Obama: those who think I’m exceeding my authority as president and becoming a tyrant…

The New Neo Posted on by

…are racists calling me uppity.

No, Obama didn’t say those words, not exactly. But that’s what he said anyway.

For years I’ve marveled at Obama’s subtly clever use of the racism charge, performed while he simultaneously pretends to take the high road on race. It’s a highly developed balancing act, probably one he’s been practicing for a long time. He demonstrated fine use of it during the 2008 campaign. And of course the MSM cooperates in further disseminating the meme that all criticism of Obama is racism.

It strikes me that no other president before Obama has had this particular approach available to him, for the simple reason that no previous president has been a member of a minority group. But I also don’t think that most other politicians, of any race or religion or gender, would have had the sheer audacity to have taken this tack. They would have thought it undignified or unpresidential or divisive—because that was the prevailing opinion until Obama came along.

Remember this incident from over five years ago, when Obama said during his 2008 campaign:

It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?

Here’s what I said then about what Obama was doing, and I stand by it now:

…[T]his Presidential race (oops, I used the “r” word!!) has truly gone into a sort of twilight zone in which no one is able to mount any sort of campaign against Obama, even using his own character flaws against him, without being accused of racism.

To recap: use Obama’s photo, and you are emphasizing that he “looks different.” Therefore, you’re a racist. Mock his overwhelming and fully demonstrated arrogance, and you’re really calling him an “uppity n-word.” Mention that this almost uniquely inexperienced candidate is unready for the responsibilities of the Presidency, and you’ll find (as Hillary did) that you’re a racist as well.

Note also, both then and now, Obama is accusing Republicans in general of this, not some specific Republican who said a specific thing. It’s a general and amorphous charge, which is far more effective and versatile propaganda. In that 2008 statement, Obama was predicting it would happen and telling people to be on the lookout for it— and although in fact it hadn’t happened and didn’t happen and wouldn’t happen, that hardly mattered, because he’d placed the idea firmly in people’s minds.

In a similar way, various methods were used later on to strongly suggest that the Tea Party was a racist organization, even though there was no evidence of anything of the sort. Such suggestions work; that’s why they’re used.

And used over and over. Here’s the latest incident from Obama:

In his interview with the Times, when asked about over-enthusiastic use of executive power, Obama sneered at conservatives. “Some of those folks think I usurp my authority by having the gall to win the presidency. And I don’t think that’s a secret.”

He added: “But ultimately, I’m not concerned about their opinions ”” very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less constitutional lawyers.”

Gall, indeed—another code word for “uppity” no doubt. Those racists who hate Obama, angry at him for having the gall to have won!

Somehow Obama has managed to pack into those two sentences more offensive, twisted, narcissistic, manipulative, mendacious thoughts than there are words in them. How anyone can read those two sentences and like the man is beyond me.

But Obama knows exactly what he’s doing. He may be a knave, but as I’ve said for a long time he’s no fool. There’s not a word there that isn’t carefully chosen. Obama is not just the first black president: he is the first Orwellian president. And it turns out that charges of racism against critics make a great cover for tyranny.

[NOTE: By the way, about that “constitutional lawyers” remark—of course, some of Obama’s critics are lawyers. But the implication that a constitutional lawyer would necessarily respect the Constitution is ridiculous. Some do, some don’t; some learn the finer points of the Constitution in order to figure out ways to violate it or get around it.

And what’s a “constitutional lawyer” anyway? There are constitutional law experts, constitutional law professors, constitutional law students, and constitutional law instructors or lecturers (as Obama was). Obama was a singular Con Law teacher in that as far as we know he never wrote a paper on the subject, although he taught it. What’s more, he never taught a general course in it; he was a specialist.

