Alert! Alert! Rogue Yemeni Email Shuts Down US State Dept!

Don't mean to minimize the dangers of Islamic terrorism or anything, but the latest round of travel warnings and temporary embassy closings has an especially bogus "Shark Week"-level hype to them:

The United States will temporarily shut down its embassies and consulates around the world Sunday -- including those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt -- as a precautionary measure over terror-related concerns, State Department officials said. 

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf did not say how long the international installations would stay closed -- only that the decision was taken “out of an abundance of caution and care for our employees and others who may be visiting.” Officials would not describe the nature of the threat.  

Sunday is a normal workday in many Arab and Middle Eastern countries, meaning that is where the closures will have an impact. Embassies in Europe and Latin America would be shuttered that day anyway. 

“We have instructed all U.S. embassies and consulates that would have normally been open on Sunday to suspend operations, specifically on August 4,” a senior State Department official said Thursday night. “It is possible we may have additional days of closing as well.”

Hey, maybe there's really a bunch of terrorists massing somewhere, ready for Benghazi II, but I just don't believe it. And, why the heck are we closing embassies, even for a second? If you don't want a repeat of the attack on the Libyan consulate (which was actually a "mission," or some such), then maybe post some Marines with actual weapons containing actual bullets and see how far your typical terrorist gets. But, that's not how things work under the Obama Doctrine, where concepts like "Defending Yourself" and "Refusing To Knuckle Under To Vague Threats" are now verboten for being the tools of imperialist running dogs. Anyway, one of Obama's two big talking points last year was that "Osama was dead and al-Qaeda on the run," so what's the problem?

I will have no problem repudiating the above should there be a massive, fatal terrorist attack sometime in the next couple weeks, but how likely is that to happen? Not very. But, this grand display of weakness and duck & covering will encourage the next "out of nowhere" attack. 

The Real Benghazi Scandal

With Day 1 of the Benghazi hearings in the can, it's hard to know where to begin: altered talking points, murdered ambassadors, State Dept. review boards, YouTube videos, orders to "stand-down," etc. If there doesn't seem to be an immediate political pay-off it's because there's been so much information coming so quickly, it's hard to absorb. Still, I think there's one inescapable conclusion that  we can already draw, and it's the real Benghazi scandal:

We have a chickensh*t president and (had) a chickensh*t Secretary of State who, God help us, aspires to be president herself.

I say this with all due respect*, of course.

Obama and Hillary actively worked to depose Hosni Mubarak and Col. Qaddafi under the guise of an alleged democratic revolution sweeping the entire Middle East when in fact the "democrats" were just Islamists with Twitter accounts. The deposing of Qaddafi was supposed to be the exemplar of the sort of "lead from behind" way of war that would accomplish everything "dumb" George Bush tried to do in Iraq, but at the fraction of the cost in blood and treasure. Having overthrown the government and unleashed a typical jihadi maelstrom, Obama and Hillary deposited Amb. Stevens and three dozen diplomats and intelligence types into a hellhole and then left them for dead once the inevitable happened and the Muslims began seeking out Americans to kill.

Then they went out and blamed a video, supposedly made in America, for the violence. In other words, our American president tried to blame us and our First Amendment right to free expression for a coordinated attack by our deadliest enemies. He even went to the UN and said this. If there is another American president who would have even contemplated doing such a thing, let alone done it, I'd like to know his name.

Then, during the few precious minutes when Mitt Romney challenged Obama on his misfeasance and non-feasance, the president smugly demanded that we "look at the transcript," where you could indeed find a single generic sentence about "terror" from the one public statement he gave about Benghazi - and that settled that! As if the whole controversy was over a prepared statement in the Rose Garden and not the cold-blooded abandonment of our diplomats.

By any definition you choose, that is chickensh*t behavior.

It's probably true that there wasn't much you could do from DC to save the 4 men who died, but so what? They made no effort to save them, and actively stopped the efforts of the few people who tried to take the initiative and rescue the embattled mission. And, forget the 4 dead, what about the three dozen survivors, some of them grievously wounded, who were also abandoned to their fates by the progressive Jesus who went to sleep while his diplomats fought furiously for their lives? The Obama-ites left them to die. Say what you will about George Bush or Ronald Reagan, but they wouldn't have let this play out that way.

The million dollar question is whether this will discredit Obama and Hillary in the eyes of the public. Well, I don't know. The whole point of covering up Benghazi was to preserve the story line that al-Qaeda was dead and the Arab Spring was going great. The depressing lesson from the 2012 election is that there are tens of millions of Americans who are happy to look the other way so long as they keep getting their government money, whether for food stamps, "free" health care, condoms, abortions, Obama-phones, layabout jobs in the bureaucracy or whatever. Amb. Stevens may have died, but at least the Tsarnaev family still had their subsidized housing! (and there's a sort of grim irony in the younger Tsarnaev brother getting his US citizenship on the same day as the Benghazi attack, isn't there?)

