from the Left, Maher, whose main contention is that health care is a “service[/]institution[s] so vital to our nation” that it should be “exempt from market pressures” [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-not-everything-i_b_244050.html], and from the Right, Dworkin, whose counter-contention is that the resulting system of public medicine would be about as efficient as the public school system
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358281875211014.html].

Both are correct. And in this case, both are being equally hypocritical. To a certain point, each author’s respective thesis [at least, as I read them] serves to illustrate the point at which each one’s respective counterpart would be forced to think contradictory. {I’m sure they didn’t do this deliberately, but no matter.]

Maher’s point about removing the profit motive from health care exposes contradictions in the conservative arguments regarding lasseiz-faire, lessened governmental interference in personal affairs, and the concomitant “threat” of triage conducted by panels using progressive tenets as guidelines. Conservatives don’t want government interfering in their health care decisions? Sure; just ask Terri Schiavo or anyone with an unwanted pregnancy. Or, ask former Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who signed the 1999 Texas Futile Care Law, allowing health care workers to remove expensive life support for terminally ill patients if the patient or family is unable to pay the medical bills: a clear case of an economics-driven “death panel”.

Similarly, albeit from the opposite ideological direction, Dworkin’s public school analog is even more apt than he realizes, as it helps put the lie to the notion that health care, like the schools, will become a truly effectively administered public good if the profit motive is removed. Instead, it will be driven by various competing interest groups—particularly, unions—who will have a stake in ensuring the diversion of resources toward themselves and away from the people who need it: in the case of the schools, the children always come last; in the case of health care, the patients will. One system of “profiteering” will simply be replaced by another.

In the end, these two pundits clearly indicate that the health care imbroglio is really about anything but health care, per se; rather, it’s about how various pieces of the pie are to be distributed [or, re-distributed]. This is the main reason that, no matter how much effort Obama and the rest of the far left expends in “drag[ging] them to it” [Maher’s comment in another forum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lBgpI2S4I4], “it”—healthcare—will never become the moral issue the left wants it to become, namely with a moral gravitas comparable to the abolition and civil rights movements, when “dragging” was called for.

The health care “debate”, then, is just an old-fashioned feeding frenzy in…drag.

More Republi-Karma: Dick Cheney vs Eric Holder

2009-08-31T16:02:00.000-07:00

Usually I avoid employing overt religious references in these blog pages, mostly for reasons of [attempted] intellectual honesty, which would be well-nigh impossible owing to my admitted fierce Judeocentrism. I write another blog [“Yeshivas Ye-ush Mi-Da’as”] in which I constrain myself less in that regard.

Yet, when discussing the ongoing issue of the legality of “enhanced interrogations” that now threatens to become an all-out war between Justice and Intelligence [Panetta’s gonna protecting his territory--who woulda thunk it?] and viewing it from my perch as the paradigmatic self-hating conservative [where are the rest of ‘em?], I couldn’t resist using both Biblical and Talmudic references to [further] elucidate my position.

In fact, I don’t think I could have found a better way to explain it.
The verse that comes to mind is from II Kings 10:18: “And Jehu gathered the nation together, and said unto them, Ahab served Ba'al a little, but Yehu shall serve him much”.

The Babylonian Talmud [Tractate Pesachim folio 87b, for those who might actually want to look it up], based on a verse in Hosea [(1:3-4): “…for in a little while I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Yehu”] relates that, when Jehu’s descendants themselves proceeded to serve the Baal as Ahab had, Jehu’s slaughter of Ahab and his household was retroactively counted as murder, despite the fact that G-d himself had commanded Jehu to wipe out the house of Ahab—for the offense of Baal worship.

The lesson herein is that sometimes, to save a society at large, drastic action must be undertaken in which people will get hurt [or, in the parlance of Dirty Harry Callahan’s commanding officer, “get dead”, though doctrinaire pacifists usually are more perturbed by the infliction of pain rather than death, for unexplained reasons]; however, at the same time, the party inflicting the pain better be certain that they act on the side of the angels.

Dick Cheney may have been on the side of the angels in a case like this, even more than Abraham Lincoln was when he suspended habeas corpus in the months leading up to the Civil War: back then, Lincoln was fighting to preserve an ideal, and here Cheney was preventing apocalyptic mass murder. [And anyone who thinks that Islamic terrorism is anything but theologically-justified apocalyptic mass murder deserves to be their next victim.] That would have been the case—until the techniques were employed to further the prosecution of what was, for all intents and purposes, an economically-driven voluntary war. [If it was anything but that, a draft would have—or should have—been called.]

I have been open about favoring all sorts of “enhanced” methods of interrogation, and that the methods of eradicating piracy in the 18th and 19th centuries provide a much more salient analog for guidelines regarding the prosecution of “War on Terror” [or whatever its being called nowadays] that the Geneva Conventions, which in any case, certainly in their 1949 edition, serve as more of a “this is how we coulda/woulda/shoulda fought the last two world wars” than as a true legal mandate for militarily “playing nice”. I have been equally open about the need for some kind of legal repercussions for those employing the techniques described above—not because they shouldn’t be used when needed, but that they should absolutely not be used at any other time.

It’s doubtful that any legal action initiated by this Administration would be anything but politically motivated. However, Cheney and his ilk have no “kick”: when they applied these techniques to preserve their own political and material positions, they indicated they were playing the same game. You don’t get to be selective about the rules, particularly after you’ve been repeatedly called on it by the electorate.

Additionally, I don’t know if any conservatives—particularly those who believe G-d Himself is conservative—would appreciate the irony of one of their own sacred texts being used to teach them such a lesson. I would reckon they do—and don’t like it.

Obamacare: Two-Strike Breaking Pitch

2009-08-17T15:22:00.000-07:00

I’m 0-for-2. At least.

First, I was bamboozled by Sarah Palin and what she ostensibly represented…until I saw the Katie Couric interview and realized what she represented was the impossibility of her credibility as long as they were inexorably associated with such unadulterated brainlessness. Additionally, she also represented the inability of the GOP team to find good people to work for them, which would have portended another term of W.-like incompetence in a McCain administration; they wouldn’t have been able to execute, even if their principles were correct.

Then came Obama’s inaugural address, and I like everyone else except for the true doctrinaire right-wingers assumed from the combination of that speech and his Cabinet appointments of Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Arne Duncan and their ilk that he planned to govern from the center, as opposed to adopting the ”socialist” and “pro-terrorist” policies the GOP tried to tag him with. Alas, the only one privy to the definition of said “Center” was the new President himself; more specifically, it seems as if he considers his policy regimen to be the true centrism.

While many on the right cried “socialism” with the stimulus package and the governmental net cast over the banking and automotive industry, even such free-market personages as Alan Greenspan had publically admitted that some intervention was needed, rendering that argument less than salient, so if the economic center had moved left, it had dome so on its own accord, if not a result of deregulatory-elicited messes. And, while certainly every foreign policy move Obama has made, from Gitmo to Cairo to Mary Robinson, belies any true centrist—even “realist”—mindset, and is a blatant attempt to centralize appeasement/”America First—In Guilt” policy, I would have been called on my politics being inexorably biased by my Judeocentrism. [Not that there’s anything wrong with that, or being Israel-centric; more that there are people who defend the state from Obama and his ilk better than I would, without necessarily preaching to the choir.]

That’s why Obamacare and its concomitant raising of the spectre of 1993 and 1994 theoretically had, at least initially, handed me—and other conservatives, self-hating and otherwise—a policy against which one could be truly opposed in principle. Never mind the nuances; this was going to involve an imposition of governmental control regarding issues of supply and demand where there was no real mandate for it. As Jon Meachem pointed in Newsweek, unlike social security or voting rights, universal health care doesn’t have the same sui generis moral imprimatur that would otherwise make it amenable to such a policy imposition; there was no reason that Obama wouldn’t fail as his attempt to become FDR and LBJ the way Bill Clinton did in 1994. Additionally, as David Gergen theorized in Rolling Stone, as Obamacare would be the one issue that could not be hung upon the previous administration with any degree of credibility, failure to implement it in at least some degree would lead to the Democrats being punished at the polls in 2010.

So, expecting a fastball down the middle [an Obamacare more or less analogous to Hillarycare], we get a breaking pitch way too close to take: Obama announces that the “public option” may be taken off the table.

Brilliant?

Not necessarily; it’s more that, people keep forgetting that Obama doesn’t feel like he owes anyone anything, so he can manipulate his policy to suit himself and his aim of keeping his [and liberals’] power. Those on the further left are angry, sure; but where else can they go? The conservative Democrats are more likely to support his legislation, and GOP’ers really now have lost possibly their most salient reason for continued intransigence [though one shouldn’t count against their propensity to continue as such.]

This guy will do anything to make sure he won’t lose, and he won’t even have to triangulate.

I'm With Stupid. Gimme A Beer.

2009-08-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

The incident at the home of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the President’s series of responses have been designated as Obama’s first “racial crisis”, as the proof that this Administration has not quite reached the level of “post-racial”.

While that might be somewhat of an exaggeration, the theories regarding the incident as a symptom of Obama’s messianic dirigible having sprung more than a few leaks, as evidenced by his poll numbers’ entering their post-steroid era.

The sad thing is, in this case, he may actually have been right. The officer was certainly within his bounds to answer the break-in call and question Prof. Gates, but once it had been established that the residence was, in fact, Prof. Gates’, the matter should have been left at that, irrespective of what ever tirade Prof. Gates may or may not have launched, short of an outright assault. Additionally, one would think that it would behoove police departments to actually know who the more prominent citizens in their neighborhoods are, particularly if they are prominent and connected ethnic minorities…and the police are on said person’s property WITH said individual in question present. [Did ANYONE learn ANYTHING from the OJ case?]

Of course, its no accident the loudest protests nationwide have come from police departments and their conservative leaning law-and-order allies, complaining of a possible “slippery-slope”: is our black President going to find all arrests of blacks “stupid”, ipso facto? Especially when the arresting officer was white? While that may not have been as explicitly stated as Obama’s “stupid” comment, the implication was pretty clear.

A perusal of a number of high-profile cases should indicate that we are far from that, particularly cases where an offending party AND officers on the case were both minorities and the complaints of a “racist” police action were just as shrill [most specifically, the incidents involving Patrick Dorismond and Sean Bell]. And, when Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney punched a [white] Capitol police officer in 2006 after he stopped her for not carrying the requisite ID, it was McKinney who was forced to apologize.

Of course, Obama wasn’t in office yet. And, as far as we know, McKinney isn’t the friend [or fundraiser…or Vineyard neighbor…] that Gates is. And that’s the point. An Obama frustrated by the fact that all his “Yes We Can”’s are eliciting equal and opposite “No You Don’ts”’s [especially from within his own party] reacted on a personal level to a question where the answer, if not the descriptive term used, was going to be a foregone conclusion, as were the partisan reactions to whatever comment he was going to make.

Ironically, it seems that, having been invited to beer with the President, Prof. Gates and Officer Crowley may become drinking buddies [bloggers’ “evidence” that the two may be distant cousins notwithstanding] after all this.

[Officer, this beer is courtesy of that gentlemen over there surrounded by heavily armed well dressed men with earpieces and sunglasses….]

Republican Legacy Chain: Quayle….Dubya….Palin?

2009-07-08T09:57:00.001-07:00

Soon-to-be-former Gov. Sarah Palin, quoting the Bible as she makes her ostensible exit, seems to have pulled off a neat trick: sticking to the script [the ultimate one, in this case] and, at the same time, departing from it [being unpredictable]. It’s highly likely that she doesn’t really appreciate the irony involved, but it doesn’t matter; what she has done is established that she will conduct the next phase of her political journey as a drama queen. This is the reverse of Nixon in ’62.

Obviously, the Republicans will need an electoral guinea pig in 2012. The choice Republicans face is whether an upcoming 2012 debacle will resemble Barry Goldwater’s 1964 loss to LBJ—which, for all intents and purposes, eventually became the starting locus for a four-decade conservative ascendancy—or, George McGovern’s 1972 trouncing at the hands of Richard Nixon, which did not do the same thing for the Democrats.

Neither the ’64 nor the ’72 scenario will deter Palin. This is likely because she’s self-delusive enough to think that she can win even with the current American political zeitgeist being what it is. However, she may vaguely senses that she has an opportunity to become a more salient historical figure, as opposed to the intellectually challenged cipher that sank John McCain.

There remain two other possible positive outcomes from Palin’s obvious early hat-toss, at least as far as conservatives are concerned. The first is that a debacle can be avoided if, like other chimerical early front-runners [see: Ted Kennedy in 1980, Gary Hart in 1987, Paul Tsongas/Jerry Brown in 1992, Howard Dean in 2004] she flames out soon enough for a more viable candidate to be presented, resulting in a more salient contest in 2012.

The second involves the aforementioned possibility of things getting so much worse than they are now [a cataclysmic economic collapse approaching 1930’s levels or a terror attack on American soil approaching the scale of 9/11] to the point that Obama’s administration is perceived to be even less competent than W.’s. If that happens, Palin might become the perfect candidate: any notion of conservative/Republican moderation will go right into the trashcan and we would be looking at an administration headed by a W.-Quayle hybrid.

And with Rush Limbaugh in the role of both Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

Sons Of Equivalences

2009-07-01T02:56:00.000-07:00

[…because some equivalences are more equivalent than others, equivocally]

ITEM: GOV. SANFORD SAYS ARGENTINIAN MISTRESS HIS “SOUL MATE”

One has to admire Gov. Sanford’s non-repentant approach as almost refreshing in its chutzpah, particularly after the Clinton’s mess of denials and Spitzer’s wife-by-side mea culpa. One wonders [though certainly not too overly] how much of it can be directly attributed to his religious conservatism.

What it does further prove, however, is that conservative hypocrisy will always be more deserving of moral opprobrium than liberal hypocrisy. This is specifically because conservatives claim their principles are timeless and absolute, if not Divinely ordained, and therefore universally applicable; hence, betrayals are more trenchant. As much as liberals and progressives try to deify Marx, Hegel and their ilk, it will always be easier to chalk up a betrayal of said principles as a disagreement among men rather than a true “non serviam”.

ITEM: ANOTHER TRIUMPH OF SAIDISM

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06292009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/columbia_tenures_an_israel_basher_176594.htm

Much has been written about the case of Joseph Massad; it doesn’t surprise me that Columbia would resort to such under-the-table tactics to get his back on the faculty. However, this item really stands out:

In a recent work, "Desiring Arabs," Massad claimed to expose yet another plot against the Muslim world -- the "Gay International." He describes how a vast conspiracy of gay activists descended on Arab countries and endangered the lives of "practitioners of same-sex contact" by transforming them into "subjects who identify as 'homosexual' and 'gay.' " Nor is Massad fond of the women's rights movement, or "colonial feminism," as he calls it. He bristles at the attention paid to the Muslim practice of honor killings, which he likens to "crimes of passion," accusing women's groups of ignoring "rampant Western misogyny."

It just goes to show; you can be overtly homophobic and misogynist, but if you are an anti-Semitic non-Caucasian academic, all is forgiven. You can only expect so much. Somewhere in Hell, Edward Said must be smiling in between floggings.

ITEM: MADOFF GETS 150 YEARS

Consider that even if he lives to be 100, his sentence will be worth no more than 20% of what it originally was. Not quite the poetic justice anyone had in mind.

ITEM: JUSTICE THOMAS ONLY DISSENT IN STRIP SEARCH CASE

I hope no one is surprised; anyone remember what almost sank his nomination in the first place?

OK Kids, He’s Dead. You Can Come Out Now.

2009-06-26T02:47:00.000-07:00

There’s an old Yiddish saying-"alleh maisim tzadikim"-which, loosely translated, means "all the dead are righteous", or more specifically, one should never speak ill of the dead, at least not the recently departed. Thankfully, not all Yiddishisms, no matter how salient, have the force of a commandment. Even if it had in this case, I would have gladly—and publicly—broken it. As I will do now.

Sometimes, pop culture gets it right. One of those cases was OJ Simpson. Once it became obvious that he was the most likely culprit in the murders of his ex-wife and Ron Goldman, the entire country knew, no matter what the outcome of the trial, that his celebrity was radioactive; never again would he be able to cash in on his status as a pop culture icon, now forever tarnished. In fact, the oft-made observations made at the time regarding the Black/White divide in reaction to the verdict, while salient, overlooked the fact that the Black “cheering” for him had less to do with OJ than the perception that a historical pattern of racial bias in the American justice system had played out in reverse for once. OJ remained as much a cultural pariah after the acquittal, even in the Black community.

Like OJ, Michael Jackson escaped legal retribution for his misbehavior. Unlike OJ somehow he was able to maintain his privileged position in the pop culture pantheon, to the point his recent comeback shows in London sold out in a ridiculously short amount of time, this despite committing the “original sin” of “just don’t get caught with a dead girl…or live boy.” Not only did he get away with it [at least] twice, but he even practically bragged about it on national television in Martin Bashir’s 2003 ABC documentary. While much of the eulogies offered regarding Jackson praised his ostensible bridging of Black and White culture, this much is certain: his supporters during his legal difficulties cut across all ethnic and racial lines. In that sense, Al Sharpton was correct.

What is even more baffling in the case of Jackson is that America—if not the world—seemed willing to forgive him the one crime that usually garners more social opprobrium than murder: homosexual pedophilia. [It’s amazing that, in all of the garment-rending on TV that almost rivaled Obama’s groveling in Cairo, the only pundit that didn’t completely sacrifice his credibility was Geraldo Rivera, who had the audacity to suggest that Jackson somehow brought this all on himself.]

In trying to explain how thsi could happen, one might begin with the argument that Michael Jackson’s contributions to pop culture at large far outweighed those of, say, OJ Simpson. While this is true, I would say Jackson's status is highly overrated. One should remember, his self-coronation as "King Of Pop" occurred around 1991, when his slide into musical irrelevancy became more slippery and, concomitantly, his more bizarre behavioral tendencies became more pronounced. Take away his work as a child star [certainly, overwhelmingly the product of others’ imaginations and talents, though one should not overlook the price Jackson himself paid], and his total musical irrelevance after 1991 [his Greatest Hits album sold poorly, and his only post-1991 album of all-new material—2001’s “Invincible”—was DOA], and you’re left with four salient albums. No one can take much away from Off The Wall and Thriller—except when one considers that the real “genius” behind those albums was Quincy Jones and his production skills. Even those couldn’t save “Bad” [certainly an appropriate title for an album with only one good song, "Smooth Criminal"], and “Dangerous” had the misfortune to come out at the time when the Seattle scene began to overtake the music business, rendering it irrelevant almost immediately upon release.

More sacrilegious from a pop culture point of view were the comparisons to Elvis and the Beatles. Uh, no. Everything Michael Jackson succeeded in—recording, dancing, video media—was equaled or surpassed by Presley and the Fab Four, who certainly made more than four relevant albums, and actually played instruments; not to mention none of them had the 15-year headstart in the business that Jackson did. Jackson came along at the right time; Elvis and the Beatles created the zeitgeists that defined their times. [I’d even argue that Jimi Hendrix’ and Prince’ musical contributions are way more important.]

Nevertheless, that fact may provide the first explanation as to why Jackson kept getting free passes: as we were continually reminded, we “grew up with him”. I suppose one can’t underestimate the power of nostalgia, but also that people bizarrely considered him almost as a “family member”. It becomes difficult to re-examine such a childhood icon with a more jaundiced eye, even when the behavior of said icon becomes increasingly inexpicable. In fact, the media's treatment of him as a freak, while accurate, may have eventually led everyone to simply shrug their shoulders even as his behavior advanced from the grotesque to the reprehensible [viz., dangling his "son" over a hotel balcony]. Consider also that Jackson’s celebrity colleagues almost to a person categorically denied the possibility that Jackson could ever hurt a child, add the almost divine currency attributed to celebrity pronouncements to the penchant for nostalgia, and Jackson’s shield became almost impenetrable. It even served to exxaggerate his cultural importance, which circuitously reinforced said shield.

A second explanation, a two-fold observation regarding child psychology and general attitudes toward others’ children, may be the most disturbing. By all accounts, during Jackson’s 2005 molestation, defense attorney Thomas Mesereau brilliantly dissected the accuser’s and his mother’s testimony, enough to elicit the eventual acquittal. At the time, I had a theory that, if the situation became dire, Jackson’s defense team had a “nuclear” option: to claim that Jackson was emotionally no more mature than his alleged victims and therefore, as an emotional [if not sexual] 12-year-old, could not form the requisite criminal intent. It never came to that, even if the spectacle of Neverland Ranch ensured that it would not take a trained psychologist to come to the same conclusion. The fact that people were willing to air this “excuse” for Jackson at the expense of his victims indicated that, in line with all the reason delineated above, there was always something more important to consider than the welfare of someone else’s children. [I always thought this was one of the fatal flaws in public education: the notion that someone would willingly cover someone else’s kid’s tuition. But that’s for another time.]

