The Democrats’ shallow bench

The New Neo Posted on by

I seems true that the Democrats have a very shallow bench. But will it matter? After all, there may be enough people so seduced by the left and/or so beholden to big government that they are the proverbial yellow dog Democrats, willing to vote for anyone who bears the stamp.

That would mean that even most knavish/foolish/unappealing of Democratic presidential candidates will have a lock on the election. Or America may turn away:

If we look at all these factors, the common theme is that the Democrats have been undone by their most basic priority. Their lust for aggrandizing more power to government””increasing its scope, its cost, its reach, and its centralization””has undermined their ability to gain and hold the majorities necessary to wield that power. It was more important to them to push through a big new entitlement than to listen to the voters. It was more important for them to recruit what they believed would be a solid far-left bloc of minority constituencies than to show anything but contempt for those backward rednecks in the heartland. It was more important for them to aggrandize the power of a central individual (or couple) than to build a broad nationwide base of leadership. And it is more important for them to be reactionary guardians of the welfare and regulatory state than to contemplate any reform of it.

Call this the Paradox of Power. To the extent Democrats have hollowed out their party, it is because their greed for more government power has undermined their ability to hold on to it.

Boy do I hope that’s true. It really depends on the American public.

[Note: Somewhat related, but somewhat unrelated: there’s Obama’s failure in Asia, something I hadn’t heard much about before.

And Joe Lieberman (‘member him?) reminds us that there actually used to be Democrats who were moderate and relatively reasonable, with a concern for the Constitution. Of course, we know what happened to Joe Lieberman at the hands of his party.]

Just more evidence that the world has gone mad

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: Ace.]

Well, well, well, who could have possibly predicted this? And please, make sure you schedule in ten minutes of meditation before and after you read it, because it’s going to cause some serious upset:

Convinced traditional discipline is racist because blacks are suspended at higher rates than whites, New York City’s Department of Education has in all but the most serious and dangerous offenses replaced out-of-school suspensions with a touchy-feely alternative punishment called “restorative justice,” which isn’t really punishment at all. It’s therapy.

“Every reasonable effort must be made to correct student behavior through”¦restorative practices,” advises the city’s new 32-page discipline code.

Except everywhere it’s been tried, this softer approach has backfired.

Yes, other large urban school districts are reporting fewer suspensions since adopting the non-punitive approach. But that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer infractions.

In fact, many districts are seeing more classroom disruptions and violence ”” a national trend that ought to set off warning bells for New York school officials.

What’s more, the movement ”” which is driven by new race-based anti-discipline guidelines issued by the Obama administration ”” is creating friction between teachers unions and the liberal mayors they otherwise support…

Last month, for instance, the Chicago Teachers Union complained the city’s revised student-discipline code has left teachers struggling to control unruly kids.

“It’s just basically been a totally lawless few months,” one teacher told the Chicago Tribune.

Please read the whole thing. One more excerpt:

“I was terrified and bullied by a fourth-grade student,” a teacher at a Los Angeles Unified School District school recently noted on the Los Angeles Times website. “The black student told me to ”˜Back off, b””h.’ I told him to go to the office and he said, ”˜No, b””h, and no one can make me.’ ”…

In neighboring Orange County, teachers are dealing with increasingly violent and disrespectful student behavior since schools there also switched to the restorative strategy.

Recently mandated “positive interventions” have only exacerbated discipline problems in the largely minority Santa Ana public school district, where middle-school kids now regularly smoke pot in bathrooms ”” some even in class ”” and attack staff ”” spitting on teachers, pelting them with eggs, even threatening to stab them, according to the Orange County Register.

It goes on and on and on.

[NOTE: About a year and a half ago I wrote a post about how Obama and Holder were intent on transforming the schools in this way in order to make the stats work out they way they’d like them to.]

Congratulating Bibi

The New Neo Posted on by

The White House isn’t going to do it, but I will: congratulations to Netanyahu on his resounding win.