This is the president we've got now. That's the real scandal.

*i.e. none

Repeated As Farce: Obama Echoes Carter In His Critique Of Romney's Foreign Policy Skills

A great history lesson from the Examiner which reminds us of the last Democrat president embroiled in a Middle East crisis who dared to chortle over his GOP rival's approach to diplomacy:

Carter criticized Reagan’s views on foreign policy during his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1980, slamming Reagan for living in a “fantasy world” and noting his inability to understand the “complex global changes” in foreign policy. 

“It’s a make believe world. A world of good guys and bad guys, where some politicians shoot first and ask questions later,” Carter said, “No hard choices. No sacrifice. No tough decisions. It sounds too good to be true – and it is. The path of fantasy leads to irresponsibility. The path of reality leads to hope and peace.” 

After Reagan’s nomination in July 1980, Carter criticized Republicans calling it “a party with a narrow vision, a party that is afraid of the future, a party whose leaders are inclined to shoot from the hip, a party that has never been willing to put its investment in human beings who are below them in economic and social status.” 

As Philip Klein noted on Twitter, the Carter campaign ran fearful “man on the street” ads during the campaign, fretting that Reagan would be a president who would “shoot from the hip.”

You really can't make this stuff up. The only people in US politics who seem to remember the lessons of the Carter years are conservatives!

The idea that Mitt Romney committed some kind of gaffe by talking tough against the Middle East mob is a striped-pantsed fantasy that can only work inside the Beltway. Americans have been watching Muslim a**holes attacking our embassies for decades. We "get" the idea that we can't treat every burned American flag as a casus belli. But that doesn't mean we have to like the peoples of the non-Israeli Middle East, and frankly there is little reason to. And, that also doesn't mean we have to lie back and enjoy the trashing of our emabssies and the murder of our ambassadors. Do we still need to be sending $1.5 billion to the Muslim Brotherhood's Egypt? Do we need to be hosting their diplomats? Best of all (and something we could implement in short order), do we need to be issuing so many visas to these folks?

A war-weary America will not react well to Republican sabre rattling, but will react well to a show of resolve. That's the real lesson of the Carter years.

Foreign Correspondent: Guess Who Else Made A Ton Of $$ Overseas?

The Obama campaign's attacks on Mitt Romney's (hissss) "foreign" bank accounts has inflicted the inevitable collateral damage. Turns out, there's a highly-placed campaign operative who made significant income from foreign sources over the last three years:

I find it strange that the Obama campaign would be making so much of Romney’s income from foreign sources when Obama’s foreign source income appears to be a much bigger percentage of his income over the last few years. Of course, one can’t tell for sure because Mitt Romney has not released his 2009 tax return. 

Yet in the three tax years in which Barack Obama has been President (2009, 2010, and 2011), fully 30.1% of the Obamas’ gross income has come from foreign sources: ($2,711,340 out of a 3-year total gross income of $8,993,449).  In 2009, 26.5% of the Obamas’ gross income came from foreign sources. In 2010 it was a whopping 41.4%, and in 2010 it was 30.2%. 

The salary that we taxpayers pay him as President (just under $1.2 million over the 3 years) accounted for less than 13% of the Obamas’ income, a share dwarfed by their 30% from foreign sources over the same period. 

From 2009 through 2011, the Obamas paid $87,429 in foreign taxes, which they applied toward a credit to reduce their U.S. tax bill.  The amounts I examined are reported on Form 1116, of which there are two filed along with their 1040 when they had both general and passive foreign income. 

Their returns do not disclose which foreign countries are responsible for paying the Obamas the $2.7 million in foreign source income, but the overwhelming bulk of it must come from payments resulting directly or indirectly from book sales.  

Nonetheless, the Obamas did report a total of $3,611 in foreign passive income in 2009 and 2010, a type of income that most often results from investments in foreign countries.  Like some of the foreign investments for which Romney has been pilloried, this Obama passive foreign income might result from the foreign investments of U.S. financial entities in which the Obamas invested.

According to Lindgren, the Obamas don't make clear the source of all of this (hissss) foreign money, but reasonably assumes that it comes from sales of the Obamas' books. Good catch by Lindgren, who blogs over at the Volokh Conspiracy. And another sh*t job by the Romney camp, which is haughtily demanding non-forthcoming apologies, rather than looking to turn this thing around on Obama.  

