Things fall apart

The New Neo Posted on by

THE SECOND COMING

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

That brilliant poem written by Yeats in 1939* [see note] came to mind after 9/11, expressing the sense of chaos and foreboding we all felt. It’s easy to forget how it appeared obvious that many attacks of similar magnitude would be forthcoming, particularly since 9/11 was followed quickly by the mysterious anthrax letters.

George W. Bush was president, and at the time—I was a Democrat, had not voted for him, and had been upset when he won in 2000—I was apprehensive about that, although I remember thinking that Al Gore as president would certainly not have been the man for the hour and that Bush was probably better suited to the situation. As the years went on, despite the setbacks in Iraq and elsewhere, things seemed to be going better than I would have expected on 9/12/2001.

Since the inauguration of Barack Obama as president they have been going steadily downhill, with an especially steep decline since November of 2014. Obama is not responsible for all of it, but I lay a great deal of it at his feet. Almost on a daily basis, I’ve been writing about the ways in which his actions have worsened things around the world. Although I’m not going to go into it in detail right now about all those ways, I think they are pretty obvious by this point to most readers here.

I will take just one example, though, and a relatively simple one compared with some of the others such as Iran: the Bo Bergdahl desertion charges. I wrote “relatively” simple, but that doesn’t mean the incident is simple at all.

The Bergdahl story actually has several layers of horribleness. The first was the prisoner exchange, which would have seemed a bad deal even if Bergdahl had been innocent of any wrongdoing—bad because it involved negotiating with terrorists, releasing captives of extreme dangerousness (five of them!), and also bad because Obama had omitted giving Congress notice although he was bound by law to do so. Then there was White House intransigence and denials in the face of mounting—and extremely compelling—evidence that Bergdahl was a deserter, which had become clear quite early on. Then there was the delay in charging Bergdahl, which was rumored to be the result of White House pressure on the military not to charge him. And maybe there will be further travesties, such as an exoneration despite convincing evidence of guilt.

But worst of all, really, was how the story dropped off the radar screen relatively quickly. That was understandable, though, because so many other terrible things were happening. That’s part of the plan, of course; to get us to play an ever-escalating game of whack-a-mole.

I realized back in 2010 (see the last paragraph of this post) that a second Obama term was to be dreaded because he would then be released from the need to answer to the electorate at all. But the electorate bears some responsibility too, as does the press and Congress. Why oh why are not more people screaming out that the emperor has been completely naked for quite some time now? And that really wouldn’t be strong enough, either, because a naked emperor may just be a fool (with foolish subjects willing to play along). This naked emperor is also malevolent.

The “why oh why” is rhetorical on my part; I suppose I know the answer. It’s certainly a question we’ve discussed before on this blog. But in a more basic way it still puzzles me, because as things become worse and worse, and Obama’s actions more extreme and more revelatory, I keep thinking there must be a tipping point, both for the press and the public as well as Congress.

But even that is probably an illusory hope. Events make me more cynical, but I don’t seem to be able to ratchet my cynicism up quickly enough to meet them.

[* NOTE: Haste makes waste—I seem to have copied the date of Yeats’ death (1939) instead of the date he wrote the poem, which was 1919. That 1919 date is actually interesting in terms of the history of the Middle East, because the end of World War I triggered the division of that region (mostly during the 20s) into something more similar to its modern, post Ottoman Empire form. World War I was a cataclysmic event with enormous repercussions, and I submit that we have never recovered from it.]

It was the co-pilot

The New Neo Posted on by

The news is shocking and yet not shocking at the same time, because by now everyone had figured it out: the Germanwings co-pilot deliberately crashed the plane and killed himself and 149 souls on board.

His motive? Unknown. Islamic terrorism committed by a known jihadi is logic itself compared to this mystery.

Perhaps the mystery will be solved. Perhaps authorities will find a diary or a note indicating that 28-year-old Andreas Lubitz experienced a conversion to Islamic terrorism and had kept mum about it till now. Perhaps he had a conversation with someone about it, or contacts with recruiters.

It’s possible. But so are other things, including the possibility that we will never know what dark impulse grabbed hold of this man and caused him to become a mass murderer. We do have this:

A mother of a schoolmate told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he had told her daughter he had taken a break from his pilot training because he was suffering from depression.

“Apparently he had a burnout, he was in depression,” the woman, whom the paper did not name.