All of Obama’s law teaching load was concentrated in several subjects that would be of use to him in his life in politics:

Before he outraised every other presidential primary candidate in American history, Mr. Obama marched students through the thickets of campaign finance law. Before he helped redraw his own State Senate district, making it whiter and wealthier, he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured. And before he posed what may be the ultimate test of racial equality ”” whether Americans will elect a black president ”” he led students through African-Americans’ long fight for equal status…

At the school, Mr. Obama taught three courses, ascending to senior lecturer, a title otherwise carried only by a few federal judges. His most traditional course was in the due process and equal protection areas of constitutional law. His voting rights class traced the evolution of election law, from the disenfranchisement of blacks to contemporary debates over districting and campaign finance. Mr. Obama was so interested in the subject that he helped Richard Pildes, a professor at New York University, develop a leading casebook in the field.

His most original course, a historical and political seminar as much as a legal one, was on racism and law.

Please read the whole thing. It’s quite illuminating.]

There go those Republicans, making up nasty stuff about the government again

The New Neo Posted on by

The House cast a vote (unfortunately merely symbolic, because the Senate won’t be agreeing) to keep the IRS from enforcing Obamacare.

Look at the way the article describes the impetus for the bill [emphasis mine]:

The House voted Friday to prevent the IRS from enforcing any aspect of ObamaCare, a bill meant to exact revenge against an agency that Republicans say is incapable of neutral enforcement of the law…

Friday’s vote was the 40th time the House has tried to fully or partially repeal ObamaCare. But it was also a chance to slam the IRS, which Republicans say has shown itself unworthy of neutrally enforcing the controversial law.

“The IRS is already out of control, abusing its power to tax and audit the activities of honest, hardworking Americans,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said. “The IRS has betrayed the trust of the American people.

“Democrats want to give this agency more power and authority?” he asked. “They want this agency involved in Americans’ healthcare? No way.”

The entire article has 686 words, according to a word counter tool I just used. But these are the only mentions of why the Republicans may have voted this way. Nothing about the fact that there was an actual thing that the IRS actually did that has made the Republicans “say” this. Nothing about the fact that what the Republicans say is like, you know, true.

It’s as though Republicans just make stuff up out of the blue, in order to thwart Obamacare. The rest of the article continues that theme with quotes from Democrats to that effect and denials from Republicans.

It ends on a nice note:

Most Democrats said the House was wasting more time by passing a bill that was sure to go nowhere in the Senate. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), who was recently honored as the longest-serving member of the House in U.S. history, offered his own historical take on the GOP bill.

“Aren’t you embarrassed to go a 40th time in a fruitless, hopeless act?” he asked. “The Republican Party is like the Bourbons of France: They forget nothing because they never learned anything.”

You know something? To a large extent I actually agree with Dingell on that score, at least in terms of political wrangling and political strategy. The Republicans seem like babes in the woods to me compared to the Democrats.

By the way, about that “longest-serving” bit, Dingell (whom I previously knew next to nothing about) is aged 87. He has been in the House, representing an area near Detroit (actually, two areas; his district was redrawn slightly recently) since—wait for it—1955.

That’s a long time indeed, fifty-eight years. All in the House. Astounding.

By my calculations, Dingell entered the House at the age of 29. Before that, he was in the army and then a lawyer in private practice and prosecutor. And before the army, Dingell was a page in the House. The page position was probably obtained because Dingell’s father was a member of the House as well, for 22 years—the same seat which Dingell junior successfully ran for and took over when his father died in 1955.

So that part of Michigan has been sending a Dingell to the House ever since 1933.

Inevitable…

The New Neo Posted on by

…move:

The Office of Personnel Management, under heavy pressure from Capitol Hill, will issue regulations saying that the government can continue to make the employer contribution to the health plans of members [of Congress] and aides, according to several Hill sources.

Anyone surprised?

There are many reasons Congress hasn’t really opposed Obama’s grants of exemptions to this or that or the other group he wants to favor. But one of them is the fact that they wanted to feel free to grant their own exemptions—to themselves.