Ghost Riders in the Media Sky

I'm not going to criticize the Obama Administration's hands-off approach to the nascent Egyptian Revolution. As much as we'd like to believe we can shape events on the streets of Cairo from the desks of Washington DC, the fact is that we can't. But I will link to this Politico piece that debunks Obama's attempt to somehow claim credit for "privately" (oh, if only you had been there!) pushing Mubarak to "reform" his government. Hey, I thought it was jobs, jobs, jobs over there at the White House:

"The way [Obama has] confronted it, is he went to Cairo and talked about the need, the universal human rights of people. He’s on several occasions directly confronted Pres. Mubarak on it. And pushed him on the need for political reform in his country," Axelrod told ABC's Jake Tapper Friday, on the adviser's last day of work at the White House.

"To get ahead of this?" Tapper asked.

"Exactly. To get ahead of this. This is a project he’s been working on for two years and today the president is working hard to encourage restraint and a cessation of violence against the people of Egypt," said Axelrod.

"Nice myth," said one human rights advocate I asked about Axelrod's description.

There are a couple of problems with Axelrod's account. First, there's little public evidence that Obama "confronted" Mubarak on these issues. White House officials have said the subjects were raised in meetings between the men, but when the two met publicly there was little indication that Obama was pressuring Mubarak on the issue.

During the 25-minute press availability during the pair's Oval Office meeting in August 2009, Obama didn't mention the issue. Mubarak was the one who brought it up, telling the press how "friendly" their exchange on the subject was and suggesting a rather leisurely timeline to make changes.

"We discussed the issue of reform inside Egypt. And I told to President Obama very frankly and very friendly that I have entered into the elections based on a platform that included reforms, and therefore we have started to implement some of it and we still have two more years to implement it," Mubarak said. "Our relations between us and the United States are very good relations and strategic relations. And despite some of the hoops that we had with previous administrations, this did not change the nature of our bilateral relations."

The other sleight-of-hand in Axelrod's comment is his suggestion that Obama's visit to Cairo in June 2009 was intended or perceived as speaking hard truths to Mubarak. To the contrary, many in the region, in other Muslim countries, and the U.S. ( see here and here), saw the choice of Egypt for Obama's first speech to the Muslim world as a huge laurel for Mubarak, not an albatross. Obama's speech made no direct reference to political reform or human rights issues in Egypt, save for a passing reference to Christian Copts there. There were alsoreports that the U.S. eased up on democracy promotion there.

I can understand the impulse to try to catch a little "democracy" fire - we all want to be on the side of the vanguard of "change," right? - but the White House spin here was pretty pitiful. Even if Mubarak was some sort of tyrannical El Supremo, and he's not at least not compared to many of his neighbors, our Smart Power set doesn't seem to realize that when the Man On the Cairo Street starts demanding "reform" or "justice," it is not of the sort that would be recognizable to American progressives who are temperamentally sympathetic to those buzzwords.

What's happening is Egypt is serious business. Maybe the protesters in the streets are on the side of the angels, and just want economic reforms (query whether progressive sophisticates realize Egypt has the sort of neo-socialist economy that Obama has been trying to impose over here) and free elections. But when there is chaos in the streets, history has taught that fortune favors those who are the best positioned and best organized to seize power. That ability lies with the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been waiting for this moment literally for decades. If Obama wants further opportunity to lecture privately an Egyptian president over human rights, then setting up a situation where the incumbent Mubarak is deposed or destabilized in favor of the Brotherhood will give you plenty of opportunities to do so.

Trying to score political points over some unheard attempt to "ride" Hosni Mubarak over human rights would be contemptible, if it were not so laughable.

Ballin' The Jackal: Anti-American Tunes At White House State Dinner?

Today's too-good-to-check story comes courtesy of the Epoch Times, which claims that Chinese classical music export Lang Lang played a scorchingly anti-American Chi-com agitprop "classic" from the Korean War era. Supposedly, a billion Chinese are right now chuckling in their 100-square foot hovels over the spectacle of tuxedoed Americans applauding politely while they are called jackals in song.

Lang Lang the pianist says he chose it. Chairman Hu Jintao recognized it as soon as he heard it. Patriotic Chinese Internet users were delighted as soon as they saw the videos online. Early morning TV viewers in China knew it would be played an hour or two beforehand. At the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, Lang Lang began tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie “Battle on Shangganling Mountain.”

The film depicts a group of “People’s Volunteer Army” soldiers who are first hemmed in at Shanganling (or Triangle Hill) and then, when reinforcements arrive, take up their rifles and counterattack the U.S. military “jackals.”

The movie and the tune are widely known among Chinese, and the song has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades. CCP propaganda has always referred to the Korean War as the “movement to resist America and help [North] Korea.” The message of the propaganda is that the United States is an enemy—in fighting in the Korean War the United States’ real goal was said to be to invade and conquer China. The victory at Triangle Hill was promoted as a victory over imperialists.

