Soccer Dad

Running interference for rashid

The Washington Post which has devoted an editorial to debunking Jim Corsi but never one to dispel scurrilous attacks against the Republican ticket has now come off the sidelines to weigh in on the Rashid Khalidi controversy in An 'Idiot Wind'. (via memeorandum)

WITH THE presidential campaign clock ticking down, Sen. John McCain has suddenly discovered a new boogeyman to link to Sen. Barack Obama: a sometimes controversial but widely respected Middle East scholar named Rashid Khalidi. In the past couple of days, Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have likened Mr. Khalidi, the director of a Middle East institute at Columbia University, to neo-Nazis; called him "a PLO spokesman"; and suggested that the Los Angeles Times is hiding something sinister by refusing to release a videotape of a 2003 dinner in honor of Mr. Khalidi at which Mr. Obama spoke. Mr. McCain even threw former Weatherman Bill Ayers into the mix, suggesting that the tape might reveal that Mr. Ayers -- a terrorist-turned-professor who also has been an Obama acquaintance -- was at the dinner.

Khalidi is widely respected. However the nature of scholarship of the Middle East now is so discredited that the respect comes from those who close their eyes. Khalidi is the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia. The fact that the chair is named after a professor of humanities not a Middle Eastern scholar should say something about the nature of the appointment. Khalidi wasn't appointed for his Middle Eastern scholarship credentials, but for his political views. While Columbia won't share the list of those who contributed to the endowment of the chair, Greg Yardley reports:

Of course, even the most ideological pack of professors can't hire someone to an endowed chair without securing funding. A position like Khalidi's requires millions of dollars in dedicated endowments. We don't know who provided these endowments, because Columbia won't tell us. Only a couple of approximately twenty donors have publicly confirmed donations. However, even these few have disturbing connections to foreign governments. One philanthropist who donated, Rita Hauser, was connected to the Palestinian Authority by her former law firm, registered as an agent for the Palestinian Authority up until 2001. Another, the Olayan Charitable Trusts, is the American charitable arm of a Saudi Arabian corporation.

He also mentions that Martin Kramer has seen the full list of donors and reports that one is a foreign nation.

The Post scoffs at the idea that Khalidi was once a PLO spokesman, but as Kramer notes (h/t LGF):

It is worth explaining what it meant to be "deeply involved in politics in Beirut" during the civil war in Lebanon. It was not at all like community organizing in Chicago. The Lebanese state had ceased to function; the political actors were all armed militias, Lebanese and Palestinian. Every individual needed to be affiliated with such an organization, if not for bread then at least for protection. Khalidi was known to be affiliated with, and protected by, Arafat's Fatah. A 1979 New York Times report (by Youssef Ibrahim) described Khalidi as "a professor of political science who is close to Al Fatah." In Beirut, to be "close" to an organization meant you enjoyed its protection in return for loyalty and services rendered. Khalidi's wife also worked as an English translator for the PLO's press agency, Wafa. So savvy journalists knew that if they wanted the Fatah spin, they could get it from Khalidi.

Aaron Klein has more:

I also never stated anywhere as fact that Khalidi was employed by the PLO, but that he reportedly worked for the official PLO press agency WAFA in Beirut while the PLO committed scores of anti-Western attacks and was labeled by the U.S. as a terror group. Khalidi's wife, AAAN President Mona Khalidi, was reportedly WAFA's English translator during that period.

I fairly note Rashid Khalidi has denied working for the PLO.

Some reports of Khalidi working for WAFA and his associations with the PLO include a New York Times account by columnist Thomas L. Friedman who wrote on June 9, 1982, Khalidi was at that time "a director of the Palestinian press agency" - Wikalat al-Anba al-Filastinija, or WAFA.

In a Jan. 6, 1981, article in the Christian Science Monitor, Khalidi reportedly used the word "we" referring to the PLO.

If he wasn't a spokesman for the PLO, he was certainly close to it. But there's plenty to suggest that he did convey the PLO line while he was in Lebanon in 1982.

Unfortunately one of those working to undermine the charges against is Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Kramer updated his post to respond to Kampeas's critique.

The Post also mocks the effort of the McCain campaign to obtain the video of the dinner. But as Andrew McCarthy argues, the LA Times report only gives us a taste of what went on at the dinner, clearly it wasn't as innocuous as the Times portrays (h/t Instpundit)

Moreover, we also know that several speakers that night sang paeans to Khalidi -- who regards the establishment of a Jewish state in "Palestine" as the Nakba (i.e., "The Catastrophe") and justifies terrorist attacks against Israeli military and government targets. The Times concedes the party was a forum "where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed." Yet, again, we are given only two blurbs: [A] young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace." One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."

You know there was a lot more where that came from, spouted by several other speakers whom the Times story fails to name. Why not put out a transcript of what was said and by whom? And if the Times has information about what was in the commemorative book that was prepared for the occasion of Khalidi's triumphant departure to assume the Edward Said chair at Columbia University, why not put that out too?

It's ironic (or hypocritical or dishonest) that the Washington Post, which, two years ago, inferred all sorts of nasty stuff about then Sen. George Allen from a single comment he made is so incurious about the guy they endorsed for President. While they allow that they disagree with some of Khalidi's views, they don't share exactly which views they object to.

Is it that he calls Israel an "apartheid state?" Or that he justifies terror attacks against Israeli soldiers? Or that he finds it hard to say that the killing of Jews living in Judea and Samaria is wrong? These are all troubling. Look at the end of the editorial:

It's fair to question why Mr. Obama felt as comfortable as he apparently did during his Chicago days in the company of men whose views diverge sharply from what the presidential candidate espouses. Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position.

Being untroubled by the extreme views of a friend is problematic, especially for a candidate for President. Does Sen. Obama, despite public statements of support for Israel still find Khalidi's views in any way valid? It may be convenient for the Post to ascribe this contradiction to "intellectual curiosity," but that's because the Post holds Sen. Obama in very high regard.

If there was evidence that Sen. McCain had attended a dinner with white supremacists five years ago, would the Post be as incurious as to what went on? Would the Post say that it was wrong to tie McCain to his dubious associates? Would the Post tell its readers to trust McCain and that he was only at the dinner to satisfy his "intellectual curiosity?"

Please also see Judeopundit.

UPDATE: It occurred to me that the Post allowed Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas - not a spokesman - the byline for an op-ed when Hamas was engaged in ongoing terror attacks against Israel two years ago. At the time, the Post's ombudsman Deborah Howell argued that the reason for giving him the forum was to "enlighten and provoke" us. The Post credits Sen. Obama's contact with Rashid Khalidi a one-time (and unaplogetic) spokesman for the PLO to "intellectual curiosity." It's interesting that for the Post's editors getting to know terrorists and their mouthpieces is a noble pursuit, but let the wrong word - like "macaca" - escape your lips and you're unfit for public office.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Your skeleton key to the election

The blogs and even the McCain campaign are making a great deal currently of the Los Angeles Times' suppression of the Khalidi video. Valid conclusions about the LA Times are certainly being drawn, but a valid conclusion about the LA Times does not translate exactly into one about Obama. The feeling on the right, simply put, is that Obama is disguising who he really is and that the press is helping him do it. Is Obama disguising who he really is? Not exactly. I would say that he tends to proclaim his identity in vague or symbolic ways, connecting with like-minded voters, while making periodic statements that confuse potentially unsympathetic voters. One one hand, many have remarked on the "socialist realism" of his campaign posters. On the other, marriage should be between a man and a woman declared one of the few senators who declined to outlaw partial-birth abortion.

Consider Obama's rhetoric about change, for instance. Yes, it is vague, but how does one strike out in a new direction on the heels of a conservative administration? By veering sharply to the left. Consider also Obama's frequent assertion that McCain is no different from Bush. Yes it capitalizes on Bush's low approval ratings, but it also implies something: From a centrist point of view, McCain stands out from Bush. From a point on the political spectrum somewhere between Nancy Pelosi and Bill Ayers, McCain and Bush don't appear to be that different. Obama's true political identity is clear for anyone who makes the effort to see it, especially if Obama also wants it be seen--that has been his strength.

The press not only seeks to cover Obama favorably, they have grasped his campaign strategy and they have worked to augment and reinforce it. Obama appeals to a certain restlessness and desire for novelty. McCain's best hope lies in the deployment of effective counter-symbols and counter-gestures. The press has instinctively sought to dismantle and undermine McCain's attempts to deploy counter-themes, such as his own maverick image, and counter-figures, such as Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.

The weakness of Obama's strategy of hiding his leftism in plain view is that it is eventually bound to be seen through. Time and familiarity can overcome shallow failures of insight, so time is on McCain's side. The political center of gravity in America is towards the center. Eventually Americans will realize that they won't get the sort of policies they favor from a figure of the far-left. There is not much time remaining, of course. This is a close election--don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Krauthammer for mccain - ii

Charles Krauthammer picks up where he left off last week, and presents part II (or here) of his endorsement of John McCain.

On other domestic issues, McCain is just the kind of moderate conservative that the Washington/media establishment once loved -- the champion of myriad conservative heresies that made him a burr in the side of congressional Republicans and George W. Bush. But now that he is standing in the way of an audacity-of-hope Democratic restoration, erstwhile friends recoil from McCain on the pretense that he has suddenly become right wing. ad_icon

Self-serving rubbish. McCain is who he always was. Generally speaking, he sees government as a Rooseveltian counterweight (Teddy with a touch of Franklin) to the various malefactors of wealth and power. He wants government to tackle large looming liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare. He wants to free up health insurance by beginning to sever its debilitating connection to employment -- a ruinous accident of history (arising from World War II wage and price controls) that increases the terror of job loss, inhibits labor mobility and saddles American industry with costs that are driving it (see: Detroit) into insolvency. And he supports lower corporate and marginal tax rates to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation.

An eclectic, moderate, generally centrist agenda in a guy almost congenitally given to bipartisanship.

Like Daniel Henninger yesterday, the alternative is a more Europe like government.

Krauthammer doesn't argue this as passionately as he did last week - the case for differentiation is not as stark. But the important new point is his rebuke - see above - of those supposed centrists who support Sen. Obama because McCain has, somehow, left them.

The domestic case for McCain is more difficult than the foreign policy one, but that's what Krautammer did today.

"Iran threatens US with suicide bombers"

That is the headline from an article in The Jerusalem Post:

Only a few days ahead of the American presidential election, Iranian parliamentary speaker 'Ali Larijani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah 'Ali Khamanai have launched harsh verbal attacks against the United States.

Referring to the US army's attacks in Pakistan and Syria, Larijani said they would not be answered with diplomatic protests.

"The US method and conduct, expressed by this aggression, will only be stopped by a clear-cut and unexpected response, whose grounds were set by the martyr Hussein Fahmida," Larijani said during a parliamentary session on Wednesday.

Fahmida was 13 when he detonated an explosive device he carried on him, destroying an Iraqi tank during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

"America should be aware not to put its huge body on top of the suicide bombers' explosive devices," Larijani said.

At HotAir, Ed Morrissey discusses the legal implications of the Iranian threat:

The threat to use suicide bombers marks a cassus belli, if the US wanted one as a pretext for strikes. Openly threatening attack on a non-belligerent nation gives that country a right to defend itself. Israel didn't take the bait with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's genocidal lunacy over the last two years, and it would be madness to attack Iran now anyway.

Of course, Iran will argue that after attacking Pakistan and Syria, the US is not non-belligerent and Iran is merely responding with a warning. Just try discussing the right of the US to defend its troops in Iraq before the UN.

In any case, though Morrissey is not suggesting military action--

that doesn't diminish the seriousness of an Iranian leader standing in its parliament and endorsing terrorism as a state policy. That's exactly what Larijani did in this statement today, and the US should respond by placing Iran's Revolutionary Guard on the list of terrorist organizations in order to freeze its funds. The Kyl-Lieberman bill would have done that last year, but it was opposed by Barack Obama and most of the other Democrats in the Senate. Larijani's threat is an open declaration of Iran as a terrorist state, and a lack of response would encourage others to follow suit.

There's Obama's name again. So, how does this latest episode affect his plans to meet personally with Ahmadinejad? It doesn't look good:

On the same day, Khamanai said the differences between Iran and the US were far beyond differences of opinion.

"The Iranian people hate the US... [because of] the various plots the US government has hatched against Iran and the Iranian nation for the past five decades," Khamanai said.

Maybe Obama could start with Venezuela until Iran cools down...

by Daled Amos

Bazaar advice

In his column yesterday, Thomas Friedman wrote:

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, compares it to bargaining for a Persian carpet in Tehran. "When you go inside the carpet shop, the first thing you are supposed to do is feign disinterest," he explains. "The last thing you want to suggest is 'We are not leaving without that carpet.' 'Well,' the dealer will say, 'if you feel so strongly about it ...' "

The other lesson from the carpet bazaar, says Sadjadpour, "is that there is never a price tag on any carpet. The dealer is not looking for a fixed price, but the highest price he can get -- and the Iran price is constantly fluctuating depending on the price of oil." Let's now use that to our advantage.

This is from an expert who has been writing for the past eight years that we "know" what Israel will need to concede to achieve peace with the Palestinians. He also advocates every single forum to pressure Israel to make those concessions. The advice he quotes would also makes sense regarding Israel, I doubt that he'd ever see that.

By stressing the importance of peace for Israel, peace processors of all disciplines show great interest. That, of course, raises the cost of peace. (It encourages the Palestinians and other Arabs to demand more concessions from Israel.)

If anything Eric Trager understands this much better than Friedman:

For this reason, the winner of next week's presidential election would be well advised to renounce Annapolis as soon as possible. The incoming president should announce a freeze on U.S. involvement in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking until both parties' domestic political situations are resolved. Without this declaration, Israel and the Palestinians will have every reason to believe that the next U.S. administration will follow along the lines of Annapolis-and thus every reason to sideline American proposals indefinitely.

If the winner is Barack Obama, don't count on it.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Please step back

Aussie Dave is frustrated. Look I don't blame him. I too wish I knew how to get my blogging to the next level.

However he's been a model for me. No, I don't have his sense of humor. I really hope that he keeps plugging.

Covering themselves, but not in glory

Yesterday's Washington Post reported on the failure of the Obama campaign to verify electronic donations. The first part of the article - featured on A2 not above the fold on A1 - is rather underwhelming. It reports the problem and the campaign's response without any skepticism. However late in the article we learn something important:

The Obama team's disclosures came in response to questions from The Washington Post about the case of Mary T. Biskup, a retired insurance manager from Manchester, Mo., who turned up on Obama's FEC reports as having donated $174,800 to the campaign. Contributors are limited to giving $2,300 for the general election.

Biskup, who had scores of Obama contributions attributed to her, said in an interview that she never donated to the candidate. "That's an error," she said. Moreover, she added, her credit card was never billed for the donations, meaning someone appropriated her name and made the contributions with another card.

No amount of protestations by the Obama campaign that they investigate all donations at the "back end" can be taken seriously with the Biskup story, given that her doppelganger contributed over 70 times the legal limit.

What's interesting is the NY Times Opinionator seems offended that the NY Times article on the topic of phony donors doesn't get much play. The Opinionator makes this incredible observation:

Between the prepaid cards and The Times's earlier disclosure of people donating to the Democratic candidate under fictitious names, conservatives are talking up campaign finance reform.

Campaign reform? Are you kidding? Conservatives are talking about complying with existing laws. The Times article on the topic from three weeks ago seems mostly focused on demonstrating that the problem isn't that bad.

Although campaigns have long wrestled with questionable donations, Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said the record-setting number of new donors Mr. Obama has drawn, many of them online, presents new challenges to a compliance system that remains stuck in the past.

Ms. Krumholz pointed out, however, that it would take an extraordinary amount of coordination to pull off widespread fraud.

Of course the case of Ms. Biskup shows an "extraordinary amount of coordination."

Plus as Hot Air observes, this was clearly not accidental. Yet editors at papers like the Washington Post and New York Times are oddly incurious about the implication of the front runner openly flouting election law. I haven't seen an editorial at either paper denouncing the insidious influence of undocumented money.

It looks like the papers are now trying to cover themselves. They're not the only ones, Campbell Brown of CNN just noticed that Sen. Obama broke his public financing pledge. (via memeorandum)

Eric Trager shows just how valuable Sen. Obama's fundraising advantage was:

Most damaging, however, the $3 million that the campaign spent airing this half-hour of pure Hollywood is already reminding the media of candidate Obama's most hypocritical act to date: his decision to opt out of public financing despite his previous pledge to accept it. Simple math beautifully illustrates Obama's duplicitously achieved advantage: $3 million would be a significant 3.5% of the McCain campaign's legally limited budget, but is less than 0.5% of Obama's unlimited war chest.

Well no, it isn't unlimited but it is quite a bit larger.

The lack of media scrutiny into these aspects of Sen. Obama's campaign show an incredible malfeasance on their part. Especially because usually they're the ones decrying the undue influence and vast amounts of money required to run a campaign nowadays. But, hey, what are principles, when your guy is winning?

Like I wrote before, the media are covering themselves by belatedly reporting on these aspects of the campaign, but they're not covering themselves in glory.

Listing to port

The editors of the Washington Post, having endorsed Barack Obama for President now reflect on the consequences of his likely victory in Can One Party Rule?

But we don't believe either party has a monopoly on policy wisdom. We liked Mr. Bush's insistence on accountability in education, tempered by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's reminder that you couldn't fix urban schools without some money. We don't support the Democrats' plan to allow unionization without secret ballots, but we agree with them that National Labor Relations Board rules have tipped too far toward management. And so on. We like to think, in other words, that a process in which both parties play a role can sometimes lead to better outcomes and not always to dead ends.

There's some sense in this. However I fail to see why they would expect such cooperation with a president who has an insubstantial record of bipartisanship especially if he achieves a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. And I also can't imagine such equanimity if the Post's editors were facing the prospect of all three branches being run by Republicans.

The editors continue:

That's harder to imagine, though, as each party's moderate wing shrinks. A Democratic sweep might bring to Washington some relatively centrist freshmen who would provide a check on the most liberal wing of the party. But it might claim as victims some of the few remaining Republican moderates, such as Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon and Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, and some of the real workhorses who are more interested in legislating than grandstanding -- the capable New Hampshire senator John E. Sununu, for example. The defeat of such politicians would be a loss for the country, not just for their party.

Of course it doesn't lament advocating for an extremely left wing President at the expense of a moderate one.

Daniel Henninger doesn't see one party control in such an innocuous light.

The U.S. emerged a superpower, and the tool of that ascent was simple -- the pursuit of economic growth. Now China, India and Brazil, embracing high-growth Cowboy Capitalism, are doing what we did, only their cities are bigger.

Now comes Barack Obama, standing at the head of a progressive Democratic Party, his right hand rising to say, "Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be for-profit cowboys. It's time to spread the wealth around."

What this implies, undeniably, is that the United States would move away from running with the high GDP, high-growth nations rising today as economic and political powers and move over to retire with the low-growth economies we displaced -- old Europe.

As noted in a 2006 World Bank report, spending in Europe on social-protection programs averages 19% of GDP (85% of it on social insurance programs), compared to 9% of GDP in the U.S. The Obama proposals send the U.S. inexorably and permanently toward European levels of social protection. This isn't an "agenda." It's a final temptation.

Or as Fouad Ajami describes it:

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late Democratic senator from New York, once set the difference between American capitalism and the older European version by observing that America was the party of liberty, whereas Europe was the party of equality. Just in the nick of time for the Obama candidacy, the American faith in liberty began to crack. The preachers of America's decline in the global pecking order had added to the panic. Our best days were behind us, the declinists prophesied. The sun was setting on our imperium, and rising in other lands.

If the Democrats were in the hands of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, I wouldn't worry about one party rule. But Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are no Moynihans. Neither is the man who's likely to be the next President.

Submitted 10/29/08

The Watcher's Council submissions are up!

• Obama wants the government to redistribute wealth - Bookworm Room looks at the recently uncovered talk given by Sen. Obama from 2001 in which he argues for government to be more dedicated to transferring wealth.


• A Spectator At The Orgy - Joshuapundit makes a list of many of the issues surrounding Barack Obama that the media refuses to examine. At the end he shows the audacity of the media's many hopes. In addition to the excellent Michael Malone article he links to, Orson Scott Card and Michael Graham have made similar observations. Similar but shorter thoughts have been expressed by Jake Tapper and Andrew Malcolm.


• The gap between the media's version and the actual truth grows wider -Hillbilly White Trash is more convinced that McCain will win than I am. Still his point - similar to JoshuaPundit's is that Barack Obama remains an unexamined candidate.


• Is a Barack Victory Predestined? - Cheat-Seeking Missiles wonders if a President Obama would lack the necessary humility to govern responsibly. For more thoughts along these lines see this at City Journal.


• We're tired of it already - The Colossus of Rhodey expresses his disdain for an especially tendentious piece of reporting on the campaign.


• The campaign and israel: take 3029 - I discuss how Israel as an issue correlates with the Jewish vote.


• The Good Daughter - The title of The Razor's post refers to his wife and how she fulfilled her final obligations to her parents.


• Both Candidates Suck - The Glittering Eye critiques both candidates and finds them both wanting. I have a much more positive view of Sen. McCain than he does. Also in his corner is a law professor from Tennessee named Glenn Harlan Reynolds who asks Is this the best we can do? and Norwegian blogger Secular Blasphemy. I match up better with Baseball Crank.

My non-council submission of the week was Michael Yon's Syria-Iraq: Bloody Border, Messy Politics about this week's raid into Syria by American troops from Iraq.

Read. Enjoy. Be informed.

watcher's council.

Jewish Students On Campus--A Force To Reckon With?

Maybe not yet, but perhaps soon, now that it seems that Colleges and Universities are willing to go out of their way to attract Jewish students:

At Chicagoland Jewish High School, "What I'm seeing is, new names are popping up all the time," says Bruce Scher, the academic dean and director of college counseling.

"Outside of the stereotypical or the standard colleges that already have strong Jewish populations, we're seeing a lot of other schools recognize the value and recognize the contribution that these students are making to a college campus," says Scher, who's also co-chair of the National Association for College Admission Counseling's special interest group for Jewish students. "Even schools like Knox [College], you know, in central Illinois, they absolutely are connecting to Jewish students."

College counselors and colleges alike - particularly small liberal arts colleges - are reporting explicit efforts to attract more Jewish applicants or build Jewish student life on campus, or both (since the two goals go hand in hand). For instance, Washington and Lee University, a decidedly Southern-influenced institution in Virginia, has identified "recruiting and supporting Jewish students at W&L" as a fundraising priority, and is constructing a $4 million Hillel House.

...Patti Mittleman is familiar with the trend, but questions the motivations behind it. When an article appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer last year describing Muhlenberg College, a Lutheran liberal arts institution in Pennsylvania, as "an unlikely magnet for Jewish students" (about a third of the student body is Jewish), Mittleman, Muhlenberg's Jewish chaplain, was "inundated" by calls and e-mails -- including, she says, "from some of the finest universities in this country."

Read the whole story.

If this trend is true, then Jewish students on campus should be able--and willing--to do more to not only maintain a Jewish life on campus, but also should be able to defend their right to present the Israeli point-of-view in confronting the negative anti-Israel rhetoric and propaganda on campus.

[Hat tip: Instapundit]

by Daled Amos

Will The Government Have To Bail Out Obama? (Updated)

At The Corner, Mark Steyn quotes an email from a reader:

Subprime Campaign Contributions

Re the Obama campaign fraud now spreading faster than Joe the Plumber's wealth, a reader writes:

If the majority of these donations are in fact fraudulent but the Obama campaign has already spent the money do you think Hank Paulson will ask the taxpayers to purchase the bad debt?

Sounds reasonable to me. If Obama isn't "too big to fail", what is?

Actually, there is a point of comparison between how the Obama campaign allows fraudulent donations and the current economic crisis. Ed Morrissey writes:

Barack Obama claims to champion the consumers of America. This demonstrates worse than just callous disregard of financial security; it looks like a deliberate attempt to allow people to empty unsuspecting consumers of their savings and credit. The checks involving security codes and address verification were put in place years ago by the credit-card companies to protect their customers from having their accounts hijacked by thieves. [emphasis added]

Keep in mind that turning off the website security to facilitate this was deliberate:

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has alsochosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited. [emphasis added]

To this claim of Obama's campaign, Morrissey responds: Hogwash!

There is only one reason to deliberately choose to bypass those security processes, and that's to facilitate fraud. Team Obama claims that they vet the donations after the fact, but that's hogwash. It costs far more to do that than to screen for security codes and address verification up front, and everyone knows it. Obama counts on the fact that most of the fraud will fly under the radar of its victims, and the only cost they'll incur is when they have to process refunds after getting a specific complaint.

Back in April, Peter Beinart noted approvingly:

Luckily, Obama doesn't have to rely on his legislative résumé to prove he's capable of running the government. He can point to something more germane: the way he's run his campaign.

Indeed.

UPDATED: In another post, Morrissey quotes someone who works for the credit card industry who points out the recklessness of disabling security on the Obama website since:

disabling the security allows would be credit card thieves to "ping" numbers till they get a hit. The number of "pings" should have raised flags at Visa and MasterCard, don't you think?

by Daled Amos

Joe Biden Serves A Useful Purpose--As Obama's Olmert

Remember when Ehud Olmert was Deputy Prime Minister, what people thought about his pronouncements about the Disengagement?

Olmert's statements are often coordinated with Sharon to "test the waters" of potential future Israeli government initiatives. Olmert was the first to go public with Sharon's plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.

Some Israeli politicians and American Jewish leaders are worried Sharon plans to later evacuate other settlements, and possibly parts of Jerusalem, and that he is using Olmert's statements to gauge the domestic and international response to such possibilities.

Could it be that some of Joe Biden's gaffes on the campaign trail are serving a similar purpose?The New York Post seems to think so:

Is Joe Biden the foot-in-mouth candidate - or is he the Obama campaign's designated teller of inconvenient truths?

First, the Democratic veep hopeful declared that America's enemies will generate "an international crisis, to test the mettle of" a President Obama.

Scary - but likely true.

And yesterday Biden let slip that he and Obama apparently have a sliding scale to determine who's "super-rich."

Obama, after all, has been promising a tax cut for the "middle class" - those making $200,000 a year or less.

Biden yesterday lowered that bar.

"What we're saying," he told a Pennsylvania TV interviewer, "is that [our] tax break doesn't need to go to people making . . . $1.4 million. It should go to [people] making under $150,000 a year."

Oops. That's a 25 percent downward redefinition of "middle class."

An Obama mouthpiece quickly dismissed the discrepancy as just another one of Joe the Senator's gaffes.

But consider: The campaign has a new TV commercial out declaring that families - not individuals - earning $200,000 or less would qualify for a tax cut. Two incomes - not one.

And, as most middle-class wage-earners know, that's a huge difference.

Of course, Israelis had more reason then to take Olmert seriously than Americans now have to pay close attention to Biden--but the comparison is there. Still, I doubt that SNL had that similarity in mind in their sketch last week where they had Biden floating the idea of a Disengagement of his own:

"Mark my words. If you take away nothing else from what I say here today, or indeed, in this entire campaign, remember this. If Barack Obama is elected, we will have a crisis. And when this crisis hits, and it will, in the second week of February, we may do some weird things. We may cede Florida back to Spain, or Alaska to the Russians.

All in jest, after all.

After all, Obama would take 'redistribution' only so far...right?

by Daled Amos

All no-ing

Next Tuesday, Marylanders will have two constitutional questions on the ballot. The big one, of course is Question 2 about legalizing slots.

Question 1 though, is to amend the state constitution to allow early voting. Monoblogue:

More importantly in Maryland's case, the Constitutional Amendment as written allows voters to vote in any precinct statewide, regardless of where they reside. This presents a nightmare scenario of provisional ballots being cast by thousands of voters who aren't familiar to the polling place officials, officials who cannot make the voter present a form of ID to verify their identity and address. Amendments to provide these safeguards were offered by Republicans during the original debate over the bill, but those common-sense provisions to require early votes to be cast in their home county and identification were both defeated by the Democrats in the Senate.

Already in place in Maryland is a system where voters can sit in the comfort of their own home, do whatever research they feel they need to on issues, and can fill out their ballot in a much more leisurely fashion - it's called an absentee ballot. In Maryland, they're available for the asking, without restriction except for being a registered voter. It's a system that has been proven over time to effectively allow those who wish to vote at their convenience to do so. While the absentee ballot system would remain in place regardless of the disposition of Question 1, the potential for fraud and the additional expense for keeping polling places open for up to ten extra days outweighs the small gain in turnout early voting has been shown to provide.

About slots, Pillage Idiot weighs in:

Usually I'm in favor of having stupid people pay taxes instead of me, as if having slots in Maryland would actually reduce taxes for the rest of us, which of course is not the case in this high-tax dystopia. But this slots issue in Maryland leaves me with one sickening thought:

After the subprime mortgage fiasco, haven't we learned what happens when the government encourages people to spend money they can't afford to spend?

He offers an alternative (apparently revenue neutral) Pillage Idiot Plan.

Attila's more creative, but Monoblogue was closer to my thoughts on the topic.

Over the last half-decade, several attempts to legalize video slot machines for the purposes of raising money for the state have been made in the General Assembly, but none passed under Governor Ehrlich. Partisan Democrats were determined not to give Ehrlich credit for any legislative accomplishment, thus the bills would die prior to adoption. But things changed once the party affiliation switched at Government House and this proposal to place slots on the ballot as a Constitutional Amendment passed with mostly Democrat support. Instead of the General Assembly doing the job they were elected to do, they punted their responsibility to the voters in an effort to alter Maryland's Constitution.

Why do it through a constitutional amendment? Why not direct legislation? And why approve it now when Martin O'Malley is governor but not when Bob Ehrlich was?

I figured that House Speaker Michael Busch would back slots once O'Malley was elected. I was wrong. He still will vote against them, but he doesn't object to it as actively he did when Ehrlich was governor. The Baltimore Sun, of course, now supports slots. Much of the objection to slots was an objection to allowing Governor Ehrlich enjoy a legislative victory. The cynicism that's on display is my reason for opposing slots.

Look, last year the Governor and legislature held a special session to raise our taxes instead of looking to cut 6% of the budget. This is a state whose budget had increased 100% in the previous decade. You can't tell me that all that growth was due to absolute necessities.

In general when dealing with ballot questions - the others are bond issues - my first inclination is to vote no. My second inclination is to see what the Baltimore Sun recommends and vote the opposite. Does the state need to borrow money for the Maryland Science Center? I don't get it.

So I'm pretty certain next Tuesday I'll be in the minority, but I'll likely be all "no-ing" the ballot questions.

Levi stubbs

I have a CD with the greatest hits of the Four Tops and another with the greatest hits of the Temptations. Every once in a while, I try to think who was better?

Usually my conclusion is that while the Temptations best songs were better than the best of the Four Tops, overall the Four Tops were better. (If you wish, feel free to debate in the comments.)

Nothing will convince me that "My Girl" by the Temptations isn't the greatest pop song ever. However most of the songs of the Four Tops, I could listen to again and again. That applies to fewer of the Temptations songs. And while the Temptations had better harmonies, Levi Stubbs's distinctive voice made the Four Tops songs soulful.

Stubbs also had a speaking (actually singing) part in a movie about twenty years ago.

Stubbs died two weeks ago but was buried on Monday in Detroit.

For a few hours on Monday afternoon, some of the Motown family was reunited in grief, remembrance and song at the funeral of Levi Stubbs, lead singer of the Four Tops. Mr. Stubbs, 72, died Oct. 17 at his home here, eight years after he stopped performing with the group, which had more than 40 top hits on the Billboard charts over the years, including "Standing in the Shadows of Love" and "Baby, I Need Your Loving."

