March 30^th

Henry‘s detritus will take a short hiatus while he gets new karabiners, sharpens his ice-ax and replaces some worn climbing ropes. More detritus will follow; that’s inevitable. Stay tuned!

 

March 28^th

Ted Cruz, as most everyone now knows, announced his candidacy for President at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. As most everyone also knows this educational institution required the attendance of its entire student body at Cruz’s coming out party; as a result some eleven thousand students showed up. If a student chose not to attend this event the reprimand cost would be a ten dollar fine. The administration claims that they want to expose their students to a variety of viewpoints and they do that through convocations. But then why did they disband the student’s Democratic Club in 2009?

According to PolitiFact there are many other ways to incur reprimands.  Participation in an unauthorized demonstration can produce twelve reprimands. (I wonder if there are any authorized demonstrations.) “Participation in a séance, witchcraft or other demonic activity carries a five-hundred dollar fine and possible expulsion.”  One can’t help but wonder if any cases of witchcraft have been reported.

This isn’t simply a case of fundamentalist paranoia worthy to be laughed at. Perpetuating the notion that witchcraft exists encourages unrestricted violence by some immigrant populations in this country and many others abroad who believe they are at the mercy of witches; the result is that they murder the suspected witch. In Kinshasa Nigeria there are more than 25 thousand abandoned children, abandoned because they cried for no discernable reason. Their parents were convinced by religious fanatics that their child was possessed of the devil and so had to be rejected. That an American institute of higher education would have a regulation implying the existence of witchcraft is beyond belief! Yet Cruz chooses this venue to announce his candidacy for President!

How do we describe the student body? Requirements for graduation include a generous dose of religion courses. Of the 120 credits required to graduate nineteen credits must be in religious studies. This is very close to the credits required for a minor in most colleges and is far more credits than the college requires in science. All-in-all I think Liberty University is a very appropriate place for Cruz to make his pitch to be the Republican standard bearer. They are a good fit for each other!

March 27^th

Our conservative de jour is Phil Kerpen. His message today is a call to repeal the inheritance tax but like the good conservative he is he calls it the “Death Tax.”

He tells us that 61 percent of the public support this tax’s repeal.  I’m surprised that it’s only 61 percent; how many would support the repeal of the gasoline tax, their state’s sales tax or whatever tax you might name? The estate tax will affect just .12 percent of all estates in this country; that’s about eight-tenths of one percent and that’s not very many. One reason is that the exemption is now well over 5 million dollars for an individual and close to 11 million dollars for a married couple.  A spouse can pass his estate to his wife or husband free of any estate tax. Then when the wife or husband dies there is an 11 million dollar exemption. That estate has to be more than 11 million dollars before any federal estate tax is owed. Of course this is for the federal estate tax, the states can have their say and right now some ten states have their own estate tax with exemptions much lower that the federal exemptions. Mr. Kerpen doesn’t touch that one, state’s rights you know.

He is also dead wrong about the federal estate tax. He claims, “We now have a tax on the books that takes up to 40 percent of everything a person leaves to his or her children as a punishment for success, for achieving the American dream.” That is, to put it inelegantly, “Horse Hockey.” As I pointed out above, not until the estate is worth nearly 11 million dollars is any estate tax owed. Kerpen must believe that there is no estate tax exemption or if he knows better he is quite simply lying.

He then cites a study that claims this tax is responsible for “the destruction of 1.1 trillion dollars of capital.” Apparently Kerpen believes that if you make the lie sufficiently outrageous people will believe it. The 1.1 trillion dollar figure he cites comes from “The Family Business Coalition.” They do not explain whether the “destruction” of these billions of dollars is the result of burning them in the streets, dumping them in the ocean or if this “destruction” is carried out in some more truly spectacular way!

Perhaps Kerpen himself deserves a closer look: A quick online search tells us that he has been very active in right wing organizations and now runs his very own as president of “American Commitment.” This group is organized as a 501 c 4 supposedly dedicated to social welfare. Hah! Really?  Openrecords.org has tried to check them out with little success because the money between this group and some others simply flies back and forth. As a 501 c 4 they cannot advocate for a candidate but they use wording that clearly shows which candidates they favor.

Mr. Kerpen is also an author: his book is titled “Democracy Denied: How Obama Is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America—and How to Stop Him.” This effort is available used on Amazon for one penny, perhaps because the original purchasers do not seem to want it in their libraries; even so I’d bet it’s still worth the purchase price.

March 26^th

Today George Will instructs us all in economics, at least in his version of economics. Does anyone believe that this will be “fair and balanced?” Neither do I.

Will quotes at length from, “Popular Economics: What the Rolling Stones, Downton Abbey and LeBron James Can Teach You about Economics.” This book was written by an editor of Forbes magazine, John Tamny. That may suggest to you the direction the book takes. Unfortunately it will be very hard for you to read this splendid book for yourself because it hasn’t been released to the public yet. The available date is about the middle of next month; meanwhile advanced copies have been made available to those expected to comment favorably on the book’s content. George Will has complied; he quotes many passages and agrees with all of them.

We find that “Most of the persons on the original list of the 400 richest Americans in 1982 were off the list in 2013.” I hope that doesn’t mean that a high percentage of former Forbes folks are now on food stamps. At this writing the poorest of the current Forbes 400 is worth 1.79 thousand million dollars.  If in another twenty years it takes 3 thousand million dollars to make the list I’ll bet the current list’s bottom feeders will still not need direct government assistance!

We learn about John D. Rockefeller who, surely out of the goodness of his heart, lowered the price of Kerosene to six cents a gallon in spite of the fact that he already had a monopoly. He may have gotten that monopoly by lowering the price to drive potential competitors out of the market. Rockefeller had plenty of other income sources which would have enabled him to do exactly that; in fact he was notorious for slicing prices to drive competitors out of his markets.

An interesting factoid presented without question, or citation, is this Tamny assertion, “When the wealth gap widens the lifestyle gap shrinks.” Will swallows this nonsense? What a fantastic statement; presumably folks at the bottom of the economic ladder find their circumstances much improved now that the top 1% are making  multimillion dollar salaries. Mr. Suh who now plays football for the Miami Dolphins recently signed a 60 million dollar guaranteed contract. (The total contract was for well over 100 million dollars.) Isn’t that wonderful for everybody? I wonder if Will or this editor of Forbes has, within the last ten years, ever had coffee with anyone on food stamps, you know say a full time Walmart employee.

Will should know that our Gini index (a measure of income inequality) is now at .41 compared with Sweden’s .24; that’s simply embarrassing and more embarrassing is Will’s apparent commitment to push it still higher. He seems unacquainted with, or purposefully ignoring, Gunnar Myrdal an architect of Sweden’s third way. The Stockholm School which Myrdal helped to found sought a middle way between Communism and Capitalism. The result was a Nobel Prize for Myrdal and the current economic situation in Sweden. The Swedes do not have to rely on improving the wealth of some so that many others can get larger crumbs from their table.