She said her daughter had seen him again just before Christmas and that he had appeared normal. She added he was a “lovely boy”. “He had a good family background,” she told the paper.

Carsten Spohr, CEO of Germanwings parent company, said in a press conference today that Lubitz “took a break in his training six years ago. Then he did the tests (technical and psychological) again. And he was deemed 100 percent fit to fly.”

Six years ago is a long time. And if he had reacted to his earlier depression by taking a break, why would he not take a break again? Or even commit suicide without killing others as well? Was he angry at Lufthansa and wanted to hurt the company, or Germany, or airline travel in general? Because surely he would have known the flight recorder would give him away.

One thing of which I’m pretty sure: we will learn more about this man. I’m less sure that we’ll ever know why he chose, one clear day in March of 2015, to fly a plane loaded with 149 other human beings into a mountain.

[ADDENDUM: I don’t even want to imagine the plight of Lubitz’s parents, who “only discovered the truth of their son’s suicide mission moments before Fench prosecutors released the information to the world.” They “had travelled to France with the victims’ relatives, but were soon separated when their son’s involvement in the disaster had been uncovered.”

They are now being questioned, having entered into their own personal nightmare.

Speaking of nightmares, Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr is quoted as saying “not in our worst nightmare would we imagine this happening.” My answer is: if not, then you should have.

It’s not so far-fetched, given the way things are going in the world today. Even though this pilot was not an obvious candidate for jihadism, that doesn’t rule it out, nor does it rule out explanations such as suicide/murder for other reasons. The US has some sort of rule that two people must always be in the cockpit at once, because it would tend to discourage such acts, although it cannot completely prevent them. Lufthansa ought to have had a similar rule.]

[ADDENDUM II: Two more facts of interest: the co-pilot said not a word during the entire episode, and although screams could be heard from the passengers, that was not “until the very last moments,” according to the Marseilles prosecutor.

It also occurs to me that the audio tape must make Lubitz’s guilt crystal clear; otherwise authorities probably would not be saying all of this so relatively early in the investigation.]

Report: voice recorder incidates pilot was locked out of cockpit

The New Neo Posted on by

According to The New York Times, a “senior military official involved in the investigation” of the Germanwings air crash has described an extremely disturbing scenario during the last eight minutes of the flight:

…[O]ne of the pilots left the cockpit and could not re-enter.

“The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer,” the investigator said. “And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer.”

He said, “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”

If this is correct, it indicates a situation that chills the blood to even imagine: the frantic pilot unable to get into the cockpit in order to avert the disaster-in-the-making. The question, of course, is whether it was deliberate on the part of the person in the cockpit, or accidental. The first would make that person a terrorist, the second would mean that some accident or sudden illness had rendered that person unconscious and unable to let the other pilot in.

But how do cockpit door locks work? Even without terrorism, why would door locks be designed so that if for some reason the pilot remaining in the cockpit is incapacitated, there is no way for the other pilot to enter in what would clearly be an emergency? No one seems to be all that clear on how it works, but here’s some information:

The cockpit door automatically locks, and in most situations, anyone outside the cockpit needs to have permission from the pilots inside to enter, the video explains. Pilots in the cockpit need to move a switch to the “unlock” position to open the door.

In the case of “crew incapacitation,” there is an emergency access procedure: someone outside the cockpit must punch an emergency code into the door access panel, then can enter 30 seconds later if there is “no action from the crew.” The video seems to imply that someone inside the cockpit could override that emergency action, but that is not entirely clear.

What I take from that is that in the case of involuntary incapacitation the system would work quite well and the outside pilot could enter after 30 seconds. But if the inside pilot didn’t want anyone to enter, he/she could block that entry. If this is correct, there are only two possibilities I can think of for the Germanwings crash: either the system malfunctioned, or it was terrorism on the part of the pilot who remained in the cockpit.

Iran is calling the shots

The New Neo Posted on by

On reading this, I marveled anew at the fairly obvious fact that Iran considers itself to be in the driver’s seat on these negotiations. Its leaders know that the US is groveling and desperate for a deal, any deal, no matter how lousy.

There’s no reason for this, either, except that Obama considers a deal to be the crown jewel of his glittering foreign policy. And in John Kerry he has finally found the perfect partner for the endeavor.

