Month: December 2011

Goldblog insists that Palestinians exist. Noah Millman puts the debate in perspective:

When people say that the Palestinians “are just Arabs” they are on one level correct. In 1900, before Palestinian Arabic could have been influenced by Hebrew, the Arabic spoken by a citizen of Haifa would have been extremely similar to the Arabic spoken by a citizen of Damascus. “Palestinians are just Arabs” is as historically and ethnologically correct as “Palestine is just part of Greater Syria” – which, at various points in history, has in fact been the Syrian perspective on the matter.

And, on another level, it’s obviously incorrect. The Arabs of Palestine had the nationalizing experience of reacting to Jewish colonization of their country – country in the French sense of “native land” rather than “state”. That experience was foreign to the otherwise-similar population in Syria, and resulted in a distinct identity.

Jonathan Zasloff makes related points:

You don’t need Gingrich to tell you that the idea of a “Palestinian people” is relatively new.  All you need is the foremost historian of the idea, Columbia’s Rashid Khalidi, to confirm it.  In his (very good) book Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, Khalidi puts the crystallization of the idea slightly after 1908, the year of the Young Turk revolt in Istanbul.  That event, Khalidi argues, catalyzed the Arabs in what is now known as Palestine to reconsider their allegiance to Ottoman Sultan (also the holder of the Caliphate), and begin to think in more nationalistic terms.  (For Khalidi, this timing is important because it allows him to argue that Palestinian Identity did not arise simply as a reaction to the Balfour Declaration and the beginnings of mass Jewish migration).

Earlier thoughts here.

(Photo: A protester with the Palestinain flag painted on her cheek takes part in a sit-in in Sweimeh, a few kilometres from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the partition of Palestine on November 25, 2011. By Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images)

Mark Hemingway dismisses organizations like Politifact as "the liberal media’s latest attempt to control the discourse." John McQuaid finds the liberal bias accusation silly but thinks Hemingway points to a real concern:

The common problem with fact-checking is a misplaced reverence for "expertise" as a substitute for hard-nosed reporting and independent evaluation. So here are a few friendly suggestions for better fact-checking: Reporters do not represent the establishment, they should be suspicious of it; politicians who seem reasonable may not be; politicians who depart from the Washington consensus may be saying something important. If you think you can even get to the truth of a complex, contentious issue with a couple of phone calls, you are kidding yourself and your readers. And don’t invent a "truth" where the truth is genuinely in dispute.

PolitiFact's own guide to fact-checking here. Paul Waldman believes the site's "Lie Of The Year" competition has been thoroughly politicized. Recent Dish on improving fact-checking here.

John Heilemann watched it (full video of the exchange here):

If you happened to devote 90 minutes to the Lincoln-Douglas-style debate between Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman that took place yesterday at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire — and you are in tenuous possession of even modest mental faculties — you will almost certainly have had one or more of the following four reactions: (a) Hey, this isn't a debate, it's a two-man panel discussion; (b) Hey, this isn't a debate, it's a two-man circle jerk; (c) Hey, this isn't a debate, it's a two-man exercise in well-intentioned high-mindedness; or (d) Hey, this isn't a debate, it's a profoundly cynical two-man political maneuver masquerading as an exercise in well-intentioned high-mindedness.

Joe Klein also tuned in:

What we got was, with certain admirable exceptions, the appearance of substance. And, more often than not when Gingrich was speaking, what we got was dangerous nonsense passed off as considered thought. A waste of time? No. We learned a lot about Gingrich’s depth of knowledge on foreign policy. It is kiddie-pool deep.

Fallows is more positive:

This time there were two informed-sounding adults talking in complete thought-sequences — even to the point of dullness, which is not bad compared to the preceding craziness. And they offered thoughts that they simply could not have developed, or that would have been batted away with slogans, in the "normal" crowded-house debate with its 30- or 60-second segments. For instance, both of them explained why the defense budget really had to go down. Or the realities of what can be expected with Pakistan and Afghanistan. The ways in which China is both rival and partner, etc. Because they both knew they'd be able to make their points, there wasn't the desperation for air time that had made performers in all the other debates act as if they have to blurt out their attack-lines and applause-points whenever they have a chance.