To provide a perfect summing-up: one item in Jackson’s ouvre repeatedly touted as one of his greatest achievements was the “Thriller” video where Jackson turns into a monster onscreen. One wonders whether Jackson was trying to tell us something. Apparently, no one was really paying attention.

No one wanted to.

Only If We're Stupid Enough To

2009-06-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

The adage “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” is a way of life in the Middle East. In a similar vein there are occasions when your ideological opponents make your job easier.

Tony Judt has done that in an Op-Ed in today’s times where he dccries the possibility that West Bank settlements will ever be evacuated [see excerpt below. If you want to read the rest of the article, go to the link; I don’t fell particularly obligated to reprint his spurious allegations about the “legality” of Jewish civilians living East of the Green Line, despite the elevations of said allegations to truisms.]

Where mine and Judt’s premonitions—if not hopes—intersect is this:

There will never be a “contiguous”, “viable”, “Palestinian State” comprising the two distinct unrelated geographic entities of Gaza and the West Bank—as long as the Israelis aren’t stupid enough to create it themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/opinion/22judt.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&th&emc=th&adxnnlx=1245672177-7tRWY 5da1m9/BS82Mmt3Q

excerpt from Fictions on the Ground By TONY JUDT June 22, 2009

Despite all the diplomatic talk of disbanding the settlements as a condition for peace, no one seriously believes that these communities — with their half a million residents, their urban installations, their privileged access to fertile land and water — will ever be removed. The Israeli authorities, whether left, right or center, have no intention of removing them, and neither Palestinians nor informed Americans harbor illusions on this score.

To be sure, it suits almost everyone to pretend otherwise — to point to the 2003 “road map” and speak of a final accord based on the 1967 frontiers. But such feigned obliviousness is the small change of political hypocrisy, the lubricant of diplomatic exchange that facilitates communication and compromise.

There are occasions, however, when political hypocrisy is its own nemesis, and this is one of them. Because the settlements will never go, and yet almost everyone likes to pretend otherwise, we have resolutely ignored the implications of what Israelis have long been proud to call “the facts on the ground.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, knows this better than most. On June 14 he gave a much-anticipated speech in which he artfully blew smoke in the eyes of his American interlocutors. While offering to acknowledge the hypothetical existence of an eventual Palestinian state — on the explicit understanding that it exercise no control over its airspace and have no means of defending itself against aggression — he reiterated the only Israeli position that really matters: we won’t build illegal settlements but we reserve the right to expand “legal” ones according to their natural rate of growth.

The reassurances Mr. Netanyahu offered the settlers and their political constituency were as well received as ever, despite being couched in honeyed clichés directed at nervous American listeners. And the American news media, predictably, took the bait — uniformly emphasizing Mr. Netanyahu’s “support” for a Palestinian state and playing down everything else.

However, the real question now is whether President Obama will respond in a similar vein. He surely wants to. Nothing could better please the American president and his advisors than to be able to assert that, in the wake of his Cairo speech, even Mr. Netanyahu had shifted ground and was open to compromise. Thus Washington avoids a confrontation, for now, with its closest ally. But the uncomfortable reality is that the prime minister restated the unvarnished truth: His government has no intention of recognizing international law or opinion with respect to Israel’s land-grab in “Judea and Samaria.”

...[I]f I am right, and there is no realistic prospect of removing Israel’s settlements, then for the American government to agree that the mere nonexpansion of “authorized” settlements is a genuine step toward peace would be the worst possible outcome of the present diplomatic dance. No one else in the world believes this fairy tale; why should we? Israel’s political elite would breathe an unmerited sigh of relief, having once again pulled the wool over the eyes of its paymaster.

Teheran Eats Itself

2009-06-13T23:14:00.000-07:00

For starters, you have to give Iran some credit. As a state that is undoubtedly theocratic, to hold elections that go beyond the Islamist tenet of “one man, one vote, once” might be considered an accomplishment, allegations of fraud notwithstanding. [As we know all too well, a polity need not be theocratic in nature to engage in voter fraud.]

As I’ve hinted at repeatedly in this forum, one of the reasons I am convinced that the American military misadventure in Iraq has been so damaging is that it has taken away resources that could have been used in operations against more dangerous players, like Iran. This would have been one such scenario, a perfect opportunity for the United States to use something other than simple diplomatic persuasion to better forward two of its stated interests: one, to better facilitate the viability of democratic institutions in the Middle East; and, two, to improve relations with the Islamic world. And, if we weren’t necessarily going to shore up an ostensibly duly elected Islamic regime, we could have taken advantage of an emerging power vacuum, reduce the influence of the Mullahs, and certainly done no worse than we’ve done in Iraq, especially since the initial crisis would have been of the Iranians’ own making.

As it is, the developing conflict provides an opportunity for the United States to experiment with it newly stated foreign policy approach of appeasing Islam, and to better gauge the possibilities inherent in an Islamic society tearing itself apart without it being our responsibility, as it became in Iraq. Obviously, American military options vis-a-vis influencing election outcomes are off the table. However, a wait-and-see approach with the most overt response being nothing more than the most lukewarm of diplomatic protests against the alleged electoral improprieties allows for the possibility that if Madma-dinejad is declared the winner and invited to form the next government, the Iranian streets will spill over and become too much for Tehran to handle.

The worst thing we can do, of course, is send Jimmy Carter to broker a compromise that maintains the status quo. That would serve as the strongest possible indicator of appeasement being US policy. One can only hope that option remains considered politically untenable.

As far as I’m concerned, though, the best possible outcome would be for the Israelis to take advantage of the bungled transmission of power and start bombing the nuclear sites now, or at least when it becomes increasingly clear that Tehran is too self-involved to truly present a unified response. One can expect that any aggressive Israeli action will unite the populace behind whoever is in power, because neither candidate is exactly philo-Semitic. However, taking advantage of the Persian power vacuum, while it would not mute the international diplomatic opprobrium that would emanate from all corners of the globe, would certainly serve to make any Iranian response less coherent and cohesive than it otherwise might be.

And, just like with Osirak in 1981, the world will thank the Israelis. [Under their breath, of course.]

Obama In Cairo II: The Triumph Of Saidism

2009-06-11T03:18:00.000-07:00

Much has been made of the fact that President Obama speech was so overtly reverent of Islam and Islamic history in his Cairo speech. In the June 9 Washington Times Frank Gaffney makes the argument that Obama should be termed America’s first “Muslim” president” the way Bill Clinton was America’s first “Black” President.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/09/americas-first-muslim-president/

While Gaffney’s arguments are salient, I would posit that it was less the triumph of Obamaist Islam [or Muslim Obamaism?] as it was a triumph of Saidism: that is, the acceptance of Edward Said’s theses of “Orientalism” and the concomitant necessity of the West to accommodate itself to the Eastern cultures it had “misrepresented” and “oppressed” for its own benefit. One might notice a correlation between the election of a [true] Black US President and the implementation of a type of “affirmative action” vis-à-vis the Islamic world based on Said’s proscriptions, among other things.

A better explanation might be found in two books by Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within and Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom. Bawer, a gay man who moved originally to Amsterdam with his partner in the 1990’s due to fears that the Christian Right was going to turn America theocratic, found that Europe seemed to have resigned itself to an inevitable Islamic takeover of the continent, and the elites enforcing the rigid doctrines of political correctness seemed to be positioning themselves for favorable treatment in an eventual Eurabia.

One might wonder whether US policy is leaning in this direction. The only other explanation I can think of is that, by making accommodating overtures to the Muslim world, Obama hopes that the religion will “reform” and “Westernize” itself, much as Christianity did. However, when one remembers that a) it took Christianity nearly two millennia to do that and b) in this regard, Islam has been unmistakably devolving, one wonders if this has truly crossed anyone’s mind.

Obama in Cairo, Part I: A Real Paradigm Shift

2009-06-10T04:59:00.000-07:00

If you’re pro-Israel [like I am], and your politics more or less revolve around issues most salient to the Middle East [like mine do], your worst nightmare has now come true.

In 1993, Time Magazine chose Yasser Arafat, F.W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, and Yitzhak Rabin as their “Men of the Year”, under the rubric “The Peacemakers”. This was no mere historical accident. It has long been a progressive truism—albeit a comparatively muted one—that Israel’s democracy was/is of the “herrenvelok” variety is analogous to South Africa’s apartheid regime, in degree is not in kind. [Whether the Israeli leadership was panicked into implementing the Oslo agreement in 1993 when they realized that a rapprochement was imminent in South Africa is an interesting matter of conjecture.]

This notion has had great currency in most of the free world [to say nothing of the “unfree” world], with until now, the exception of the United States. With the exception of the State Department—which still hasn’t gotten over the fact that it was overruled by President Truman in 1948 when he recognized the new independent State of Israel over its vehement objections—the US, at least in public, has for the most part, been Israel’s most steadfast ally, certainly for the last 40 years.

Specifically, the US was committed to the continued existence of Israel as THE Jewish State. President Obama’s speech in Cairo indicated that those days are now over.

While it’s certainly true that the United States’ policy regarding settlements [as evidenced by the American’s continued opposition to their existence, and characterization as such as “impediments to peace”] and Jerusalem [as evidenced by the longstanding refusal to move the American Embassy there], the tone of this speech, in combination with the rather deferential—if not outright servile—attitude toward Islam indicates that the scales have shifted.

One can say that United States policy is “equally accepting” of Jews and Palestinians’ “national rights” to the same piece of real estate. What this means is the United States’ new policy is to pressure Israel to “peacefully” vote itself out of existence as the Jewish State; the “Road Map” leads to a one-state solution.

For mostly obvious political reasons, this cannot be stated publicly. Yet. However, Winston Churchill’s formulation “The Jews are in Palestine [sic] by right, not by sufferance” has been reversed.

There is one hopeful development that has been overlooked. As it becomes increasingly clear to the Israeli populace that the rest of the world expected the Oslo process to lead to the eventual establishment of a “binational” state, the Israeli electorate has finally woken up to the idea that only they can truly look out for their own interests. In 1999, when Prime Minister Netanyahu stood up to American pressure and was turned out of office by the Israeli electorate, the political zeitgeist was different. Ten years later, most of Israel believes that peace has been given more than a chance, and that the Palestinians and their supporters are playing a zero-sum game.

The question of Israel’s existence will be answered ONLY by the Israelis themselves.

Reality Check

2009-05-27T19:59:00.001-07:00

In a time where the political winds have shifted enough that the Israel can seriously question whether the Unites States still considers it a bonafide ally, the following piece should serve as a reality check.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1243346480786&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The simple truth can help bring peace
By MAX SINGER

An often-overlooked piece of Palestinian behavior is key to the pursuit of peace. The Palestinians teach their people that no Jewish kingdom ever existed in the land they call Palestine, and that there was never a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Presumably some Palestinians know these teachings are false, but for most they are "facts" learned in school and taken for granted. These falsehoods are deliberately spread by the Palestinian leadership. To publicly deny them is to be viewed as disloyal, and anyone who tries to assert the truth risks retribution.

This is not just a matter of ancient history - it's not merely an "alternative narrative" which needn't be contested because it's just talk. This false story helps explain the Palestinian refusal to make peace, because so long as Palestinians think the Jews were never here before, they will see Jews as a foreign colonial implant with no moral claim or right to the land. Modern Israel's claim to land in Palestine depends on the Jews' historic connection to the territory. Without this history, the nation of Israel would be merely foreign invaders, not a people who can be seen as returning home.

When a powerful foreigner comes and takes your territory just because he wants it, you have no honorable way to yield your rights. Accepting such a foreign invasion would be a cowardly sacrifice of honor. By insisting that this is what happened, the Palestinians' leaders are in effect burning their bridges behind them, so that their people will be forced by their honor to fight on, and prevented from making an honorable peace.

The Palestinian leadership's willingness to look foolish by denying well-known historic facts - including basic Christian history - demonstrates the importance to them of denying their people the moral and psychological basis for an honorable peace.

THE UNITED STATES CAN make an important step toward peace by publicly assuring the Palestinians that there were indeed ancient Jewish kingdoms in the land, and a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount before the birth of Muhammad. There are plenty of Muslim sources that the US can use to teach these facts.

Denial of the Jews' ancient connection to the land is much more important than Holocaust denial. Israel's claim to the land has nothing to do with the Holocaust. The international decision that Palestine should be a Jewish homeland was made by the League of Nations a generation before the Holocaust. Jews claim the land based on their continuous emotional and religious attachment to it since ancient times - not as compensation for six million dead.

Since Palestinians and other Arabs care about honor, we should make it possible for them to recognize that there can be an honorable peace with the Jews. (Although there would still be Muslim objections to Jewish rule in Israel.)

Israeli diplomats should call on the US to end the Palestinians' denial of history, even though the State Department apparently regards the truth as something offensive to Arabs.

What better public disagreement can Israel and the US have than a disagreement about whether to allow the Palestinians to continue denying Jewish history? What better diagnostic tool can there be to determine when Palestinians are truly ready to live with Israel than looking at whether they are willing to acknowledge the Jews' connection to the land?

The writer, a founder of the Hudson Institute, is a senior fellow there and at the BESA Center of Bar-Ilan University.

Equivalences

2009-05-15T09:02:00.000-07:00

Congruence, as opposed to equivalence or approximation, is a relation which implies a kind of equivalence, though not complete equivalence. from Wikipedia

ITEM: Waterboarding, and CIA Torture Photos

The Obama Administration is discovering that it is impossible to be pacifistic when in power. Not that they haven’t tried, particularly through their craven appeasement of the Muslim World and their allies [Chavez, et al.]. Yet to a certain degree they realize we are at war; witness the “flip-flop” regarding the torture pics, which in a sense is comforting, because beyond the “hearts and minds” issue, someone realizes that the PR war is part of the war effort as a whole (something that the last Administration ignored).
Also, it interesting to see the Republicans grill Nancy Pelosi regarding when she knew about waterboarding, and her almost offhanded “I was for it before I was against it”; she knows that the Republicans tried this gambit with the Iraq War, and while it worked in 2004, it can only further highlight their complete lack of credibility on—well, just about anything.

ITEM: Non-Proliferation

In its attempt to TL the Government of Iran, the Obama Administration is trying to make equivalences between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iran’s drive toward arming themselves. Additionally, Obama has blindly pursued non-proliferation with a vigor unseen since JFK made it a personal crusade, and there is unspoken pressure on Israel because now rogue states can point to Israel’s “intransigence” on the issue.
I would hope that Obama is smart enough to realize that Israel’s policy of nuclear opacity provides enough of an indication that if they have it, it’s purely for defensive purposes. [OK, they have it, but that’s exactly the point.]
In contrast, when rogue states whose political philosophies are guided by a theology that MANDATES war to conquer and subdue the planet, and these rogue states actually “tout” the theological prestige that comes with the acquisition of nukes and other WMD, and then they threaten their use unfettered by any consideration other than eschatology…oh wait, I have to be careful here. Someone might think I’m talking about the Jews.

ITEM: Carrie Prejean, Obama, and Gay Marriage

Many conservatives are up in arms about the pressure brought to bear on the Miss Universe contestant for having the temerity to stand up for her beliefs. Plus, you hear, didn’t Obama say the same thing?
Not really. Context is everything. Prejean was definitely making a statement about what she thought was the moral incorrectness of gay marriage, and she probably would be equally against civil unions; Obama was more likely making a policy statement than a moral judgement. Political incorrectness combined with self-righteousness doesn’t make anyone popular.
Yet, while we deal with this topic, I would like to shatter one more “equivalence”: the notion that the reluctance to the powers-that-be to legalize gay marriage is as immoral as the now-discredited miscegenation laws that were on the books for so long. Actually, no; mixed couples risked imprisonment, and even sometimes exile from the state where said union was illegal. That won’t happen again. The legal disabilities imposed on gay couples may or may not be civil rights issues, but they certainly not as clear cut as that.

Item: Village Voice and NY Post Agree

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-05-13/news/bloomberg-and-the-teachers-union/

Some might consider this the sign of the apocalypse, particularly if they work for any teachers’ unions. In a lead article in the Village Voice that looked more like a typical Post editorial excoriating UFT leader Randi Weingarten, Wayne Barrett unequivocally took sides against the unions: “the Mayor's campaigning is easy. So easy, he can roll over the union this time—and should.” For good measure, he even took a swipe at ACORN and linked them to failing schools. This in what most consider THE flagship organ of progressivism.

There may be hope for the children after all.

Empathy

2009-05-08T02:53:00.000-07:00

You have to give President Obama credit.

He explicitly defined "quality of empathy" as "an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes…we need somebody who's got . . . the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young, teenage mom; the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African American or gay or disabled or old." It might be the first time the word has been used specifically in this context, but the notion that one needs to “arriv[e] at just decisions and outcomes” is not; this was how then-President Johnson referred to “the next stage of civil rights” in 1965: “not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.”

“Empathy” is a catch-all; in this case it doesn’t even have to be a code.

Obama may be correct in applying the term “empathy” as far as noting than no judge can be completely impartial, Justice Roberts’ when he comparison of judges to baseball umpires calling balls and strikes notwithstanding (especially since every baseball fan knows that every umpire employs a different strike zone). In fact, they are being equally disingenuous.

In fact, Obama’s 2007 statement that "the issues that come before the court are not sport” completely misses the point. In the current American political zeitgeist, that’s exactly what they have become. I’ve described this notion in various ways, from calling it “Acquisitionism” to comparing it to an NFL with only two teams. However, the notion of Empathy vs Impartiality—or, to put it in the political terms bandied about most regarding judges, Activism vs Constructionism—forced me to come to temrs with a new concept.

Justice may be blind; in the U.S., judges never are, and this can be attributed to our adversarial system. All judges are lawyers and act as such, even if they’re not supposed to. They have now also become politicians. Furthermore, they have been activist since Marbury v. Madison, and “legislated from the bench” since at least Brown v. Borad, but probably before. It has also been shown that “constructionism” regarding the Constitution is oxymoronic at best, when one sees how the same document can be used to uphold Plessy v Ferguson and its diametric opposite, Brown v Board, over a period of less than 60 years.

When one gets beyond all the partisan rancor, a look at the scorecard indicates that “partisan” judges get confirmed, usually by sizeable majorities. The most contentious appointment to have been confirmed was Clarence Thomas’ in 1991, and that had more to do with his alleged misbehavior than his propensities toward “natural” law and disavowal of the affirmative action process than got him into to law school in the first place. One could even make a case that Robert Bork was rejected not because he was an insufferable far-right moralist (which he was) but because he showed himself to be absolutely politically tone deaf. No one was going to give him points for being consistent. For what its worth, one should also remember is that the most “activist” Court since World War II (if not ever) was led by a former Republican Governor—Earl Warren—who had been appointed by a Republican President—Dwight Eisenhower.

The only empathy we need to have is for people who actually believe that the judicial process is supposed to be above all this. And we shouldn’t have much.

For New Chair(person) Of RNC: Bristol Palin

2009-05-06T14:33:00.000-07:00

I realized that after my last post I spent so much time attempting to justify putting W.’s administration in the dock that I didn’t flesh out my reasoning behind why conservatives have no credibility, beyond the standard laundry list of Republican disasters of the past six years.

Then I heard on the news this morning that Bristol Palin, daughter of Gov. Sarah, is having another change of heart about abstinence education and is stumping across the country for the Candie’s Foundation as a spokesperson for reducing teenage pregnancies.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hCJJnoKaw1If6gMyZri_7KaI_MQD980UO4O0

I realized that no better example exists of Republican/conservative inconsistency, hypocrisy, and incompetence. Forget her mother; Bristol is now the new face of the Republican future, and the (literal?) embodiment of the effectiveness and salience of its principles, at least in term of its social policy outlook. Even Octomom claims she hasn’t has sex for nine years but doesn’t preach about it.

Enhanced Interrogations III—The Big Payback: Republi-Karma’s Logical Conclusion

2009-05-06T04:32:00.000-07:00

Since I continue to be confounded by the current Administration’s insistence that enhanced interrogative techniques qualify as torture, and I agree with conservatives’ insistence that their employment remains legitimate, if not compulsory, in dealing with terrorists, I’m sure I will at least equally confound my readers when I insist that the architects of said policies—I include Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice, and I exclude those at Justice who crafted the policies/justifications—should sit the dock and face a trial that will rival the spectacle and the obvious blatant partisan rancor that attended the Clinton impeachment.