Kerry is one of the few people in American public life I detest as much as I do Obama, and my feeling for Kerry is of much longer duration, predating even my political change and going back to the days of his Vietnam testimony before Congress. That feeling has only grown more intense over time. Actually, although many of you may think this odd, the two men remind me of each other—in their opportunism, narcissism, pomposity, belief in their own brilliance, duplicity, and willingness to betray their country. Obama has had much more political success than Kerry because of the “likeability” factor as well as his cachet as the first black president, and Obama is much more bold. But Kerry is the perfect lackey for him.

The Iranians know with whom they’re dealing. They obviously have no respect for either of them, nor for the UN. And why on earth should they?:

An Iranian official on Tuesday rebuked the chief of the U.N. atomic agency for demanding snap inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites, saying the request hindered efforts to reach an agreement with world powers, state TV reported.

The United States and five other world powers face an end-of-the-month deadline to reach a framework agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. Western nations suspect Tehran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability alongside the civilian program. Iran denies such allegations, insisting its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful.

Earlier this month Yukiya Amano, the head of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tehran should agree to snap inspections to reassure the international community.

Iran’s nuclear spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said Amano’s comments harm the delicate negotiations. “It would be much better if Amano only talked about the IAEA’s seasonal and monthly reports,” he said, according to state TV.

One of the main motivations for the Iraq War was that Saddam Hussein had refused to cooperate with inspections of WMD programs. That’s been de-emphasized by those who were against the war, and has been almost forgotten. All of this—as well as the fact that under Obama we pulled completely out of Iraq and signaled our inability to follow through—has indicated to countries such as Iran how fundamentally unserious the West is right now about either enforcing such inspections or stopping enemies who wish to get such weapons. Leaders like those of Iran have no trouble perceiving such weakness, which smells to them as the scent of blood to sharks.

Bergdahl charged with desertion

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s about time:

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who was recovered in Afghanistan last spring after five years in captivity, faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Eugene Fidell, Bergdahl’s attorney, told The Washington Post that his client was handed a charge sheet on Tuesday. Army officials announced they will provide an update in his case at 3:30 p.m. at Fort Bragg, N.C., but declined to discuss new developments ahead of the news conference…

The charges come after a lengthy investigation launched last June after his recovery and a review by Gen. Mark A. Milley, the commanding general of U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg. Bergdahl has faced a slew of accusations from his fellow soldiers that he abandoned them on the battlefield and caused a manhunt that diverted resources from the war effort and put lives in danger.

Bergdahl will faces charges under articles 85 and 99 of the military’s Uniform Code of Military Justice, Fidell said.

I imagine there’s an interesting tale of the fight by the Obama administration to keep this day from ever happening. This could get very, very interesting.

More on the Germanwings crash

The New Neo Posted on by

Facts learned today:

Witnesses who saw the plane right before the crash report it as having been intact. So a bomb catastrophic enough to blow part of the plane off could not have been the problem.

Despite the lack of a message from the pilots during the eight-minute descent, the instruments were still functioning well enough to have been “automatically relaying its altitude, airspeed and heading to air traffic control” the entire time. And yet there seems to have been no attempt by pilots to maneuver it, or even to slow it down. It crashed into the mountain at very high speed.

The plane was an Airbus A320, which is highly automated:

Last year an Airbus A321 owned by Lufthansa went into a sudden descent at 31,000ft, falling at the same rate ”“ 4,000ft per minute ”“ before the crew managed to regain control.

The European Air Safety Directive said in that incident the aircraft’s angle of attack sensors had become blocked and tricked the computer into thinking the aircraft was about to stall.

The EASA said that in that situation: “The flight control laws order a continuous nose down pitch rate that, in a worst case scenario, cannot be stopped with backward sidestick inputs, even in the full backward position.

“This condition, if not corrected, could result in loss of control of the aeroplane.”

That would be my leading theory at the moment, because of the rate of fall and the fact that it’s a very similar plane of the same series. Although the authorities keep saying terrorism is unlikely, I certainly don’t think it can be ruled out, either. Cockpit intrusion? Also, the names of the pilot and copilot have not been released, and that could have some significance although I wouldn’t bet on it.

It was initially reported that the black box had been found missing its memory card, but that report has been contradicted:

The director of the lead investigating agency said today that they have recovered an audio file from the black box of the downed Germanwings flight but have not found the second black box from the Airbus A320 that crashed in the French Alps.

This comes after French Prime Minister Francois Hollande said at an earlier news conference when he said that crews had found the exterior of the black box but not the module that contains the memory equipment, though a the director of the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses (BEA) went on to deny any such discovery.