His funeral attracted a full house at Greater Grace Temple, the same church where memorial services were held in 2005 for the civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. While Mrs. Parks was eulogized by political figures like Senator Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, Mr. Stubbs's funeral drew notables mainly from the music world.

This is a great story:

The Tops -- who included Lawrence Payton and Renaldo Benson as well as Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Fakir -- could not afford to pay for the four matching white flannel suits they had ordered from Hot Sam's, a Detroit haberdasher.

"We didn't have quite the money to pay for those four suits," said Mr. Fakir, known as Duke, who was nattily dressed for the funeral in a gray suit, white shirt and white tie. "But for some reason, he trusted us to bring back the balance, and we did."

The doctor's unpleasant medicine

Helena Cobban is shocked:

Since when is it okay for a state (or an individual) to set out to kill a person based solely on accusations against him that have never been publicized and have never been tested against even the most basic norms of criminal procedure?

It is not okay. Extra-judicial killings, also known as assassinations, are always abhorrent. They shock the conscience of anyone who believes in the rule of law. When carried out by states they represent a quite unacceptable excess of state power.

"Extra-judicial killings" is a term pacifists use to define war. It has the convenient side effect of legitimizing terror. Essentially it means that terrorists who operate outside of the norms of international law should be exempt from military actions against them.

Cobban continues:

This week, we have had yet another shocking example of

(a) our government-- speaking through still unnamed "administration officials"-- trying to "justify" the acts of lethal aggression it committed against Syria on Sunday by saying that they were aiming at (and indeed, also succeeded in) killing an alleged long-time operative of Al-Qaeda in Iraq called Abu Ghadiya; and

(b) this explanation being reported by many branches of the media-- e.g. the NYT, "Wired" magazine, and Britain's ITV-- without those reporters also providing the essential background in national or international law, or in common morality, that would indicate that such acts of assassination constitute serious violations of the rule of law. And without seeking out and quoting the opinion of anyone who states anything to that effect... In other words, these acts of extra-judicial killing are treated by these reporters and the editors who stand behind them simply as "business as usual", the kind of "normal" acts that a government carries out need that not be exposed to any particular questioning or criticism.

So not only is our government illegitimate or at least involved in illegitimate activities, but our media is abetting our criminal government. I'm not going to go into a long discourse about irregular warfare, but it is Cobban who is ignorant of international law (as well as much of the MSM) because she denies countries their legitimate right of self defense. Maybe she should spend some time in the courtroom of Judge George Daniels and learn about the difference between terror and warfare.

So what was the United States doing in Syria this week? Here's how Michael Yon describes the situation:

It is extremely safe to say that many hundreds, indeed thousands, of Iraqis have been killed by the handiwork of foreign fighters. Untold tons of munitions have flowed across the border over time. Those arms are a lifeline to the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Anbar has gone mostly quiet and Special Forces and conventional forces have been making progress up there in Nineveh, but Mosul is the last serious redoubt of al-Qaeda in Iraq, as well as other insurgent groups. (Diyala still has some problems.) In 2007 and early 2008 when I was last there, explosives were coming in through Syria. In fact, the last combat mission I did in Iraq this year was with a Special Forces team that specifically was searching for weapons coming in through Syria.

I've been right up to that desolate border on a number of occasions. The terrorists just come across that border to murder and otherwise intimidate Iraqi villagers in Nineveh to achieve their nefarious ends. Some of the truck bombs in Nineveh and Mosul proper have been massive, and during one attack that I have previously written about, perhaps four to five hundred Yezidis were murdered within minutes. The Yezidis are very friendly toward Americans and have treated me like an honored guest. When they were attacked, it felt like a punch into my own stomach, and so I wrote "[2] Stake Through Their Hearts" after hundreds were murdered.

The insurgency in Mosul is the last big thorn left in Iraq's paw. That we struck targets in Syria does not surprise me and I am not appalled. I am appalled that Syria allows these groups to use its territory as a base and conduit to destabilize Iraq. A Syrian government that allows these groups to penetrate Iraq's borders and murder Iraqis and Americans doesn't have much moral standing to complain about an incursion into its territory.

Bill Roggio explains how the U.S. learned about the terror network in Syria:

The US military learned a great deal about al Qaeda's network inside Syria after a key operative was killed in September of 2007. US forces killed Muthanna, the regional commander of al Qaeda's network in the Sinjar region.

During the operation, US forces found numerous documents and electronic files that detailed "the larger al-Qaeda effort to organize, coordinate, and transport foreign terrorists into Iraq and other places," Major General Kevin Bergner, the former spokesman for Multinational Forces Iraq, said in October 2007.

Bergner said several of the documents found with Muthanna included a list of 500 al Qaeda fighters from "a range of foreign countries that included Libya, Morocco, Syria, Algeria, Oman, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom."

Eli Lake (via memeorandum) shows how this represents a legitimate escalation of the war on terror.

We have entered a new phase in the war on terror. In July, according to three administration sources, the Bush administration formally gave the military new power to strike terrorist safe havens outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. Before then, a military strike in a country like Syria or Pakistan would have required President Bush's personal approval. Now, those kinds of strikes in the region can occur at the discretion of the incoming commander of Central Command (Centcomm), General David Petraeus. One intelligence source described the order as institutionalizing the "Chicago Way," an allusion to Sean Connery's famous soliloquy about bringing a gun to a knife fight.

Plus, Lake wonders

On one level, this new policy conflicts with Obama's stated desire for opening up diplomatic channels to places like Tehran and Damascus. On the other hand, this is precisely the type of policy that he has repeatedly promised at least for Pakistan, whose territory is believed to host Osama bin Laden: If America has actionable intelligence on al Qaeda leaders, and the country housing those terrorist sits on its hands, we will act. His campaign rhetoric has now become the official war policy he will inherit. Is this a development that pleases him?

Similarly, Noah Pollak thinks that the candidates, especially the favorite must address this escalation:

What's important right now is that both candidates go on record about the raid. Should there be repeat performances -- as many as needed to impress Bashar that his days of meddling with impunity are over? Should Iran be targeted for similar strikes? Do you, Mr. Obama, view this news as an unacceptable expansion of the war that will never be countenanced in your administration, or do you believe it a vital component of a winning strategy in Iraq?

I think most people intuitively know how McCain would answer these questions.

The New York Times adds this context to Lake's report:

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has attacked terrorism suspects in the ungoverned spaces of countries like Yemen and Somalia. But administration officials said Monday that the strikes in Pakistan and Syria were carried out on the basis of a legal argument that has been refined in recent months to justify strikes by troops and by rockets on militants in countries with which the United States is not at war.

The justification is different from the concept of pre-emption the administration articulated immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, and which was used as the rationale for the invasion of Iraq. While pre-emption was used to justify attacks against governments and their armies, the self-defense argument would justify attacks on insurgents operating on foreign soil that threatened the forces, allies or interests of the United States.

Administration officials pointed Monday to a passage in President Bush's speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month as the clearest articulation of this position to date.

"As sovereign states, we have an obligation to govern responsibly, and solve problems before they spill across borders," Mr. Bush said. "We have an obligation to prevent our territory from being used as a sanctuary for terrorism and proliferation and human trafficking and organized crime."

The Hashmonean reports on another recent anti-terror success that seems to bolster Lake's point.

By the same token, America's international anti-terrorism efforts scored huge this past week. It is little reported but a massive terror funding ring has been blown wide open in a long, complex US anti-terror and anti drug investigation which has revealed massive ties between Hezbollah & South American and Colombian Narco trafficking. An entire Hezbollah criminal drug funding ring has been busted while at the same time revealing the deep tentacles that organization has to brutal criminal elements and enemies of America. The Terrorists are dealing drugs for profit.

The Washington Post reports on this story from the vantage of Syrian government:

In the same letter, Syria urged Iraq to investigate the U.S. raid and said the attack came as Syria had been increasing efforts to stem the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq.

"In this regard, we refer that this unjustified act of aggression comes at a time when the Iraqi and US sides recognize Syria's efforts exerted to preserve Iraq security and prevent any illegal infiltrations into its territories," the letter said. The Syrian news agency did not specify which Syrian officials signed the communication.
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Underscoring the possibility that the raid could hinder U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq, Syria on Tuesday indefinitely postponed Syrian-Iraqi talks on regional cooperation that had been set for Nov. 12 in Baghdad.

Yon and Roggio, though, undermine the Syrian claim to making efforts to stem the deadly tide of smuggling. However the Washington Post's editorial showed a level of comprehension absent in the news report:

The logic of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad seems to be that his regime can sponsor murders, arms trafficking, infiltrations and suicide bombings in neighboring countries while expecting to be shielded from any retaliation in kind by the diplomatic scruples of democracies. For most of this decade that has been lamentably true: U.S. commanders and Iraqi officials have over and over again pointed to the infiltration of al-Qaeda militants through the Damascus airport and the land border with Iraq, and Syria's refusal to curtail it, without taking direct action. Yet in the past year Israel has intervened in Syria several times to defend its vital interests, including bombing a secret nuclear reactor. If Sunday's raid, which targeted a senior al-Qaeda operative, serves only to put Mr. Assad on notice that the United States, too, is no longer prepared to respect the sovereignty of a criminal regime, it will have been worthwhile.

However I'm not so impressed with the closing paragraph:

Mr. Assad's government has lately taken a few cautious steps toward breaking out of its isolation, participating in indirect peace talks with Israel and granting formal diplomatic recognition to Lebanon for the first time. European governments have been quick with rewards, and the next U.S. president -- if it is Barack Obama -- may also hasten to upgrade contacts. If the Syrian regime is genuinely interested in making peace with Israel, distancing itself from Iran and the terrorist movements it sponsors, and rebuilding ties with the West, that is to be welcomed. What Damascus should not be allowed to do is reap the diplomatic and economic rewards of a rapprochement while continuing to plant car bombs, transport illegal weapons and harbor terrorists. Israel has let Mr. Assad know that it is prepared to respond to his terrorism with strikes against legitimate military targets. Now that the United States has sent the same message, maybe the dictator at last will rethink his strategy.

That's a big if. Unless American and Israeli pressure persist, Assad will have no reason to change his behavior. That will only happen when the cost of threatening the United States (and Israel) outweighs the benefits of subscribing to a phony peace.

Overall, this looks like a big win for the United States, but the next administratin needs to keep this policy in place or it will lose contol of Iraq.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Volokh Conspirator Assisted

David Bernstein at Volokh Conspiracy asks a question I can answer:

Is it supposed to be a great revelation that Obama would like to see wealth more "fairly" distributed than it is currently?

It's true that most Americans, when asked by pollsters, think that it's emphatically not the government's job to redistribute wealth. But are people so stupid as to not recognize that when politicians talk about a "right to health care," or "equalizing educational opportunities," or "making the rich pay a fair share of taxes," or "ensuring that all Americans have the means to go to college," and so forth and so on, that they are advocating the redistribution of wealth? Is it okay for a politician to talk about the redistribution of wealth only so long as you don't actually use phrases such as "redistribution" or "spreading the wealth," in which case he suddenly becomes "socialist"?

Well, yes. You could argue that any tax-funded government undertaking whatsoever causes wealth to be redistributed, but there is difference between saying, for instance, that the suffering of the destitute should be relieved by the government and referring to "redistribution of wealth" as if it is a worthy goal in itself. According to the latter approach income disparities themselves are a problem and there is something unfortunate or even sinful about great financial success. I have my doubts about politicians who refer to a "right to healthcare," but at least such statements don't imply that our system has failed somehow because the guy down the street has more money than I do and that the government should not rest until this lamentable situation is rectified. The phrase "redistribution of wealth" is accompanied by an ethic that any moderate planning to vote for Obama should find troubling.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

The piano

My grandfather, "Zaydie" Morris Newman was a lawyer. Once he had a very grateful client who gave him a gift of a Steinway baby grand. The piano was in our family for many years. When we moved to Baltimore we got the piano. My father refinished it over many Sundays in our apartment.

When we moved to a house, the piano came with us. All of us learned to play the piano. I never was very good. I don't think any of us were ever as good as my mother. When she was younger she would get little busts of famous composers. (I never did much musically. My two brothers, though, each found instruments that they played with some level of skill. One played the accordion; the other drums.) I took guitar lessons for a year or two after piano, but was never very good at it.

In addition to law, my grandfather made an attempt to run for a local office in Worcester Massachusetts. I remember going house to house dropping leaflets under the door for him some forty years ago. He lost. Interestingly he was a Republican and distrustful of FDR. In 1944, my mother was embarrassed that hers was the only family supporting Dewey. But in retrospect she's impressed that her father sensed something about Roosevelt at the time that most other Jews didn't.

However, now my parents are preparing to move out of their house. Unfortunately, none of us has room for a baby grand. So this past Sunday she sold it to a man who refurbishes pianos. We'll miss it. The living room will look empty without it.

UPDATE: I'd like to add two things about Worcester.

First of all, when I was very young - and no I don't remember these incidents - when we visited I sometimes played with the grandchildren of my grandparents' friends. The grandparents watched these children because they're father ran into trouble with the law. In fact he was a fugitive. His name: Abbie Hoffman. Maybe that explains my radical politics these days. :-)

In January 1962, the state of Massachusetts had ten hearings on the state's Blue Laws. My grandfather argued against them at the hearing in Worcester. My mother still has the clipping. From what I've been able to uncover, the state's Blue Laws were ruled unconstitutional in 1959 by a federal court in a case called Gallagher vs. Crown Kosher Supermarket. In 1961 the Supreme Court ruled that the blue laws of Massachusetts were constitutional. My best guess is that once the judicial effort failed, those fighting the blue laws tried the legislative route.

Israel's strategic environment

Gen. Amos Gilad gives an overview of Israel's strategic environment.

Currently, Israel is living in a relatively good strategic environment. We are not facing imminent war and have not faced a hostile coalition since the 1970s. We seem to have defeated suicide terror, at least temporarily.

In the end he concludes:

Iran is trying to convince some states in the Middle East that this is the era of the Iranian Empire. It is not only Israel who is threatened. Iran has global ambitions to become a superpower that is recognized by the whole world, like the empire of Cyrus the Great.

This is the main challenge to the entire world and I hope we will be united against it. I am not sure that the diplomatic option will be effective enough to prevent it, and we have to measure success based on results. There are other options, but I am against boasting and declarations. All options are on the table and, at the end of the day, Israel will make its own decision.

Towards the beginning Gen. Gilad writes something that's likely to get lost:

We in Israel are determined to have a real peace agreement with the Palestinians. Our goal is to have two states for two peoples living side-by-side in peace and security. This policy is easy to define, but it is very difficult to achieve. The main issue for Israel is the security issue.

The Palestinian Authority is split into two entities. Israel is ready to sign a peace deal with the Palestinians. This is the policy of the State of Israel. But we need to sign an agreement with the entities that represent both Gaza and the West Bank.

We are able to discuss this policy at all only because of the unprecedented success of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank. Between 2000 and 2002, Israel did not have great success in preventing Palestinian suicide bombers from targeting Israel's major cities. The only reason that we are living quietly today is our success in identifying the terrorists and enhancing the cooperation between intelligence and the army.

Operation Defensive Shield worked. It's a point that doesn't get mentioned much as the peace processors have seized the day, the initiative and the talking points. In order for there to be peace there needs to be an agreement.

More importantly, as Gen. Gilad points out, the terrorists must be defeated. And though he doesn't write it, the Palestinians must accept Israel's right to exist. No number of agreements or Israeli concessions will ever be enough if that premise doesn't exist.

Overall it's an interesting read. I think that Gen. Gilad is a bit too complacent about Hamas. And it's interesting that both Hamas and Hezbollah consider Al Qaeda an enemy.

Crossposted on Yourish.

The campaign and israel: take 3029

Last week Gallup released a poll showing that American Jews support Sen. Obama by a margin of 74 to 22. But if you look at the breakdown at the end, the October results were recorded over a shorter period of time and, more importantly, were the result of a somewhat smaller sample with a larger margin of error.

It's clear that Sen. Obama will win the American Jewish vote, but it's not clear that he will win it by 3 - 1 as writers have been claiming.

Martin Peretz weighs in:

But first I'll write about the Palestinians, with a little digression to the hysterical Jews and cynical Republicans who are trying to convince these very Palestinians that Barack Obama is their greatest ally. After all, he once was caught in a photograph with Edward Said. But these savvy Arabs are having none of this. They simply don't believe it.

Well it wasn't that Sen. Obama was once photographed with Edward Said. It was that he was close friends with Rashid Khalidi. And that he attended a dinner in Khalidi's honor where anti-Israel speeches were given, which didn't seem to upset Sen. Obama. The feeling is that his closeness to Khalidi suggests an agreement with him.

And as far as the Palestinians not believing that a President Obama would be more sympathetic to their cause than a President McCain, there's some evidence to the contrary.

23 year old [Palestinian] Ibrahim Abu Jayyab sits by the computer in the Nusairat refugee camp [in the Gaza Strip] trying to call American citizens, in order to convince them to vote for the Democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama... Most of the Palestinians feel hatred towards USA, whose administrations have always stood by Israel...

Abu Jayyab's idea is to make telephone calls to American citizens through Internet sites that allow making free calls... in order to use them [to make phone calls] for the campaign supporting Obama. Abu Jayyab says: We dial random numbers and try to call people without knowing their identity or their affiliation...

(h/t Daled Amos)

Peretz concludes:

Except for black Americans, American Jews will back Barack Obama by the highest percentage in the country. So much for Jewish conservatism. So much for Jewish distrust of African Americans. Put that nonsense in the trash.

These are straw men. The question is how supportive of Israel Sen. Obama is likely to be. If Jews would question Sen. Obama's support of Israel, it wouldn't be because of conservative values or because of mistrust of African Americans. It would be on policy grounds.

Still if American Jews are somewhat comforted by Sen. Obama's campaign regarding Israel, Israelis apparently are not:

These are the types of threats that color Israelis' worldviews and influence the type of American president they want: someone who will take a hard line when confronting any existential threat to the Jewish state.

"They look at [Sen. John] McCain and they see a tough president willing to help them do what is necessary. The look at Obama and they see a liberal with big ideas. But when the time comes when Israel has to do something tough and not so beautiful, they don't know whether he'll say 'do what you have to do,' " says Shmuel Rosner, an Israeli expert on US politics.

That perception has placed Senator McCain 12 points ahead of Obama in a recent poll conducted by the TNS Teleseker polling agency. The survey, commissioned by the Rabin Center for Israel Studies, found that 52.5 percent of those polled thought McCain would do a better job of protecting Israel.

I wonder what would happen if the identification of the voter was pro-Israel instead of Jewish. After all Shmuel Rosner recently wrote that Israel was not a major concern for most American Jews. If that's the case, then the Jewish support of Sen. Obama is largely independent of his stands on Israel.

Michael Oren has looked more closely at the statements of the two candidates. It's a comprehensive look at the statements of each, not at their advisers.(it's a must read.) Here's one point of divergence:

These disparities are rife with ramifications for Israel. Long time advocates of preemption, Israelis may be disappointed by an Obama administration that abandons the tactic and recoils from further preventative action against terrorists. They will have to grapple with the fallout of an American evacuation from Iraq, which is almost certain to be perceived in the region as an Islamist triumph. Still, Israel could benefit from a United States that is less inclined to pursue polices unilaterally and more in line with international opinion.

The situation might be reversed under McCain. The U.S. would continue to press its anti-terror campaign in the Middle East and stay the course in Iraq but remain to a large extent isolated globally. The Israeli ideal of an America that is engaged militarily in the Middle East and in sync with the international community may well prove elusive.

I don't know how important being in "sync with the international community" is to Israel. Certainly American support during Operation Defensive Shield was essential but it also went against the international consensus. In the end Oren concludes that Israel needs the candidate who is the better leader in charge because events will often dictate American actions more than previously stated policies.

After reading Oren, I'm more convinced that McCain is the better choice regarding Israel. I don't know that Oren would agree with that conclusion.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Credit

Ive written before about the lack of credit that President Bush gets for his policy towards Africa.

It's interesting but there's something else that he isn't getting credit for: President Barack Obama. And by Don King of all people.

"We had 43 presidents in the United States, he was the 43rd president, 42 of them promised us everything and gave us nothing, both Democrats and Republicans," King said in an interview with Reuters.

"(Bush formed) the most diverse cabinet of any president in the history of the United States. I know that they are condemning him now ... but this man prepared us for a Barack Obama, for the 'great change,'" King added, naming Bush Cabinet members Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Rod Paige and Alfonso Jackson as examples.

Quite a few critics point out that there aren't a lot of African American Republicans. But is that because Republicans are hostile to minorities, or because African Americans are hostile to Republicans? While Sen. Obama (or any African American Democrat) is going to get over 90% of the black vote, Lynn Swann, Ken Blackwell and Michael Steele certainly didn't.

What gives?

In another area where President Bush isn't getting enough credit, Ross Douthat writes:

It's true that at the national level, welfare reform reduced spending along the way (though Tommy Thompson's reforms in Wisconsin, the model for the national reform, boosted funding during the transition to workfare), whereas the Bush anti-homelessness push has required an infusion of roughly $500 million (less, I believe, if you adjust for inflation) over what HUD provided for homelessness policy in 2002. But the payoff in terms of conservative goals - reducing dependency, increasing workforce participation - has been pretty impressive. And responding intelligently to homelessness seems like exactly the kind of thing that a more minimalist, means-tested welfare state ought to be doing.

Ross Douthat asks why conservatives won't take credit for a success like this. But I think the better question why isn't the MSM, at least, pointing to such success.

Fiery Spirited Zionist keeps writing in the comments that history will judge President Bush more generously than he is treated now. There's ample evidence that that's the case. The question is whether future historians will be as partisan as those writing the first draft.

Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed calls on all Palestinian leaders to resign

Witty and good:

There is no comfortable solution for the Palestinians to repair their domestic affairs other than the leaders abandoning their ambitions to lead. This is a fact that has been known for a long time. However, the problem is how to convince all these leaders when it's apparent how happy Hamas is with its sovereignty over Gaza, and its readiness to give everything to preserve it; the same applies to the others.

The fact is that the Palestinian president has proposed a negotiations' plan that offers an opportunity for a Palestinian Government without parties or leaders, because he proposed the formation of a technocrat government, i.e. ministers would be experts and not politicians or party members. Therefore, the government would be neither a Fatah nor a Hamas government, and the Palestinians would live in happiness and amicability, and would dedicate themselves to the achievement of two important issues: the first is managing their daily affairs, and the second is leaving the leaders to work on designing a peace plan for themselves, and also a peace plan with the Israelis.

I cannot imagine that this idea, which is assumed to satisfy everybody because it respects everybody, will be approved easily unless Hamas understands that there is only a short way to go on the road along which they are proceeding. Hamas has lived a difficult life, and has tried everything in order to establish a permanent position for itself on the ground; this includes a peace plan that is very generous to the Israelis, with the exception that it calls the plan a truce for 18 years in which it relinquishes Jerusalem, the refugees, and the borders in exchange for the Israelis to leave the Palestinians to fight each other while they live in peace without interference.

Great sentence . . . I think. The phrase "it relinquishes" refers to Israel?

At the time Hamas held a truce with Israel, it tried to engage in skirmishes with the Egyptians, and to drag them into a confrontation with the Palestinians and the Israelis; this attempt nearly succeeded in changing the map and not only the government in Gaza. [...]

What's Arabic for "read the rest"?

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Does ACORN Have A Branch In Gaza?

From Palestinian Media Watch:

PA daily reports that Gaza residents are randomly calling American homes trying to convince Americans to support Barack Obama for president

by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, Oct. 27, 2008

The following is the story in the PA daily:

"23 year old [Palestinian] Ibrahim Abu Jayyab sits by the computer in the Nusairat refugee camp [in the Gaza Strip] trying to call American citizens, in order to convince them to vote for the Democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama...

Most of the Palestinians feel hatred towards USA, whose administrations have always stood by Israel...

Abu Jayyab's idea is to make telephone calls to American citizens through Internet sites that allow making free calls... in order to use them [to make phone calls] for the campaign supporting Obama. Abu Jayyab says: We dial random numbers and try to call people without knowing their identity or their affiliation...

He said that a large number of Palestinians dislike their activity... [those] who do not see any difference between the American politicians, because of the hostility that they feel towards America. But his hope is that their activity will have some impact [in support of Obama]."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 26, 2008]

Knowing there is an issue that Jewish voters and Palestinians in Gaza can agree on makes me feel warm all over...

by Daled Amos

Syrian strike

The New York Times reports on yesterday's raid into Syria and concludes:

The United States is trying to negotiate a strategic agreement with Iraq that would allow American troops to remain in the country and carry out military operations. The pact faces strenuous opposition from neighboring countries, especially Syria and Iran, because of fears that the United States might use Iraqi territory to carry out attacks on them.

The United States has no diplomatic relations with Iran and has withdrawn its ambassador to Syria.

It is kind of odd to make the focus of the article the fears of Syria and Iran. Part of the problem is that the Times's report seems to have been early and they haven't updated it.

The Washington Post provides more information and context:

U.S. attacks inside Syria are extremely rare, though the U.S. military has stepped up security along Iraq's border with Syria in recent months to stem the traffic of fighters and weapons into Iraq. U.S. officials say many insurgents, particularly suicide bombers, arrive in Iraq via the Syrian border.

The two most obvious questions are what was U.S. military doing and why now?

(more via memeorandum)
Bill Roggio gives some background and speculates what the United States may have been after.

If the raid occurred, the US military must have detected a senior member of al Qaeda in Iraq in the region. Abu Ayyub al Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is reported to have left the country earlier this year after the terror group lost its sanctuaries in Diyala province.

The US military may be closing in on al Qaeda's senior leadership. US forces killed Abu Qaswarah, al Qaeda in Iraq's second in command, during a raid in Mosul in northern Iraq on Oct. 15. The military has also killed and captured numerous al Qaeda leader and couriers over the past several weeks. The information obtained during these raids help to paint a picture of al Qaeda's command structure inside of of Iraq as well as in neighboring countries.

Amos Harel of Ha'aretz makes an interesting observation:

The common denominator to all these operations is that nobody takes the Syrians seriously anymore, given the repeated violations of their sovereignty. It is doubtful the domestic security situation there has ever been this unstable.

Then he adds:

The lack of stability in Syria adds to the already-tense situation between Israel and Lebanon. Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said Sunday that weapons-smuggling from Syria to Hezbollah is continuing across the country.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that Israel is prepared to attack weapons convoys, on a background of Hezbollah efforts to equip itself with anti-aircraft missiles.

Is it possible that the American raid is a signal to Israel then?

After observing that the raid took place 5 years too late, Noah Pollak frames it in the context of the Presidential election:

What's important right now is that both candidates go on record about the raid. Should there be repeat performances -- as many as needed to impress Bashar that his days of meddling with impunity are over? Should Iran be targeted for similar strikes? Do you, Mr. Obama, view this news as an unacceptable expansion of the war that will never be countenanced in your administration, or do you believe it a vital component of a winning strategy in Iraq?

Joshua Landis writes:

The Bush administration seems to be ratcheting up action against Syria during its last days in power. The cross border raid undertaken on Sunday, which killed eight people, seems to fit into a broader pattern of the Bush administration initiating cross boarder attacks into countries that it is not officially at war with. The recent attacks in Northwest Pakistan are a case in point.

The Bush warmonger meme, which we will now doubt see quite a bit in the MSM in the coming days. The idea, as Bill Roggio wrote that there was likely as specific target, will get little attention.

Mere Rhetoric, Meryl and LGF have previously blogged this.

Juggling carnivals 10/27/08

Incoming Carnivals

Thanks to What War Zone for hosting the latest Haveil Havalim. #188 to be precise. Thanks to Jack for keeping Haveil Havalim going and being one of the longest running blog carnivals!

Thanks to Dr. Sanity for featuring a post of mine in the yesterday's Carnival of the Insanities. I see I got billing along with Israel Matzav and Judeopundit.

Musical monday #65

Elie's been bugging me to put together a list of past themes and I haven't done it yet. I hope that he didn't do this one yet. I don't think so. You know the drill. No googling. Figure out the lyrics and the theme. Check out Elie's Musical Monday #64 for the complete solution!

1 I wanna wake up in a city that doesn't sleep
2 I'm taking a greyhound on the Hudson river line
3 To the left and to the right, buildings towering to the sky
4 ... have they given up and all gone home to bed
5 I learned a lot of lessons awful quick
6 Fly down to mexico
7 When you're sleeping on the 4th floor up
8 Voices leaking from a sad cafe
9 You'd rather see me paralyzed
10 They say there's always magic in the air
11 The Movie-Palace is now undone,
12 It only comes out when the moon is on the run
13 Hello lampost
14 Straight, straight through the heart of you
15 Up and down Park Avenue
16 And I nearly died from hospitality
17 Ya know the movement seems to soothe me
18 Asking only workman's wages
19 Can you tell me now, Before I'm leaving you
20 Not even the chair
21 This guy's the one that makes you feel so safe, so sane and so secure
22 Silence please, listen to the words I say
23 She made me stop and get ahold of myself
24 ... when you're short on your dough.
25 And he keeps his pockets full of spending loot
26 Baby when we touch, Love you so much

The guys who did #19 are better known for producing #5.

Good luck and happy guessing!

Here is the solution for Musical Monday #63

1) I got pictures, got candy
Vehicle - Ides of March
2) I can lock all my doors
Cars - Gary Numan
3) Wheels take the brunt. Pinion and a rack
Cars are Cars - Paul Simon
4) I wanna be famous, a star on the screen
Drive my car - Beatles
5) You told me we live in the shadows
Don't take my car out tonight - The Hooters
6) There's a wild man, wizard,
Taxi - Harry Chapin
7) With a pink hotel, a boutique
Big yellow taxi - Joni Mitchell
8) And I don't like Star Wars
Bicycle Race - Queen
9) We'll get matching jackets and helmets too.
Motorcycle Mama - Sailcat
10) That ain't my shadow on the wall
That ain't my truck - Rhett Aikens
11) Arrows of neon and flashing marquees
Truckin' - The Grateful Dead
12) From just one kiss I am inspired
Keep on Truckin' - Eddie Kendricks, Temptations
13) the major was a lady suffragette
Jet - Wings
14) I might get rich you know I might get busted
Jet Airliner - Steve Miller Band
15) You're gonna hear electric music
Bennie and the Jets - Elton John
16) I tell you now, they don't mean a thing
Leaving on a Jet Plane - PP & M, John Denver
17) Zero hour nine a.m.
Rocket Man - Elton John
18) there's always been a quiet place to harbor you and me
Rock the boat - The Hues Corporation
19) And the gold and the cotton and pearls
Ship of fools - World Party
20) Smog will get you pretty soon.
Ship of fools - The Doors
21) I won't slave for beggars pay, likewise gold and jewels,
Ship of fools - The Grateful Dead
22) Full speed ahead, Mr. Parker, full speed ahead!
Yellow Submarine - The Beatles
23) Thinking of a sweet romance, beginning in a queue
Bus Stop - The Hollies
24) Every day I get in the queue
Magic Bus - The Who
25) Climb up in the loft sit and talk with the radio on
She thinks my tractor's sexy - Kenny Chesney
26) I put her out in a town that was so small
Chevy Van - Sammy Johns
27) So he pawned all his hopes and he even sold his old car
Midnight train to Georgia - Gladys Knight and the Pips
28) Then you left me, said you felt trapped
Train in vain - The Clash
29) goodbye pretty mama, get yourself a money man
Train, train - Blackfoot
30) On a cloud of sound I drift in the night
Magic carpet ride - Steppenwolf
31) Was the dark of the moon on the sixth of june
Convoy - C.W. McCall
32) Who's gonna plug their ears when you scream
Drive - The Cars

Congratulation to Clayton for getting the answer first. (I was thinking "vehicle" but "methods of transportation" would be accurate too!)