It seems as if Obama’s Justice Department will actually spare the country this ordeal, probably because it would be perceived—rather accurately—to be grossly overreaching, aside form the fact that the spectre of national security will hang over every aspect of the proceedings. Additionally, it’s unlikely that any truly Constitutional violations occurred, at least to the point that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

However, I would like to see the aforementioned “Fab Four” in the dock for various, if inherently contradictory, reasons.

First: lying about the nature of the war. Not specifically about WMD in Iraq, thought that’s a whole other can of worms. By declaring that “you are either with us or against us”, and then enlisting countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as erstwhile allies, the conducting of the entire “War On Terror” became a treasonable exercise in effect, if not intent.

Second: attempting to fight the war on the cheap. If we were truly fighting a “War”—which even the Pentagon realized was limited before the change in Administrations—a draft would have been instituted. The fact that one wasn’t indicated one of two things: either a) the “War”—wherever it was being conducted—was not as compulsory as the Bush Administration was declaring it to be, or b) they put their political fortunes ahead of the nation’s. You don’t “go to war with the Army you have”; you find a way to get a better one, even if it means you have institute a draft, rationing, or higher taxes.

Third: placing the Administration’s political fortunes ahead of the nation’s. One can trace this all the way back to a September 20, 2001 editorial in the Wall Street Journal exhorting the Bush Administration to use the 9/11 attacks as an opportunity to link the conservative agenda to the war effort and force the country to accept it.

Fourth: Abu Ghraib. Again: I have no sympathy for the “victims” of “torture”; I’ve been clear about where I stand on that. However, what occurred there, more than any other incident in Iraq, was indicative of the war effort complete lack of professionalism and competence, especially in terms of the criminal level of political tone-deafness. What Abu Ghraib did was further highlight all of the clandestine activity needed to give us an advantage, which of necessity made it harder to keep clandestine. The Administration couldn’t keep its mouth shut even before then.

One could plausibly claim that I am advocating the criminalization of political failures, and I strengthen the hands of our enemies by publicly placing the former Administration on trial for protecting our country. No; I am advocating that whichever Administration fighting a war can be held accountable for confusing the prosecution of said war with their political entrenchment. The Bush White House’ own spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said “people have to watch what they say and watch what they do”, but that rule didn’t seem to apply to the Bushies.

Republicans and conservatives would no doubt publicly decry the shame of their erstwhile standard bearers being treated like common criminals; even Clinton didn’t face imprisonment. However, conservatives have to realize two things. One, as I’ve detailed in my numerous “Republi-Karma” posts, they created this political climate of hyper-partisanship in the mid-1990’s and it would simply have reached its logical if absurd, conclusion with a criminal trial. Two, the series of political disasters starting with the failure to plan for the Iraq occupation thru Abu Ghraib, Katrina, the 2006 elections and the economic meltdown have robbed them of any credibility. That, in the end, may be the biggest betrayal of all: there are conservative principles that are sound—and, because their champions are without credibility, will be impossible to implement.

Enhanced Interrogations Part II: Split Hairs, Broken Bones

2009-04-29T23:50:00.000-07:00

The President remarked offhandedly today that he thought that the practice of waterboarding constituted torture.

I’m half hoping that he was obliquely admitting that the other techniques I referred to in Part I—specifically, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and cultural degradation—might be “legit”, even given Geneva restrictions. But I doubt it.

In any case, there are other, extra-legal objections raised against the use of “torture”, or “physical pressure”. The classic objection that “it doesn’t work” is usually attributed to Cesare Beccaria, who writes in “On Crimes and Punishments:"

“Speaking the truth amid convulsions and torments is no more a free act than staving off the effects of fires and water except by fraud…it [pain] leaves him no liberty but to choose the shorters route to end the pain for the time being.”

However, one can elicit justification for our “techniques”, even in light of this argument. In cases of terror, “torture” is used to elicit information unknown to both the questioner and suspect; the “victim” might say anything to stop the pain, but he knows that if he is proven to lie or having given misinformation, the increased likelihood the torture will resume. So it might be effective. Beccaria was generally talking about religious, or religiously-influenced, torture (“Confess!”), where the torturer was looking for a specific answer, irrespective of the actual truth, and the victim usually knew what his tormentor wanted to hear. That is not the case here; having a predetermined answer doesn’t help the interrogator save lives.

In Gray v. Lucas, 710 F.2d 1048, 1061 (5th Cir 1983), “accepting as true proffer that prisoner will remain conscious for period of time that will result in some pain and terror from method of execution” was deemed “insufficient as matter of law to require a hearing.” Pain and terror do not necessarily make a punishment “cruel and unusual”; punishment is supposed to “hurt”, in one form or another. The individuals undergoing “torture” are not material witnesses; they are dangerous participants in an ongoing conspiracy.

In a similar vein, if we’ve already granted that government can take your life and liberty, it should, albeit within very limited circumstances, be able to have a lien on one’s “dignity”. If this should include a cultural or religious degradation as a psychological tactic, that method should be legitimated in warfare, particularly when the enemy has used religious justification as a rallying cry: breaking that psychological hold might prove to be the difference in the game.

(One might even say that re-institution of corporal punishment in our penal system (on an adult level—NOT a child level) might actually impact recidivism. Certainly we should consider the public shaming of proven sex offenders (which we do already in a way, via Megan’s Law) or those who commit other violent offenses against children.)

Recently a New Yorker article opined that solitary confinement is tantamount to torture. That should actually serve to recommend its more widespread use., because it might actually prevent a) inmate on inmate crime and b) serve as a deterrent if it was used in extreme cases; c) certain defendants, especially those convicted of extraordinary crimes that fall under the aforementioned “extreme cases” (e.g. terrorist masterminds, mass murderers, gang leaders, organized crime leaders) should be held completely incommunicado for life as part of their punishment.

Is there a way to distinguish between “us” and “them” in the manner in which such practices are conducted? It needs to be conducted in a clinical manner both in interrogative and corrective settings, but especially with the interrogations: only those who are expert in the various psycho-physiological elements can make it work and elicit the live saving information. One might claim this becomes an issue of "preception-as-reality" and we therfore become like "them" even in such a case; I would differ, but in any case, the cat's out of the bag, if it wasn't before, and only the complete cessation of the practice of such "black arts" will serve as a salient distinction. That will never happen, however, because a) the "black arts" are such a part and parcel of "business practice" in the intelligence community and b) our intelligence services aren't that suicidal. (I hope.)

To provide a transition to my next missive—where I proffer that the top officials in Bush Administration sit in the dock for doing what I ostensibly recommend: I will say that they specifically did NOT do this, and left it up to their legal minions (e.g. Gonzalez and Yoo) to formulate the opinions that would keep their hands clean. Just as a final thought for now: I wouldn’t hold Yoo and Gonzalez directly responsible for their opinions. They were doing what their bosses (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al) wanted, even if unspoken. But I’ll get to that in the next post.

I thought so...

2009-04-27T15:05:00.001-07:00

Turns out it was Meghan Clyne and not Gov. Palin.

The Post printed a correction today and buried it on page 22.

Sarah Palin, Pundit?

2009-04-26T22:46:00.001-07:00

Sundays' NY Post ran an editorial entitled "100 Days, 100 Mistakes".

Item #15 in the printed edition was attributed to Gov. Sarah Palin:

"I WON" AND THE DEATH OF BIPARTISANSHIP

"Obama soared to victory on the hopeful promise of a new era of bipartisanship. During his inaugural address he even promised an 'end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.'

"Too bad it took all of three days for the promise to ring hollow.

"Start with Obama's big meeting with top congressional leaders on his signature legislation -- the stimulus -- on the Friday after his inauguration. Listening to Republican concerns about overspending was a nice gesture -- until he shut down any hopes of real dialogue by crassly telling Republican leaders: 'I won.' Even the White House's leaking of the comment was a slap at the Republican leadership, who'd expected Obama to adhere to the custom of keeping private meetings with congressional leadership, well, private.

"It's only gone downhill from there. The stimulus included zero Republican recommendations, and failed to get a single House Republican vote.

"It's not just the tactic of using Republicans for bipartisan photo-ops, and then cutting them loose before partisan decisions, that irks Obama's opponents. The new president wasted no time rushing forward with policies and legislation guaranteed to drive Republicans nuts. The first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act -- a partisan hot-button that drew all of eight Republican supporters in the entire Congress. Then there was the swift reversal of Bush policies on abortion and embryonic-stem-cell research -- issues dear to the Republican base.

"And when Obama and the Democrats in Congress took up SCHIP -- the children's health-insurance bill that Republicans say vastly expands government's role in health care -- they had an easy chance for real bipartisanship. After all, the bill had been hashed out in the previous Congress, and a bipartisan accord was reached before President Bush responded with a veto. Did the Obama team push for the compromise version in the 111th Congress? Nope. They went back to the drawing board, ramming through the Democrats' dream version.

"Of course, the lack of bipartisanship isn't limited to Capitol Hill. Obama has taken gratuitous swipes at the Republicans who recently decamped Washington, blaming President Bush for everything from the economy and the war to the lack of sufficient puppies and rainbows. And who could forget the Rush Limbaugh flap -- in which Obama's top advisers, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, orchestrated a public relations campaign meant to undermine the Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, by framing talk-radio personality Limbaugh as the real head of the Republican Party.

"For now, Obama's back-pedal on the bipartisanship promise just makes him look insincere. But the real consequences of the mistake will be felt soon enough. As Presidents Bush and Clinton could tell him, congressional majorities do change -- and at some point, Obama will need Republicans on his side. He'd be smart to spend his second 100 days making up for the serious snubs of his first."

I wrote the following letter to the editor, under the assumption that Gov. Palin was the attributed, if not the actual, author:

While the Post's list of the Administration's mistakes is more or less accurate if eminently predictable, by utilizing an essay attributed to Gov. Palin, it does itself no favors and further erodes the credibility of the conservative case. Do you think it likely that a woman who couldn't a) name a Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade AND b) identify ANY published news periodical (What? She doesn't read the Post?) could have formulated the argument in item 15 on her own? One could almost just as easily believe Bristol Palin wrote the piece.

When I checked the online edition of the piece, the item was a) moved to # 17 and b) was credited to journalist Meghan Clyne.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04252009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/100_days__100_mistakes_166177.htm?page=0

I'm still waiting for a clarification.

But Is It ILLEGAL?

2009-04-23T23:20:00.000-07:00

The Rep. Jane Harman story broken by CQ’s Jeff Stein seems slated to become the latest round of ammunition in the arsenal of any and all anti-Zionists and anti-Semites.

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000003098436&cpage=1

Rep. Jane Harman , a California Democrat long involved in intelligence issues, was overheard on a 2005 National Security Agency wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In return, the Israeli agent pledged to help lobby for Harman to become chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee.

That was Stein’s lead.

Let's assume for just a second that Stein might be on to something.

To say the least, all the backroom machinations as alleged by Stein, particularly surrounding the issues vis-a-vis wiretapping, are at the very least messy, and certainly embarrassing (probably, even more for Harman than Israel).

However, anyone who carefully reads the story should realize that, at least from the point of view of anyone pro-Israel, there is less to this story than meets the eye.

“It’s the deepest kind of corruption,” said one of the sources, a recently retired law enforcement official who was involved in the AIPAC investigation. “It’s a story about the corruption of government — not legal corruption necessarily, but ethical corruption.” The two former AIPAC officials are scheduled to stand trial in June.

"[T]he deepest kind of corruption", but "not legal corruption necessarily"? HUH?!?

Why didn't the "source" just go ahead and say "I don't like it, so therefore it should be illegal, even if it isnt"?

Is there a better illustration of the double standard as applied to supporters of Israel/Zionism?

Can anyone exactly pinpoint what it is Harman is supposed to have done that is actually ILLEGAL?

I didn't think so.

Enhanced Interrogations Part I: The Torture Never Stops

2009-04-21T20:22:00.000-07:00

In theory, I shouldn’t be of two minds about Obama’s recent announcement that he is leaving open the possibility of prosecuting members of the Bush Administration for various Constitutional violations in their prosecution of the “War on Terror”. I applaud the use of enhanced interrogations. Yet, I think a public airing—even a trial of the major players—would actually be good for the country in the long run, even given the obvious dangers of inevitable politicization. But that's for the next post.

In the meantime, I have no problem with the contents of any of the memos written that provided legal justifications for enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, wallbanging, and various forms of cultural degradations.

First, the Geneva Conventions are at the very least outmoded, if not outright irrelevant. Most of their provisions (as most “war laws”) are/were written after the fact; e.g, poison gas was not outlawed DURING World War I, and all of Nuremberg’s hanging offenses were, technically, legally ex post facto. [It’s not as if that would have been used as a defense, and the Nazis in the dock didn’t try; they realized they were lucky that they weren’t simply lined up against a wall and summarily executed, as Churchill had suggested.]

Given an even grudging acceptance of the Conventions, however, I would hold strongly that its provisions would NEVER actually cover “enemy combatants”; as they don’t consider themselves bound by any rules other than Kill The Infidels And Win The Virgins, they ALWAYS present a clear and present danger.

(One could concomitantly argue that the terms “enemy” or “unlawful combatants” are oxymoronic, as terrorists practice something other than combat. First-degree Aggravated Murder. In theory, an analog to piracy would not be all that forced, if we would treat modern pirates like we used to: hanging them.)

I would also argue that the list of interrogation techniques covered in the released top-secret Bush-era memos fall short of ANY legal definition of torture. I would further argue that practitioners of terror could be legal “dead men walking”, e.g., for all intents and purposes, they should be considered to have been “summarily executed”, pace Churchill, and anything that happens to them afterward would be of no legal consequence, i.e., get your intel and then put a bullet in their heads.

One will ask the inevitable questions whether we are, as Obama warned against in his inaugural address, becoming engaged in the “false choice between our security and our ideals.” I would say that, like conservatives who have been carp about the “author’s intent” vis-à-vis the Constitution, human-rights leftists have been as “strict constructionist” about the Geneva Conventions, which, as I have said, are at best historically anachronistic.

There remains the possibility that we would begin to resemble mid-‘70’s Chile or Argentina. However, in theory, if we take terrorists at their word that they are commanded to Kill The Infidels And Win The Virgins, and they present the aforementioned clear and present danger(s), they have automatically forfeit their lives and rights (not necessarily in that order) with due process.

In Part II I will explain why I think the idea of trials are a) necessary and b) inevitable.

The [O]liphant in the Room: Moral Offense, Redux

2009-03-29T03:33:00.000-07:00

In my July 17, 2008 post “Morally Offensive”, I made the following comment about the Obama fist-bump New Yorker cover:

“It was offensive.

It was funny.

It was funny precisely because it was offensive.”

So:

Am I now forced to say the same thing about the recent Pat Oliphant cartoon containing unequivocal Israel-as-Nazi imagery?

Thankfully, no, for a very simple reason: Oliphant was obviously not trying to be funny; he was trying to be very clear about who he thinks has the moral high ground in the conflict.

Fine; I hear my critics carp. (All 1.6 of them). Oliphant was probably dead serious (when he’s trying to be cute, he’s got his little guys at the bottom making side comments) and wanted to very clear about whose side he’s on.

BUT—I hear (from whomever, or wherever, it may come from)—aren't you, as a Jew and Zionist, OFFENDED? And don’t you consider what he did immoral? And, therefore, does that not explode your theory about “moral offense” being a contradiction in terms?

Actually, no, I wasn’t offended. Not even viscerally.

To be sure, if there is ever another Holocaust, I won’t be seeking refuge with Pat Oliphant. However, he would likely claim that he has nothing against Jews, or even Israelis, and, despite the fact that he has displayed the same antisemitically influenced bias that all self-styled “critics” of Israel exhibit, he might actually not be completely deluding himself.

Ironically, one might even deem that a cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban is more “inciteful” than this Oliphant cartoon, not as a matter of morals, but at a matter of behaviorism. I don’t have to go into detail explaining how that actually distinguishes between each respective target’s behavior; one target protests via letters, the other via rioting and murder. QED.

Tangentially, I would almost defend Oliphant’s “right” to publish such calumny, because I would like to reserve myself (and my side) the right to publish equally offensive—and, regards them, completely true--depictions of my mortal enemies.

The bigger problem, however, might be just that these “critics” and “criticisms” of Israel, to paraphrase Larry Summers, are “anti-Semitic in effect, if not intent”. It almost doesn’t matter if these people are actually antisemitic (especially since so many of them seem to be Jewish). It seems, almost, that people are trying to be antisemitic without being labeled as antisemites, and they are getting away with it, since “bigotry” and “racism” have been so obviously politicized (see: Durban).

Therefore, even if there is an imperative to protest such calumny (which is definitely describes Oliphant’s cartoon, in case anyone is unclear about where MY stand is on the picture), a new line of attack may be needed. It might be time to divorce intent from effect: these behaviors themselves should be enough to warrant a different kind of label.

Accessory.

Because even if these people don't necessarily "hate" us, we end up just as dead.

In Case Anyone Wonders How Money Really Gets Wasted, Recession Or No Recession

2009-03-10T20:30:00.000-07:00

I came across this post courtesy of Naomi Ragen.

In case anyone wonders about America's--if not the world's--propesnity to shoot itself in the foot economically (and then have its recipients shoot them/us in the foot(or elsewhere) literally), view the item in the seventh paragraph where Ehrenfeld details the discrepancy between funding for tsunami victims and the PA/Hamas.

Misery Pays
by Rachel Ehrenfeld

Posted March 9, 2009 | 03:14 PM (EST)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-rachel-ehrenfeld/misery-pays_b_172882.html

Giving $5.2 billion to the Palestinian Authority (PA) will do little to bring real change in the condition of the Palestinian refugees or security in the Middle East. Instead of rebuilding the "shelters" in the refugee camps as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has done for decades, this huge sum of money should go to build new communities, industry and a civilian infrastructure for a viable Palestinian state.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared the U.S. has "worked with the Palestinian Authority to install safeguards that will ensure our funding is only used where and for whom it is intended and does not end up in the wrong hands."

The World Bank recommending that the donors give their "budget support" to the PA directly through its Central Treasury Account. It also suggested direct donations through other organizations such as: "the EU-PEGASE, the World Bank administered PRDP-Trust Fund," and a few others.

The U.S., the World Bank and other donors rely on Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's promise that the money would not reach Hamas or be used for any terrorist activity. Yet, Fayyad, a former Resident Representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the West Bank and Gaza, has little control over PA funds in Fatah-controlled West Bank, let alone in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Fayyad himself stated many times that controlling Palestinian finances "is virtually impossible." Moreover, last month, despite Fatah-Hamas bloody disagreements, Fayyad diverted $21.5 million sent from Israel to Gaza to pay PA employees' salaries, to rebuild the houses of Gaza residents that were destroyed during Operation Cast Lead. On March 7th, Fayyad announced his resignation, to facilitate the Fatah unity government with Hamas.

This was not the first time the Fatah-led government was sending money to Hamas. On Jan. 15, 2008, Fayyad's government declared it would give Hamas 40% ($3.1 billion) of the $7.4 billion that was pledged in December 2007 by international donors. Furthermore, in October, 2008, despite the bloody crackdown on Fatah members in Gaza, the PA was paying the salaries of at least 77,000 "loyal employees." Yet, before Hamas took over, there were only 21,000 PA paid loyalists in Gaza. Once the power-sharing negotiations between Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are completed, billions of dollars will go to Hamas, which continue to call for the destruction of Israel.

Since the Oslo Accords, the PA received some $14 billion to $20 billion in international aid, according to a 2007 Funding for Peace Coalition (FPC) report to the British Parliament. Each Palestinian received $4,000 to $8,000 per year. However, of the $7 billion pledged international aid, only $5 billion were spent to assist more than 5 million Tsunami victims in more than 15 countries on two continents.

If the newly pledged $5.2 billion are distributed, each of the 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza would receive $1,300 dollars. In comparison, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), provided in humanitarian aid for 2.5 million Darfur refugees from 2003 to 2006 -- only $100 per person annually.

The PA uses a large amount of the aid it receives to support the terrorist activities against Israel. Each Palestinian or Israeli Arab, imprisoned in an Israeli jail, is entitled to financial assistance from the Palestinian Authority, if he (or she) was sentenced for activity connected to the "struggle against the Israeli occupation."

Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi documented at least $40 million per year, paid to at least 11,600 (in march 2008) Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails. In addition, the PA uses its budget to assist thousands more released prisoners and pay bonuses to the families of suicide bombers. Thus, foreign aid to the PA should be given only when the PA publicly denounces terrorist activities against Israel and stop the support to the terrorists.

The billions of dollars poured into Gaza since Israel pulled out in 2005, have resulted in the strengthening of the radical Islamic Hamas. It keeps the Palestinians under its thumb poor and oppressed and uses their children and women as human shields. Hamas strives not only for the destruction of Israel. It hosts other terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, and uses the Gaza Strip as training grounds. With Iran's help, it threatens to undermine pro Western regimes in the region.