The hoodie: et tu, Smithsonian?

The New Neo Posted on by

So now we have word that the Smithsonian is “eyeing” Trayvon Martin’s hoodie for its new branch, the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

According to the branch’s director Lonnie Bunch:

It became the symbolic way to talk about the Trayvon Martin case…It’s rare that you get one artifact that really becomes the symbol.

Because it’s such a symbol, it would allow you to talk about race in the age of Obama.

What a novel idea! Now, that’s something we haven’t been allowed to do—talk about race in the age of Obama. Is that something like love in the time of cholera?

It seems to me we’ve been doing a great deal of talk, talk, talking about race “in the time of Obama.”

—The left would like to define that “talk” as their pointing out how racist Republicans and conservatives are, and having all white people respond by apologizing for being white like Chris Matthews has.

—Obama would like to define that “talk” as our listening to him give interminable, cliche-ridden speeches about the experience of black people and especially of himself, including topics such as his grandmother, the typical white person, and her fears.

—Eric Holder would like that “talk” to be about how cowardly we have been not to talk, or something like that.

I wonder if we’re not pretty much talked out at the moment. Despite that, I have a bit to add to the talk, and that’s this: it would be deeply deceptive and one-sided propaganda for the Smithsonian to display Trayvon Martin’s hoodie as a symbol of this case, because of what the hoodie has erroneously come to mean and the way it was used:

Zimmerman described Martin as wearing a “hoodie” the night he killed the teen, claiming self-defense. Protestors across the country wore hoodies in support of Martin as they called for Zimmerman’s arrest, prosecution and conviction.

Zimmerman’s words—like so much else about that night—have been repeatedly twisted to imply that he phoned in a call about Martin as a suspicious person in part because he was wearing a hoodie. But the evidence says otherwise.

Not that the left, Obama, Holder, or Lonnie Bunch (or the Smithsonian, unfortunately) care, but this is what actually happened, according to the transcript of Zimmerman’s call to the police that night:

Dispatcher: Sanford Police Department.

Zimmerman: Hey we’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there’s a real suspicious guy, uh, [near] Retreat View Circle, um, the best address I can give you is 111 Retreat View Circle. This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy is he white, black, or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

Dispatcher: Did you see what he was wearing?

Zimmerman: Yeah. A dark hoodie, like a grey hoodie, and either jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes. He’s [unintelligible], he was just staring…

Dispatcher: OK, he’s just walking around the area…

Zimmerman: …looking at all the houses…

Anyone who knows anything about how the police work knows that they ask for a description of the subject. That description includes race (as here, in direct response to the dispatcher’s question) and clothing (as here, in direct response to the dispatcher’s question). What else could Zimmerman have said, if in fact Martin was wearing a hoodie, which he in fact was? No one’s paid a particle of attention to the other portion of Zimmermans’ careful description—jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes—because they can’t be used for propaganda purposes like the sweatshirt.

Thus are myths born. This one is a particularly pernicious one, fanned by the blames of racial demagoguery. And now, the Smithsonian wants to get into the act?

[NOTE: Cross-posted at Legal Insurrection.]

Wouldn’t you know it…

The New Neo Posted on by

The host of this blog has been down—or rather, somewhat troubled, because apparently the servers have been working for some people and not for others (I’m in that latter group)—for many many hours.

This always throws me, despite the fact that I know it’s one of the typical and periodic experiences that goes with blogging. But we moderate-sized bloggers feel very dependent on our hosts and the servers thereof. That dependency is necessary (don’t have the wherewithal to do it ourselves), but not fun.

It’s not that I depend on the kindness of strangers, exactly. But I certainly depend on (and pay for) their competence.

Speaking of which:

So, a little while ago, I had just given up on a quick fix and gone to my two older backup blogs, put up a post or two, and activated comments there—when lo and behold, this one came back up! Oh frabjous day!