The song Lang Lang played describes how beautiful China is and then near the end has this verse, “When friends are here, there is fine wine /But if the jackal comes /What greets it is the hunting rifle.” The “jackal” in the song is the United States.

Well, that may be. It's certainly easy to believe the Obama State Department would be this clueless. Plus, can you really expect any American - even a Sino-studies PhD - to be intimately familiar with Maoist propaganda songs from the Fifties?

On the other hand, there's the matter of the sourcing. The Epoch Times may be familiar to urban Americans, as ET's yellow news boxes and free papers are a regular feature of the downtown scene (it is in San Francisco, anyway). But, even without reading it, you can kind of tell it's attached to a religious group. It just has a Final Call feel to it, if you know what I mean. And, as it turns out, ET is the news arm for the Falun Gong in exile. So, you know, there's an agenda you have to account for.

That doesn't mean the agenda makes the story untrue, of course. ET makes a plausible claim that, while Lang Lang didn't make a big deal of it at the time, he did mention taking pride in playing the piece in a blog posting (don't know if it was a Chinese language blog). ET also says that TV viewers in China were aware that the song would be played, and further that the mainland Chinese saw the performance as a moment of cultural triumph over the capitalists. Could be. I would certainly credit ET with having better knowledge about what's going on in China than the (non-Chinese speaking) elites who run America's media companies and foreign policy apparatus.

Right now, ET is the only news organization telling this story, but it's been linked (and discussed) at Instapundit, Powerline, Althouse and Breitbart, which means it has already penetrated the right-wing blogosphere pretty thoroughly. That means the MSM, the White House and the Chinese will be quite happy to ignore this little dust-up. If Rush or Fox News pick up on this, however, look for an "explanation" on or about Wednesday afternoon.

The New Breed: Julian Assange's Tea Partying Side

The on-going Julian Asssssange case continues to surprise. A sharp-eyed RS McCain found this surprising sound bite from the Hacker Conscience of the World's interview with Time:

The United States has some immutable traditions, which, to be fair, are based on the French Revolution and the European Enlightenment. The United States' Founding Fathers took those further, and the federalism of the United States also, of relatively powerful states trying to constrain federal government from becoming too centralized. Also added some important democratic controls and understandings. So there is a lot of good that has historically come from the United States.

But after World War II, during World War II, the federal government of the United States started sucking the resources to the center, and the power of states started to diminish. Interestingly, the First Amendment started overriding states' laws around that time, which I see as a function of increasing central power in the United States. I think the problems with the United States as a foreign power stem from, simply, its economic success, whereby it's, historically at least, a very rich country with a number of people and the desire left over as a result of

Let me explain this a bit better. The U.S. saw the French Revolution and it also saw the behavior of the U.K. and the other kings and dictatorships, so it intentionally produced a very weak President. The President was, however, given a lot of power for external relations, so as time has gone by, the presidency has managed to exercise its power through its foreign affairs function.

As McCain jokingly wonders, has Asssssange been reading Lew Rockwell or watching Glenn Beck? Or, volunteering for Ron Paul?

More likely he has been incubating in the works of Chalmers Johnson and Andrew Bacevich, the leading proponents of the "American Empire" theory of history. Johnson is a familiar figure among the nose-ringed poli-sci crowd on the Left, often sharing the stage with Noam Chomsky and other worthies. But, Bacevich is more unusual: a pro-military college professor best known for an outraged anti-Iraq War essay he wrote after his son was killed in action there. His books are worth reading if you are a conservative, even if he reaches shocking conclusions along the way, such as his claim that Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech was actually a misunderstood bit of visionary statecraft. Anyway, Bacevich is a big proponent of the "empire of military bases" critique of the US, but without the off-putting anti-American rhetoric that usually accompanies such analyses.

What people like him - and Asssssange - conveniently elide over is that the "empire of bases" was built with the goal of communist containment. You can argue whether these bases are necessary 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but I don't think there's much of a argument as to their historic necessity, worries about the "military-industrial complex" notwithstanding.

BTW, McCain came across the above soundbite in a post by Bill Weinberg, who says "enough with the Julian Assange worship" and further declares that Assange's vision of constitutional history has a distinctly "teabagger" flavor and is racist to boot. Apparently, Weinberg actively supports a strong central government lording over the US, rather than a federal government with limited powers. That's nice to know, but I wish his fellow travelers on the left could be equally forthright as to their vision of DC's role in our lives.

The Idiot's Progress: How Has Wiki-leaks Damaged US Interests?

I've joined with everyone else in railing against Julian Asssssange and Wiki-leaks. Michael Ledeen writes that many of the revelations from the State Dept. cables were actually "good" leaks, in that the true state of affairs in the world have been laid out in a way that benefits realists and to the detriment of diplomats and internationalists. Could it be that Asssssange is the rare useful idiot who is actually useful?