The only way to ensure the $5.2 billion produces a real change to the lives of the impoverished Palestinian in Gaza, create a viable Palestinian state and stability in the region, is by conditioning this money on the PA's cessation of all terrorist activities. Moreover, to ensure the funds do not reach Hamas and are used properly, the money should not be administered by any Palestinian organization, or Hamas supporting UNRWA, but by an international monitoring group.

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is Director of American Center for Democracy and author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed -- and How to Stop It.

What Is, and Why I'm, A "Self-Hating Conservative": A Copy of My email Response to Said Query

2009-02-20T12:20:00.000-08:00

im a self-hating conservative because

a) liberals are usually cooler and better looking (hello? hollywood? would you rather hang out with Sean Penn or Alan Keyes?)

b) one can forgive liberals a lot easier for playing with the truth because since they actually believe that morality is what they say it is, it ipso facto becomes more flexible, and more tolerable, to argue with them (if theyre not too attached to PC. But those arent liberals, theyre progressives.)

However: conservatives always think theyre right and G-d agrees with them. So, when they are right, they're merely tolerable, but when they're wrong, or they play with their principles and claim never to have changed them, theyre lying on two fronts. Thats when theyre downright embarrassing and I dont want to have anything to do with them.

Put another way, I have no contemporary "liberal" credentials, so I wouldnt claim to be one of them. However, though I (reluctantly) share certain conservative principles, I wouldnt wanna hang out with them.

Or, in psychiatric terms: A psychotic thinks 2 + 2 =5. A neurotic knows 2 + 2 =4; he just cant stand it. Im a neurotic conservative.

My One Contention With Jacobson

2009-02-18T22:45:00.000-08:00

First off, I didn't manage to paste the link to Howard Jacobson's piece yesterday. Here it is.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-letrsquos-see-the-criticism-of-israel-for-what-it-really-is-1624827.html

Next, I want to quote the one passage that probably highlights the moral "dilemma" an otherwise reasonable progressive like Jacobson has placed himself in, and a way out.

Jacobson:

I watched demonstrators approach members of the public with their petitions. “Do you want an end to the slaughter in Gaza?” What were those approached expected to reply? – “No, I want it to continue unabated.” If “Massacre” presumes indiscriminate, “Slaughter” presumes innocence. There is no dodging the second of those. In Gaza the innocent have suffered unbearably. But it is in the nature of modern war, where soldiers no longer toss grenades at one another from their trenches, that the innocent pay.

First: he has already presumed, likely because of the discrepancy in the number fatalities, that the Israel perpetrated a "massacre", even if indirectly, even if justified. That is the first presumption that has to be contended with. If any massacre has been committed, the responsibility belongs solely to the Hamas minions who cynically use civilians as shields and bombs. To his credit, he quotes salient vocies and evidence debunking that notion that responsibility is on Israel's hsoulders, but he betrays too much discomfort with the idea; he gives too much credence to the very people he's calling out. He's accepting that the Israelis may have evn been the least bit "indiscriminate", when he knows (and WRITES!!!) the opposite to be true. Its Hamas that is being deliberately, and discriminately, indiscriminate.

Second: "Slaughter presumes innocence." Again, the proximate cause of said slaughter is Hamas, for the reasons enumerated above. Though, one may claim that as the Hamas government was duly elected by the Gazan populace, their "innocence" is an open question, which is my position. But one need not even go that far to contend that if there is a "slaughter", or a "massacre", again, the blood of both the Palestinians and Israelis is on the hands of Hamas'--and their useful idiots.

So--if "'you want an end to the slaughter in Gaza?' What were those approached expected to reply?"

This is my reply to these progressives:

YOU are as responsible as Hamas for the deaths of the "innocents" you proclaim to speak for.

YOUR bias and anti-semitism is tantamount to accessory to murder. Of Palestinians as well as Israelis. Especially since you KNOW (and, probably, secretly hope that) more PALESTINIANS will die.

YOU want and end to the "slaughter" in Gaza?

SHUT UP.

Now, to be sure, I would not place a progressive like Jacobson in this camp. (I would say that a "leading light" like Naomi Klein, with her recent call for a boycott of Israel that she proclaims outright should be carried out with the intent and effect analogous to the divestment from apartheid-era South Africa is perilously close to crossing this line into accessory, if she has not yet already. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/10/naomi-klein-boycott-israel
She becomes the most recent addition to a list of prominent progressives--particularly Jewish progressives--who should be labeled as such accessories. I will provide such a short (or maybe not so short) list in an upcoming post.)

However, Jacobson's progressive take on the conflict, even if misguided in part, is important to consider. Which is: that it is might be possible for someone who is for whatever reasons uncomfortable (even if unnecessarily so) with Israel's actions vis-a-vis their sworn enemies in Gaza and elsewhere to STILL make distinctions between criticism and bigotry.

They should be held to it.

Howard Jacobson: Let’s see the 'criticism' of Israel for what it really is

2009-02-18T07:05:00.000-08:00

There may be some rational voices left in the progressive camp. Even in Europe.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-letrsquos-see-the-criticism-of-israel-for-what-it-really-is-1624827.html

The Independent: Commentators
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Howard Jacobson: Let’s see the 'criticism' of Israel for what it really is

I was once in Melbourne when bush fires were raging 20 or 30 miles north of the city. Even from that distance you could smell the burning. Fine fragments of ash, like slivers of charcoal confetti, covered the pavements. The very air was charred. It has been the same here these past couple of months with the fighting in Gaza. Only the air has been charred not with devastation but with hatred. And I don’t mean the hatred of the warring parties for each other. I mean the hatred of Israel expressed in our streets, on our campuses, in our newspapers, on our radios and televisions, and now in our theatres.

A discriminatory, over-and-above hatred, inexplicable in its hysteria and virulence whatever justification is adduced for it; an unreasoning, deranged and as far as I can see irreversible revulsion that is poisoning everything we are supposed to believe in here – the free exchange of opinions, the clear-headedness of thinkers and teachers, the fine tracery of social interdependence we call community relations, modernity of outlook, tolerance, truth. You can taste the toxins on your tongue.

But I am not allowed to ascribe any of this to anti-Semitism. It is, I am assured, “criticism” of Israel, pure and simple. In the matter of Israel and the Palestinians this country has been heading towards a dictatorship of the one-minded for a long time; we seem now to have attained it. Deviate a fraction of a moral millimetre from the prevailing othodoxy and you are either not listened to or you are jeered at and abused, your reading of history trashed, your humanity itself called into question. I don’t say that self-pityingly. As always with dictatorships of the mind, the worst harmed are not the ones not listened to, but the ones not listening. So leave them to it, has essentially been my philosophy. A life spent singing anti-Zionist carols in the company of Ken Livingstone and George Galloway is its own punishment.

But responses to the fighting in Gaza have been such as to drive even the most quiescent of English Jews – whether quiescent because we have learnt to expect nothing else, or because we are desperate to avoid trouble, or because we have our own frustrations with Israel to deal with – out of our usual stoical reserve. Some things cannot any longer go unchallenged.

My first challenge is implicit in the phrase “the fighting in Gaza”, which more justly describes the event than the words “Massacre” and “Slaughter” which anti-Israel demonstrators carry on their placards. This is not a linguistic ploy on my part to play down the horror of Gaza or to minimise the loss of life. In an article in this newspaper last week, Robert Fisk argued that “a Palestinian woman and her child are as worthy of life as a Jewish woman and her child on the back of a lorry in Auschwitz”. I am not sure who he was arguing with, but it certainly isn’t me.

I do not differentiate between the worth of lives and no more wish to harm or see harmed the hair of a single Palestinian than do those who make cause, here in safe cosy old easy-come easy-go England, with Hamas. Indeed, given Hamas’s record of violence to its own people – read the latest report from Amnesty if you doubt it – it’s possible I wish to harm the hair of a single Palestinian less. But that might be rhetoric in which case I apologise for it.

Rhetoric is precisely what has warped report and analysis these past months, and in the process made life fraught for most English Jews who, like me, do not differentiate between the worth of Jewish and Palestinian lives, though the imputation – loud and clear in a new hate-fuelled little chamber-piece by Caryl Churchill – is that Jews do. “Massacre” and “Slaughter” are rhetorical terms. They determine the issue before it can begin to be discussed. Are you for massacre or are you not? When did you stop slaughtering your wife?

I watched demonstrators approach members of the public with their petitions. “Do you want an end to the slaughter in Gaza?” What were those approached expected to reply? – “No, I want it to continue unabated.” If “Massacre” presumes indiscriminate, “Slaughter” presumes innocence. There is no dodging the second of those. In Gaza the innocent have suffered unbearably. But it is in the nature of modern war, where soldiers no longer toss grenades at one another from their trenches, that the innocent pay.

Live television pictures of civilian fatalities rightly distress and anger us. Similar pictures of the damage this country did to the innocent of Berlin would have distressed and angered us no less. The outrage we feel does credit to our humanity, but says nothing about the justice of a particular war. Insist that all wars are too cruel ever to be called just, argue that any discharge of weapons in the vicinity of the innocent is murderous, and you will meet no resistance from me; but you will have in the same breath to implicate Hamas who make a virtue of endangering their own civilian population, and who, as everyone knows but many choose to discount, have been firing rockets into Israeli towns for years.

The inefficiency of those rockets, landing God knows where and upon God knows whom, is often cited to minimise the offence. As though murderous intention can be mitigated by the obsolescence of the weaponry. In fact the inefficiency only exacerbates the crime. How much more indiscriminate can you be than to lob unstable rockets into civilian areas and hope for a hit? Massacre manqué, we might call it – slaughter in all but a good aim. And this not from some disaffected group we might liken to the IRA, but the legitimately elected government of Gaza.

If it is a war crime for one government to fire on civilians, it is a war crime for another. But when a protester joined a demonstration at Sheffield University recently, calling on both sides to desist, her placard was seized and trampled underfoot, while the young in their liberation scarves and embryo compassion looked on and said not one word.

And Israel? Well, speaking on BBC television at the height of the fighting, Richard Kemp, former commander of British Troops in Afghanistan and a senior military adviser to the British government, said the following: “I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare where any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of civilians than the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) is doing today in Gaza.” A judgement I can no more corroborate than those who think very differently can disprove.

Right or wrong, it was a contribution to the argument from someone who is more informed on military matters than most of us, but did it make a blind bit of difference to the tone of popular execration? It did not. When it comes to Israel we hear no good, see no good, speak no good. We turn our backsides to what we do not want to know about and bury it in distaste, like our own ordure. We did it and go on doing it with all official contestation of the mortality figures provided by Hamas. We do it with Hamas’s own private executions and their policy of deploying human shields. We do it with the sotto voce admission by the UN that “a clerical error” caused it to mis-describe the bombing of that UN school which at the time was all the proof we needed of Israel’s savagery. It now turns out that Israel did not bomb the school at all. But there’s no emotional mileage in a correction. The libel sticks, the retraction goes unnoticed.

But I am not allowed to ascribe any of this to anti-Semitism. It is criticism of Israel, pure and simple.

A laughably benign locution, “criticism”, for what is in fact – what has in recent years become – a desire to word a country not just out of the commonwealth of nations but out of physical existence altogether. Richard Ingrams daydreams of the time when Israel will no longer be, an after-dinner sleep which is more than an old man’s idle prophesying. It is for him a consummation devoutly to be wished. This week Bruce Anderson also looked to such a time, but in his case with profound regret. Israel has missed and goes on missing chances to be magnanimous, he argued, as no victor has ever been before. That’s a high expectation, but I am in sympathy with it, and it is an expectation in line with what Israel’s greatest writers and peace campaigners – Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, David Grossman – have been saying for years. Though it is interesting that not a one of those believed such magnanimity included allowing Hamas’s rockets to go on falling unhindered into Israel.

Was not the original withdrawal from Gaza and the dismantling of the rightly detested settlements a sufficient signal of peaceful intent, and a sufficient opportunity for it to be reciprocated? Magnanimity is by definition unilateral, but it takes two for it to be more than a suicidal gesture. And the question has to be asked whether a Jewish state, however magnanimous and conciliatory, will ever be accepted in the Middle East.

But my argument is not with the Palestinians or even with Hamas. People in the thick of it pursue their own agenda as best they can. But what’s our agenda? What do we, in the cosy safety of tolerant old England, think we are doing when we call the Israelis Nazis and liken Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto? Do those who blithely make these comparisons know anything whereof they speak?

In the early 1940s some 100,000 Jews and Romanis died of engineered starvation and disease in the Warsaw Ghetto, another quarter of a million were transported to the death camps, and when the Ghetto rose up it was liquidated, the last 50,000 residents being either shot on the spot or sent to be murdered more hygienically in Treblinka. Don’t mistake me: every Palestinian killed in Gaza is a Palestinian too many, but there is not the remotest similarity, either in intention or in deed – even in the most grossly mis-reported deed – between Gaza and Warsaw.

Given the number of besieged and battered cities there have been in however many thousands of years of pitiless warfare there is only one explanation for this invocation of Warsaw before any of those – it is to wound Jews in their recent and most anguished history and to punish them with their own grief. Its aim is a sort of retrospective retribution, cancelling out all debts of guilt and sorrow. It is as though, by a reversal of the usual laws of cause and effect, Jewish actions of today prove that Jews had it coming to them yesterday.

Berating Jews with their own history, disinheriting them of pity, as though pity is negotiable or has a sell-by date, is the latest species of Holocaust denial, infinitely more subtle than the David Irving version with its clunking body counts and quibbles over gas-chamber capability and chimney sizes. Instead of saying the Holocaust didn’t happen, the modern sophisticated denier accepts the event in all its terrible enormity, only to accuse the Jews of trying to profit from it, either in the form of moral blackmail or downright territorial theft. According to this thinking, the Jews have betrayed the Holocaust and become unworthy of it, the true heirs to their suffering being the Palestinians. Thus, here and there throughout the world this year, Holocaust day was temporarily annulled or boycotted on account of Gaza, dead Jews being found guilty of the sins of live ones.

Anti-Semitism? Absolutely not. It is “criticism” of Israel, pure and simple. A number of variations on the above sophistical nastiness have been fermenting in the more febrile of our campuses for some time. One particularly popular version, pseudo-scientific in tone, understands Zionism as a political form given to a psychological condition – Jews visiting upon others the traumas suffered by themselves, with Israel figuring as the torture room in which they do it. This is is pretty well the thesis of Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children, an audacious 10-minute encapsulation of Israel’s moral collapse – the audacity residing in its ignorance or its dishonesty – currently playing at the Royal Court. The play is conceived in the form of a family roundelay, with different voices chiming in with suggestions as to the best way to bring up, protect, inform, and ultimately inflame into animality an unseen child in each of the chosen seven periods of contemporary Jewish history. It begins with the Holocaust, partly to establish the playwright’s sympathetic bona fides (“Tell her not to come out even if she hears shouting”), partly to explain what has befallen Palestine, because no sooner are the Jews out of the hell of Hitler’s Europe than they are constructing a parallel hell for Palestinians.

Anyone with scant knowledge of the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations – that is to say, judging from what they chant, the majority of anti-Israel demonstrators – would assume from this that Jews descended on the country as from a clear blue sky; that they had no prior association with the land other than in religious fantasy and through some scarce remembered genealogical affiliation: “Tell her it’s the land God gave us/... Tell her her great great great great lots of greats grandad lived there” – the latter line garnering much knowing laughter in the theatre the night I was there, by virtue of the predatiousness lurking behind the childlike vagueness.

You cannot of course tell the whole story of anywhere in 10 minutes, but then why would you want to unless you conceive it to be simple and one-sided? The staccato form of the piece – every line beginning “Tell her” or “Don’t tell her” – is skilfully contrived to suggest a people not just forever fraught and frightened but forever covert and deceitful. Nothing is true. Boasts are denials and denials are boasts. Everything is mediated through the desire to put the best face, first on fear, then on devious appropriation, and finally on evil.

That being the case, it is hard to be certain what the playwright knows and what she doesn’t, what she, in her turn, means deliberately to twist or just unthinkingly helps herself to from the poor box of leftist propaganda. The overall impression, nonetheless, is of a narrative slavishly in line with the familiar rhetoric, making little or nothing of the Jews’ unbroken connection with the country going back to the Arab conquest more than a thousand years before, the piety felt for the land, the respect for its non-Jewish inhabitants (their rights must “be guarded and honoured punctiliously,” Ben Gurion wrote in 1918), the waves of idealistic immigration which long predated the post-Holocaust influx with its twisted psychology, and the hopes of peaceful co-existence, for the tragic dashing of which Arab countries in their own obduracy and intolerance bear no less responsibility.

Quite simply, in this wantonly inflammatory piece, the Jews drop in on somewhere they have no right to be, despise, conquer, and at last revel in the spilling of Palestinian blood. There is a one-line equivocal mention of a suicide bomber, and ditto of rockets, both compromised by the “Tell her” device, otherwise no Arab lifts a finger against a Jew. “Tell her about Jerusalem,” but no one tells her, for example, that the Jewish population of East Jersusalem was expelled at about the time our survivors turn up, that it was cleansed from the city and its sacred places desecrated or destroyed. Only in the crazed brains of Israelis can the motives for any of their subsequent actions be found.

Thus lie follows lie, omission follows omission, until, in the tenth and final minute, we have a stage populated by monsters who kill babies by design – “Tell her we killed the babies by mistake,” one says, meaning don’t tell her what we really did – who laugh when they see a dead Palestinian policeman (“Tell her they’re animals... Tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out”), who consider themselves the “chosen people”, and who admit to feeling happy when they see Palestinian “children covered in blood”.

Anti-Semitic? No, no. Just criticism of Israel.

Only imagine this as Seven Muslim Children and we know that the Royal Court would never have had the courage or the foolhardiness to stage it. I say that with no malice towards Muslims. I do not approve of censorship but I admire their unwillingness to be traduced. It would seem that we Jews, however, for all our ingrained brutality – we English Jews at least – are considered a soft touch. You can say what you like about us, safe in the knowledge that while we slaughter babies and laugh at murdered policemen (“Tell her we’re the iron fist now”) we will squeak no louder than a mouse when we are abused.

Caryl Churchill will argue that her play is about Israelis not Jews, but once you venture on to “chosen people” territory – feeding all the ancient prejudice against that miscomprehended phrase – once you repeat in another form the medieval blood-libel of Jews rejoicing in the murder of little children, you have crossed over. This is the old stuff. Jew-hating pure and simple – Jew-hating which the haters don’t even recognise in themselves, so acculturated is it – the Jew-hating which many of us have always suspected was the only explanation for the disgust that contorts and disfigures faces when the mere word Israel crops up in conversation. So for that we are grateful. At last that mystery is solved and that lie finally nailed. No, you don’t have to be an anti-Semite to criticise Israel. It just so happens that you are.

If one could simply leave them to it one would. It’s a hell of its own making, hating Jews for a living. Only think of the company you must keep. But these things are catching. Take Michael Billington’s somnolent review of the play in the Guardian. I would imagine that any accusation of anti-Semitism would horrify Michael Billington. And I certainly don’t make it. But if you wanted an example of how language itself can sleepwalk the most innocent towards racism, then here it is. “Churchill shows us,” he writes, “how Jewish children are bred to believe in the ‘otherness’ of Palestinians...”

It is not just the adopted elision of Israeli children into Jewish children that is alarming, or the unquestioning acceptance of Caryl Churchill’s offered insider knowledge of Israeli child-rearing, what’s most chilling is that lazy use of the word “bred”, so rich in eugenic and bestial connotations, but inadvertently slipped back into the conversation now, as truth. Fact: Jews breed children in order to deny Palestinians their humanity. Watching another play in the same week, Billington complains about its manipulation of racial stereotypes. He doesn’t, you see, even notice the inconsistency.

And so it happens. Without one’s being aware of it, it happens. A gradual habituation to the language of loathing. Passed from the culpable to the unwary and back again. And soon, before you know it...

Not here, though. Not in cosy old lazy old easy-come easy-go England.

Nadia Suleiman, Big Love, and Other Family Models

2009-02-11T20:21:00.000-08:00

With all the attention given to the FDLS/Yearning For Zion scandal, the success of HBO’s Big Love, the Octuplet births, and the attendant brouhahas surrounding Prop 8 and gay marriage in particular, a new family model has quietly made its way into the pantheon of “alternatives” to the “nuclear” family.