So that the experience shouldn’t be a total loss, let me just remind you all to bookmark my two backup blogs for the future, just in case:

neo-neocon at blogspot

backupneo at blogspot

Welcome back everyone!

Snowden finds a home

The New Neo Posted on by

In Russia, that great libertarian stronghold.

Let freedom ring.

Is anyone surprised? Putin has Obama’s number. Although, who knows? Maybe Obama doesn’t much care if Snowden never returns.

As for Snowden himself, he’s been offered a year’s asylum, renewable at the will of the Russians. Otherwise:

It is not clear what Snowden plans to do in Russia, although he has said he would like to travel around the country. VKontakte, Russia’s answer to social networking site Facebook, has already offered him a job.

And then there’s this howler from the article:

A senior Kremlin official played down concerns.

“Our president has … expressed hope many times that this will not affect the character of our relations,” Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s top foreign policy adviser, told reporters.

About liberals and those good intentions

The New Neo Posted on by

Quite a few commenters questioned my decision in this post to assume that a certain liberal named Steven Rattner, former counsel to Obama’s Treasury Department, has good intentions.

Here’s what I wrote in that post:

If you believe Rattner to be well-intentioned””and from the sound of him I will give him the benefit of that doubt…

The comments section afterward was replete with responses such as this one by “pst314“:

Neo, something to ask yourself: After how many generations of failure and disaster can one cease to attribute good intentions and deduce malice and utterly careless arrogance?

Those of you who’ve followed this blog for some time are no doubt aware that for many many years I’ve had a series of posts on the “fools or knaves?” question. So not only have I asked myself the question in the quote above, but I’ve explored it over and over and over.

But it’s an important one, so I’ll answer again, and I’ll try to be crystal clear: sometimes the person in question is a fool and sometimes a knave, sometimes both. And sometimes someone in the liberal camp actually is neither, and is making some good points on a certain subject (although that’s rare, I’ve certainly experienced it).

In general, it tends to go like this: leftists are most likely be the knaves, liberals are more likely to be the well-intentioned “fools.” However, political operatives and/or pundits and members of the MSM (in other words, those in power) are more likely to be the knaves, whether liberal or leftist.

As for Rattner himself (whom I realize is not the main issue, but just an example), I know so little about him that I don’t know into what camp he really falls. But more importantly, I assumed for the sake of argument that he was well-intentioned not because I wanted to make a point about Rattner himself, whose thought process and motivations I have no real knowledge of, but because I wanted to say something in that post about the reasoning process of those liberals who are well-intentioned.

They don’t exist, you say? I say: horse manure. I know they do, and I know it because most of my friends are just such people (many of those same friends of mine would of course consider me the fool, but my point is that they are well-intentioned rather than malicious).

What’s more, I know they exist for another reason: I was one of them for most of my life. I absolutely know that, as a liberal, I was extremely well-intentioned. My intentions have not changed; my information has.

The eye exam: which is better?

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I went to the eye doctor for my annual exam. All went well, fortunately.

But the experience reminded me that those questions the eye doc asks when he makes you don those weirdo glasses drive me nuts: “Which is better, number 1 or number 2?” Another piece of glass in front of your eye, in and out of the opening: “1 or 2?” And then another and another, 1 or 2.

Who knows? More than half the time, neither is better. Both drift in and out of focus as I continue to look at them, and he continues to wait, trying to mask his impatience. Or maybe both are better in different ways. One is darker, one lighter—does that count? Do it again. And then, apologetically, maybe just one more time.

After a while, I started answering “the first one,” just to make a decision and move things along. Otherwise I’d have been there all afternoon.

It’s a small complaint in the scheme of things, I know. But I thought I’d share it with you, you lucky people.

ADDENDUM: Funny stuff. Suggested by commenter “Prince Benjamin”:

So Yeats, what were you bellyaching about?

The New Neo Posted on by

The poet Yeats often wrote about how dreadful old age was, especially its physical manifestations.