Alfred Lilienthal eulogized

"j." formerly the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, currently has an article that goes about "Remembering the foremost Jewish anti-Zionist." He "loved San Francisco," hated Israel, and wrote that the Diary of Anne Frank "could not possibly have been the work of a teenager."

It was a simple death notice in the Washington Post: "Author, and Middle East expert, Alfred M. Lilienthal, age 94, died peacefully Monday, October 6, at his home in Washington, D.C."

He may have died peacefully, but Alfred's life was hardly peaceful. I know because I was his cousin, as well as his friend. [...]

Alfred once worked for the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism. They let him go because his views were so passionately pro-Arab and anti-Israel that even fellow ACJ members were offended. In later years, he offered to endow a chair at one of his alma maters, Cornell University. But he attached so many strings that Cornell turned down the gift.

He spoke at anti-Zionist gatherings in Libya and Iraq in the 1970s, and championed the United Nations "Zionism is racism" resolution in 1975. Sadly, he also became involved with Holocaust deniers, going so far as to write, "'The Diary of Anne Frank' may be a fraud. ...Any informed literary inspection would have shown it could not possibly have been the work of a teenager."

Alfred loved San Francisco and traveled to the city with great frequency. As his own activism increased, San Francisco was a natural destination as it was a center of anti-Zionism. The ACJ claimed that one-third of its national membership was from San Francisco. [...]

The article doesn't quite note the glee with which Neo-Nazis hawked his writings. "I am glad his views did not prevail," the author concludes.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Anti-abortion democrats

There's a fascinating article in the NYT about a certain kind of Democrat who are making headway in Republican districts.

The anti-abortion pitch is standard fare in Alabama's Second Congressional District, a deeply conservative area that President Bush carried twice and that has been represented in Washington by a Republican for four decades.

What makes the spot unusual is that Mr. Bright is a Democrat. And that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has been pushing hard for Mr. Bright's election, paid for it.

It's fascinating, but there's more:

Kelli Conlin, the president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, called the recruitment strategy misguided, saying that surveys conducted by her organization showed that even some Republicans express support for abortion rights when her group described the consequences of outlawing the procedure.

"The movement to recruit anti-choice candidates ignores the larger reality that this is a pro-choice nation," she said. "It misses the larger point." (Polls show a divided nation on the issue: A 2008 CNN-Opinion Research poll found that 53 percent of Americans characterized themselves as "pro-choice," versus 44 as "pro-life;" a 2007 poll by the same organization showed the numbers reversed, 45-50.)

This isn't quite right. Well yes a majority of the nation is pro-choice, but that doesn't necessarily mean what the National Institute for Reproductive Health or Planned Parenthood or NARAL claims that it means.

If you looked at polling you'd see that American's largely do not believe that abortion with no limits is a good idea. Here's a summary of Gallup's polling on the topic.

The most controversial aspect of the abortion issue for Americans is abortion in the first trimester. "Pro-life" Americans widely denounce this, while "pro-choice" Americans widely support it. Both sides agree abortion should generally be illegal in the later stages of pregnancy.

Though this summary doesn't have it, the numbers I've usually seen have about 60% of the population objecting to second trimester abortions and over 80% objecting to third trimester abortions. When the subject is "partial-birth" aboriton, though, the rate of opposition is even higher.

It's funny that when second and third trimester abortions are reported on, you rarely see them modified as "extremely unpopular." That's reserved for the war in Iraq.

In fact one thing that you'll notice about polls is that they only get reported if they support the view of the reporter or news service. (You only read about public support of the death penalty when there's some indication of decline.)

The presence of pro-life Democrats is a reflection of the popular belief that the right to abortion should not be unfettered and that some reasonable limits are called for.

via memeorandum

Chomsky: US public opinion "overwhelmingly holds that Iran should have the right to develop nuclear energy"

What greater spokesman for the American people could there be than Chomsky?

The American people support Iran's right to enrich uranium and are "strongly opposed" to issuing any military threats against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program, said a leading US foreign policy expert in an exclusive phone interview with IRNA in Berlin on Saturday.

Noam Chomsky lashed out at western media reports saying Tehran was "defying the world" over its nuclear program.

"That's a funny definition of the 'world'. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), for example which is the majority of countries, endorses Iran's right to enrich uranium," said Chomsky.

"Now nobody thinks they have the right to develop nuclear weapons, however that's different issue. But the majority of the (American) population agrees (on Iran's right to enrich uranium)," he added.

Iran has repeatedly stressed that having nuclear arms would be against its Islamic teachings and laws.

The distinguished 80-year-old professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said, "Public opinion here overwhelmingly holds that Iran should have the right to develop nuclear energy..."

Chomsky reaffirmed also that Iran was "of course entitled to uranium enrichment as a member of the NPT." [...]

"Nobody is seriously concerned about Iranian aggression. There has been no sign of any. But they are upset about Iran's influence in the region. Also in the background is the concern that Iran might turn East. That's not discussed very much but that's certainly a policy concern," the feisty US political dissident added. [...]

Iran has dissidents also, but somehow I don't think they are cheered very much by the "feisty" views of their American colleague.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

If you're not angry you haven't been paying attention

I've the bumper sticker with the phrase "If you're not angry you haven't been paying attention" around a bit over the past few years. I'm assuming it's an anti-Bush mantra. I think that it's wrong in that case, but it's 100% about the upcoming American election.

So here's some advice. Do you want to be informed?

Check out the latest post from In Context, Sponge Mode for links to 5 excellent articles about different aspects of the election.

And if that's not enough, Check out Gateway Pundit's Confirmed: MSM Holds Video Of Barack Obama Attending Jew-Bash & Toasting a Former PLO Operative... Refuse to Release the Video!

(h/t LGF)

And if that's not enough please check out "In what kind of nation, do the media investigate critics more than candidates?" at Daled Amos.

Please understand that we are being poorly served by our media. The information that would allow the electorate to make an informed choice has been withheld or distorted. These articles will fill in some of the blanks.

But don't just read these articles. If you know an undecided voter, send these articles to her. If you know someone who is supporting Sen. Obama but not strongly, consider sending them to him.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Council speak 10/26/08

The Council has spoken.

On the council side Bookworm Room's Why Obama's "share the wealth" argument should hurt him , which provided background of "spread the wealth around." The runner up was my The Washington Post chooses hope ahead of substance

On the non-council side:
The wnning entry was The Comprehensive Argument Against Barack Obama The runner up was my submission, "In what kind of nation, do the media investigate critics more than candidates?", which was a round up of the media response to Joe the plumber.

Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks for the support for my entries!

watcher's council.

Is This Why The Press Is In The Tank For Obama?

In Obama's Ever-Changing Story About Ayers, I quoted JustOneMinute who suggests

it seems to me that since Obama is covering something up he has become indebted to people (such as Bill Ayers) who are abetting that cover-up. What favors are acruing here, and how deeply does the Chicago machine have their hooks into Obama? I don't think we will find out by ignoring this.

Now I see that Mark Steyn refers to a Michelle Malkin post to suggest that the debt may be in the opposite direction:

The reason the press are going to such shameless lengths to drag Obama across the finish line is because he's their last best hope at restoring the old media environment, including a new Unfairness Doctrine for radio, and regulation of the Internet.

Brian C. Anderson writes in The New York Post:

Yes, the Obama campaign said some months back that the candidate doesn't seek to re-impose this regulation, which, until Ronald Reagan's FCC phased it out in the 1980s, required TV and radio broadcasters to give balanced airtime to opposing viewpoints or face steep fines or even loss of license. But most Democrats - including party elders Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Al Gore - strongly support the idea of mandating "fairness."

Would a President Obama veto a new Fairness Doctrine if Congress enacted one? It's doubtful.

Read the whole thing.

It's an idea--though the beneficiaries would be, as Steyn himself points out, the radio and the Internet and not the press per se. 

by Daled Amos

Stop the Presses!! (Obama lives across the street from a Shul)

This is one of the sillier Daily Kos diaries I've seen, and that's saying something:

[...] They dropped a whopping $1.6 million for a six bedroom house in the northern end of Hyde Park. OK -- that might seem like a lot of money for most of us, but that's not the big shocker here. It's not that extravagant for a U.S. Senator and best-selling author.

The really shocking information -- that revelation that will put to rest the anti-Semitic rumors:

The Obama's new house is across the street from a synagogue!! [Bold in original]

Let me say that again: The Obama's new house is across the street from a synagogue . . .

Where do the Obamas live? Across the street from a synagogue.... [Italics in original]

Yes, they deliberately moved to a house that is literally across the street from a local center of Jewish culture -- a house of Jewish worship! Perhaps, this reflects some naivete -- they might not have realized how difficult it would be to find street parking on the Jewish High Holidays. Still, it seems hard to argue that a true anti-Semite would invest such a princely sum to buy a home across the street from a synagogue.

So, the next time you talk to a Jewish relative about the election and they say he's anti-Semitic, just tell them he moved into a nice house across the street from a synagogue in Hyde Park. What kind of anti-Semite spends seven figures to buy a home across the street from a synagogue?

Why . . . why . . . they'll be davening Shacharis there!! Maybe there's a Gemara shiur in the morning and just across the street Obama will be finishing his morning waffle. What's wrong with you Jewish Republicans?

Crossposted on Judeopundit

First blood

Former National Security adviser, Robert MacFarlane wrote about the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut and its aftermath. Apparently, the United States had a response planned against Hezbollah targets in the Bekaa Valley, but it was aborted.

Cabinet officers often disagree, and rigorous debate and refinement often lead to better policy. What is intolerable, however, is irresolution. In this case the president allowed the refusal by his secretary of defense to carry out a direct order to go by without comment -- an event which could have seemed to Mr. Weinberger only a vindication of his judgment. Faced with the persistent refusal of his secretary of defense to countenance a more active role for the marines, the president withdrew them, sending the terrorists a powerful signal of paralysis within our government and missing an early opportunity to counter the Islamist terrorist threat in its infancy.

It's a pretty strong indictment of Caspar Weinberger and implicitly of President Reagan.

The Donovan lists the 241 servicemen who were killed. Two years ago Ocean Guy related a more personal recollection of the attack.

If the United Stataes had struck, would it have sent the forestalled the growth of radical Islam in the past quarter century?

Crossposted on Yourish.

Jewish democrats anonymous

My name is David.

I am a reformed Jewish Democrat.

I used to be a Democrat. That's how I first registered. It was necessary if I were to vote in local elections. Sometime in the 80's, a friend prevailed upon me to change my registration. Since then, except for a brief time when I changed my registration for a local election, I have been a Republican.

As a Republican I obviously was more sympathetic to the views of Sen. McCain than I was to any of the Democratic candidates for President.

But what I waited for after the Democratic nomination was a positive reason to vote for Sen. Obama. It never came.

Sen. Obama's supporters treated Jews who did not want to vote for him as mentally deficient at best or, at worst, racist. Obviously, if we didn't want to vote for Senator Obama it was because of those e-mails that claimed he was a Muslim. It had nothing to do with his willing twenty year association with an antisemitic preacher.

And obviously, if we looked at his voting record, AIPAC gave him great grades for his commitment to Israel. But we shouldn't look at his association with Rashid Khalidi or his statement that being pro-Israel doesn't mean being pro-Likud.

And just as obviously he was pro-Israel because the closely associated J-Street folks said that he was pro-peace and thus pro-Israel. The folks on J-Street's advisory board include Henry Siegman who never met an Arab dictator - Hafez Assad of Syria and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia are two - who didn't want peace more than those Israelis; Debra Delee of Americans for Peace Now, whose group sees that more territorial concessions from Israel will bring peace just like the withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza did; anti-Zionist ex-Israelis like Avraham Burg and self-professed post-Zionists like Yossi Beilin. Yes, I'd figure that these folks would have Israel's best interests in mind.

The condescension with which the Jewish non-supporters of Sen. Obama have been treated by the his campaign and its surrogates has been appalling. I don't remember another presidential campaign where the effort to marginalize the Jewish vote has been so heavy handed.

Yes I was once a Jewish Democrat.

But I'm over it now.

On the one hand there's the nyt, on the other, there's reality (krauthammer)

Predictably The New York Times endorsed Sen. Obama for President. It doesn't suffer from the intellectual dishonesty of the Washington Post's endorsement, rather it suffers from the Times's detachment from reality.

I can't know if Charles Krauthammer got an early copy of the Times's endorsement, but his endorsement of McCain ( or here or here - via Contentions) refutes just about every overwrought claim made by the Times.

The Times endorsement starts with this laughable paragraph.

Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation's future truly hangs in the balance.

And of course the Times then launches into a rant that makes "hyperbole" seem like understatement.

The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush's failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens -- whether they are fleeing a hurricane's floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable

The bottom line is that whenever the United States stands up for itself, it will cause some resentment. So the question is whether our leader will stand up for us, or allow other countries to veto what may be best for us.

And it takes a special kind of chutzpah to blame the "preventable" financial crisis on the Bush administration (and John McCain) when they were asking for tighter regulation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which are at the center of the crisis.

Anyway, here's Charles Krauthammer (sort of) fisking the Times.

The NYT:

Mr. Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation's problems.

In the same time, Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism. His policies and worldview are mired in the past. His choice of a running mate so evidently unfit for the office was a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed the accomplishments of 26 years in Congress.

Krauthammer:

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the past year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

NYT:

Given the particularly ugly nature of Mr. McCain's campaign, the urge to choose on the basis of raw emotion is strong. But there is a greater value in looking closely at the facts of life in America today and at the prescriptions the candidates offer. The differences are profound.
...
Mr. Obama has withstood some of the toughest campaign attacks ever mounted against a candidate. He's been called un-American and accused of hiding a secret Islamic faith. The Republicans have linked him to domestic terrorists and questioned his wife's love of her country. Ms. Palin has also questioned millions of Americans' patriotism, calling Republican-leaning states "pro-America."

This politics of fear, division and character assassination helped Mr. Bush drive Mr. McCain from the 2000 Republican primaries and defeat Senator John Kerry in 2004. It has been the dominant theme of his failed presidency.

Krauthammer:

Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

NYT:

Mr. Obama was an early and thoughtful opponent of the war in Iraq, and he has presented a military and diplomatic plan for withdrawing American forces. Mr. Obama also has correctly warned that until the Pentagon starts pulling troops out of Iraq, there will not be enough troops to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Krauthammer:

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

NYT:

Mr. Obama wants to reform the United Nations, while Mr. McCain wants to create a new entity, the League of Democracies -- a move that would incite even fiercer anti-American furies around the world.

Unfortunately, Mr. McCain, like Mr. Bush, sees the world as divided into friends (like Georgia) and adversaries (like Russia). He proposed kicking Russia out of the Group of 8 industrialized nations even before the invasion of Georgia. We have no sympathy for Moscow's bullying, but we also have no desire to replay the cold war. The United States must find a way to constrain the Russians' worst impulses, while preserving the ability to work with them on arms control and other vital initiatives.

Krauthammer:

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

NYT:

The nation's problems are simply too grave to be reduced to slashing "robo-calls" and negative ads. This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of those qualities.

Krauthammer:

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

(Note: I roughly followed the order of the Times endorsement, but some parts are out of place. I have links to both articles, so you can read each or either in full. And Krauthammer didn't necessarily address every single argument of the Times. Still he seemed to anticipate most of them.)

"Botch Your Mother's Operation Day" suggested as response to "Hit a Jew Day"

Now they've gone and done it:

A number of students reportedly sustained minor injuries, and one child was slapped in the face, during "Hit a Jew Day," an activity organized by sixth-graders at the Parkway West Middle School in Chesterfield. About 35 Jewish students are believed to attend the 850-student school.

The incident came as part of an unofficial "spirit week" that began innocently with "Hug a Friend Day" and "High Five Day." School officials said that during "Hit a Jew Day," most students were only tapped on the shoulders or back, but one student allegedly was slapped.

Principal Lindo Lelonek called an assembly Tuesday to address the incident. Lelonek said discipline will range from parent conferences to suspensions. Four or five students reportedly are involved.[...]

It is expected that Lelonek will be informed of the possibly calamitous consequences of an insufficient disciplinary response shortly. Sixth-graders are a bit young to have access to the full range of available punitive medical and international financial options, but most of them have elder siblings.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Geldof leads the cheers

Instapundit notes that once again former Boomtown Rat, Bob Geldoff has gone to bat for Bush, but observes:

The press will tell the story eventually. But not until after the election.

A few weeks ago, the Boston Globe ran an op-ed about Bush's African legacy:

Africa has received $3.5 billion in additional funds from Bush's Millennium Challenge Corporation initiative, which rewards poor countries that encourage economic growth, govern well, and provide social services for their people. The president's HIV/AIDS program, principally focused on providing Africans with anti-retroviral drugs to treat the disease (1.7 million people are on the therapy), has been such a success that the program has been extended to 2015 at $48 billion. His five-year, $1.2 billion effort to combat malaria has provided 4 million insecticide-treated bed nets and 7 million drug therapies to vulnerable people.

The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, approved in 2000 and reauthorized in expanded form in 2004, provides trade benefits with the United States for 40 African countries that have implemented reforms to encourage economic growth. Since 2001, US exports to Africa have more than doubled to $14 billion a year, while African exports to the United States more than tripled to $67 billion, of which $3.4 billion has been in goods other than oil. USAID has provided more than $500 million in trade capacity building for poor countries to access international markets, which is the only way Africa will escape the poverty that has for too long oppressed the continent.

While Bush's critics have given him little credit for his African initiatives, they will be among his most enduring legacies in a region of the world neglected by policymakers from both parties for too long. Africans will long remember what Bush' critics have ignored.

(h/t Sarcasitpundit)

Of course it isn't just the media at fault, as Instapundit quoted Geldof lecturing the President back in February.

It's called marketing. Something you obviously have no clue about or else I wouldn't have to be here telling people your Africa story'

I blogged about this earlier here.

Ya think?

Ad Week recently had a featured article on one of the most successful advertising campaigns in history.

But coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable--and has become more so over time. In the six weeks following the conventions through the final debate, unfavorable stories about McCain outweighed favorable ones by a factor of more than three to one--the most unfavorable of all four candidates--according to the study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

For Obama during this period, just over a third of the stories were clearly positive in tone (36%), while a similar number (35%) were neutral or mixed. A smaller number (29%) were negative.

For McCain, by comparison, nearly six in ten of the stories studied were decidedly negative in nature (57%), while fewer than two in ten (14%) were positive.

Whoops, that wasn't Ad Week, it was the Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism. (How you have the words "excellence" and "journalism" in the same title is beyond me.)

That's a newsflash for you, the media is biased.

LGF:

It's just something that sort of happens, I guess, and the media reports on it like they report everything else, without any sense of responsibility or embarrassment. Then they go right back to writing hit pieces.

(via memeorandum)

Given that the newspapers surveyed will undoubtedly all endorse (or have already endorsed) Sen. Obama, this is is one more piece of evidence that the "wall" between the editorial and reporting staffs of newspapers is largely a myth. The reporters look for the stories that will support the editorial position of the paper.

While there's no doubt that the markets hurt Sen. McCain, is there anything in Sen. Obama's performance to show that he could handle the meltdown other than his legendary unflappability?

So it comes down to PR that comes not from the campaigns, but from the supposedly neutral arbiters of our society.

Wow, so the media did a study and showed that it's biased during the time that Sen. McCain slid in the polls. Who would have thought?

Crossposted on Yourish.

Submitted 10/23/08

Watcher's Council submissions for this week are now up!
The Colossus of Rhodey - Don't know much about history? The media sure doesn't - Read it and learn something new from Hube. In general he shows that the Bill of Rights originally applied to the federal government and that only in more recent times has it come to be applied to states. This post is about this applies to the separation of church and state.
Joshuapundit - Kicking The Rats Off The Ship - Joshuapundit has had it with conservatives who are down on the McCain ticket because of his choice of Sarah Palin to be his running mate. I agree that this antipathy stems from some rather blatant elitism rather than a look at her record.
The Razor - If Obama Wins... Part 2 - Following up on last week's excellent post the Razor looks at what President Obama might be expected to do in terms of the budget and judiciary. This is measured speculation at what he would be able to do not what he would want to do. As a contrast he links to Roger Kimball's hypothetical scenario. Mickey Kaus gives an example from Sen. Obama's experience as law review editor that would bode well for his administration. (h/t Instapundit)
Cheat-Seeking Missiles - Media Bias #89 - The Audacity Of Inexperience - Like me Cheat Seeking Missiles looks at a Washington Post article about Sen. Obama. His is a news story and he speculates how the same folks who judge Sarah Palin might have reacted if his (and his wife's) political choices had been made by Republicans.
The Glittering Eye - Unforeseen Secondary Effects - The Glittering Eye looks at Hawaii's abortive attempt to provide universal healthcare for children and observes that if it can't work in Hawaii, don't expect it to work nationwide. More on the Hawaii experiment at Baseball Crank:

Wow, if you give something away for free, people won't want to pay for it anymore! Nobody could possibly have seen that one coming.

and health insurance at Jeff Jacoby.
Hillbilly White Trash - Biden screws up and tells the truth - Hillbilly White Trash comments on Biden's "crisis" gaffe. He argues that if there's another major terror attack against American interests:

Then again Obama will have a massive crisis on his hands - which will be explaining why this kind of thing didn't happen after 9/11 when Bush was president and our troops were fighting Islamofascists on Middle Eastern soil but is now happening again on his watch.

I commented on the Biden statement here. Michael Ledeen covers it here. One possibility he presents is that Biden is simply presenting conventional wisdom that would occur with any new occupant of the White House. (h/t Instapundit)
Bookworm Room - Why Obama's "share the wealth" argument should hurt him - Bookworm Room gives some nice background to explain why the socialism implied in Sen. Obama's "spread the wealth" comment sprung up in Europe.
Rhymes With Right - Some Sense From The Pentagon - Rhymes with Right brings good news that PC-ness has been rejected at the Pentagon.
Soccer Dad - The Washington Post chooses hope ahead of substance - I critique the Washington Post's endorsement of Sen. Obama. For such a strong endorsement there are an awful lot of qualifiers.

On the non-council side, I recommended Daled Amos's "In what kind of nation, do the media investigate critics more than candidates?" stringing incidents where those who question Sen. Obama receive unwanted scrutiny.

Bookworm Room submitted The Comprehensive Argument Against Barack Obama. You don't need to watch the videos, just read the text. I also wanted to add that in the section about abortion, the observation about how unpopular the idea of unfettered access to abortion is in this country. If you ever see polls on the topic, a majority of those polled are against second trimester abortions. Even more object to third trimester abortions. That's why the pro-abortion crowd uses the scare tactics they do. Of course the MSM doesn't regularly quote polls that show that Americans object to their accepted worldview.

Read. Enjoy. Be informed.

Inviting a crisis

Michael Kinsley said that a gaffe is when a politician speaks the truth. If that's so, I suppose Sen. Biden's recent statement about there being an international crisis withing six months of Sen. Obama's election as president would qualify as one.

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

(h/t LGF)

Of course, Biden has to show that this will be because some countries will want to test the new president's mettle. He doesn't suggest that the Sen. Obama's may invite this crisis.

However, Elder of Ziyon recently observed that Iran welcomed Sen. Obama's initiative to talk with them with no preconditions, if only he would apologize to Iran and come begging.

The frontrunner for President of the United States looks as if he is begging to negotiate with Iran, and Iran appears to be considering granting that wish if only the lowly US works a little harder at its begging.

As Barry Rubin shows, though, Sen Obama's statement (and the belief so prevalent in the media and in "sophisticated" foreign policy circles) that reaching out to Iran can only bring good, is not just naive, it is historically ignorant.

"I have been involved in the search for the elusive Iranian moderate for 30 years." Then Gates revealed what was actually said at Brzezinski's meeting, in which he participated, summarizing Brzezinski's position as follows:

"We will accept your revolution....We will recognize your government. We will sell you all the weapons that we had contracted to sell the Shah....We can work together in the future."

The Iranians demanded the United States turn over to them the fugitive Shah, who they would have executed. Brzezinski refused. Three days later Iran seized the embassy and forever changed the Middle East. The road thus paved led to the Iran-Iraq and Iraq-Kuwait wars, the power of Hamas and Hizballah, September 11, 2001, and a great deal more. Many thousands would die due to American timidity and Iranian aggressiveness.

Had the United States been a mean bully in its treatment of the new Islamist Iran? The On the contrary, Washington did everything possible to negotiate, conciliate, and build confidence. We'll do almost anything you want, Carter and Brzezinski offered, just be our friend. Far from being appeased Iran demanded such a total humiliation--turning over the fatally ill, deposed Shah for execution--even that administration couldn't accept it.

Biden's statement is a refreshing reminder of the dangers that await the United States should his ticket win the election. Biden, though, probably didn't think he was admitting as much.

Crossposted at Yourish.

Is This The End???

by Daled Amos

Colorful maples

In late summer I like crape myrtles. In April and May I like the dogwoods blooming.

This time of year, I like maples.

I walked around the neighborhood to get pictures of the maples. Maples seem to do the nicest job of turning colors. This was a nice contrast between the orange and the regular green in the foreground.

I loved this deep red.

I looked up and saw this.

Here are two more shots of that tree.

And here's a leaf

This one was across the street.

Here's a closeup of a remaining crape flower and, I think, seed.

And in fall the dogwoods don't look nearly so impressive.

Building the terrorists' confidence

A possible smuggling tunnel was just discovered under the city of Hebron. Explosives from that tunnel were removed by the PA police who then alerted Israeli officials. That makes it the perfect time to give the PA even more control over Hebron!

On Wednesday, IDF regional commanders and Civil Administration head Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai will meet with their Palestinian counterparts to finalize details ahead of the planned deployment - possibly later this week - of 700 Palestinian policemen in Hebron.

Barak has presented the plan to US security coordinators for the region Generals Keith Dayton and James Jones, as well as to Quartet envoy Tony Blair, senior defense officials told The Jerusalem Post.

Following the deployment in Hebron, the Defense Ministry is also considering adopting the "Jenin model" in Nablus, Tulkarm and Kalkilya.

This would be called a confidence building measure as it gives the terrorist organizations masquerading as Palestinian government even more confidence that they can carry out their unholy work unmolested.

And let's not forget that Iran is reportedly exerting greater influence in Judea and Samaria.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Tunnel watch

Interesting story from the Jerusalem Post, but how should I feel about it?
Should I be encouraged by this?

The 150-meter-long tunnel was discovered by Palestinian Authority security forces on Monday and was immediately reported to the IDF, which sent an Engineering Corps force to destroy the structure.

IDF sources and defense officials said Tuesday that the tunnel had been found empty and that it was unclear what its purpose was.

Or discouraged by this?

The Post learned on Thursday, however, that several hundred kilograms of explosives and arms were found in a branch of the tunnel and that the PA security forces confiscated it before informing the IDF of the discovery.

Israel Matzav says I should be discouraged:

Let's stop right there for a minute. WHERE did all of those weapons go? Obviously, back to the 'Palestinians' who put them there, which shows us all the limits of 'Palestinian' cooperation with the IDF and the security forces

Plus he shares some informed speculation what the purpose of the tunnel was.

This is the second recent escalation in the business of tunneling. Hmm, will the PA follow the lead of Hamas and start regulating them?

Seriously though, this suggests that Hamas is exporting its tunneling technology to PA areas.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Juggling carnival 10/20/08

Incoming Carnivals

Thanks to Creating a Jubilee County for including a post of mine in this week's Carnival of Maryland. While you're there check out posts from Pillage Idiot and Monoblogue, Maryland Politics Today, GOPinion Plus and many other fine Maryland bloggers. And don't forget the great photos at the Ridger.

Haveil Havalim #187, the Jewish blogging carnival is up at I'll Call Baila. I thought Leora's post on the history of Jews in Iran was especially interesting. Plus there's a new category of Jewish hair.

And thanks to Dr. Sanity for featuring a post of mine at this week's Carnival of the Insanities. Also featured are posts at Gateway Pundit, American is an Obamanation, Miriam's Ideas, Fausta's blog and Israel Matzav. Betsy's Page provides a fine response to this Washington Post editorial.

blog carnivals.

Thinking the right thoughts

William Kristol on the arrogance of the elites:

Why do elites like to proclaim premature closure -- not just in elections, but also in wars and in social struggles? Because it makes them the imperial arbiters, or at least the perspicacious announcers, of what history is going to bring. This puts the elite prognosticators ahead of the curve, ahead of the simple-minded people who might entertain the delusion that they still have a choice.

I'm thinking mostly of the MSM, though Kristol is referring to a more general elite. It's hard not to get the impression when I read the Washington Post or the New York Times that I could be open-minded individual, if I just adopted all the premises they did. There's something perverse about defining open-mindedness by attaching it to the belief in certain ideas.

Kind of like the man Jay Nordlinger just wrote about.

(via memeorandum)

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin adds:

In this election more than most, the MSM has become trapped by their own narrative. After all, if the MSM barons have intoned that Joe the Plumber is a dolt, Sarah Palin was a tragic error and Barack Obama won every debate, it simply isn't possible that Obama could lose, is it? Well, aside from the potential for secretive racism - which is trotted out at every turn -- there's nothing to prevent Obama from sailing to victory.

(via memeorandum)

As she states, her point isn't that Sen. Obama won't win or isn't likely to win. It's that when the media is so invested in the victory they can't reasonably see any other outcome. That's the problem when the referee takes sides.

Abbas the messenger boy?

Both the Hashmonean and Shira Bat Sarah noted this story in comments.

The first mention was in Ha'aretz:

U.S. President George W. Bush has apparently offered his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, to press Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights if Damascus promises to cut its relations with Iran, the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jareida reported on Friday.

According to the report, Bush made the offer in a handwritten letter transferred to Assad by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The second was in Ynet:

"In the letter, Bush suggested finalizing the agreement within several weeks, before the US presidential elections, in order to push the Middle East peace process, an achievement the president will be able to proudly present before leaving the White House in January."

The same source added that the delegation accompanying Abbas on his visit to Syria "was unaware of the letter or its details, and the US insisted that this be carried out secretly and far away from the official channels."

The newspaper went on to report that the American ambassador to Damascus was not informed about the issue as well.

I'm not familiar with all the protocols of diplomatic contacts but this seems highly irregular. While I'll acknowledge that in many ways President Bush has been a disappointment when it comes to Israel, this suggests that he has totally rejected deeply held beliefs that have held sway over much of his term in office.

Why would anyone trust a secret letter to Abbas, someone whose own standing is somewhat in doubt? Wouldn't such a message be given to a Syrian envoy rather than to another (nominal) head of state?

And of course Abbas or someone close to him would have a reason to fabricate this letter. They'd be suggesting that Israel ought to deal with Syria - and by extension, Abbas - before it is forced to. This news story seems to be taken from David Landau's "rape" fantasy.

Joshua Landis, not someone I'd usually quote, also finds the story incredible.

The following Haaretz report sounds completely untrustworthy. How could Abbas and his entourage be "unaware of the content of Bush's letter," for Assad and yet the Palestinian who has presumably leaked the contents to Haaretz was in the know? How could Jack Khoury publish something that sounds so improbably silly?

He writes that Ha'aretz has retracted the story, but links to the original article.

Like I wrote above, President Bush has been something of a disappointment regarding Israel, but promising to pressure Israel over the Golan in order to wean Syria away from Iran seems a bit much. And the claim from Abbas or someone near him is just not credible.

Crossposted on Yourish.

