Back after 4 years

I curtailed my blogging when I was finishing my dissertation and - foolishly - felt that I'd be better off writing 'blog' style posts on F*acebook rather than this clunky ol' website. But right after the election of Trump (ym'sh), I fled FB for two big reasons:

(1) I discovered that they were stealing my phone text messages, which prompted me to research & realize that they were basically operating as a computer virus
(2) I saw normal people become deranged by FB's polarization. I think it's a destructive & evil platform. Basically the computer equivalent of Oxycontin: designed to help, has a veneer of beneficence, but operationally addictive and destructive

I always knew that the near future would be fought by tech titans - much like the oil/energy companies of decades past - and I need to choose sides: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, and/or uh, AOL? Do they still exist? Anyway. I guess I currently trust google more than others, but all are robber-baron style octopi and we must all be careful

All told, I will try to write more on the blog, because I have a big backlog of material. I do have a twitter feed and I spend most of my time there, but decent writing is hard to produce (limits of the form etc, I'm sure there's some good scholarly work on this)

Anyway, it's good to be back. Let's see if it sticks

Gun Issues Update

Here's some more resources about the ongoing sea-change in the American view about gun ownership and gun violence. It's good to see that at least so far the change is occurring. After Sandy Hook I read many journalists (aka pundits) say with all the idiotic gravitas that they could muster that "there's nothing we can do" about our gun culture. Speaking as a sociologist, I can say that nearly every journalist I have read - on every subject - is at best an educated layman, but more often just a loud ignoramus. So, thank God, the mood is shifting. If we could stop slavery, maybe we can stop this too.

1. This is Slate.com's "Gun Death Map" - a handy, and shattering, crowdsourced reference guide for current gun deaths.

2. For quick reference, here are Obama's executive actions. Again, thank God, Big B is doing what we elected him to do. I'm seeing a change in his attitude towards congress, something I hoped would happen after his reelection.

What comes out from this list is a demonstration that the NRA maybe the most evil organization in America. Because while the other legal-evil groups - e.g. tobacco, oil - advocate indirect death for their own profit, the NRA is in favor of actual death. They may be more evil than gambling and drug lobbyists (and they exist) for that same reason. Jewish law is pretty clear that the one worst crime is murder, mainly because it can't be reversed.

Why do I say they are the most evil? Because after Sandy Hook the journalists have kicked into gear and are now reporting just how much the NRA has been working to ensure that crazy people can get their hands on mass murder tools. It's stupefying, it's numbing, just how much the NRA has done to allow murder!

The best journalist team is, yet again, the Daily Show. Even though they've gotten worse and worse about Israel (shame on you Stewart!), they are top notch about this issue. See the second video here to be astounded:

3. From Huffpo: Jon Stewart Takes On NRA Over ATF Limitations On Enforcing Existing Gun Laws (VIDEO)

Guns

Adam Gopnik one of the best New Yorker writers, says in reaction to the latest mass murder:

Of course, we don’t know, and perhaps never will, what exactly “made him” do what he did; but we know how he did it. Those who fight for the right of every madman and every criminal to have as many people-killing weapons as they want share moral responsibility for what happened last night—as they will when it happens again. And it will happen again.

Yes. This happens way too much in America. One thing we need to realize is that there are many prices we pay, as Americans, for our freedom and Federalism. We are a huge country, and each state is different enough from the other that what is a blessing for some areas is seen as a curse in the others. The problem with the gun situation is that the people who think they are a blessing seem to rarely be the victims.

As a country we seemed to believe that we would restrict our freedom when it comes to air travel and new immigrants in order to not have another 9/11. Yet we seem determined to retain the same freedom - for guns - that will allow domestic terrorism to run amok. I believe the same impulse is behind both aspects of this paradox - the same people who ruin air travel, and who never liked immigrants in the first place - are the same people who demand the guns. The impulse is either myopic xenophobia (which we don't own the patent for), or the adolescent need to have someone else pay for your pleasures.

America has at least two major cultures that at times conveniently line up to the red-state blue-state divide. But suffice it to say that the reason why the US will never truly be an enlightened moral leader of the free world has to do with the burden of the South (and, if necessary, all the Red States). They are the ones who (a) are the worst Xenophobes, (b) hate education in favor of backwards religion [note to surfers, I am a clergyman], (c) want to hit their own kids and lock up other kids in prison for adult crimes, (d) enjoy the death penalty (not support, these guys love it), and the list goes on.