In the poem “Among School Children“, he describes himself as having looked pretty nifty in youth and terrible at sixty:

And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once – enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

And in “Sailing to Byzantium” Yeats wrote:

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick,
unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress…

Then there’s “The Tower“:

What shall I do with this absurdity””
O heart, O troubled heart””this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog’s tail?

I know and love these poems, but I really never knew what Yeats himself looked like. I figured, though, that when I searched, I’d find some photos of a rather good-looking young man and then some of a decrepit, stooped, wrinkled, gnarled, unattractive old geezer.

So let’s start with the younger Yeats. Here he is as—yes—a rather good-looking youngish man:

Yeats1906

But you know what? In that photo he’s actually not all that young. It was taken in 1906, when Yeats was 41, and he could pass for a man in his twenties.

And even in 1911, when he was 47, he looked pretty darn good, somewhat of a cross between Warren Beatty and Daniel Day-Lewis, with just the tiniest touch of gray to add a hint of distinction:

NPG x6397,William Butler Yeats,by George Charles Beresford

So he must have turned into a sticklike old scarecrow some years later, right? Well, let’s take a look at a photo taken when he was 58:

Yeats1923

I still can’t see that he had much to complain about.

Here’s an undated one that must have been taken in his late 60s or early 70s (he died at the age of 73, so that’s the upper limit):

Yeatsolder

Granted, he has aged. But he still looks like what one might call a fine figure of a man, a forceful presence in mind, body, and spirit.

At the age of 51, after mooning after actress and feminist Maud Gonne for the better part of many decades, Yeats married a 25-year-old with whom he was apparently happy, and yet went on to have affairs with other women till the end of his life. This seems to have been helped along (if only psychologically) by a “rejunvenation” operation, intended to restore male vigor (including the sexual kind), that Yeats underwent at the age of 69 (details here in case you’re interested).

There’s poetry, and then there’s life.

What to do about Detroit: illogical non-consequences

The New Neo Posted on by

If you’re familiar with Thomas Sowell’s concept of competing visions (see this or this) you’ll have a framework for this conversation between Steven Rattner, former counsel to Obama’s Treasury Department, and George Will, on the topic of what should be done about Detroit.

I was going to cut and paste an excerpt from the link. But for some reason I couldn’t cut and past from that site, and the excerpt is too long to copy by hand (and I’m in a particular rush today). But if you go to the transcript, you can find the exchange I’m talking about just a third of the way down, beginning at the point where Stephanopoulos asks about the Detroit bailout, and Rattner answers “First of all, there’s a difference between a bailout…

Read the exchange with George Will up to the point where Rattner says “…feral dogs for the rest of their lives.” And then, for a discussion of that discussion, read Seth Mandel’s article in Commentary about it:

Rattner had argued that “apart from voting in elections, the 700,000 remaining residents of the Motor City are no more responsible for Detroit’s problems than were the victims of Hurricane Sandy for theirs, and eventually Congress decided to help them.” Will referenced that comment Sunday morning, reminding Rattner that those votes went for “60 years of incompetence, malcontents, and in some cases criminals.” He argued that Detroit had experienced a “cultural collapse” and is now reckoning with the consequences of their decisions. Rattner, in an illuminating and noteworthy response, said:

“So that’s fine. And so what do you want to do, do you want to leave them sitting in exactly the situation you just described, or in the spirit of America trying to help people who are less fortunate, whether their (sic) victims of natural disasters or their own ignorance or whatever, do you want to reach out and try to help them and try to reinvent Detroit for not a lot of money. We’re talking about a couple billion dollars here, this is small potatoes in the great scheme of life, or else you have your scenario, just leave them all sit (sic) with feral dogs for the rest of their lives.”