The washington post endorses hope ahead of substance

For a short time I was taken by this argument in NRO:

In the eyes of the Post, Obama has been wrong about the biggest and most pressing foreign policy decision facing the country, and continues to double down on a wrong position. Can they endorse a man who they have concluded is "ultimately indifferent to the war's outcome"?

Subsequent editorials, have disabused me of the notion that the editors were anything but cheerleaders for Sen. Obama. In fact just a few days ago, I interpreted a Fred Hiatt column as saying that he'd rather that McCain lose without pointing out the weaknesses of Sen. Obama. I predicted then that he was laying the groundwork for his paper's eventual endorsement of the junior senator from Illinois. (And yes Maryland Conservatarian is vindicated.)

The Post's endorsement of Sen. Obama reeks of hypocrisy. There was no way they could make this endorsement and continue to claim any level of intellectual honesty. So it begins.

THE NOMINATING process this year produced two unusually talented and qualified presidential candidates. There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president.

(via memeorandum)

If they respected John McCain, this endorsement would not be made "without ambivalence." They only respected him as (VDH put it as) a "maverick loser."

This endorsement includes the following phrases about the endorsee "Mr. Obama's economic plan contains its share of unaffordable promises ... he has been less definitive than we would like ... Mr. Obama has disparaged the McCain proposal in deceptive ways ... we question whether his plan is affordable or does enough to contain costs ... His team overstates the likelihood that either of those can produce dramatically better results ... Mr. Obama's greatest deviation from current policy is also our biggest worry ... We also can only hope that the alarming anti-trade rhetoric we have heard from Mr. Obama during the campaign would give way to the understanding ... a cause that Mr. Obama injured when he broke his promise to accept public financing in the general election campaign ... Mr. Obama's résumé is undoubtedly thin ... We had hoped, throughout this long campaign, to see more evidence that Mr. Obama might stand up to Democratic orthodoxy."

In other words, there's plenty of ambivalence. Of course I've cherry picked these comments, but they are substantial. The editors of the Post just don't have the intellectual honesty to say that these doubts alongside a thin resume add up to a disqualification to serve in the most powerful position in the world.

As Max Boot and Beldar have pointed out, the editors of the Washington Post have the audacity to place their bet on Sen. Obama based on nothing more than hope. They're hoping that on a number critical issues he will act differently from his announced positions.

Going back to the endorsement of Senator Obama, look at the positives the Post writes about Senator McCain.

Over the years, he has been a force for principle and bipartisanship. He fought to recognize Vietnam, though some of his fellow ex-POWs vilified him for it. He stood up for humane immigration reform, though he knew Republican primary voters would punish him for it. He opposed torture and promoted campaign finance reform, a cause that Mr. Obama injured when he broke his promise to accept public financing in the general election campaign. Mr. McCain staked his career on finding a strategy for success in Iraq when just about everyone else in Washington was ready to give up. We think that he, too, might make a pretty good president.

There's a "but" coming, obviously. Still these are instances that in any other circumstance would the Post would hail as "courageous" and likely be the basis of an endorsement. Here's a guy who stood on principle to do the right thing and bring about a good conclusion to a bad situation.

As noted above, the Post, which considers Iraq one of the most important foreign policy issues, has criticized Sen. Obama more than once for his stance on Iraq. The current domestic crisis that is in the spotlight is financial. So why does the Post think that Sen. Obama will handle it better?

Overshadowing all of these policy choices may be the financial crisis and the recession it is likely to spawn. It is almost impossible to predict what policies will be called for by January, but certainly the country will want in its president a combination of nimbleness and steadfastness -- precisely the qualities Mr. Obama has displayed during the past few weeks. When he might have been scoring political points against the incumbent, he instead responsibly urged fellow Democrats in Congress to back Mr. Bush's financial rescue plan. He has surrounded himself with top-notch, experienced, centrist economic advisers -- perhaps the best warranty that, unlike some past presidents of modest experience, Mr. Obama will not ride into town determined to reinvent every policy wheel. Some have disparaged Mr. Obama as too cool, but his unflappability over the past few weeks -- indeed, over two years of campaigning -- strikes us as exactly what Americans might want in their president at a time of great uncertainty.

First of all, whatever the degree the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played in the crisis, their collapses were largely the result of Democratic actions (and inactions.) Here's Stuart Taylor, no Republican:

A leading illustration of this Democrat-GSE symbiosis came in summer 2005. The Senate Banking Committee adopted a bill to impose tighter regulation on Fannie and Freddie, with all Republicans voting for it. But the Democrats voted against it in committee and killed it on the floor.

Also in 2005, Fannie and Freddie began buying vast amounts of subprime and "alt-A" mortgages with, in many cases, virtually no down payments, that had been taken out by people with low credit scores and low incomes relative to their monthly payments. To finance more and more affordable housing, as leading Democrats, and some Republicans, had urged, the GSEs dramatically lowered their traditional underwriting standards.

Between 2005 and 2007, Fannie and Freddie "sold out the taxpayers" by financing almost $1 trillion in such highly risky mortgages, according to "The Last Trillion Dollar Commitment: The Destruction of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," a carefully researched essay posted on the conservative American Enterprise Institute's website by Peter Wallison of AEI and Charles Calomiris of Columbia Business School.

So while the Post praises Sen. Obama for his role in addressing the problem, it ignores his role in the exacerbation of the problem. In endorsing him, the Post is not only telling us to trust him to do the right thing now, but is effectively advocating putting the government in control of the political party that made sure that problems in the financial sector would become a crisis.

And in praising Sen. Obama, the endorsement also ignores Sen. McCain's more substantial effort to pass the bailout bill. It was an effort that the Post derided. Sen. McCain didn't just ask Republicans to vote for the President's bill, he helped shape the bill and secure Republican support. (I'm not addressing the merits or faults of the bailout bill, but if Obama's tepid support of the bill is a reason to endorse him, how is McCain's more substantial work on behalf of the bill ignored?) "Unflappability" is neither substance nor an accomplishment.

I'd like to point out two other endorsements of the Post's that contrast with the logic its editors showed in endorsing Sen. Obama.

Two years ago an experienced white legislator took on a less experienced black politician in the Senate race in Maryland. Here's what the Post's editorial had to write about the challenger:

The other candidate, Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, deploys platitudes and gauzy rhetoric to disguise a tissue-thin grasp of policy.

What's interesting is that on a couple of issues, that I'm aware of, Mr. Steele showed some knowledge that his opponent (and current Senator) Benjamin Cardin did not. For example, On Meet the Press, Cardin insisted on bringing troops home from Iraq and that there was no way to fix the situation. If the administration had followed Cardin's plan, there would have been no surge. On the other hand Steele said that the current strategy (two years ago) needed to change. So who was right on Iraq?

And even as the Post endorsement of Cardin two years ago mentions that he occasionally deviated from the Democratic party line, it's very clear that Cardin is no independent.

Still the Post's easy dismissal of Steele contrasts with its indulgence of Sen. Obama. If they didn't fundamentally agree with Sen. Obama, the Post's editors would have had to have dealt with the statements of his that they don't agree with instead of simply hoping that he doesn't mean what he says.

It's interesting that the Post faults John McCain for:

And we find no way to square his professed passion for America's national security with his choice of a running mate who, no matter what her other strengths, is not prepared to be commander in chief.

Never mind, for a moment as Don Surber put it:

Democrats nominated an inexperienced but cute senator who won't just be a heartbeat from the presidency; he will be the heartbeat.

or as Thomas Sowell put it, a bit less sarcastically

The issue that is raised most often is her relative lack of experience and the fact that she would be "a heartbeat away from the presidency" if Senator John McCain were elected. But Barack Obama has even less experience-- none in an executive capacity-- and his would itself be the heartbeat of the presidency if he were elected.

Let's go back four years to the Post's Kerry for President:

None of these issues would bring us to vote for Mr. Kerry if he were less likely than Mr. Bush to keep the nation safe. But we believe the challenger is well equipped to guide the country in a time of danger. Mr. Kerry brings a résumé that unarguably has prepared him for high office.

I have seen no mention that Sen. Kerry's pick of Sen. Edwards, in any way, detracted from his ability to "keep the nation safe." Either the vice-presidential pick matters or it doesn't. The Post's editors benefit from the fact that most people aren't going to remember what they wrote four years ago. But the inconsistency is glaring.

The Kerry endorsement also disproves Max Boot's belief in the good faith of Fred Hiatt. This endorsement might have been written six months ago, with the blanks left in for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and a few other details. The Post, despite, its substantive disagreements with the Democrats on major issues, is, at heart, a pro-Democratic paper. Despite its protestations implying otherwise, the Post was never going to endorse the Republican nominee this year even one it claims to respects as much John McCain.

The Post, in endorsing Barack Obama, makes a fairly good case for Sen. McCain, as Beldar wrote.

However, the Washington Post's dishonesty in endorsing Sen. Obama - which required its editors to ignore their differences with Obama over Iraq and ignore McCain's efforts on behalf of the bailout - betrays not just its readership but also its claim to being an "independent" newspaper.

Council speak 10/19/08

The council has spoken.

On the council side, this week's winning entry was Joshuapundit's The Jewish Stockholm Syndrome, an examination of the trend of Jews to vote Democratic even when doing so apparently goes against their own interests.This week's runner up was The Colossus of Rhodey's Why "hazard pay" for tough schools won't work.

On the non-council side, the winning entry was Jim Hoft's The Complete Guide To ACORN Voter Fraud at Pajamas Media. It's good that it was published now, because in the future such exposes may be against the law. The runner up was Michael Totten's Resisting the United Nations, which is something people should keep in mind when promoting Kofi Annan's endorsement of Barack Obama for president.

BTW, did you know that the new Watcher does some posting on the side too?

Congratulations to all the winners.

watcher's council.

"In what kind of nation, do the media investigate critics more than candidates?"

Read "What Joe the Plumber Shows Us About the Left" 

Also: Check out JustOneMinute:

TO: Public@nytimes.com

Dear Mr. Hoyt;

Great job reporting the news that Joe the Plumber has tax liens. Shouldn't the Times follow with something dismissive about (a) the tax liens on the treasurer of Obama's campaign, and (b) Obama's apparent ethics violation in reporting speaking fees fon his 2000 and 2002 tax returns that are barred by Illinois State ethics laws that apply to state legislators? [see here DA]

The NY Times search is quite bare on that coverage as of now.

One final point. From The Wall Street Journal:

As for his [Joe The Plumber's] unpaid taxes, blogger "Patterico" reports that Obama's campaign treasurer has liens for unpaid taxes [see here DA]. That isn't exactly an earth-shattering scandal either, but it is hard to see how it is less relevant than Wurzelbacher's liens.

Also, from Jennifer Rubin:

...not a single one of the networks news outlet or mainstream national newspaper has looked at Obama's unprecedented attempt to use the Justice Department to chill speech. In all the pieces on "temperament" no one has reminded voters that the last president to try to employ law enforcement officials -- as Obama did in Missouri -- to go after opponents exercising First Amend

And from The Corner:

Here's the letter Cindy McCain's lawyer just sent to The New York Times regarding their recent and entirely unwarranted investigation of her. Here's the choicest cut:

It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative assets looking into Michelle Obama. You have not tried to find Barack Obama's drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of My Father. Nor have you interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them. Thus, there is a terrific lack of balance here.

I suggest to you that none of these subjects on either side are worthy of the energy and resources of The New York Times. They are cruel hit pieces designed to injure people that only the worst rag would investigate and publish. I know you and your colleagues are always preaching about raising the level of civil discourse in our political campaigns. I think taking some your own medicine is in order here.

[Hat tip: Instapundit]

by Daled Amos

Never the "o" word

Earlier this week, the AP reported, Syria and Lebanon Set Up Formal Ties:

The initiative by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria ends six decades of nonrecognition and meets a demand by the United States that Syria act to help achieve stability in the region, even as Syria pursued indirect peace talks with Israel. Syria and Lebanon said they planned to open embassies by the end of the year.

Just peachy, right?

And the article concludes:

Syria has dominated Lebanon for decades and long kept a military presence there, regarding it as a Syrian province.

Note that the word "occupation" is never used. Also note the uncertain tense of that sentence. Does Syria still regard Lebanon as its own? The AP won't tell you that, but Jonathan Spyer will. In An iron fist in a velvet glove, Spyer writes:

Lebanese commentators are expressing cautious optimism. However, the more likely prognosis is that Syria will continue to exercise its will in Lebanon through a combination of diplomacy and other means. Syria apparently expects that the Lebanese opposition will make significant gains in the elections scheduled for March.

Damascus is also understood to expect that a Barack Obama victory in the US presidential election will mark the end of Syrian international isolation.

The independent military capacity wielded by Hizbullah - pointed at Israel and, where necessary, at pro-Western forces in Lebanon - continues to be supplied via Damascus. This capacity holds the final word in Lebanon. Nothing can happen without its consent.

Nothing's changed. Syria's making a cosmetic change for international consumption but isn't giving up its designs on Lebanon.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Dead letter

Daled Amos has an example of an American failure to stand up to the Palestinian Authority.

This isn't a matter of failing to defend Israel, but of failing to defend American citizens; or even to call those responsible for their murders to account. It's one in a number of failures of the American government to demand even the most basic display of responsibility from the Palestinians.

This has been a failure of the Bush administration. (And it was a failure of the Clinton administration before it.)

Evelyn Gordon lays out an even more damning case against the outgoing administration.in Just another bit of fish wrapping:

Does anyone still remember George W. Bush's April 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon? At the time, it was touted as Israel's main quid pro quo for uprooting 25 settlements, expelling some 10,000 Israelis from their homes and withdrawing the army from Gaza. Yet today, it is never mentioned - and for good reason: In the ensuing four years, the Bush and Olmert administrations between them have systematically eviscerated every "achievement" it allegedly granted Israel.

(It would appear that the Washington Post need not have worried so much. William Safire had a much different take at the time.)

But there's a name that's very important in Gordon's opening paragraph: "Olmert." What would have happened if Ariel Sharon's successor had insisted that the United States make good on its pledges? Well here's how Gordon describes one:

THE LETTER also pledged that "Israel will retain its right to defend itself against terrorism, including to take actions against terrorist organizations," if Gaza did prove "a threat that would have to be addressed by any other means" than diplomatic pressure. In reality, Washington pressed Olmert to avoid anything beyond ineffective, small-scale military operations. But there, it was pushing against an open door: Olmert wanted a major operation as little as Bush did.

(Though, it seemed that the United States would have allowed a more decisive Israeli campaign against Hezbollah in 2006 than PM Olmert was willing to risk.)

And in the matter of the American pledge that all Palestinians would be settled in Palestinian territory, Gordon writes that the United States never much mentioned it again, but didn't back down from its words. However ...

Olmert, however, single-handedly gutted this achievement by offering to absorb some 20,000 Palestinian refugees under any deal. And as everyone knows, the minute you concede the principle, the price is negotiable.

Predictably, therefore, the world is already pressuring Israel to raise the figure. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, for instance, declared earlier this month that not only must Tzipi Livni honor Olmert's offer, she might even have to increase it: "I don't know how many [refugees Israel must accept] - 10,000 or 100,000, I don't know," he said.

While there's no excusing the Bush administrations reversals; I wonder if things would have been different if Ariel Sharon hadn't been incapacitated. More generally, is Israel's well being more dependent on who is elected American President or on who is elected (or succeeds as) Prime Minister of Israel?

Crossposted on Yourish.

Morgan state marching band

About 5 O'clock yesterday, my wife saw that the Morgan State Marching band was arriving at the nearby Northwest High School, so she suggested that we go and check out the band. We caught them at the end of their performance but we were quite impressed.

The fellow holding the flags seemed embarrassed, but he still graciously posed.

It appears that the Morgan State Marching band was performing in advance of a Northwest High Wildcats football game, as is evidenced by this guy.

At first I thought he was the Morgan bear, then I realized he was probably the Northwest Wildcat. Anyway, if it wasn't dinner time, maybe I would have stayed with my nine year old and his friend. Still I got a shot of the opening kickoff return.

October 15th: 5th Anniversary Of Murder Of 3 Americans By Palestinian Terrorists

Not much attention seems to have been paid this past week to the 5th anniversary of the murder of three American security contractors, John Branchizio, Mark Parson, and John Martin Linde Jr. by Palestinian terrorists on October 15, 2003.

Jeff Jacoby reported at the time:

Three Americans -- John Branchizio, Mark Parson, and John Martin Linde -- were murdered last Wednesday when terrorists in Gaza bombed the diplomatic convoy they were riding in. News accounts immediately described the attack as a first -- "an unprecedented deadly attack on a U.S. target in the Palestinian territories," to quote the Associated Press. But Branchizio, Parson, and Linde were not the first Americans to be murdered by Palestinian terrorists. They were the 49th, 50th, and 51st in the past 10 years alone.

A few hours after their deaths, the White House condemned "the vicious act of terrorism" that killed them, extended "heartfelt condolences to the families," and promised "to bring the terrorists to justice."

At the time, the PA went through the motions of apprehending the killers:

Following the attack, PA Leader Yasser Arafat at first arrested three low-level members of the splinter organization Popular Front and held a quick trial that the U.S. called a sham, but he later caved into pressure and admitted the three may not have been involved in the attack. The perpetrators remain at large.

One year later, in October 2004, the topic came up again when:

a senior Palestinian official publicly admitted for the first time he knows the identity of the killers.

Musa Arafat, the head of PA military intelligence and a cousin of Yasser Arafat, said, "The Palestinian security forces know who was behind the killing of three Americans in Gaza nearly a year ago, but cannot act against the factions while the fighting with Israel continues."

The last effort made on behalf of the murdered Americans came last year with the sponsoring of HR 2293:

To require the Secretary of State to submit to Congress a report on efforts to bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who killed John Branchizio, Mark Parson, and John Marin Linde.

You can see what progress was made on the bill at GovTrack.us:

• May 14, 2007: the bill was introduced by Rep. Gary Ackerman (D, NY)
  
• June 26, 2007: the bill was reported by Committee 
  
• July 16, 2007: the bill was passed by the House by a voice vote
  
• July 17, 2007: the bill was received in the Senate, read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations  
  

The New York Sun noted on January 2, 2008 that the bill:

is now languishing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where three Democrats on the panel, Joseph Biden, Christopher Dodd, and Barack Obama, were too busy running for president to forward the bill to the full Senate.

What will it take to get Biden and Obama to move the bill forward?

If Americans don't remember these men, how can we expect the politicians to?

Israel Matzav goes into detail on the failure of the White House to pursue this matter.

by Daled Amos

Krauthammer: what a (race) card!

Charles Krauthammer marvels at the irony of the situation (and here):

What makes the charges against McCain especially revolting is that he has been scrupulous in eschewing the race card. He has gone far beyond what is right and necessary, refusing even to make an issue of Obama's deep, self-declared connection with the race-baiting Rev. Wright.

In the name of racial rectitude, McCain has denied himself the use of that perfectly legitimate issue. It is simply Orwellian for him to be now so widely vilified as a stoker of racism. What makes it doubly Orwellian is that these charges are being made on behalf of the one presidential candidate who has repeatedly, and indeed quite brilliantly, deployed the race card.

... and the brilliance:

How brilliantly? The reason Bill Clinton is sulking in his tent is because he feels that Obama surrogates succeeded in painting him as a racist. Clinton has many sins, but from his student days to his post-presidency, his commitment and sincerity in advancing the cause of African Americans have been undeniable. If the man Toni Morrison called the first black president can be turned into a closet racist, then anyone can.

And let's not forget that Sen. Obama chose as his running mate a guy who referred to him as "... articulate and bright and clean." Krauthammer rightly calls one of Sen. Obama's attacks on Sen. McCain as "dishonorable" but apparently for Obama charges of racism are used for political advantage, not to express outrage.

Before there was joe the plumber, there was vicky iseman ...

Think about the deluge of attention being paid to Joe the Plumber, much of it unfair. Well it wasn't the first time the media turned out its big guns on an innocent in order to undermine the McCain campaign. One attempt, was the attempt to tie Sen. McCain romantically to a lobbyist named Vicky Iseman.
I'm not a huge fan of Lanny Davis, still there have been times where he's written things I've agreed with. Now he's come to the defense of Vicky Iseman:

Lanny Davis is highly critical of The Times' story. "Human beings matter, even in journalism," he says. "To any ethical journalist, if you are going to write something that will leave human wreckage behind, you need to be sure you are right." He and other friends say that Iseman is a professional and dedicated lobbyist.

(via memeorandum)

Yep, the Times was totally unethical and the National Journal article doesn't make them look any better.

I've written about the Times's shabby treatment of Iseman before.

But I've wondered about Ms. Iseman. Remember she's an accomplished lobbyist - who, according to the National Journal, worked her way up from receptionist to partner - who was reduced to the role of whore by shoddy reporting of the NY Times. How did she feel about the spotlight that was shined on her?

Asked why she is speaking now, Iseman says she struggled with her decision. She says that it is not her intent to "impact the election one way or another." But, she says, she needs "to set the record straight about who I am." Iseman explains, "When The New York Times' story ran, I never in a million years felt it would be what it was. I was a mess after it came out." While defending McCain himself, she feels that the McCain campaign did not defend her strongly enough when The Times' story broke.

She went back to work a week after the article appeared, Iseman says. "I thought if I just went back to work and reminded people of whom I was as a professional that it would go away -- but it didn't." She complains that she has been the subject of "vile" comments on the Internet and even has seen an image of her face posted on a pornographic website.

Strangers, she says, sometimes blame her for damaging McCain. "While waiting in the ladies room line, [a woman] told me that I should be ashamed of myself for what I did to 'that man, Senator McCain,' " Iseman recalls. "To this day, I will be typing on my computer and will get an e-mail calling me the worst of the worst names." She also says that three clients dropped her after The Times' story.

After the Republican National Convention in early September and the many critical press stories on McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Iseman says, she decided to break her silence. The news coverage "caused me to think that I should speak out about what happened to me."

Iseman was on target in an e-mail to the Times:

In interviews over the past three weeks, Iseman gave National Journal access to her e-mail exchanges with The Times. In one e-mail to a Times reporter, dated last January 2, Iseman assailed the reporting methods, saying they were "reminiscent" of Jayson Blair, a young reporter who was forced to resign from The Times in May 2003 after repeatedly fabricating elements of his stories. Iseman also made it clear in her e-mail exchanges with The Times that she believed that The Times' primary source was Weaver.

Jayson Blair. That's how she referred to four of the Times's top reporters. Still given that they likely have no consciences, I don't imagine it will bother them much.

David Bedein: Why Won't Obama Answer Questions About Israel?

From The Philadelphia Bulletin:

Barack Obama, Jewish-Americans And Israel
By David Bedein, The Bulletin
10/15/2008

From a personal and professional perspective, this is the sixth American Presidential campaign that I have covered from Israel, concentrating on the "Israel aspect" of the story.

This time I not only have covered the campaign from Israel - This time, I was assigned by The Bulletin to fly over and cover the Obama campaign at the time of the Pennsylvania primary in April.

My observation of the "Jewish American view of Sen. Obama" was that there was an atmosphere of unreality surrounding Jewish advocacy and Jewish opposition to Sen. Barack Obama.

Both pro-Obama and anti- Obama forces in the Jewish world related to the senator with an attitude of superficiality, paying more attention paid to the company that he keeps than to the policies that he stands for.

Yet here is the rub: None one has really heard where Sen. Obama stands on Middle East issues.

When I interviewed three of Sen. Obama's staffers who specialize in Middle East issues, I presented them with 18 questions. Besides the issue of Palestinian incitement, which his staffers said that he abhors, they could not provide any answers whatsover to basic questions put forward by The Bulletin last April.

With the multi-billion dollar arms package to Saudi Arabia about to reach the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which Sen. Obama is a member, his staffers could not even say what his position was on arms to Saudi Arabia, which remains in a state of active war with Israel.

Indeed, Saudi Arabia currently funds Hamas, the Democratic Front For The Liberation of Palestine (PLFP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), all of which are Palestinian terror organizations that actively engaged in planning operations against the Jewish state

After Sen. Obama's formal nomination as democratic candidate for president in late August, The Bulletin resubmitted these 18 basic questions.

Sen. Obama's staffers promised answers this time. None were forthcoming.

Yet there is a way to gain insight into Sen. Obama's policies towards Israel. Not by tabulating votes on the Senate floor and not by counting how many superlatives that he uses on Israel.

Instead, by paying attention to the three high ranking former U.S. State Department officials whom the Senator has hired: Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross and Daniel Kurtzer. The policy which characterizes all three of them is their consistent promotion of the PLO as a supposed peace partner with Israel for the past 20 years, no matter what the reality was.

This is the threesome that defined the PLO as a peace partner even after the PLO would not ratify the Oslo "declaration of principles" in October 1993.

This is the threeesome that attested to the fact that, in 1996, the PLO had cancelled its covenant to destroy Israel, when it had not done so.

This is the threesome who insisted on arming the PLO to fight Hamas even though the PLO made it clear from the outset that it would never engage Hamas in any full-scale war.

And this is the threesome who promote a PLO state, come what may.

And this is the threesome who main committed to mobilizing Jewish Americans to support a PLO state, come what may.

From Sen. Obama's appointment of Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross and Daniel Kurtzer, it is easy to discern where the Senator stands - for the renewal of the Oslo process once again, this time with the teeth of an American administration that would impose a Palestinian state, even though it remains at war with the State of Israel.

The role played by Daniel Kurtzer has not been forgotten - as the man who wrote tough speeches for former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker when he pressured Israel 20 years ago.

What about Sen. Obama's sensitivity to the consquences of Arab terror?

After all, during his visit to the shell-shocked Israeli town of Sderot near Gaza, he met families whose homes and lives have been devastated by Arab missile attacks.

It was in Sderot where Sen. Obama looked into the eyes of each of these families and told them that he would never forget the consequences of what terror had done to people in Israel.

Yet on the very next morning, Sen. Obama addressed a crowd in Berlin in which he depicted how nations around the world had suffered from the consequences of terror. The senator named each of these nations. Yet he forgot to name Israel.

A short term retention span which deleted Israel as a nation whose people suffered the conseqeunces of terror could not have been a coincidence.

Sen. Obama gives prepared speeches.

The time has come to put aside platitudes and to stop judging Sen. Obama's attitude towards Israel from those who have endorsed him. His choices of advisors speak for themselves. [emphasis added]

David Bedein is The Bulletin's Middle East Correspondent.

by Daled Amos

What part of zionist don't you understand?

According to Amir Taheri, Jesse Jackson said:

The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where "decades of putting Israel's interests first" would end.

Jackson believes that, although "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain strong, they'll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.

(h/t Bookworm Room, Meryl)

Now Jesse claims that his quotes have been taken out of context.

Jackson himself denounced Taheri, according to the Associated Press, for "selectively imposing his own point of view and distorting mine," issuing a statement saying Taheri was trying to "to incite fear and division."

Jackson added that he "has never had a conversation with Sen. Obama about Israel or the Middle East."

And of course the Obama campaign claims that Jesse Jackson does not speak for the campaign. That's true. Of course the question is why people who share Jackson's views seek to be supporting Sen. Obama.

Here's what the Obama campaign has to say:

"Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. is not an adviser to the Obama campaign and is therefore in no position to interpret or share Barack Obama's views on Israel and foreign policy. As he has made clear throughout his career and throughout this campaign, Barack Obama has a fundamental commitment to a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, and he is advised by people like Dennis Ross, Daniel Kurtzer, Rep. Robert Wexler, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Senator Joe Biden who share that commitment," Morigi said.

Dennis Ross and Daniel Kurtzer were among "Baker's boys," the (Jewish) State Department officials who worked for James Baker during Bush 41 and stayed on in various capacities into the Clinton administration. Here's left winger Phillip Weiss on Kurtzer:

Kurtzer's central argument is one I read in The Israel Lobby. George H.W. Bush--Bush 41--led the best presidency on Arab/Israel issues in the last 20 years. His standing up to Israel on the settlements in '91 was a great thing, though "some domestic advocates for Israel were unnecessarily alienated." That's the Israel lobby. And because Bush folded on this issue, it "had a searing effect that far outlasted the Bush 41 administration, reverberating well into the Clinton and Bush 43 years and causing the next president and his team to overcompensate in ways that created a different set of problems."

This is a vicious, anti-Israel and ahistorical post. But it is rather admiring of Kurtzer and what it would signal for an Obama administration. What's going on is that pro-Israel, is starting to mean supporting active American engagement in the Middle East. It means ignoring the "minority" Jews who are "hawkish" on the Middle East. It means supporting an Israeli government that his headed by a left of center party willing to make unconditional concessions to Israel's enemies and opposing Israeli governments headed by the Likud.

It is centered around a conceit that America knows better what is right for Israel than Israelis and that just the right amount of concessions will magically bring about a peaceful Palestinian state living side by side with Israel.

That's a fantasy, of course. There won't be peace until there's an acceptance of Israel by the Palestinians. No amount of Israeli concessions will change that. People like Kurtzer and Ross may pretend otherwise, but they are fooling themselves. (Given how invested Ross in the idea of a peace process, it's not surprising. Who would admit that his life's work was folly?)

Jesse Jackson is being truthful. He knows what Sen. Obama means when he says that being pro-Israel isn't the same thing as being pro-Likud. He's just less diplomatic.

Ironically the JPost linked to another article above the Jackson denial about another man of cloth whose views of Israel are misunderstood.

The 75-year-old Nicaraguan, a former diplomat for the Sandinista government, has been sharply criticized in the past weeks for hugging Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad moments after he gave a speech to the UN in which he described Israel as a "cesspool."

D'Escoto has also refused to condemn Ahmadinejad's comments that Israel be "wiped off the map."

He told the Post he "did not like" the comments, but said he believed Iran's antipathy toward Israel stemmed not from anti-Semitism but from the political dispute over the Palestinian issue.

"I don't pretend to be infallible, but I don't perceive that, for example, from Iran they would be anti-Jew," d'Escoto said. "That position of the Iranian government is on account of what they consider to be the bad treatment for the Palestinians."

D'Escoto helped arrange that Iftar dinner for Ahmadinejad when he was in NY to address the UN.

Courtesy of new General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto, who is Nicaragua's foreign minister, and a coalition of left-wing American Christian groups, he will be the guest of honor at a private iftar dinner to celebrate the end of Ramadan. The September 25 event at the Grand Hyatt Hotel has all the trappings of a Cold War solidarity event. Joining D'Escoto as hosts are some companeros from the former Catholic priest's Sandinista days: The World Council of Churches, the American Friends Service Committee, the Mennonites, and the US section of the World Conference of Religions for Peace.

My guess is that if pressed on the issue of how he loves Israel, D'Escoto would anwer "Well done."

Crossposted on Yourish.

Submitted 10/16/08

This week's Watcher's Council Submissions are up!
* Rhymes With Right- Democrats Object To Fundamentally True Statement - Rhymes with Right defends the head of Virginia's Republican party. I'm not sure I buy it. It was a purposefully inflammatory comment. Still this point is 100% correct.

Does this make Obama guilty of Ayers' crimes? No, of course not - but his willingness (and the willingness of so many in the Chicago/Illinois political machine and the national Democrat establishment) to embrace him and work to make him a mainstream political figure is disturbing. Would McVeigh's co-conspirator Terry Nichols ever be allowed a similar rehabilitation? Would any politician who associated with him after his involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing ever be considered acceptable by the American people? I don't think either of those questions requires much consideration to answer.

* The Razor- Oil Boom Turns to Bust - The Razor looks at the forces that have led to a very swift reduction in gas prices. Mostly its been part of the business cycle. Extra good news:it hurts Russia and Venezuela. (also Iran!) One thing I've wondered about is how the higher gas prices might have triggered the liquidity crisis.
* Joshuapundit- The Jewish Stockholm Syndrome - JoshuaPundit writes about the tendency of Jews to vote Democratic, even if doing so goes against their interests. Seraphic Secret recently had to explain a religious observance to a Hollywood producer.