Now, single motherhood is obviously not a new phenomenon. Forget the Murphy Brown-“cultural elite” battles of a few elections past; one need not even look at statistics of inner-city out-of-wedlock births, but notions pervasive in those (and now, other) neighborhoods that there’s nothing irresponsible about having children before one is prepared to, whether an impoverished inner-city teenager who says “Marriage is for white people”, or a Nadia Suleiman OCD archetype who is psychopathologically driven to procreate and will stop at nothing to do it.

Thankfully, there seems to be little praise from the medical/scientific community for the fertility doctors who apparently took advantage of Suleiman’s mania. More tellingly, she seems not to have gotten too many public mazeltovs from the pro-life community. Since the rabid contracontraceptionists (yes, I made that up) are so well attuned to the PR game, they must realize that Suleiman is manna from heaven to the prochoicers: she allows all pro-lifers to be tarred with the brush of her own compulsions.

(Maybe when Gov. Sarah Palin choked on her answers about contraception in her interviews with Katie Couric, Suleiman was just the kind of archetype she had in mind. And yes, I, so enamored with Palin before I saw those interviews, am turning on her with a vengeance. I blew a ton of credibility on assuming she was actually intellectually salient, when she really was a female Quayle. But I digress, as usual.)

Meanwhile, two recent articles have highlighted the new type of single motherhood: usually a somewhat accomplished woman experiencing, for whatever reason, relationship droughts (as opposed to, say, an oversexed teenager with no compunction to practice safe sex, let alone the ability to even conceptualize self-support) deciding not to wait for a relationship—marital or other—to precede childbearing.

One was Lori Gottlieb’s “The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough: Marry Him!” in the March 2008 Atlantic Monthly, which, though focused more on issues of unrealistic romantic expectations and how our protagonist realizes that she may have possibly jumped the gun by conceiving single and thereby further complicating her already limited romantic options, nevertheless kows that “it isn’t that I’m unable to accept reality and make significant compromises because that’s what grown-ups do (I can and have—I had a baby on my own).”

The other was Emily Bazelon’s “2 Kids + 0 Husbands = Family”, in the New York Times Magazine of Feb. 1, 2009. Simply put, she writes: “Many college educated mothers [are] setting up lives around other single mothers and all their children, with no role for men or romance.” Hardly the “Boston marriages” of the late 1800’s. One of her subjects’ take on marriage is that “it seems like adding on a big mess to something that comparatively stable.”

But more tellingly, in my Orthodox Jewish community, the one anathematic notion that a woman can actually conceive a child out of wedlock has been (however slowly and quietly) been turned on its head. I was recently as a Sabbath meal and I met a 39-year old lawyer (not unattractive by any account, but whom some men with issues might find “intimidating”) who had conceived twins via IV-fertilization, and the mood at the table was very supportive. There is (again slowly and quietly) a growing body of Jewish legal response treating the subject—in a surprisingly more flexible manner than one would expect. Even though the trend is ostensibly without precedent in those communities, the more conservative juristic element has had an equally hard time find salient textual support to prohibit the practice.

(Granted, at the Sabbath table I was at, none of the guests would have had the “chutzpah” to be antagonistic, as a heavy ostracistic (yes, I made that up too) response would probably be instantaneous. Still, I think the support was genuine. I certainly am supportive.)

As a tangential, but closing note, regarding Prop 8-like issues and “gay adoption”, one might consider a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy being instituted regarding such domestic partnerships’ adopting children, based on some of the models depicted above.

Yeah, I know; I’m denying that marriage is a “civil right”, and “don’t ask, don’t tell” obviously worked SOOO well in the military. I don’t expect doctrinaire progressives to call my proposal anything but bigoted. My challenge is more to those (just a little) farther to the right on the socio-political spectrum: is your opposition to such arrangements theologically/morally absolutist and therefore not grounded in logical social policy, or are you genuinely concerned with the welfare of children enough to consider alternative arrangements that might at least not lead one to directly condone relationships you find objectionable?

Think about it.

I Take It Back. Gaza Is Now Under UN Occupation. Someone Tell The UN

2009-02-06T11:51:00.001-08:00

Objectivity is not that farfetched a notion after all.

This might be the most "evenhanded", or least anti-Israel, MSM article I've seen yet.

Kudos.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090206/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians

UN halts aid to Gaza, cites Hamas disruption
By JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press Writer Josef Federman, Associated Press Writer – Fri Feb 6, 10:08 am ET

JERUSALEM – The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Friday it has halted all aid shipments into the Gaza Strip due to interference by the ruling Hamas militant group.

The U.N. Relief and Works agency said it made the decision after Hamas personnel intercepted an aid shipment for the second time this week.

In a statement, UNRWA said 10 truckloads of flour and rice that had been delivered into Gaza on Thursday were taken away by trucks affiliated with the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs. Earlier this week, Hamas police took thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.

UNRWA said the suspension would remain in effect until the aid is returned and the agency receives credible assurances from the Hamas government that such thefts will end. There was no immediate reaction from Hamas.

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said the agency would continue to distribute aid from its existing supplies in Gaza, but that stocks were running low.

"There is enough aid for days, not weeks," he said. Complicating the situation, he said the agency has not been able to import plastic bags used for food distribution, and that existing supplies will run out early next week.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called UNRWA's decision "unjustified."

He said Hamas supports UNRWA's work but believes the agency gives some of its aid to groups attached to Hamas' rivals.

He urged UNRWA "to put an end to using aid for political means, and to distribute it to all the needy equally."

Some 80 percent of Gaza's 1.4 million people rely on the U.N. agency for food and other support, and U.N. officials say the need for aid has increased since Israel ended a military offensive in Gaza last month.

The offensive, meant to halt years of Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel, killed nearly 1,300 people and caused widespread destruction.

Also Friday, Israel deported 15 activists from an aid ship it intercepted en route from Lebanon to Gaza. The activists, all Lebanese and Syrian citizens, were deported overnight, the military said.

Three others — two Indians and a Briton — remained in police custody pending deportation, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

The ship had attempted to reach Gaza on Thursday in defiance of an Israeli blockade. Israel intercepted the vessel and towed it to Ashdod port, where it remained docked Friday. It was not immediately clear when the boat would be allowed to sail.

Israel and Lebanon are officially at war. Israel said it was concerned about the ship's cargo and called the boat a "provocation." Israel, which is enforcing a naval blockade aimed at Gaza's Hamas rulers, has allowed several similar aid ships into Gaza and has turned several more back, but had never before boarded or detained one.

While the boat remained docked, some 1,000 units of donated blood were quickly unloaded and sent into Gaza, military spokesman Peter Lerner said. The rest of the supplies on board were being examined and would also be sent to Gaza, he said.

Israel imposed the blockade after Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007. Since then, it has allowed in little more than basic humanitarian supplies.

Despite Israeli concerns, no weapons were found on board. The organizers of the aid ship, Lebanese political and human rights activists, said the cargo comprised of medicine, food, toys and basic humanitarian supplies such as mattresses and blankets.

Israel unilaterally halted its devastating Gaza operation on Jan. 18, and Hamas followed with an announcement that it would hold its fire.

Sporadic fighting has persisted. On Friday, Gaza militants launched two more rockets into Israel, the military said. There were no injuries, but it illustrated the fragility of the Gaza cease-fire. Late Thursday Israeli forces on the Gaza-Israel border shot and killed a Palestinian who the military said approached the fence armed with a grenade.

Egypt's attempts to mediate a long-term cease-fire have not succeeded so far. Hamas is demanding that Israel open Gaza's blockaded border crossings as part of any agreement, but Israel says it will not turn the crossings over to Hamas control. It also wants international guarantees that weapons smuggling into Gaza will stop.

The attempts to negotiate a cease-fire are unfolding in the shadow of Israel's national election on Tuesday, as Israel's leaders compete over who can take the toughest stand against Hamas.

New polls Friday showed the likely winner would be hard-line Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who says the current government ended the Gaza operation too early, without causing enough damage to the Islamic group.

(AP correspondent Karen Zolka contributed to this report.)

The Super Bowl: Another Entitlement?

2009-02-03T22:38:00.000-08:00

There has been a theory that the NFL is the last bastion of American manhood, if not all elements of our culture that conservatives find favor with (well, most conservatives; who can forget George Will’s plaint that the game “combines the worst elements of American life: violence and committee meetings”) and progressives find objectionable (viz. “The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football”; “For Pride, Profit, and Patricarchy”; “Men Will Be Boys”).

From the vantage point of this particular self-hating conservative rabid football fan, last night’s Super Bowl contest (like last year’s, instantly (and justifiably) canonized as one of the top five contests in the game’s history) moves the NFL further towards progressive/liberal values than it already has gone, entrenched as it is in egalitarianism (parity) and socialism (the TV contracts even sharing among all 32 clubs).

Of the last ten Super Bowls, six have been decided by a touchdown or less, with the game winning score occurring in the final two minutes in five of those; two have been gameworthy until the middle of the fourth quarter (XL and XLI); and the other two (XXXV and XXXVII), though blowouts, showcased what might have been two of the best defenses in NFL history (the 2000 Ravens and 2002 Buccaneers).

Additionally, as the commercials have become more and more tailor-made for the broadcast, enough that they almost have become a broadcast in their own right, the expectations for the quality of the commercials almost exceed the expectations of the quality of the game.

It’s as if a good game AND good commercials have become another entitlement. (Well, maybe in our current economy America might have deserved it.)

Of the four major professional sports, football is the only whose championship is decided in one contest. This might be why people the miss strong element of drama that surrounds a Super Bowl: always a storyline that not only is a lead-in to the game, but also within the game itself, no matter how one-sided or sloppy the game might be, which almost always make the game memorable.

I have seen full telecasts of every Super Bowl, except for I and II, which don’t exist because NBC and CBS erased the tapes, and V, which also seems to have disappeared. The only Super Bowl that had all the drama sucked out of it before the first quarter ended was VIII, when the Dolphins scored touchdowns the first two times they had the ball on almost identical 10-play, 5-1/2 minute drives, sandwiched around a Vikings three-and-out. It might be the only Super Bowl where the highlight film is more exciting than the game.

So, if you ever think there was a Super Bowl not worth watching, you just haven’t studied your football.

Hello, everyone: Gaza is no longer occupied.

2009-02-03T22:37:00.000-08:00

There are no Jews left living there.

Excuse me: one. Gilad Shalit. And they won’t let him leave.

Still, people seem to be hung up on Israel’s “demographic doom” because there are 1.4 million Arabs in Gaza just waiting to be included in the Israeli body politic long enough to vote the Jewish State out of existence.

And the MSM and the Left are still spouting it. (Not that they wouldn’t print anything that wasn’t true…)

I just hope the Israelis are smart enough not to.

The Palestinians now have one state. (No, not Jordan; that would make two.)

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: its time to introduce the severance of Gaza and the West Bank as “Occupied Palestinian Territories” that would make up a contiguous Palestinian "State" into the diplomatic vocabulary.

There is no specific "Palestinian people" in any ethnic, geographical, political, religious or historical context that commands the two "occupied territories" as a matter of either international law, historical legacy, or even the principles of self-determination.

(At some point, we should also introduce the concept that the demand for a Jew-free Palestinian State willy-nilly makes an Arab Palestine a racist political entity. (Of course, racism no longer applies to Jews and Israelis. Just ask hard- and not-so-hard-Left Jews and Israelis. But no matter.))

Economics 101 Take-Home: Who do YOU think is responsible?

2009-01-28T13:14:00.001-08:00

In the post-partisan bliss that is the optimism surrounding this new administration lurks the one issue that will eventually bring back full-force partisan rancor, and it isn’t Iraq.

It’s the economy, stupid (or more accurately, the stupid economy).

The more strident doomsayers (“Socialism!”) have been relatively quiet since Sept. 15th when Lehman Bros went belly up; but now that there is, in fact, a Democratic administration in place, one can only hear the claws and teeth being sharpened once again.

Since I’ve mentioned that there is a rather considerable lacuna in my liberal arts education that should be filled by economics (I avoided it; I was a (still recovering) pre-med), it has been very hard for me to keep track of who is truly at fault for this mess.

I finally decided that the only way to really determine where blame lies would be to throw out the most plausible candidates from all side of the socio-politico-economo-religio-philosophico-academi-punditocratic spectrum.

So I’m gonna ask for a little class participation here. I’m gonna provide a list for starters. Feel free to add anything you like (however, if you even come close to blaming the Jews, I will find you.)

Here goes:

Bernie Madoff.

Anyone who invested with Bernie Madoff.

Anyone who worked for Bernie Madoff.

Anyone who knew what Bernie Madoff was up to.

Anyone who didn’t know what Bernie Madoff was up to and was PAID to know.

Sarbanes-Oxley. Glass-Steagall. McCain-Feingold. Hawley-Smoot.

Rich people who don’t pay taxes.

Rich people who pay taxes and bitch about it.

Rich people who pay taxes and think they should pay more.

Poor people who don’t pay taxes.

Poor people who pay taxes AND vote Republican.

Poor people who pay taxes AND vote Republican AND bought houses with subprime loans.

Poor people who pay taxes AND vote Republican AND bought houses with subprime loans and THEN bitch about the economy.

Fannie Mae. Freddie Mac. The justice of the peace who joined them in un-holy monetarimony.

Any CEO whose compensation package stretched into seven figures before the stock options kicked in.

Any CEO whose compensation package stretched into seven figures after the stock options kicked in.

The Bailout. No matter who’s being bailed out or for how much.

Any automobile manufacturer (US, Japan, or anywhere else) for still using the internal combustion engine.

Big Oil.

Every country in the Middle East except for Israel (because Israel has no oil).

All of Western Europe (“Axis of Weasel”), for not backing us in Iraq. (Although we can partially forgive France because they elected Sarkozy.)

All of Eastern Europe and the UK, for backing us in Iraq.

The UN.

Big Food. Whole Foods.

Democrats. Republicans. Independents. Conservatives. Neo-conservatives. Paleo-conservatives. Liberals. Progressives. Bernie Sanders. Lyndon LaRouche.

ALL talk show hosts—radio, TV, cable—no matter their political inclinations.

The unemployed. The employed. Employers. Employees.

Unions, especially the UTA and NEA.

Acquisitionism Redux: Running Up The Score

2009-01-26T18:37:00.001-08:00

Apparently, a girls’ high school basketball coach in Texas has been fired because his team WON a game 100-0.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,482825,00.html

On its Web site last week, Covenant, a private Christian school, posted a statement regretting the outcome of its Jan. 13 shutout win over Dallas Academy. "It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened. This clearly does not reflect a Christlike and honorable approach to competition," said the statement.

Meanwhile, the coach had a completely different take on it. “I do not agree with the apology or the notion that the Covenant School girls’ basketball team should feel embarrassed or ashamed. We played the game as it was meant to be played. My values and my beliefs would not allow me to run up the score on any opponent, and it will not allow me to apologize for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity."

Just by way of contrast, one only has to go back to 1916 and the most lopsided game score in college football history: Georgia Tech’s 222-0 (yes, 222-0) victory over Cumberland College. With Tech up 126-0 at the half, coach John Heisman (yes, THAT Heisman) admonished his troops: “Men, don’t let up. You never know what these Cumberlanders have up their sleeves.”

I suppose that what caught me was not just the fact that the Covenant administrators publicly professed their shame at running up the score. It was that they specifically made a religious reference in disavowing their team’s achievement (“Onward Christian Soldi…wait, not that far onward!”). So, whether it violated religious principles or simply was not in keeping with unwritten “mercy” rules against running up a score when a contest is not suspended at a predetermined tally.

The item I found particularly odd was that a presumably conservative institution would suddenly resort to a rather progressive principle—affirmative action (“Lets not overcompete, ladies”)—only to cover it up in religious platitudes. (Which in and of itself raises the question: what if they were competing against those who were less than “Christlike”?)

Aside from reading too much into this event as a microcosm of certain undercurrents in contemporary American politics and culture, I would actually like to point out that in truth, as I’ve described in my essays on what I call “Acqusitionism”, Americans aren’t only happy if they win; they need someone else to lose. However, in sports, the only thing that are hated more than losers are quitters (it seems that Dallas Academy has come in for all sorts of praise for persisting while losing 100-0).

Even worse than losers quitting are winners quitting. In 1984, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were beating the New York Jets 41-14 very late in the 4th quarter, but the Jets were driving for a meaningless touchdown and using up the clock, and the Bucs needed to get the ball back to give their running back James Wilder a shot at a season combined-yardage record. So the Bucs all but lay down on the final drive (enough that it was evident on the videotape) and let the Jets score. This did not sit well with anyone in the sports world, but especially not the Jets, who, in a rematch with the Bucs the next season, set all sorts of team offensive records including points in beating up on Tampa Bay 62-28.

If you’re going to compete, you compete. Until the clock runs out.

Networking: NFL vs MLB

2009-01-25T01:16:00.001-08:00

We interrupt the ususal screeds about the new Administration and the war in Gaza to talk about sports. (After all, the New York Jets’ most recent end-of-season collapse “merited” a New York Times Op-Ed column from Bob Herbert.)

Personally, I am more partial to football than baseball. Much has been written and said about the differences between baseball and football as a sport—that best explained, of course, by George Carlin; and, as a business—particularly how the NFL’s brand of “socialism” has made it the most financially viable of all the major sports leagues, and how baseball has spectacularly failed in maintaining any level of profitability. (Although, in the current economic climate, this may hardly be grounds for strident criticism.)

Still, all you have to do to truly understand why the NFL is much more effective and profitable as a business than MLB is just to look at the two sports’ respective commissioners over the past 35 years.

NFL: Pete Rozelle, Paul Tagliabue, Roger Goodell. All very effective.

MLB: Bowie Kuhn. Peter Ueberroth. Bart Giammatti. Fay Vincent. Bud Selig. Uebberroth was competent, but he only lasted four years; Giamatti could have become one of the all time greats if not for his untimely demise. Kuhn and Vincent were nothing to write home about, and Selig is the equivalent of a fox guarding a henhouse.

So I find it bizarre that in marketing legacies, baseball outdoes football.

At first glance, this isn’t necessarily so surprising. Professional baseball has much deeper historical roots in this country and its early years are much better documented and have a much larger treasure trove of available primary sources. Even baseball’s records from before what is considered the “modern” era—i.e., the American League beginning play in 1901—are very extensive. Football, is of more recent vintage; it really developed from the college game (which it did not truly overtake in popularity until the 1960’s) and the earliest incarnations of the professional game were so anarchic that in many cases record keeping would have been moot. The two sports’ respective Halls Of Fame are illustrative of all of this (although, walking through the “Shrine” at Baseball’s Hall Of Fame and looking at the brass plaques of the inductees, I wondered at times whether I was at a memorial chapel).

That disparity, owing to historical forces, makes perfect sense. What I don’t understand is how the MLB has outdone the NFL legacywise ion the one thing the NFL has always excelled at: marketing. One can see these processes sports’ cable TV networks and the editing and marketing of both sports’ vintage games on DVD’s.

The shenanigans surrounding the NFL Network and the cable companies do not bear repeating; suffice it to say, I have premium cable and MLB Network—but no NFL. Additionally, it seems that MLB Network programs a greater variety of classic games and makes it a larger part of programming than the NFL does.

Ostensibly, from the NFL’s standpoint, this may be in no small part due to the existence of an extensive underground of trading of game broadcasts; the NFL has always been extremely protective of its product. Yet the NFL seems to be following the lead of the RIAA and shooting itself in the foot by restricting its viewers and its viewings.

Furthermore, I have an extensive collection of both MLB and NFL vintage DVD releases. To date, MLB has released numerous sets of games, including close to 15 complete World Series; the NFL has released a comparable number of “Classic Games”, including collections from about 10 teams’ “Greatest Games”, and entire playoff runs of the Super Bowl winning teams from most of the past 10 seasons (with the exception of the New England Patriots; it currently is assembling a compendium of almost all the playoff and Super Bowl games from their 2001, 2003 and 2004 Championship seasons in one 10-disc set).

The MLB games do not undergo nearly the kind of surgery that NFL games do. That may be owing to the nature of both games (in football, editing huddles sometimes makes sense; in baseball, editing waiting periods between pitches would obviously destroy the pace of the games); but the way the NFL games are edited sometimes introduces jumps that compromises the flow of the game.

But what really bothers me is the way most of the NFL DVD’s end: extremely abruptly, with no scenes of celebration, let alone post-game extras. It might be too much too ask to include commercials on some of the Super Bowl broadcasts; but no pre-game shows or post-game interviews? The NFL recently released the Raiders’ three Super Bowl victories. I watched Super Bowl XVIII as it happened; I was in eighth grade. I can understand not necessarily wanting to include Barry Manilow singing the National Anthem; but not to include the coin toss with Bronko Nagurski? And no post-game Al Davis’ “Just win, baby” and President Reagan’s crack about Marcus Allen and the Russians?