Liberals in general are very miffed at the Israeli election results. But they’ve been angry at Israel for a long, long time, ever since the Likud Party first came to power in 1977. Until then, Israel was a country that had always been governed from the left.

So it’s no surprise whatsoever that the left in the US is unhappy at Netanyahu’s continuing hold on power. To them, it’s just another sign that Israel is unworthy of support and worthy of condemnation. The left hates Netanyahu (and Israel) even more now, if that’s possible, because he is openly despised by their leader Obama, and because Netanyahu has had the temerity to say what everyone already must know: that at the moment there is no two-state solution possible.

As Paul Mirengoff writes:

In 2009, Netanyahu was probably motivated to endorse a two-state solution in part by a desire to please the new Obama administration. In 2015, Netanyahu understands that, for him, there is no pleasing Obama. His support of a two-state solution did not lead to decent relations with Obama; nor did it lead to fruitful negotiations with the Palestinians.

It is not, therefore, demagoguery for Netanyahu to change his stated position on a Palestinian state. Indeed, given the rise of radical Islam, it would be irresponsible of him to cling to the position he took six years ago under very different conditions. In all likelihood, that position has been a dead-letter for some time.

“Two-state” solution is one of those phrases that have become practically meaningless except as a signal to the left that one’s heart is in the right place. I’m for peace! I’m for justice! I’m for lifting the downtrodden up! At this point, however, it’s degenerated into empty posturing among leftists, with no possibility of achievement in the real world because Israel has no partner for peace, as the events of the Camp David Summit failure followed by the Second Intifada, and the subsequent and continuing Palestinian stance towards Israel, have made crystal clear to anyone who wasn’t already mired in leftist and/or anti-Israel thinking. Netanyahu is now stating those facts openly, because he needed to court the right in his country and because there is no longer any reason to hide them in order to try to placate Obama or Europe.

Netanyahu’s win was much bigger than expected. He should have no trouble forming a government.

[ADDENDUM: Josh Earnest said that Obama will be calling Netanyahu to congratulate him “in the comning days.” Sure; he has to attend to some pressing concerns in the meantime. Oh, and he’ll be reprimanding Netanyahu for mentioning the last-minute get-out-the-Arab-vote campaign that Obama may have helped pay for. The White House is “deeply concerned” about such “divisive rhetoric.” ]

Israeli election open thread

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a thread for commenting on the Israeli election as it develops now that the polls are closed.

Exit polls indicate a very close race, as predicted. Remember that this is a parliamentary election, with the likelihood that a coalition government will need to be formed and that therefore the Prime Minister may not be known right away, although there might be some strong indications of who it will be. But it could take a long, long time.

UPDATE 6:01 PM: Netanyahu declares a “great victory” for Likud because they’re tied with their rival party. As the Times of Israel puts it: “Likud ahead or level with Zionist Union in all 3 exit polls, better placed to build coalition; 71.8% turnout highest since 1999; delight in Likud, dismay in Zionist Union; Jewish Home slips.”

So—although it’s premature—I’d say it’s looking like (as so often has happened) when Obama backs a candidate the candidate doesn’t seem to do so well.

Too bad the same couldn’t have been said for Obama himself. The Israeli system is so complex, however, that I don’t really know if Netanyahu is out of the woods yet. But things look promising. More details here.

Oh, and by the way…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the Cotton letter signed by the 47 Republican Senators was never “sent” anywhere:

Cotton got 46 other senators to sign this letter in ink. “Because it was an open letter, it was not sent to Tehran but rather posted on Senator Cotton’s website and social-media accounts,” Caroline Rabbitt, Senator Cotton’s communications director, explained to me last week. Cotton & Co. never even dropped an envelope in the mail.

Not that the left will care.

Oh, and the little girl evil mean conservative Ted Cruz supposedly terrified was not frightened, according to the girl’s mother:

Julie’s mother, Michelle Trant, told a Boston radio station on Monday that the headlines about her daughter being frightened to death are simply not true.

“There was no tears,” she said, telling the show she told her daughter that “Ted Cruz is the one that will put this fire out. And then she then looked at him as a hero,” Politico reported.