An hour later the producer, not Jewish--truly bright, creative and decent--calls back.

"I asked all the Jews in the company and they're drawing a blank."

"Right. Well, I'm not surprised. Look, lemme send you a few links and then get back to me."

"Hey, I believe you. Just tell me when we can have our sit-down?"

I suggest a day and time.

"Robert?"

"Yeah?"

"I respect your commitment. I really do. But tell me, how come none of the Jews in the company know what I'm talking about?"

I sigh.

I am sad.

"Tell me something, did all you guys go to the big Obama rally here in town?"

"Sure, of course."

* Cheat-Seeking Missiles- Raile Odinga Joins Ayres, Wright, Alinsky et. al. As Questionable Obama Associates - Cheat Seeking Missiles looks at Kenya's new maximum leader and his ties - political and familial - with one of the two presidential candidates.
* The Glittering Eye- Issues 2008: Reforming Government - The Glittering Eye has a post that could be called deceptively simple. Well, the deceptive part isn't in its simplicity, but in its power.

Every year millions of Americans dutifully purchase one of the two top tax preparation software packages, TurboTax or TaxCut, to help them in filing their federal and state income taxes. Between them these two programs have something like a billion dollars in annual sales. If government were functioning properly these two packages wouldn't exist at all. They flourish in a niche created by ineffective government.

He doesn't address which candidate would be more likely to address this problem. Neither candidate has made much of an issue about it. I suspect that if either candidate would wish to change the way government is run it would be Sen. McCain.
* Hillbilly White Trash- More on the little messiah's troubling friends - Hillbilly White Trash emphasizes the ties between Sen. Obama and ACORN.
* Soccer Dad- Putting on Ayers - I wrote about why Sen. Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers should be significant and wonder if its too late to help Sen. McCain.
* The Colossus of Rhodey- Why "hazard pay" for tough schools won't work - Colossus of Rhodey argues that stopping the nonsense would go a long way towards making better public schools. Public schools, of course, in many ways have become social service agencies rather than (or in addition to) centers of education.
* Bookworm - A Great Day By The Bay - Bookworm Room and family go to visit an Amphibious Assault Ship and learn how it operates.

My non-council submission this week is Last Kaddish - Redux at Seraphic Secret, a powerful look at loss.

Read, Enjoy. Be Informed.

watcher's council.

Dow rallies

Why has the financial collapse been so resistant to attempted fixes so far?

Jennifer Rubin:

It is a massive task to build the rules, gather information, and staff up seven different groups charged with everything from homeownership preservation plans to government oversight. It is not surprising that the markets haven't reacted, since we are not yet out of the start-up phase.

Robert Samuelson:

What we've discovered is that the real problem is bigger. Large parts of the financial system are too thinly capitalized and too dependent on unreliable short-term debt. Leverage ratios often reached 30 to 1 for investment banks and hedge funds (that is, $30 of debt for every $1 of capital). The presumption was that the MBA types had learned how to "manage risk." That false conceit backfired. Low capital didn't adequately protect against losses. Confidence and trust evaporated, because no one knew which institutions held suspect securities, how much the losses were and who was ultimately safe.

Deleveraging -- a shift from excessive debt toward more capital -- is inevitable and desirable in the long run. The trouble is that, in the short run, it could destabilize the economy if it proceeds too rapidly.

And yet, today, the Dow is up over 900.

I blame Bush. (Instapundit hasn't said that yet, so I figured I ought to.)

My guess is that the yo-yo isn't over yet.

In other economics news, Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics. Freakonomics likes the choice.

Whether you like his Times columns or not, you have to admire Krugman's tenacity. He personifies the true public intellectual, and even when he writes a column that irritates you, at least you know it involves careful thought and a true dedication to the public debate.

I've read a few of his op-ed columns and rarely see "careful thought." If you're talking about his Slate articles, that's a different story.

Donald Luskin disagrees vociferously.

The person alive to receive the award is merely a public intellectual, a person operating in the same domain as Oprah Winfrey. And even as a public intellectual, the prize is inappropriate, because never before has a scientist operating in the capacity of a public intellectual so abused and debased the science he purports to represent.

And he ends with a sharp putdown:

The only question now is whether Krugman will pay taxes on the prize at the low rates enabled by the Bush tax cuts he has done so much to discredit, or if he will volunteer to pay taxes at higher rates he considers more fair.

Ouch.

Would that be posha?

One of my biggest complaints about Palestinian demands for a state, is that they've never set up the institutions of government. Well now, in Gaza, Hamas has taken the first step. Call it P-OSHA. (h/t Daily Alert)

Gaza's smugglers are going legit: Owners of the scores of tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border have registered with the Hamas authorities, pledged to pay workers' compensation and hooked up their operations to the electricity network.

The once clandestine business has come out into the open. In one place, dozens of large tents, each marking a tunnel work site, were pitched just yards from an Egyptian watchtower beyond the border wall.

Elder of Ziyon who follows the tunnel industry actually had this story first.

Mere Rhetoric puts things a little differently from the way I did.

First of all: there are economists in Gaza, which is just how it was in Auschwitz right? More to the point: combine this with Hamas's new online terror course and you kind of have to admit that they've gone from being a ragtag bunch of genocidal lunatics to being a well-organized cadre of genocidal lunatics:

I wonder if these new safety rules will apply to the north Gaza tunnels too?

Somehow, I don't think that Hamas is building tunnels to smuggle in supplies from Israel. It sounds more like they want another few Gilad Shalits.

This news coming on the heels of Khaled Meshaal's comment that Israel is "unreliable." Of course, Hamas is suffering from a decline in popularity, so perhaps Hamas is demanding more for Shalit and Israel is balking, which would be motivating Hamas to up the ante.

All speculation of course. But it would seem to fit recent events.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Terror and elections

Getting Shmuel Rosner on board at Contentions was a great move. He's a little too much of a leftist for my taste, but he does have an eye for an interesting story, or an interesting angle. But his effort today, The Terrorism effect is bewildering because of its conclusion.

This means that an additional terror attack in 1992 could have killed the Oslo process-which makes one think about the strange ways of terror, and the deranged ways in which it serves to destroy both victim and aggressor alike.

Another terror attack in 1992 may well have helped Rabin even more. Shortly before the elections, a fifteen year old girl, Helena Rapp was killed. Rabin used her death to argue that Shamir's policies made Israel less safe. A year after the killing this is what Clyde Haberman of the NY Times wrote:

One reason Yitzhak Rabin is Israel's Prime Minister is a teen-age girl named Helena Rapp.

Helena Rapp was viciously stabbed to death by a Palestinian a year ago as she waited for a bus near Tel Aviv, and Mr. Rabin invoked her killing again and again during his election campaign last summer. Install me as leader, he told Israelis, and you will have someone flexible enough to forge peace with the Arabs but also tough enough to stop Arabs who think they can get their way by knifing Jewish girls. As the final vote proved, it was a winning strategy.

However progress on negotiations did not lead to a reduction of terror. As Haberman later noted:

Whatever the reason, the bloodshed was ample and sustained, diverting Mr. Rabin from peace negotiations and forcing him to deal with rolling thunder on his right. The opposition Likud Party, reborn under a dynamic new leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, ran hard with the terrorism issue. So did disaffected Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, whose anti-Government demonstrations have grown bigger and more violent.

It did the Prime Minister little good to complain, as he did, that the right was trying to capitalize on tragedy, which indeed seems to be the case but is little different from what he himself did last year. Nor did it improve his standing to point out that stabbings pose no existential threat to Israel, or to lash out at young Israelis for being too passive in the face of knife-wielders.

The point is that Rosner's premise is wrong. Another terror attack probably would have helped Rabin and Labor even more..

HIs befuddlement at the end is also strange. In 1992, yes, it appears that terror helped bring Labor to power, which, in turn brought about the Oslo Accords. But in 1996, terror brought Likud to power, even though Likud opposed the unconditional implementation of Oslo with no regard to Palestinian compliance. But the violence of early 1996, showed that Oslo wasn't working. In late 1995, after Yigall Amir assassinated Yitzchak Rabin, Shimon Peres's government withdrew from six Arab cities. It was the Palestinian Authority's job to secure those cities and ensure that no terrorists were allowed to operate there. Of course Arafat allowed Hamas to operate in areas under his control, so the resulting terror took advantage of Arafat's connivance. Unlike the terror of 1992, it showed that the peace process wasn't working. When terror declined under Netanyahu, Israelis relaxed and voted him out of office.

Terror may affect election results. But terrorists are more opportunistic.The effects of terror on an election will be related to how the electorate views the government. I don't think that there is enough data to draw consistent conclusions whether terror makes an electorate more hawkish or more dovish.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Fred proves victor right

After Victor Davis Hanson observes:

Indeed, McCain as a vicious campaigner is a complete fabrication, but, again, a brilliant subterfuge on the part of Team Obama that, in fact, has run, via appendages, the far more vicious race. Obama and his surrogates have repeatedly engaged in racial politics (as Bill Clinton lamented when in fury he denounced the "race card"); when there was never evidence that McCain was using race as a wedge issue, it was clear Obama most surely was-preemptively, on at least two occasions, warning Americans he would soon be the victim of opposition racial stereotyping. His surrogates like Biden and those in the Senate continue to link legitimate worries about OBama's past with racism.

And more damning yet:

And third, a lot of moderates who would not vote for McCain liked him when he was a sophisticated, ironic maverick loser scoring points against the simplistic Bush and other cardboard-cut-out conservatives. Now he has the onus of winning a campaign and can't be a noble, tragic loser;so it is easy to say he is no good since he is less than perfect. The sure iconoclastic loser has an attraction that the mainstream conservative possible winner does not.

Fred Hiatt in today's Washington Post highlights this mindset perfectly.

It may be that it's easier for such a campaign to get blown off course. In an exceptionally pro-Democratic year, against an exceptionally unflappable opponent, it's not surprising that a campaign without bedrock policy goals would try first one thing, then another, with one of those things being character assassination.

I certainly can't prove that a McCain campaign built on respect and attention to issues would be faring better than the real thing. Without Sarah Palin to rally the base, and without the insidious questioning of Obama's patriotism, McCain might be even further behind.

And of course, after before exhorting McCain to take the high road, Hiatt noted:

The mud flies both ways in this campaign, with Obama and his allies relentlessly pounding McCain as out of touch, erratic, dishonest and, over and over again, dishonorable.

So why is it OK for the Obama campaign to sling mud then?

I realize that to some degree Hiatt's advice matches that of Bill Kristol. But Hiatt is pretty clearly telling McCain: "I like you as a loser." Kristol is actually telling McCain: "play to your strengths."

What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads -- they're doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.

And let McCain go back to what he's been good at in the past -- running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They're happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free.

Provide total media accessibility on their campaign planes and buses. Kick most of the aides off and send them out to swing states to work for the state coordinators on getting voters to the polls. Keep just a minimal staff to help organize the press conferences McCain and Palin should have at every stop and the TV interviews they should do at every location. Do town halls, do the Sunday TV shows, do talk radio -- and invite Obama and Biden to join them in some of these venues, on the ground that more joint appearances might restore civility and substance to the contest.

Unlike Hiatt, Kristol isn't saying that negative campaigning is wrong for Republicans, he's saying simply that it's ineffective. Whether or not McCain will heed Kristol's suggestions - or if Kristol's suggestions could even help is beyond me. I think that Kristol underestimates the power of the media. Had the media been even remotely fair in its election coverage, the electorate would harbor way too many doubts about Sen. Obama's qualifications and associations for him to be a viable candidate.

And few things epitomize the media's unfairness than Hiatt's smug moralizing. (The Washington Post will endorse Obama.)

Pushing jewish buttons

What politicians will do for the Jewish vote. They push our buttons.

In my experience, the most obvious way politicians try to woo Jews today is to demonstrate their support of Israel and to appeal to long-held social values. The less obvious way is through, well, political buttons.

Back in 1940, Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate, was beaten by Franklin D. Roosevelt in a landslide. Normally this might make for just a footnote in history. But of great interest to Jews is the button that was handed out in an effort to gain their vote.

This seems to be the first instance of using Hebrew-style calligraphy to communicate -- in coded fashion -- one's political allegiance.

I may not agree with this one, but it is the cleverest.

The complete slideshow starts here.

Crossposted on Yourish.

A bazaar protest

Don Surber observes:

... dictators are lousy economists

Case in point: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In an interview a few weeks ago with the New York Times, he assured the interviwer, Neil MacFarqhar that Iran's economy was in fine shape.

NYT: I've been to Iran a lot, and I know people work two jobs to survive and they really are angry about the economy. When you talk to Iranians it is the one thing that they really criticize the government for all the time.

President Ahmadinejad: Let's wait a few months and see how people will vote in the elections. We are always constantly in touch with the people, we live together side by side. I invite you to make the trip with me to Iran, to visit Iran so you can hear what people say. There is a lot of freedom in Iran. They express themselves, they participate in elections, they hold rallies and gatherings. We are not too concerned, and neither should you be concerned.

And then there was this exchange:

NYT: The other economic point is the question of gasoline. We know that Iran is one of the largest oil-producing countries in the world, and yet it imports 40 percent of its gasoline. That is another thing that people get upset about. Why is it so high, and why don't you invest more money in refineries, for example?

President Ahmadinejad: Are people really angry over this?

NYT: Yes, occasionally they riot and burn gas stations.

President Ahmadinejad: That is not the reason why they put those on fire. We are actually about to build seven additional refineries. Of course gasoline is used at very high rates in Iran because it is extremely cheap. The government pays a lot of money to afford that.

People buy lots of gasoline because the government subsidizes it. Good sound economics there!

Anyway, the Times is reporting that all is not well with the Iranian economy.

In the latest sign of discontent with Mr. Ahmadinejad's economic policies, the merchants went on strike to protest being included in the country's first value-added tax, a 3 percent charge on all products except basic commodities like dairy products and bread.

In an effort to persuade the traders to end their strike, Mr. Ahmadinejad said last week that the new tax law would be suspended for two months. But the newspaper Sarmayeh reported on Sunday that the traders had demanded that the law be permanently revoked.

Further:

Last year, Parliament approved the tax in an effort to increase the government's revenue and make the traditional trade more transparent. The government began enforcing the law in late September, at a time when the annual inflation rate was hitting 30 percent and traders were frustrated by a decline in sales. International sanctions were also taking their toll.

"Merchants do not want to pay sales tax," said the carpet seller who declined to be quoted by name. "There has been little trade in the bazaar since March because of the inflation. We cannot import or export anything because of bad relations with most countries and economic sanctions. And the government is increasing the pressure by enforcing new regulations every day."

The United Nations Security Council has imposed economic sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt its nuclear program. As a result, businesses must pay more for imports and cannot move money at major international banks.

So sanctions may not be stopping the Iranian nuclear program. But they seem to be fueling discontent with the regime. Not ideal, but at least a start.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Signs, signs everywhere a sign

Walked around the neighborhood to take pictures of color changing maples. During my walk I saw a couple of interesting signs.

Don't believe it. The children at that house are absolute angels, from what I've seen.

This is great. I love clever business names.

New horizons in ethics

Mankind has never been as advanced as it is at present. We have now developed concern for plant dignity:

For years, Swiss scientists have blithely created genetically modified rice, corn and apples. But did they ever stop to consider just how humiliating such experiments may be to plants?

That's a question they must now ask. Last spring, this small Alpine nation began mandating that geneticists conduct their research without trampling on a plant's dignity.

"Unfortunately, we have to take it seriously," Beat Keller, a molecular biologist at the University of Zurich. "It's one more constraint on doing genetic research."

Dr. Keller recently sought government permission to do a field trial of genetically modified wheat that has been bred to resist a fungus. He first had to debate the finer points of plant dignity with university ethicists. Then, in a written application to the government, he tried to explain why the planned trial wouldn't "disturb the vital functions or lifestyle" of the plants. He eventually got the green light.

The rule, based on a constitutional amendment, came into being after the Swiss Parliament asked a panel of philosophers, lawyers, geneticists and theologians to establish the meaning of flora's dignity.

"We couldn't start laughing and tell the government we're not going to do anything about it," says Markus Schefer, a member of the ethics panel and a professor of law at the University of Basel. "The constitution requires it."

In April, the team published a 22-page treatise on "the moral consideration of plants for their own sake." It stated that vegetation has an inherent value and that it is immoral to arbitrarily harm plants by, say, "decapitation of wildflowers at the roadside without rational reason." [...]

The notion of animal rights often goes hand in hand with the idea that it is wrong to eat animals. Is the notion that it is wrong to eat plants on the horizon? Can people derive nourishment without eating animals or plants? Perhaps we should limit ourselves to only eating the most primitive plants, such as algae. Or perhaps this development puts plants and animals on an equal footing and there is no ethical basis for vegetarianism anymore. And are we going to see picketing on Sukkos from the Arba Minim Liberation Front? What will we two-legged animals do? Call in PETA!

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Fools, tools etc.

My post last week, Fooling with tools, inspired a comment by Michael Lonie that Meryl wisely turned into a full post, The whys, not lies, of the Iraq War. My intent was to point out the hollowness of Sen. Obama's association of the war in Iraq with 9/11. It was nothing more than a straw man. I'll admit that my response wasn't comprehensive, but this post is. I thought that this aspect of Michael's comment was especially good.

The Iraq Campaign also gave the US the opportunity to fight the jihadists on grounds of our own choosing. Geographically we could fight them in the Middle East instead of in New York. Tactically we could pit skilled US soldiers and Marines against them, instead of relying on unarmed airline stewardesses and passengers to do the fighting. Strategically it allowed us to seize the initiative from the jihadists, to make them react to our moves rather than we to their's. Taking the initiative away from the enemy is always important in winning a war.

The Democrats have been trying to wrest the issues of Iraq and he war on terror away from the Republicans in a variety of different ways. This is as excellent argument against those efforts. But by all mean, read the whole thing.

Olive libels again

It's a little early but Elder of Ziyon noted a "news" story:

Settlers from the illegal Israeli settlement of Yitzhar in the northern West Bank attacked a Palestinian family collecting olives on Saturday morning, a government official told Ma'an.

Mayor Burin Ali Eid of the village of Burin, near Nablus, said a fight broke out when settlers "chopped down five olive trees" owned by the family.

Local Palestinian sources said that settlers cut down 15 olive trees in other Nablus-area attacks on farmers.

And another Palestinian propaganda site, AFP has the story too:

Two Palestinian farmers were lightly wounded today when they were attacked by people they said were Jewish settlers from Yitzhar who tore down around 15 olives trees while the Palestinians were collecting the harvest.

Elder of Ziyon notes a reason for skepticism.

Yitzhar is a religious Jewish village and the residents would not desecrate the Sabbath by chopping down any trees, so it is clear that these claims are lies.

He also links to a conflicting report.

I've blogged about the olive vandalism stories in the past. If you pay attention they usually happen in late October or early November. Boker Tov Boulder, some years ago linked to a plausible explanation why these incidents always occurred at the same time of year.

A widely-published AP photo of an Arab woman weeping and embracing an allegedly chopped-down tree (similar photos were taken by Reuters, AFP, and others] shows that the trunk is intact, and that only the top branches are cut off - as if it had been purposely pruned. In fact, the Haifa-based Land of Israel Task Force says that this is exactly what happened.

"The left-wingers and Arabs pulled the same trick last year," Task Force head Aviad Visuly said, "and using the same method." Photos of the trees show that the branches were sawed off in a manner that is beneficial to the trees. "Why would vandals bother sawing off each individual branch? Wouldn't they just cut down the trunk?"

The branches begin growing back 2-3 months after they are cut, and grow to full size within two years. "In the meanwhile," Visuly said, "the orchard owners receive stipends from the Saudis, via the PA."

Now I realize that the incident yesterday is a little early and the damage in the AFP photograph doesn't match the description of "pruning." However, it is common for the Palestinians to blame Jews for damaging olive trees. As AFP notes elsewhere:

For Palestinians, who start harvesting olives this month across the West Bank, olives are not only an important agricultural product, the olive tree also symbolizes their attachment to the land.

Olive trees are symbolic, and charging Jews with damaging them is an effective way to perpetuate grievances against Israel. I have to agree with Elder that this wasn't a case of "settlers" vandalizing the trees. Given the reported injuries - to two brothers - I'd guess that this was more likely the result of a clan clash than a assault by the resident of Yitzhar.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Council speak 10/12/08

The Council has spoken!

The winning entry this week is Wolf Howling's Hurricane Subprime - Part I (1977-2000) , a comprehensive look behind the legislation that led to the current financial collapse. Runner up is the Razor's If Obama Wins a look at the possible constraints that would act against President Obama being able to implement a left wing agenda. Both are extremely deserving winners. (I recently saw a counterpoint to this. If I recall where it was I'll hopefully link to it later.)

On hte non-council side, my submission, Baseball Crank's The Integrity Gap, Part I of III: Gov. Sarah Palin, an essential read on Gov. Palin's political career that you likely have not seen in the MSM. The non-council runner up was Obama v. McCain: Foreign Policy at Heretical Ideas. This was a well thought out post, though I disagreed with it.

Congratulations to all the winners!

watcher's council.

Cook discovers Sand

Jonathan Cook, writing for an Abu Dhabi news site, discovers crackpot Shlomo Sand, who argues that modern Jews have no connection to ancient Israel largely based on an expanded version of the long-discredited (but much beloved by anti-Semites) Khazar theory of the origins of Ashkenazi Jews:

Jews travelled to other regions seeking converts, particularly in Yemen and among the Berber tribes of North Africa. Centuries later, the people of the Khazar kingdom in what is today south Russia, would convert en masse to Judaism, becoming the genesis of the Ashkenazi Jews of central and eastern Europe.

Dr Sand pointed to the strange state of denial in which most Israelis live, noting that papers offered extensive coverage recently to the discovery of the capital of the Khazar kingdom next to the Caspian Sea. Ynet, the website of Israel's most popular newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, headlined the story: "Russian archaeologists find long-lost Jewish capital." And yet none of the papers, he added, had considered the significance of this find to standard accounts of Jewish history.

And what is that significance exactly? Nobody doubts the Khazars existed, but the notion that their existence accounts for the existence of Ashkenazi Jews doesn't seem to rest on any of that evidence thingy. Here is Cook approvingly quoting Sand on the subject of Zionism and Jerusalem:

"Zionism changed the idea of Jerusalem. Before, the holy places were seen as places to long for, not to be lived in. For 2,000 years Jews stayed away from Jerusalem not because they could not return but because their religion forbade them from returning until the messiah came."

Actually, Jews became the majority population in Jerusalem once more around 1840, some 40 years before the first Zionist arrivals. Not even the Neturei Karta, proponents of a take on Judaism and the Holy Land which is being mangled here, have ever argued that Jews are supposed to "stay away" from Jerusalem. Cook, the sort of Journalist who writes anti-Israel articles for the Guardian, reports that Tom Segev finds Sand's book to be "fascinating and challenging." That's enough to make Cook start swallowing warmed-over Arthur Koestler, who is probably a much more entertaining writer than Sand will end up being when the inevitable English translation comes. I know about Cook's article because it was picked up by Electronic Intifada and then MPAC-UK. Need I say more?

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Nancy pelosi, does not compute

What's wrong with this paragraph?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that a $150 billion economic stimulus plan is needed now because of the faltering economy and she may call the House into session after the election to pass it.

"...needed now...after the election..."

If we need the bill right away why wait until after the election?

1) It's not really that important.
2) It might not work.
3) It might backfire and hurt Sen. Obama's chances and Democratic aspirations for a filibuster proof Senate.

Yes the article gives a fourth possibility.

If Democratic nominee Barack Obama wins the White House and if Capitol Hill Democrats make gains in the elections as well, it might be easier to pass a stimulus measure over dispirited Republicans, especially if the economy remains in big trouble.

In a straight party line vote, Speaker Pelosi could get the bill passed with or without Republicans. My guess is that she knows that there will be significant Democratic defections from this bill, just like there were from the bailout package.

That's why I think the first three cynical explanations are more likely.

The bailout package failed to stop the the market drops. Apparently massive government interference in the economy - even to avert disaster - is not viewed positively by either the markets or the voters. So Speaker Pelosi intends to put off the vote until a point where it can't hurt Democratic electoral prospects.

If anything, this is further proof that Instapundit is right, Sen. McCain should run against Congress. Here's a proposed speech that would tie a number ideas together.

When I first arrived in the Senate, a man named Charles Keating made very generous contributions to me and four other senators. But when the price of his generosity became clear, I refused to do as he asked. He had wanted us to relax oversight of his thrift institution so he could plunder it without fear. Though I (and Sen. John Glenn of Ohio) refused to do his bidding, I still consider this episode a low point in my Senate career. My vulnerability to special interests made me sensitive to the fact that I must never again be tempted by someone who put his own interests ahead of the nation.

For me it was "country first."

In contrast, during the early years of his political career, my opponent, Sen. Obama made a number of connections with people who have questionable values. He attended the church of an American damning pastor named Jeremiah Wright for twenty years. For twenty years he sat in the pews of Rev. Wright's church imbibing his screeds against the United States. I know that my opponent doesn't accept those denunciations, but still the sermons didn't bother him at all, until he was an established and credible candidate for President of the United States. Only when Rev. Wright's sermons became a political liability, did Sen. Obama denounce him.

Before Sen. Obama embarked on his political career he looked for ways to help the community. In the course of doing so, he encountered, befriended and got the support from one Willaim Ayers. Mr. Ayers was a former member of the Weather Underground and he was unrepentant about his activities. In fact a number of years ago, he expressed regret that he didn't do more violence to this country - the day that interview was published was Sept. 11, 2001. And yet despite Mr. Ayers' unapologetic attitude towards domestic terrorism, Sen. Obama benefited from his association with Mr. Ayers without concerns about the beliefs of his supporter. Sen Obama put his career first.

A few weeks ago, when the scope of the financial collapse became known, I looked to do my part to protect the citizens of this country. I suspended my campaign and came to Washington to help achieve bi-partisan consensus to address the crisis. My opponent, Sen. Obama continued campaigning. I put the needs of the country ahead of my ambition to have the honor of serving this great country as President.

As it turned out, neither the markets nor the public appreciated my efforts. The stock market fell the next day and the polls continued to show that the nation prefers my opponent.

Even now, despite passing the bailout bill, the markets continue to suffer from a lack of confidence. What does the Democratic congress propose? A new stimulus package. They even say that it's needed right away. But when will they act on it? After the election.

The Democratic leadership wants it both ways. It wants to show that it's looking out for the nation, but it doesn't want to risk its electoral prospects. They are putting their own ambitions ahead of the nation's. If this is the kind of leadership you want over the next four years, then, by all means vote for Sen. Obama and enhance the Democratic hold over the legislature.

But if you want someone who is looking out for the you - the people of the United States - during these uncertain times, I ask you for your vote. I believe and my record shows that I will always put country first.

Fooling with tools

Sen. Obama from the debate Tuesday night.

I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us.

The United States did not attack Iraq because of 9/11. Or not exclusively. This little tidbit is a reminder that Sen. Obama's worldview is much different from that of George W. Bush or John McCain.

The reason why the Bush administration - with overwhelming Congressional support - decided to attack Iraq was because Iraq under Saddam had failed to come clean about its WMD program in accord with UN resolutions. Since the United States was uncertain, the government felt - especially in the wake of 9/11 - that it couldn't take and find out that there Saddam had a WMD program when a SCUD landed in the United States or in the land of an ally loaded with such a warhead. Saddam also was giving aid to numerous terror groups. And despite what the MSM would have you believe, he did have ties to Al Qaeda, even if he had no role in 9/11.

But here's the part that bothers me even more. One of the mantras of the Obama campaign is that he will use all the (presumably diplomatic) tools at his disposal to prevent Iran from going nuclear. The assumption is that these diplomatic tools will be effective. But Sen. Obama never seems to consider what would be if diplomacy fails.

Sen. Obama's implication is that President Bush failed to use all the diplomatic tools available to him to bring Iraq into compliance. President Bush did try, but he was undermined (as Pres Clinton was before him somewhat) by countries like France, Germany and Russia that had commercial dealings with Saddam and were thus willing to subvert the UN resolutions that were supposed to bring him in line.

Rather than take a chance, President Bush chose to take action. Sen. Obama claims that a nuclear Iran is "intolerable." But if it becomes inevitable because diplomacy fails will Sen. Obama continue using those tools? Or will he act?

Related from Anne Bayefsky:

Wake up. There is a genocidal maniac on the verge of reaching the point of no return in his ability to make a nuclear weapon. A fanatic with the stated ambition to murder five million Jews living in Israel -- to start. A villain who has already funded and armed a terrorist war against the Jewish state that in 2006 forced one-third of Israel's population to live underground for almost a month. In other words, an individual who is ready, willing, and able to give the nuclear trigger to a terrorist group -- to terrorists who cannot be bargained with because they prefer their death to your freedom. As for the suggestion that the Mullahs are more powerful and nicer guys, the millions brutalized and subjugated in Iran tell a different story.

h/t LGF

Crossposted on Yourish.

Putting on ayers

Obama & Friends: Judge Not? (or here) Charles Krauthammer argues that bringing up Sen. Obama's ties to Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright and Tony Rezko isn't unfair, concluding:

He doesn't share the Rev. Wright's poisonous views of race nor Ayers's views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.

Until now. Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright's pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.

Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.

Of course he faults McCain for not focusing on these ties earlier. In fact McCain decried efforts to tie Sen. Obama to his preacher of 20 years.

But that was months ago, at a time when Sen. McCain undoubtedly thought he could still earn the media's respect by keeping the tone of the campaign "civil." That was a miscalculation on two counts. Practically he disarmed himself (and his surrogates) from using a potent issue. Secondly, he figured that he'd still get the special treatment from the media that he was used to getting eight years ago. Where he miscalculated was that then he was running against a Republican; now he's running against a Democrat who's a lot closer to the media's views and who has their sympathy regardless of what Sen. McCain does.

George Will and Ross Douthat (via memeorandum) point out another weakness with the playing up the Wright/Ayers/Rezko connections: people's biggest concern now is the financial meltdown, how does this line of attack help McCain in this time of economic uncertainty?

It's a good question, and I wish I had an answer to it. However Hot Air indicates that this is likely to be a major line of attack for the McCain campaign.

What are they thinking? My best guess, would be Karl Rove's most recent column. Though the polls are all going Sen. Obama's way, there's one poll that isn't. Here's Rasmussen:

But, putting the debate performance in perspective, both men and women think McCain is better prepared to be president.

While men are evenly divided on whether Obama is prepared or not, 66% say the Republican is ready, but just 25% say he is not. Among women, 52% believe Obama is ready, while 56% believe McCain is. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of women voters do not believe the Democrat is prepared to be president, versus 31% who believe that of McCain.

Even 36% of likely Obama voters say McCain is prepared to be president, while just three percent (3%) of likely McCain voters believe Obama is ready.

In a survey in mid-September, 63% said McCain is prepared right now to be president, while 44% said the same of Obama. Forty-five percent (45%) said Obama wasn't ready to be in the White House.

Rasmussen's results show that its respondents thinks that Obama would handled the major issues of the day better than McCain would and yet more of them feel that McCain is ready to be president. That's pretty incredible.

And that's the approach that Rove takes:

Mr. Obama's test is that voters haven't shaken deep concerns about his lack of qualifications. Having accomplished virtually nothing in his three years in the Senate except to win the Democratic nomination, Mr. Obama must show he is up to the job. Voters like him, conditions favor him, yet he has not closed the sale. He may be approaching the finish line with that mixture of lassitude and insouciance he displayed in the spring against Mrs. Clinton.