Like many things, American exceptionalism and supremacy - something I grew up believing and want to exist - was a historical necessity during the Cold War. The world was divided into slave and free, seen as Communist vs. Non (South Africa for some reason was part of the 'free' team) and we were the biggest, baddest of the non-Commies. It helped that we weren't damaged by World War II. But even more crucial is that we are a huge unified land mass with crucial natural resources and bordered by two oceans. We have plenty of room for crops and industry, and being under one government allows a stupendous synergy for business. This means we'll never be out of the top 5 world powers - as long as we stay unified, see Russia and China for proof of this. And we're better off than those 2 because much of our land is useable and we have warm-water oceans.

Our might made us right, and thank God we were on the side of freedom. But one aspect of our freedom is that we allow less than half of the population residing in states that due to Federalism give them disproportionate electoral power. These 'freedom loving' states hate much of the world, and distrust anyone who doesn't look like themselves (case in point: Obama hatred... do you believe that people still think he's stupid? You can call him arrogant, aloof, even foreign - there's proof for all of that- but stupid? It makes sense only if you are an inveterate racist, of which there are many).

Is this the freedom we want in America? So far, our vision of freedom not only ensures we have an insane health care system, but also mass murder of our children.

Cain's Race Card

Herman Cain as a good presidential name going for him. Single syllable names are great, see Gore v Bush, and Biblical last names even better, no matter the images evoked of a powerful man killing his weaker brother - which is a perfect description for the Republican Party in 2011, and for Cain's attitudes towards American Blacks as well.

However, he plays the race card like he was in Vegas. Most recently, he has needed to double-down (note my gambling metaphors!*) because he has been accused of sexually harrassing a bunch of employees. People have referenced Clarence Thomas. The implicit point of Cain is that black men will be accused of this if they are Right Wing. I don't assume he harassed the women because he was black. I assume he did it because (a) he's a rich businessman born between 1940-1960, (b) he's a patriarchal fool who treats everyone as an object. These are blanket assumptions for anyone of his ilk.

Anyway, Cain and his cronies are trying to portray him as the victim, which I just love in a gallows humor way. In this interview

you can see that he blames the liberal establishment for leading the charge against him. Basically, punishing him and his Black Republican Brethren for their maverickyness.

Aside from the fact that there's no proof for his assertion, and that it's a classic Strawman Defense for someone guilty as Cain, I'd like to use my trusty tools of (1) logic, and (2) precedent to understand the situation.

This is currently a Republican primary. Unlike 2000 and 2008, there's an incumbent and therefore only one primary. And as history will show that primaries are when the real knock-down attacks occur. Scandals are brought up by their own party-mates - and this is logical because once a person gets the nomination, then the process of election changes.

Biden's plagarism, Hart and Clinton's philandering**, McCain's black*** babies, Obama and Rev. Wright - all examples of devestating attacks that occured by their own party during the primaries.

There is no incentive, truly none, for the other party to being opposition research during the primaries. Why should the Democrats attack Cain 14 months before election day? It's illogical and has no precedent. The only people who care about Cain right now, and have the money to do oppo research, are Perry and Romney. I'd bet Romney did this.

Footnotes:
*Gambling metaphors are steeped in US politics. The "New Deal" itself is a poker reference. So is "The Buck Stops Here" (Truman).
** Not with each other.
*** Black to a Republican means something totally different than what you think.

Reaction to Tuesday's Midterms

Some quick reactions from Tuesday's Midterm Elections. Note, when I say "we" that refers to "Democrats" and/or "(Normal) Jews" and/or "(Normal) Americans". This is because, as I said Monday, the current Republican party is bizarrely more evil in intention than the ideas backing the Bush Years:

1. This could have been much much worse. As the dust settles, the Democrats lost only 1 House. Many of the lost seats in the Senate should have been quite safe (PA, Ill-a-freakin'-Noise) and that's a depressing sign. But considering that Teabaggers were defeated in many places, that California stayed Blue, and that Harry Reid's Faustian deal is still under warranty, means that it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
   


2. The irony about Reid is that if anyone is responsible for the current failure of the Democrats, it's Reid. As I said in the intro, it's a given that the current GOP is freakishly evil (see below), but the only places where their evil could reign was SCOTUS (which is a lost cause until Scalia and Thomas get incapacitated by their own hatred of humanity), and the Senate. Despite the Dems having a historically high 60 seats, Reid allowed the Senate Republicans to destroy most attempts to repair the economy and help America. It's that bad. And because of the deadlock in congress, more people are out of work than should be, the health care plan is flaccid, and Obama's appointees are stalled in committee. All this evil was hated by the American people who returned their ire on... House Democrats. Who were by and large heroes these past 2 years. If there was any justice, Reid should have lost, the Dems should have kept the Senate - and House.
   