This is significant because it makes clear that the left will not see Detroit as evidence of the need for fiscal sanity. Even after liberal policies drive a major U.S. city to bankruptcy and collapse, the left will argue not only that the city should be bailed out by taxpayers but that it’s really a minor incident”“just a couple billion dollars, which is, in Rattner’s words, “not a lot of money.” To do otherwise, Rattner says, would not be “in the spirit of America.”

So there you have it. Liberals will argue that it is imperative to promise unaffordable pension and health benefits to government workers, and once that predictably ends in financial ruin, that it isn’t in the “spirit of America” not to fork over billions more. At no point is a consideration for sustainable economic policymaking introduced into the process.

Competing visions, indeed. If you believe Rattner to be well-intentioned—and from the sound of him I will give him the benefit of that doubt—it’s pretty astounding that he doesn’t seem to factor in the notions of moral hazard or logical and/or unintended consequences.

If liberals reward bad decisions over and over, that’s a decision they make, but Rattner doesn’t even seem to factor in the possible (probable?) bad results to which that could easily lead.

Or perhaps he’s not really looking that far, he’s just looking for a way to blame the rich or the mean Republicans or someone on the right for lack of compassion. But an overabundance of compassion can easily lead to a perpetuation of the problem. And equating Detroit’s financial situation with a natural disaster such as Hurrican Katrina—which Rattner did, refusing to blame the voters of Detroit for anything—is a recipe for recurrent disaster.

Actually, though, I’m not making light of the dilemma. Those who advocate some sort of economic toughlove are vulnerable to accusations of hardheartedness, and to rejection by voters. The long view does not seem to be the nice view—“teaching a man to fish” rather than giving him a can of sardines can lead to quite a bit of hunger and human suffering. The desire to alleviate pain in the short run is a very understandable one, and for a person to stick to his/her guns and convince others he/she is right, that person had better have a pretty good sense (and some pretty good arguments) that in the long run the conservative vision will lead to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. I happen to think those arguments are very persuasive, but where I live I seem to be in the minority.

Will the press ever turn on Obama…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the way much of it has now turned on Weiner? That’s the question asked by a commenter at this post about The New Yorker’s new cover mocking Weiner.

weinerny

My answer, in a nutshell, is no.

After all, there is no real cost to turning on Weiner. The election is not a national event. No one seemed to like Weiner all that much to begin with; perhaps the only people getting thrills up the leg about him might have been a few of his sext partners. Weiner’s misbehavior was sexual and simple to conceptualize, and most especially it was not political in nature (except for the over-arching issue of lying). Those who supported Weiner earlier and excused his personal failings—once—could rest easy in knowing that had shown them to be personally magnanimous. They had given him another chance, he blew it, and now by turning on him they’re showing they have morals and standards. Win/win.

And besides, his offenses had nothing to do with politics or policy. Abandoning Weiner now threatens no particular political or theoretical belief system of his previous supporters, and helps them look righteous and even-handed. And it doesn’t hurt that his activities lend themselves quite easily to mockery; the double-entendres just keep coming (oops!).

Nor is there any racial angle with Weiner; he’s Jewish, and therefore not of a protected group.

Obama is very different. For him, the press has compromised every ideal it professes to have. His sins are not personal, they are political abuses of power, and the abuses of power are for the most part in furtherance of the agenda of the left. For supporters and press to turn on him now would mean a re-organization of their much more basic belief system and perhaps even their politics. Even worse than that, it could mean saying the right was right about Obama all the time. That would be most threatening of all.

No, the only way the liberal press would ever really turn on Obama would be for not being leftist enough—for joining the conservative enemy, as it were. And although there were moments of that with Obama’s policies on Guantanamo, drones, and NSA spying (all of which involved him appearing, in the eyes of liberals and the left, to be too much like Bush in fighting Islamic terrorism—even though Obama refused to call it that), the Obama-dike of the MSM held.

It’s hard to imagine anything else that could ever threaten it.

Can someone please explain this to me?