“We have not localized the black box,” said BEA Director Rémi Jouty. “We have not found any debris of the black box and in the history of air accidents we know about … [we] don’t remember any recorder broken into little pieces.”

I really really hope the audio file yields much useful information, and that the flight recorder is also found.

The latest in my Comcast saga

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been having connectivity and slowdown issues since last fall. You’ll find my November post on the saga here, but I thought I’d give you an update.

For various reasons, although there are alternatives to Comcast where I live, they aren’t very good ones. So I kept working with Comcast. They gave me two new modems along the way, and in addition I tried buying one myself, but nothing helped. Every now and then the whole problem would go away for several weeks, and I’d fool myself into thinking they’d fixed it. But then it would return.

So a couple of days ago I called them again, although talking with them is a bit like wrestling with alligators. The task was to convince them to send still another service person here and investigate more thoroughly (one had visited back in November and found nothing wrong). They keep trying to say it’s my computer that’s at fault, but I pointed out that my computer seems to do just fine when it’s away from home.

So yesterday the guy came, and you won’t believe what he found. Or maybe you will.

A segment of cable that was part of a grouping running to the modem had been hooked up backwards. I don’t know the terminology for the thing, but it was white and about a foot long. He said that the “in” end had been put where the “out” should have been, and vice versa. Both ends were clearly marked. All he did yesterday was to unfasten that thing and reverse it and voila! Instant improvement, which I hope will last, although it will take a few weeks to know for sure.

So, to summarize: the last Comcast service person—the one who had brought me the spiffy new modem—fastened it in wrong, in an egregious error. In fact, the new guy said he was surprised I’d been getting any service at all, there was so little signal coming in.

I see this as some sort of metaphor for the way this country is headed. Would that the solution were as simple!

On Jews disliking evangelicals

The New Neo Posted on by

In a previous thread, commenter “Ann” offered a link to an article written in 2008 by James Q. Wilson entitled, “Why Don’t Jews Like the Christians Who Like Them?”

From the article:

Evangelical Christians have a high opinion not just of the Jewish state but of Jews as people. That Jewish voters are overwhelmingly liberal doesn’t seem to bother evangelicals, despite their own conservative politics. Yet Jews don’t return the favor: in one Pew survey, 42 percent of Jewish respondents expressed hostility to evangelicals and fundamentalists. As two scholars from Baruch College have shown, a much smaller fraction””about 16 percent””of the American public has similarly antagonistic feelings toward Christian fundamentalists.

Wilson goes on to write about a lot of things, although most of them have nothing to do with why Jews don’t like evangelicals. His main answer to that question, the one posed in the title, is “because Jews tend to be liberals.” True, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go very far.

Very unfortunately (and somewhat surprisingly to me), Wilson does not link the survey on which his entire premise about Jews not liking evangelicals seems to rest, nor does he give out enough information that a person could locate it (“one Pew survey” doesn’t quite pin it down, and one survey is not really much to base an entire theory on even if he did give the link). When I Googled the topic, I couldn’t find many surveys about it at all, although I did locate this one, which at least seems to be related although not precisely the same. My guess is that it’s a similar Pew survey, done in a year that’s different but fairly close in time (the one I found was done in 2014, so it’s more recent than Wilson’s article).

So I read the Pew report carefully, and it seems to me it’s pretty much “garbage in, garbage out” regarding the Jews and their opinions. The problems with it are as follows: it doesn’t define “Jews,” nor does it break them down into observant and non-observant, much less which type of observance they follow (there are ordinarily huge differences). Since many Jews in the US are nonobservant (although not necessarily atheists, which is a separate category in the survey), and even most observant Jews are reform Jews, people could describe themselves as Jewish while being basically secular and liberal. Unless the pollsters made a special effort to get Orthodox Jews in their survey (and since there is no breakdown, one can assume they didn’t pay attention to that aspect), that particular group is probably significantly underrepresented.

But perhaps more problematic is the fact that although the entire survey consists of a little over three thousand people, there are only 100 Jews. That’s not out of line with the percentage of Jews in the population—in fact, it’s slightly more, relatively speaking. But it’s by far the smallest religious group in the survey, and a small number in the sense of making it difficult to draw valid conclusions based on it. The results for such a small group are particularly prone to error, and if you look at the following chart you’ll see something interesting about the margin of error for the Jewish response:

errormargin

Plus or minus 12.6 percentage points seems pretty unacceptable for a poll. For what it’s worth (which isn’t much), the results were that Jews rated evangelicals on average as 34 on a “feeling thermometer” that goes up to 100, very similar to the score for how they rate Muslims. Jews rated evangelicals very similarly to how agnostics rated evangelicals (giving me a hint that perhaps a lot of the Jews in the survey are really agnostics), and somewhat higher than atheists did.