3. Which leads to the most infuriating result of Tuesday. While it's bad enough that the disturbing and malevolent John Boehner will be the new speaker, and that the Teabaggers have renewed vigor, what I'm especially angry about is that the GOP tactic of legislative anarchy worked for their benefit. The GOP is better at "playing the ref" than the Dems, mainly because the GOP is ideologically anti-government! Even when the Dems were trying to stop Bush's evil, in general their party is in favor of legislation. GOPers can take it or leave it. They may have claimed that they were trying to stop laws that hurt the American people, but only morons or fanatics actually believe that was true. Seriously. The proof is that the GOP supported everything they claim Obama stands for when Bush was the president. Every (non-alcoholic/moron) in Congress knew that we needed economic stimulus, health care, and bank reform - the GOP just didn't want those vitally important things to happen under a Democratic president. Which makes them a special type of evil.
   
   Note, this proof is the same one behind the Teabaggers: (1) if you don't like deficit spending, then why did you support Bush's epic/disgusting ballooning of the deficit? Because you want tax cuts and crazy wars? OK, yeah, you do. But it's because they're bigoted fiends; (2) if you hate health care reform, why did you support the Medicare Prescription Drug Boondoggle? I could go on but the pattern is obvious.


The Republicans spent 2 years blocking vitally important legislation - that they supported and knew would help get people jobs, medicine, life - in order to help their electoral chances... and it worked. And the American people fell for it. And I just threw up in my mouth.

And because it worked, the GOP will do it again and it will work again. It's bad enough to know that evil has gone unnoticed, it's worse to know that it will keep happening.


4. It's possible that Obama should be blamed for not strongly broadcasting the GOP evil before Nov 2. It is my biggest cavil with the president: that I want him to fight more. Yeah, it's nice to be 'non-partisan' but evil is evil and must be stopped. However, in retrospect, I have to blame the House/Senate democrats - and thus the DNC - for the responsibility of carrying out that message. It was their gooses about to be cooked and their legislature to be explained, and thus I blame their loss on themselves.
   
   
5. The big silver lining about the election is that - based on the GOP Evil Analysis above - that the hidden enemy of Republican Obstructionism now has a face. Ya see, as I've experienced in my own life, it's part of the American psyche to dismiss the excuses behind loss and failure. Bush lied, stole 2000, so what - he crossed the finish line and now we can move on to the next horse race. So too in Congress - so what if the GOP committed legislative fraud and grand evil over 2 years - it's not visible therefore its not provable. Yet now Bone-nert/Bay-nert/Boonert is the orange face of Congress. And we have a clear, easily spotted - even at night - enemy of Democracy.
   
   
6. Other good news - Massachusetts stayed Blue. The Scott "Nudie Model" Brown debacle of 2009 did not repeat.
   
   
7. On the unknown/bad news front: one piece of info I was looking for in the news organs is probably the most crucial factor of the Midterms - the makeup of State legislatures in those states that will gain/lose Congressional seats because of the new census. As Obama said on the Daily Show, the two biggest anti-Constitutional enemies to the Republic are (1) the filibuster, especially in the hands of the anarcho-nihilistic burglars of the GOP, and (2) gerrymandering of House districts. The GOP has succeeded in the former and may now succeed in the latter.
   
   
8. The last reaction for now has to do with newspapers. I sought out a (free) New York Times on Tuesday morning because I felt that I needed to have a good analysis and breakdown of the effects of the Midterms. Yet, I didn't get one. Not only was the newspaper frozen in time while reporting on a constantly shifting fact landscape, what information they did contain was fluffy and pedestrian. I wanted numbers! I wanted facts about losses and wins and causes and effects. Instead the paper was filled with reaction pieces about mood and feelings. It was useless. The internet wins again - not only because its up-to-the-second in news, but because the possible info is BETTER.

