Hewitt Award Nominee

"Is Obama anti-Semitic? I don't know what the answer is," – Victor Davis Hanson, in an interview with Michael Totten.

The question is why Obama does not …  have, er, some kind of instinctive understanding that there is a massive moral difference between Arabs and Israelis. Or something like that. Hanson notes that the end of the Soviet Union will allow Israel to "finish" its wars of the past:

The earlier wars were between nation-states, and Israel couldn't finish those wars because of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union called us up and told us to make the Israelis stop. They did that in 1967 and 1973. The war was at least finished enough, though, so that Egypt, Syria, and Jordan wouldn't attack Israel directly any more. If they did, Israel would not only fight back, but maybe demolish their capitals. Today there is no longer a Soviet Union to stop the Israelis.

Totten asks:

What are the Europeans going to do if Israel decides to just destroy Hamas once and for all?

And how exactly does one "just destroy Hamas once and for all?" Cast Lead was too wimpy?

Existentialism And The English Soccer Fan

GREENKevorkDjansezian:Getty

Yes, I nearly fell off the elliptical when I saw that ball go in the net, and to answer Boris's question:

"What was the thought that followed the yelp?"

I can respond with four words: "Oh no! Not again!" Alex Massie seeks some kind of solace and ends up with Camus:

"All that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football."

He was a goalie. But Gideon captures the basic idea:

One of the masochistic pleasures of watching England, however, is the sheer familiarity of the narrative. We build the team up, we convince ourselves that this time we’ve got a real chance, the team get off to a decent start and then it all falls apart. It’s like having a recurring nightmare. And I think the players are as spooked as the fans – you can see their self-belief collapsing, as soon as things start to go wrong.

Even the headlines in this morning’s papers contained references to past disasters that did not need to be spelled out. One tabloid screamed, “Oh No, Not Again.” But my favourite was the News of the World’s front page – above a picture of the hapless England goalie, Robert Green, was the headline “Hand of Clod”. All fans will instantly get the reference to the infamous “Hand of God” goal with which Diego Maradona eliminated England in 1986. Seems like yesterday.

My dad's verdict? The Americans were an impressive bunch of players.

(Photo: Robert Green of England, as he walks off the pitch at full time in the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Group C match between England and USA at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium on June 12, 2010 in Rustenburg, South Africa. By Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

Emanuel vs Johnsen

Scott Horton's understanding of Dawn Johnsen's failed nomination to head the OLC:

I think Johnsen is right that disagreements over torture policy fueled G.O.P. opposition to her nomination. But the fact is that she had Republican support, and may well have had sixty votes or more at the time her nomination was withdrawn. So why wasn’t she confirmed? Harry Reid and Rahm Emanuel are the only people who can answer that question. Reid has proven inept generally in managing the confirmations process, and unwilling to push nominees through even when they had solid majority support. Unlike recent Republican chiefs-of-staff, Emanuel has taken a detached view of nominations, allowing candidates to languish and failing to provide White House support to push the process to a vote. Emanuel’s view also seems to be that any nominee who runs into trouble with the G.O.P. should just withdraw. This attitude empowers those in the G.O.P. who raise bad-faith objections to nominees and further clogs the system. It’s one reason why Emanuel doesn’t stack up well when compared with any of his recent Republican predecessors.