“I’m telling you: She was quite happy,” Ms. Trant said. “She was like, ”˜oh? you’re going to put that out? We’re good. We’re good here.’”

In a separate interview, Ms. Trant told People magazine: “There was nothing scary that happened. I’m just so upset the way this has gone down.”

“I just feel like Ted Cruz deserves better than people making up a lie that a 3-year-old was terrified of him, because she was not. I just want to have the truth out there,” she said.

Ah, but what does the girl’s mother know? She’s just a—just a—Ted Cruz supporter.

Mitt Romney to box Evander Holyfield

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, you read that right. It will be an exhibition match in Salt Lake City to benefit a charity that treats blindness and other vision problems. Aside from demonstrating that Romney’s not quite the inhibited guy he was often portrayed as, it illustrates once again what a basically nice guy he is.

I would like to know whether this will be done shirtless or not; my guess is a T-shirt for modesty’s sake. I ask only because I saw Romney up-close during the 2012 campaign, and I noted that he is in seemingly fantastic shape for a guy his age:

It was Romney who was most surprising. It’s often been remarked…that Romney is a handsome man who looks pretty good for his age. But now that I’ve seen him up-close and personal I would like to correct that: he looks better than his photos, and much younger. Except for the graying temples, he could pass for a man nearly half his age.

Is it clean-living (Romney the Mormon does not smoke or drink of even ingest coffee)? I don’t know, but whatever it is if he could bottle it he would make another gazillion dollars to add to his first fortune. What’s more, in this particular venue both men eschewed jackets for more casual wear, and thus it was possible to see that Romney is in great shape””and not just great shape for a 64-year-old man, either; great shape for anyone, although of a type more suited to the occupations of outfielder or runner or even dancer than linebacker or first baseman.

Somehow I overlooked “heavyweight boxer” at the time; he lacks the bulk. And many who observed him in the 2012 race feel he lacks the fight.

But I wish him well against Holyfield.

And it just so happens that, although I’m not a boxing fan at all, I was at my in-laws’ house during the infamous ear-bite fight and watched it live on TV, much to my shock and horror. So Holyfield occupies a warm spot in my heart as well.

Althouse asks: Have you ever taken a political position that was hard for you to take?

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, you know my answer: constantly.

It’s been especially hard socially. Althouse writes:

It’s my hypothesis that people take the positions that are comfortable to them. Living in Madison, Wisconsin, I often wonder about the depth of the political opinions that seem to be everywhere. To express an opposing view would take some effort and maybe even injure your personal life, so it’s easiest to go along and get along, even to adopt the views of the people around you and to avoid exploring the possibility of thinking something else.

These beliefs, then, which seem so entrenched, are actually shallow beliefs. The behavior patterns and commitment to getting along may be deeply rooted, but the ideas themselves are fairly insubstantial. The engagement with politics itself is insubstantial. Why pay so much attention to politics when deviating from your comfortable point of view would only expose you to pain?

Ah, my favorite topic—political opinions, why we hold them, and what could make people change them. I agree that a great many people—perhaps the majority, and (from my observations, anyway) the majority of today’s liberals—take positions that are comfortable for them in the sense that they are surrounded by people who hold the same position. In other words, it’s very easy and pleasant to dance in a ring with the others.

But I would slightly amend Ann’s characterization of their beliefs as “shallow” and say that the amount and quality of the logical reasoning behind those beliefs may be shallow, but the beliefs themselves are extremely and deeply entrenched—and that’s because, as she writes, “The behavior patterns and commitment to getting along may be deeply rooted.” For people who hold beliefs mostly for that reason, it’s a very powerful motivation.

In other words, as in the old saying, it’s hard to reason people out of beliefs that they weren’t reasoned into in the first place. Sometimes these sorts of beliefs can be the most tenacious of all because they rest on emotion rather than reason, and abandoning them causes an extraordinary amount of stress and even a loss of identity for a while. And since I believe Ann is correct that most people are not interested in politics all that much—at least not in digging down deep into the details, rather than just the sound bites or the headlines—it’s really not hard for most people to ignore evidence that might derail their beliefs and therefore their pleasant world of group agreement.