Tea Party Republicans

Frank Rich yesterday claimed, correctly, that: "What made the Tea Party most useful was that its loud populist message gave the G.O.P. just the cover it needed both to camouflage its corporate patrons and to rebrand itself as a party miraculously antithetical to the despised G.O.P. that gave us George W. Bush and record deficits only yesterday."

Very true. The Teabaggers, aka The Fort Sumpterists, are the latest in the group of dupes who fall for the cynical robber-barons of the current GOP. The tea-partiers who have genuine grievances should seriously be directing their energy against the GOP, and their perpetuation of the Bush years of disgrace and plunder. They won't because, bottom line, they are bigots. It's funny how this simple fact should still be in dispute. Why is their ire creepily directed against the Black President and the Lady Speaker?

Is it relevant that the Teabaggers are bigots? So what, you may ask. Well it's crucial because:

1. The GOP has embraced these sick fools, and that shows that the GOP is happy fellow-traveling with the scum of America. One sad lesson I get from this semester's study of the Holocaust is that the conservatives in Europe in the 1930s felt they could control the wacko radical right in their countries and while they succeeded in Italy, Romania, Hungary etc this gambit failed in Germany. And Germany was able to then take over all the conservative governments, ain't that funny. Radical Rightists are bad news no matter the era or nationalist-bugbear. And the Teabaggers are the radical right.
   
   
2. The teabaggers will come after the Jews with the same fervor they reserve for their Nigerian Presidential delusions. Another lesson I learn from the Holocaust is that the crazies actually mean what they say. Listen to their rhetoric.
   
   
3. There can be no Jewish Tea Party as a result, and I'd claim there should be no Jewish support for a political party that embraces Tea Partiers. Then again, the fact that a Republican candidate for Congress in Ohio happily dresses up like an SS officer should cement this conviction. Yet there are Jewish Republicans still because Obama is perceived as not a friend to Israel. Look, his state department has definitely screwed up, but as I've said many times before, there has not been one single 'fact on the ground' as a result of this - as opposed to the Bush years which gave us a Shiite Iraq, a Hamas controlled Gaza, and two failed Mideast wars - greatly reducing the American ability to contain Iran.
   
   Jewish republicans: don't get blinded by racism or greed! - the GOP is not our friend!
4. One last lesson from the Holocaust for now: that in every country where the Jews felt they were safe because they were rich, or part of the ruling class, we were quickly tossed to the wolves when the Nazis came knocking. Just being Jewish is a death sentence to the radical rightists of the world. You may think this is hyperbole, or a generalization, or even a cliche, but I've been going through the historical record in detail and it's nauseating how often it happened.

Pic from here of the GOP scumball in his SS uniform. Note, according to the Wiki: "He supports Israel's right to self defense and the American obligation to support it; he opposes a Palestinian state formed by taking land from Israel, a divided Jerusalem, and believes that the UN has become irrelevant." A lesson for you holdout GOP Jews: Actions speak louder than words. Dressing as a Nazi is a red line, no? Or does it matter when your hatred of blacks and/or greed for low taxes come into play?

Robert Reich about the 2010 Midterms

This is a great essay from from Robert Reich (at Salon) about how to understand the upcoming midterm election. The key points he makes, under the rubric of advising Obama not to move to the "center":

1. There is no "center" to American politics. The "center" is merely what most people tell pollsters they think or want at any given time. Trying to move to the center by following polls means giving up on leadership because you can’t lead people to where they already are.

2. By the first midterm the public is almost always grouchy because the president wasn’t a messiah and didn’t change the world. No single president has that kind of power. The higher the expectations for change at the start of an administration, the greater the disillusionment.

3. Presidents’ parties always lose the first midterm elections because the president isn’t on the ticket, and the opposing party has had time to regroup and refuel. It’s always easier for the party on the outs to attack -- and to mass troops for the assault -- than for the party inside to defend.

4. The economy trumps everything else, even though presidents aren’t really responsible for it. So when it’s bad -- as it was during the first midterms of Carter, Reagan and Clinton -- voters penalize the president’s party even more than usual. When it’s very bad, the electoral penalty is likely to be that much larger.

But read the whole thing.