As a hypothetical, though, let’s just imagine that the results are accurate and that Jews don’t especially like evangelicals. I’m actually not at all sure most Jews even know what evangelicals believe in or stand for. The word sounds a great deal like “evangelist,” (same root), which traditionally has meant “a person who seeks to convert others to the Christian faith, especially by public preaching.”

With the Jews’ lengthy history of being the objects of forced or pressured or coerced conversion attempts, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to be somewhat wary of Christians you thought might be members of a group trying really hard to convert you. Unless a person is conversant with all the different Christian sects, and recent developments in Christianity—which believe me, most Jews and most non-Christians in general are not—it could sound as though “evangelicals” would be people who fit that proselytizing description. This in turn could be a fairly large part of the answer to Wilson’s question of “why” the dislike.

I strongly doubt that most Jews even know that evangelicals are their friends, or what they believe, or that evangelicals support Israel and respect Jews and the Jewish religion. Evangelicals may think those things are well-known facts, but I would wager they’re not at all well-known among Jews, secular or otherwise.

The religious categories the survey subjects were asked to rate did not include any Protestant denominations except evangelicals, which I find to be a curious thing. Most people—even Jews—have a better idea of what Catholicism is and a long history with it, and even some of the larger Protestant denominations (although I think that’s a lot less clear than Catholicism), but evangelicals are more of a mystery. By the way, the Wiki entry for “evangelicalism” mentions that adherants “believe in the centrality of the conversion or ‘born again’ experience in receiving salvation, believe in the authority of the Bible as God’s revelation to humanity and have a strong commitment to evangelism or sharing the Christian message.” That latter part—the commitment to sharing the Christian message—could be the source of some Jews’ fear that evangelicals are people intent on converting the Jews. Although that’s not a correct perception about evangelicals for the most part, it may be an understandable one in the absence of personal knowledge to the contrary.

One last thing—the Pew survey I found asked respondents to rate religions not on a measure of liking or disliking per se, but on a “feeling thermometer” with a cold/warm scale on which 0 was “coldest/most negative” and 100 was “warmest/most positive.” Some unknown number of respondents may have interpreted that in such a way that lower scores meant that the respondent is cold towards the group because he/she doesn’t know much about the it; more of an absence of feeling than an active dislike.

Air crash in the Alps

The New Neo Posted on by

A terrible air disaster:

All 144 passengers and six crew were today presumed dead after the Airbus A320 crashed in a remote region of the French Alps en route from Spain to Germany.

One of the plane’s black box recorders has been found and will be examined immediately, France’s interior minister said.

The images emerged as confusion reigned over the final minutes of the doomed Airbus A320 after air traffic controllers claimed they received no SOS despite the jet nosediving 32,000ft in just eight minutes.

Don’t there seem to have been a higher percentage of recent crashes where the controllers precipitously lost contact with a plane that was still intact? Apparently this jet descended for eight full horrific minutes, and yet there was no communication at all. I know pilots’ first duty is to fly the aircraft, but I still wonder why there might be no word from the pilots during such a lengthy interval. Was there depressurization and unconsciousness?

At least in this case the plane’s location is known, the black box has been found, and answers will probably be forthcoming in the not-too-distant future.

[NOTE: I noticed that this was the same type of plane involved in the amazing Hudson River landing by “Sully” Sullenberger.]

In a situation…

The New Neo Posted on by

…such as this, truth is especially hard to come by:

The Wall Street Journal reported late Monday that in addition to Israelis spying on the highly-sensitive negotiations between Tehran and world powers, details were back-chanelled to US legislators in an effort to sabotage the deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program.

“Frankly I was a bit shocked, because, there was no information revealed to me whatsoever,” said House Speaker John Boehner

But I’ll take a crack at a guess:

(1) Israel did spy on the Iran talks. If they didn’t, they should have. The US has become its enemy, along with Iran.
(2) The US knew this, but is releasing this information now in order to further hurt Israel, and to harm some Republicans in the process. A twofer.
(3) Boehner is not actually shocked.
(4) Some details were back-channeled to US legislators. The funny thing is that the Obama administration is supposed to be giving Congress some information on the negotiations, but of course hasn’t. Now he’s peeved that the Israelis may have kept Congress abreast of his secret plans to give away the farm.