Of course, the opposite is true for those who already are at variance politically with most people in the community in which they live and especially the group with which they socialize. I’d be curious to know what the statistics for political change are for people who move from a community where they espouse the majority view to one where they are going against the general consensus. Do they undergo political change more often than people who don’t make such a move? Perhaps; I don’t know. And then of course we all are aware of what happens to many young people when they go off to college and are exposed to the relentless propaganda there from the left. But young people are in an especially malleable and impressionable state, as well as one in which the opinion of their peers is of the utmost importance, so they are particularly ripe for the leftist picking.

My change of politics in the intellectual sense was somewhat hard to go through, but nowhere near as hard as the social “coming out” later. I underwent my political change mostly in private (read the story if you’re interested). I was living in a new place, had recently been divorced, and was undergoing a very lengthy recuperation from surgery, all of which made for a large degree of social isolation and meant I had a great deal of free time on my hands. Furthermore, I was motivated (starting with 9/11) to do much more reading about world events and politics than ever before, and for the first time I was getting my news from multiple newspapers online rather than one or two delivered at home. I was probably helped along in the journey by the fact that I didn’t even realize I was now reading papers on the left and the right, ant that this was something I’d never done before (previously I had thought my main sources—the Boston Globe and New Yorker—were unbiased).

All of these factors helped get me to the point where, although I’d never really been “reasoned” into my previous positions, I abandoned them when faced with enough evidence to the contrary. My change was helped along by two things in particular: (1) logic and rationality are very important to me; and (2) I had previously moved in such a liberal bubble that I was unaware of the harsh way many liberals treat those who differ from them politically.

The naivete of that last part may really surprise you. It’s not that I’d never noticed liberal attacks on conservatives in the news. But those were public figures; I was me. My friends and relatives knew me and liked me, knew I was intelligent, kind, thoughtful, etc. etc.—one of the them. At least, I thought they did. So why would they be angry at me? I don’t think the possibility even entered my mind, in part because I’d almost never seen anyone in my circle disagree with the prevailing liberalism.

Let’s just say I was in for a big, big, BIG surprise. By the time I realized I was in social hot water, there was no turning back—not that I would have considered it anyway. The only thing that could have made me turn back would have been for me to encounter a preponderance of convincing evidence to support the basic liberal argument, and so far that hasn’t happened at all. Au contraire.

I’m now used to my position. I’m used to not fitting in. I’ve made my accommodation and accepted the situation. I know it has affected a few of my relationships deeply and many slightly. Most have survived the cataclysm, although in somewhat altered form. But make no mistake about it—it was a cataclysm of sorts, although I never sought it out and never anticipated it. But it doesn’t surprise me that very few people would seek it out, and that most will run screaming from evidence that invalidates their previous belief system.

I’ll let John Updike have the last word. I am not Updike, nor are most people—not a literary light hobnobbing with the other literati in the Vineyard, sharing drinks and conversation and sun. But the sentiments and the sense of dislocation are not all that different from those Updike experienced back when he distanced himself from the others by writing a letter to the editor of the Times that was, if not exactly a defense of the Vietnam War, then just as certainly not an attack on it.

In this essay, Updike describes what ensued (and if you haven’t read it before, please do yourself a favor and read the whole thing) [emphasis mine]:

It pained and embarrassed me to be out of step with my magazine and literary colleagues, with the bronzed and almost universally “antiwar” summer denizens of Martha’s Vineyard (including Feiffer and the fiery Lillian Hellman), and with many of my dearest friends back home in Ipswich, including my wife. How had I come to such an awkward pass? In politics, my instinct had always been merely to stay out of harm’s way. My home town of Shillington, Pennsylvania, was peaceably shared by both parties, and by honorable double inheritance I was a Democrat…