Chelsea's Wedding

So Chelsea finally got married, and to get the stuff out of the way: (1) her husband is "Jewish", (2) she did not convert, and as such it was an (3) interfaith wedding (as shown in this quote from the Times: "The interfaith ceremony was conducted by Rabbi James Ponet and the Rev. William Shillady. Ms. Clinton is Methodist, and Mr. Mezvinsky is Jewish." I guess the rabbi is my old New Haven colleague Jim Ponet of Yale Hillel who is a Reform rabbi and possibly knew the President at school. The picture of the chossun shows him in his tallit, so way to go Jim for doing that, and it wasn't during the 9 days, but it was on Shabbat. Oops.

Anyway, rather than lament about the nature of intermarriage among American Jews, or some other weirdness, I would like to point out that we live in a remarkable age when in a single administration the President and Vice President (both non-Jewish natch) have children who married Jews. Cheslea to Mark Tallisdork yesterday, and Al Gore's daughter Karenna Gore Schiff (OK, the Schiffs are now separated but its (a) besides the point and (b) pretty typical for intermarried couples, especially who name their firstborn son "Wyatt".)

To make this point clear: the two most powerful men in the world, two men permanently engraved in American history, have Jewish inlaws. And you can even add that the same president had a Jewish mistress, you can see that Jews have come a long way (oy). OK, forget the mistress and concentrate on the marriages.

While intermarriage is terrible for the Jewish people, and will bring sadness and teeth gnashing to non-Orthodox Jewish continuity, to think of either Clinton & Gore's marriages as 'intermarriage' misses the point: it would have been assumed that for this to happen in a previous era, possibly up until the mid-1960s, the Jew would have been the one to convert. What an age we live in when we would even assume that the daughter of a two-term popular Baptist president would herself convert to Judaism. Let's get real, people.

216

That's it, the House voted to approve the Senate bill. We've finally entered the Western World for social safety net - guaranteed health insurance.

It's a good day to be an American.

Update: I mean, I feel so happy right now for the fact that we got this done. It's good in itself - it will both help save lives and save poor people money. Isnt' that what Hashem wants?

And I feel good, because as a number of commentators have said: the GOP bet everything on this - they gave nothing and promised that it will destroy all life in the universe - and now they lost. So they can't even claim victory for anything. And this victory thus makes Obama look like a super-ninja with rocket roller skates - he's so truly Da Man - and the Democrats in congress showed their constituency that it was the right thing to vote for them, and shows the independents that if you put the Democrats in charge, they will get big things done

This is a great victory.

Obama and the Jacksonian Zionists

Goldblog sent me to one of the best things I've seen written about the non-Jewish American support for Israel - this article by Walter Russell Mead at The American Interest: Obama and the Jacksonian Zionists. I don't know what the journal "American Interest" is about (its anodyne title could mask any sort of partisan lunacy) nor who Mead is, but Goldblog highly recommends him by name.

Pic made by me from an original within Mead's piece.

Robo-Land, Massachusetts Senate 2010

So Massachusetts is now in one of those teabagger fueled election death-struggles. Which means that for the past week or so we've been getting robocalls every few minutes or so. Robocalls, like mudslinging, turns voters off, not on and the candidates should know that. Karl Rove did - that's why he'd only pay for robocalls for his opponents (I think).

Anyway, the election tomorrow (Tuesday) is between a lackluster Democrat and a pretty-boy GOP walking-teabag cypher. The fact that we're in this place is scary to me, as a Democrat and a supporter of the president, but it's also a testimony to machine politics. We shouldn't be here, but here's why I think we are:

1. Martha Coakley is a poor candidate. Sadly, she's a combination of Hillary Clinton & John Kerry - an unimaginative, and mean, woman whose ambition overshadows her talent. I voted against her in the primary for this reason and were she in any fashion decent, this election wouldn't be so close. A sign of her paucity as a candidate is her desire to go negative early and often. Even when she was leading by double-digits in the primary, she attacked her opponents - one reason why I voted against her. And that undeserved hauteur - a hallmark of Kerry - is undoing her now.

2. Massachusetts screwed up the voting schedule - I said this before - there's a reason to have elections all at the same time. We should have had the primary on the November day and the special election soon after. Rather MA is forcing people to go to vote 3 times in close succession. It's expensive and time consuming. And unlike my fellow pundit-curmudgeons, I sympathize with good faith reasons for being unable to vote (with our 3 kids we're forced to find a babysitter or work out a way to switch places and go to the polls - not easy, and we both have time flexible jobs!) And voting in January in Massachusetts?! In-freakin-sane! The inevitable low-voter-turnout of the bad scheduling favors the crazy, under-employed, and committed - and in an off-year that means that opposition party.

