Month: December 2009

Marc Lynch picks apart last week's Pew survey on foreign policy:

Only 16% of the public has a favorable view of Pakistan, our essential partner in the new AfPak strategy — barely more than have a favorable view of Iran (11%) — and unfavorable views of Pakistan have gone from 39% to 68% since last year.  Yikes.  And the partisan gap on Israel is interesting, if not new:  in the general public, 68% of Republicans and 43% of Democrats say that they sympathize with Israel more than with the Palestinians. Among [Council on Foreign Relations] experts, a solid 41% plurality say that they sympathize with both Israel and the Palestinians equally.

A reader writes:

Your reader is right:  Sometimes people-in-the-spotlight are able to bring attention to a misunderstood or relatively unknown issue, in a way that raises awareness and helps families who are struggling with such issue. Tipper Gore helped to diminish the stigma associated with mental illness by talking about the personal story of her mother, Michael J. Fox courageously shows the face of Parkinson's disease, as did Betty Ford with alcohol dependency, etc. So I'm sure that some people are helped by seeing Trig on stage "so openly, proudly and even normally apart of someone's life."

But outside of parading Trig around so "proudly," what has Palin done to advance the issue, or educate others on the issue, in the way Gore, Fox, Ford and others have done?

So far as I can tell, she's only given one speech on the issue, in October 2008, during the campaign. It was a pretty good speech. Palin advocated for extending the funding and scope of the federal program, IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), and utilizing the NIH to get parents better information on how to care for a special needs child from birth onwards.

Unfortunately, she hasn't followed through on those campaign promises, not as Governor, not as a political or celebrity figure who wields enormous influence. If I were a mother of a special needs child, I might find this frustrating—I would want Palin to use her stage to do more than simply illuminate Trig. Just sayin.

Electronically:

With this series, The Atlantic becomes the first magazine to deliver fiction exclusively to Kindle readers, and we hope you enjoy it. This month we're featuring stories by acclaimed authors Edna O'Brien and Christopher Buckley.

The Persian website Kalameh reports that Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi's wife, was stalked by a group of Basiji women and sprayed with pepper spray. Persian2English translates:

According to an eye witness, when Zahra Rahnavard asked them why she was being followed, the women claimed they intended to protect her. Zahra Rahnavard then replied, “You have been following me all day anywhere I went including my office.” According to the eyewitness, Rahnavard said, “I’m telling you that I am Green from head to toe and you are only here to prevent my presence.”

This conversation ultimately lead to a verbal discussion and Rahnavard was insulted by the leader of the women Basij who questioned Rahnavard on what her ideas were before and after the revolution.  Rahnavard then replied, “Are you interrogators or body guards as you claim?” The lady replied, “You are scared of us.”

Continued here.

(Photo: ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images, Hat tip: Enduring America)

Once again, the Israeli press is more candid and interesting than the neutered US MSM which fears being tarnished as anti-Semites if they dare question aspects of the current US-Israel relationship and how it impacts the US' broad global and regional interests. From Haaretz:

Every appointee to the American government must endure a thorough background check by the American Jewish community… The latest round of heated debate has been over the nomination of Hannah Rosenthal to head the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in the Obama administration. Rosenthal, who is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, served as a Health Department regional director under the Clinton administration, and held positions in different left-leaning Jewish organizations.

Between 2000 and 2005, Rosenthal was the head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs; she was also the executive director of the Chicago Foundation for Women. In recent years, she has served on the advisory board of the J Street lobby.

Many Jewish groups are fine with her, even the ADL. But she has actually criticized some neocons for erecting an absurdly Manichean, Seth Lipsky-style "pro-Israel" or "anti-Israel" dynamic. And so true hardliners are trying to derail her too:

Shortly after the announcement of Rosenthal's nomination, conservative Jewish web sites began to attack her, some of them declaring that Obama appointed an anti-Israeli to fight anti-Semitism.

Rumors brewed that she had accused Israel of systemically strengthening anti-Semitism. Bloggers argued that her appointment would cause Jews and Israelis to cast doubt on Obama and his relationship with Israel. In one of her articles, Rosenthal criticized conservative voices in the Jewish community who she accused of taking over the discourse regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"It's a scary time, with people losing the ability to differentiate between a Jew, any Jew, and what's going on in Israel," Rosenthal said. 

What she means is that there is immense neoconservative resistance to the idea that the interests of Israel and the interest of the United States may not always be identical. And an immense conviction that anyone who even utters this truism is a closet anti-Semite.

Putting NSFW words in their mouths:

Yglesias makes a fair point:

Their basic point, that the kind of carbon tax proposal that policy wonks would dream up would be superior policy to the kind of cap-and-trade plan that would result from the compromises necessary to get 60 votes in the Senate, is very true. But by the same token, the kind of cap-and-trade proposal that policy wonks would dream up would be superior policy to the kind of carbon tax plan that would result from the compromises necessary to get 60 votes in the Senate.

Drum interjects:

In the near term, no serious carbon tax will ever pass the U.S. Senate.  Period.  If you believe otherwise, you're just not paying attention to things.  A big part of the surge in interest in a carbon tax is purely cynical, coming from special interests who are afraid a carbon cap might actually pass and want to muddy the waters with pseudo-liberal arguments in order to build an anti-C&T alliance and keep anything at all from passing.  There are plenty of carbon tax advocates who are perfectly sincere, but I gotta tell them: you're being played by people who are the farthest thing imaginable from sincere.  If you win, we're not going to get a carbon tax.  We're going to get nothing.

And when nothing is revealed as insufficient, maybe a better solution will emerge.

A disgruntled Obamaite writes in response to this post:

… and so the next morning the monkey trainer arrived with one half cup in the morning, saying: "Sorry, but the gorillas were threatening to stop lending nuts to the orangutans, so I gave the gorillas most of your nuts to placate them.  Oh, and there won't be any nuts this evening, because nut gathering takes time and you have to be patient. One more thing; I know I said that your babies wouldn't have to work gathering the nuts for me over in the scary part of the forest, but it turns out I'm going to have to send a bunch more baby monkeys over there, but it's just for a short time, unless I change my mind." 

Then the trainer arranged the monkeys in their cages, boy, girl, boy girl, because any other arrangement might upset the orangutans.

This is called selling one course, but delivering another.

It's that time of year again: O'Reilly waging a war on the war on Christmas.

Scott Lucas relays the spin from government-run Press TV:

Students in Iran gathered to commemorate the national Student Day as reports suggest a number of anti-government protesters have attempted to hijack the occasion…. The occasion…provided opposition protesters with an opportunity to stage anti-government demonstrations. However, their efforts were foiled thanks to the presence of anti-riot forces in several parts of the capital….

The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that police arrested a number of the rioters who set on fire trash bins. The news agency added that a group of rioters wearing green clothes destroyed the Amir Kabir University’s entrance gate on Vali Asr street and attacked the students inside the campus. The rioters, IRNA said, also tore down the security station inside the university. They also threw rocks at a bank on campus. The report added that students in return chanted slogans, calling the rioters “traitors.”

The above video – labeled "Showing Money To The Basiji" – was shot at Amir Kabir University. Tehran Bureau recorded a related chant:

Pool naft chi shode/ Kharj basiji shode: "What happed to the oil money/ It was spent on the Basiji"