Who’s doing the editing?

1-20-09

2009-01-21T04:31:00.000-08:00

When you get down to it, President Obama's inaugural address was more about a national attitude check then a real declaration of a universal change in US policy. What he seemed to make clear is that he understands what his job is and that there are certain things that must be done, despite (or possibly even because of) the fact that he has been left with a huge mess to clean up.

This is in complete contradisitinction to his predecessor, who was bequeathed with a country that was far better off after eight years of the Clinton Administration, yet took advnatage of some of the starkest challenges face by this nation in order to further a political agenda: creating a "permanent Republican majority."

Ironically, Obama may have been implicitly channeling W.'s "exit interview", where he felt compelled to explicitly state "You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made, but I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions."

(This was almost comically echoed by Ed Gillespie, the White House historian: "I think he would like to be remembered as someone who stuck by his principles, understanding that in making tough decisions not everyone is going to agree with the tough decisions that he's made." As if he had to translate W. Now they tell him.)

It is questionable whether the propensity to characterize W. as the "Worst President Ever" in some circles is more politically transparent or historically fallacious; there are much starker examples of failure of policy and leadership (Buchanan, Hoover, and Van Buren, for example). Additionally, my original assessment that W. didn't care about his legacy may have been slightly premature. Yet it seems that W. woke up to what his job was on the its last day, never mind that there was a legacy attached.

To more clearly illustrate the analog, it is highly plausible that history will be a much kinder judge of Bush and his administration than its current poll number, as it has been to Truman and his administration. One may even draw an analog between "elitist" criticism of both Truman ("hick") and W. ("dumb"). Yet the strongest distinction bewteen the two is the almost naked partisanship of W.'s tenure and the bipartisanship of Truman's (to a fault--it allowed HUAC and McCarthyism. But it was hardly going to score political points).

To the degree that the Presidency is about personality, W. had a distinct advantage coming in: his "everyman" persona, which, combined with his ostensible "anti-intellectualism", made him politically palatable. When he had to look more like a man in charge and everything fell to pieces around him, that asset immediately turned into a liability. The enduring image of W. will be one of beleaguerment.

In contrasts, Obama's intellectual and personality gifts are both without question. The historical import of both his election and the its timing with the country's current difficulties is obviuosly not lost on him. What remains to be seen--aside from the salient question of whether he will govern from the center or the left--is whether his personality and charisma are among a set of skills embodying effective leadership, or whether they will end up being his primary engine of administration and potentially as much a liability as an asset, as they did in W.'s case.

This was the entire point of the inaugural address.

Funny; There Was Nary A Word About It In The Inaugural Address

2009-01-21T02:52:00.000-08:00

The AP Headline reads: "Israelis, Palestinians hand Obama first challenge".

I thought his first challenge was the economy.

Or Iraq.

Or Afghanistan/Pakistan.

Or partisan rancor.

Banky Moony Surrenders

2009-01-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

Maybe Banky Moony was listening after all.

I suppose "unilateral cease-fire" is UN-speak for "unconditional surrender".

If not Orwellian. (Or French).

Lets guess who's supposed to "surrender" here.

AP's story is below.

January 15, 2009
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The U.N. chief urged Israel Friday to declare a unilateral cease-fire in Gaza, but Israel rebuffed the idea as its diplomats headed for Egypt and the United States in what appeared to be a final push toward a truce.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon floated the idea during a visit to the West Bank on his Mideast mission to try to stop Israel's three-week-old offensive against Hamas militants who have been firing rockets from Gaza for years.

"I strongly urge Israeli leadership and government to declare a cease-fire unilaterally," Ban said from Ramallah, the seat of the West Bank government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a fierce rival of Hamas. "It's time to think about a unilateral cease-fire from the Israeli government."

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev dismissed the idea.

"I don't believe that there's a logical expectation in the international community that Israel unilaterally cease fire while Hamas would continue to target cities, trying to kill our people," he said.

Ban is on a weeklong trip to the region meant to promote a truce after both sides ignored a U.N. resolution demanding an immediate and durable cease-fire.

He will not meet with Gaza's Hamas rulers, who have been shunned by much of the international community since they violently overran Gaza in June 2007.

It's not the first time that there has been a call for a "unilateral cease-fire" on the part of the Israelis; usually it came from the English Parliament, and those calls were so transparently one-sided that even a hardcore Palestinian sympathizer like Tony Blair had to reject the call at the time.

The interesting item here is, that by Banky Moony bypassing Hamas and thereby tacitly admitting on behalf of the UN that Hamas IS a terrorist oragnization, he further illustrates the true ineffectuality of the UN's involvement in any aspect of dealing with the conflict between the Jewish State and her unequivocally hostile neighbors.

Read that again; even AP can find only so much wiggle room with the facts.

He will not meet with Gaza's Hamas rulers, who have been shunned by much of the international community since they violently overran Gaza in June 2007.

Banky Moony should declare a unilateral moratorium on United Nazions diplomacy in, about, or around Israel, and recuse himself and his "organization" from any pretense to adjudication of the conflict, owing to a clearly blatant conflict of interest.

Gazans elected Hamas

2009-01-14T02:03:00.000-08:00

Again, Naomi Ragen says it better than me—or almost anybody.

"Gazans elected Hamas, and now Hamas has put weapons in mosques, and boobytrapped their homes. Hamas steals humanitarian food shipments, the ones Israel lets through even during rocket attacks on her civilians, distributing it to armed terrorists, and making civilians pay. There was never a more debased and barbarian movement than that of Hamas, whose leadership sits in bunkers sending out terrorists to fire rockets at Israeli schools from the midst of Palestinian schools, hoping that an Israeli retaliation will provide enough bodies for the world to demand a ceasefire, so that they can claim their victory, get their payoffs from the Iranian mullahs, and rearm. They will never give up, because they don't know how to do anything else. Like Nazis, these Islamic fanatics make peace impossible and unconditional defeat the only option."

How Hamas is raising Gaza's children (no explanation necessary)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTGbP55HGi8

Diplo-plexy

2009-01-09T00:13:00.000-08:00

It might seem rather heartless to proffer a theory of creative diplomacy that takes advantage of a series of political vacuums while people die.

It also might be even more heartless to find humorous historical analogues between the current Gaza crisis and the international response to it, and complete diplomatic fiascoes of the past.

Yet, since I’ve left no doubt whose side I’m on, and that, despite (or maybe because of) my unabashed Judeocentrism, I’ve also left no doubt about that Israel and her supporters occupy the moral high ground here, my conscience is clear. Even if the propriety of finding humor in carnage is, at best questionable, sensitivity toward an enemy that desires nothing short of my complete disappearance is even less so.

So, aside from my usual attitudes towards the UN, its utility and moral standing, I found it rather funny as to how the most recent machinations of the Security Council’s resolutions were hashed out.

Specifically, two items:

One, that the United States abstained from a U.N. Security Council vote Thursday night urging an immediate cease-fire in Gaza despite the fact that the text of the resolution was hammered out by the United States. This is somewhat reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson’s authorship of the League of Nations being soundly rejected in Washington. Israeli and their supporters should find Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’ statement the United States "fully supports" the resolution, but abstained because it "thought it important to see the outcomes of the Egyptian mediation"-- referring to an Egyptian-French initiative aimed at achieving a cease-fire—especially delicious. If the Israelis were smart they’d leave her and her State Department twisting slowly in the wind for the next week and a half of her tenure.

Two, not only are Israel and Hamas not parties to the vote, but despite the fact that the Resolution is clearly aimed at Israel, their antagonistic counterparts are never identified. This should create a diplomatic conundrum that the Israelis should exploit to the fullest—again, if they are smart enough. They can approach this one of two ways: Israel can insist that until the counterpart to the conflict is properly identified, the resolution is ipso facto null and void; or, they can either declare that Hamas is an illegitimate entity and this war is doing the work the West and Fatah couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do.

Either way, since the resolution was not drafted under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which is militarily enforceable, if the Israelis are serious about this series of battles being a microcosm of their wider existential struggle, they will stubbornly persist in the face of what might amount to nothing more than an attack of diplo-plexy suffered by those who were never truly favorably disposed to them in the first place.

The New Unconditional Surrender: How To Fight In Gaza

2009-01-01T13:02:00.000-08:00

The latest Gaza crisis might finally present a series of opportunities for the Israelis to introduce a new set of political and diplomatic truisms into the Middle East theater.

The Israelis also can present a new set of examples in how to fight a War on Terror, as well as a war against a regime that supports terror, when their entire raison d’etre is terrorism.

The time has finally arrived when Israel can, through force of arms, sunder the territories and put to rest the diplomatic notion that there needs to be a contiguous Palestinian state made up of the West Bank and Gaza. One may need to come to grips with the fact that there are overwhelming Arab majorities in each respective territory, giving them the right to political self-determination in those territories. Granting that, it does not follow that the Israeli are responsible for correcting an accident of geography and creating another version of mid-20th century Pakistan, which tore itself asunder after 24 years. The Palestinians seems to have doing a good enough job of that anyway.

The “two-state” solution becoming a “three-state” paradigm will also serve to further bury any notions of a “right of return”, as there would now be 2 more Arab states for any Arab---Palestinian or other—to “flee” to.

On the battlefield, the Israelis should introduce two new elements of warfare which aren’t necessarily so new.

The first is that a defensive victorious power can force an unconditional surrender upon their foes without ever having to physically set foot on their opponents’ territory. This can be done through repeated incessant airborne assaults upon the offending territory until it completely reforms itself and pledges to forever cease all hostile behavior and intent and then follows through on that pledge. Any breach of that commitment is automatically construed as an act of war and invites instantaneous further repeated bombing until compliance is reestablished by force.

The second is that the almost inevitable “humanitarian crisis” that results should be laid exclusively at the feet of the entity that initiated the hostilities; in this case, the ruling Hamas gang in Gaza. Any civilian casualties, destroyed infrastructures, collapsed economies, even widespread starvation should be the complete and utter responsibility of Hamas. The Israelis should completely surround Gaza and not let anyone or anything in or out until the society reforms itself from within, no matter the human cost within the territory. This should finally put to rest any notion of the “Pottery Barn rule”’s application here.

Admittedly, this would be a hard act to follow in any other theater in the War on Terror. Most terror-harboring states are, to varying degrees, functioning nation-states. One might say that this is how the Americans should have fought the war in Afghanistan: reduce an entire society-state to absolute rubble if they promote or harbor. Ann Coulter wanted to convert the Afghan populace to Christianity. I would have converted them to pre-history. That would have set the proper example, as opposed to attempting to convert them to democracy.

The Israelis should use Gaza as THE paradigm of converting a people to pre-history. They have been deemed human refuse by their Arab brethren for the sake of their utility as political pawns, so there is no reason the Israelis should not take the Arabs at their word. Hamas was elected by the Gaza populace, so the Gazans have, through exercise of their political franchise, indicated their assent to Hamas’ program of Judeocide.

All the Israelis really have to do withstand the political and diplomatic opprobrium and treat it as background noise while they conduct business that has been unfinished for far too long.

Gaza, Again

2008-12-27T17:20:00.001-08:00

This is what I had hoped for when the Israelis unilaterally pulled out of Gaza three and a half years ago.

That is, since they had absolved themselves completely of the responsibility for governing and providing for a populace that was inalterably opposed to their (Jews’, that is) very existence, let alone their presence in Gaza, they would thereby reserve for themselves the right to conduct military incursions into the Strip whenever they deemed it necessary.

Unfortunately, they never seemed to believe that incursions were warranted, despite the incessant barrage of unprovoked terrorist rocket attacks from Gazan soil.

Until now.

I’m not entirely certain as to what precipitated this unprecedented response (which, to be certain, is exactly what it is: a purely defensive response. Not even preemptory: purely defensive). I surmise that, more than the electoral implications, it takes advantage of the transition period between the Obama and Bush administrations while at the same time giving a rather grand middle-finger salute to the US State Department, which, for all intents and purposes, has yet to recognize that the 1947 UN partition plan gave the Jews a homeland/state (although they obviously recognize their Arab counterparts’ land rights).

If the Israelis are smart and don’t repeat their mistake of letting up as they did in the 2006 Lebanon War, they will continue to bomb Gaza at least until the day Obama takes office, or until the entire Hamas leadership is dead or replaced with a governing body that will not tolerate the conduction of any terrorist activity from its soil.

Now what happens with the inevitable question of civilians, such as when Secretary Rice called for recognition of "the urgent humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza"?

This time, there are no innocent civilians in Gaza. And it’s Rice’—and this Administration’s—fault, because they insisted upon the imposition of “democratic” elections before a fully functioning society was running in the Strip. This terror-ridden failed-state Hamas-driven entity was chosen by its people, and they bear the responsibility for the actions of their leaders, which they undoubetedly approve of wholeheartedly. The war IS with the Gazan population, and the Israelis have nothing to lose by saying so.

It was said around the time of the 2006 Lebanon War that a new set of “facts on the ground” could result. They did, but not in Israel’s favor. This time, let’s hope the Israelis have the fortitude to follow through.

Madoff

2008-12-18T06:37:00.000-08:00

As if the current economic situation wasn't enough of an impetus to bring the "white-wing"-ers out of the woodwork blaming the Jews for everything, now comes a bonafide scandal involving a committed and involved Orthodox Jew. I couldn't have even begun to formulate a response to these events; then I saw this from Naomi Ragen.

In the aftermath, the rise of anti-Semitic chatter on the internet has
reached new, ominous levels. But I read one talkback--on a Madoff site full of vicious anti-Semitic remarks by seemingly educated and 'liberal' people -- which made sense. The writer said that it wasn't fair to blame all Jews, but it was certainly true that there were many, many Jews who were talented in business and finance, and therefore disproportionately represented in those fields. What a shame, therefore, he wrote, that the Jewish community had not made more of an effort to instill the values of the Torah in its members, which would have meant decency and honesty and absolute integrity would have guided the worlds of business and finance, saving the world so much misery.

Well done.

This was my repsonse.

It obviously has not been made clear in the general culture that Torah stands as much for fiduciary as ritual purity, and the fault, in this case, is not with the anti-semites. When one says "values of Torah", "decency and honesty and absolute integrity" are rarely the first things to come to anyone's mind. Even among the most decent Torah-observant.

The Orthodox community and its institutions need to come up with a foolproof series of background checks and prophylactic policies vis-a-vis philantropists regarding their fiduciary reliability before exminaing their religious bona fides (easier said than done, but nonetheless).

I would even go as far as coming up with a method of public shaming of proven thieves, even creating a virtual "mitzvah" of reporting them to the secular authorities. However, we see how much luck we've had in rooting out sexual predators; how much moreso rooting out financial malefactors, who usually can buy their way out of anything until they run out of money. Like Madoff.

I'm Gonna Have To Say Something About Prop 8

2008-12-16T22:56:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog, I essentially explained its raison d’etre in the equivalent of three pages when I could have explained it one sentence. To wit: I am ostensibly a self-hating conservative who is forever trying to intellectually justify my conservative positions as exceptions to my imagined ingrained liberalism.

Prop 8 provides an illustration of said phenomenon.

As a believing Orthodox Jew, I find my religion’s proscription of homosexuality troubling at the very least, particularly its designation of said activity as an “abomination”. Yet, knowing what I know about the sources of Jewish Law and its legal system, I consider myself intellectually bound to believe in its truth.

I will not even try to argue with anyone who considers my views to be homophobic; in today’s political climate, they probably are. I also personally believe there is no way to mitigate the prohibition in Jewish law with any degree of intellectual honesty. But that’s another discussion (see the last article below).

So I'll say this:

Other than the purely theological, there is no truly logical reason to morally oppose homosexual relations between consenting adults.

Anyone claiming otherwise is either intellectually dishonest or self-delusional.

So, again for the record, had I been in the voting booth in California, I would not have pulled the lever in either direction, for the simple reason that no salient non-theological argument has been proffered in its favor. I count myself to be on the side of Prop 8’s proponents (certainly, those who voted “no” would put me there, even if—or possibly because—I would have abstained). However, the burden of proof of the proposition’s non-theological moral saliency is clearly on its proponents, and they have not come close to meeting it.

Below are four articles that illustrate just how far they are. (And, if you read Lisa Miller’s Newsweek article (fourth below), you’ll see how tenuous the theological argument is.)

An Orthodox Jewish religious perspective:
'MARRIED' AND THE MOB, Rabbi Avi Shafran, http://www.jewishamerica.com/ja/features/AmEchad.cfm

It seems clearer than ever that gay activists are not, as was once thought, interested only on being left alone, or, as was later thought, on being granted the same privileges as others. They are fixated, in fact, on creating a society where traditional religious perspectives on homosexuality and marriage are regarded, in law and in social dialogue, as the equivalent of racial or ethnic bias.
The scenario of religious people - and institutions like churches, synagogues and mosques - being branded as bigoted simply for affirming deeply-held religious convictions is around the corner. And eventual prosecution of the same for voicing those convictions is only another corner or two away.

What began as a plea for "rights" is rapidly, and noisily, morphing into an assault on freedom of speech and conscience.

Jews who take their religious tradition seriously will not allow the shifting sands of societal mores to obscure the fact that the Torah forbids homosexual acts, and sanctions only the union of a man and a woman in matrimony. They know, further, that the Talmud and Midrash teach that a saving grace of human society throughout the ages has been its refusal to formalize unions between males.

A politically conservative “natural law” perspective:
California Proposition 8 and Natural Law Rights
http://www.cehwiedel.com/blogs/redcountycalifornia/?p=2693

Natural law morality guided by conscience preserves and strengthens those relationships and social bonds, builds trust, inhibits our selfishness. We need to regain an appreciation of the morality of natural law as the foundation for our law, both domestically and internationally, and the courts must self-police in recognizing the consequent inherent limitations on their powers, or the grand aspirations of the American Declaration will have come to naught.

The People of California need to reassert their natural law rights against a State Supreme Court that has disdained and disregarded them. They need to overrule the Court’s decision to redefine marriage according to a morality that sees only libertine license as good, with no counterbalancing duties and responsibilities. A State, any State, is a poor substitute for responsible self-governance, self-control, and self-discipline. Nothing less than freedom, true freedom, is at stake, for our children and grandchildren, if not for ourselves.

Please, California, enact Proposition 8. Much more than marriage is at stake, and not just on your fair shores. Help protect our children’s and grandchildren’s marriages, and in doing so, help us take back our Constitution from those who were sworn to preserve it but have been its greatest undoing.

A secular law perspective:
Democracy, Religion and Proposition 8
Geoffrey R. Stone
Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2008/11/democracy-relig.html

Does Proposition 8 violate the Constitution? There are several arguments one might make for this position. One might argue that Proposition 8 discriminates against gays and lesbians in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. One might argue that Proposition 8 unconstitutionally limits the fundamental right to marry. One might argue that Proposition 8 violates the separation of church and state. It is this last argument that interests me.

Laws that violate the separation of church and state usually take one of two forms. Either they discriminate against certain religions (“Jews may not serve as jurors”), or they endorse particular religions (“school children must recite the Lord’s Prayer”). Proposition 8 does not violate the principle of separation of church and state in either of these ways. It neither restricts religious freedom nor endorses religious expression.

What it does do, however, is to enact into law a particular religious belief. Indeed, despite invocations of tradition, morality and family values, it seems clear that the only honest explanation for Proposition 8 is religion.
[]
Proposition 8 was a highly successful effort of a particular religious group to conscript the power of the state to impose their religious beliefs on their fellow citizens, whether or not those citizens share those beliefs. This is a serious threat to a free society committed to the principle of separation of church and state.

And, the best argument against Prop 8 from the religious angle, which shows how tenuous even the theological argument might be.
Our Mutual Joy
Lisa Miller
http://www.newsweek.com/id/172653/page/1

Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. "It is better to marry than to burn with passion," says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?

Someone's Paying Attention

2008-12-12T10:44:00.000-08:00

In my July 24 post Dirty Laundry I discussed the phenomenon of ostensible enforced silence regarding certain uncomfortable cultural phenomena in the furthest-right Orthodox communities. I specifically didn't deal with abuse of children at that time; that was--and remains--the touchstone phenomenon.

So it was encourgaing to see this, from VosIzNeias, advertised as "The Voice Of The Orthodox Jewish Community":

http://www.vosizneias.com/24091/2008/12/11/borough-park-ny-charedi-girl-molested-on-way-to-school-hiknd-kudos-to-family-for-reporting-it-to-law-enforcement-hynes-speaks-out/

Chareidi Girl Molested On Way To School; Hikind: Kudos To Family For Reporting It to Law Enforcement; Hynes Speaks Out

Borough Park, NY - Last week, in the shadow of the Mumbai massacre, a significant battle in the ongoing war against sexual abuse in the Orthodox community was begun.