But here's a warning sign for Mr. Obama. Of recent candidates, only Michael Dukakis in 1988 has had a larger percentage of voters tell pollsters they believe he lacks the necessary qualifications to be president.

If Sen. Obama's qualifications for president are being questioned, then attacks on his associations - and, by implication, on his character, would presumably strengthen those doubts. Maybe that's what the McCain camp is thinking. I suppose better late than never, but I can't help wondering if it isn't too late.

UPDATE: Riehl World View explains how he thinks it could work:

Bring Ol' Jerry I hates da white man Wright out on stage for the last two weeks of the campaign, while Obama's integrity and honesty have already been eroded, and it presents a problem he potentially can't solve. No one will believe he didn't hear that garbage for twenty-years, assuming they even believe that now. So, what does that do to the map?

The Red States will all but immediately come home to McCain and we'll be looking at a very typical Red State / Blue State election dynamic which isn't so bad for McCain. But it gets even better than that for McCain, which is why McCain is still playing so hard in Pennsylvania and in the Midwest. The states that rejected Obama for Hillary at the end of the Democrat Primary likely hold the key to this race.

via memeorandum.

Friedman's kind of punditry

Thomas Friedman was bothered by something Gov Palin said at the vice presidential debate:

Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can't just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: "You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that's not patriotic."

What an awful statement. Palin defended the government's $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.

Note the switch. Palin quoted Sen. Biden's assertion that "...higher taxes is patriotic." But somehow, Friedman translated "higher taxes" into "fair share of taxes." There's a difference between the two assertions. Friedman aimed at the wrong barrel!

Sam Dealy:

What Palin did do, however, was call out a politician who, like some relic of the church indulgences scheme, would put a price on patriotism. And just like Biden, Friedman, too, reaches the facile conclusion that the only expression of patriotism is for (other) Americans to pay more taxes.

Dealy argues further:

Here's a third suggestion: Perhaps lawmakers and bureaucrats could show some patriotism by cutting back on spending? Yes, every program has its champions and beneficiaries. But faced with the current economic conditions, surely some priorities--or sacrifices, to use a moral term Friedman might appreciate--can be set? And if that's too inequitable, then why not push for an across-the-board spending cut for every agency and program?

Rick Moran argues:

Yes, by obeying the law and paying taxes we fund police, firemen, our military, and social programs. But all Palin was saying in the debate was that paying taxes was not "patriotic" - not that we shouldn't pay them. Friedman confuses why we pay taxes with the plebian necessity to do so. If obeying the law is "patriotic," it cheapens and demeans the meaning of the word. In fact, patriotism is going beyond what is expected of us as citizens and serving our country despite the fact that doing so means we deny ourselves the ability of doing what we want to do in our own interest. Patriotism is having an unselfish and self-abnegating attitude toward the non-material. Taxes certainly don't fit the bill.

At the end Friedman takes some more gratuitous swipes at Palin:

And please also don't tell me she is an "energy expert." She is an energy expert exactly the same way the king of Saudi Arabia is an energy expert -- by accident of residence. Palin happens to be governor of the Saudi Arabia of America -- Alaska -- and the only energy expertise she has is the same as the king of Saudi Arabia's. It's about how the windfall profits from the oil in their respective kingdoms should be divided between the oil companies and the people.

At least the king of Saudi Arabia, in advocating "drill baby drill," is serving his country's interests -- by prolonging America's dependence on oil. My problem with Palin is that she is also serving his country's interests -- by prolonging America's dependence on oil. That's not patriotic. Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy -- not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs. If Palin has that kind of a plan, I haven't heard it.

The Palin and McCain idea is that we look for alternatives to oil, but in the meantime avail ourselves of the resources we have. I know Friedman's hooked on the "oil is addiction" cliche. (Unfortunately, Presdient Bush seems to be also.) But a better (though still imperfect) analogy would be the cure to a disease. Say we had treatments that could slow the progress of a deadly disease but were still searching for a cure. Would anyone suggest that we not use that (or any) treatment unless we had an total cure? Of course not.

And if we drill for American oil, won't that lower the price of oil that Abdullah is getting for his barrels. Won't that, in the end, hurt him at least a little bit? I mean it's not like Gov. Palin is using her clout to serve as a PR flack for the King of Saudi Arabia.

As far as "empowering Americans," I'm not sure we need a government plan to do that. We have a capitalist economy. When there's a promising technology, talented people will sign on to bring that technology to the public.

As a reporter, Friedman was capable of making astute observations. However as a columnist any observation he makes is followed by an analysis that is colored by his deep seated prejudices. If his column is aobut the Middle East it will colored by his belief that peace requires ever more concessions from Israel to the Palestinians. If his column is political then it must be colored by making sure to subordinate his conclusions to Democratic talking points (I know that's pretty much a tautology because he's a columnist for the NYT) rather than demonstrating an ability to think critically.

Abysmal abbas

Yesterday I expressed some qualified optimism about an upcoming Middle East summit planned for November. I figured that if Abbas would attend because he needed Israel, perhaps he'd be less stubborn.

The Hashmonean, in comments, though, differed:

Now, progress on agreements which has resulted in capitulation to Palestinian demands previously off the table are clearly being codified in a maintenance summit, who's sole purpose in November can be to prepare a hand-off to the next administrations, thus codifying Olmert's govts concessions & tying Israel's hands with Livni or without her going forward. Rice is solidifying the damage she has done here squeezing us over this past 2 years.

Now I see that Abbas isn't so scared of Hamas that he isn't still looking to reconcile with them.

So let's hope that the maintenance summit doesn't have too much success and that Israel's next leader won't be hamstrung by last minute concessions made by a caretaker government. The Hashmonean has a poll showing that Israelis are overwhelmingly confident about their country and its rightness unlike the way the Washington Post portrayed Israeli society.

Crossposted on Yourish.

We'll tell you what's important

via memeorandum and Instapundit.

James Taranto yesterday critiqued the latest fad in "journalism:" fact-checking.

Like movie reviewing, the "fact check" is a highly subjective process. If a politician makes a statement that is flatly false, it does not need to be "fact checked." The facts themselves are sufficient. "Fact checks" end up dealing in murkier areas of context and emphasis, making it very easy for the journalist to make up standards as he goes along, applying them more rigorously to the candidate he disfavors (which usually means the Republican).

Specifically he critiques this "fact-check:"

Like movie reviewing, the "fact check" is a highly subjective process. If a politician makes a statement that is flatly false, it does not need to be "fact checked." The facts themselves are sufficient. "Fact checks" end up dealing in murkier areas of context and emphasis, making it very easy for the journalist to make up standards as he goes along, applying them more rigorously to the candidate he disfavors (which usually means the Republican).

Example: USA Today has a "reality check" of a McCain ad whose script runs as follows:

Narrator: "Who is Barack Obama? He says our troops in Afghanistan are . . .

Obama: ". . . just air-raiding villages and killing civilians."

Narrator: "How dishonorable. Congressional liberals voted repeatedly to cut off funding to our active troops, increasing the risk on their lives. How dangerous. Obama and congressional liberals: too risky for America."

The USA Today headline reads "Quote From Obama Taken Out of Context." In a way this is a tautology, since a quotation by definition is taken out of its original context (and placed in a new one). But of course the phrase out of context usually connotes "used in a misleading way." Is that the case here? Here is a longer version of the Obama quote, per USA Today:

"We've got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."

On the one hand, Obama was making a broader argument, which the McCain ad ignores: that America should send more troops to Afghanistan. On the other hand, Obama clearly did assert that America is "air-raiding villages and killing civilians" (the subsequent clause makes that undeniable), though one could argue about whether he was asserting or merely worrying that we are "just" doing so.

Taranto doesn't seem bothered by the charge in the ad and nothing about it seems amiss. Except to Obama supporters.

Take yesterday's Washington Post editorial, Dangerous Territory:

But the relevance of character can't excuse an anything-goes assault. Mr. Obama's use of the word "just" in his statement on Afghanistan was inartful. But Mr. McCain knows perfectly well that Mr. Obama doesn't believe U.S. troops are killing only civilians. He also knows perfectly well that the problem Mr. Obama described -- the alienation of Afghan civilians by military tactics that lead to too many civilian deaths -- is real and demands a rethinking of strategy. What's dishonorable in this case is the McCain ad, not the Obama statement.

"Inartful?" The Post dismisses that the use of the word indicates anything about Sen. Obama's mindset. It looks to me like he's emphasizing the civilian casualties above all else. And as Taranto points out there could be less to the "killing civilians" charge than meets the eye.

Given that the enemy in Afghanistan does not distinguish itself from the civilian population, how many of the putative civilians who have died in attacks by the West were actually enemy combatants? And on what basis does one assign blame for civilian casualties when the West attacks terrorists who are hiding among civilians?

Going back to the Washington Post editorial, it compares the McCain camp's tying of Obama to Bill Ayers with the Obama camp's tying of McCain to Charles Keating. On the one hand:

Character is legitimate campaign fodder -- up to a point. Is there something to be learned from Mr. Obama's association in the 1990s with William Ayers, the unrepentant domestic terrorist to whom Ms. Palin referred? It's certainly not that Mr. Obama hates America or shares responsibility for the bombing Mr. Ayers helped carry out. By the time Mr. Obama came on the Chicago scene, Mr. Ayers was a member of the liberal political establishment that Mr. Obama sought to join. Maybe someone of stronger character would have decided not to go with that flow -- not to join a foundation board with Mr. Ayers or allow him to host a political coffee. It's an arguable point, maybe a small brushstroke in a full portrait of Mr. Obama, in any case hardly disqualifying to his candidacy.

On the other hand:

Similarly, the Keating savings-and-loan scandal, in which Mr. McCain was accused of poor judgment but no crime, is a legitimate topic. The Obama campaign is off-base in seeking to tie it to today's financial meltdown on the basis that Mr. McCain was and remains an ideological foe of regulation. As we've written here before, his record is far more complex, including advocacy of stricter accounting standards after the Enron scandal and stronger regulation of housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But Mr. McCain himself has talked about the shame he felt in his Keating Five involvement and how it impelled him to a greater attention to ethics in his subsequent career. It's a brushstroke, or two, in his political portrait.

Brushstrokes? In the first case Sen. Obama knew about Ayers' past and it set off no alarms. If this was the way to political power, he wouldn't worry over such details. In the second case, his dealings with an unsavory character inspired Sen. McCain to be concerned with corruption and take action.

It's a point I made before. Others have too, including here. And yet the Washington Post just dismisses these concerns as "brushstrokes."

What is important to the Washington Post? Well it wasn't the involvement of James Johnson in the Obama campaign. After the flap the Post had an editorial Surrogate Silliness.

Ditto Mr. Johnson. Like many people, he made a lot of money at Fannie Mae at a time when its accounting was messed up. As a wealthy person, he got a mortgage that may or may not have been more favorable than the mortgages available to other wealthy people. Mr. Obama handled the controversy clumsily. But, once more, this episode tells us nothing important about Mr. Obama. Mr. Johnson as Washington insider? Please. Mr. Obama sought the help of a Democrat who had experience vetting potential vice presidential running mates. If Mr. Obama needed surgery, what would it say if he picked a doctor who hadn't previously performed the operation he needed?

This might sound awfully quaint. It may be pitifully naive. But would it be too much to ask for just a little more focus on what the candidates themselves have to say--and less on the surrogate bloopers du jour?

Given the subsequent failure of Fannie Mae, this argument seems quaint. Someone who was involved in the Fannie Mae failure is someone who Sen. Obama trusted. That also says something about his judgment. But the Washington Post says, "move along, nothing to see here."

It's hard not to get the feeling that the media (as represented by the Washington Post here) has taken an approach of "we're the final arbiters of what's important this campaign season."

I've wondered (as have others) if the Washington Post would follow through on some of its substantive criticisms of Sen. Obama on Iraq and note the huge experience gap and endorse John McCain for president. The Post's unwillingness to entertain questions of Sen. Obama's character and judgment make it pretty clear that it won't endorse McCain. I expect an unenthusiastic or, at least, equivocating, endorsement of Obama from the Post. But they will endorse him.

So What Do Israelis Really Think Of Obama?

At this point--who knows? If you like, you base yourself on the video from Israelis4Obama:



Then again, there is Willy Stern who made the rounds in Israel for The Weekly Standard and came to the conclusion that: "One thing Israelis and Palestinians can agree on is that Obama is bad news." Palestinians think that Obama is bad news? The going theory is that Palestinian Arabs think that Obama is good for the Palestinians...

To test the theory, I go to see Ramallah's top pollster, Khalil Shikaki. He has a Ph.D. from Columbia University, writes op-eds for the New York Times and Washington Post, and has taught at Brandeis. Shikaki runs the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research out of his office in a well-appointed building atop a Subaru dealership. The building wouldn't be out of place in downtown Tulsa. He has recent polling data on Obama. A late August survey indicated that a scant 9.9 percent of Palestinians thought an Obama presidency would have a "positive effect" on the Palestinian question. Apparently, the "audacity of hope" mantra doesn't fly in Arabic. Shikaki said he hadn't expected "such a large percentage of negative results" for Obama. He supposes that Palestinians--whether they are Fatah supporters in the West Bank or Hamas supporters in Gaza--think both American candidates are heavily biased in favor of Israel and therefore equally bad.[emphasis added]

Well, if the Arabs are not falling head over heels for Obama, surely Israeli Jews are--you did watch that video above, didn't you? According to Gallup, Obama gets about 66% of the American Jewish vote.

In Israel, though, it's an entirely different matter. "Israel is the only place on the globe in which the public genuinely likes the Bush administration," notes Shlomo Brom, a retired Israeli brigadier general who studies national security issues at Tel Aviv University's Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies. "McCain is widely seen as an extension of Bush by the Israeli electorate." No one should be surprised that Obama trailed McCain 38 percent to 31 percent in a late July poll of Jewish Israelis. (In May, McCain was up 43 percent to 20 percent over Obama.)

"We respect war heroes in Israel, especially those like McCain who were POWs," notes Mitchell Barak, managing director of the Jerusalem-based Keevoon Research, Strategy & Communications. "We see Obama fantasizing about how he wants to sit down and talk to the terrorists, and he loses a lot of Israelis right there. He comes off as unrealistic and insensitive to the existential challenges facing the Jewish state, and as naïve."

Naïve, indeed. It's a theme that popped up frequently when I mentioned Obama's name. Obama lacks experience. Obama doesn't understand how to deal with terrorists in general, and radical Islamic terrorists in particular. Obama thinks a court of law is the right forum for dealing with terrorists. Obama thinks the U.N. is a dandy place to solve difficult problems. Obama would have happily lost the Iraq war. Obama would cede regional hegemony to the Iranians. And so on.

Most Israelis, who live daily with the threat of terrorism, simply don't trust Obama.

According to Stern, not only is McCain preferred by Israelis over Obama, this preference transcends party affiliation:

The leaders of all three of Israel's major political parties--Labor, Kadima, and Likud--prefer McCain but they don't dare say so publicly, reports chain-smoking political consultant Eyal Arad. Why not? Because, explains Arad, they know they might have to deal with Obama for the next four years. "Israelis fear the unknown and Obama represents the unknown," explains Saul Singer, longtime editorial page editor of the Jerusalem Post, now on book leave.

This is all pretty irrelevant to the election back in the US of course--unless you are considering the absentee vote of Americans living in Israel. Apparently the absentee vote of the military is not the only one that is expected to vote for McCain:

Expat Americans in Israel are also largely right-leaning. Kory Bardash, a former Goldman Sachs analyst who is now chairman of Republicans Abroad in Israel, predicts that McCain will get more than 75 percent of the vote among Americans living in Israel. He wants it to have an impact, too. Bardash is specifically targeting absentee voters who are registered back home in the swing states of Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

In the end, no one knows how much the Jewish vote is going to matter altogether. However, what an Obama presidency will do is naturally of interest to Jews both in the US and in Israel. And the impression Stern gives is that if Obama wins, Israeli leaders will be more wary.

by Daled Amos

Biden On The Pakistani Threat To Israel

I posted earlier about Biden's gaffes about Israel during the debate--that Hezbollah has been kicked out of Lebanon and that the Hamas elections were held in the West Bank.

It turns out that Biden made a third error about Israel during the debates--the nuclear threat Israel faces from Pakistan:

Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. Pakistan already has deployed nuclear weapons. Pakistan's weapons can already hit Israel and the Mediterranean.

Jim Geraghty, who has a list of 22 gaffes Biden made during that debate, explains:

The distance between Israel and Pakistan is 2,085 miles, or 3355 kilometers...They are working on developing longer-range missiles; maybe Biden knows of some development that public sources do not yet know about. Theoretically, the Pakistanis could put the weapon on a boat and then sail it to the target, but by that standard, any site on a coast in the world is within their range.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This site indicates that the top range of Pakistani missile that can carry a nuclear warhead is 1000 miles. By being off by 1,000 or so, I'm now upgrading this to full lie/error/hallucination status.

It's one thing to mistake the West Bank for Gaza, but mistakenly thinking that Pakistan poses a threat to another country is getting into the area where mistaken notions lead to mistaken policies.

On a side note: in another post I questioned the story--based on Biden's book--that Biden once told Milosevic to his face that, "I think you're a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one."

In Biden Played Less Than Key Role in Bosnia Legislation, The Washington Post casts doubt on the story:

Milosevic is now dead and only a handful of people were in the room. Ted Kaufman, then Biden's chief of staff and now an aide in his vice presidential campaign, said the incident occurred exactly as Biden recounted it.

But John Ritch, then deputy chief of staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, does not remember such a blunt statement, but rather that Biden more gently made the case that Milosevic could be a war criminal. "The legend grows" regarding the meeting, Ritch said. "But Biden certainly introduced into the conversation the concept that Milosevic was a war criminal. Milosevic reacted with aplomb."

A third Biden aide in the room did not recall the confrontation and a fourth declined to comment.

Upon his return to the United States, Biden issued a 36-page report on the trip, laying out eight policy proposals, including airstrikes on Serb artillery and lifting the arms embargo. The report, largely written by Ritch, does not mention the war-criminal exchange in the two pages devoted to the Milosevic meeting. But the day after it was issued, Biden appeared on NBC's "Today" show and said he had called Milosevic a war criminal to his face. "This guy looked at me as if I said, 'Lots of luck in your senior year,' " Biden said.

Yet despite the report, and with all his bragging about being instrumental to the measures taken by the US, Biden only played a minor role in doing anything about the situation:

During last week's debate with his counterpart on the Republican ticket, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Biden twice gave himself credit for shifting U.S. policy on Bosnia. The senator from Delaware declared that he "was the catalyst to change the circumstance in Bosnia led by President Clinton." At another point he noted: "My recommendations on Bosnia -- I admit I was the first one to recommend it. They saved tens of thousands of lives."

But, despite the bravado, Biden was not a key player in the legislation that ultimately forced Bill Clinton to lift an arms embargo imposed by the United Nations on Bosnian Muslims fighting the Serbs, according to congressional officials involved in the issue and a review of Biden's speeches and voting record.

In his autobiography, "Promises to Keep," Biden says that the pivotal Senate vote came "nearly three years after I called for the plan" to unilaterally lift the embargo. But the charge actually was led by then-Senate Minority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) and Democratic Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), who has since become an independent.

...By the time Biden signed on to the Dole-Lieberman bill, two years after his encounter with Milosevic, he was listed only as the ninth co-sponsor.

That's the same kind of bravado we hear when Biden claims "I am a Zionist" or the Obama campaign claims "Obama Loves Israel".

When can't they just stick to kissing babies?

by Daled Amos

Ayers ready to rumble?

via memeorandum and Instapundit

David Bernstein writes:

In short, Obama's ties to Ayers and Wright suggest to me NOT that Obama agrees with their views, but that he is the product of a particular intellectual culture that finds the likes of Wright and Ayers to be no more objectionable, and likely less so, than the likes of Tom Coburn, or, perhaps, a Rush Limbaugh. Not only that, but he has been in his particular intellectual bubble so long that he was unable to recognize just how offensive the views of a Wright are to mainstream America, or how his ties to Ayers would play with the public, especially post-9/11.

I don't agree with Bernstein's assessment of Ronald Reagan. But Sol Stern, a few months ago, gives a reason why this outlook is problematic:

Ayers's influence on what is taught in the nation's public schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for. In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.

AERA already does a great deal to advance the social-justice teaching agenda in the nation's schools and has established a Social Justice Division with its own executive director. With Bill Ayers now part of the organization's national leadership, you can be sure that it will encourage even more funding and support for research on how teachers can promote left-wing ideology in the nation's classrooms--and correspondingly less support for research on such mundane subjects as the best methods for teaching underprivileged children to read.

One more crisis not of israel's making

Yes we've heard of the terrible siege that Israel has laid against Gaza. Mere Rhetoric catalogues all of the charges against Israel and shows them to be bogus.

The latest to fall is how Israel's blockade harmed the sick and injured in Gaza. Israel actually allows the vast majority of those who apply to leave for medical treatment to get treatment in Israel.

Elder of Ziyon has more.

Which means that during this horrible "siege," Israel has been doubling and re-doubling the number of patients allowed from Gaza to Israel or the PA for treatment.

Additionally as the JCPA - the source for these figures - points out

# The facts are that Israel has provided ever increasing numbers of approvals of permits since the Hamas takeover of Gaza, despite increasing rocket attacks on Israel's civilian population, including mortar and terror attacks directed at the Erez crossing used by patients.
# At the same time, there have been at least 20 incidents where Palestinians used medical missions to attempt terror attacks.

Reading things like this makes me wonder if Israel actually cares more about Palestinians than the Palestinian leadership does. The most recent medical efforts we saw from Hamas was its persecution of Fatah affiliated doctors, making health care in Gaza even less available. Yet it's Israel that will be in the dock, accused by the likes of Amnesty International of preventing access to health care and other crimes:

Amnesty International raises concern over human rights violations entrenched in the normative and institutional structure of the Israeli state: the failure of Israel to recognize the applicability to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) of humanitarian and human rights law; the unlawful settlements in the OPT; the construction of a fence/wall mostly within the OPT; the demolition of Palestinian homes in the OPT and of Arab Israeli homes in Israel; policies which undermine the rights of the occupied Palestinian population to health, education, housing, work and an adequate standard of living in the West Bank and, in particular, in Gaza where Israeli authorities have imposed a stringent blockade; torture or other ill-treatment of detainees;

This goes beyond irresponsible. There exists no charitable explanation for AI and the other NGO's who will be doing the will of the Arab world next year at Durban II and demonizing Israel. This isn't about helping the Palestinians but about hating Israel and the Jews.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Abbas at the abyss

Secretary Rice is apparently planning to celebrate the first anniversary of the Annapolis summit with - another summit. Shmuel Rosner describes this proposed summit as maintenance as opposed to a desperate, ill fated and misguided attempt (like Taba in 2001) to reach a final agreement.

A summit in November is unlikely to provide a definitive answer as to which of these assessments is closer to reality. Nevertheless, Secretary Rice can make a strong argument for such a summit. She'll argue that this event should not be seen as a last-minute attempt at reaching an agreement in the mode of Clinton's Taba talks (following the collapse of the Camp David summit in 2000), but rather as a maintenance measure.

Aside from the success the PA has had in enforcing the law and order in Jenin, David Hazony writes that perhaps what's motivating Mahmoud Abbas, is a sense of mortality.

Why now? Probably because for the first time, his regime is under a direct threat from a Hamas overthrow. According to reports, Fatah is preparing a major anti-Hamas assault in the West Bank, which comes on the heels of Hamas' own threatening to repeat its successes from Gaza in the rest of Palestinian territory. In other words, things have gotten so bad for him that he has realized how much he really needs Israel and the support of major powers.

Meryl points out that Hamas is using the law to help their takeover attempts.

Hamas, the terrorist group that took over the Gaza Strip in a wave of violent attacks that included throwing bound Fatah members off buildings, rocketing civilian homes, and resulted in over 100 dead Palestinians, including, of course, women and children--yeah, that Hamas is pretending to care about the legitimacy of a law that they never followed in the first place except to put their people in place to take over.

I wonder though, if there's another factor that's motivating Abbas.

Findings of the third quarter of 2008 indicate continued slow decline in Hamas's popularity while Fateh's popularity remains stable as it was during the second quarter. Similarly, findings show a slightly wider gap between the popularity of President Abbas compared to that of Ismail Haniyeh in favor of the former. Positive evaluation of the conditions of Palestinians in the West Bank remains higher than that of conditions in the Gaza Strip. This applies to overall conditions as well as those of democracy and human rights. Findings show also significant opposition to Hamas's military entry into Shijaiah in the Gaza Strip in early August.

Surprisingly, the good government terrorists are alienating their constituents. Too bad we don't hear more about this in the press.

I don't trust Abbas. He continues to be a terrorist sympathizer and I suspect he was always was more involved in terrorism than his apologists allowed. I don't know where this will lead, but it's better if Israel has one less front that it has to defend. And despite the apparent improvement in his support, he remains a weak leader. Still a practical maintenance meeting probably will cause less harm than an all out effort to bridge the unbridgeable gaps.

So is Abbas motivated by fear or confidence? At this point I don't know that it matters.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Down on j-street

via memeorandum

A recent pro-Obama video has some of the Israeli officials who appeared in it upset, for they feel that it misrepresented their views.

Former head of the Mossad Ephraim Halevy and former IDF deputy chief of staff Maj.-Gen. Uzi Dayan accused the group of taking their words out of context, saying that when filmed they had been told that the issue at hand was the challenges facing the next man in the White House, and not that the film was aimed at endorsing Obama for president.

"It's not only misleading, it was an interview about what the next president was going to have to deal with," Dayan told The Jerusalem Post, "and to know that they used this interview and took [only] five seconds [of it], and put me in a list of people praising Barack Obama...

Shmuel Rosner points out that the video's less a problem because it misrepresents Sen. Obama, than that it mis-represents Israel.

Again, the problem with this clip is not that it gives a misleading impression of Obama. It's the impression it gives about Israel that's wrong. Yes, one can find some Obama supporters among the ex-officials of the Israeli Defense forces, but they will be in the minority. One of them, Amnon Shahak, is shown in both clips. Shlomo Brom, Yossi Alpher and Shaul Arieli - names most Israelis (and surely Americans) will not recognize - are all knowledgeable, respectable people, but can be usually counted on to be in opposition to most things the Israeli defense establishment believes.

Gens. Brom, Alpher and Arieli (as well as Naomi Chasan, who is also mentioned as being on the video) are all supporters of J-Street a "pro-peace, pro-Israel" organization that is closely tied to Sen. Obama.

Still this doesn't mean that the misrepresentation was done by the Obama campaign, but by a group that supports Sen. Obama.

Rosner's point is reiterated by Israel Matzav:

This is especially significant because, as I noted in the earlier post, Dayan is the only one interviewed with ties to a party on the right of the political spectrum, and it was Dayan who allowed the video's makers to claim that the generals interviewed were from "across the political spectrum."

Two other retired generals who were interviewed - Amram Mitzna and Giora Inbar (who is also now apparently a US citizen since he said he would vote for Obama), stood by the comments, although they too admit that they had no idea why they were being filmed. The rest of the JPost article I linked above is a rehash of yesterday's JPost article about the video.

More at Daled Amos.

The truth is that the last polling numbers I saw actually showed that Israelis prefer Sen. Obama to Sen. McCain by a small margin. I forget where I saw them. I believe that those polls even had him leading among Likud voters. I don't recall who the polling organization was, though I find those numbers surprising. (Of course, that does not mean that they're wrong.)

Crossposted on Yourish.

Right about wright

Bill Kristol quoting Sarah Palin:

I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers -- and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright?

She didn't hesitate: "To tell you the truth, Bill, I don't know why that association isn't discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that -- with, I don't know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn't get up and leave -- to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up."

As I just pointed out, Sen. Obama found Rev. Wright's views politically attractive. There's no reason it shouldn't be fair game.

Sen. Obama's going to bring up McCain's role in the Keating 5.

Great. Back when they were allowed to write positive things about John McCain in the NYT, this is how the incident was recalled:

Of course, money in politics is rarely a direct bribe. Often, people give not because they expect anything in return but because they find it easier than not giving. When your biggest client calls you and asks you to contribute $1,000 to the Clinton campaign, you don't think much about it; you write the check. But Charlie Keating, it turned out, expected something in return. He expected McCain and others to pressure Federal regulators to look the other way while he played fast and loose with taxpayers' money.

All of this quickly came out when the story broke in early 1989 that McCain, together with four other Senators similarly favored by Keating -- Glenn, Donald Riegle of Michigan, Dennis DeConcini of Arizona and Alan Cranston of California -- had gathered twice in 1987 to discuss Keating's complaint that he was being treated too harshly by Federal bank regulators. McCain was branded one of ''the Keating Five'' and dragged into a Senate investigation to determine exactly what he had done in exchange for Keating's money. When you go back over the Senate Ethics Committee hearings, which lasted 14 months, you see pretty clearly that he did surprisingly little. Both the committee and the transcripts are conclusive on this point. One incident in particular leaps out. When he saw that McCain would not interfere with the law on his behalf, Keating took to insulting McCain behind his back. Word got back to McCain that Keating had been all over the Senate calling him ''a wimp.'' A McCain staff member who was present at a subsequent meeting between McCain and Keating recalled for the Senate Ethics Committee how it played out:

In all the time . . . I've been around John he, himself, although he will answer questions in response to his experience in Vietnam, I have never, except for this one occasion, heard him raise his prisoner-of-war experience. And very early on in that meeting, I remember him vividly telling Mr. Keating that he hadn't spent five and a half years of his life in a prisoner-of-war camp to have his courage or integrity questioned. And he gave Mr. Keating a dressing down, the likes of which I, in my experience on the Hill, have never experienced a Senator giving a major employer of his state. It was startling to me.

And McCain took from that experience a dedication to fight corruption. (Even sometimes going too far.) When he realized what Keating was about he refused to cooperate.

What exactly did Sen. Obama take from his experience with Rev. Wright? That you maintain your loyalty to questionable characters until they become political liabilities?

The comparison between the two is not flattering to Obama.

No runs, no hits, plenty of errors

In his column yesterday, the NYT's public editor, Clark Hoyt asserted:

By my count, The Times has published more tough articles on Obama, 20, than on McCain, 13, since the beginning of last year. I have posted links to the stories on my blog, The Public Editor's Journal, and you can decide for yourself.

Before then he inserted this precious tidbit:

Until Thursday, when The Times published a front-page article on Biden's lifestyle and personal finances, he seemed like a forgotten candidate, while three tough articles about Palin had been on the front page. (Several readers called the Biden piece a "hit" and charged that The Times wrote it only to even the score because Republicans were complaining.)

Republicans were complaining? Why might that be? Could it be that one of the articles about McCain was what Republicans called a hit piece and that Hoyt himself observed:

I think that ignores the scarlet elephant in the room. A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide.

So when Hoyt's giving the overview of the "tough" articles written about each candidate, he doesn't even own up to the one about McCain that even he found wanting? And he only refers to the Times's overreach by implication!

Hoyt also gives an overview of a number of the tough pieces about McCain including.

They included reports on the hasty, last-minute vetting of Palin, distortions or misstatements of fact in McCain's television ads, and his love of gambling and ties to the industry.

Uh that vetting process? OK, it was covered by the Washington Post earlier and it sounded that McCain's people did vet her pretty thoroughly, but secretly. Apparently it's an article of faith at the NYT that if the Times didn't know about it didn't happen. But the Times's editorial position, which just happens to coincide with the Obama campaign's position, is that the choice of Palin was reckless and a poor reflection on McCain.