March 25^th

Cal Thomas comes forth today with some whoppers. “The President …behaves like an enemy of Israel when he attempts to impose a Palestinian state on Israel…” but then there is the fact that Netanyahu himself has suggested a “two state solution.” The problem with his solution is that it comes with conditions that the Palestinians could never accept and it’s clear that Netanyahu knows that. Even so, just before the election he flatly denied the possibility of a two state solution before he later modified that assertion.

“Israel embraces western values …free elections and religious tolerance… a free press and equal rights for women…” says Thomas. That will be news to the Israeli women who were stoned for praying at the Wailing Wall while the police looked on and did nothing. At least the police didn’t force them to leave the wall as they have done over and over again in the past. Israel is a semi theocratic state dominated by orthodox Jews. As for “pluralism” why would Netanyahu claim, as a scare tactic, that Arabs were “being bused in to vote?” I guess he was catering to the “real” Israeli’s fear of Israeli Arabs most of whom are Muslim; why else would he say that if he had nothing to gain by saying it? (The episode reminds me of the voter ID laws popping up in red states here that once simply intimidated black applicants trying to vote. Now with a stacked SCOTUS these states have a way to limit voting rights legally.)

Thomas goes on to claim that a Palestinian state would be a launching pad for an attack on Israel, that it would be suicide for Israel to return to the 1967 borders which he claims President Obama is pushing Israel to do. Where exactly does the President push Israel to return to the 1967 borders except for the international expectation that conquered territory should not benefit the conqueror? Most European nations take the same view of the Israeli situation that our government has, yet Cal Thomas criticizes only President Obama. Again it is clear that this country is the only friend Israel has; its only supporter and Netanyahu has chosen to risk throwing that away. Now Thomas tells us this is President Obama’s fault.

Netanyahu, when he spoke to Congress, claimed he wanted to give them his message. No, he wanted to humiliate the President. He could have communicated with Congress in a letter but that would not have been sufficiently incendiary for him, not nearly colorful enough for Netanyahu the demagogue. He craved the standing ovations he knew he would get from a Congress hostile to the President and he got what he wanted, perhaps more that he wanted.

Finally Thomas references Old Testament passages in Deuteronomy and Zachariah describing the horrible fate that awaits those who support Israel’s enemies. If we take those warnings seriously Cal I guess Israel doesn’t really need us anymore.

 

March 24^th

Today Mona Charen’s column is all about race. She begins by attempting to establish her bona fides on the topic; as a child she grew up in a black neighborhood and had black friends and neighbors. She even had a black “much adored second grade teacher” so clearly there couldn’t be a racist bone in her body. She then tells us how she was chased and beaten up in this same neighborhood when she was nine years old. Of course she was; if she had been a lone black kid in a poor white neighborhood or even a strange white kid in a white neighborhood the same thing would have happened.

Mona claims that when we are asked to engage in a conversation about race what is wanted is a confession of sin by white people and, despite vastly diminishing levels of racism the old stain continues to poison the lives of minorities. This, she tells us, is a fiction. Really, tell that to the parents of a demented black kid who waved a screwdriver at a white cop in Madison and was shot dead five seconds later.

Then she claims that she is extra polite and considerate toward black people in an attempt to make up for our racist past. She maintains that the entire quota of social programs including trillions of dollars and even the election of “Barack Hussein Obama testifies to how badly America yearns to prove its racial bona fides.” Absurdities will multiply when they go unchallenged. Tell us Mona what is your reference is for these trillions of dollars in social programs designed to compensate blacks for past discrimination? I thought our social programs were race neutral and not specifically aimed at African Americans. If I was wrong then which programs were designed specifically to help African Americans and make up for our past sins?

Then we have the bizarre notion that whites elected President Obama from a sense of guilt. That remark comes close to being delusional. Obama lost the white vote by 20 percentage points, a statistic Charen could have obtained in 30 seconds on the internet. Never mind if Charen was concerned about truth she would never had said “trillions” were being spent on social programs to compensate blacks for racial injustices.

Finally Mona gets to what she sees as the nub of the issue, the kernel that proves no amount of help can improve the black community; it’s because of absent fathers. She claims that family structure is a far better predictor of poverty than is race, but the correlation between family structure and poverty is exactly the same as the correlation between poverty and family structure. Any high school student can tell you that the correlation between “A” and “B” is exactly the same as the correlation between “B” and “A.” Mona is in well over her head.

She speaks glowingly of Pat Moynihan and claims that we haven’t had an honest conversation about race since; nor does she provide one here.

March 23^rd

Ted Cruz has announced his candidacy for President. He did that today from a stage at Liberty University; this is the school founded and previously administered by the fundamentalist minister Jerry Falwell. Now his son, Jerry Falwell Jr. is continuing in his father’s tradition. The Reverend Falwell Jr. fervently believes that the earth is less than 10 thousand years old and that dinosaurs and humans occupied the earth at the same time. While evolution is taught there so is creationism which is pushed as the superior choice.

Senator Cruz was at least assured of an audience; all Liberty University students were required to attend the speech announcing his candidacy. The requirement to attend was not seen by all students as a requirement to support Cruz; some students showed up in crimson t-shirts with their choice, Rand Paul, emblazoned on the front and these sat well within camera range. (I know of one college requiring attendance at convocations which found students unfurling newspapers just as the speaker began holding forth. Students can be difficult to push around!) The Senator at one point asked that all members of his audience use their cell phones to send their email addresses to his campaign headquarters; this would make it easier for them to receive invitations to contribute to his campaign.

The students were particularly enthusiastic when he claimed that when elected he would immediately repeal “Obama Care.” I doubt that any of these undergraduates knew that repealing this legislation would immediately remove them from their parent’s health insurance. Adolescents are quite susceptible to most forms of demagoguery and while Cruz’s high-pitched voice is not well suited to that task, otherwise he has all the rhetorical skills of Huey Long, even if they have totally different messages.

There is little doubt that if the “Old Confederacy” still existed, Cruz would have a splendid chance at the nomination for its presidency and he would probably win it. Unfortunately for Cruz the majority of Americans, even the majority of Republicans, are not much impressed by his efforts. A poll today shows Cruz’ candidacy with just three percent of the Republican vote tied there with Huckabee against Jeb Bush’s 13 percent. In fact no poll by anyone shows Cruz anywhere but in the very low single digits.

I’m sure the Democrats would love to see the Tea Party Kid surge forward and get the nomination. That is unlikely to happen but we can all hope for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

 

March 22^nd

 

Today we’ll look at George Will’s column. George is concerned because “millions of female-led households are being established by women who by focusing on their careers are delaying motherhood partly because of a shortage of suitable partners.” Well, maybe, but the key weasel word here is “partly.” I think George is looking back wistfully to the days of yore when the ideal life for a woman, even a professional woman, was to breed and serve her husband. What percentage of college educated women are not marrying because they cannot find “suitable “partners George doesn’t say…and he doesn’t say because he doesn’t know! I would maintain that many bright, well educated women who are not marrying and having children are not doing so because they aren’t the least interested in doing so.

He then includes a riff from another Princeton alum, a woman who counsels the undergraduate women of Princeton to find a husband from among the males at hand because they will never again have as good a chance to find a husband as intelligent as they are. This advice has been given to undergraduate women for as long as I have had any connection with colleges and that is a very long time indeed.