A Chasidic resident of Borough Park, beard, conservative clothes and all, lured early morning a Chasidic girl on her way to school into his home off the street in broad daylight under the pretext of needing some assistance. He then proceeded to force and molest his victim, who is under the age of 13.

According to State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who has championed the cause of abuse victims in recent months, the family first reported the incident to his office. They then contacted four community rabbonim to ask whether they were halachically permitted to report the perpetrator to the authorities. Three rabbonim allegedly said they didn't want to get involved. The fourth, in contrast, permitted them, and apparently strongly urged them to proceed.

The family then reported the incident to the offices of Kings County DA Charles Hynes, which shortly ordered the arrest of the perpetrator. The perpetrator has been Arrested and charged with Sexual Abuse in the Second Degree and Endangering the Welfare of a Child, and is awaiting trial.

VIN News praises the "heimishe" family, as Assemblyman Hikind describes them, for coming forward. VIN News also gives high marks to the courageous, forward-thinking rabbi who allowed the incident's reportage to the authorities. Praises goes out once again to the courage of Assemblyman Hikind for publicizing the issue. And a special recognition needs to go out to Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz Menhal Of Yehsiva Darchai Noam In Monsey, NY who has been speaking out publicly on this subject for many years.

[Editors Note: For those who question why VosizNeias posts columns on the matter of abuse; our response is that discussing problems is the first step in solving them. In fact, Rabbi Yakov Horowitz addresses this very question in his column Why I Write Columns on Abuse which appears in this week's issue of The Jewish Press. His words speak for themselves -- and for the editors of VosizNeias]

VIN News reminds its readers that this incident was perpetrated in the heart of Borough Park, in daylight hours, by a presentable, average-looking Chosid and community member—in contrast to the abuser stereotype of a sinister-looking stranger from the street.

Investigators believe there are more victims of the same perpetrator. VIN News joins investigators' call for victims and their families to come forward. Abuse crimes may be reported to the offices of Assemblyman Hikind or DA Hynes.

In related news, DA Hynes denied charges by a victim's father that Orthodox community leaders pressured him into lightening charges against his child's abuser. In a TV report last night by New York's PIX 11, Hynes argued that he was working hard to prosecute abusers. "There is a suspicion that the orthodox community will hide its sins," he told an interviewer. "I have not found that to be true. They know that I am very, very aggressive on this stuff."

However, in an anonymous interview in the same report, the victim's father insisted that Hynes had been pressured into lessening charges against the accused perpetrator. "I was actually forced to agree to that," he said. "The rabbis in the Jewish community tell the District Attorney, 'Back off.' "

Countered Hynes: "I have two signed statements from parents—they don't want to put their kids through the torture of a trial." The report added that Hynes is pushing for a change in extradition laws with Israel to allow old flights from justice to be returned to American courts for trial.

Perhaps most significantly, the report mentioned that Hynes "would like to sign a memo of understanding" with Orthodox community leaders that they would turn over allegations of abuse to his office instead of trying to handle them within the community—similar to the 2002 agreement with the Catholic Church in the wake of its abusive-priests scandal. VIN is unsure yet cautiously optimistic about this latter development.

Republi-Karma Coda: Blagojevich and Plunkitt

2008-12-10T23:51:00.000-08:00

Gov. Rod Blagojevich seems to have directly bypassed traditional Illinois machine politics in managing his career. Instead , one might find a well-worn copy of George Washington Plunkitt’s 1905 Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics: “There's an honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin': 'I seen my opportunities and I took 'em.'"

(For the record, Plunkitt did believe there was such a thing as "Dishonest Graft", according to Plunkitt, would be using influence to have a project built on land after the land had been purchased. In any case, he may not have objected to Blajo's practice of selling offices to the highest bidder, as this was a Tammany staple. However, if Blajo actually did read Plunkitt's treatise, it would be unlikely that he would have progressed as far as a passage decrying anything as "dishonest".)

Has the “liberal” media been engaged in an attempt at a massive cover-up of the messianic mess? Unlikely. It seems like they’ve been asking the “hard questions” and then jumping to answer for Obama, but that may be just because there isn’t anything traceably fungible between Rod’s and Barack’s camps. As this investigation had been going on for five years, which pre-dates Jack Ryan’s implosion and Obama’s cakewalk of a Senate election versus GOP heavyweight Alan Keyes, one can safely surmise that Obama was smart enough to stay away.

Additionally, had there been anything substantive and the Republicans gotten wind of it, one thinks that they would have been able to make charges of rank corruption stick; even they hadn’t been simultaneously so brazen and incompetent. In any case, the conservative media has been behaving in exemplary fashion since the election; most “serious” outlets (e.g., not including Limbaugh and Coulter) have essentially been saying the same thing: We Blew It. The realization has set in that they had their moment—28 years of it—and now its over. In terms of political capital, conservatism is certainly experiencing its own recession, and nobody is about to bail them out. Still, even while appearing to be duly chastened, conservatives on whole have been genuinely gracious.

Gary Hart owes Gov. Goniv a thank-you note for one-upping “follow me around; you’ll be very bored”. Hell, Blagojevich even makes Nixon look good; at least Tricky Dick didn’t tell anyone he’d been taping until he was forced to, and besides, JFK was actually the one who had installed the system in the first place.

But to dare the authorities to wiretap you? And after 9/11? The only explanation I can come up with is that Blajo was laying the groundwork for what might turn out to be a successful insanity defense.

Too bad Plunkitt isn't available to defend him.

Bailing Myself Out

2008-12-06T17:46:00.001-08:00

I didn’t expect that actually trying to keep up with the election was gonna depress me so much that I would get so sick of it, to the point where I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either candidate.

(Well, I won’t go so far as to say I fell into depression. Maybe a recession, and it took till now to get myself bailed out).

I was spoiled the first time I voted in a Presidential (actually, any) election, in 1992. At that point, being pro-Israel dovetailed perfectly with the politics of the Democratic Party; the convention in New York was described as one of the most overtly pro-Israel in years.

Contrast that with the fact that only four years before, in Atlanta, Jesse Jackson and his minions (e.g., Alton Maddox and Vernon Mason) had hijacked the proceedings and practically made the pre-Oslo Arafat Dukakis’ running mate; add to that the image of Pat Buchanan making the keynote speech in Houston at the 1992 GOP convention. The choice for a pro-Israel voter was ostensibly as obviously Democratic then as Republican now. In 1992 it wasn’t all that difficult to be liberal and pro-Israel.

What made the 2008 cycle ultimately so depressing was that it became increasingly more difficult to intellectually justify my vote beyond the Israel factor, especially since I continue to bend over backwards to try top convince myself and others that I’m not conservative. After watching the Katie Couric interviews with Sarah Palin (forget the Supreme Court decisions---couldn’t name a NEWSPAPER or MAGAZINE???? Hell-LLLO?!?!?) it became well-nigh impossible.

(I’ve concluded that Bristol Palin preganacy was not the result of her lack of access to sex ed. She got pregnant because she didn’t have access to ANY ed. Her mother’s knowledge of current events was so lacking, one can only imagine what her daughter’s intellectual proclivities were.)

The good thing about this election is that it seems that the truly toxic partisan elements of our political culture seem to have played themselves out. Granted, things in general are a lot messier now than they were in 2000 and 2004, and there seems to be at least some salient idea, however nebulous, of what’s at stake, and that we all may be on the same side, after all.

Blame the Jews?

2008-10-11T20:14:00.001-07:00

Ironic, isn’t it, that the first ones to blame the Jews if Obama loses will be… the Jews.

Obama’s Jewish poll numbers seem to approach that of Carter, the last Democratic candidate not to get a majority of the Jewish vote. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that, to religious Zionist Jews like me, his campaign betrays a decided leftist bent reminiscent of every utopian socio-political fad that ultimately was destructive not only to us, but to the country and, in many cases, the “world order”, for lack of a better term.

For Jews who subscribe to a different set of commandments, their support of Obama is undoubtedly due to the fact that his campaign portrays a decided leftist bent reminiscent of every utopian socio-political fad that ultimately was destructive not only to us, but to the country and, in many cases, the “world order”, for lack of a better term.

“Different set of commandments”?

Absolutely.

I’ve come to the conclusion that, because I’m the one who holds myself accountable to a set of religious principles over and above a set of nebulous ethics that have become as axiomatic--if not more--than any fundamentalist religious doctrine, I am more tolerant and more open-minded than any of my co-religionists who subscribe to the contemporary liberal creed. And, make no mistake about it, contemporary liberalism is a creed.

I didn’t like being preached at during my long and extensive religious education. I don’t like being preached at when I read religious texts for my own edification. However, I never forget that what I’m reading is designed—whoever is responsible for the design—to do exactly that: preach, and preach from a Judeo-centric point of view. It is ultimately up to me to decide what morally and intellectually binds me as a result.

However, I’ll say it again: the Jews who throw an alternative moral code at me are no less self-righteous—or fundamentalist—than the farthest right-wingers with the longest beards. There are certain liberal tenets I can accept, but the beauty of liberal doctrine was supposed to be that it would be up to me to decide what would be morally binding.

That no longer being the case, I can handle the implication that my Judaism—especially when combined with my support for Israel—ipso facto renders me morally suspect, as far as liberals are concerned. I should have expected that long ago. What I suppose I’m going to have to get used to is the implication that my being Jewish should actually morally bind me to leftist doctrines, and that my refusal to do so renders me the wrong kind of Jew, or insufficiently Jewish.

If Sarah Silverman wants to be my Rabbi, where was she when I was in high school?

Back to School

2008-10-02T20:58:00.000-07:00

I was going to write that I had thought Sarah Palin’s obvious weaknesses could have been converted to strengths.

I was going to write that her obvious inexperience in foreign policy—or, any real policy outside of Alaska—would be blunted by controversy surrounding Obama’s “community organizing”, either because of its purported lack of gravitas or the unsavory characters Obama associated with in these organizations. (This despite the fact that Obama’s Chicago “communities’” populations might have approached the total population of Alaska).

I has hoped that Gov. Palin’s sex would serve to a) reintroduce gender into the race after the Obama campaign thought it had cleared that hurdle by beating Hillary, at the same time that it would b) serve as a living breathing rejoinder to hard Left Marxist gynocentrism that remains a fundamental part of the current Democratic zeitgeist, in spite of—or even because of—her Assembly of G-d-driven outlook (vis-à-vis abortion, sex education, etc.).

I had surmised that her lack of policy experience, her relatively short political c.v. and her deeply held, unabashed belief system would be less vulnerable to generic political charges of flip-flopping, because she hadn’t had enough opportunities to do it.

I was going to theorize that the combination of these factors, and the fact that she (credibly) holds herself out as a working-class mom with a regular family (and, a certainly “imperfect” family, which could only work in her favor) and rising from the PTA to the governor’s mansion would resonate more widely with the American public than Obama’s tale of growing up with a single mother in, while not privileged, certainly a unique set of circumstances that relate to American life in much narrower (and, certainly his case, more “elite”) sense.

I hoped, once I had ceased being a swing voter and committed to the McCain-Palin ticket, that all of this would coalesce into a solid electoral asset for the ticket; especially with an economic crisis afoot where the conventional wisdom and general perception is that it is a Republican creation, her impression of a complete political and economic outsider could only help the ticket’s prospects.

I couldn’t decide whether she had handled, or been handled, in her interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. However, it was evident that she had been able, to q certain degree, deflect their obvious biases, if not highlight them, so those were, at worst, a draw for her.

Then I watched tonight’s debates and saw what exactly she was up against.

It was obvious that she is being kept on a short leash.

It was clear that the hope was that, unlike her appearance onstage in Minneapolis where she truly shined, that she would simply not screw up.

It was revealed that she was truly a national policy neophyte who needed her talking points scripted and that she, unlike her counterpart, was breaking her teeth selling them in an arena where the playing field was actually level.

More importantly, it was the first time the people running the McCain campaign were really in a no-win situation, realized it, but realized they couldn’t do anything about it.

Obama sounded like a Senator. McCain sounded like a Senator. Biden sounded like a Senator.

Sarah Palin sounded like a schoolmarm, or at best, a parochial high-school social studies teacher conducting a current events lesson.

Now I might be biased, because there was only one social studies teacher I ever liked/had a crush on, and she looked nothing like Sarah Palin. I don’t think that was the case, however; I didn’t get the impression that she was being overbearing. It made her look like she wanted to finish the lesson before the class became inevitably unruly.

This time, Biden took her back to school.

I have written off the McCain campaign before, even as I had been leaning to (and am now committed to) voting for the McCain ticket.

I’m not doing that now. Up until now, Palin was an unqualified asset to the ticket. And, now that she has been freed from this social obligation of the electoral season, its time for the ticket to take off the leash and let her do what she does best.

Attack.

Republi-Karma III: Economics

2008-10-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

In the simplest sense, the economic crisis is the result of the perfect convergence of Republican deregulation and Democratic affirmative action.

To wit, the removal of barriers between, and oversight from, investment and commercial banking, which was the true culmination of deregulatory impulses stemming back to the 1980’s, combined with the policy of handing out loans deliberately to those who were more likely to default, but whose entitlement to said loans was influenced by other factors.

One may not even have to “stoop” to identifying said factor as ethnicity; it seems as if the borrower’s likely inability to pay was the deciding factor in actually lending the money. This is paradigmatic “acqusitionism”: EVERYONE has a RIGHT to OWN a home, no matter who has to pay for it. Just like health care and education.

(This also might raise questions about whether need-based “affirmative action” in academia and elsewhere is a more reasonable policy than ethnicity-based admissions/placement. I still think it is, especially with regards education, particularly due to its more intangible benefits. )

However, there are two reasons why this crisis, beyond the stereotypical Republican-as-Wall-Street-versus-Democrat-as-Main-Street stereotype, is going to hurt the Republicans more than the Democrats.

The first reason is that, while housing was the primary catalyst is precipitating this crisis, it was more a symptom than cause, particularly because while profits were being made no one was going to complain too loudly, or at least do anything about it. The Republican claim of warnings issued about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whether they are true or not, lack credibility because the culture of deregulation is undoubtedly their creation.

The second reason is that, like 1968, the already hemorrhaging treasury is being simultaneously drained by an unpopular and divisive war. The party in charge paid for it then, and may pay for it now.

It also seems that the Democrats have gotten over their fear of playing politics to win; Nancy Pelosi seems willing to drag out the crisis long enough to allow the playing field to be tilted further in the Democrats favor. However, this naked tactic is certainly not unknown on the other side of the aisle; after 9/11, the Wall Street Journal advised Bush and his administration to use the events to his political advantage (although Rove, Cheney and his minions would have, and did, do exactly that in any case).

The only question is whether Congress is having fun grandstanding while the Treasury drains. There is no question of whether they care. They don’t.

Gynocentrists Have No Real Principles

2008-09-28T16:57:00.000-07:00

No one should expect that any doctriniare feminists will decry the atrocity chronicled here.

But a very loud "Where Were You When....?" should be waved in the face of anyone who attacks Sarah Palin for not subscribing to gynocentrism.

Every time.

from:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080928/wl_afp/afghanistanunrestwomenpolice
Taliban kill Afghanistan's most high-profile policewoman
by Nasrat Shoaib
Sun Sep 28, 9:32 AM ET

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Sept 28, 2008 (AFP) - Taliban gunmen shot dead the most high profile female police officer in Afghanistan and wounded her teenaged son as she left home to go to work Sunday, officials and the militia said.

Attackers waiting outside the home of Malalai Kakar, head of the city of Kandahar's department of crimes against women, opened fire on her car as she left, Kandahar government spokesman Zalmay Ayoobi told AFP.

"Today between 7 am and 8 am when she was (in her car) outside her house and going to her job, some gunmen attacked," Ayoobi said.

"Malalai Kakar died in front of her house. Her son was wounded."

A doctor in the city's main hospital said Kakar, in her late 40s, had been shot in the head.

"She died on the spot and her son was badly injured and is in a coma," he said on condition of anonymity.

Her son, aged 15, had been driving Kakar to work, police said. The boy later came out of the coma but was in a serious condition.

A spokesman for the extremist Taliban movement, which targets government officials as part of a growing deadly insurgency, said that the assassins were from his group.

"We killed Malalai Kakar," spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP. "She was our target, and we successfully eliminated our target."

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack, saying in a statement that it was an "act of cowardice" by the "enemies of the peace and welfare and reconstruction of Afghanistan."

The European Mission branch in Afghanistan said Kakar had been an "example" in her country and her murder was "particularly abhorrent."

The interior ministry praised her as a "brave hero and loyal to her profession."

Kakar, a mother of six, was regularly profiled in international media and was known for her courage in one of Afghanistan's most conservative provinces.

A captain in the police force and the most senior policewoman in Kandahar, she headed a team of about 10 women police officers and had reportedly received numerous death threats.

Kandahar is the birthplace of the extremist Taliban, who are mounting a growing insurgency that targets government officials.

During their 1996-2001 hold on power, the Taliban stopped women from working outside the home and even leaving home without a male relative and an all-covering burqa.

Kakar was the first woman to enrol in the Kandahar police force after the 2001 ouster of the Taliban and had been involved in investigating crimes against women and children, and conducting house searches.

The head of Kandahar province's women's affairs department was killed in a similar way two years ago.

And in June gunmen shot dead a female police officer in the western province of Herat in what was believed to be the first assassination of a female police officer in the war-torn country.

Bibi Hoor, 26, was on her way home when two armed men on motorbikes opened fire, killing her instantly. It was not clear who killed her or why.

Afghanistan's police force was destroyed by the time the Taliban were removed and is being rebuilt with international assistance. It numbers about 80,000 people, including a few hundred women.

About 750 policemen have been killed in the past six months, mostly in insurgency-linked violence sweeping the country.

Self-Explanatory

2008-09-28T00:14:00.001-07:00

It's pretty clear to most readers of this blog that I'm voting for McCain.

From the domestic angle, I'm convinced that Obama and his minions are unabashed socialists. But that's another story.

I think the follwing article excerptexplains everything from the foreign-policy angle. I don't have to say anything else.

from:
Obama, McCain and Israel
Who really stands by Israel? Obama's, McCain's worldviews provide the answer
09.27.08, 14:13 / Israel Opinion
Yoram Ettinger

How would the worldview of Obama, McCain and their advisors shape US policy toward Israel?

1. According to McCain, World War III between Western democracies and Islamic terror/rogue regimes is already in process. According to Obama, the conflict is with a radical Islamic minority, which could be dealt with through diplomacy, foreign aid, cultural exchanges and a lower US military profile. Thus, McCain's worldview highlights – while Obama's worldview downplays – Israel's role as a strategic ally. McCain recognizes that US-Israel relations have been shaped by shared values, mutual threats and joint interests and not by frequent disagreements over the Arab-Israeli conflict.

2. According to Obama, the US needs to adopt the worldview of the Department of State bureaucracy (Israel's staunchest critic in Washington,) pacify the knee-jerk-anti-Israel-UN, move closer to the Peace-at-any-Price-Western Europe and appease the Third World, which blames the West and Israel for the predicament of the Third World and the Arabs. On the other hand, McCain contends that the US should persist – in defiance of global odds - in being the Free World's Pillar of Fire, ideologically and militarily.

3. According to Obama, Islamic terrorism constitutes a challenge for international law enforcement agencies and terrorists should be brought to justice. According to McCain, they are a military challenge and should be brought down to their knees. Obama's passive approach adrenalizes the veins of terrorists and intensifies Israel's predicament, while McCain's approach bolsters the US' and Israel's war on terrorism.

4. Obama and his advisors assume that Islamic terrorism is driven by despair, poverty, erroneous US policy and US presence on Muslim soil in the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, McCain maintains that Islamic terrorism is driven by ideology, which considers US values (freedom of expression, religion, media, movement, market and Internet) and US power a most lethal threat that must be demolished. McCain's worldview supports Israel's battle against terrorism, demonstrating that the root cause of the Arab-Israel conflict is not the size – but the existence - of Israel.

5. Contrary to McCain, Obama is convinced – just like Tony Blair - that the Palestinian issue is the core cause of Middle East turbulence and anti-Western Islamic terrorism, and therefore requires a more assertive US involvement, exerting additional pressure on Israel. The intriguing assumption that a less-than-100 year old Palestinian issue is the root cause of 1,400 year old inter-Arab Middle East conflicts and Islamic terrorism, would deepen US involvement in Israel-Palestinians negotiations and transform the US into more of a neutral broker and less of a special ally of Israel, which would drive Israel into sweeping concessions.