However this is what someone at the McCain campaign had to say about the NYT's vetting story.

The story, my campaign source told me, is "materially false." Gov. Palin, the strategist said, was subjected to a "complete vet." "That included her filling out a 70-question questionnaire that was highly intrusive and personal. She was then interviewed for more than three hours by A.B. Culvahouse. There were multiple follow-up interviews."

(h/t Neo Neocon)

So Hoyt boasts about a story that the McCain campaign dismisses as inaccurate. (Sure the McCain campaign would say that. Of course the McCain campaign also provided the details of the vetting process so it makes the NYT's assertion look silly.)

I looked at Hoyt's blog about the 20 tough pieces on Obama and 13 on McCain. I'm not going to go through them all, but given the centrality of Jeremiah Wright to Obama's political career and the fact that Hoyt boasted that the Times mentioned Wright before most Americans had heard about him, let's go to that first Wright story, titled "A candidate, his pastor and the search for faith."

Twenty years ago at Trinity, Mr. Obama, then a community organizer in poor Chicago neighborhoods, found the African-American community he had sought all his life, along with professional credibility as a community organizer and an education in how to inspire followers. He had sampled various faiths but adopted none until he met Mr. Wright, a dynamic pastor who preached Afrocentric theology, dabbled in radical politics and delivered music-and-profanity-spiked sermons.

Few of those at Mr. Wright's tribute in March knew of the pressures that Mr. Obama's presidential run was placing on the relationship between the pastor and his star congregant. Mr. Wright's assertions of widespread white racism and his scorching remarks about American government have drawn criticism, and prompted the senator to cancel his delivery of the invocation when he formally announced his candidacy in February.

Mr. Obama, a Democratic presidential candidate who says he was only shielding his pastor from the spotlight, said he respected Mr. Wright's work for the poor and his fight against injustice. But "we don't agree on everything," Mr. Obama said. "I've never had a thorough conversation with him about all aspects of politics."

It is hard to imagine, though, how Mr. Obama can truly distance himself from Mr. Wright. The Christianity that Mr. Obama adopted at Trinity has infused not only his life, but also his campaign. He began his presidential announcement with the phrase "Giving all praise and honor to God," a salutation common in the black church. He titled his second book, "The Audacity of Hope," after one of Mr. Wright's sermons, and often talks about biblical underdogs, the mutual interests of religious and secular America, and the centrality of faith in public life.

After soft pedaling Wright's views as "scorching remarks about American government have drawn criticism" the Times did little to question how much of Wright's dogma Obama embraced. It acknowledges that Obama would have a difficult time distancing himself from Wright. But failing to provide the toxicity of some of Wright's beliefs, the article can hardly be said to be tough on Obama. And of course the article makes every effort to show that Obama was drawn, not to his Wright's fiery words, but his generous actions:

Mr. Obama had never met a minister who made pilgrimages to Africa, welcomed women leaders and gay members and crooned Teddy Pendergrass rhythm and blues from the pulpit. Mr. Wright was making Trinity a social force, initiating day care, drug counseling, legal aid and tutoring. He was also interested in the world beyond his own; in 1984, he traveled to Cuba to teach Christians about the value of nonviolent protest and to Libya to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, along with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Wright said his visits implied no endorsement of their views.

And note how the article allows Wright to deny that he didn't endorse the views of Qaddafi or Farrakhan without looking for any evidence that the denial may have been (and likely was) insincere.

By contrast look at this excerpt from an adoring article about Obama from Rolling Stone, originally titled "The Radical Roots of Barack Obama."

The Trinity United Church of Christ, the church that Barack Obama attends in Chicago, is at once vast and unprepossessing, a big structure a couple of blocks from the projects, in the long open sore of a ghetto on the city's far South Side. The church is a leftover vision from the Sixties of what a black nationalist future might look like. There's the testifying fervor of the black church, the Afrocentric Bible readings, even the odd dashiki. And there is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a sprawling, profane bear of a preacher, a kind of black ministerial institution, with his own radio shows and guest preaching gigs across the country. Wright takes the pulpit here one Sunday and solemnly, sonorously declares that he will recite ten essential facts about the United States. "Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he intones. "Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!" There is thumping applause; Wright has a cadence and power that make Obama sound like John Kerry. Now the reverend begins to preach. "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!" The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: "And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS S***!"

This is as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from, as much Malcolm X as Martin Luther King Jr. Wright is not an incidental figure in Obama's life, or his politics. The senator "affirmed" his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a "sounding board" to "make sure I'm not losing myself in the hype and hoopla." Both the title of Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright's sermons. "If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from," says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, "just look at Jeremiah Wright."

I'd argue that this is harder hitting than the Times piece. It lets us know exactly what Wright's views are and makes no apology that Barack Obama chose Wright's church for his own because of the politics. The Times, in contrast, finesses the issue of Obama's political views and casts his choice of church as a matter of defining his faith, not necessarily his politics. The Times in that "tough" piece was seeking to diffuse possible criticism of its favored candidate.

Clark Hoyt wants us to trust him (and his paper) that they were tougher with Obama than with McCain because there were more "tough" articles about Obama. But the one Obama article I checked out was hardly tough.

It's like a batter was asked how his game was and he says that he made contact 33 times. Now some of those could be foul balls and some could be grand slams. Hoyt's criteria for "tough" is no more meaningful than "I made contact."

Perhaps a different standard could apply: The Times is tougher on whichever candidate its own public editor acknowledges distorts more.

Similar thoughts at Cheat Seeking Missiles.

Juggling carnivals 10/06/08

Incoming Carnivals

Thanks to the Greenbelt for linking to me in the latest Carnival of Maryland illustrated with pictures of lots of cute fuzzy creatures.

J-Pix #19 is up. Some really nice pictures of the Shomron - and LA!

Thanks to Writes like she Talks for featuring one post of mine and two others that I suggested for the latest Haveil Havalim. I was especially impressed with A Simple Jew's post this week!

And finally thanks to Dr. Sanity for including a post of mine in today's Carnival of the Insanities along with posts from Israeli Matzav, and Wolf Howling

25 months

This morning at 1:15 AM she turned 109 weeks old.

One of the things that has changed about her, is that she now has a nice percentage of her teeth. Her "toothless wonder" days are over. And that gets me thinking about the transition we are about to experience. When she stops being a baby, and starts being a little girl. I already started discussing the issue at Baltimore Sun's Parenting blog. At the time I listed 5 criteria for marking the change between baby and little girl.

1) The most obvious, I suppose, is toilet training. I don't think she's that far from that. She is very good about letting us know when she's 'gusting, ' and I suspect that she may even know when she has to go.

2) She talks very well. But when will she reach the stage that a conversation consists of more than a single exchange?

3) When the majority of her sentences no longer start with 'I want...'

4) When she goes a whole day without crying.

5) When she starts walking with a more even gait and not looking like she's bouncing with every step.

Here are a few more:
6) When she walks up and down stairs instead of sliding down and climbing up.
7) When we can trust her to sleep in a bed.
8) When she starts dressing herself.

It's not that she doesn't do this things at all yet, but they're not her regular way of operating. But when the babyness is gone, I'm going to miss it.

One sound that we've been hearing more frequently around the house has been the scraping of chairs against the kitchen floor as she navigates the kitchen for snacks. It's tough to get her to sit and eat her regular meals. But she loves certain snacks. Cookies for sure. Lollypops. Applesauce too. (However it has to be in the little plastic cups, I can't serve it to her in a bowl from a large jar.)

I first noticed it a few weeks ago when we returned from my parents house with a supply of chocolate Rice Krispie squares. When she was supposed to be getting ready for bed, I saw a chair in the kitchen by the counter where there was the open bag of Rice Krispie Squares. When I found her, there was one in her mouth.

I'd previously written my thoughts on the "terrible twos."

Tonight I saw some behavior that leads me to refine my thoughts a bit. She seems to believe that if she expresses something properly or does something on her own it's the same as having been given permission.

Before dinner, she went downstairs, got into a food cabinet and got herself a multigrain bar, proudly she showed us "cookie" holding it out, with the expectation that we'd unwrap it for her and she'd eat it. She was none too pleased when I attempted to take it away from her. I won the struggle, but she was undaunted. She went downstairs and got herself another one, but this time held it close to her chest. I had to fight to get that one away from her too.

She also didn't listen and went out the screen door when one of her siblings left it open. When we went to get her she insisted that she wanted to be outside and we insisted that she come in. Since we're bigger we carried her in and made her sit in the corner. She was furious with us, so she went to her older sister for comfort. How dare we limit her!

So the question is now that she is asserting her independence more, how do we set limits?

At the end of the day when I come home she is so happy to see me and runs to me, asking me to pick her up. In fact she likes me to pick her up a lot. (Funny but the two children immediately older than her used to love to ride on my shoulders at this age, but she would rather be held in my arms.)

Maybe during the day, my wife will remind me of a few things, so I reserve the right to add more later.

UPDATE: How could I forget? Food!

Her favorite foods are ketchup and yogurt. Though not necessarily together. Whenever we give her ketchup - like for french fries, she'll eat the ketchup plain. Oh, and because they're long and thin, she calls green beans "ri-ries" (french fries.) So we'll keep the charade going as long as it means that she'll eat vegetables.

She loves cake and cookies. One morning about two weeks ago, I was trying to get out of the house. She hadn't eaten much breakfast but kept asking me for cake. I kept breaking off pieces of chocolate cake when she'd finish the previous one. I felt like Bill Cosby, giving my baby chocolate cake for breakfast.

She is generally very affectionate. When I come home at night and will run to me (or slide down the stairs) to greet me. And at bed time she is usually absolutely adorable. She might lie down and say "Goo nite nite" and hold her arm out for a hug. Or she'll stand and give us hugs.

Previous related entries:
Two years,
23 months,
22 months,
21 months,
20 months,
19 months,
18 months,
17 months,
16 months,
15 months,
14 months,
13 months,
One year,
11 months,
10 months,
9 months,
eight months,
seven months,
six months,
five months,
four months,
three months,
two months,
One month.

This is your brain on Obamatol 2

Courtney E. Martin, writing in the CS Monitor, unwittingly makes a great case for voting for McCain:

Like so many Americans, I feel as though I am holding my breath.

Could the quiet seed of joy that was planted in my heart the day I heard Barack Obama speak for the first time take root and grow without fear of the brutal storms of disappointment?

Could a leader that evokes awe in me actually win a presidential election? Could the beauty - and logic - of his words win over the majority of this country's voters? Could they see past the lies and distractions to the center of a human being who sincerely wants to invoke citizens' higher selves?

Could a system that seems so broken, so moneyed, so corrupt actually serve to help the American people elect an authentic, complex thinker? Could it be that - despite all that is wrong with the electoral process - there is enough right to allow a thoughtful candidate to get through the muck and emerge earnest and excited to lead? [...]

If Obama is elected, if I am invited to rejoice with the majority of Americans, the best part of me will have a chance to smile triumphantly at the worst.

Sometimes you believe in someone and they inspire you right back. Sometimes kindness and wisdom triumph over fear and brutality. Sometimes this country is as amazing as your wildest imagination of it.

This thing is entitled "Dare I believe Obama can win?" It seems to prove that Obama is what his associations with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers always suggested: an extremist. Why would a normal liberal inspire this sort of writing? The author obviously never thought she would ever see a Eugene Debs or a Gus Hall in the Oval Office and now she is wondering if she should dare to hope. Should she? I hope not.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Musical monday #63

Check out the answers to Musical Monday 62. Sorry, I'm not as ambitious or clever as Elie.

However this time I tried to maintain some semblance of order. #1, is the theme. The rest follow the theme, though 30 is kind of odd, and 31 and 32 don't really fit.

But you know the drill, guess the lyrics, solve the theme and no Googling or other search engining. Because of the Jewish Holidays, the next scheduled Musical Monday is at Elie's in two weeks.

1) I got pictures, got candy
2) I can lock all my doors
3) Wheels take the brunt. Pinion and a rack
4) I wanna be famous, a star on the screen
5) You told me we live in the shadows
6) There's a wild man, wizard,
7) With a pink hotel, a boutique
8) And I don't like Star Wars
9) We'll get matching jackets and helmets too.
10) That ain't my shadow on the wall
11) Arrows of neon and flashing marquees
12) From just one kiss I am inspired
13) the major was a lady suffragette
14) I might get rich you know I might get busted
15) You're gonna hear electric music
16) I tell you now, they don't mean a thing
17) Zero hour nine a.m.
18) there's always been a quiet place to harbor you and me
19) And the gold and the cotton and pearls
20) Smog will get you pretty soon.
21) I won't slave for beggars pay, likewise gold and jewels,
22) Full speed ahead, Mr. Parker, full speed ahead!
23) Thinking of a sweet romance, beginning in a queue
24) Every day I get in the queue
25) Climb up in the loft sit and talk with the radio on
26) I put her out in a town that was so small
27) So he pawned all his hopes and he even sold his old car
28) Then you left me, said you felt trapped
29) goodbye pretty mama, get yourself a money man
30) On a cloud of sound I drift in the night
31) Was the dark of the moon on the sixth of june
32) Who's gonna plug their ears when you scream

Thanks to all for guessing at Musical Monday #61, and Elie guessed correctly first, that I was featuring artists who had died. (Except in #30, it was all as solo artists. 30, only one of the Righteous Brothers has passed away, but the song was Rock n' Roll Heaven.) My brother and Clayton questioned whether "Dream a little dream of me" was credited to the Mamas and Papas or to Mama Cass. I thought the latter, but might have been wrong.

Somehow I forgot Harry Chapin and the duo of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, so I added them in an update.

1) I left my home in Georgia (original)
(Sitting on) the Dock of the Bay - Otis Redding
2) I jump into my car and I throw in my guitar
Gold - John Stewart
3) Your lights are on, but youre not home
Addicted to Love - Robert Palmer
4) Wondrin' what in the world did I do (original)
Crazy - Patsy Cline
5) Day turned black, sky ripped apart
Blow Away - George Harrison
6) Neon signs a-flashin', taxi cabs and buses passin' through the night
Rainy night in Georgia - Brook Benton
7) And all my thoughts were cloudy
New York's not my Home - Jim Croce
8) Yo no soy marinero (original)
La Bamba - Richie Valens
9) Stay with me while we grow old
Loving You - Minnie Riperton
10) Am I happy or in misery?
Purple Haze - Jimi Hendrix
11) a cat named Frankenstein (original)
Another Saturday Night - Sam Cooke
12) And each time I tell myself that I, well I think I've had enough, (original)
Piece of my heart - Janis Joplin
13) Stars shining bright above you
Dream a little dream of me - Mama Cass
14) Put your glad rags on and join me, hon,
Rock around the clock - Bill Haley
15) Baby you know what I like
Chantilly Lace - Big Bopper
16) It's just a fear that builds within me
Walk away from Love - David Ruffin
17) Do it light, taking me through the night
Shadow Dancing - Andy Gibb
18) So you must have had a hunch.
You beat me to the punch - Mary Wells
19) Diesel-powered straight to you,
Keep on truckin' - Eddie Kendricks
20) Any other one, that makes me sad (original)
Maybe baby - Buddy Holly
21) I woke up this morning and realized what I had done
The most beautiful girl - Charlie Rich
22) The deal was made in Denmark on a dark and stormy day
Roland the headless Thompson Gunner - Warren Zevon
23) Above us only sky
Imagine - John Lennon
24) why do birds sing so gay?
Why do fools fall in love? - Frankie Lymon
25) And if you love him, Oh be proud of him
Stand by your man - Tammy Wynette
26) You're the meanest old woman that I've ever seen.
Hit the road Jack - Ray Charles
27) Oh you wished me well, you couldn't tell (original)
Crying - Roy Orbison
28) We're caught in a trap
Suspicious Minds - Elvis Presley
29) Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear
Mack the knife - Bobby Darin
And this one, at least half fits the theme:
30)When they meet for one big show
Rock n Roll Heaven - Righteous Brothers
31) I play the game, a fantasy
Ain't nothing like the real thing - Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell
32) She said --You know I love you because you're so much like him.
The Mayor of Candor Lied - Harry Chapin

32)

A 16 year old lie

In an editorial, the Washington Post writes:

AFTER ISRAELI Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was voted out of office in 1992, he gave an interview in which he revealed he had never been serious about peace negotiations with the Palestinians. His real intention, he said, had been to drag out the talks for a decade while settling hundreds of thousands more Jews in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Well actually, that wasn't the context that Shamir meant his comments. It was, of course, par for the course at that time that Shamir's comments were construed like that.

According to a translation in an article published in the Jerusalem Post this is what Shamir said:

"I would have conducted autonomy negotiations for 10 years, and in the meanwhile we would have reached a half million people in Judea and Samaria," Shamir said in an interview in Ma'ariv. Currently, an estimated 120,000 settlers live in the territories.

(Source:SHAMIR PLANNED TO DRAG OUT TALKS UNTIL ISRAELI CONTROL OF AREAS WAS IRREVERSIBLE, David Makovsky. Jerusalem Post. Jerusalem: Jun 28, 1992. pg. 01. Yes that title perpetuated the myth of what Shamir had said.)

Does that mean that his intent was to drag out negotiations or that that's how long he expected that they'd take? There was at least one other person at that interview, the interviewer himself. And this is his take:

The Maariv journalist, Yosef Harif, said the remarks were made, but he added that he did not think Mr. Shamir was trying to drag out the peace talks to avoid autonomy.

What Shamir was saying was that he expected talks on autonomy to last at least ten years, not that he sought to drag them out. Given that more conciliatory successors have failed to satisfy Palestinian demands over the past fifteen years, Shamir's observation looks accurate, if not a little optimistic.

Now, of course, in 1992 the talk was about autonomy,not statehood. And remember at the time that even the late PM Yitzchak Rabin, sounded a bit like what would be called a right wing extremist nowadays.

Mr. Rabin has repeatedly refused to be drawn into discussions about which specific settlements he defines as "political" and which he would continue to support as necessary for Israel's security. In general, he has defined security zones as the Jerusalem area, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights.

The point that the Post was making was to compare Shamir's comments with those of Ehud Olmert last week.

Last week, Ehud Olmert, who served in Mr. Shamir's cabinet and believed in his dream of a "greater Israel," gave a similar truth-telling interview at the end of his own stint as prime minister -- only the message was very different.

"We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories," Mr. Olmert told the newspaper Yedioth Aharonot. Of his long record as a supporter of keeping and settling those lands and Arab East Jerusalem, Mr. Olmert said, "For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at reality in all its depth."

The Post is willing to acknowledge that Israel has changed a lot in the intervening years.

Mr. Olmert's words are one measure of how far Israel has changed politically in 16 years. Before 1992, acceptance of a Palestinian state or even direct negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization were unacceptable to the parliamentary majority; now a former leader of the right-wing Likud party can say that Israel must withdraw from all but a small part of the territories captured in the 1967 war.

But the editorial is dishonest when it claims:

Mr. Olmert's position is pragmatic: He says that the territorial concessions are necessary to prevent Israel from becoming a "binational state," with an Arab majority. Judging from polls, a majority of Israelis agree with him.

It's as if Israel had never withdrawn from Gaza or from any cities in Judea and Samaria. The question since 1996 or so hasn't been whether Israel will maintain control over millions of Arabs, but what the final shape of the Palestinian state will be. By taking this approach, the Post is giving a "peace veto" to the Palestinians. (Olmert is too, for that matter.) By the Post's reckoning, as long as negotiations do not satisfy the Palestinians, Israel is still occupying them.

And it's hard to find what poll shows that a majority of Israelis agree with Olmert. Here's a recent poll that shows that only 26% of Israelis consider the "demographic" threat significant. Here's another one showing that only 7% of Israeli Jews consider that there's a demographic threat. And this shows a majority of Israelis - apparently having learned from Gaza - opposing further disengagement from Judea and Samaria.

However polls of Palestinians continue to show a rejection of the idea of a Jewish state.

Finally the Post takes the approach of any number of Olmert's detractors:

What's changed in Israel is the willingness of the political mainstream to accept, in theory, a Palestinian state along territorial lines that most of the world (including most Arab states) would accept. What hasn't changed is the steady pace of settlement construction that is slowly but surely making that solution more difficult to carry out -- and the unwillingness or inability of Israeli leaders to stop it. Mr. Olmert tried to make history with his parting words; sadly, they were deeply at odds with his actions.

So Israel has changed politically but the "settlements" remain the single biggest obstacle to peace. Aside from the fact that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza has strengthened Hamas and encouraged terror, what makes the Post's editors think that Israeli "occupation" is the primary obstacle to peace? (The same could be said about Lebanon and Hezbollah.)

Isn't the biggest problem that the lack of change on the Palestinian side?

The Post's editors dredge up and misconstrue a statement made by Yitzchak Shamir in 1992 to make their point, but they've been awfully incurious about comments and actions from the Palestinian leadership showing a lack of commitment to peace.

For example right before he died, highly regarded "moderate" Faisal Husseini didn't sound so moderate:

Similarly, if we agree to declare our state over what is now only 22 percent of Palestine, meaning the West Bank and Gaza -- our ultimate goal is [still] the liberation of all historical Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] sea, even if this means that the conflict will last for another thousand years or for many generations.

In short, we are exactly like they are. We distinguish the strategic, long-term goals from the political phased goals, which we are compelled to temporarily accept due to international pressure. If you are asking me as a Pan-Arab nationalist what are the Palestinian borders according to the higher strategy, I will immediately reply: "from the river to the sea."

Palestine in its entirety is an Arab land, the land of the Arab nation, a land no one can sell or buy, and it is impossible to remain silent while someone is stealing it, even if this requires time and even [if it means paying] a high price."

And before that (but after Oslo) there was Arafat's famous speech in a Johannesburg mosque:

This agreement, I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Mohammed and Koraish, and you remember the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and [considered] it a despicable truce.

And what about Arafat's incitement ahead of the 'tunnel riots" in 1996?

And there is ample documentation that the "Aqsa intifada" was not a spontaneous outburst of violence, but planned by Arafat in advance.

Event the current "moderate" hope of the peace processors, Mahmoud Abbas has gotten in on the act.

In her press conference yesterday with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Israeli-Palestinian talks would continue, despite claims of a boycott by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas's boycott came after he accused Israel of committing "more than a holocaust" in Gaza.

The Abbas boycott and his reprehensible accusations follow a pattern established well before the current escalation in Gaza. Last month, for example, Abbas's Palestinian Authority declared a three-day mourning period for PFLP leader George Habash, who was associated with the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics and with the assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi.

In case anyone might think that the PA is only remembering past "glories," Fatah, the faction that Abbas heads, issued a poster displaying a map of "Palestine" that included all of Israel, a machine gun and a picture of Yasser Arafat. Incitement against Israel, including the glorification of "martyrdom," continues through Abbas-controlled PA television, and PA educational institutions, such as schools and camps.

Last month Abbas showed even more chutzpah as he sought a meeting with convicted child murderer Samir Kuntar.

It's remarkable that the Post has two data points - a misinterpretation of a statement by Yitzchak Shamir from 16 years ago and the continued existence of settlements - to show that Israel is dealing in bad faith with the Palestinians, but ignores mountains of evidence that Israeli concessions over the past 15 years have done nothing to moderate the Palestinian population's antagonism towards Israel. So while the Israeli position regarding the Palestinians has changed dramatically, there's been no reciprocal movement on the part of the Palestinians.

And of course that escapes the notice of the sharp eyed editors of the Washington Post.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Breaking news from gaza

The masked Arab youth opened his hand slowly to expose two bullets.

"These are waiting for anyone who harms our leaders," he said, his eyes staring at the shells.

The 19-year-old youth is a member of al-Kassam, a secret military wing of Hamas, the fundamentalist Islamic movement now waging a bloody internal fight with its rival Fatah cadres that threatens to turn the Gaza Strip into a second Lebanon.

His bullets will be fired at any fellow Palestinian, especially a Fatah activist, who threatens or harms a Hamas boss.

For nearly three weeks, this bleak strip of land has been rocked by Wild West-style shootouts in the streets, beatings with clubs and axes, and gang fights involving up to 50 men. At least one person has been killed and more than 100 Palestinians injured. Many Gaza leaders have been threatened with assassination.

That's breaking news from 1992. The article was "Gaza Strip Arabs wage bloody feud" by Bob Hepburn in the Toronto Star. Jul 16, 1992. pg. A.1. (For those who have access to ProQuest through your local library or other institution, the URL is:
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=456425021&sid=4&Fmt=3&clientId=72171&RQT=309&VName=PQD ) I was looking for something else when I found it. Not much has changed, has it?

Crossposted on Yourish.

"We have your back"

Just One Minute writes:

Now, how about the question of whether Bill Ayers has a hard-left educational philosophy shared by Barack Obama? My guess is that soccer moms (and dads) would be
interested to learn about that.

Well, yes I would, thanks for thinking about me. And I would like to know about the connection between Sen. Obama and the guy who said on 9/11 that he was happy to have committed terror against the United States and that he didn't do enough.

Unfortunately, if I read the New York Times, I wouldn't know a whole lot more. Just One Minute summarizes:

Mr. Shane presents the bare bones of many of the allegations made by critics, thereby allowing the Times to defend this piece as fair and two-sided. However, little or no evidence is presented to support the allegations while the Obama denials and current explanations are presented uncritically. The net effect will probably be to convince many people that the Times pushed hard but simply could not find a story here.

Of course a blogger, Stephen Diamond, has illustrated the ties between the two. The Times contacted him and still refused to use the information he provided.

Finally, you have now twice questioned whether I have evidence of the role of Ayers. I told you about the evidence on the phone, I sent you copies of the evidence and I blogged on the evidence prior to the posting of your story. My evidence is written, it is contemporaneous with the events, it fits the facts as we know them and it is consistent with how organizations like the CAC are established and organized.

On the other hand, your evidence is based on two conversations with individuals who did not have either the legal authority or fiduciary responsibility for the selection of the board. Your evidence is 14 years after the fact.

In social science and law, written contemporaneous records are considered a more credible source than ex post recollections by only a small number of the individuals involved. I thought the same standards applied in journalism as well.

Diamond, BTW, does not appear to be a McCain supporter.

Fausta sums it up:

So we have two issues:
An issue of judgement
An issue of experience.

On the judgement side, Obama worked for an extended period of time in two political projects with an unrepentant terrorist who travels to Chavista schools to advocate the overthrow of democracy.

On the experience side, Obama's only real administrative experience track record is as dismal as it can get. $160 million of CAC money? gone.

(h/t Instapundit)

Hot Air goes after the Times:

If John McCain had spent ten years on charitable boards with someone less egregious than abortion bombers -- say, with Randall Terry of Operation Rescue -- the New York Times would have Page One, in-depth reporting, complete with teams of reporters combing through the minutes of the board meetings. Hell, the New York Times infamously smeared McCain with allegations of a sexual affair based on nothing but gossip from two disgruntled ex-staffers last February, and spent days rolling that out, using four reporters on the story. For the Obama/Ayers connection, they have Scott Shane telling us that there's nothing to see here.

Why might this line of attack work? Think back to Charles Krauthammer's column on Friday. Krauthammer wrote:

Now Obama is cool as in collected. He has the discipline to let slow and steady carry him to victory. He has not at all distinguished himself in this economic crisis -- nor, one might add, in any other during his national career -- but detachment has served him well. He understands that this election, like the election of 1980, demands only one thing of the challenger: Make yourself acceptable. Once Ronald Reagan convinced America that he was not menacing, he won in a landslide. If Obama convinces the electorate that he is not too exotic or green or unprepared, he wins as well.

Tying Sen. Obama to Ayers makes Obama seem a little less safe. It hardly seems out of bounds. Still Jennifer Rubin points out:

The pattern in these situations has been the same throughout the campaign. A a one-sided press account comes out. The McCain camp stomps its collective feet and puts out detailed emails to conservative media decrying how unfair the MSM is and unloading rebuttal information. Conservative media examine, investigate and present contrasting information while the MSM goes merrily on its way. The McCain camp publically rails against the MSM. The problem? No voters who actually matter have any information as to what the "real" or at least balanced story may be. Why? Because for reasons not entirely clear the McCain camp itself has resisted taking on the burden of directly through ads, speeches, interviews and debates informing the public. As a result their message never sees the light of day.

Is Palin a hint of things to come? Perhaps. But if they want this job done they had better do it themselves.

So there needs to be an effective followup by the McCain campaign.

And where is, you might ask, America's other major daily, the Washington Post on this? Glad you asked:

In fact, both a Washington Post article in April and today's New York Times piece revealed Obama and Ayers to have had only a casual association: the former radical hosted a coffee for Obama's first bid for state Senate, they served together on an educational charity board and both live in Chicago's Hyde Park.

Obama has taken pains to minimize their connection, calling Ayers "somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know" and "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight."

It's not just Obama (who's been minimizing the connection). It's been the MSM too! Message from the Washington Post to the Obama campaign: "We have your back!" If the Washington Post had taken every denial of the Nixon administration at face value, we'd never had had the Watergate scandal!

Lots more via memeorandum.

Guardian: "Ahmadinejad accepts Israel's right to exist"

In a rare instance of idiocy above and beyond the call of usefulness, Peter Tatchell proves himself incapable of noticing what Ahmadinejad is saying and has been saying for some time:

Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made a remarkable announcement. He's admitted that Iran might agree to the existence of the state of Israel.

Ahmadinejad was asked: "If the Palestinian leaders agree to a two-state solution, could Iran live with an Israeli state?"

This was his astonishing reply:

If they [the Palestinians] want to keep the Zionists, they can stay ... Whatever the people decide, we will respect it. I mean, it's very much in correspondence with our proposal to allow Palestinian people to decide through free referendums.

Since most Palestinians are willing to accept a two-state solution, the Iranian president is, in effect, agreeing to Israel's right to exist and opening the door to a peace deal that Iran will endorse.

Ahmadinejad made this apparently extraordinary shift in policy during an interview last week when he was in New York to address the UN general assembly.

There is no "shift in policy" here. Ahmadinejad has always said that he would abide by the results of his proposed "referendum."

The problem is that there is no way to spin the idea that the Palestinians should vote on the fate of the Jews in Israel into a moderate opinion. If Palestinians mostly support a two-state solution, and it is not clear at all that they do, it is because they think that is the best they can do under the circumstances. This tells us nothing about the outcome of a Palestinian-dominated, never-never-land "referendum" in which the Palestinians can choose any fate for the Jews they like. The way Ahmadinejad put it in his 2006 Time interview was this:

In any country in which the people are ready to vote for the Jews to come to power, it is up to them.

This is obviously not anything that Ahmadinejad suspects the Palestinians of desiring. He is just playing stupid rhetorical tricks for the likes of Peter Tatchell.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Fables of Fishel: Gilad Atzmon asks "Credit Crunch or Rather Zio Punch?"

I don't follow Gilad Atzmon's writing closely enough to tell if he has ever been this far down in the anti-Semitic gutter before, but in his latest composition he definitely seems to be getting deeply in touch with his inner Goebbels. One old standard that he riffs on here is the old Nazi claim that Lenin was Jewish. Actually, only Lenin's maternal grandfather was Jewish. That gives him less Jewish ancestry than celebrated non-Jews like John Kerry and Barry Goldwater. Atzmon, despite the fact that he is making a convoluted point, just refers to Lenin as a Jew (like any Nazi slob):

Lenin and Trotzky were Jews, they were ideologists, yet they didn't operate primarily as Jews.