Even though some of the reported remarks of foreign leaders were undoubtedly given to Americans in order to deceive us or manipulate us, still and all I find the cables I’ve read so far to be very helpful to anyone trying to understand the world.

It will no doubt annoy the Israel haters no end to discover that Arab leaders seem to be even more concerned about Iran than the crowd in Jerusalem, for example. And it’s very helpful for everyone to see that the “Axis of Evil” was real–the strategic cooperation on missiles and nukes between Iran and North Korea (with Chinese complicity) was intense.

No surprise that the cables have been denounced as “mischief” by Ahmadinejad, since they document the fraudulent electoral “results” that gave him a second term, and present the ghastly details of Iran’s use of the Muslim version of the Red Cross for espionage and murder in Iraq. Indeed, if I wanted to invent evidence to document the case against Iran that I have been making for twenty years or more, I could not have done better than the State Department cables just released.

Two thoughts:

First, it would save the world a lot of time and trouble if most of this stuff were published, rather than classified.

Second, the leakers should be punished violently. It has to be possible for our leaders to talk privately, both among themselves and with foreigners. If it’s all going to be leaked, candor will vanish and we will be locked into a wilderness of mirrors.

As Ledeen says, some of the Wiki-leaks info was useful information...but the leakers should still be "violently punished." I think that's a good balance. The revelations Ledeen cites above are not "new" - they are the sort of things widely discussed in the blogosphere and even in the foreign press. But, they are not the sort of things discussed much either by our government or by our MSM, both of whom seem to live in fear of an American public roused into action by the thought of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons via North Korea and China, among other things.

Asssssange is wrong for taking upon himself the task of deciding what secrets America should have. But America is wrong for tolerating some of the secrets it keeps from itself.

Before the Flood

Via Naked Capitalism, here's an entertaining article from Der Spiegel about the "dramatic" breakdown in talks at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen. Long story short: the Europeans had put together a "green" treaty that they thought would Save The Earth, but the Chinese and Indians would not go along with it because it would involve curtailing their economic growth just when it was getting started (with the Euro-weenies still living well off of 200 years worth of development). The impasse was lifted by Barack Obama who suddenly walked out of the meeting, joined an impromptu caucus of the BRIC countries, and drafted a meaningless agreement that would do nothing for the climate (that is if humans could negotiate the problems of the planet away), leaving the Euros to huff importantly about how they were only trying to save humanity. Some of this stuff is classic: How China and India Sabotaged the UN Climate Summit

There were still two important placeholders, X and Y, in the draft agreement. They marked the spots where the percentage targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, for the industrialized nations and emerging countries respectively, were to be entered. "We cannot go over and say nice things but x and y wait please one year or so," Merkel said. The German chancellor was determined to secure a commitment from China and India to participate in the climate protection efforts.

But China and India were unwilling to make that commitment. Behind the backs of the Europeans, they had apparently reached their own agreement with Brazil and South Africa. "We have all along been saying 'Don't prejudge options!,'" said a representative of the Indian delegation*, prompting Merkel to burst out: "Then you don't want legally binding!"

This, in turn, prompted the Indian negotiator to say angrily: "Why do you prejudge options? All along you have said don't prejudge options and now you are prejudging options. This is not fair!" Chinese negotiator He Yafei stood by this remark.

British Prime Minister Brown, speaking in a sonorous voice, tried to mediate. "I think it's important to recognize what we are trying to do here," he said. "We are trying to cut emissions by 2020 and by 2050. That is the only way we can justify being here. It is the only way we can justify the public money that is being spent to do so. It is the only way we can justify the search for a treaty."

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg pointed out that it was the Indians who had proposed the inclusion of concrete emissions reductions for the industrialized nations in the treaty.

But India had made an about-face within hours and was no longer interested in his own proposal. An unidentified member of the group was outraged, saying: "I am surprised that our Indian friend would say that an amendment by the Indian environmental minister this morning is no longer there. This is a breach of process."

Merkel took one last stab. The reduction of greenhouse gases by 50 percent, that is, limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, was a reference to what is written in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. Then she directed a dramatic appeal at the countries seeking to block the treaty: "Let us suppose 100 percent reduction, that is, no CO2 in the developed countries anymore. Even then, with the (target of) two degrees, you have to reduce carbon emissions in the developing countries. That is the truth."

Of course, Chinese negotiator He Yafei knew perfectly well that Merkel was right, which was precisely why he could not possibly agree with her proposal. It would have meant that China was required to check its economic development. Double-digit growth figures would no longer be an option for the Asian giant.

