Updated Labels: Shunned, Nut

Back at the beginning of the year, I worked on the epistemological task of updating my blog-labels. One change was to add titles to politicians, e.g. instead of plain old Bill Clinton, he became Citizen Bill Clinton. I explained the change thusly:

Herr is a title for evil politicians (and the appropriate gender specifics, e.g. Herr Cheney, Frau Coulter);

Citizen for good guys (for the most part; I'm being generous by including Krugman here);

Comrade for bad leftists (e.g. Ralph Nader).

Since that time, early January, I've added a few more categories:

1. "The Nut" = This applies to people I used to align with but who have since either gone completely crazy or whose previously existing crazy has shown to be no longer useful. This applies to my bygone favorite politician Joseph Lieberman who has transformed himself into a monster, and Martin Peretz (editor of The New Republic) who has always been crazy but while it was useful during the Bush Years and the two Israeli Wars of 2006-2008, his anti-anti-Zionism has gotten too shrill and unhinged to be useful.
   
   
2. "The Shunned" = This applies to people/politicians who's early promise was destroyed by subsequent immorality and/or incompetence. This applies to John Edwards and Ehud Olmert. Edwards had such promise but it turned out that his tacky lack of judgement was deeper than I could have imagined. And Olmert, oy, whose talent as a consummate political strategist and in-fighter was unbalanced by his utter inability to lead a nation, resulting in thousands of innocent deaths.
   
   
3. Miscellaneous additional titles = Extremely crazy or evil right-wingers get added fascist titles, e.g. "Mayorissimo Herr Rudolf Giuliani" or adding a "von" to the middle of the name "Herr Ronald von Reagan"
   
   
4. Borderline cases = Despite my grand disappointment with Paul Krugman, I've given him a "Citizen" title; Hillary Clinton, once she joined the Obama admininstration earned her a "Citizen" title as well. But these can be lost.

For the special cases of Hillary and Lieberman, I will explain more of my thinking anon.

Stick a Fork Into Edwards

You know I'm an Edwards supporter. Not a fervent one, but he's still my favored candidate: he's the pre-1968 Democrat that we've needed for a while. But we've got two big enemies to defeat: first Hillary and second the GOP. Edwards has been building up a support/election team in Iowa since December 2004. And yeah, he came in second, and 30% is very respectable. But, Obama has exploded. Edwards is an unnecessary spoiler, and I want to win.

He won't leave the race, as I said last night, until either: (1) every dollar is spent, (2) his wife dies, or (3) Obama offers him a good job, (4) all of the above. But I don't want his presence to confuse the anti-Hillary voters. Edwards had his chance to win in a low-speed state that he's spent a lot of time in... it's time to pack it in.

Mind you, Obama is - of all the major candidates - the worst for Israel. But, even then, he can't be all that bad. While he talks up the internationalism rhetoric, the Clinton posture and the Bush posture hasn't been all that great either. Ironically, what's best for Israel comes from when Israel itself has a good leader. Clintons failures came from Rabin, Peres, Barak. Bush's failures from Olmert (and his, if you want to call it, successes from Sharon). Carter's success came from the best prime minister in Israel's history, the heilige Begin.

The next US president's success in Israel will come from the next prime minister (and we can only hope it's not Barak or Bibi).

Last Year at This Time

As I wrote below about being on vacation, I'm currently at my parents' home in Maryland. We come here for vacation so my mom can take care of our kids while my wife and I try to relax. My mom is the only one who has the same energy level as my eldest, so it's a good match.

This year has a totally different feel from 2006. Besides the obvious facet of our having a whole 'nother child along (which makes the adult to kid ratio inadequate for a full bore relaxation), I see from this computer (and from the blog template) what I was fixated on 12 months ago: 1. the second Lebanon war, 2. the Connecticut primary battle.

I would not have predicted 12 months ago that the Lebanon war would go so badly or that once it had been botched that Olmert would still be in power. Nor would I have predicted that after his November win Lieberman would become a hackneyed quasi-Republican stooge. A few comments:

Olmert

Israel - because it's constantly hanging on the lip of doom - is supposed to take leadership quality much more seriously than we do here. Possibly that holds only for their military and not politicians (and that's possibly the opposite structure in America). The US military could be staffed by high level morons and we regular citizens wouldn't even know until the Russkis/Red Chinese/Cubans have conquered the Midwest. The military just has very little to do with everyday life and the protective redundancy built into our 'Homeland Security' means that we just don't pay attention. But our politicians are constantly in our eyesight - probably because we have so many of them and because we insist on constant elections.

