Like yesterday's poll on the issue, Gallup's new poll on marriage equality finds majority support, with the biggest annual shift in opinion since the poll began. The divide:
Democrats' and independents' support for legalized same-sex marriage increased this year by 13 and 10 points, respectively. Republicans' views on the issue did not change from last year. Clear majorities of both Democrats and independents now support gay marriage, 69% and 59% respectively, contrasted with 28% support among Republicans.
To go from 41 points behind to 8 points ahead in a decade and a half must count as one of the most successful political and social campaigns in history. The trouble in New York is that one man sits squarely in the middle of the last redoubt of true resistance: older white conservative men.
Yossi Klein Halevi has a must-read on why many Israelis are caught between seeing a Palestinian state as an existential necessity and as an existential threat. It's helpful in understanding where the Israelis are coming from. What I find just as interesting is Halevi's understanding that the preconditions Obama has landed on the Palestinians are, in many ways, more onerous than those he has asked from the Israelis. The likelihood of an agreement on these terms is highly unlikely, without serious shifts in the Palestinian leadership. If Netanyahu were as smart as Obama, he'd agree with everything the president proposes … and wait for the Palestinians to dig in. Instead …
"Are we ready to have our sports information delivered by someone who is gay? We're going to find out. Because for the last 16 years I've been living a free life among all my close friends and family. But I've been living behind what is a gargantuan size secret in the sports world. … I am gay. Yeah, Jared Max the sports guy with one of the most familiar voices in New York sports isn't quite like the majority," – veteran radio host Jared Max.
First, Obama re-states the rather bland U.S. policy consensus. Next, his critics treat this as a dramatic and radical change to current policy when it isn’t anything of the sort, and the Israeli government pretends that the consensus view is some new, horrible imposition that cannot be tolerated. At the same time, Obama’s political foes declare that he has betrayed Israel, which ought to reveal them as buffoons but instead somehow makes them seem more “credible” on foreign policy. After all of this, Obama backs down and stops saying anything about the uncontroversial position that caused the phony controversy.
What seems to be missing from the analysis of apocalyptic thinking you quoted is the third element: vengeance. The belief that those in control of the world, those who have brought it to such confusion, must not only be wiped away but be so by God's righteous wrath. It isn't merely that something good must come out of existence and prevail; it is that there must be punishment for the guilty as well as reward for those with fidelity. Revelations is inherently a revenge fantasy, and so many of the believers – whether they believe it will be next week, next year or on the immanent time horizon – crave revenge for a world they no longer understand, as well as for all of the slights and humiliations that their fidelity to some belief has brought down upon them.
Another writes, "Thought you'd enjoy this FAQ by a college professor for his students on what do about final exams in the event of rapture." Money quote:
Q: If my mother/father/grandfather/grandmother/favorite aunt/etc. is chosen, will I be excused from the final so that I may mourn his/her loss?
A: No. They have not died, but been granted eternal life, thus this does not count as a case of a death in the family.
I was … taken aback when I read a statement from Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday that he "expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of U.S. commitments made to Israel in 2004, which were overwhelmingly supported by both House of Congress."
So Netanyahu "expects" to hear this from the President of the United States? And if President Obama doesn't walk back the speech, what will Netanyahu do? Will he cut off Israeli military aid to the U.S.? Will he cease to fight for the U.S. in the United Nations, and in the many international forums that treat Israel as a pariah?
I don't like this word, "expect." Even if there weren't an imbalance between these two countries — Israel depends on the U.S. for its survival, while America, I imagine, would continue to exist even if Israel ceased to exist — I would find myself feeling resentful about the way Netanyahu speaks about our President.
My hope, for what it's worth, is to protect the possibility of a majority Jewish state to survive with its capital in Jerusalem for ever. I'm a Zionist. Always have been. And strongly so. I think Obama is doing his best to bring it about, primarily because it is America's interest, but also because it is in Israel's. And despite the hysteria from the Fox-Likud fringe, Obama's words yesterday toward the Palestinians were stark, essentially putting Abbas on the spot on the Hamas charter, for example. And yet this leader of a foreign government thinks he can essentially dictate terms for an American president and attempt to corral the US Congress to side explicitly with a foreign leader over the American president in foreign policy.
Don't push your luck, Bibi. Others have with Obama and they have learned that he is often more canny than they are with political jujitsu. Obama's usual tactic: gently and subtly prompting his foes to self-destruct. I just hope that in this critical juncture in the Middle East, Netanyahu doesn't take his country with him.
"It's going to take a while for the news media to realize that you're covering something that happens once or twice in a century, a genuine grass-roots campaign of very big ideas. I expect it to take a while for it to sink in," – Newt Gingrich, on the campaign trail in Waterloo, Iowa. Yep: Waterloo.
"Barack Hussein Obama adopted Yasser Arafat’s staged plan for Israel’s destruction, and he is trying to force it on our prime minister,” – Likud MK Danny Danon, who escorted Palin during her Israel trip.
Two nuggets of fact lie on the shore after the last news-cycle. One helps explain my mystification at the immediate hard right hysteria. The verbal formula that essentially repeats the standard position of every recent US administration on the two-state solution did not strike me as anything new; in fact, it struck me as a minimalist response to Israel’s continued aggressive settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. And yet instantly Drudge, Fox, Romney et al. blasted the “stunning” news that Israel had somehow been thrown under the bus.
None of this makes sense until you realize that Netanyahu had been given a heads-up by the administration. So it’s pretty obvious that it was the Israelis who immediately got their US media mouthpieces to spin the speech as some sort of attack. So those of you who think Jeffrey Goldberg and Walter Russell Mead and Victor Davis Hanson are a foreign government’s favored outlets should think again. These leftist radicals are far too unreliable a channel.
Then there’s the odd, but telling note that Obama gave an exclusive interview on the speech to the BBC’s Andrew Marr. Why the BBC? Well: Obama is headed to the UK next week; and who does he need to prevent total humiliation and isolation for the US and Israel at the UN in September? The Europeans. If Britain were to endorse a Palestinian state at the UN in the fall, the US could well find itself utterly isolated in defense of Israel’s insistence on strengthening its grip on the West Bank.
And then, of course, one wonders if what Obama really wants is exactly for the European allies to vote for Palestinian statehood, because he, given the exigencies of American politics and fundraising, and his own attachment to Israel, cannot. And this speech was designed in part to give him cover.
Aaron Carroll forwards a chart from The State Of Working America:
Almost one quarter of children below the age of 6 in the United States were in poverty in 2009. That number had been increasing over the years before that. Think about it. One in four children in the richest country in the world are in poverty. The next most prevalent group was children 6-18. Think about that as we talk about cutting Medicaid, which covers one third-of children, likely all the children you see above
The Dish 