Obama's worldview would be welcomed by supporters of an Israeli rollback to the 1949 ceasefire lines, including the repartitioning of Jerusalem and the opening of the "Pandora Refugees' Box." On the other hand, McCain's worldview adheres to the assumption that an Israeli retreat would convert the Jewish State from a power of deterrence to a punching bag, from a producer – to a consumer – of national security and from a strategic asset to a strategic burden in the most violent, volatile and treacherous region in the world.

Liberal Jews: Dual Loyalties?

2008-09-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

Some friendly advice to our Obama-supporting friends: When your interests are aligned with those of Iran's President and Hitler-wannabe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it's time for some re-assessment of priorities… There is something very wrong with a party that insists on sitting down with Ahmadinejad without preconditions, but refuses to share a stage with the Republican Party candidate for Vice President of the United States of America.
From: Democrats give Ahmadinejad reason to smile
Abraham Katsman and Kory Bardash Sep. 24, 2008 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1222017379006&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Jewish American voters should consider carefully whether opposing a woman who opposes the abortion of fetuses is really more important than standing up for the right of already born Jews to continue to live and for the Jewish state to continue to exist. Because this week it came to that.
From: Our World: Your abortions or your lives
Caroline Glick, Sep 22, 2008 www.jpost.com caroline@carolineglick.com

I agree with both of these sentiments. My only question is whether the writers of these articles are expressing any surprise along with their outrage, either toward Jewish Liberals (Glick) or Liberals in general (Katsman and Bardash).

Katsman, Bardash and Glick are missing some of the impeti behind this (relatively) new Zeitgeist.

Regarding Katsman and Bardash’s assessment, one must see that the Democrats are not going to make the same mistakes they did in 2000 or 2004, when they felt compelled to take the ostensible moral high road at the highest political cost: the presidency.

Regarding Glick’s piece, unfettered access to abortion is undoubtedly the closest thing the Democrat left has to a sacrament, and it dovetails quite nicely with the aforementioned political urgency, inasmuch as the Republican Party platform calls for a Constitutional amendment protecting the fetus, and the current Republican VP candidate is on the record opposing abortion in all circumstances including rape and incest.

For doctrinaire liberal Jews, and certainly for doctrinaire liberals, there is no conflict in either case. And, in a certain sense, we shouldn’t expect there to be; it really is a very small majority of Jews—and I include myself among them---whose Jewish identity is central enough to their political identity that it overrides other political sentiments. I say override because I am still not comfortable with many conservative tenets, nor am I convinced that conservatives are our friends any more than I am convinced liberals are our implacable enemies. (We just have to hope that our penchant for self-destruction stops somewhere short of liberals’.)

Irrespective of how the recission of Palin’s invitation to the rally was handled, and the liberal/Democratic pressures that went along with it, I’m not so sure it ultimately would have been a good idea to have only Palin there with no Democratic balance. (I’m not saying that this was anyone’s fault but the Democrats, but bear with me.) The last thing anyone needs right now is for anyone to think that fighting terror is a uniquely conservative concern. Especially in this political climate.

The 1980 election was the last time Jews abandoned the Democrats in a national election; the notion that Carter was hostile toward Israel (if not Jews) has seemed to bear that out. In 1992, however, the Democrats took advantage of Bush I's perceived hostility toward the Jewish state (if not Jews as well, again) and were amply rewarded. I registered as a Democrat in that election, the first election I voted in.

Regarding the question of whether it is better for Jews to be liberal or conservative. I would say a Jew should never be forced to make that choice. I would also cringe when Jews assert that one side of the political fence, or the other, is ipso facto compatible with Judaism, whichever version. I would assert with equal force that Jews who adopt one political doctrine, or the other, as a set of personal sacraments, should be aware of what they are getting themselves into.

I'm ceratinly not going to tell them.

Life's a Bitch...

2008-09-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

...and it's not your bitch.

Palintology vs. Obama-ssianism

2008-09-18T19:58:00.000-07:00

Palin's presence on the ticket is such that many voters have been entranced by her enough to ignore the "scarier" elements of her political agenda. Even liberals--especially liberal women--are taken in (read the most recent Newsweek). That's why the hard Left and the Obamaniacs are so up in arms: she is not only a "heretic" (as an "anti-feminist" woman) who stands as a rebuke against everything they stand for (see: Eve Ensler, Matt Damon), but she has stolen Obama's charisma factor from right under him. Not to mention that she reopens the gender-race battle that Obama thought he'd already won.

Also, if Democrats are hoping that the current economic crisis will spell electroal success fro them the way it did in 1992, they aren;t paying attention. Only the hard Left has really been able to effectively tag McCain as W's inevitable third term; Wall Street's straits might elicit some stronger anti-corporate and anti-capitalist schadenfreude among the American public, but any real socialist-influenced advocacy of soaking the rich will be blunted by the message that there is nothing left to collect from.

I wrote off McCain way too early (in particular, in Republi-Karma). This is no longer Obama's election to lose.

United Nazi-ons

2008-09-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

No, that's not a misprint. I insist on that being the correct spelling.

Dave Barry has opined that the raison d'etre of the UN is to "denounce Israel for everything, including sunspots."

I suppose I betray my ostensible knee-jerk pro-Israel sentiment when I counter-"bash" the UN.

Never mind that its "Committee on Human Rights" has seated, in no particular order, China, Syria, Lybia, Cuba, Sudan, and other shining beacons of liberty.

Never mind that its troops just sat on their hands during the Rwanda massacres in 1994.

Never mind that there were pictures of the UN commander in Srebrenica drinking with Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic the night before Mladic's troops massacred at least 7,000 Bosnian Muslims.

Then there's the outright undisguised hostility towards Jews (let alone Israel), never more in display than during the Durban "Anti-Racism" Conferences in 2001.

But I don't need to burden you with the details. Pedro Sanjuan's The UN Gang and Dore Gold's Tower of Babble document all of the above in a more devastatingly effective manner than I ever could.

However, just when one thinks the UN can't outdo itself, comes this bit of news, courtesy of Michael Freund of the Jerusalem Post (forwarded from Naomi Ragen):

The war in Lebanon may have ended two years ago, but that hasn't stopped the UN from exploiting the conflict to besmirch Israel. In a move that harks back to the bad old days of UN hypocrisy and double standards vis-à-vis the Jewish state, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is reportedly set to demand that Israel reimburse Lebanon and Syria for damage caused during the war against Hizbullah.
Yes, you read that correctly. The UN wants Israel to pay for having the gall to defend itself.

I'm trying to weigh historical parallels. It seems Ban is trying to draw an analog between 2006 Israel and 1918 Germany (not too farfetched, as the Nazi analog has been bandied about by Israel's enemies almost since the birth of the Jewish state.)

I would venture a different parallel--Ban has taken a page from Hermann Goering's playbook. Here's a retelling of the aftermath of Kristallnacht:

Following Kristallnacht, on November 12, 1938, Hermann Goering called a meeting of the top Nazi leadership to assess the damage done during the night and place responsibility for it. Present at the meeting were Goering, Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Walter Funk and other ranking Nazi officials. The intent of this meeting was two-fold: to make the Jews responsible for Kristallnacht and to use the events of the preceding days as a rationale for promulgating a series of antisemitic laws which would, in effect, remove Jews from the German economy. It was decided at the meeting that, since Jews were to blame for these events, they be held legally and financially responsible for the damages incurred by the pogrom. Accordingly, a "fine of 1 billion marks was levied for the slaying of Vom Rath, and 6 million marks paid by insurance companies for broken windows was to be given to the state coffers." (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/kristallnacht.html)

Yes, it is spelled United Nazi-ons.

Patriots, Pigs and Palin

2008-09-10T08:41:00.000-07:00

In the two days since I just pulled the ideology of "acquisitionism" from various nether regions, a number of things have happened that have served to simultaneously buttress my theories send me in search of further refinement.

As I said at the close of my last post, a key element of "acquisitionism", or at least its most salient American characteristic, is that you can't win unless someone else loses. In other words, the real final American frontier is schadenfreude.

As a Jet fan, I am experiencing this in spades right now with the season-ending injury to Patriot superstar Tom Brady. Curt Schilling was right on the money when he said that New York fans were practically salivating over this.

(It isn't so much that I was praying for Brady to get hurt (though, while watching Sunday's Jets-Miami game, I was waiting for some Jet defender to send Chad Pennington back to the operating table, and during Dan Marino's playing days, I openly rooted for someone to take him out), but since the Jets have certainly experienced more than their fair share of season-killing injuries, and since possibly the biggest such incident in recent history occurred in a game against the Pats (Vinny Testaverde in 1999), there seems to be some element of Divine payback at work here.)

I think that Americans like to see anyone doing better than they are taken down in the most publicly humiliating manner possible. This is as obvious by-product of our cleberity-driven culture, but a particularly vicious brand of schadenfreude is the current fulcrum of our political system. As I have described, this for the most part has fueled the Right's Clinton-hatred, and the Left's current Bush-hatred, more than any real policy differences.

I've also mentioned that in the current political climate, the Right adopted these attitudes as their electoral and governing strategy, and it worked for them for more than a decade, before ostensibly blowing up in their face.

Well, there seems to have been a much quicker turnaround than I had anticipated. The nomination of Sarah Palin has brought out the Left's most vicious attack-dog tactics, and they all seem to be backfiring. One can say that the Democrats have now suffered from their "acquisitionist" impulses twice in the same election cycle: first, when Hillary did not get the "coronation" she has been expecting and felt she was entitled to, and now Obama, whose anointment as the Left's messiah has been put on hold.

Not only that, but by making him fight the race-gender battle all over again, and this time truly across ideological lines, Palin has served to pull the rug out from what supposed to be his historical moment. Which is why he had to know better than to make his pig lipstick comment: even if he didn't intend it as a slap at Palin--which I believe is possible--he had to know that this was going to come back to bite him in the ass very quickly. Palin has knocked him off his pedestal, but more importantly for the Republicans, she's changed the game.

In theory, Palin should be more careful, because all this proves that payback is always imminent; if you climb on a pedestal, particularly if constructed upon religious platitudes, people are really going to enjoy watching you getting knocked down, if they can't manage to do it themselves. However, I think given that she has truly bared herself fully on a personal, if not political, level, the Left's attempts to score political points by pinning the "bridge to nowhere" on her are, well, a bridge to nowhere.

Hillary just wore pants. Palin is the real deal.

American Socialism: Acquisitionism

2008-09-08T14:27:00.000-07:00

The Cognitive Dissident is not very financially or economically savvy. His parents worked hard and saved so that he wouldn’t have to. So he doesn’t.

As far as economics are concerned, it seems to me that the true meaning of supply and demand is that wherever there’s a supply, I demand to get a hand in it.

The news surrounding the government’s bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac basically underscores this general attitude of entitlement that seems to pervade American political and socio-economic culture. In other words, people don’t just have a right to a roof over their heads: they have a right to OWN the roof and everything under it, even before it is even close to being paid for.

In this sense, it seems that American has gone even one step beyond baseline socialism. One might say that it is a distorted analog to Manifest Destiny: when we ran out of frontiers to conquer, we turned to our own backyards. Instead of capitalism, we might call it acquisitionism.

This acquisitionist position has extended to two very important social goods: health care and education. The existence of a system of public education is predicated on the notion that a basic “free, appropriate” education should be available to all. The systems of “socialized” medicine that exists in much of Europe applies the same notion to health care.

From the little I know about economics, by designating health care and education as “rights”, by extension it means that demand is infinite, which means that supply will never catch up. More importantly, it also means that someone will always be compelled to pay for someone else’s goods.

Aside from the blurry billing, there’s the issue of ostensible “moral hazard”. The lines have always been drawn between progressives’ complaints of “corporate welfare” (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, S & L, airlines, bailouts, tax cuts for the rich) and conservatives’ fears of creeping socialized just-about anything (higher taxes, education, health care, welfare, “war on poverty”). Don’t be fooled: the American Left is just as acquisitionist as the American Right.

The lesson of all this? Unless you find yourself as a real outlier on the great American socio-economic bell curve, you will probably be getting an output somewhat proportional to your input. There are just two things you wont be able to do: one, discern a necessarily direct connection between your efforts and rewards; and two, control who may benefit as a result of your efforts.

Ultimately, the latter is probably the unique defining characteristic of American “socialism”. In capitalism, you have to invest. In acquisitionism, you get someone else to. You can’t win unless someone else loses.

That is the acquisitionist ethos.

Republi-Karma Redux

2008-09-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

The McCain campaign just can’t get a break.

The selection of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate was an inspired choice, to be sure. The announcement coming so soon after the Investiture at Invesco also showed that the McCainiacs don’t lack for a sense of timing; it may have served to blunt the effects of any post-convention bounce.

However, in the current political climate, the familial baggage attached to Palin has only magnified the target on her back, however unjustified the attacks are.

Personally, I would venture that the fact that she has been so successful while dealing with such family difficulty should resonate with most Americans, who may actually be more likely to have familial difficulties unlike hers without the personal success she has experienced. For some reason, that doesn’t seem to be happening.

As if the announcement of Bristol Palin’s travails weren’t enough to disrupt what might have been inspired timing, Hurricane Gustav made landfall to remind everyone of this administration’s biggest failure and the actual turning point in its political fortune.

Additionally, the Pentagon has—quietly—traded “Global War on Terror” for “Long War Against Violent Extremist Movements.” In other words, somebody finally dispensed with “Mission Accomplished” as a battle plan and consequently pulled the rug out from under this administration’s raison d’etre. Even such a conservative eminence grise as Rich Lowry now characterizes this administration as having “w[on] a disputed election and botch[ed] a foreign occupation” (in yesterday’s New York Post).

Ironically, the conservatives had been complaining all along that American military successes were never reported; now even they can’t stand the good tidings. An anonymous operative on the Republican convention floor was reported as having said the best thing about the convention was that it would be over soon. Conservatives can only wish the same could be true about a policy nightmare largely of their own making.

On a tangential note, I wrote in these pages (“Prime Time Prognosis: Fertile”, July 21) that maybe a new, more effective model of related social services would result from a seeming spate of very public pop-culture pregnancies.

Irrespective of the political fallout resulting from Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, this may finally be where that tipping point occurs, because it shows that it can happen in an otherwise upstanding, stable, even religious family.

Someone must be paying attention.

W. Doesn’t Care. He Doesn’t Have To.

2008-08-28T04:34:00.000-07:00

Lyndon Johnson just wanted to be popular.

Despite all of his landmark legislation and accomplishments in office—at least before the Vietnam war and the events of 1968 left his legacy in tatters—LBJ couldn’t get anyone to like him. (When he asked one of his advisers why no one liked him, the adviser told him point black: “Because, Mr. President, you’re not a very likeable man.”)

Bill Clinton has succeeded where LBJ failed. His performance and reception at the DNC last night reminded us—and him—that his likeability is his greatest political and personal asset, and ultimately is his best tool in solidifying his legacy.

Regarding our current President, it’s hard to fathom what motivates him beyond his need to overtake his father and the rest of his family. Much has been made of his religious convictions and his recovery from alcoholism (and possibly worse), but a case could be made that he needed to adopt some salient system of discipline if he was ever going to amount to anything, and at age 40, these were the best options available.

I think W. is, and remains, the slacking underachiever who had other people always do his work for him, had his greatest success as a figurehead governor with no real power, and governed as President much the same way by serving as spokesperson and figurehead for people and forces larger than himself and not having to engage in effort beyond a certain level.

He also, aside from (and maybe even because of) his apparent thin skin regarding what his father thinks of him, is probably impervious to any kind of criticism from any other quarters, and doesn’t really give a damn about his poll numbers or if he truly bears any responsibility for the shape he’s leaving the country in, if indeed it even occurs to him that things are much messier now than they were in 2000.

None of that matters to him. He’s already been the Most Powerful Man In the (Free) World for two terms (take that, Dad), and all he had to do was play to the camera.

W. was never “dumb”. He might be the most intellectually lazy occupant of the Oval Office in American history, and I would venture that said indolence far outweighs his actual intellectual limits. He was, and is, generally oblivious to any notions of empathy, almost as if he had a political—if not clinical—form of Aspbereger’s syndrome. When he said he “didn’t do nuances”, it wasn’t that he weighed and rejected the notion; it was that it just wouldn’t register it anywhere in his mind.

Kanye West said that Bush didn’t care about Black people. He was half right. Bush doesn’t really care about any people. He doesn’t care if he’s liked or not. He doesn’t even care about his legacy.

Bara-calculus

2008-08-26T14:52:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama is apparently miscalculating twice over by allowing the Hillary Clinton roll call and by giving the Clintons quality face time at the convention. This came essentially from the same people who declared his trips abroad to have been ultimately self-defeating.

These notions are reflective of a considerable degree of conservative wishful thinking.

What they should find more frightening is the possibility that Obama may be taking strategies from the Karl Rove playbook, and that they might work: first, by shoring up his base, and second, by actually campaigning as a “uniter” when he has no intention of governing as one.

He has been shoring up his base in two ways: first, by actually acknowledging the considerable historical import of the Clinton campaigns—Bill and Hillary both—without worrying that they might overshadow him. By giving them such floor time he links his campaign with the only Democratic success story of the past 40 years (the Carter administration emphatically does NOT figure in this equation). In other words, Yes [H]e Can, just Like They Did.

Additionally, by allowing even the idea that he didn’t get a majority of the popular vote to float about the convention floor, he gives credence to the notion that sometimes the electoral system does NOT always necessarily directly reflect the will of the people, and that just like W. won his office that way, the Democrats should acknowledge that they might need their own version of 2000 to win, and they should have no qualms about it.

His travels abroad actually had a similar effect. Europeans obviously can’t vote for him, and his immediate poll numbers may have suffered in the short-term. However, by playing to the multi- and internationalists back home, he demonstrated that he would govern with them primarily in mind, at least as far as foreign affairs are concerned.

Finally, despite some of his more recent “flip-flops” and ostensible moves to the center, Obama essentially remains an income-redistributing internationalist who intends to bring American socialism into the political mainstream the way Reagan brought solid conservatism into the mainstream, and then to the “permanent majority” so eagerly sought by the Rovian minions.

Generally, the Democrats’ attempts at tit-for-tat payback for the Republicans’ shenanigans during the Clinton years—from the “irrational” hatred of the sitting President to the impeachment threats—have not worked in their favor. This time they may actually succeed.

At the convention last night, Teddy Kennedy asserted that Obama would “close the book on old politics.” Kennedy couldn’t have been more wrong. Obama’s campaign may yet rewrite the book on “old politics”.

The Convention: Regular Season Begins

2008-08-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

“Politics [is] allegedly a non-contact sport and certainly not much of a spectator sport…our political conventions are by and large devoid of drama and suspense.”

In the above quote, the late David Halberstam was trying to explain why Americans are more inclined to watch football, rather than, say, baseball, the Oscars, or the political conventions.

I don’t watch the political conventions for the same reasons that I don’t really watch the Oscars. If I want to hear speeches I can go to the synagogue; as much as congregations complain, no sermon ever goes on for four hours with commercial breaks, even (and especially) on Yom Kippur.

In any case, it’s no accident that Halberstam compares politics to football, or even that the conventions are planned so close to football season. It has been said that politics is show business for ugly people; I would venture that it more resembles athletics for the uncoordinated. The sport to which it has been most compared to, is of course, football, which follows somewhat from the obvious military imagery (the suitcase with our country’s nuclear launch codes is the “football”) to Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s assertion that running for office was like coaching football: one had to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it was actually important.

However, the most salient features of today’s politics are more reflective of whose “team” one is on more than what one’s true beliefs or ideals really are. In the United States, that for the most part leaves us with a two-team league. Unfortunately, this means that every game pits the same two teams against each other, over and over again. This reminds me of how much I was suffering during this past year’s Super Bowl week: as a rabid Jet fan, I had to choose between the Pats and Giants. Imagine that every game, every week, on every channel (Basic! Premium! IO! DTV! Satellite!) was Pats vs Giants. Pre-season. Regular season. Playoffs. Super Bowl. Now maybe one understands why partisan politics drive Americans nuts.

Although, it should be said, most football fans would watch even the NFL even if it only had two teams. Including me. I suppose one might say a similar phenomenon exists in politics. Somebody's going to watch the conventions.

For the record, I rooted for the Pats in the Super Bowl. I didn’t want to have to deal with the consequences of a (possible [CHOKE]) Giant upset. I also was hoping that the Pats would finally knock the Miami Dolphins off the “undefeated” pedestal. Besides, to my mind, Don Shula embodies football evil incarnate far more than Bill Belichick. And Shula didn’t need a hoodie to radiate malevolence; ask any NFL official who had to deal with him. Or Walt Michaels.

(Imagine this presidential election: Belichick vs Shula. I'd write in for Parcells.)