Month: May 2011

Members of the United States Naval Academy freshman class wear body armor, helmets and carry rifles through a mud-filled ditch as part of the 'Wet and Sandy' challenge during the rigorous Sea Trials May 17, 2011 in Annapolis, MD. Under strict safety supervision, about 900 freshmen, or 'Plebes,' faced 14 hours of 32 rigorous physical and mental challenges during the trials, a daylong, action-oriented event modeled after the Marine Corps 54-hour Crucible and the Navy's Battle Stations. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Kevin Drum expects GOP elites to squash the Tea Party:

[The Tea Party] was a handy force for rousing the voters in the 2010 election, but there's only so much idiocy that even Republicans can put up with. Talk radio is one thing. Fox News is one thing. For the most part, they talk big but don't actually demand that politicians commit suicide. Tea partiers, conversely, do want them to commit suicide, and if they get their way the only real result is going to be more Democrats in Congress and the reelection of Barack Obama. The adults in the party understand this perfectly well, and they're going to throw the tea partiers under the bus if it looks like they're seriously screwing things up for GOP hopes next year.

Weigel feels the Tea Party remains powerful: "Every political debate happens in the terms the Tea Party set in 2009."

Alex Massie insists that British cities aren't full:

Would it be disastrous if English (and Scottish!) cities were as densely populated as Boston or Chicago (12.75)? I suggest it would not. … That doesn't mean there's no "room" for growth; merely that some of that growth should be "up" not "out".

Go read Andy Bacevich who appears not to have lost his mind.

The NYT really needs to get a grip. Here's Ethan Bronner parroting Likudnik propaganda:

Mr. Obama said that the solution should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps, meaning that if Israel, as expected, held onto some close-in settlements, it would have to yield an equal amount of land to the future state of Palestine from within its borders.

Where the fuck is that in the speech? Obama made no mention of perfectly equal land-swaps. Unless Bronner is capable of reading minds, or I am missing something, there is nothing here that is different from Bush's position. I notice the NYT has changed its headline on Bronner's piece. I've defended Bronner in the past, but this knee-jerk parroting of Israeli government spin as fact is downright embarrassing.

Anne Applebaum predicts a rise of anti-immigration sentiment in France. Joshua Keating agrees:

[T]he arrest would seem to be bad news for one constituency: immigrants. If the scandal cripples the Socialists, the far-right may come to be seen as Sarkozy's primary competition in the race, meaning the president will have to pander even more to anti-immigrant sentiment. … With Le Pen already taking full advantage of the Strauss-Kahn scandal, you can expect Sarkozy to accelerate his pandering and more measures along the lines of the recent burqa ban.

That seems to be the issue. Fox News is backtracking:

While the idea of using the 1967 borders as a starting point to negotiate land swaps for a final peace deal is not new, hearing an American president use those words sent chills through the Netanyahu government, which is loathe to even think the words “'67 borders.” …

While the current focus is on 1967 borders, Obama did follow that up with “land swaps,” which is diplomatic speak for allowing Israel to hold on to certain settlement blocks that have been built in the West Bank, while trading out other land.

By the way, Obama did not "follow up" 1967 with anything. It was in the same fricking sentence:

The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.

But if it is true that an American president's even mentioning the 1967 borders as a basis for a peace settlement is deeply shocking to the Israelis, they really have misjudged where they are. Obama is as good as they are going to get if Israel really wants to end its accelerating slide toward self-destruction. No fanatical AIPAC-approved Republican is going to be able to deliver any kind of peace, given the remarkable democratic revolution in the Middle East. And if a democratic Egypt emerges to insist on the obvious contours of the two-state solution, and Israel still balks at even freezing its settlement activity, it seems to me that the US should side with a far more crucial ally in the region, Egypt, and withdraw its support from an essentially un-democratic Greater Israel, with a disenfranchised Arab majority in Judea and Samaria.

Well, Roger Ailes isn't that powerful. The meme that a speech that said almost nothing new is a "stunning" attack on Israel is countered on the right with an embrace of the speech by neoconservatives. Yeah: you couldn't make this conservative cognitive dissonance up. Max Boot:

[T]oday’s speech at the State Department marks Barack Obama’s emergence as a full-fledged, born-again neocon firmly in the George W. Bush mold.

John Tabin:

President Obama’s speech on the Middle East represents a watershed in his shift from a destructive and delusional approach to the Middle East, marked by indifference to democracy promotion and solicitude toward tyrants, toward embracing a policy that looks a lot like George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda.

Ed Morrissey:

The entire speech could easily have been delivered by George W. Bush in its commendable but hardly inspirational cheering of democratization, which foundered on Obama’s decision to task Bashar Assad with leading democratic reform in Syria.

My view of the speech as I heard it is below. My bottom line on Israel/Palestine is that this contained little that is new on the subject. Moreover, the content about democratization was almost exactly the same as the final section of the prescient Cairo speech. The distinction between Bush and Obama on democratization is now and always has been that Bush wanted to impose it by force and Obama wants to coax its indigenous evolution. Is that so hard to grapple with?

(Links via Robert Stacy McCain.)

One begins to suspect that we have really have entered a postmodern era on the right. So Fox News "reports" that Obama's speech calling for a return to 1967 borders, with agreed-upon land swaps

stunned Washington and Jerusalem by endorsing Palestinians' demand for their own state based on the pre-1967 borders. The break with longstanding U.S. policy appeared to immediately aggravate the Israelis, who want the borders of any future Palestinian state determined through negotiations.

Stunned? Here's secretary of state Clinton in 2009:

We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.

Ethan Bronner even props up this bizarre notion. His argument is that somehow this differs from Bush's policy. If it is, the difference is so slight it is invisible to me. Bronner's evidence is that there is a distinction between affirming that a peace settlement should not be based on "a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949" and one saying exactly the same thing with the formula of 1967 borders along with "mutually agreed upon land-swaps." Let's just say that Bronner is now far to the right of Jeffrey Goldberg and Walter Russell Mead.

Romney follows the Ailes line:

President Obama has thrown Israel under the bus. He has disrespected Israel and undermined its ability to negotiate peace.

Pro-settler Huckabee:

President Obama has betrayed Israel and made a grievous mistake by suggesting borders of Israel go back to pre-1967 borders. This is an outrage to peace, sovereignty of Israel, and a stable Middle East.

I guess this is a monent to realize that the American right and the West Bank settler movement are now indistinguishable. The alleged surprise at Obama's recitation of the bleeding obvious, if not entirely cynical, can only come from an assumption that Israel gets to keep the West Bank in perpetuity. If that is now the GOP's position, it is a radical departure from the last president and American policy for decades.

Politicians are debating a national driving tax that would charge motorists by the mile:

A driving tax could either replace the current 18.4 cent a gallon federal gas tax or, possibly, add to it.

Tim Haab reiterates that a gas tax would solve all the same things:

Taxing gas on a per gallon basis has the potential to meet all of these goals. l've stated this all before in the form of a Fuel Efficiency Payment (yes I know I keep linking to that post, but I'm hoping eventually I will get my point across):  An $X per gallon gas tax is the same as a tax on low fuel efficiency, a tax on driving, a tax on externalities, a tax on road use.  The only thing it doesn't address directly is congestion (that would require peak load pricing), but it does address congestion indirectly in the form of fewer vehicle miles travelled.