3. Obstructionism Works - The GOP are better obstructionsists that Democats for a number of reasons: (a) conservatives, almost by definition, are against change which means they WANT to stop things, (b) the GOP is against government (pretty much) and so stopping legislative movement is part of their ideology, (c) the party, since Newt's time, has had remarkable voting unity - which helps obstructions.

In any case, the GOP obstructionism has given the view to the electorate that Congress isn't capable of doing anything and that helps the GOP depict themselves as the loyal opposition. Of course the truth is that they are continuing the despicable practices of their 2000-2008 reign... but most voters seem unable to capture that right now - aided by Coakley's hacky negativity.

Tomorrow may determine the end of the Obama era - just like Clinton's Democrats let him down from 1993-1994, so the stupid Democrats of 2009-2010 may end Obama before he can really begin.

Briefly stated, we need to get rid of the filibuster - it's become unconstitutional. Beforehand, the Senators, knowing they had a terrible weapon, only used it for the most severe cases. But the current GOP, like the gun-toting hillbillies who make up their core electorate, are using their weapons for everything. Sadly, it's time to take the gun away. I'll say more anon about that, though.

Why Don't They Just Leave?

This is me, the Diaspora Jew, thinking. Every kind of oppression that's been suffered, currently and in the past, by some minority group has been subjected to my people. Slavery (although, true, it was a while ago), genocide, marriage restrictions, forced conversions, etc. But this is the 21st century, and if any of those things happened to me and my people, especially if its from a Western nation, I would get up and leave. That's what we always did, and it's even easier to do now.

I'm setting aside Israel, even, as a possible destination, even though that's why it was created. But if Israel didn't exist, and it's the 21st Century, and I'm living in a country with freedom to travel (e.g. unlike Iran/USSR), and my home country was persecuting Jews - then I would leave.

This is my gut reaction whenever I hear someone - in America or another Western nation - decry their treatment by the home country. I guess this is why all 4 of my grandparents - especially my father's father - just got the heck out of Eastern Europe in the teens/twenties. They said, to paraphrase Cartman:

Cases where this came up: Jehova's Witnesses who are shocked and appalled that they're forced to give their children blood transfusions (even though it says explicitly in the Old Testament not to eat blood). The Styx's response to the JW: hey guys, just leave America! If you don't like our religious oppression, then act like the Jews and go to Micronesia or Somalia or some other place.

Another case: Gays in America. Evidently, we're terrible for gay rights in America. OK, so if Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, South Africa, Canada, Norway, and Sweden have legalized gay marriage, then why don't you become citizens of those countries?

Note - very important caveat - I am not saying that these groups should 'go back where they came from' or to 'leave America to real Americans' or some other white supremacist stuff. My whole point is that when the white supremacists start attacking you, that's a sign that it's probably time to move.

So, I'm not saying that the gay community shouldn't try to change America's laws - all power to them! - I'm just trying to understand the strange (to me) impulse to stay in a country which oppresses you.

This could be why Jews have generally survived over the millennia in the Diaspora, because we don't think that a particular bunch of painted rocks in an arbitrary latitude and longitude needs to be our permanent locale. I just find that view to be fundamentally un-Jewish.

Note, this is also why I react negatively when some bunch of congregants insist that they need to stay in some dying neighborhood in some decrepit city. Sure, I understand the limits of poverty; that many people - especially senior citizens - can't move for practical reasons. I'm down with that. What I'm rejecting is the *ideological* arguments I hear about staying in some neighborhood. Again, the Styx reaction: You're in the Diaspora, Just Move!

And, of course, you will ask: what about the land of Israel? Aren't those painted rocks sacred? Of course they are. But I'm also with Rebbe Yochanan Ben Zakkai on this - Israel is sacred, but the Torah and human life is more sacred. I reject land-for-peace deals because they're usually impractical and dangerous, not because I believe a clump of dirt is inherently worth a human life.