The New Neo Posted on by

Israel releases terrorists in anticipation of talks with Palestinians.

At this point I can’t say I really understand any part of it. These periodic releases—and periodic talks—keep happening, and there’s no reason to expect that anything good will come of it, and plenty of reason to expect bad. I am puzzled as to what such talks would gain for Israelis:

Netanyahu said somewhat elliptically that being involved in a diplomatic process will make it much easier for Israel to act ”“ and stop actions ”“ in the area.

Israel, he said, had three interests in re-engaging now with the Palestinians: To try to find a solution to the conflict; to prevent negative trends against Israel in the international arena from gaining steam; and to allow Israel to better prepare to deal with the “challenges and opportunities” in the region.

Everything clear now?

This justificaton is particularly laughable, in a bitter-laugh sort of way: “to prevent negative trends against Israel in the international arena from gaining steam.” These “trends” have gained so much steam in the last forty years or so despite Israel’s cooperation in a gazillion negotiations and prisoner releases that they are capable of driving a dynamo that could power the entire country.

As for “finding a solution to the conflict” through talking—does anyone realistically think that has any chance of happening? The Palestinians have given no indication of wanting to find solutions except 100% on their terms. They are winning the propaganda war, they get aid and comfort from all over the world, and if they ever “solved” the conflict they’d have to face the extreme economic and political dysfunction of their own country (I assume it would have become a country at that point). Why would they want to ever do that?

Maybe the key to this move is something in internal Israeli politics? I’m not conversant enough with that arena to say. Perhaps some readers can shed a bid of light.

And by the way, in the past whenever I’ve written about Israel, the posts have almost immediately drawn trolls. We’ll see what happens with this one.

[NOTE: One odd fact from the article:

They [the Israeli negotiating team] were expected to hold a preliminary meeting Monday at US Secretary of State John Kerry’s home with Palestinian negotiators Saeb Erekat and Mohammad Shtayyeh, and then begin the negotiations in earnest on Tuesday.

John Kerry’s home? Doesn’t that seem rather odd? Kerry lives in Louisburg Square in Boston’s Beacon Hill, by the way, one of the ritziest old-money spots in the city:

The Greek Revival houses around the square reflect the rarefied privilege enjoyed by the 19th century upper class in Beacon Hill. The Atlantic Monthly editor William Dean Howells, teacher A. Bronson Alcott and his daughter, author Louisa May Alcott, are among the famous people who lived there in the 19th Century. One of the last private residences built on Louisburg Square was 2 Louisburg Square, built in 1847 for wealthy merchant and philanthropist Thomas Handasyd Perkins Jr., known as ‘short-arm Tom,’ who lived at 1 Joy Street.

Currently it is one of the most expensive residential neighborhoods in the country, and an oft-included landmark in walking tours and guidebooks. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry owns a townhouse on Louisburg Square. The average cost of a townhouse on the street exceeds $6 million and reaches as high as $20 million.

Of course, Kerry has many other homes, too. Perhaps it’s one of the others we’re talking about? But technically, only the Louisburg Square home could rightly be called “his”; the others are in wife Teresa’s name.

A lot of people think Kerry is rich because he married Teresa, who was rich because she inherited the money from her late husband John Heinz. That’s indeed how Teresa got her enormous wealth, and it’s also true that Kerry’s wealth increased tremendously on marrying her (at least, his access to the perks of her wealth did). But he was a fairly wealthy man through his own inheritance before he ever married her.

It’s interesting to note that Kerry’s wealth was no issue for the Democrats in the 2004 election, although it was unearned by him or his wife, whereas Romney’s almost entirely earned wealth was considered an awful thing by Democrats in 2012. One can only conclude that earned wealth is more philosophically objectionable to liberals than inherited wealth—at least, when it’s earned by a Republican.

Oh, and of course, Bain Capital BAD. It seems like only yesterday that Bain was the bane of so many people’s existence. But it was only a year ago.]