I first voted, pulling the Democrat lever, in New York City, in 1956; naively I thought Stevenson might actually beat Ike this second time around. In 1960, transposed to Massachusetts, I was happy to vote with most of my fellow Bay Staters for our young native son, Jack Kennedy. And in 1964 I went to considerable trouble to vote inside the Soviet Union, casting at the American embassy in Moscow my absentee ballot for Lyndon Johnson…

The protest [against Johnson and the Vietnam War], from my perspective, was in large part a snobbish dismissal of Johnson by the Eastern establishment; Cambridge professors and Manhattan lawyers and their guitar-strumming children thought they could run the country and the world better than this lugubrious bohunk from Texas. These privileged members of a privileged nation believed that their pleasant position could be maintained without anything visibly ugly happening in the world. They were full of aesthetic disdain for their own defenders, the business-suited hirelings drearily pondering geopolitics and its bloody necessities down in Washington. The protesters were spitting on the cops who were trying to keep their property””the USA and its many amenities””intact…

At moments of suburban relaxation, in our circle of semi-bohemian homes…I was, perhaps, the most Vietnam-minded person I knew. Those who deplored the war fit what protesting they could into their suburban schedules and otherwise dismissed it with a gesture of automatic distaste; the technocrats of our acquaintance, the electronic engineers and stockbrokers and economics professors, tended to see the involvement as an administrative blunder, to which they could attach no passion. But I””I whose stock in trade as an American author included an intuition into the mass consciousness and an identification with our national fortunes””felt obliged to defend Johnson and Rusk and Rostow, and then Nixon and Kissinger, as they maneuvered, with many a solemn bluff and thunderous air raid, our quagmirish involvement and long extrication. My face would become hot, my voice high and tense and wildly stuttery; I could feel my heart race in a kind of panic whenever the subject came up, and my excitement threatened to suffocate me…

…it greatly distressed me, for example””it wasn’t fair””that American liberals could so blithely disown what was clearly a typically and historically liberal cause, foreign intervention against a Communist bully…I wanted to keep quiet, but could not. Something about it all made me very sore. I spoke up, blushing and hating my disruption of a post-liberal socioeconomic-cultural harmony I was pleased to be a part of.

Updike’s entire essay is one of the best I’ve ever read on the subject of how a person might feel who is, albeit reluctantly, forced by his/her convictions to step out of line and differ politically. No wonder so few people do it.

A moment of your time

The New Neo Posted on by

If you could take a moment and help Legal Insurrection’s fight against an anti-Israel boycott proposal, it would be appreciated. In Ithaca, New York, home of Cornell, the local BDS/JVP people who are leading a call for a boycott of Israeli products at a local store are apparently trying to pad the voting, including from multiple devices per person.

Here’s the poll. Thanks!

By the way, here’s an excellent article at Legal Insurrection on what happened the last time a US administration celebrated a Netanyahu loss, in 1999.

Steinbeck: of puppies and men

The New Neo Posted on by

I was in my car listening to NPR the other night (yes, sometimes I listen to NPR) and someone mentioned that, back in the 30s, half of John Steinbeck’s first draft of Of Mice and Men had been eaten by the author’s new puppy.

So for Steinbeck, “the dog ate my homework” was really true, although since he wasn’t in school it didn’t serve as an excuse. In those pre-computer days he had no extra copy and was forced to re-create the missing half.

The person on NPR said that Steinbeck quipped that perhaps his dog was acting in the capacity of critic. I think that shows remarkable forbearance on Steinbeck’s part.

Steinbeck, of course, was a dog lover. But the “Charley” of Travels With Charley was not the same canine who ate Steinbeck’s homework, since Of Mice and Men was published in 1937 and Charley traveled with the author in 1960.

But Steinbeck got back at that puppy who had eaten his book. If you’re familiar with the plot of Of Mice and Men, the dimwitted but well-meaning giant Lennie accidentally kills a puppy while petting it, which foreshadows the more tragic ending of the book.

If you follow Israeli politics…

The New Neo Posted on by

…you might want to read about this new development, which was highlighted at Drudge today.

Make of it what you will.