Again, to state clearly: Land for Peace has worked with some countries (e.g. Egypt, for now), and Jordan) and that is a good *practical* argument for the tactic in the future. Land for Peace has totally failed in Gaza, and was a fiasco with Lebanon, and hasn't worked well with Jericho. So my general wariness to Land-for-Peace is on practical grounds, with a bit of ideology thrown in (basically that Israel should exist, small stuff like that). But I opposed the ideological doctrine that one must die before ceding an inch of Israel. I claim that it is avodah zarah and goyish to think that wood and rocks is worth more than a human life.

Pic from here.

Wexler Stepping Down

Robert Wexler is (one of?) the only Orthodox Jews in the House of Representatives and he just announced that he's stepping down to join a Middle East Think Tank. This is very disturbing.

I have tenedentious contacts with Wexler; he's a member of my parent's shul in Maryland and he's my aunt's (father's sister) rep down in Florida. When I was trying to contact the Obama campaign last year - to volunteer as a speechwriter - Wexler was the guy I was trying to use (it came to naught; long story). I had great hopes for him in the Obama administration since he was an early supporter and was important in convincing the mad Florida Jews to think of Obama as a viable Democrat (and president).

Why is he leaving? I sure hope it's not a scandal. I really want him to have a future.

Pic from his new job's website; backpost finished on 2009-11-20.

Jack Kemp Dies, 73

Jack Kemp died last night from cancer at 73. I actually liked him; he was the real deal. I guess because he and I are both upstate New Yorkers. But he's a vanished breed - a non-racist, moderate Republican politician. I have long said that the 1996 Election was one of the only ones in my lifetime where I could have lived with either choice (as opposed to, lets say, 1988 which was a disaster every-which-way). In fact, it could have been a Kemp v. Gore battle in 1988 which I would have liked very much (despite that I was 2 years away from voting age). Ah well.

State of the Parties

Soon may be the day when the largest party affiliation will be no party:


h.t. to Sullivan for the chart

Inauguration Imminent

I plan to watch the inauguration in the Brandeis student center with a hundred or so screaming fans. Not as good as freezing my tush off at the Capitol, but warmer and closer to my 1 pm class.

Here's a good AP story about some inauguration data.

Constitutional Amendment for the 21st Century

The 20th Amendment changed the transition date of the US presidency from March 4th to January 20th. It was a swiftly passed change to the Constitution following the agony of Herbert Hoover. Not only was the bum thrown out of office in 1932 but we needed to wait 4 months to actually have the throwing occur.

I propose that while 4 months worked in the 18-19th centuries, and 2 months for the 20th, we live in an even more swift and dire age and can have an even quicker transition. I propose the transition should be in 2 weeks.

Oh, I hear you cry, that's not enough time for the new president to get up to speed! Look at Obama; he's filled his cabinet in a much faster time than his predecessors but it still takes time and even for him its not finished.

I counter-argue that the whole point of a chief executive is that he controls the cabinet. If the new president took over in two weeks, then even if the previous cabinet were to be in place, they would need to follow the directives of the new guy. And even if they were all to resign at once, then (a) the President could not accept the resignations, or (b) the career bureaucrats who fill up the cabinet offices could take over until new guys are found. Even as it stands it's not *enough* time to really get the new cabinet up to speed to their new jobs, and my solution could actually be a better way to transition in.

My ultimate point is that things are rapidly going to hell even quicker than in 1932 (Bush is like a combination of Herbert Hoover and James Buchanan - bad war and bad money) and we need new leadership fast fast fast.

My Idea! Pardon Prevention

I see from the TPM that Cong. Nadler has put in legislative words and idea I hafd for some time:

Nadler, who two weeks ago introduced a resolution demanding President Bush not issue 'pre-emptive' pardons of officials in his administration, said his amendment would bar presidents from pardoning members of their own administration for official acts. The president would retain the power to pardon the secretary of state for, say, beating his wife, Nadler said, but not for actions taken in an official capacity.

The presidential pardoning is a scary thing and especially for a criminal like Bush. Considering that his father was able to exonerate all his Iran-Contra co-conspirators is proof enough that we should be worried.

[Update from 11-11-2009 - I am still shocked, til this day, that Bush didn't actually cheese out and pardon everybody. My main theory why he didn't was to contrast with Clinton; i.e. people are still angry - from the Left, nukh - over Clinton's pardons, which tainted an otherwise remarkable presidency. Bush knew he was in trouble with the critics and craven pardons probably would have unleashed a vindictive backlash. As we see, he's has managed to avoid a lot of the opprobrium in the past few months, because he has lain low. Not so for Cheney...]