Israel seems the opposite. Their military is integral to the citizenry. Everyone serves (except the ultra-orthodox and anti-Israel Arabs... an interesting set of bedfellows). The military is everywhere and is constantly being tested for its efficiency. If something is broke in the military it will swiftly be fixed because the stakes are so high, the scrutiny is so high, and the participation is so high.

The Israeli political class, however, appears to be held in purposeful contempt. Government doesn't really work in Israel; it's a parliamentary system that has infrequent elections and no direct representation. Taxes are very high but to get anything done you need to use corruption - bribery or nepotism. As such, the politicians in Israel seem to be universally corrupt, contemptuous, and negligible.

Cases in point: (1) Olmert botched a war and is still in power, (2) Chaim Ramon sexually assaulted a soldier and is now deputy prime minister, (3) Peres, second in command during the War is now president.

However, the only politician that may be held to the same high standard as the military is the Defense Secretary. Cases in point: (1) Halutz, army head during Lebanon, is gone; (2) Amir Peretz, defense secretary, is gone; (3) Ehud Barak, despite being a disgraced failure of a PM, is still a talented general and so he was promoted to head of Labor and made Defense Secretary.

Under this analysis, it all makes sense. Olmert is still PM because Israelis don't consider it an all that important job; theoretically if Halutz hadn't resigned, then he would have been forced to.

The other component of Olmert's eerie longevity is that he's probably a stupendous political infighter. How else to explain how he managed to be number 2 in Kadima, the next prime minister after Sharon's incapacitation, still PM after a fiasco *plus* getting his favored candidates as President (Peres, who beat both Labor and Likud candidates and who had never before won an election), head of Labor (Barak, as opposed to Ayalon who pledged to bring Olmert down), and keep convicted pervert Ramon in government (*and* promote him). These are extraordinary political accomplishments and make me frightened of Olmert’s abilities.

Yet, despite all that I took down a picture of me and Olmert from my office wall… maybe I’ll put it back up if he manages to liberate Shalit, Regev and Goldvasser.

Lieberman

This is a more mundane story. Joe started to go wacky before Lamont threatened him. I believe the loss of his mother – who I’ve been told acted as his moral and political gyroscope – made Lieberman do all these politically stupid things. I also think that had the Democrats not tried to throw Joe under a bus last August, he’d be less likely now to betray his party principals. It is said that people suffer a loss of loyalty when their employer unsuccessfully tries to fire them. So too with Joe.

It’s still sad to see a man of integrity defend this criminal presidency. Isn’t it ironic that the two men people considered party mavericks - McCain and Lieberman – have destroyed their public integrity by their staunch support of a detested president and a bald fiasco of a war?

If I figure out how that happened, I will learn a great secret of life.

{2009 Update: cool Lebanon map from Debka. Lieberman doggie pic from here.}

Letter to the TPM

[Sent today]

Dear Dr. Josh,

Why is the whole Alcee Hastings thing even happening? Even if the GOP is denying it, the election was about corruption. Even Iraq was about corruption (or at least high level lies about human lives). Didn't Pelosi get that memo? Your whole muckraking enterprise was based on the fact that neither Congress nor the Press was providing oversight for the immense malfeasance being done in our name, with our lives and our money.

So how in God's name did Pelosi support someone implicated with ABSCAM? And ultimately who cares whether Alcee was unfairly prosecuted and impeached by congress - he was IMPEACHED. C'mon! If they want to throw Alcee a bone then re-try him, as colleagues, to get the impeachment reversed. We won the election but Pelosi seems determined to undermine that with these absurd decisions.

Pelosi reminds me of Ehud Olmert - both are superb legislative survivors. Pelosi gets credit for winning back the house (I can't imagine Gephardt doing as well as she did). Olmert seems to have nine lives in the Knesset. Great talents. But neither are good governors .

Who has influence over her? Who can we call to stop this crazy thing?

