Month: December 2012

Conception Of The Day

A brilliant new Twitter account:

Netanyahu: Digging Deeper II


And the beat goes on:

Israel has seized more than $120m (£75m)in tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in response to last week’s overwhelming vote at the UN general assembly to recognise the state of Palestine. The move came as the PA president, Mahmoud Abbas, returned to cheering crowds in Ramallah in the West Bank following Thursday’s vote, in which 138 countries backed enhanced “non-member state” status for Palestine. Only nine countries opposed the move and 41 abstained.

Five European countries have summoned Israeli ambassadors to vent their extreme displeasure at the Netanyahu government’s increasingly extremist policies.

Fox News vs MSNBC

A reader pushes back against my comparison of the two networks:

Can we please stop with the false equivalency that MSNBC is a less-competent Fox? MSNBC is slanted, but here are the things that keep them distinct from Fox:

1) They acknowledge their bias.
2) They don’t ignore major news stories.
3) They don’t invent news from fiction.
4) They don’t fund/promote/create ‘grass roots’ movements and then cover them as spontaneous.
5) They don’t attack and undermine non-partisan fact-checking sources
6) They (particularly Maddow) attempt to get actual important figures from the right to come on, though those figures usually decline
7) They don’t employ politicians who are currently running for office while covering those same politicians

These aren’t distinctions of competence; they are distinctions of kind. I know you don’t care for their treatment of Pat “You-Can’t-Say-That-on-Television” Buchanan, but ejecting a single figure for persistent offensive speech is not the same as ejecting an entire class of commentators simply because their arguments may undermine your core propaganda message.

MSNBC is partisan. Fox is false.

I don’t think my reader is wrong. But because I’m not a partisan Democrat, all I can say is that Fox is completely shameless in its propaganda and paranoia while MSNBC is just smug with its partisanship and liberalism. So Fox is worse. But forgive me for not watching either – unless for hathetic purposes.

Let Iran Get The Bomb

Stephen Walt claims that Iran going nuclear won’t change much:

[B]oth theory and history teach us that getting a nuclear weapon has less impact on a country’s power and influence than many believe, and the slow spread of nuclear weapons has only modest effects on global and regional politics. Nuclear weapons are good for deterring direct attacks on one’s homeland, and they induce greater caution in the minds of national leaders of all kinds. What they don’t do is turn weak states into great powers, they are useless as tools of blackmail, and they cost a lot of money. They also lead other states to worry more about one’s intentions and to band together for self-protection. For these reasons, most potential nuclear states have concluded that getting the bomb isn’t worth it.

But a few states-and usually those who are worried about being attacked-decide to go ahead. The good news is that when they do, it has remarkably little impact on world affairs.

Including Mao’s China – even in its most insane, totalitarian period. Containment of Iran is as possible for us now as containment of the USSR was for decades. It’s staggering to me that this position – once mainstream – is now unrepresented in both major political parties.

“I Don’t”

June Thomas makes the sapphist case for forgoing marriage:

In "Here Comes the Groom" Sullivan took a swipe at the "gay leadership," one of his favorite adversaries, much of which, he said, "clings to notions of gay life as essentially outsider, anti-bourgeois, radical." He’s right, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Lesbians are already ridiculously good at monogamy. How much squarer do you want me to be?

Heh. Thomas explains why her "visceral anti-marriage animus is particularly strong" when she hears "twentysomething lesbians talking about their wives and fiancees":

Are they really going to mate for life, like swans in sensible shoes? That seems attractive at 35, but at 25 it’s positively Amish.

Worst of all, it threatens the continued evolution of a talent perfected over the millennia as our relationships have gone unrecognized by church and state: a gift for breaking up. Lesbians tend to bond intensely and often. Once a relationship has run its course, lovers become great friends. If you know a lesbian, chances are you know a lesbian who’s gone on vacation with her current girlfriend, an ex-girlfriend, and a dog she once shared with a different ex. I don’t want to lose that. And I don’t want to be just like everyone else.

And you don't have to be.

The battle for marriage equality was the battle for June to be able to reject the possibility of marriage. Before it, she had nothing to reject. Before it, she was withheld the choice she is now making. And that's the paradox: before we achieved marriage equality, what June describes as alternative lesbian life was a fate all gays, in all our massive diversity, had to make the best of. Since the marriage equality movement gained momentum, we have now begun to make it a choice. Live your life as you see fit. But everyone deserves the choice for integration or separation, marriage or not.

This is a non-zero-sum reform. It's both-and, not either-or. But I think it's not at all surprising that the older generation, who formed their identities out of imposed victimhood and marginalization – and created a vibrant culture outside social norms – would have a hard time understanding the younger generation who have now grown up thinking of marriage as one obvious option for their lives and their loves.

Netanyahu: Digging Deeper

How Beinart sees Abbas's actions at the UN last week:

It’s unclear how much the Palestinians’ victory at the U.N. General Assembly will ultimately matter. It certainly doesn’t, by itself, change America’s status as the most important outside influence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by far. But every year since Obama and Netanyahu came to power, American influence has declined. The Palestinian U.N. bid isn’t the only evidence. You can also measure it by the increased willingness of Middle Eastern governments like Egypt, Turkey and Qatar to break the U.S. quarantine on Hamas. Sooner or later, it’s likely key European governments will break that quarantine too.

Israel's new settlement plans are only accelerating this process:

Everybody knew that Israel's move to build new settlements in the previously off-limits area outside Jerusalem known as E1 would anger friends and enemies alike. But few probably guessed that it would send European ambassadors fleeing the country. According to a new report from Haaretz, that's exactly what the diplomats from France and Britain are thinking.

I'm also just absorbing what the Israeli government did to the Obama administration. From the Iron Dome out, Obama has had Israel's back for the last two months – and, to any fair observer, for the past four years. But again and again, Netanyahu's treatment of Obama (and Americans) is best described as contempt. At what point has Israel asked how it can help its chief ally these past few years? Never. And this extraordinarily crude response to the Palestinians' perfect right to seek UN status – and the huge success of their appeal there – show just how heavy a burden Greater Israel is on the US right now.

Israel is no longer an ally, it seems to me. It is, at best, a subsidized, spoiled child that cannot resist acting out.

The Death Knell For Football? Ctd

Another story with disturbing implications for the NFL:

Kansas City Chiefs linebacker and former Long Island high-school star Jovan Belcher was allegedly battling football-related head injuries and booze, painkiller and domestic problems when he snapped and murdered his girlfriend before killing himself in front of two coaches Saturday.

TNC says what needs to be said. Money quote:

We don't know what happened. We will never know what happened to Junior Seau. For me, that was the problem. The NFL has never been a reliable arbiter on player safety and brain injury. I don't want to sit around with my beer and wings on Sunday and wonder whether my pastime contributed to the murder of a young mother and the orphaning of a little girl. I'm just not up for it.

When will that view become more widespread? And can the NFL adapt?

Neologism Of The Day