Weigel quips:
It's now time for someone to point out that Ronald Reagan ALSO had to lose key campaign staffers before he won the 1980 nomination.
Bernstein rounds up more snark.
Month: June 2011
Another Tortured Boy
Al Jazeera has the horrific details:
The video, provided to Al Jazeera by sources inside Syria, shows the mutilated body of 15-year-old Thamer al-Sahri, who was arrested for participating in an anti-government demonstration. Hundreds of residents of the Syrian town of Jeeza filled the streets to mourn his death on Wednesday, the day his body was released from the mortuary and returned to his parents, six weeks after he went missing.
The amateur video shows al-Sahri's body riddled with bullets, missing an eye, several teeth, and according to Al Jazeera's source, returned to his family with a broken neck and leg. Al Jazeera is unable to independently verify the footage due to restrictions on journalists in the country.
Al-Sahri was arrested along with his friend, 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb - the teenager whose brutal death caused much of the world to pay closer attention to the events in Syria.
How Much Do Scandals Matter?
John Sides digs up a 2009 study measuring the damage done by various -gates. The researchers "presented respondents with one of four vignettes about a hypothetical politician [named Mark Jones] enmeshed in a scandal":
The vignettes all had a negative effect on views of Jones, as you might suspect. But there are some interesting nuances. First, the financial scandal tended to matter more than the moral scandal. Second, the financial scandal’s impact was augmented by the abuse of power, but the abuse of power had less impact in the moral scandal. Third, the moral scandal had more impact on evaluations of Jones as a person than on evaluations of his job performance.
De-Friending Weiner
Weigel believes the congressman would be better off if he hadn't lied:
That first week, he let a bunch of liberal-leaning pundits explain that he was probably just the target of a smear campaign. … When people say Weiner doesn't have friends, they're referring to his lack of strong allies in Congress. You could widen the net — at the end of this he's not going to have any friends in the movement, either.
Kirsten Powers, among others, resents being used by Weiner.
The Egyptian Gladiator
Ali Abdel Mohsen spotlights a colorful character:
Given the current state of the economy, it comes as no surprise that many Egyptians are doing all that they can to revive international interest in their country. What is surprising, though, is that one man has somehow managed to convince himself – and a few others – that he can single-handedly “boost tourism in Egypt” by fighting a full-grown African lion in direct hand-to-paw combat, in front of the Pyramids at Giza. Inexplicably, al-Sayed al-Essawy, a 25-year-old from Daqahlia, has come to believe that “the world will flock to see the Egyptian man who defeated a lion with his bare hands.”
Chris Keeler collects several "ridiculously awesome" quotes from al-Essawy.
The Profound Unseriousness Of Tim Pawlenty, Ctd
Bruce Barlett explains just how far-fetched Pawlenty's economic promises are:
Two points I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere: (1) According to the OECD, no county in its database has ever achieved 10 continuous years of +5% growth except Korea; a few had compounded growth rates above 5% annually for 10 year periods, but none have done so for many years and the U.S. has never done so in its history. (2) The U.S. has only once in its history gone 10 years without a recession — the George H.W. Bush/Bill Clinton expansion that ran exactly 10 years from March 1991 to March 2001; the average postwar expansion only lasted 5 years.
Making Circumcision A Choice
Freddie deBoer makes a strong argument against infant circumcision:
In a free society, individuals are free to make their own choices. And they should particularly be free to make their own choices about their bodies. Any adult man is fully free to go get a circumcision if he wants one. (The fact that none do, outside of the coercion involved in religious conversion in order to get married, should tell you something.) Men who were circumcised as infants are denied that right.
One position in this debate increases human autonomy and human liberty, and one restricts it. To oppose routine infant circumcision, you don't need to be convinced by the arguments against circumcision! You only need to recognize the right of the individual to make his own choice and to have sovereign control over his own body. That is the very bedrock of a free society: that people of vastly different values and ideas can coexist and recognize the right of others to make their own decisions. I don't need to understand the reasons that others make the decisions that they do. I only have to respect their right to a decision making process that is their own.
Herman Cain’s Insane Ideas
For one, he wants a "Great Wall of China" border wall:
Put me in charge of the fence and it will be a twenty foot wall, barbed wire, electrified on the top. And on this side of the fence, I’d have that moat that President Obama talked about. And I would put those alligators in that moat!
Pareene has a field day with this and with Cain's "no bills longer than three pages" pledge. Cain also says he'll hire Muslims in his administration only if they take a "loyalty oath." Scott Keyes unloads:
Cain’s requirement that Muslim nominees take a loyalty oath while Catholics and Mormons would be exempted is not only bigoted, it’s also ironic considering that the same suspicion was once levied at Catholics.