Happy Thanksgiving,
[The Styx]

Juan Cole Sees Some Light

Juan Cole, Professor of Middle East Stuff at the University of Michigan is a well respected member of the left-wing blogosphere and a commonly quoted expert on the Middle East. He also hates Israel. He may or may not hate Jews, I'm sure some of his best friends are Hebrews, but Juanito sure does hate him some Israel.

Just be warned, whenever you see the man quoted in a blog or Mainstream Media, you should know they are employing Edward Said's replacement.

On his website [called Informed Comment, meant to be as truthful as Fox's 'fair and balanced' no doubt] you can read some wonderfully twisted reportage and commentage about the nasty Israelites.

However, as an example of just how bad Hezbollah is, even Juan Cole thinks they have gone too far.

This is important to know because we pro-Israel people don't make a distinction between the PLO, Hamas, or Hezbollah. They are all terrorists; they all want to kill Jews, they will not stop until we're dead. I guess they *do* wear different uniforms and may even kill each other a few times just to keep in practice, but, c'mon, what's the difference?

Anyway, if Juan Cole thinks Hezbollah is off the chain, then I we need to figure out what exactly makes the Hezzies different from the PLO and, uh, explain that to people? Ah, forget it, they'll never follow simple arithmetic.

Anyway, this is what Cole has on his site:

[Ar.] Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah (Hezbollah), gave a televised speech on Sunday explaining his own strategy. He said in an eerily calm and calculating voice that he had aimed his rockets only at military targets, not at Israeli settlements 'in Occupied northern Palestine' (i.e. Israel). In contrast, he said, the Israeli military had from the beginning targeted civilians. (In fact, Nasrallah's katyushas are impossible to aim with any precision and in loosing them on Israel, he inevitably killed and wounded civilians; likewise in Haifa. His opening statement is a self-serving lie.)

He complained at length about Israeli airstrikes against civilian targets. He linked hitting the Israeli warship to Israel's airstrikes on Baalbak [where they hit a Husayniyah or Shiite mourning center].

He added, "We arose to strike at the city of Haifa, and we know the importance and grave significance of this city. Had we targeted with our missiles the chemical and petrochemical factories, an enormous catastrophe would have ensued for the inhabitants of that area. But we deliberately avoided those factories, which were in the sites of our missiles, since we were eager not to push things toward the unknown and were eager that this weapon be a weapon not of revenge but of defense . . . a weapon that would return the crazies in the Olmert government to a modicum of reason and save them from a grandiosity complex, or, I might say, the stupidity whereby they distinguish themselves . . . But because we set those targets aside this time does not mean that we we always adopt this position. At any point where we consider that we are involved in defending our nation and our people and our families, we will resort to all means we can in pursuit of that defense . . . " (-Cole translation)

He also denied that there were any Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon or that he had had Iranian help. He said people were always putting down the Arabs and saying they could not accomplish anything, but, he said, look at the Israeli warship in flames. That was an Arab accomplishment.

Uh, wouldn't an Arab accomplishment be more like, oh, inventing something or building up something nice? Destroying things and killing people is not an accomplishment.

I watched in horror as this maniacal speech unfolded in which Nasrallah actually threatened the Israelis with releasing chemical gas from local factories on civilians in Haifa. Despite fighting them for all those years, he clearly does not understand the Israelis' psyche or the trauma of the Holocaust. A threat like that. The Israelis don't like being caught in a quagmire any more than the next person, which is why Nasrallah could get them to leave southern Lebanon. But his victory appears to have given him megalomania, and he has now gone too far.

Hizbullah's attacks on Israeli civilians are war crimes. The killing of the civilians in Haifa at the train station was a war crime. And threatening to release chemicals from factories on civilian populations is probably a war crime in itself, much less the doing of it.

Obviously, I do not accept that Hizbullah's actions justify the wholesale indiscriminate destruction and slaughter in which the Israelis have been engaged against the Lebanese in general. But they do have every right to defend themselves against Nasrallah and his mad bombers.

If we can only get Cole to understand that Lebanon, ya know, supports Hezbollah... actually, that's too strong... howzibout: Lebanon effectively is Hezbollah... yeah ... maybe he'll see that 1+1 = 2?

Nah.

{2009 Update: pic from campus-watch.}