Month: May 2010

PoliticsHome's current projection:

 

Notice that the Tory vote keeps going up, though. They're at 35.5 percent now. If they can add a few more points, they could get a clear, if fragile, majority. The latest Ipsos/MORI polling in swing Labour seats gives the Tories real hope of a small majority, depending on what happens elsewhere in the country. The map above looks like an electoral Rubik's Cube for a reason. If the Liberals had not had a transformative campaign, Cameron's strategy of focusing on the marginal swing seats would be bearing more dividends.

Notice also the real news here: if the Liberals come in second, two points ahead of Labour, and yet get less than half Labour's seats, the pressure for electoral reform – and some sort of more proportional representation – will intensify. In some ways, the battle now is between the Tories and the Liberals – to ensure or to avoid a deep reform of the voting system.

Geoffrey Dunn disassembles her lawyer's latest claims.

This strikes me as a big deal. In an effort to win back the gay vote, the Tories' "Contract For Equalities" expands on the Conservative support for civil partnerships thus:

''We will also consider the case for changing the law to allow civil partnerships to be called and classified as marriage.''

So we may soon have a major conservative party in the Anglosphere committed to full marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. Nothing could more dramatically expose the gulf between Britain's Tolerant Tories and America's Christianist Republicans.

The torture exposer and the torture authorizer meet at the WHCD.

The NYT does due diligence on the current Pope’s acquiescence in the monstrous crimes of Marcial Maciel for years and years and places John Paul II (rightly) at the center of the scandal. Longtime readers of the Dish will not learn much new from the piece but it’s a helpful, if understated, summary. In a strange way, if one assumes that JP2 was guilty primarily of staggering naivete and denial, Benedict’s record is the worst. It’s quite clear, for example, that he knew or suspected the gravity of the cult-leader’s crimes – the sex abuse, the polygamy, the incest, the secret vows, the vast sums of money used to prevent real investigation – and decided to punt on the question because of John Paul II’s dedication to the lucrative Legion and the power of Cardinal Sodano, who emerges as a figure as corrupt as any in the long history of ecclesiastical corruption:

In an interview, Father Athié said Bishop Talavera — who has since died — told him that [Cardinal Ratzinger] had read the letter (outlining the scale of Maciel’s criminality) and decided not to proceed with the case. “Ratzinger said it could not be opened because he was a person very beloved by the pope,” referring to Father Maciel, “and had done a lot of good for the church. He said as well, ‘I am very sorry, but it isn’t prudent,’ ” Father Athié said.

What you see here is something in front of our noses: the Pope decided not to act against a morphine-addicted, polygamous rapist of minors and his own children because the rapist was close to John Paul II. And instead of closing down a cult penetrated by this corruption to its core, he has just decided merely to give it a new head and leave much of its pre-existing leadership in place.

Why? Because the cult still manages to bring in new priests and is worth some $35 billion. When measured against rape and incest, the money and vocations are more important to Pope Benedict XVI. So too is the fact that the Legion backs the theology and orthodoxy of the Franco-Pinochet Catholic far right.

Whenever this Pope’s defenders claim he finally acted against Maciel, remember these things. And remember who else supported him almost to the very end – George Weigel (still routinely quoted in the NYT as if he is a disinterested party); Richard John Neuhaus; Mary Ann Glendon; Bill Bennett; and almost the entire theocon establishment.

Chait's view of the attempted car bombing in Times Square:

Rushing to take credit for a bungled attack is fairly pathetic. It's another piece of evidence of al Qaeda's severely degraded capability of launching attacks on American soil, where leaving a smoke-filled car in Manhattan is an operation worth boasting about. The Christmas bombing likewise failed on account of miserably low quality.

Yglesias's question:

I don’t quite get why this is prompting so much less freaking-out than the Christmas underpants bomber did. Both seem on a par to me — amateurish failures that seem to indicate that whichever people might be inclined to kill American civilians don’t have much in the way of capacity. Is the country learning? Maturing? Or is it just that airplane-related incidents have some special grasp on the public imagination?