Hospice And Assisted Suicide, Ctd
A reader writes:
As a hospice RN, I feel I should point out the common misperception expressed by the Hospice chaplain who said, "It can be argued that the morphine greatly, and mercifully, accelerates death." I believe the revered gentleman is speaking to a subject that lies well outside his field of competency. Morphine sulfate is extremely safe when administered in appropriate dosages, which is the reason it's so widely used to treat pain. Morphine administration at the end of life does NOT hasten death. In fact, adequate pain control tends to actually extend life. Morphine dosages that are appropriate for the amount of pain the patient is experiencing will not depress respirations, which is the primary life-threatening side-effect of inappropriately large doses of Morphine. (Here's an article in ScienceDaily on the subject.)
The Power Of AIPAC, Ctd
Goldblog says I misunderstand the Israel lobby:
Andrew now interprets Israel's power in Washington in the manner of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, whose anti-Israel polemic, "The Israel Lobby," blames American Jewish supporters of Israel for most of the bad things that have happened to America abroad over the past decade. Their argument is simple: Without "the Lobby," Israel would be friendless in Washington. This always struck me as wrong, not because AIPAC isn't powerful, but because Walt and Mearsheimer (and Andrew) don't seem to understand what makes a powerful lobby group powerful. The most powerful lobbies, over time, are those that lobby for causes that are already popular among the American people.
Let me just correct the record and insist I do not blame "American Jewish supporters of Israel for most of the bad things that have happened to America abroad over the past decade," and I have not written that. Al Qaeda hated America primarily for broad reasons of unwanted intervention in the Middle East, specifically our troops in Saudi Arabia and was only peripherally and opportunistically interested in Israel/Palestine. Israel's elites were also smart enough to be against the Iraq fiasco. My objections have stemmed from Israel's recent decisions to disporportionately pulverize Gaza and intensify settlement building on the West Bank, even as a responsible partner emerged on the West Bank and an American president had a chance to rebuild US relations with the Arab and Mulism world. In my view, Netanyahu has acted without the slightest concern for the interests of his allegedly closest ally and most powerful supporter.
Jeffrey quotes Walter Russell Mead:
Full-throated support for hardline Israeli positions is a populist position in American politics — like full-throated support for a fence on the Mexican border. It is a foreign policy idea that makes elites queasy and that they try to steer away from, but support for it is so strong in public opinion, and therefore in Congress, that presidents have to figure out how to work with this force rather than taking it on directly.
Really? There is absolutely a broad sentiment of sympathy with Israelis over Palestinians. But this is not always reflected in support for "hardline Israeli positions." A Rasmussen poll last year, for example, found Americans opposed Israel's policy of continuing to settle the West Bank by a margin of 2 – 1. The settlements have been the core issue between Netanyahu and Obama. Yet in that struggle, Obama has lost decisively. (And Rasmussen, if anything, is likely to understate opposition because it tilts Republican).
Polling on the Gaza war, to take another example of a "hardline Israeli position", varied depending on the question.
When posed as which side do you support, Americans backed Israel over Hamas by 2 – 1. But when asked whether the war was preferable to negotiations, the public was divided almost equally (44 – 41), again according to the right-leaning Rasmussen poll. More saliently for whether AIPAC makes a difference, a 55 percent majority of Democrats opposed the Gaza war. Yet every single Democratic Senator voted for a resolution essentially supporting Israel's position. 71 percent of Americans believe the US should be neutral between Israel and Palestine. The US Congress gave the Israeli prime minister more standing ovations when he addressed them recently than they did heir own president's State of the Union, and the Senate Majority Leader backed Netanyahu against Obama on the peace process.
Now check out something called political donations. AIPAC doesn't donate to campaigns itself, but its members do aggressively – and perfectly properly. On political contributions made between 2009-2010, MAPlight.org lists the pro-Israel lobby in the Ideology/Single Issue subset, which it dominates (second only to the Republican/Conservative category), contributing more than four times as much as the pro-gun lobby, ten times more than the gay and Cuba lobbies, three times more than women's rights organizations, and 143 times more than the pitiful "Pro-Arab" lobby. The most popular destination for members of Congress on foreign trips sponsored by non-profits? Tel Aviv.
There is nothing even faintly illegal or fishy about any of this. It is all in the light of day; it is a legitimate form of lobbying the government; it represents the passions of many American citizens. AIPAC has every right to exist and to celebrate the fact that, "except for the State of the Union address, the AIPAC Policy Conference is the largest annual bipartisan gathering of U.S. senators, representatives, administration officials, diplomats and foreign ambassadors.”
But to argue that somehow this does not give one foreign government disproportionate clout, that it acts as a mighty force swaying the political discourse in Washington, that it has a huge edge in setting the boundaries of acceptable policy toward the Middle East, seems perverse to me. If all its positions – de facto defending settlements, defending all of Israel's wars – were supported by vast majorities, it is spending a hell of a lot of money and a huge amount of time on nothing.
I don't think they're that stupid.
(Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves as he arrives May 23, 2011 to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference 2011 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. By Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images.)
The Dish 