Will continues by calling attention to “assortative mating.” Simply put this means we tend to marry people like ourselves. Will claims that this process concentrates advantages in the children of those favored by genetics and culture to take advantage of opportunities. This leads him to “privilege theory” which makes the obvious claim that some men are born with advantages. Then he says that the notion government can do anything to equalize this situation is “dubious.” Finally he cites one Joy Pullman who writes for The Federalist and who maintains that this attempt at equalization is “incompatible with freedom.” How is helping disadvantaged people incompatible with freedom?  Perhaps it’s incompatible with the children of privilege feeling free to be superior to everyone else.

How does increasing the opportunities for those not born to the purple decrease the benefits and freedoms for those who were? Could it be that whatever success you inherit is diminished if I am successful too? Surely even a conservative wouldn’t stoop to believing that! But then I could be wrong.

 

March 21^st

Today we will comment on some of Dr. Charles Krauthammer’s recent utterances. Dr. Krauthammer is a very well educated, perhaps even brilliant, psychiatrist whose political mutterings have attracted him to Fox News—or perhaps vice versa.

Dr. Krauthammer has recently claimed that President Obama “despises” Prime Minister Netanyahu more that he does President Putin or, indeed, the Ayatollah Khomeini. How Dr. Krauthammer knows this remains a mystery. He does not claim to have ever met the President. Perhaps psychiatrists have some special training that allows them to rank order the extent that “A” despises “B,” “C,” and so on.

We are told that President Obama is not happy about Netanyahu’s convincing win in the recent Israeli elections. This win was gained partly by Netanyahu reversing his pledge of a two state solution to the Palestinian problem and partly due to the race baiting Netanyahu did by claiming that Arab citizens were being bused in to vote. Krauthammer has decided in his column that Netanyahu’s reversal on the issue of Palestinian statehood was irrelevant. He claims that there would be no Palestinian state no matter who won. If so then why did Netanyahu destroy his credibility by admitting he lied about his views on statehood for the Palestinians?

It is not that Obama despises Netanyahu so much as Netanyahu despises Obama. He has made that very clear by his actions to address the Congress and to bash any negotiations with Iran that the President might undertake. The result is that Netanyahu has won an election but put the nation of Israel at considerable risk. His visit has encouraged the “47” Senators to attempt to scuttle the President’s negotiations with Iran and in so doing increased the Iranian hard-liners position.

Perhaps we might examine this “stunning electoral victory;” It happens that Netanyahu got exactly 23.2 percent of the popular vote, that’s right; he got less than a quarter of Israeli votes! That’s more than he was expected to get but it’s rather like a boxer who is not expected to last a full round knocked out early in the second round and claiming that  he won a great victory. Notice that this paltry 23 percent was obtained by admitting to a lie and playing on the not totally illegitimate paranoia of Israeli citizens. It happens that even in the settlements most at risk for Palestinian attacks and hence most expected to cave to Netanyahu’s message he still couldn’t get more than one-third of the popular vote.

Now this consummate politician has risked his strongest ally’s policy of protecting his country by vetoing any resolution condemning their lopsided response toward west bank attacks. Many Europeans would probably not differentiate between the Palestinian terrorists, Hamas, and Israeli terrorists, the Irgun. Netanyahu’s work to mend his fences has just started.

March 20^th

The history lesson today is provided by Thomas Sowell. Mr. Sowell likens Benjamin Netanyahu to Winston Churchill because both were sounding the alarm against aggression. One might as well compare a lion with a weasel!

Churchill tried to prod the British into rearming to face the Nazi threat. Roosevelt tried to do that in this country but was blocked at every step by Republicans in Congress who insisted that we remain neutral; other ‘American Firsters” claimed that we should not antagonize Hitler.

Sowell goes on at some length detailing the various attempts to control Nazi expansion with treaties; none worked, Hitler never kept his word. He was almost as bad at keeping treaties as we were with the Native American tribes. It is estimated that we had and broke about 500 “Indian Treaties.” We broke other treaties as well; the Guadalupe–Hidalgo Treaty of 1848 which ended the war with Mexico had conditions which were essentially ignored by this country. (Nor will you find them in Texas history school books.)

Sowell claims that Churchill said in 1932 that, “Alone among nations we have disarmed while others have rearmed.” Sowell claims that, “Today the United States has that dubious and reckless distinction.” He claims that, “While Russia and China increased the share of their national output devoted to military spending we have decreased ours.” That’s true and egregiously misleading. Sowell actually implies here that we are disarming! Sowell says that, “Churchill deplored the gullibility of disarmament advocates in 1932 and that gullibility is still not exhausted in 2015.”

Let’s look at some data from the Stockholm International Center for Peace Institute: In 2012 the combined military expenditures of China and Russia was .257 billion dollars, our expenditures were .682 billion dollars or 2.65 times as much as the combined expenditures of China and Russia. In 2013 China and Russia combine for .276 billion while we spent .640 billion, or 2.32 times as much. In 2014 China and Russia spent .199 billion while we spent .581 billion, a decrease from the previous year but now 2.92 times as much as China and Russia spent together. This, Sowell implies, is some sort of disarmament? I wonder if his belief that we are disarming has led Sowell to sell short any defense stocks. Somehow I doubt that he has done that.

Sowell doesn’t have as much trouble with the truth as Netanyahu who has now that he has won the election is trying to back away from his claim that he against a two state solution. He just isn’t in favor of it right this very minute. Can you say weasel?

March 19^th

George Will today is promoting the Presidential qualifications of Ohio’s Governor Kasich. Among Kasich’s many accomplishments Will lists that he has cut taxes by three billion dollars and that “death is no longer taxable.” (But George, death has never been taxable…anywhere. It’s the proceeds you gain from someone else’s death, if they are large enough, that are taxable. Please George; you know better than to mislead people like that!) Then about the three billion in reduced taxes: that’s splendid from a conservative perspective; now tell us which programs were sacrificed to reduce taxes by that much. Since Ohio doesn’t have to worry about defense spending these reductions are probably to social programs and so would be an added recommendation for Kasich in the view of most conservatives.

Will claims that Kasich reimburses state colleges and universities on a per-pupil basis and they “do not get a dime” for a student who doesn’t graduate. I can assure Kasich that his incentives will guarantee an increase in the number of students admitted to the state’s schools and will certainly increase the graduation rate. Of course Kasich has said nothing about maintaining admission standards or maintaining graduation standards; he just wants more students admitted and more students graduated. No problem Governor; your schools can do that!

At the moment Ohio State University’s first year students are an academically talented group; Their ACT scores for the middle 50 percent are at the 87 centile to 97 centile nationally. This means that only 25 percent of Ohio State entering students score below the 87 centile on a national test; that’s impressive! Unfortunately, with the governor’s incentive program it probably won’t last.

Will tells us that Kasich does not “do modulation.” I assume that means Kasich is not interested in discussion and is perhaps a trifle rigid. Will does not elaborate on what he means by “modulation.” He does tell us that “sometimes he (Kasich) suggests that opposition to him annoys God.”  Isn’t that just the sort of guy we need in the White House?