The Chinese diplomat refused to give in to the Europeans' demands, saying: "Thank you for all these suggestions. We have said very clearly that we must not accept the 50 percent reductions. We cannot accept it."

This was the point where Sarkozy, who had had enough, accused the Chinese of hypocrisy. As one of the attendees recalls: "There was a sense that we had reached a logjam, an abyss."

What a bunch of loons. These are the 21st century's equivalents to the Reagans, Thatchers, Kohls, Mitterands, Ghandis, and Dengs of my youth. Imagine that, while the financial crisis was still at a low boil, the leaders of the developed world were arguing over how much they should hobble their own economies for the sake of ephemeral problems with climate change.

I'm sure Obama would have loved to emerge from Copenhagen with a treaty ("Nice Weather For Our Time") to wave around, but give him credit for quickly reading the mood of the room, getting out of there, and getting in with the side with real economic power. The folks at Der Spiegel don't seem to agree, as this bit of editorializing makes clear:

Finally, the politician spoke up whose claim to being the most powerful man in the world would soon be based solely on his many nuclear weapons: US President Barack Obama. By that point, hardly anyone in the room dared to even bite into the soggy mozzarella sandwiches that were constantly being served.

You have to love the xenophobia on display here. Of course, America is again to blame for arrogantly agreeing to destroy the planet, but China and India are clearly the objects of a subdued racial antagonism for their role in derailing the Summit. What's next, a trade war over tariffs disguised as carbon credits?

The Pogram Program

Via Contentions, John Mearsheimer gave a speech at the Palestine Center in DC on his favorite topic: The Israel Lobby. His latest innovation: dividing American Jews into three groups according to their attitudes towards Israel's "apartheid" state.* The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews v New Afrikaners

First, there are the Righteous Jews, who are "liberal," profess to "love" Israel, but are not afraid to criticize her:

Righteous Jews have a powerful attachment to core liberal values. They believe that individual rights matter greatly and that they are universal, which means they apply equally to Jews and Palestinians. They could never support an apartheid Israel. They also understand that the Palestinians paid an enormous price to make it possible to create Israel in 1948. Moreover, they recognize the pain and suffering that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967. Finally, most righteous Jews believe that the Palestinians deserve a viable state of their own, just as the Jews deserve their own state. In essence, they believe that self-determination applies to Palestinians as well as Jews, and that the two-state solution is the best way to achieve that end. Some righteous Jews, however, favor a democratic bi-national state over the two-state solution.

Sounds like a great buncha guys. Mearsheimer helpfully identifies some of these "Righteous Jews:"

The list would include Noam Chomsky, Roger Cohen, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Tony Karon, Naomi Klein, MJ Rosenberg, Sara Roy, and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss fame, just to name a few. I would also include many of the individuals associated with J Street and everyone associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as distinguished international figures such as Judge Richard Goldstone. Furthermore, I would apply the label to the many American Jews who work for different human rights organizations, such as Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch.

FYI, I try to keep myself off of lists that include Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein.

Next, Mearsheimer defines "Afrikaner Jews." You might want to listen to some ominous music while reading this:

These are individuals who will back Israel no matter what it does, because they have blind loyalty to the Jewish state. This is not to say that the new Afrikaners think that apartheid is an attractive or desirable political system, because I am sure that many of them do not. Surely some of them favor a two-state solution and some of them probably have a serious commitment to liberal values. The key point, however, is that they have an even deeper commitment to supporting Israel unreservedly. The new Afrikaners will of course try to come up with clever arguments to convince themselves and others that Israel is really not an apartheid state, and that those who say it is are anti-Semites. We are all familiar with this strategy.

And, here's a list of "Afrikaners"

I would classify most of the individuals who head the Israel lobby's major organizations as new Afrikaners. That list would include Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Ronald Lauder of the World Jewish Congress, and Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, just to name some of the more prominent ones. I would also include businessmen like Sheldon Adelson, Lester Crown, and Mortimer Zuckerman as well as media personalities like Fred Hiatt and Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, and Martin Peretz of the New Republic. It would be easy to add more names to this list.

Yes, and I'm sure you'd love to be the one who gets to make that list. (the third group are what many would call the mushy middle: they like Israel fine, but wish they didn't have to see so many caterwauling Palestinians on TV and feel guilty because they seem so upset. No list, sadly).

Mearsheimer is dead serious about this, and so are a lot of other people on the Left. They really believe that Israelis are operating an apartheid state and that the suicide bombing Palestinians are uniquely deserving of world-wide sympathy. All of this for the people who cheered the 9/11 attacks...

