Month: March 2012

Daniel Levy thinks the Israeli prime minister won't risk his almost-certain reelection over the Iranian nuclear program:

The pressure to act is top-down, not bottom-up. And to the extent to which there is trepidation among the public, that is a function of fear at the blowback from Israeli military action, rather than fear of Iranian-initiated conflagration. Also to be factored in is the possibility of 2012 being an election year in Israel (though technically the current parliament could serve until October 2013). If Netanyahu does pursue early elections, as many pundits expect, then the political risk associated with an attack increases, heightened by the likelihood of a strike being depicted as an election ploy. What’s more, prices at the pump are an issue for Israeli voters, just as they are in the United States. 

(Hat tip: Larison)

Question? askandrew@thedailybeast.com Video archive here.

Who knows what's going on? What seems quite remarkable to me is that the Koch brothers have nominated to the board two strident anti-libertarians:

John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog, whose firm counts Koch Industries as a client. Hinderaker has written, “It must be very strange to be President Bush.  A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice.  He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.”  Hinderaker supports the Patriot Act and the Iraq War and calls himself a neocon.

Tony Woodlief, who has been president of two Koch-created nonprofits and vice president of the Charles Koch Foundation. Woodlief has blogged about “the rotten heart of libertarianism,” calling it “a flawed and failed religion posing as a philosophy of governance” while complaining about libertarians “toking up” at political meetings.

A libertarian institute? With a neocon and a culture-warrior on its board? Not encouraging for anyone on the right trying to resist the allure of war and politicized religion and their fusion at home and abroad. More worries about intellectual integrity here.

I mentioned the great existentialist, Albert Camus, as someone who had impacted my own religious thinking. A reader notes that in William Faulkner's obit for the great writer, something of the same came across:

Camus said that the only true function of man, born into an absurd world, is to live, be aware of one's life, one's revolt, one's freedom. He said that if the only solution to the human dilemma is death, then we are on the wrong road. The right track is the one that leads to life, to the sunlight.

He did refuse to suffer from the unceasing cold. He did refuse to follow a track which led only to death. The track he followed was the only possible one which could not lead only to death. The track he followed led into the sunlight in being that one devoted to making with our frail powers and our absurd material, something which had not existed in life until we made it. He said, 'I do not like to believe the death opens upon another life. To me, it is a door that shuts.' That is, he tried to believe that. But he failed.

Despite himself, as all artists are, he spent that life searching himself and demanding of himself answers which only God could know; when he became the Nobel laureate of his year, I wired him 'On sault l'â me qui constamment se cherche et se demande'; why did he not quit then, if he did not want to believe in God? At the very instant he struck the tree, he was still searching and demanding of himself; I do not believe that in that bright instant he found them. I do no believe they are to be found. I believe they are only to be searched for, constantly, always by some fragile member of the human absurdity. Of which there are never many, but always somewhere at least one, and one will always be enough.

People will say he was too young; he did not have time to finish. But it is not How long, it is not How much; it is, simply What. When the door shut for him, he had already written on this side of it that which every artist who also carries through life with him that one same foreknowledge and hatred of death, is hoping to do: I was here. He was doing that, and perhaps in that bright second he even knew he had succeeded. What more could he want?

(Photo: the car crash in which Camus was killed.)

Santorum says the campaign is bankrupting him.

Silver makes projections:

Adding up the projections from the ten states, I show Mr. Romney getting 217 delegates, or almost exactly half of the total available. Mr. Santorum would get 107 delegates by these projections — about a quarter of the total — with Mr. Gingrich getting 61 and Mr. Paul 25.

Zeke Miller hears mixed messages. The view through rose-colored glasses: 

Republican strategist Curt Anderson, an optimist, called the current moment a ”low ebb” for the GOP. “Obama looked unbeatable in Jan of 2009. Obama looked easy to beat in Jan of 2011,” he said. “Now we are at a low ebb. This too shall pass.”

(Chart from (pdf) Langer Research)

A quiz.

That is one view of how to stop Israel going rogue:

“The Iranian case is different because the American vital interest might be affected,” Giora Eiland, once a national security adviser to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said. “To do something against an American explicit request is much different. Besides the operational risks that are very high and the general security risks. We are taking a real political risk that no Israeli prime minister can take.” Eiland said, however, that such a risk would be present only “as long as the American ‘no’ is as explicit as I described.”

Stephanie Hegarty examines why jeans are so widely loved throughout the world:

Indigo doesn't penetrate the cotton yarn like other dyes but sits on the outside of each thread. These molecules chip off over time, causing the fabric to fade and wear in a unique way. "Why did it sell?" asks [Paul Trynka, author of Denim: From Cowboys to Catwalks]. "Because the denim changed as it aged and the way it wore reflected people's lives."

Jeans also have a miraculous ability to stay clean:

Last year a microbiology student at the University of Alberta, Josh Le, wore the same pair of raw denim jeans for 15 months without washing them and then tested their bacterial content. He tested them again two weeks after washing them and found the bacterial content to be much the same.

(Photo by Flickr user jimpg2)