Israeli elections are particularly hard to predict because of the potential for various coalitions, as compared to a system such as ours. I also find that when the upcoming Israeli election is discussed on news broadcasts in this country, it’s usually treated as a far more simple matter than it is, as though it’s just a question of whether Bibi will win or won’t he. No one will “win” this time in terms of getting a majority; it’s the coalitions that count. And it’s not for Prime Minister that people vote—Israel’s is a parliamentary system.

This article tries to make some sense of the chaos, and offers a relatively reassuring picture of surprising stability:

A victory for the left-of-center alliance of ex-ministers Tzipi Livni and Isaac Herzog may change some, but not all, of the parameters of Israel’s regional and foreign policy. Some of their likely partners””the Yesh Atid party of the former celebrity newscaster Yair Lapid, Kulanu of ex-Likud minister Moshe Kahlon, and at least one religious party””are the same interlocutors that Netanyahu would court in his own efforts to form a coalition…

The upcoming elections are unlikely to usher in another upheaval. A victory for either the Likud or Herzog-Livni camps will more likely occur by the thinnest of margins, and will have to rely on a broad coalition of centrists and possibly religious parties to keep afloat. Gone are the days when Labor or Likud could, alone, win at least a third of Knesset seats. Whoever emerges victorious will have to strike deals with the plethora of small parties occupying Israel’s center, while accommodating their natural allies to their right and left.

Meanwhile, the US left is busy counting chickens and clucking about how the fickle and hypocritical Likud-loving US right will abandon Israel if Netanyahu loses. Do they not remember that the right has basically stood by Israel even when it had much more lefist governments? Probably not, nor do they care. It’s about the 2-minutes hate.

Obama and Iran: a long time coming

The New Neo Posted on by

Ron Radosh has a good article at PJ today about Obama’s Iran policy, in which he ends by saying that “Obama may go down as the Chamberlain of our time.” I made a related point in my post yesterday when I wrote:

The word “unprecedented” is used so often that it’s become a boring cliche, but it is the correct word to apply to Obama’s attitude towards Iran and nuclear weapons. Even Chamberlain, the best precedent I can think of, appeased Hitler when England didn’t really have a lot of military preparedness and was in a relatively weak position. What’s Obama’s excuse? Nothing.

Chamberlain is the best precedent I can think of, but that doesn’t mean he’s an especially good one (for example, we know far more about the bad intentions of the Iranian government than Chamberlain did about Hitler in 1938). I meant it when I wrote “unprecedented.”

Oh, there have been people willing to sell out their own country before, but offhand I can’t think of an instance in which the leader of a democracy has decided to capitulate to a known, long-term enemy dedicated to its destruction, and to do so with the support of many members of his own party and of the mainstream media, although most of the populace disagrees with him (and yet is seemingly powerless and largely asleep), and without facing the imminent threat of an overwhelming attack by a militarily superior force. If you can think of such an example, please enlighten me.

I can understand Obama much better than I can understand why more people are not alarmed by his actions. And by “more people” I mean in particular the Democrats in Congress, who should be going to the Repubicans and saying they’re ready to join in impeaching and convicting him over this (I know; dream on) and who aren’t even close. The real question is whether, if a bad deal goes through, they would even stand with the Republicans to try to stop it in some way.

Obama has been in office for over six stressful years. This Iranian deal has been a long time coming, and was telegraphed over and over by Obama. For example, even back in February of 2008, a year before Obama became president, I was somewhat alarmed at his seeming belief in the idea that Iran could be talked out of its desire for weapons, and that offering Iran “improved relations with the international community” could change its mind, although he also offered some tough talk about sanctions. By as early as October of 2009 I wrote an article for PJ pointing out what Obama had in mind:

What’s far more likely is that the withdrawal of center funding was designed to be a signal to Iran’s government. What might this act be communicating, other than the weakness of the Obama administration and its tendency to appease repressive governments? It is highly possible that Obama’s intent, at least, is a practical one: that the Iranian leaders perceive there might be something in it for them if they cooperate with Obama. That “something” could come under the general rubric of what used to be known as détente…

The idea behind it would appear to be that such Iranian governmental pragmatists exist and are in the ascendance, that they can be successfully negotiated with, that it will pay large dividends to refrain from embarrassing them by calling attention to the regime’s human rights violations, and that none of this will be read as the Obama administration’s weakness and capitulation. That’s a tall order.