As a case in point about educational incentives, here is a case study: I was an active college professor for more than thirty years. After I retired I taught one introductory class in my field at a nearby community college. (No, it was not NMC.) This community college wanted students to get passing grades because their state subsidy was tied to enrollment and so they discouraged faculty from giving any failing grades at all. Justifying the failing grades I gave was easy: a quarter of my students never showed up for class and another quarter never passed a test. This was all the more remarkable because I was cautioned against including the “science” based chapters of the text…and the high school level text had been chosen before I arrived. I never taught there again, much to everyone’s relief…including mine! That was my experience in a college whose state funding was on a per pupil basis.

March 18^th

Netanyahu has won the Israeli election; now he has to recover the damage he has done to his reputation among many European nations and among liberal Americans.  He has always been seen as a “hard liner” even among his supporters in this country.

Israel and Netanyahu have had a recurring problem with the truth. In the 1967 war Israel insisted that Egypt had struck first. They hadn’t; Israel had. This first strike, once it was obvious, was seen as a legitimate act of preemptive war. Even so Israel’s initial lies about Egypt striking first did not help Israel’s reputation for veracity.

Then Netanyahu, in order to garner more right wing support, reversed his previous commitment to a two state solution between Palestinians and Israel.  His commitment to a two state solution was never believed by Israel’s Arab neighbors. George Mitchel, who had successfully brokered the Northern Ireland peace treaty, was given the task of investigating the possibility of peace between Palestinians and Israelis. In this capacity he claimed that after interviewing the heads of nearly twenty Arab countries and telling them of Netanyahu’s commitment to a two state solution all of them told him that Netanyahu was lying. Now we find that the Arabs were right.

Settlement of the conquered territories has been an issue between the US the UN and Israel since the ’67 war. On this matter Israel will do as it pleases in spite of US and UN objections. They quite deliberately began new settlements to coincide with Vice President Biden’s recent visit. Sticking your finger in your benefactor’s eye can have interesting consequences. We shall see.

Israel is land poor. The country occupies about 8 thousand sq. miles with a population of about 8 million people. The conquered territories add about another 3 thousand sq. miles available for Israeli settlement. While Israeli inflation is in check, housing prices, particularly in the major cities, have soared by 50 percent in the last seven years. At the same time the Israeli government is encouraging more Jewish immigrants. Netanyahu, in response to attacks on a Synagogue in Holland, recently said that all Dutch Jews should immigrate to Israel so that they would be safe. As Europeans become more disgusted with the disproportionate Israeli response to Palestinian attacks on their citizens, European Jews are increasingly targeted. As more European Jews are targeted more move to Israel exacerbating the housing problem there which, in turn, leads to more settlements on the occupied territories. This is hardly a virtuous circle!

Of course Netanyahu has many dear friends in this country, some very rich like Sheldon Adelson and some just ordinary Republican Senators who support, without question, any right wing cause.

March 17^th

Mona Charen has her usual harsh words for the President today and quite naturally commends the 47 Republican signers of the letter to Iran. She remarks that the President said it was ironic that the Senators were on the same side as the “supposed” Iranian hardliners (her quotes). “Supposed” hardliners Mona? Does that imply the Ayatollah Khomeini is not really a hard liner? She claims that comments about the letter were “snorting and pawing of earth;” how colorful. If you have a weak case you can at least use colorful language in your attempt to make it.

She claims that President Obama’s appeal to Congress to authorize airstrikes is an “abrupt about face;” of course it isn’t. The President has asked for this sort of authorization before but Congress hasn’t wanted to grant it. If these airstrikes get our military into trouble Congress wants clean hands. They remember agreeing to the Invasion of Iraq and everyone, including Hillary Clinton would like a revote! The President has said that he doesn’t require Congressional approval for airstrikes but that the people’s representatives should be involved.

Charen then spends an entire column of print on what she says are the “most consequential and catastrophic of Obama’s lies” citing The President’s repeated comments that Iran should not have the bomb. There are three extended quotations to this effect. Then follows some references to a number of right wing pundits who, she declare, have “documented the President’s true wish—for a detente with Iran paving the way for nuclear status.” This documentation consists largely of innuendo and many, many words; it is reminiscent of the documentation Giuliani presented to show that the President doesn’t love America.  Mona apparently sees no difference between nuclear status, which, for example, Japan has; and having a nuclear bomb which Japan hasn’t. A little physics never hurt anybody.

Finally, there is an adage in political investigation called, “Follow the money.”  Who might benefit from throwing a wrench into the negotiations with Iran? If you have been following the oil market you know that the price of crude oil has had a very significant drop; it had been about 100 dollars a barrel and now it is below 50 dollars a barrel. This drop is the result of overproduction in excess of 1.25 million barrels a day; as you might imagine this drop has had a catastrophic effect on oil stocks and on employment in oilfields, particularly in Texas. Losing money can irritate the high rollers who hold oil stocks. If an agreement is reached with Iran and sanctions are lifted Iran will send another million barrels a day to the oil market. Can you think of any politician who would prefer not to have that happen? I can; I can think of several.

March 16^th

Patrick J. Buchanan is back today and using a Hoover Institute report predicts the downfall of the European Union. He cites the European unemployment rate of 11.4 percent compared with our 5.6 percent. He fails to note that the 11.4 percent may be distorted by Greece’s 27percent and Spain’s 26 percent. These two countries combined have a very much smaller population than Germany whose unemployment rate is just over 5 percent and that is less than ours. Europe is not yet a basket case. In fact many economists believe that Germany’s stock market right now is a better bet than our own.

Pat quotes at length from Bruce Thornton’s “The EU has Failed;” Thornton is a classicist and a military historian affiliated with the Hoover Institute. His background includes not a hint of training in political economy or any other kind of economics; never mind, his views appeal to Buchanan. I will try to summarize a lengthy two column quote: Thornton asks, “What comprises the collective beliefs and values…that form the foundations of a genuine European wide community?” That’s easy and that rationale formed the basis for the Treaty of Rome; it was an opposition to the continuous wars that had plagued Europe for more than a century. That is what led European nations to relinquish some of their sovereignty and form the European Union.

Thornton does not pursue this line of reasoning; he goes off on a harangue about church attendance. He claims that Christianity “gives divine sanction to notions of human rights…political freedom and equality.” These are all good things of course but where is religious freedom? Thornton leaves that out, perhaps he thinks no one will notice; but someone has! He, and consequently Buchanan, despairs because Christianity is fading as a force in the lives of Europeans and indeed it is. He maintains that, “social democracy (has not)… given reason to sacrifice for the common good.” That’s absurd on its face. The Nordic and other more socialist countries of the Union have voted themselves huge tax burdens because they see the social programs they support favoring the common good.

Europeans in the past have experienced religiously motivated wars and massacres. Witness the persecution of the Huguenots who were subjected to more rigorous social restrictions than the Nazis placed on the Jews. Then there was the plague of wars propelled by nationalistic pride: from Napoleon to Bismarck to Kaiser Wilhelm to Adolf Hitler. Is it any wonder that the people of Europe would work to avoid the continuation of such a curse? Frankly I doubt that filling up European cathedrals would help; it certainly didn’t in the past.

