“Already Collapsed”

The Bangkok Post interviews Mohammed Reza Mahdi, "former high-ranking intelligence official in Iran":

The government has already collapsed. There’s going to be big changes very soon. Believe me, it will happen soon. I can promise you that I will meet you for the next interview in Teheran very soon. However, I am afraid that the transition won’t be peaceful. You see what has happened during the religious ceremony called Ashura a few days ago.

Ed Morrissey notes that police states can exist for decades and calls "predicting the end of the Iranian mullahcracy is a bit of a fool’s game."

Convert, Tiger! Ctd

A reader writes:

I am Christian who has taught Comparative Religion and attempted to present these religions not from a Christian perspective, but from within each of their own religious worldviews.  Having done so, I can affirm that Buddhists do have concept of redemption – but, not surprisingly, it is not like the Christian conception.  The Buddhist concept is called nirvana, itself a very misunderstood concept by many Christians.  Additionally, since awareness of suffering is one of the Four Noble Truths, then forgiveness is an important dimension of overcoming suffering.  Brit Hume could have found this out in about thirty seconds by just Googling it (wonderful thing, those internets).

But you don't need Google if you're saved.

The Slow Death Of A Metropolis

Ryan Avent has a long and thoughtful post responding to a wrong-headed Prospect article on urban decline and its causes. Avent:

[S]o long as declining cities are still there, there will be cries to try and rejuvenate them with various public programs — tax incentives to lure new companies, public funding for stadiums or convention centers, bail-outs for failing firms. These kinds of things are simply not helpful. The issue is this: it’s never clear what transition is going to look like and what the right distribution of people and capital is going to be. In providing aid to struggling cities, then, we want to facilitate that transition, not impede it. We want to make people more mobile, even as we work to generate a high quality of life in growing cities and declining cities. We don’t want to lock up resources in declining cities, either by propping up failing companies or by trapping people in hopeless situations.

“They Want Blood”

A reader writes:

I too live here in a deep red state. The hatred of Obama is felt all over…they want blood. I can't imagine it being close to this bad in the purple/blue states, or else Obama would be polling below 40%.  There's a fever here in the "blood" states, for sure, but I think it

extends to the demographic that you refer to all the time.

I work for a small municipality and a 20 year old guy just got elected to city council runiing basically as a member of the Glen Beck party. His friends show up at council meeting with 9/12 Project t-shirts. And, yes, he tries to extend Glen's political ideology, whatever it is at the moment, to his work as a city councilman. It often comes off as boorish and combative, cause it really doesn't related to a lot of the things he votes on, but it's there nonetheless.

And what if the Rs campaign on repealing HC legislation? Then all the Ds have to do is run ads telling everyone aunt Nelda ain't gonna be getting insurance after all, because she has a pre-existing condition.There are good things this bill does that the Rs can be portrayed as now wanting to repeal.  It goes both ways.

Quote For The Day III

"In a way, Israelis are looking around and saying, 'We've achieved normalcy. We don't have bombings. The stock market's OK. Why should we launch another messy peace process that may rock the boat again?' " – Tamar Hermann, Israeli pollster.

This may be the real reason for Netanyahu's intransigence on settlements.

He shares Israelis' world-weary contempt for the peace process, suspicion of everything Arab and confidence that Israel can survive despite its neighbors:

Israel's commerce with the Arab world never amounted to more than 1 percent of its total international trade revenue.

But the demographic clock ticks and the constant West Bank and Gaza humiliations of Palestinians make animosity deeper. This is a short term optimism amid long-term crisis. And it's up to Obama to hold a mirror up and remind Israelis that they need to make some tough decisions sooner than they might like.