Larison lambastes Huntsman for saying he'd consider Gingrich for veep:

I hope this extinguishes whatever enthusiasm realists and non-interventionists had for Huntsman’s candidacy. Can he be serious? Gingrich is at the top of his short list? No doubt Gingrich is relieved that Huntsman is willing to consider him for the No. 2 position. Huntsman will be lucky to be considered for the role of Ambassador to Vanuatu in a Gingrich administration.

(Photo: Republican Presidential Candidates Newt Gingrich (R) and Jon Huntsman share a laugh following a Lincoln-Douglas style debate at Saint Anselm College on December 12, 2011 in Manchester, New Hampshire. By Matthew Cavanaugh/Getty Images)

Amy Davidson analyzes the encounter:

[Vietnam veteran Bob Garon, who was sitting at a table with his husband,] asked Romney where he stood on gay marriage. Romney was against it; when Garon followed up by asking why a same-sex partner shouldn’t get the veterans’ benefits available to spouses, Romney repeated that “I believe that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman, and we apparently disagree.” What is striking is how Romney, despite picking up—sooner than some of his rivals might have—what Garon thought of the issue, completely fails to turn this into any sort of a human moment. You are a politician; here is an old man, sitting next to you in a diner, who, one way or the other, has had a complicated life. There was no strand Romney could seek out and hang on to? Ask what years he fought in the war, express some sense of respect or internal struggle—anything.

TNC compares gay soldiers to black soldiers:

[A]sking people to die for this country, while denying them the full rights accorded other citizens is an ancient and disreputable tradition. Daniel Walker Howe, in his award-winning history, notes how Andrew Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans with a truly American army of blacks, Native Americans and Irishmen, and then went on to become his country's foremost white supremacist. 

Blacks fighting in the Civil War suffered mortality rates 35 percent higher than their white comrades. Moreover, they faced court martial and execution at much higher rates. If they surrendered they were subject to enslavement, torture or massacre. Ten percent of all troops who fought for the Union were black. For their sorrows, they were turned over to the tender mercies of Red Shirts and White Liners and their sacrifice was erased from the history books

Mark Mitchell reflects on the euro crisis: 

[T]he current crisis (and this is merely part of a broader crisis that extends beyond Europe) appears as a failure to appreciate the fact that optimal human institutions—those that facilitate human flourishing—cannot exceed a certain scale, and when they do, they will inevitably suffer.

Europe’s problems, then, present an opportunity to reconsider ideas that have been ignored for too long. A renewed commitment to the principles of political decentralism, economic localism, and cultural regionalism is a radical prescription for a Europe haunted by the specter of unity, but it would provide the opportunity for Europeans to reconsider the meaning of citizenship, culture, and community on a scale that is meaningful, which is to say, suited to human beings.

As the crisis deepens and as centralizing solutions continue to show themselves inadequate, perhaps one day in the not-too-distant future saner heads will prevail and consideration of human scale will emerge as an idea whose time has come. The sooner we on this side of the Atlantic learn this lesson the better we will be able to manage our own troubles.

It would blow a massive hole in the deficit and make the tax code much more regressive. Howard Gleckman does the math:

Everyone in the top 0.1 percent would be better off than under 2011 rates and they’d get an average tax cut of $1.9 million. Among those in the bottom 20 percent, only about one-quarter would be better off under the Gingrich plan. Overall, low-income households would get an average tax cut of $63. … Because the plan is so much more generous when compared to current law, the overall cost of the Gingrich plan is even greater. He’d reduce revenues in 2015 by nearly $1.3 trillion, or 35 percent of federal taxes that year. Talk about starving the beast!

It would also require destruction of vast swathes of government:

Gingrich’s plan would leave enough money to cover the cost of so-called mandatory spending, a category that includes Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, along with part of the interest on the U.S. debt. Dedicating the money for those purposes wouldn’t leave any funds for defense spending or any other federal agency.

So unless the miraculous Lafferite effects take off like a rocket, Newt would have to zero out all defense. Chart from Kevin Drum, who comments:

In order to make sure that not a single person would even theoretically pay higher taxes under his plan, Newt uses the dodge pioneered by Rick Perry that allows taxpayers to choose between the current tax code and the Gingrich plan. However, he goes Perry one better by being even more brazenly pro-millionaire with an effective rate of 11.2% for anyone earning more than a million dollars per year.¹ Take that, cowboy!

Question? askandrew@thedailybeast.com Video archive here.