An awful lot of smoke and mirrors here, I think.

Dershowitz rips Obama on Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

Dershowitz:

I wouldn’t hire this administration to negotiate a one-month lease for me,” Dershowitz said.

He also called Obama “undiplomatic,” “petulant,” and “juvenile,” according to Noah Pollak of the Emergency Committee for Israel…

And yet, and yet—although these actions by Obama regarding Iran and Israel were totally and completely predictable, I seem to recall a certain Alan Dershowitz voted for him and vocally supported him, twice. In 2012, some of his stated reasons for that endorsement concerned wanting liberal justices appointed to SCOTUS (ironic that perhaps Obama won’t get to name any more, however, if all of them manage to hold up for the next two years). But then Dershowitz wrote the following, which was already risible in 2012 although if anything it’s even more risible now:

The case for Barack Obama also includes his approach to foreign policy, which has improved the standing of America around the world…The Obama administration has worked closely with our allies to impose the harshest possible sanctions on Iran, to depose Muammar Gaddafi and to help keep the Arab Spring from turning into an extremist Muslim winter…

With regards to Iran, which poses the most immediate threat to the security of the United States and its allies, most especially Israel, the policy of the Obama administration is crystal clear: It has taken containment off the table and kept the military option on the table…

But the best way to avoid the need for military action is for the Iranian mullahs to believe that the United States will never allow them to develop nuclear weapons. If they believe that reality then the pain of the sanctions will pressure them to give up their nuclear ambitions. President Obama has clearly stated that he is not bluffing when he says that his administration will never allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. A secondterm president generally has more credibility than a firstterm president when it comes to threatening military action…

When it comes to reenergizing the moribund peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, Romney has said that he would do nothing other than kick the can down the road.

President Obama, on the other hand, would almost certainly try to bring the parties together to achieve a two-state solution that guaranteed Israel’s security while allowing the Palestinians to govern themselves.

If I wanted a lawyer I wouldn’t mind having Dershowitz on the case. But for anything else—well, let’s just say I’m not impressed. Obama fooled you once, Dershowitz, fooled you twice…

Although I’m picking on Dershowitz (not that he’ll know or care), he’s not alone, and I doubt I’m telling him anything he doesn’t already know. I think that’s why he’s so very angry at Obama right now: he’s made a fool out of Dershowitz. Or shall I say, a useful idiot. But you know what? I think that, if Obama was running for a third term (perish the thought), that Dershowitz would go for that football again. And again.

That’s how hard it is to change one’s political mind, especially for those who are dedicated liberals and who have gone on record for years as such. Dershowitz wouldn’t even have to renounce liberalism; all he’d have to do is renounce Obama. But in a way, that’s the first step down the slippery slope.

In no surprise at all…

The New Neo Posted on by

…Ted Cruz has thrown his hat into the 2016 presidential ring.

Early-bird Cruz is one of the smartest guys ever to run for the presidency. And I don’t think even the staunchest conservatives would be likely to question his conservative bona fides.

Although I suppose someone can find a way—and indeed, just now when I checked, I find that the paleo/Buchananesque/isolationist wing of the party seems to detest him. They think he’s too hawkish, and that too many candidates will split the conservative wing of the party (I agree with the latter assertion).

Of course, Cruz is the only declared candidate so far, so the field is decidedly unsplit at the moment. But they think he has absolutely no chance of winning and therefore should never have tried in the first place. I believe he’s certainly a long shot, but not an impossible one. I happen to like Cruz, although he’s not my frontrunner. I think he’d be a better president than senator; as senator, he’s more of a lonely voice crying in the wilderness.

[NOTE: By the way, a quick perusal of that paleo publication to see which Republican candidate they do like doesn’t reveal anyone. They seem to detest Walker at least as much as they hate Cruz, and I can’t imagine that Jeb Bush is their man. This Buchanan article makes it clear that his isolation is intact, even now, and it seems that all the conservatives and Republicans are too hawkish for him. Maybe he wants another go-round for…Pat Buchanan? Now, there’s a longshot. He’s 76 now, by the way, but it seems he’s been around forever.]