*Mearsheimer is now forecasting a future in which Israel will rule over the West Bank and Gaza under a form of apartheid government that denies Palestinians any rights whatsoever. But, Mearsheimer believes apartheid-style government will not last and eventually a bi-racial democracy will evolve, which will be dominated by the more numerous Palestinians. I'd like to see the Palestinians evolve a democracy over themselves before I believe they will join in a democracy with the Israelis! Anyway, Mearsheimer admits that this would represent the end of Israel as a Jewish state, which is sporting of him, I guess.

Rebels With a Cause

I don't approve of the violent overthrow of government (especially when said overthrow benefits Russia at our expense), but I do think this picture of a group of Kyrgyz rebels sitting at the desk of the recently deposed president was wonderful:

I swear they look like they just won the company softball match, rather than the keys to the kingdom:

EUPHEMISM ALERT: the Wall Street Journal is describing the new Kyrgyz government as "self-installed." Wow, it sounds so pro-active!

Living In A Political World

You can always count on the Olympics to come around every four years. And, trailing in its wake, you can always count on smug media elitists to tell us all that we are all Very Bad People for celebrating American achievements at the Games. Susan Jacoby, who writes some sort of Atheism Column for the Washington Post (as God is my witness, I am not making this up), provides this year's model (h/t Newsbusters): Olympic Boosterism: When American Superiority Means Inferiority

If you would like a graphic (literal and figurative) demonstration of our nation's greatest failing, sit in front of your television set and watch NBC cover an international sports event, the Winter Olympics, as if only Americans were participating. Every time the Today show's Meredith Vieira stumbles over the name of the Russian figure skater Yevgeny Plushenko (it's pronounced exactly as it's spelled, Meredith, with the accent on the second syllables) and giggles to show that it's OK to be ignorant, I think about all of the announcers from Canada and Europe who pronounce everyone's name correctly. Their employers care about getting it right, and NBC doesn't. Not if the athlete isn't one of us, contributing to the mounting total of "American" medals announced breathlessly every day. Why, anyone would think that these medals were more important than the performance of American students on international comparison tests of achievement in school. In case you're interested, Finland was No. 1 and Canada No. 2 in the most recent international assessment of reading comprehension. The United States was No. 15. U.S.A., U.S.A....

Boy, for an atheist, this lady sure is judgmental, not to mention puritanical. No sports for you until your reading comprehension "beats" Finland's!

Jacoby's attempts at international sophistication are probably the funniest bits of her screed. She claims that foreign media outlets "pronounce everyone's name correctly." No they don't. If you watch TV in France, American names are rendered in an elaborate (and dashingly romantic) French accent. Go to Japan and American names receive the same treatment (in 7 years living in Japan, not one person pronounced my name correctly, although they were very nice about it). And so on. Also, I don't know what countries Jacoby has visited, but I can guarantee the citizens of those countries care about the performance of their teams first and foremost. Shocking, I know. I think I can already hear the guns of August.

Worse, according to Jacoby, we give athletes from other countries short shrift

This Olympic coverage matters because it offers a window into a deeply provincial, reflexively nationalistic mindset that hampers our understanding of the rest of the world and prevents any realistic assessment of American weaknesses and strengths in comparison to other countries. In a truly emblematic moment in the "We're No. 1" extravaganza, NBC showed a recap of the medals ceremony for theMen's Super-G, an Alpine skiing event. Americans Bode Miller and Andrew Weibrecht won silver and bronze, respectively, but the network simply blanked out the gold medal podium, which was occupied by Norwegian Aksel Svindal. Well, who cares about a Norwegian? He's just an athlete from one of those unhappy countries cursed by secularism and universal health care.

That is simply wrong. Svindal, for one, was the subject of a Sentimental Puff Piece (SPP), and NBC has been talking up his historic performance. And if there has been a men's alpine event that did not feature numerous shots of Svindal's emotional father (who bears an alarming resemblance to Psota's Norwegian grandfather), I'd like to know its name. Curling coverage has given short shrift to the US team because, frankly, they suck. Bobsledding, ski jumping, nordic combined, biathalon, even women's figure skating have been dominated by Dread Furriners, and NBC's coverage has reflected that.

Then, Jacoby gets around to what really gets her goat. Universal health care has not gotten enough attention in these Olympics:

A twin of this delusion about superior American morality is the conviction that we have nothing to learn from the way any other country does things. The dire warnings that "Obamacare" was going to turn the U.S. into Europe or Canada--as if the inferiority of European and Canadian medical care were self-evident--has been very much a part of the non-debate over health care this year. And here is why the NBC coverage means more than the jingoistic flag-waving that always surrounds international sporting competitions. This has been a lost opportunity for a little bit of education that could have been sandwiched in between the medal counts. Since the Olympics are being held in Canada, would this not have been a perfect opportunity to do a feature on the Canadian health care system to go along with the endless time-filling blurbs on what the American athletes are listening to on their iPods? There were certainly ample news pegs, since injured athletes were being carried off the slopes to Vancouver hospitals every day.