March 15^th

George Will, in his column today, fixates on a graph which shows quite conclusively that as unemployment decreases the welfare rolls are increasing. There is no doubt that this does seem to be happening. Will then concludes that social welfare programs obviously don’t work and suggests that we must look at the “social pathology” of unmarried black women having children; indeed 72 percent of African-American children are born to single women and three million mothers under thirty are not living with the fathers of their children. No one suggests that all of these three million are black.

Maybe we should look at this relationship between job growth and welfare growth first. This indicates that as jobs become more plentiful the welfare rolls increase. Will agrees with former Senator Moynihan who pointed this out that it is counter intuitive; it isn’t, at least not now. Will should make the acquaintance of some Walmart employees; when these people are hired they are given printed instructions about how to apply for food stamps and other government assistance. That’s welfare; it means they have a job so they’re employed but they earn so little that they are eligible for welfare. This and similar situations could well account for much of this relationship. Will assumes that if welfare rolls increase as jobs increase then welfare isn’t working; that’s nonsense!

Then there is Will’s contention that black fathers are absent because the mothers of many black children are single. In fact we now have about 73% of all women at age thirty and below who have lived with someone before they were married. Simply because a woman is single and a parent does not mean that there is no male in the house. And the male in the house may not be the child’s father.

If Will is so concerned about poor women, whether black or not—note that he doesn’t mention any but black women—having children that need public support why does he mention absolutely nothing about birth control? Organizations like Planned Parenthood provide free advice and free contraceptives to poor people. Will seems unaware of the organization, or of other routes poor people have to effective birth control. For someone so knowledgeable and so concerned about these issues this is a remarkable omission. Could it be that this doesn’t fit his right wing agenda?

 

March 14^th

Forty-seven is a recurring number for conservative politicians: first there was Romney’s 47 percent who would never vote for him because they were benefiting from progressive welfare programs and then there were the 47 Senators who sent the letter to the Iranians about the hazards of trusting agreements with an American President. Certainly the first instance helped Romney lose his election to the President; the fallout from the second 47 hasn’t yet played out.

This morning’s “Factcheck” has an interesting piece about Senator Ron Johnson, one of the letter signatories. The Senator claims that the Iranian “Parliament will be able to say yes or no on this deal and I think the US Congress should have the exact same deal.” Well, not really. Senator Johnson is as ignorant of Iranian government as he assumes Iranians are ignorant of ours.

Their parliament is not quite like our Congress; first the clerics in charge of the country must approve your candidacy before you can run for office. The issues you can approve, once you’re elected, have already been approved by the supreme leader and the unelected members of the Guardian Counsel. What would happen if any member of this parliament failed to approve a measure that these senior people had already approved? No one knows because that has never happened. Senator Johnson’s notion that these governing bodies are somehow equivalent is simply wrongheaded.

There has been some second guessing on the part of at least one Senator but other high level Republicans are sorry they were left out. The Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, wanted to sign the letter, the former governor of Texas, Rick Perry was also disappointed that he was left out. Maybe they can get another letter together, have Republican Governors sign it and reinforce the Senators. But not all the signatories are now convinced the letter was a great idea. Senator McCain said that the Senators should have considered the matter a little longer but it was snowing, the weather was closing in, and they all had planes to catch. No comment on that line of reasoning is necessary.

There has also been a response from Iran: The Ayatollah Khamenei, himself, said that the letter was “a sign of the decline in political ethics and the destruction of the American establishment from within.” Now the Republicans are getting lessons in political ethics from the Iranian leadership. Not long ago a Fox News type wanted to accuse Diane Feinstein of being a traitor for giving aid and comfort to the enemy when she released a torture report. Certainly this letter has overjoyed the Iranian leadership. I’ll bet Fox News will not accuse these Senators of being traitors; fair and balanced?

March 13^th

Hillary Clinton’s emails are getting a severe bashing today from Cal Thomas, another old white man pontificating for the right wing. At the end of his column he tells us why: “Without Hillary…as their nominee the Democrats have a weak bench. With her they may be more likely to lose the next election if lingering questions are not adequately answered.” Cal wants to make sure that the “lingering questions” remain at the forefront of everyone’s attention.

Thomas makes several points that have nothing to do with Hillary Clinton’s emails: they have to do with the Clinton’s “baggage” as he puts it. President Clinton has been out of office for close to fifteen years but Cal Thomas feels the need to remind everyone of Whitewater, cattle futures, Monica Lewinsky, and yada, yada. All of these questions are supposed to reflect unfavorably on Hillary Clinton as a Presidential candidate. So how did they reflect on Bill Clinton’s Presidency? He, after all, was the target; so what was the result for him? He left office with a 65% approval rating, the highest approval rating of any departing President in the last fifty years. Cal Thomas neglects to mention that. Whatever happened to “fair and balanced?”

He also has to bring Lois Lerner’s emails into the picture. She was accused of targeting right –wing organization wanting tax exemptions; her boss said the emails were lost but then found out they weren’t. I’ve written about Lerner before. She refused to testify before Congress although she pleaded guilty to bias in administering her office and so, in the conservative tradition, was found guilty as accused and summarily kicked out of her job; literally escorted from her office under police guard. What that deplorable incident has to do with the Clintons Thomas doesn’t say. Give him time; he’ll find a link.

Then Cal Thomas asks why mid-east countries, not known for their favorable treatment of women, would contribute to the Clinton Foundation?  What would they expect in return?”  It’s clear that for those on the right, contributions to anything produce an expectation of a good return on your money. If Cal contributes to his church do you suppose that he expects salvation in return? Maybe the question about contributions to the Clinton Foundation was only designed to create a little more paranoia about the Clintons. That seems to be the only focus of this entire piece.

March 12^th

Today we’ll look at South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham’s talk at a New Hampshire meeting of politicos. The Senator said that if he were elected President, the first thing he would do would be to call out the army, surround the capital, and keep the legislators in session until they had restored all the recent military cuts. An observer claims that this comment was met by some mild and amused snickers. Maybe that was because no one took the Senator seriously; his chances of winning the Republican nomination are not zero because that would be mathematically impossible.

Subsequently, David Weigl, writing for Bloomberg News tells us that a Graham staffer claimed the Senator’s was “not to be taken literally.”  (So maybe this was a metaphor?) Graham really had no other choice: he could say he was joking, although he didn’t say that—a staffer did; or he could say he was dead serious in which case he was dead, at least his candidacy would be dead. Telling the world that you would use the armed forces to mount a coup to enforce your views if you became President will not get you friends, except perhaps among the lunatic right. Graham’s remarks coupled with his mentor McCain’s “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” are enough to move most anyone toward paranoia…forget the 47 Senators attempting to scuttle peace talks.

Maybe Graham’s remarks were motivated by fear for his country’s safety, a desire to strengthen our military in a clearly unsafe world. Well, perhaps; but there is another possible motivation, one common among Republicans: money. If this military spending is restored who benefits? The citizens of South Carolina do and they benefit enormously; they have about 900 defense contractors and eight major military bases. Together these pump enormous amounts of wealth into the state. Out of a population of 4.7 million people in South Carolina 65 thousand are military. In Michigan, by contrast, in a population of slightly under 10 million just 33.5 thousand are military. Military spending is very important to South Carolina. This could account for some of Lindsay Graham’s hawkishness.