Backpost, finished Nov 11, 2009. Pic from here.

Conservative & Liberal Today

Kleiman at The Reality Based Community brings up a point I've been making for some time:

A former publisher of the National Review has endorsed Barack Obama as the “conservative” candidate in this year’s Presidential race. That may sound like a paradox, but it makes perfect sense if you go back to what the word “conservative” originally meant.

“Conservatism” has many meanings. To my somewhat jaundiced eye, the primary practical content of American conservatism as embodied in the Republican Party is a preference for the interests of rich people and employers over non-rich people and workers, combined with hostility to the demands of “outsiders” for equal treatment. All the rest — the preference for “small government” that is nonetheless active in dictating sexual morality, hostility toward environmental protection, hostility toward science, nativism — follows from that basic stance. (The current tendency on the right to support the executive power over the legislative power is merely temporary and partisan.)

Of course there are tensions on both interest-group and ideological lines. Employers tend to be anti-nativist. Many “small government” types are anti-imperialist. Libertarians don’t like the sexual-purity agenda.

But the thing American conservatism most lacks is “conservatism” in the proper sense in which “conservative” is the opposite of “progressive”: a sense of the costs of rapid change and a distrust of pervasive schemes of reform, in the tradition of Burke, Hayek, and Oakeshott. Steve Teles has pointed out, for example, how utterly un-conservative it is to propose drastic changes in Social Security, and of course the same might be said about the project of making Iraq safe for democracy.

As relentlessly partisan as I am on most left/right issues, I find myself right in the middle on the progressive-conservative axis. The Second Reconstruction was a frankly revolutionary effort, and had quite as many unintended side-effects as Burke himself could have expected, but it was no less necessary or glorious for all of that. The same was true of the New Deal, and is true now of the movement toward regulating the environmental impacts of private economic activity. But I still find myself nodding in agreement when someone says “The basic cause of problems is solutions.” Both the freeway and the public housing project seemed like good ideas at the time.

Thinkers with an Oakeshottian cast of mind have been drawn toward Republicanism by the relentlessly progressive mood of the Democrats. And some of them, revolted by the past eight years, are now looking for another option. One of the attractions of Barack Obama’s candidacy was his capacity to speak to those people. I don’t know how many of them are actually out there, but it’s good to know that there are some.

Sounds familiar, no?

Backpost finished 2009-12-07.

Kennedy-Johnson & Hillary-Obama?

One of Sullivan's readers points out why making the SAT analogy of Obama:Clinton = JFK:LBJ isn't true (emphasis/bold mine):

Kennedy/Johnson and Obama/Clinton don't compare. Johnson was not a serious contender for the presidency against Kennedy in the way that Clinton is against Obama. The "hatred" between Kennedy and Johnson was ideological and political but not formed in battle, so to speak, as is the case with Obama and Clinton. Kennedy's major opponent was not Lyndon Johnson. It was Hubert Humphrey. And even then, one has to use "major opponent" loosely. Kennedy steamrolled everyone in the primaries. Kennedy racked up 85 percent of the vote in NH, 64 percent in IL, 92 percent in MA, 71 percent in PA, 81 percent in IN, 88 percent in NB, and 70 percent in MD. Another thing is that Humphrey wasn't even a consistent second place contender for the presidency. He ran second to Kennedy only in Wisconsin (Kennedy 56.5/Humphrey 43.5) and West Virginia (Kennedy 60.8/Humphrey 39.2). The only contests Humphrey won were DC and South Dakota where Kennedy, apparently, was not on the ballot. Johnson's biggest vote total in the 1960 primaries was 3.9 percent.

Humphrey's totals in the other primaries was usually in the low single digits. When Humphrey dropped out Lyndon Johnson was considered the only serious contender but again "serious" has to be used loosely. In the primaries, Johnson was a statistical nothing. The only reason that Humphrey and Johnson were favored is because, in spite of the primaries, the smoke-filled room was still the way things were done and party bosses really chose the nominee and that's where I see a comparison between the election 1960 and election 2008. The party bosses could not ignore Kennedy's impressive primary wins much as the superdelegates will not be able to ignore Obama's admittedly less impressive pledged delegate and popular vote lead.

I haven't checked the facts, but it sounds plausible.

Pic from this freaky conspiracy site (sorry). Backpost finished 2009-12-07.