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Jennifer Rubin blogs about the Middle East peace process. Says that even liberals see what is happening.
Even Richard Cohen has figured out that it is not Bibi’s intransigence but Obama’s incompetence that is at the root of the non-peace-talks impasse. He writes:
“Obama ought to confer with someone who knows the region — and listen to him or her. Trouble is, many experts have told him that his emphasis on settlements was the wrong way to go. As late as last week and the succession of meetings held at the United Nations, it was clear that Netanyahu would not ask his Cabinet to extend the settlement freeze. Yet not only did the White House reject this warning, the president repeated his call for a freeze. “Our position on this issue is well-known,” Obama told the U.N. General Assembly. “We believe that the moratorium should be extended.” Well, it wasn’t. …
…The pattern repeats itself – Obama beats up on Israel, fails to deliver concessions to the PA, and then commences begging with the parties not to break off talks and embarrass the U.S. president. Granted, Abbas is no Anwar Sadat, but Obama has made both himself and the PA president look weak and ineffective. …”
In Contentions, Evelyn Gordon shows how Obama’s past actions have hurt his current negotiations with Israel.
I suspect Netanyahu resorted to this flimsy excuse because the real reason is too undiplomatic to state publicly: Obama, by his own actions, has shown he views presidential promises as made to be broken. And Israel’s government is loath to incur the real damage of extending the freeze (which J.E. Dyer ably explained here) in exchange for promises that will be conveniently forgotten when they come due.
Israel, after all, received its last presidential promise just six years ago, in exchange for leaving Gaza. In writing, George W. Bush said the Palestinian Authority must end incitement and terror, voiced support for Israel “as a Jewish state,” vowed to “strengthen Israel’s capability” to defend itself, and said any Israeli-Palestinian deal should leave Israel with the settlement blocs and “defensible borders” and resettle Palestinian refugees in the Palestinian state rather than Israel. He also promised orally that Israel could continue building in the settlement blocs.
But when Obama took office, he denied the oral pledge’s very existence, infuriating even Israeli leftists. As Haaretz’s Aluf Benn wrote, it was possible to argue the policy should change, “but not to lie.” …
John Steele Gordon says that the Dems are the butt of jokes by liberal comedians.
Jon Stewart tears you to shreds, and the audience eats it up big-time (h/t Instapundit). For someone like President Obama, with an ego the size of a Midwestern state, this must be very, very painful to watch. For the rest of us, it’s a lot more hilarious than Steven Colbert’s recent Congressional testimony.
But because all great humor, political or otherwise, must be grounded in truth and the realities of human nature, it must also be very frightening to Obama, in particular, and Democrats, in general. When the people in a mainstream audience fall out of their chairs when Jon Stewart suggests that the slogan for the Democratic campaign this fall should be “We came, we saw, we sucked,” that’s a pretty good indication that the Democrats have lost the country and no longer control the political narrative.
I don’t think the Democrats will be laughing on Nov. 2.
Victor Davis Hanson comments on the Obami’s divisiveness.
…In Obama’s world, there is no such thing as legitimate skepticism of his policies, even though they seem to millions to be radical and contrary to the notions of limited government, lower taxes, and personal freedom, notions that have long set us apart from our Western constitutional cousins in Europe. Instead (as can be seen in his latest Rolling Stone interview), those who oppose his policies — from the tea-party groups that resent his background to that destructive force on the national scene, Fox News — represent darker forces.
Looking back at 20 months, we see this Nixonian them-vs.-us world in which good progressives battle against those who make more than $250,000 per year; greedy doctors taking out tonsils; police who stereotype and act stupidly; Arizonan xenophobes who snatch kids out for ice cream; Islamophobes who would deny constitutional rights to Muslim moderates at Ground Zero; and racists who have traditionally stood in the way (mutatis mutandis, as they do now) of freeing the slaves.
All this psychodrama is beneath a president. It is a prescription for tearing the country in two — and about the dumbest thing you could do just weeks before an election.
Peter Wehner has some Rolling Stone quotes from the president and opines on what they may signify.
Barack Obama’s recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine paints a portrait of a president under siege and lashing out.
For example, the Tea Party is, according to Obama, the tool of “very powerful, special-interest lobbies” — except for those in the Tea Party whose motivations are “a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the president.”
Fox News, the president informs us, “is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world.”
Then there are the Republicans, who don’t oppose Obama on philosophical grounds but decided they were “better off being able to assign the blame to us than work with us to try to solve problems.” Now there are exceptions — those two or three GOPers who Obama has been able to “pick off” and, by virtue of supporting Obama, “wanted to do the right thing” — meaning that the rest of the GOP wants to do the wrong thing. …
In the WaPo, Michael Gerson notes the arrogance in Obama’s criticism of everyone.
President Obama’s latest interview with Rolling Stone magazine is revealing precisely because it is so typical. Everyone — really just about everyone in American politics — is chided, challenged, instructed, judged or admonished in one way or another. The president’s condescension is universal.
…Some of these criticisms may be legitimate. Piled atop each other in a long interview, they indicate a president disappointed with a nation that can’t manage to live up to his own high standard of public service. The professor issues his grade: all of us need improvement.
A critic who is angry can be confronted as an equal. A critic who is disappointed is asserting his superiority. The method is inseparable from smugness. The view from Olympus may be broad, but it makes a leader distant from the ants below. …
Rick Richman counters Obama’s self-pitying argument that he inherited this mess. Not to mention that Obama has compounded the problems.