Another anti-Semitic article of faith is that the Bolsheviks were financed by Jewish bankers. There is actually some evidence of Wall Street financing of the Bolsheviks although most of the figures involved were not Jewish. The lone and Jewish figure of Jacob Schiff is often nominated to appear in the defendant's box for this accusation. What real evidence exists seems to exonerate him, but one of the oldest and moldiest second-hand source citations in the neo-Nazi/conspiracist business often appears in support of statements blaming Schiff. The citation appears in Atzmon's article in its classic form as "New York Journal American 1949. February 3." In a world alien to Atzmon and his ilk, a world where someone citing a source is supposed to have actually seen the source, the citation points to a gossip column. I once did some research on anti-Semitism and I have known this fact for about 15 years. It is doubtful that Atzmon knows it, and he almost certainly lifted the citation from some other hack. At any rate he joins a long tradition of omitting the gossip-column part and thereby passing off the citation as a reference to a normal newspaper article.

The reader may wonder where, according to Atzmon, "Zionists" come into the picture in the current "credit crunch." Some seemingly approving references from Greenspan to the subprime lending seem to be all Atzmon needs to declare that it was all Greenspan's idea. Later Atzmon returns to this idea with added improvisations about what the ultimate aim was:

Alan Greenspan planned to provide his president with an economy boom assuming that prosperous conditions would divert the attention from the war in Iraq. Greenspan is not exactly an amateur economist, he knew what he was doing. He knew very well that as long as Americans were doing well, buying and selling homes, his President would be able pursue implementing the 'Wolfowitz doctrine' destroying the 'bad Arabs' in the name of 'democracy'.

Do you think Atzmon knows what he is doing? Or is he just riffing on some old standards?

Crossposted on Judeopundit

That's one way to get your zoo membership revoked

The expression "Please don't feed the animals" took on a horrifying new dimension recently as a young Aussie satisfied his curiosity about what would happen if some small animals got pitched over the fence into the crocodile's enclosure. From the AP via Huffpo:

A 7-year-old boy broke into a popular Outback zoo, fed a string of animals to the resident crocodile and bashed several lizards to death with a rock, the zoo's director said Friday.

It seems that the boy is going to escape suffering any consequences, unless his parents decide to take away his dessert or something like that:

Alice Springs police said they are unable to press charges against the boy because of his age. Children under age 10 can't be charged with criminal offenses in the Northern Territory. His name was not released because of his age.

The Zoo Director concludes:

"I just want people to learn that they can't let their children go and run amok . . .

That's a good thing to bear in mind as you spend hours in Shul on Yom Kippur with your kids.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Council speak 10/05/08

The council has spoken.

The winning council post was Cheat Seeking Missiles' McCain needs new messaging strategy. I'll add that with Gov. Palin's connecting Sen. Obama to William Ayers, suggests that the McCain campaign realizes that it's necessary too. The runner up was Wolf Howling's A Dodd-ering fool. This suggests another line of attack for McCain. With people worried about the economy, he should be hitting hard on the Democrats who have used their political connections for personal financial gain.

On the non-council side the winning entry was the American Thinker's Barack Obama and the strategy of the manufactured crisis. On one hand the charge in this article seems incredible, but then you read this and say: Maybe it is possible. The runner up was Obamination: Obama Supporters Bob McCulloch, Jennifer Joyce Threaten to Prosecute People For Criticizing Obama at the St Louis C of CC Blog.

Congratulations to all the winners.

watcher's council.

Biden--36 Years In The Senate Can Only Do So Much (Updated)

I've made the argument before (here, here and here) that experience does not necessarily carry judgement with it. Even when talking about Biden's experience as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, there is a lot to be knowledgeable of. Still, this gaffe by Senator Joe Biden is surprising:

When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it."

Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel. [emphasis added]

Hezbollah was kicked out of Lebanon? This will come as news to Hezbollah--and to the Lebanese who have to put up with them. It is reminiscent of Gerald Ford's famous gaffe in his debate with Carter:

During a campaign debate against former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, Ford incorrectly stated that Poland was "independent and autonomous" from the Soviet Union, though at the time the Soviet Union dominated Poland and much of Eastern Europe. When pressed, instead of reconsidering, Ford responded more firmly that "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration".

Of course, people were then more aware of Poland than they are of Lebanon today; these are Vice Presidential debates--not Presidential debates; and the media is not going to make a big deal out of this mistake. For example, with all the detailed facts that ABC's Fact Check apparently picked up, they totally missed this one.

Michael Totten notes the irony of the situation:

Biden is supposedly Mr. Foreign Policy. He's supposed to be the experienced elder statesman Senator Barack Obama chose to help him govern and fill in some of his knowledge and experience gaps. He's supposed to know far more about foreign policy than she does.

You can make of this what you will. Many will put this in the same basket with all of the other gaffes made by Biden over the last several weeks--meaning they will be ignored.

Still, when something like this is put into the context of the positions Biden has held over the years, the question does arise as to the basis of those positions--positions that have demonstrated a lack of judgement, and possibly a lack of experience.

UPDATE: I missed this one too. LGF notes another Biden gaffe on the Middle East:

Here's what the president said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won.

Biden confused Gaza with the West Bank. 

Imagine if Palin had made that kind of mistake. So why is the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held to a lower standard? 

by Daled Amos

[Hat tip: Instapundit]

Serious about syria?

CNN reports:

The United States and Syria held a series of meetings this week, signaling a possible thaw between the two countries as the former seeks to peel the latter from its close ties with Iran.

No further meetings are planned between the two sides, said several senior State Department officials, who downplayed the expectations of a major breakthrough.

"You can't tell yet," one of the officials said. "It gave us a chance to raise our concerns directly, but the results will depend on what we see on the ground."

What's "on the ground?"

Why Syrian's flexing its muscles and threatening Lebanon.

And as far as peeling Syria away from Iran. Good luck with that.

Crossposted on Yourish.

A pirate's life

Currently there's a standoff off the coast of Somalia between the US Navy and a Ukranian freighter that's been seized by pirates. The freighter, it turned out, was ferrying a signficant amount of weaponry. The NYT got over a satellite phone. The pirate of course justified his actions:

Q. Have the pirates been misunderstood?
A. We don't consider ourselves sea bandits ["sea bandit" is one way Somalis translate the English word pirate]. We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.

Q. Why did you want to become a pirate?
A. We are patrolling our seas. This is a normal thing for people to do in their regions.

Q. Isn't what you are doing a crime? Holding people at gunpoint?
A. If you hold hostage innocent people, that's a crime. If you hold hostage people who are doing illegal activities, like waste dumping or fishing, that is not a crime.

Q. What has this Ukrainian ship done that was a crime?
A. To go through our waters carrying all these weapons without permission.

I guess without significant governmental authority in Somalia, the pirates see their role as policing their country's territorial waters. He says they have no interest in harming the hostages or in the weaponry on board. They just want cash.

Max Boot writes that the Navy is trying to upgrade to fight the threat of piracy, but has run into cost problems.

This Saturday, the Navy will commission its first Littoral Combat Ship, the USS Independence. A month from now, the second such vessel, the USS Freedom, will follow. These are relatively small vessels that would be ideal for fighting pirates. (They even pack non-lethal weapons for such missions.) The Navy hopes to build 55 of them, but they had to cancel those plans because of massive cost overruns. A top priority for the next Secretary of Defense must be to stop runaway acquisition programs fueled by "cost plus" reimbursement and constant changes in requirements which encourage contractors to "gold plate" their projects.

Israel to buy american planes

The Wall Street Journal reports that Israel is planning to buy up to 75 American fighter planes:

The Defense Department formally notified Congress that it wants to sell Israel as many as 75 of the latest-model fighter jet, which is being developed under a contract led by Lockheed Martin Corp.

A sale could be worth as much as $15 billion. It would mark the first order from outside the original team of countries working on the jet, the F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter.

Israel also is looking to outfit a number of the jets with its own technology.

The technology issue was discussed last week between the IAF and a team of US military officers from the JSF Program who were in Israel. It also was at the focus of talks Defense Ministry Director-General Pinhas Buchris held in Washington earlier this month.

Israeli demands include installing an advanced radar and conformal fuel tank design for long-range missions made by Israel Aerospace Industries, as well as other electronic and weapons systems that could require changes to the configuration of the aircraft.

"We have unique needs and need to retain our superiority in the region," a senior defense official explained. "To meet these needs we must to be able to install our own systems."

Some of the jets may have an ability to take off and land vertically - like a helicopter.

If Israel exercises the vertical option, it would be the first time that the IAF obtains this capability, needed out of fear that Israeli airfields would be paralyzed by enemy missiles in a future conflict and planes would have difficulty taking off in a conventional fashion.

The reason for that option is sobering.

UPDATE: Much, much more at the Hashmonean. Given his knowledge of military hardware, I shouldn't have been surprised.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Krauthammer throws in the towel

When I read the news today that McCain was closing down operations in Michigan, it struck me. The race is over.

Chris Cillizza wrote, though, that the race isn't over.

The McCain campaign held a conference call with political director Mike DuHaime and senior adviser Greg Strimple to argue that the Arizona Senator retains a viable path to 270 electoral votes.

Their map: Win six toss up states -- Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana and Ohio -- that have traditionally favored Republicans and hold the solidly GOP states to get to 260 electoral votes. Then find 10 more electoral votes in some combination of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

"To say we are on defense is not true," insisted Strimple. "We are aggressively using our resources in states where we have to win."

Maybe. But the problem with that logic is it assumes McCain can hold those six red state tossups, which, in the case of Ohio, Colorado and Virginia (at least) looks to be a dicey proposition.

The other McCain isn't so optimistic:

The top folks at Maverick HQ -- who in early September were thinking about what their positions might be in the McCain administration's transition team -- are now on Travelocity, booking their Caribbean vacations for the second week in November. They will furiously deny this of course, but the ability to lie through one's teeth with apparent sincerity is a prerequisite to being a professional political operative.

And Charles Krauthammer who earlier counted Sen. Obama out due to gracelessness, and more recently because his star had dimmed, now believes that Sen. Obama just needs to run out the clock (or here).

Now Obama is cool as in collected. He has the discipline to let slow and steady carry him to victory. He has not at all distinguished himself in this economic crisis -- nor, one might add, in any other during his national career -- but detachment has served him well. He understands that this election, like the election of 1980, demands only one thing of the challenger: Make yourself acceptable. Once Ronald Reagan convinced America that he was not menacing, he won in a landslide. If Obama convinces the electorate that he is not too exotic or green or unprepared, he wins as well.

(I disagree with Krauthammer's charactrerization of McCain's support for the surge as a "Hail Mary" play. He didn't advocate it for political advantage. But that's beside the point.)

And while he believes that Sen. Obama has the necessary attributes at this time to win, Krauthammer still harbors reservations about him. (The same ones that I do.)

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a "second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament." Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition -- do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.

Well yes, I do think I know some of what he believes. While he won't likely govern as far to the Left where his true convictions lie, his convictions are pretty far from the mainstream and they will inform his decisions to some degree. But the rest of the sentence is on the mark.

Is it possible as Jay Cost writes that McCain's problem is the credit crisis?

What really matters is if, when, and how this financial situation resolves itself. It is fair to say that, on a purely political basis, McCain needs a resolution more than Obama. His numbers have taken a hit - and, despite his best efforts, he has not successfully gotten in front of this issue. That's not to say that he needs this particular bill to pass - the fact that members of Congress in the most competitive districts voted against the bill tells us something. Rather, McCain needs this issue to become less immediate, less salient. Nothing else is getting through right now. McCain needs this to drop off the front page as a first step to recover the ground he has lost in the last 20 days.

It's possible that getting a bill passed will help McCain's campaign. Still the withdrawal from Michigan feels significant.

And can Sarah Palin's performance last night really make a difference as Frank Luntz suggests?

No matter how attractive a candidate she is, she's #2 on the ticket and McCain will win or lose on his own strength. Gov. Palin may have assured herself a prominent role in national politics, but I don't imagine that she will change the race.

Sigh.

Rememberances of conflicts past

Four and a half years ago, Leslie Stahl appeared on 60 minutes explaining how she had failed to mention that Viacom, the parent company of CBS, had a book deal with Bush critic, Richard Clarke, the previous week when she had interviewed Clarke about his book. The interview raised some questions as Captain's Quarter's noted at the time:

CBS News has apparently decided to publish anything by anyone with a grudge against George Bush, and part of their marketing is to hijack the reputation of the news organization that Edward R. Murrow built in order to push their political agenda. Laura Ingraham wondered on her show today why Lesley Stahl tossed Clarke softball after softball during the interview, and now we know why.

CBS News President Andrew Heyward needs to address this financial conflict of interest immediately if CBS News wishes to retain any credibility whatsoever. Heads need to roll over this, beginning with the person who greenlighted the interview. Until CBS comes clean, we will know that CBS News whores out for Viacom, and Andrew Heyward is apparently its pimp.

Bryan Preston and Chris Regan took apart Stahl's "admission:"

A week went by before CBS's conflicted interest landed in the press. On the March 28 program, Stahl tried to wave away the omission as an "oversight." She explained that when she and her producers approached Clarke "months ago" he did not yet have a book deal, so the CBS crew had no way of knowing that the conflict of interest would arise. That answer is constructed to deceive: Stahl never mentioned when the interview itself was conducted or the fact that it's possible to edit video packages right up until airtime. The "months ago" formulation is meant to fool viewers into believing that, once initiated, the process of interview-to-air precludes any opportunity to change, add, or delete relevant material -- which is bogus. Put another way, is 60 Minutes, long known for having some of the best television editorial talent in the business, really not nimble enough to add new material to news packages after the initial point of contact?

Stahl's not-quite apology didn't quite say that the vaguely timed courtship included both the interview and a book-deal offer, but she didn't quite deny it either. And why be so vague? Just tell us when CBS first approached Clarke, and what sort of deal was offered. We need dates and figures, please. The date of the actual interview would be nice, too. Given the Viacom syndicate's recent tactics, it is reasonable to conclude that Clarke is just the latest newsmaker to get a fistful from the 60 Minutes cash register via CBS's corporate sibling, Simon & Schuster.

It must also be just a coincidence that the book's original April 27 publication date got fast forwarded to coincide with Clarke's testimony before the 9/11 Commission, testimony that contradicts many of Clarke's statements over the past two years but seems tailor made to do maximum political damage to the president in an election year -- thereby creating a deafening buzz about the book. (That buzz has so far helped 130,000 copies of Clarke's book fly off the shelves, incidentally.) None of this could have been timed and engineered to create yet another perfect multimedia storm, could it?

With that background in mind what are to think of Gwen Ifill's book deal and her ability to handle the debate tonight?

Jennifer Rubin sees a positive in this:

While I agree that this is an ethics debacle for her I think it is a godsend for Sarah Palin. What better way to ensure hyper-attention to fairness and to keep the moderator on the straight and narrow? And should Ifill stray and convey her obvious affection for Obama's candidacy, the McCain camp will of course scream bloody murder. Now the latter is becoming an everyday occurrence, but the prospect of undergoing a debate moderated by someone with an obvious ideological and financial interest in the success of one ticket really is grounds for complaint.

And Instapundit makes an excellent point here:

On the other hand, if, say, John Stossel or Bill O'Reilly were the moderator, I suspect that we'd be getting a lot of squawking from the same journalistic "watchdog" types who think there's no problem with Gwen Ifill. And that double standard -- and the departure from the neutrality ideal that it exemplifies -- is a bigger problem than any conflict of interest on Ifill's part. While a debate moderator isn't practicing journalism while moderating a debate, those who report on these matters are a different kettle of fish, and it's a kettle that's starting to smell kinda bad .

Read to the end as his last line is amazingly snarky and, sadly, on target.

More at memeorandum.

Michelle Malkin shows Gwen Ifill to be in violation of PBS's standards.

In the end, what's going to matter for the campaign is how Gov. Palin handles the debate, bias or not.

Bair market

If there's any good news about the financial problems affecting our country it's that there's at least one silver lining. Congress may be dysfunctional, but at least the FDIC is working as it's supposed to.

IndyMac was in fact taken over by the FDIC, becoming the IndyMac Federal Bank, while WaMu was acquired by JPMorgan Chase and Wachovia by Citigroup. So far as I know, not a single depositor at these banks has lost money. This is huge. And it suggests to me that if the Congress is unable to craft a deal for Treasury purchases of toxic assets, the nation is still in good hands as a result of the good offices of the highly professional, credible, and trustworthy Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, run very well by Ms. Bair.

It seems quite a few mornings lately that I've woken to the news that another failing bank has been taken over. The FDIC has struck pre-emptively to insure that depositors are protected.

One lump or two?

The NYT outlines some of the provisions of the Senate bill that passed:

The multiple tax breaks, called extenders in the Capitol because they renew or extend expiring tax benefits, appeal to many lawmakers and could provide a political argument for backing a bill that has otherwise been very unpopular.

Instead of siding with a $700 billion bailout, lawmakers could now say they voted for increased protection for deposits at the neighborhood bank, income tax relief for middle-class taxpayers and aid for schools in rural areas where the federal government owns much of the land.

Despite the fact that some of these are tax breaks, I'm hard pressed to call these "conservative" changes. No these are sweeteners. Consider the provision of aid for schools in rural areas. Jay Cost explains why that provision would be included.

Opposition was very stiff in the Midwest, where ten of ten Republican caucuses voted in the negative. There was unanimous opposition in Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. Even in Ohio, home state of Republican leader John Boehner, seven Republicans voted against the bill.

Republican support in the West was split: there was opposition in Arizona, Colorado, and Montana, but more favorable results in California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah.

Those are the states known for their rural areas aren't they?

I think that Instapundit's observation is apt.

Before it's all over, we'll probably wish that Monday's bill had passed instead -- giving Congress more time to add their gimmes probably hasn't produced a better bill.

Of course this gives McCain a focus for his campaign.

If McCain were smart, he'd be running against Congress in general, and Pelosi and Reid in particular.

And at this point, he really could use a focus.

But then, all these sweeteners are rather artificial aren't they?

Peace on earth and a rocket launcher

I remember some cartoon - maybe from Mad Magazine, maybe from Calvin and Hobbes - showing a little boy on Santa Claus's lap asking for all sorts of weaponry and - peace on earth. This picture reminded me of the punchline.

Anyway, Elder of Ziyon observes that these toy weapons aren't very safe.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Mahmoud's awesome, very good week

So a party that advocates the lifting of restrictions of Nazi symbols has won a significant victory in Austrian elections.

(h/t LGF)

No doubt Austria will now be shunned internationally - and rightly so - just as it was a decade ago when the Austrian government sought to bring in Jorg Haider.

But contrast that to the mad Mahmoud's recent successful American tour as Jeff Jacoby recounts:

At the United Nations, the Iranian president delivered a speech laced with undiluted anti-Semitism, denouncing "people called Zionists" who dominate the world's "financial and monetary centers" and control "the political decision-making centers" in the West through "deceitful, complex, and furtive" means. His remarks were greeted not with jeers or stony silence, but with lusty applause from the delegates and a hug from the president of the General Assembly.

Then CNN provided the hatemongering head of state with another soapbox - an interview with Larry King, who warmly shook the Iranian president's hand and tossed him a series of fatuous softballs: "Where in the US would you like to travel? Would you like to meet Sarah Palin, since you're both former mayors? You don't wish the Jewish people any harm, do you?"

On Thursday, Ahmadinejad was the guest of honor at a dinner and "dialogue" hosted by several left-wing Christian organizations, including the American Friends Service Committee, the Mennonite Central Committee, and the World Council of Churches. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom had urged the organizers not to honor someone who "has manipulated such dialogues repeatedly into a platform for spreading hatred," and warned to no avail that lionizing Ahmadinejad would only "burnish the Iranian leader's legitimacy." The dinner went ahead as scheduled, amid pious invocations of "engagement" and "discussion." Intoned Mark Graham of the American Friends Service Committee: "You can't just engage with people with whom you agree on all issues. That leads to a very myopic view of the world."

You see antisemitism is unacceptable when it's expressed by Europreans. But when it's expressed by Muslims who want to bring back the actual policies of the Nazis not just their symbols, why, it's perfectly acceptable.

The excuses are all predictable.

We can't judge them, they're different than us.
They're showing solidarity with their Palestinian brothers.
They don't really mean it.

Those are loads of BS.

There's been a case made that Ahmadinejad's statements constitute "incitement to genocide."

The statements emanating from the Iranian President are not only alarming and destabilizing. They also constitute direct and public incitement to commit genocide -- a gross violation of international law. Such incitement is reminiscent of historical incidents of genocide, like that which occurred in Rwanda. The critical difference is that while the Hutus in Rwanda were equipped with the most basic of weapons, such as machetes, Iran, should the international community do nothing to prevent it, will soon acquire nuclear weapons. This would increase the risk of instant genocide, allowing no time or possibility for defensive efforts.

It is essential to distinguish between freedom to oppose a government and incitement to genocide. Various political leaders outspokenly condemn rival governments using epithets like "the evil/Cuban/corrupt/North Korean/ruthless regime." These verbal barrages, however, pose no existential threat to ordinary people in the street. Ahmadinejad's reckless anti-Semitic tirades that "the Jews are very filthypeople,""[theJewshave]inflictedthemost damage on the human race," "[the Jews are] a bunch of bloodthirsty barbarians," "they should know that they are nearing the last days of their lives," and "as the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map" should have aroused trepidation. Thus far, however, Ahmadinejad's threats have been met with acquiescence, indifference, and inaction. Yet, his apocalyptic utterances are not mere rhetoric. Ahmadinejad's declaration that the Holocaust was a "fairy tale," and his enabling of Hamas and Hizbullah, demonstrate that there is simply no way for his ambitions to be realized without perpetrating a new genocide.

Again this is a lot more serious than reviving "Nazi imagery." Ahmadinejad's actions and statements could be considered actionable, in a legal sense, and grounds for expelling Iran from the UN. (The General Assembly did this to South Africa, when apartheid was the law of its land.)

And yet I suspect we'll have to wait really long time before the UN chooses to act responsibly regarding Iran and its threat to Israel. Heck, even Mohammed el-Baradei concedes that his Nobel prize winning agency hasn't been successful in stemming Iran's nuclear ambitions. Of course this isn't an admission of incompetence, but a request for more money to continue being ineffective.

The events in Austrai are certainly troubling, but Iran remains a bigger threat to Israel and the world.

Meryl has more.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Mehr News: "Ahmadinejad's Reasonable Stance on the Holocaust"

We have met denier Paul Grubach before on this blog. Here is yet another example of the fact that Ahmadinejad's lunacy where the Holocaust is concerned is generally shared by Iran's news agencies:

An American researcher and a Holocaust Revisionist believe that Ahmadinejad's points of view on Holocaust are right and reasonable.

A considerable article by Paul Grubach, to Mehr,

In a recent interview with CNN's Larry King Live, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rightly noted that the Zionist lobby blocks neutral and objectively fair research on the alleged Holocaust. When Larry King asked him if, from his point of view, the Holocaust did not happen, the Iranian leader responded: "No, what I am saying is let more research to be done."

In late September of 2007, President Ahmadinejad had another confrontation over the Holocaust when he spoke at Columbia University's school of international and public affairs. At the New York institution of higher learning he was given a hostile reception by Columbia's president Lee Bollinger. The intrepid Iranian leader was criticized for his questioning of the orthodox view of the Holocaust.

Directing his barbs at Ahmadinejad's Holocaust skepticism, Bollinger emphatically stated: "The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history."2 At the dawn of a more enlightened age, this statement will be looked upon as absurd. As we shall soon see, President Ahmadinejad's view on the Holocaust is actually very reasonable, as the Holocaust is a questionable and even dangerous doctrine that needs more critical scrutiny. [...]

The rest of the article is the usual rot.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Olmert and the disregarded doctrines

Some background first.
From the The Winograd Commission report:

a. The Prime Minister bears supreme and comprehensive responsibility for the decisions of 'his' government and the operations of the army. His responsibility for the failures in the initial decisions concerning the war stem from both his position and from his behavior, as he initiated and led the decisions which were taken.

b. The Prime Minister made up his mind hastily, despite the fact that no detailed military plan was submitted to him and without asking for one. Also, his decision was made without close study of the complex features of the Lebanon front or of the military, political and diplomatic options available to Israel. He made his decision without systematic consultation with others, especially outside the IDF, despite not having experience in external-political and military affairs. In addition, he did not adequately consider political and professional reservations presented to him before the fateful decisions of July 12th.

c. The Prime Minister is responsible for the fact that the goals of the campaign were not set out clearly and carefully, and that there was no serious discussion of the relationship between these goals and the authorized modes of military action. He made a personal contribution to the fact that the declared goals were over-ambitious and not feasible.

From the summary of "Releasing Terrorists: New victims pay the price"

* The Israeli Cabinet approved on August 17 the release of almost 200 Palestinian security prisoners as a "goodwill gesture" to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. The list includes several prisoners "with blood on their hands," who, by definition, were involved in the murder of Israelis.

* According to an informal estimate by Israeli security bodies, about 50 percent of the terrorists freed for any reason whatsoever returned to the path of terror, either as perpetrator, planner, or accomplice. In the terror acts committed by these freed terrorists, hundreds of Israelis were murdered, and thousands were wounded.

* Israel freed 400 Palestinian prisoners and five other prisoners in return for Elhanan Tannenbaum, who was held captive by Hizbullah, and for the bodies of three soldiers kidnapped on Mount Dov. According to Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Tzahi Hanegbi, from the date of the deal on January 29, 2004, until April 17, 2007, those freed in the deal had murdered 35 Israelis.

Keep those two bits of information in mind when parsing Ethan Bronner's Olmert Says Israel Should Pull Out of West Bank:

In an unusually frank and soul-searching interview granted after he resigned to fight corruption charges -- he remains interim prime minister until a new government is sworn in -- Mr. Olmert discarded longstanding Israeli defense doctrine and called for radical new thinking, in words that are sure to stir controversy as his expected successor, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, tries to build a coalition.

Let's just say, as demonstrated above, this wouldn't be the first time that Ehud Olmert has "discarded longstanding Israeli defense doctrine" and the earlier times cannot exactly be called resounding successes.

In the past Israel has, of course, believed in deterrence and no releasing prisoners with blood on their hands. These are doctrines that Olmert (and other Prime Ministers) has (have) discarded and they haven't made Israel any more secure or brought it closer to peace. I suppose you can package it as "radical new thinking" but that's not the same thing as it being a good idea.

Dion Nissenbaum thinks that Olmert's right but that it's too late and that he should have made this speech last year.

Yes, a year after degrading Israel's deterrence and with the results of the withdrawal from Gaza flying into Sderot on a regular basis, the Israeli public would have been quite receptive to the idea of more withdrawals.

Tim McGirk is similarly cynical.

But for all those who think that Olmert's thinking is in any way new, how does it differ from the past 15 years since the Oslo accords were signed? Since then even Binyamin Netanyahu ceded land to the Palestinians. As I've written before, what's now the mainstream Right for Israel, is roughly where Israel's Left was twenty years ago. Netanyahu, if he's elected, isn't going to recapture Gaza - he might bring the fight to Hamas - but no Israelis will be staying there. And Netanyahu isn't likely to reverse any facts on the ground in Judea and Samaria either. He may not be willing to cede as much land to the Palestinians, but that's a far cry from saying that he'd be making the "occupation" irreversible.

And it takes a real naif - or knave - like McGirk or Nissenbaum to heap sarcastic praise on Olmert for saying the right thing too late, when in fact it is the Palestinians who haven't changed over the past fifteen (or twenty) years. As Jonathan Spyer recently wrote after outlining the phony Palestinian efforts to codify their "commitment" to a two-state solution:

The advocates of the one-state solution then maintain that since Israel has chosen to sabotage the possibility of partition, there is no longer any possibility for the realization of this, and since Israeli settlement activity has de facto created a single entity west of the Jordan River, the appropriate--or perhaps sole possible--response of the Palestinian national movement is to accept this fait accompli and to begin a campaign for integration of the entire population of this area into a single state framework. This case has been made in myriad publications in a variety of languages over the previous half decade.[25] It is hard to find mention of the fact that this position was in fact the PLO's official stance until 1988. Rather, the impression given is that after a long period of commitment to partition, the Palestinians and the international community must now abandon this position, because Israel's actions have made it an impossibility.

More generally Barry Rubin writes that he premise of Olmert and his admirers have it all wrong:

The reality is that the Palestinians--albeit living off large-scale, though poorly spent, global subsidies--for whom time is an enemy. They face bad conditions; Fatah's decline continues; the chance to have their own state slips away because their leadership pushes it away. Arab regimes face Islamist challenges that may be defeated but waste resources and stunt their progress. The chance for democracy, moderation, and stability has been lost for another generation.

Peace is preferable but much of what makes it so is that it must be a good peace, one that makes things better and is sustainable. Peace is possible only when the other side wants it. Today's peace process mania is like a cartoon character whose legs windmill in a blur but which never advances.

But whether or not Olmert is correct, his statement causes mischief.

The Yedioth Ahronoth wrote that Olmert's comments would complicate Livni's job even before she takes over.

"He places on the doorstep of his successor a foreign policy doctrine, the likes of which has never been spoken by an incumbent prime minister," commented his interviewers.

It should be no surprise that the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas intends to pocket this for future negotiations.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he hopes the statements made by Prime Minster Ehud Olmert regarding sovereignty over Jerusalem, the territories and the Golan Heights will serve as a "deposit" for the next government.

And when lame duck Ehud Barak negotiated with Yasser Arafat, "under the gun" of the "Aqsa intifada" in early 2001, the Palestinians accepted all of his concessions as a starting point for future negotiations. Another example of defense doctrine disregarded, at great cost to Israel.

Ehud Olmert can't help learning the the wrong lessons.

See also Daled Amos, My Right Word, Israel Matzav and Meryl.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Submitted 10/01/08

This week's Council Submissions are up.

• Rhymes With Right - In The Aftermath Of Ike - The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly - Rhymes with Right looks at the best and worst of human behavior in the wake of Ike. And the worst of government actions.


• Joshuapundit - The Crap Sandwich - Joshuapundit doesn't pull any punches in his criticism of the bailout bill that Congress failed to pass. I thought that Larry Kudlow explained why it was worth taking the bad with the good, but as JoshuaPundit pointed out, even without a bill the stock market recovered, raising questions as to how essential the bill was. (Now the Senate has passed a similar bill - with "sweeteners," having nothing to do with the credit crisis. Please tell me what tax deductions for treating "mental health" conditions have to do with the bailout.


• Wolf Howling - A Doddering Fool - Wolf Howling singles out Sen. Dodd for special censure for his role in preventing reform and taking advantage of his position to get favorable terms for his mortgage. "Not part of the solution" would be a good description.


• Bookworm Room - When God closes a door, he sometimes opens a window - Considers what ought to be called a valuable life.


• The Colossus of Rhodey - I thought the Left wanted to talk about issues? - Colossus of Rhodey.Hube deflates the issue of Sen. McCain's cars. And btw, Rep. Rangel also has kept a car in the House garage in violation of rules. And no, it's not American made, it's a Benz.


• Hillbilly White Trash - The little messiah unleashes his freikorps - HIllbilly White Trash questions Sen. Obama's legal efforts against critics.


• The Glittering Eye - System Failure - The Glittering Eye shares his thoughts on the financial crisis. Do I understand it much better? No, but it's still a very entertaining read.


• Soccer Dad - McCain's role - Given that the House bill failed, I find myself having written a post that was obsolete in short order. Still I think I did highlight that McCain actually worked to accomplish something, while his opponent worked on his debating skills.


• Cheat-Seeking Missiles - McCain's Needed New Messaging Strategy - Cheat Seeking Missiles has helpful advice on how McCain ought to refocus his message(s).

My non-council submission asks if Congress is Learning from History at Q & O. Specifically, will Congress learn from Chile's history and look for a more free market approach. If the Senate's example means anything, the answer is "no."

Read, Enjoy. Be Informed.

watcher's council.