Mixmaster at Balloon Juice recounts playing with firecrackers as a youth:

Apparently, the masterminds behind this device lacked the experience of a ten-year-old boy, since they didn’t know that M-80s tend to fizzle and can’t blow up shit. And they must not get basic cable, otherwise they would have put a hell of a lot more gas in that car to get those tanks to explode quicker. But they are clearly public relations geniuses, because the attention they’re getting is way out of proportion to their bomb-making skills.

"If you're someone who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in awhile. If you're a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not often be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. So too is the practice of engaging in different experiences with different kinds of people.

For four years at Michigan, you have been exposed to diverse thinkers and scholars; professors and students. Do not narrow that broad intellectual exposure just because you're leaving here. Instead, seek to expand it. If you grew up in a big city, spend some time with some who grew up in a rural town. If you find yourself only hanging around with people of your race or your ethnicity or your religion, broaden your circle to include people who've had different backgrounds and life experiences. You'll learn what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes, and in the process, you'll help make this democracy work," – president Obama.

(Photo: Obama at Saturday's DC bacchanal, by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty)

She really should think of joining the diplomatic equivalent of Cirque du Soleil.

John Mearsheimer outlines what he regrets is the likely future for Israel/Palestine if we do not get a new peace deal under this president:

The story I will tell is straightforward.  Contrary to the wishes of the Obama administration and most Americans — to include many American Jews — Israel is not going to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank.  Regrettably, the two-state solution is now a fantasy.  Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a “Greater Israel,” which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa.  Nevertheless, a Jewish apartheid state is not politically viable over the long term.  In the end, it will become a democratic bi-national state, whose politics will be dominated by its Palestinian citizens.  In other words, it will cease being a Jewish state, which will mean the end of the Zionist dream.

It makes for a depressingly convincing read. The Palestinians remain too divided to deliver much in the time period necessary (soon); the Israeli government, whatever it says, is obviously committed to controlling all of the West Bank and all of Jerusalem indefinitely; the US Congress does what AIPAC tells it to and will prevent any aid or loan guarantee pressure on Israel; a huge Christianist Zionist population in America wants Greater Israel almost as much as the settlers themselves (see: Palin, S. and Scheuneman, R.); liberal American Jews have finessed the anguished position of being against settlements but against any serious attempt to stop them; and by now, the settlements themselves are so entrenched it might take something close to an Israeli civil war or mutiny in the IDF to remove them.

So given that there’s no real way to stop the emergence of a de facto apartheid state, and assuming that Israel will not engage in massive ethnic cleansing, what will happen in the future? Mearsheimer:

The critical question is: what will happen to those Jews who comprise the great ambivalent middle once it is clear to them that Israel is a full-fledged apartheid state and that facts on the ground have made a two-state solution impossible?  Will they side with the new Afrikaners and defend apartheid Israel, or will they ally with the righteous Jews and call for making Greater Israel a true democracy?  Or will they sit silently on the sidelines?

I believe that most of the Jews in the great ambivalent middle will not defend apartheid Israel but will either keep quiet or side with the righteous Jews against the new Afrikaners, who will become increasingly marginalized over time.  And once that happens, the lobby will be unable to provide cover for Israel’s racist policies toward the Palestinians in the way it has in the past.

At that point, with the Likudnik right marginalized, and the ambivalent middle increasingly distressed by a more clearly apartheid system, what will happen? Mearsheimer sees a bi-national democracy achieved through Palestinians winning the international argument that a non-Jewish Israel is preferable to an apartheid Israel. He urges non-violence in such a situation.

This is where he loses me. I suspect he is being far too sanguine about the possibilities of a mature, non-violent Palestinian movement that uses its democratic majority for fruitful and non-violent and non-anti-Semitic ends. But I also suspect that his analysis of the Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobby in Washington is accurate: Israel will gladly sleepwalk into international pariahdom (which will only confirm its rectitude for Podhoretz et al.), become a prison for a majority of its population, lose its soul in the brutality such a state would necessitate and see large flights of secular Jews from its population and an increase in religious fanaticism among those who remain.

One wonders if it isn’t already too late to prevent this. But those who want Israel to survive and prosper as a Jewish state must surely hope so. I suspect that the only major political “ism” of the nineteenth century to survive intact in the twenty-first is in grave danger of dying.

Israel’s only hope is Obama. But when he holds the mirror up to them, it cracks.

(Photo: a young religious settler on the West Bank. By Uriel Sinai/Getty.)