Moreover, the first Canadian ever to win an Olympic gold medal on his home soil, Alexandre Bilodeau, has a medical and human backstory that would have been made for TV--had he been an American.

Actually, that last bit is evidence that Jacoby has not watched one second of NBC's coverage. Bilodeau was the subject of another SPP, which went heavy on the sentiment regarding his brother, Frederic, who suffers from cerebral palsey. And NBC did broadcast Bilodeau's medal ceremony which included a rousing crowd sing-along of "Oh, Canada!" along with so much flag waving that you would have thought the massed Canadians were ready to march on Baghdad. There's an inconvenient truth for you: even Canadians like to indulge in "jingoistic flag waving" of the sort Jacoby disapproves.

Jacoby also manages to throw in Brit Hume, Tiger Woods, Justice Scalia, 9/11, and a lot more. Wake me up when there's some atheism in there.

Such is life under our "hip" progressive masters. We can't even enjoy something as simple as a downhill ski run without someone smugly lecturing us about reading comprehension and universal health care. A question for Jacoby: if we do as you wish and mix sports with discussions of public policy regarding health care (or whatever) isn't that the sort of rank "bread & circuses" propaganda that sophisticates like you are always so quick to deplore?

Cast No Shadow. pt 2

According to an off-hand comment in today's W$J, Hank Paulson's new book includes the revelation that Russia approached the Chinese in August 2008 with a plan to dump trillions of dollars worth of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac bonds. Shouldn't the SEC be looking into this? Russia Tried to Force a Bailout of Fannie & Freddie

Russia urged China to dump its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 in a bid to force a bailout of the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said.

Paulson learned of the "disruptive scheme" while attending the Beijing Summer Olympics, according to his memoir, "On The Brink."

The Russians made a "top-level approach" to the Chinese "that together they might sell big chunks of their GSE holdings to force the U.S. to use its emergency authorities to prop up these companies," Paulson said, referring to the acronym for government sponsored entities. The Chinese declined, he said.

Russia's five-day war with U.S. ally Georgia started on Aug. 8, the same day as the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Games.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told U.S. President George W. Bush during those ceremonies that "war has started," according to Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman.

"The report was deeply troubling — heavy selling could create a sudden loss of confidence in the GSEs and shake the capital markets," Paulson wrote. "I waited till I was back home and in a secure environment to inform the president."

Call me crazy, but isn't this the sort of story that's worth a little publicity? There was a UPI story, a story in the Denver Post, and a couple scattered blog posts. But, most of the public discussion has focused on what Paulson "thought" of Sarah Palin (whom he only talked to on the phone). The American public is often accused of being ignorant, but it's always mind blowing to consider the type of information that is often kept out of the public consciousness. In fact, Fannie and Freddie have consistently benefited from this sort of controlled release of information. I'm sure that has nothing to do with their fictional status as "private" companies and their very real status as a conduit for an off-the-books national housing policy by progressives in and out of government.

As might be expected, Zero Hedge provided the most comprehensive coverage and analysis: Russia Urged China To Dump Its Fannie/Freddie Holdings Before GSE Bailout

The implications of this revelation are troubling, as in a newly multi-polar world, in which China is now the second largest economy, and merely needs a block of one other major power, be it Russia or Japan, in order to precipitate a selloff in critical U.S. securities, be they MBS (not so much these days), or, more relevantly, Treasuries.

Curiously, the bailout of the GSE was based on the premise that placating China and other major US security holders (both in the public and private arena) is critical. It explains the lack of impairment of both the Sub debt in the GSEs as well the sub debt in all the bank holding companies. If indeed China had been considering selling its bonds, it means that it had likely approached the proper senior level officials with its concerns, and could have been a material influence in bailout policy in the days surrounding the Lehman collapse. Which makes an even bolder case for the observation that the U.S. is nothing more than a vassal state of its largest creditor: if China can dictate domestic policy, which these days typically amounts to yet another bailout decision, then why do Americans need to pretend their government is at all relevant any longer?

We keep hearing that America is "ungovernable," its politics gridlocked because of partisanship. But, the real problem is that we've spent ourselves into a hole with no way to get out on our own, and the rope held by the likes of Vladimir Putin. The public is in an uproar. There is a growing sense that untrammeled public spending has to come to an end; yet all the present leadership in DC wants to do is convene a blue-ribbon commission, instead of convening the "commission" - that would be Congress - we already have. For decades, Democrats have been nurturing and defending the New Deal/Great Society from all comers. It may yet be that their hand will be forced by the sort of hostile foreign elements that they believe they can engage diplomatically. We can only hope that, after the crash, we understand how we got there and how we can dig our way out.