It is worthwhile to note that while Graham wants to restore those awful and reckless military cuts he nowhere suggests how they might be paid for.

March 11^th

In a truly Orwellian twist Governor Rick Scott of Florida has banned the terms “climate change” and “global warming” from the permitted phrases used in state communications. He also absolutely denies that he did any such thing. I saw the press conference in which he was asked about it. In it he ducked and dodged and refused even then to say those awful words. Instead he said that Florida was focused on state problems yada, yada, yada. As if the rise in sea levels already occurring, and those predicted to come, would not be a problem for Florida.

Governor Scott’s anxiety about any acknowledgment of climate change is understandable. There is a building boom in Florida. He wants that to continue as long as he is governor and after that, well, who cares? He certainly doesn’t. Given that vast stretches of Florida are less than three feet above sea level; to be specific that’s 145 billion dollars-worth of homes and 2100 sq. miles of land. Drop down to less than two feet above high tide and there are71 billion dollars in homes which have a good chance of disappearing before a 30 year mortgage is paid off!

The Governor has decided that building permits and forecasts will use the sea rise over the last hundred years to forecast how much sea rise to predict for the next hundred years; that’s eight inches and that’s a joke! If you are Governor Scott and you want folks to come to Florida and build, build, build, you do whatever you have to do to quiet this climate change nonsense. First, don’t let anyone talk about it; maybe then it will go away!

The governor’s insistence that he has given no order to ban the terms “global warming’ and “climate change” have a difficult time with some facts; Typical is the case of a young woman who recently obtained a Ph.D. in epidemiology from a Florida University. Unfortunately for her it involved the effect of climate change on ciguatera, a food produced illness. Before she could publish her paper she had to get clearance from a Florida bureaucrat, Sharon Watkins, who oversees the department which had to approve this woman’s paper.  Well, there was a holdup because you see the effect of climate change was at the heart of this research so that term was in the write-up for publication and this would not do at all. This scientist was not allowed to publish a paper on the effects of climate change because her paper mentioned climate change. Ultimately the bureaucrat and the scientist reached an agreement by calling climate change “climate variability.”

The Governor has another problem: government flood insurance premiums are being adjusted upward because the program is running billions in deficits. One family bought a new home in Florida expecting a 3 thousand dollar flood insurance bill; it was 21 thousand dollars. That’s a federal program and there is nothing Scott can do about it; playing with words won’t help. Florida is in a pickle and Scott is only worried about what will benefit Scott.

March 10^th

We now have 47 new residents of Foggy Bottom, new Secretaries of State, all Republican. Well, not really; they just think they are now in Foggy Bottom. They have written a brief letter to the Iranian leadership declaring that any agreement reached only with President Obama and not approved by them can be “reversed by a stroke of the pen.” The list of bold signatures was longer than the condescending letter which began by declaring that perhaps the Iranians did not understand our constitutional system. It’s not altogether certain that these Senators understand it either!

 The leader of this rump bunch is Senator Thomas Cotton a newcomer to the Senate; he is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He has served, as an officer of course, in both Iraq and Afghanistan and he is accustomed to being noticed! He has managed to get forty-six other Republican signatures to this brief didactic letter on the Constitution. It is interesting to note that Cotton could not get all of the Republican Senators to sign on and he got not one Democrat; so much for the new boy attempting to reach across the aisle. That sort of thing is only expected of Presidents.

This effort skirted narrowly around the letter of the Logan Act while violating the spirit of it.  The Logan Act prohibits unauthorized American citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. Its purpose was to avoid having citizens undercut government efforts to deal with foreign powers. (In 2007 Nancy Pelosi met with Syria’s dictator Assad in spite of President Bush requesting that she not do it. The Republicans howled about that. Now the roles are reversed.)

Senator Cotton, true to his militaristic associations, has recommended that we provide Israel with B-52 bombers and a supply of Bunker Busting Bombs. He has not suggested that we supply Israel with additional nuclear weapons, but that my come. He recently was an honored guest at the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) meetings. These folks promote and profit by more government defense spending.  Senator Cotton is very popular with them. He has their full support, and potentially their massive funding for his campaigns.  While he advocates much more defense spending he remains very silent about how it should be paid for. He is a good Republican after all. Perhaps we should send Cotton a copy of “Dr. Strangelove or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb.” But that might encourage him. He might not see the movie as a dark comedy.

During his Senate campaign he said that ISIS and Mexican drug cartels joining force to attack Arkansas was an urgent problem. One wag has suggested that he is Sarah Palin with a Harvard degree. I think Sarah is smarter than that!

 

March 9^th

Patrick J. Buchanan has taken issue with Eric Holder’s classification of the Ferguson Police Department as racially biased. Pat maintains that after diligently searching through many emails only seven racist ones were found. Moreover the many nights of riots and looting that followed the killing of the black teenager were clearly a disproportionate response to just one killing. Then there was the testimony of witnesses who later recanted their accusations. All-in-all Pat tells us that this fine white police officer is “innocent of the slanders” that have been brought against him. Pat takes issue with the claim that a disproportionate number of blacks have been cited for various crimes because this is the case nationally.

Patrick J. Buchanan is a bigot; the matter has been thoroughly investigated by no less a stalwart conservative that William F. Buckley Jr. In a 40 thousand word investigative piece Buckley concluded that Buchanan’s racist comments disqualified him from consideration as a candidate for the Presidency (1992). On civil rights legislation Buchanan had said,

 

“There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The 'negroes' of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours.” (Right from the Beginning, Buchanan's 1988 autobiography)

 

It seems unlikely that Buchanan will give us an even-handed look at Ferguson, MO…and he hasn’t! 
The statistics he cites are accurate but he is careful about which ones he gives us. It’s true that blacks in Ferguson appear to commit a disproportionate number of crimes; at least they are charged a disproportionate number of times. That is not the same! It is also true that fines levied primarily against blacks are used to finance the City of Ferguson. Sometimes a simple parking ticket could escalate to a thousand dollar penalty. Sometimes the charges were just silly. A black man resting in his car after a sweaty work-out near a playground was arrested and charged as a pedophile, then when he gave his name as Mike instead of Michael he was accused of lying to a police officer.

Six percent of the police force is black, ninety-four percent are white; the town is two-thirds black and one-third white. Could that be a pattern? After Holder’s findings were announced exactly three police officers were dismissed. The chief responsible for this mess was not relieved of duty and was not available for questioning. More will be heard about this subsequently. Buchanan mentions none of this.

Then to the brave officer who shot the teenager, I’ve gone over this before: Following the altercation in his police car Wilson called for back-up but he couldn’t wait for it to arrive. He’d been “disrespected” you see, so he left his patrol car and went looking for this enormous teen (6’3’’ and 290 lbs.). He found him and in a fearful panic for his life he killed him.