As the President and Vice President whine about the whining of their shrinking “base,” as being insufficiently appreciative of the superhuman efforts to confront our problems, they might remember the old saying that “in times like these, we should remember there have always been times like these.” Victor Davis Hanson writes that the problems Obama has faced have not, in fact, been worse than those that other presidents confronted as they entered the presidency:
A recession and 9/11 were not easy in 2001. And 18% interest, 18% inflation, 7% unemployment, and gas lines by 1981 greeted Reagan. Truman took over with a war … a wrecked Asia and Europe, a groundswell of communism, a climate of panic at home, and a soon to be nuclear Soviet Union … capped off soon by a war in Korea. …
John Podhoretz has some positively weird quotes from the prez.
Here are some things Barack Obama said this evening to Democratic donors (I quote from Mark Knoller’s Twitter feed):
“Now’s not the time to quit…it took time to free the slaves…ultimately we’ll make progress.”
“I need you to be fired up.”
“There better not be an enthusiasm gap, people.”
Ordinarily, I don’t think it’s wise to second-guess the communications or rallying skills of a man who garnered 69 million votes. I don’t know if I ran for office that I’d get 6900 votes. But wow. This is some terrible, terrible communicating.
I mean: It took time to free the slaves??? …
Byron York reports that there is no rest for the weary.
It’s often remarked that President Obama has enjoyed a number of getaways, vacations, and mini-vacations during his 20 months in office. But at a Democratic fundraiser Thursday night, the president said, “I’d appreciate a little break.”
…According to the pool report, Obama thanked Phillips for the work he and his wife have done for Team Obama. Then the president mentioned that Phillips and Douglass have an opulent place in Italy and wondered why there had been no invitation to visit. “I’d appreciate a little break and some Tuscan sun,” the president said, according to the pool report. “Some pasta. I can use it.”
Obama reportedly spoke about 15 minutes. After the dinner, he left the Phillips/Douglass home and headed to DAR Constitutional Hall, where he addressed the Democratic National Committee rap concert/fundraiser. Then, it was back to the White House by 9:45 pm, where the president presumably was able to get a little rest.
Toby Harnden looks at Florida’s senate race. He notes that no one is talking about Obama. And happily, Crist’s defection isn’t hurting Rubio.
Representative Kendrick Meek, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in the November 2nd mid-terms, also neglected to let Mr Obama’s name pass his lips during an appearance with the former vice-president in a union hall.
…Two years ago, every Democrat in the country was invoking Mr Obama’s name as they hoped to ride on his coat-tails to electoral victory. This year, he is a near-pariah, with many of the party’s candidates doing everything they can to distance themselves from him.
…This year, Mr Meek is trailing badly in a three-horse race. Marco Rubio, the Republican candidate, backed by the anti-government Tea Party, was initially viewed as too Right-wing for Florida. He now has a seemingly unassailable 13-point lead, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll.
Behind Mr Rubio, who is on 46 points, is Governor Charlie Crist. The Florida governor, a centrist who pulled out of the Republican primary race when it became clear he would lose, is on 33 points, with Mr Meek at just 18. …
David Warren discusses the possible computer strike on Iran’s nuclear reactor.
It would appear that a significant thing has happened — an act of war with extraordinary consequences — without anyone getting visibly upset. Perhaps I am understating: but the cyber worm attack on the Iranian nuclear facility at Bushehr may well have put it out of commission as effectively as any cruise missile strike by the Israeli or U.S. air force.
We cannot know the extent of damage. Iran is a mostly closed society; the Russians who designed and largely built that reactor have been operating no differently than they did during the Cold War; Pentagon sources seem themselves puzzled; Israelis, if they know something, are not telling; and so on. We can infer that something very bad has happened to the Bushehr reactor from scattered reports, but cannot be sure what that was, or if the cyber worm used to make the bad thing happen was (as various computer security experts have speculated) “Stuxnet.”
They became aware of Stuxnet several months ago, and immediately began trying to reverse engineer, to discover how it works and what it is meant to do. Also, mapping reports of its appearance as sleeping “malware” in thousands of the world’s major industrial computer control systems. (A peculiar concentration was found in Iran, with secondary concentrations in Pakistan and India.) …
David Goldman isn’t sure if the computer strike on Iran is true, but that it is plausible, and reminds us something similar has happened before.
Except for one established fact — that it’s been done before — I wouldn’t touch the Iranian cyberwar story with a barge pole. Lies, half-truths and misinformation surround live intelligence operations like nested hedge-rows, and to ask anyone truly in the know about such things is the equivalent of saying, “Lie to me.” The Israeli spook site Debka (entirely unreliable) reports that the damage to Iranian industrial controls from the “Stuxnet” worm is serious, citing Iranian media threats that Iran will wage a “long-term war” on Israel and the United States–the presumed malefactors–in retaliation. …
…The first documented large-scale cyber attack produced one of America’s most stunning covert victories of the Cold War. In mid-1982, a Siberian natural gas pumping station exploded with the force of three kilotons of TNT. …
No doubt there is an element of psy-ops. Computer controls are finicky at best, and if the Iranian systems are compromised in some way, they cannot know how many “logic bombs” will go off in the future, or which of their IT people might be wandering about with a USB drive containing additional worms. I have no way of sorting truth from psywar. How cool would it be if the story checked out?
In case you need another reason to clean out Congress, Andrew Phillips and Pete Donohue, in the NY Daily News have a story.
The city will change the lettering on every single street sign – at an estimated cost of about $27.5 million – because the feds don’t like the font.
Street names will change from all capital letters to a combination of upper and lower case on roads across the country thanks to the pricey federal regulation, officials said Wednesday.
…The changes are among many in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices that regularly changes to improve road safety, highway administration spokesman Doug Hecox said. The mixed upper- and lowercase rule was adopted in 2003, but municipalities were given until 2018 to comply completely, Hecox said.
“If it’s such a pressing safety issue, why won’t it be done until 2018?…” said Paul Kelly, 66, a retired Manhattan resident. …