Nixon and Kissinger spent years laying the groundwork for détente with the Chinese, through careful behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Whatever one thinks of their politics, or their ultimate success or failure, both men were experienced old hands at foreign relations and diplomacy. The same can hardly be said for their modern-day counterparts, Obama and Hillary Clinton, who give the appearance of being willing to give up much without laying the proper foundation, or any assurance of getting anything in return…

One thing ”” and perhaps one thing only ”” is certain about Iran, and that is that never before have we faced the potent and dangerous combination of factors it potentially represents: a nuclear-armed state that is at the same time a repressive fundamentalist theocracy at least as concerned with the world to come as the present one.

It didn’t take great prescience or genius to see that, either. It was obvious. That’s what’s so odd about our present situation, in which Obama’s pro-Iran position has only become more extreme and more obvious, and more people ought to be opposing it very visibly and vociferously. Instead, they’re mad about a Republican letter to the mullahs that merely explains the way the American balance of powers works.

[NOTE: See also this.]

Sunday roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

I try to take Sunday off, but there’s so much temptation in the form of news today that I’m doing the linkage thing:

(1) Cop shooting suspect arrested in Ferguson:

A 20-year-old protester has been charged with shooting two police officers in Ferguson, Mo., last week, authorities said Sunday.

County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch said Jeffrey Williams was charged with two counts of assault in the first degree, one count of firing a weapon from a vehicle and thee counts of armed criminal action.

McCulloch said Williams admitted firing the shots but said he was shooting at someone else.

“We’re not sure we buy that part of it,” McCulloch said, adding that the handgun used in the shooting has been recovered.

At the moment, I’m pretty sure I don’t buy it. I’m reserving judgment, of course, but unless some sort of striking evidence turns up that substantiates his story, I have a tendency to think a felon (suspended sentence for receiving stolen property and credit card fraud) doesn’t just fire into a crowd and happen to hit two police officers because he’s being robbed by some unknown assailant. Fortunately, they may be able to locate some surveillance footage of the scene which will shed light on what happened.

(2) If you’re baffled by Israeli politics, so is just about everybody. Here’s an article to help you sort out what’s happening with Netanyahu and the election, and what the results might be. Related news is that the Senate is investigating whether the Obama administration has given aid to the opposition trying to unseat Netanyahu. This would certainly be consistent with everything I know about Obama and his history of election dirty tricks.

(3) John Bolton has called Obama’s negotiations with Iran “an unprecedented act of surrender.” I agree, and I think that’s key to understanding why the Republicans wrote that letter to Iran and why even some Democrats are on board as being against Obama’s deal.

The word “unprecedented” is used so often that it’s become a boring cliche, but it is the correct word to apply to Obama’s attitude towards Iran and nuclear weapons. Even Chamberlain, the best precedent I can think of, appeased Hitler when England didn’t really have a lot of military preparedness and was in a relatively weak position. What’s Obama’s excuse? Nothing. He is going against years of bipartisan agreement in US policy towards Iran, and he is doing it without much support even from his own party, much less bipartisan support. And he has the perfect partner in crime for the task of needless, unforced capitulation: John Kerry, who has a long history of negotiating with the enemy. Kerry’s been waiting his whole adult life for just such a moment.

[ADDENDUM: This is what I wrote when I first heard that Kerry would probably be nominated for the Secretary of Defense job (although he ended up as SOS instead). It contains some of his testimony on Vietnam.

In addition, see this post of mine written during the 2008 campaign, when Kerry defended then-candidate Obama’s idea of talking with Iran. I am convinced that this sort of thing is why Hillary was replaced as SOS with Kerry, who has long been on the same page as Obama on foreign policy.]