Buchanan gives us no information about the use of fines to support the city, about the disparity between the black/white ratios on the police force and in the city, nor of some of the absurd charges by police against black citizens. This is hardly a surprise. What is a surprise is that newspapers continue to carry his column!

 

March 8^th

Charles Krauthammer in a Washington Post opinion piece has made some of his usual wild exaggerations and a few outright, let’s just call them misstatements. His comments are a truly worshipful analysis of Netanyahu’s speech which he calls “Churchillian;” presumably because both Churchill and Netanyahu were warning about catastrophic future events. One of them was right but so far only one.

Krauthammer claims that Obama has, “… for six years offered the Mullahs an extended hand.” Really? That hand contained some severe sanctions and promised even worse if agreement could not be reached. Why else would Iran be at the negotiating table now if it were not for those sanctions? I’m sure Krauthammer doesn’t believe that they came to negotiate simply because of Obama’s charm.

Krauthammer makes much of the fact that after ten years the deal, assuming there is one, will expire. Naturally there is no possible way that this agreement could be extended if it seems necessary. If Iran agreed to the limits under threat of sanctions why would Krauthammer and Netanyahu believe that the agreement couldn’t be extended? The possibility of an extension would give Obama some credit and that for Krauthammer is simply unthinkable.

Netanyahu suggests some conditions and if these are not met then we “ratchet up sanctions.” For the first time is this diatribe Krauthammer actually mentions sanctions in his comments. Of course the “conditions” Netanyahu wants to place on Iran will have to be monitored and so far nothing has been said that would suggest that Netanyahu believes such monitoring would work. With Krauthammer’s mistrust of Iran you would think he would mention that,  but that would imply some criticism of his hero Netanyahu; unthinkable!

March 7^th

Today I’m going to speculate about the current rash of anti-Semitism. Of course anti-Semitism is not new but it is increasing. I’m going to hazard some guesses about why this is happening. First some givens: Israel is a small but powerful country; its army is quite capable of defending its territory from any attacker or combination of attackers. However, an enemy with atomic weapons is obviously an existential threat whether or not Israel also possesses these weapons.

In 2014 various attacks on Israel civilians by Hamas, a terrorist organization based in Palestinian territory, resulted in a reply by the Israeli military. The result was that 66 Israeli soldiers were killed and 2200 Palestinians were killed. (Palestinian deaths are variously estimated depending on the source.) Suffice it to say that the death toll was widely disproportionate between the two sides. This is typically the case when Israel decides on punitive efforts against attacks from the Palestinian territory.

In addition to the Palestinian deaths Israel usually demolishes homes which they believe have harbored terrorists or have been in any way involved in the attacks on Israel. These demolitions in 2014 left 60 thousand people homeless. At the same time Israel excludes many relief organizations from Palestine territory because they claim these organizations are pro-Palestinian. When various organizations attempt to censure Israel for this behavior the United States vetoes the censure. It seems clear that Israel believes that if they respond to Hamas with disproportionate force they can stop Hamas from attacking them. It isn’t working!

It is not working and it is producing some ill will partly because many people tend to favor the underdog in any contest and the disproportionate number of casualties in these affairs clearly show that the Palestinians are the underdogs. I believe that Hamas knows this and is quite deliberately provoking the Israeli attacks to gain world-wide sympathy for their cause. Putting their munitions and rocket launchers in residential areas is, I believe, an attempt to gain sympathy since they know that Israel will, quite predictably smash them and cause many civilian casualties.

As sympathy for Israel declines so does tolerance for Jews world-wide who have no connection whatever with Israel; this is not dissimilar to the attacks on Muslims and their mosques even if they have no connection with ISIS or other Muslim extremists. The process is called generalization, if you cannot attack the thing that irritates you then attack something similar.

Perhaps an additional comment about terrorists: Israel, as a state, owes a great deal to Irgun, a terrorist (Freedom Fighter?) group whose activities killing and bombing in British controlled Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s helped to encourage the British to leave and produced the Jewish State. Their most notable attack was the bombing of the King David Hotel which killed 91 people. Israel now has plaques celebrating this event. Go figure!

March 6^th

Ruth Marcus goes after Hillary Clinton today for doing public business with her private email account. Ruth Marcus is hardly a conservative so when she is unhappy with a liberal who is the likely nominee for the Democratic Presidential nomination people should pay attention, particularly people like me.

Hillary Clinton was, and is a very powerful person; a former First Lady, a former United States Senator, then a Secretary of State and now a likely candidate for the Presidency. Marcus makes no allowances for Hillary’s stature; her use of a private email account was clearly against State Department policy. Marcus quotes an impressive array of documents which support that conclusion.

So why would a savvy political operative like Hillary Clinton do such a thing? Most likely much of it was pure hubris; she did it because she had the power to do it. Which of her advisors would risk a six-figure plus salary by suggesting to Ms. Clinton that there were departmental rules against the practice? She probably also did it because she wanted to control access to her emails after being the target of right wingers over Benghazi; it was a bad decision. This private email business, once it became public, resulted in Clinton putting a “Kick me” sign on her back. Now she is trying to remove it by releasing 50 thousand emails with the result that her opponents ask, “How do we know that these are all of them?”  That’s an unanswerable question. By trying to remedy the problem she has taken down the “Kick me” sign and replaced it with a new “Kick me harder” sign.

The remedy may be time: it will be a year before the real election combat begins. The public is likely to be bored by the whole thing soon  in spite of right wing “ain’t it awful” efforts to keep it alive. We’d better hope that this is the case because Hillary is our only realistic candidate. Elizabeth Warren plans not to run; even so, Elizabeth is keeping her powder dry. Good thing too; we might need her!

March 5^th

“Tough to stop the IRS and its lawlessness” is the title of George Will’s column today. The IRS has been a favorite whipping boy ever since its existence began with the passing of sixteenth amendment in 1913. Much of the whipping was well deserved…and some of it wasn’t.

Will continues to demonize Lois Lerner, a thirty year government employee, who was effectively terminated May 22^nd 2013. On that date she was given a box, told to clean out her desk and was escorted out of the building by security. She was supposed to testify before a congressional committee, took the Fifth Amendment, and was thus presumed guilty and sent packing. George Will continues to pile on the invective.

So what’s this all about? It’s primarily about the 401(3) (c) designation for organizations. This designation allows contributors to the organization to get a tax deduction for their contributions. If you contribute to a political party you get no tax advantage, but if the organization is a 401c3 designated charity, a deduction for contributions is allowed. Of course such organizations can engage in “educational activities,” in voter registration efforts and in other equivalent activities but they cannot engage in pushing partisan legislation or in “education” favoring a particular candidate for office.

Many churches have this designation but some denominations are indignant that they cannot advocate for candidates favorably disposed toward their theological views. They claim that this prohibition violates their various constitutional guarantees. It doesn’t. It just offers a choice; they can be either a charitable institution or they can be a political advocacy group. They can’t be both so they complain about it.

In the case of Ms. Lerner we have a bureaucrat who held up the approval of organizations with Tea Party, Conservative, or other right wing political indicators in their applications but approved applications from liberal groups. I have a problem here: If this 401(3) (c) designation is supposed to be only for groups not pushing a political agenda then why should either group get approval?

The task of investigating and approving these organizations was not all done by Ms. Lerner; some of it was undertaken by other people in her organization of 900 people.  All of them had to be trained. Unfortunately the Congress in its infinite wisdom cut the training budget by 96% effectively eliminating it. As a result all of the excrement is dumped on Ms. Lerner’s head. She now, some years later still gets threatening hate mail as does her 86 year old mother. She is unemployable although she has the good fortune to have a substantial government pension. George Will believes that she should be prosecuted and laments that the statute of limitations will soon run out eliminating that possibility.

March 4^th

No right-wing columnists are in the paper today but there is still ample material for comment. I’ll begin with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech. This was a very well received effort if we judge by the number of standing applause interruptions. But then which legislator wants to be on cameras sitting silently while the head of the Jewish state is receiving thunderous approval from almost everyone else. Anyone doing that would immediately labeled an anti-Semite, so everyone applauded.

After the speech the comments were mixed; Bibi absolutely rejected the current efforts to negotiate a reduced level of Iranian nuclear development. He claimed that Iran would violate any treaty they signed. But of course any treaty would demand inspections so any violation would be known quickly. Netanyahu did not provide any alternative to negotiation. The impression was clearly given that Israel would attack Iran if they thought an attack was necessary.

(Make no mistake; nuclear weapons in Iran’s hands would be a catastrophe for us as well as for Israel. Iran is a well-known exporter of terror and they see us as a mortal enemy; they call us the great Satan. If they do develop atomic weapons it takes little imagination to picture a dozen or more terrorists with suitcase sized bombs exploding them in the heart of our major cities.)

 Suppose Israel did attack the nuclear facilities. Keep in mind that Iran has dispersed their nuclear efforts and that many are located very deep underground. How would the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) know if its air attacks had been completely successful? Israel does maintain a very sophisticated spy service. Some of that spying has been turned against us. Johnathan Pollard gave Israel secret documents about nuclear bomb development; was caught, convicted and is serving a life sentence for his crime. Israel promised not to do that again, a promise they haven’t kept.

While Israel scoffs at any treaties Iran might sign, Israeli promises regarding settlements in the territories conquered in the 1967 war are routinely ignored. Attempts by various international bodies to censure the Israelis for these settlements, which contravene international law, have routinely led to a US veto. We play big brother to the skinny adolescent who then finds that he can get away with anything he wants. Israel wonders why most Middle-Eastern countries want them pushed into the sea.

March 3^rd

Mona Charen’s column is titled, “Questions the press doesn’t ask Democrats.” Unfortunately for Mona this column comes just as the press is hot on the current awfulness of Hillary Clinton who, as Secretary of State, used her private email account to communicate with various people. I’m sure this will be a major issue for Fox News. (She had no government provided email account.)

Charen begins with a harangue about Scott Walker who sat without responding when Giuliani assured us that President Obama did not love his country. She snarkily asked if Walker was expected to grab Giuliani by the scruff of the neck and escort him off the stage. No, but he could have done what Senator McCain did in similar circumstances when a woman at one of his gatherings claimed Obama was an Arab and frightened her. McCain took the microphone and said, “No, he is a decent family man with whom I have some fundamental political disagreements.” Walker couldn’t imagine doing anything like that with Giuliani’s comment; Mona can’t imagine him doing it either, nor can I.

Then Mona asks why the press responded so forcefully to Giuliani’s assertion that Obama doesn’t love his country while ignoring Obama’s remark about Bush being “unpatriotic.” The reasoning behind Giuliani’s accusation, so he claimed, was based on “the way he was brought up.” (Later, after the firestorm started he gave other reasons.) In contrast, Obama’s comment about Bush was based on the fact that, at the end of his two terms, he left his country with two trillion dollars of debt! Charen leaves out that part but I would guess that many fiscal conservatives would agree with the reason for Obama’s characterization of Bush.

She is worried about “the participation of left-leaning journalists in Republican debates” and claims to have her own list of “journalists who will be fair.” I wonder if any of her “journalists who will be fair” work for fair and balanced Fox News? It’s too bad she won’t give us any names on this list of neutrals. Maybe she knows that on close examination they aren’t all that neutral!

Then we have a list of questions to ask of Democrats:  “How many immigrants should we welcome every year? As many as can get here? …presents any problem for unskilled Americans who are having trouble finding work.”  That is a hopelessly naïve question. Mona apparently believes all immigrants will come looking for unskilled jobs displacing unskilled American workers. At the Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital fully a third of the physicians are immigrants. In a few years we will be short 45 thousand physicians. Simply restricting the total number of immigrants is not the answer. Revising immigration laws is a complex issue and well beyond the simple–minded gotcha types of questions suggested by Mona Charen.  Her other suggestions for questions are equally naïve.

 

 

 

March 2^nd

Today we take a glance (sidelong) at CPAC. This is an acronym for the Conservative Political Action Committee. These folk meet aperiodically in various locations to allow members to air their views.

First an admission: I did not attend the meetings. My comments are based on interviews I saw and fragments of speeches presented on news channels. These are my impressions: I saw the former governor of Texas, Rick Perry, try to slip around the question from Dana Bash about putting “boots on the ground” to defeat ISIS. He finally said that yes he would do that if it was required. How would he decide if it was required? Bash didn’t ask that and Perry didn’t elaborate. For a man surely used to the spotlight he seemed desperately nervous during the interview.  I know this appearance was important to him but his mannerisms did not demonstrate much self-confidence. (Subsequently he claimed Hillary Clinton was “disloyal” because she did not report a 500 thousand dollar donation to the Clinton Foundation for Haitian Relief. All of that money went to Haitian relief.)

Another wowser was Dr. Ben Carson. Some of his quotes are strange. He has said that Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery. He was supposed to have said “worse than slavery.” He insists he didn’t say that but that he did say the worst thing since slavery. I suppose that’s a bit more defensible, but not by much. Was it worse than Jim Crow? Worse than lynching over 4 thousand people most of them black? Ben has said some other curious things although he maintains that he never really said them. What he admits to saying is bad enough. Recently he claimed his religion keeps him from being conned by science.

 Then we have Governor Scott Walker, the firebrand labor irritator. The Governor has claimed that if he can handle 100 thousand angry labor people ISIS will be no problem for him. Now he is on the hook for comparing American labor to ISIS! If you really want to play in the political big leagues you do have to consider how what you say will be perceived by your opponents!

Finally as one of the all-time great quote producers we have Sharron Angle. Sharron has lost a bit of press coverage since she lost a Senate race to Harry Reid in 2012. So many absurdities have come out of her mouth that it would be a joy to list them. Unfortunately she has lost relevance in the political arena so I will list only one: when addressing group of Latino students she said, “Some of you look a little more Asian to me.” She was speaking about criticism of her ads picturing Mexicans illegally crossing the border. She also insisted that Detroit had “sharia law.” And to think that she won’t win the Republican nomination! Oh pshaw!

I have come to believe that once a Republican aspires to high political office something interrupts the neural circuitry between the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the seat of planning and judgment, and the larynx, involved in speech.