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David Warren comments on the Russian reactor in Iran.
… when we have no reason whatever to trust the motives or behaviour of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and plenty of evidence it had acted insincerely on previous agreements, Hillary Clinton went to Moscow with her ludicrous “reset button,” and Barack Obama followed with a new “START,” that jumbles the distinction between offensive and defensive weapons — again, just what the Russians wanted.
Likewise on Iran: the persistent and ridiculous assumption that the Russians have been acting in good faith, has left us entirely free of leverage. Instead, we are now gaping at a fait accompli.
In the end — and we are approaching the end, when Iran is established as a nuclear power, and the Israelis must make their “existential” decision on whether and how to take that threat out — we have not been rendered powerless by the enemy. We began with insuperable moral and material advantages, and we have rendered ourselves powerless by frittering them away.
George Will contrasts the pretend president to a leader with substance.
… Arguably the most left-wing administration in American history is trying to knead and soften the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history. The former shows no understanding of the latter, which thinks it understands the former all too well.
The prime minister honors Churchill, who spoke of “the confirmed unteachability of mankind.” Nevertheless, a display case in Netanyahu’s office could teach the Obama administration something about this leader. It contains a small signet stone that was part of a ring found near the Western Wall. It is about 2,800 years old — 200 years younger than Jerusalem’s role as the Jewish people’s capital. The ring was the seal of a Jewish official, whose name is inscribed on it: Netanyahu.
No one is less a transnational progressive, less a post-nationalist, than Binyamin Netanyahu, whose first name is that of a son of Jacob, who lived perhaps 4,000 years ago. Netanyahu, whom no one ever called cuddly, once said to a U.S. diplomat 10 words that should warn U.S. policymakers who hope to make Netanyahu malleable: “You live in Chevy Chase. Don’t play with our future.”
All of a sudden the Economist has decided the state has grown too big. Where were they over the past ten years?
… Throughout the rich world, government has simply got too big and Mr Cameron’s crew currently have the most promising approach to trimming it. Others—and not just the tottering likes of Greece and Spain—will surely follow. That includes America. At present, unlike in the 1980s, there is no Reaganesque echo from the other side of the Atlantic: despite the Tea Partiers’ zeal, the Republicans seem as clueless as Mr Obama in producing a credible medium-term plan to balance America’s budget. But pretty soon, as in Europe, somebody will have to come up with one—and Britain, for better or worse, is likely to be the place they will come to for ideas.
Rich Rickman posts on a Christopher Hitchens visit to the Daily Show.
… Hitchens: Oscar Wilde used to say that a map of the world that doesn’t include Utopia isn’t worth looking at. I used to think that was a beautiful statement. I don’t think that at all anymore. I tell you, to be honest, the most idealistic and brave and committed and intelligent young people that I know have joined the armed forces. And they are now guarding us while we sleep in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. … I never would have expected that would be what I would say about the students I have to teach.
Stewart’s audience, which is often raucous, listened to this in silence.
Hitchens writes in Hitch-22 that these days he thinks about “the shipwrecks and prison islands to which the quest [for Utopia] has led” and that he came to realize that “the only historical revolution with any verve left in it, or any example to offer others, was the American one.” His appearance on the Daily Show was an example not only of his physical courage but also of the intellectual audacity that pervades his book.
Along those lines, we have a video for you - Troops Surprising Loved Ones
Some of our favorites have called BS on the reporting of the primary in Colorado. John Podhoretz deals with the NY Times first.
I’ve read some cracked political analysis in my time, but a story on the New York Times website this afternoon called “A Primary Victory Boosts White House, for Now” may be the San Andreas Fault of cracked political analyses. It seems, according to the reporter Jeff Zeleny, that the White House is rejoicing today in the primary victory of Colorado Senate candidate (and sitting Senator by appointment) Michael Bennet over an insurgent Democrat named Andrew Romanoff:
“President Obama and his White House on Wednesday were savoring one of their sweetest victories of the midterm election season, as Senator Michael Bennet’s triumph in the Colorado Democratic primary on Tuesday interrupted the political storyline that all incumbents are doomed by voter discontent.”
The story goes on to say that Obama had invested his political capital in Bennet, that if Bennet had gone down it would have demonstrated his weakness, and so on. …
David Harsanyi is next with guffaws for a piece in The Atlantic.
Most of the national coverage of yesterday’s Colorado primary races really has me shaking my head. And few topped Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic. Though I usually enjoy and respect Ambinder’s work, in this instance, he seems to be engage in wishful thinking, or perhaps he’s getting the bulk of his information from the Michael Bennet camp. It wouldn’t be surprising considering the Senator’s brother is his boss.
Now, it may turn out that Bennet runs a brilliant general campaign, captures Colorado independents in droves and runs away with the race. But as of right now, Republican Ken Buck is leading in almost every poll I’ve seen (there is a PPP poll showing Bennet with a slight lead, though the same poll had Norton edging Buck — hat-tip Mike Booth). And the only “energized” party around here seems to be the party that wants to drive out incumbents.
You wouldn’t know that reading most national coverage. And in just a few posts, Ambinder describes Bennet as a brilliant campaigner (he spent millions more than Andrew Romanoff) as “relatively independent” (he voted down the line for the Obama agenda) an “education innovator” (DPS has, at best, mixed results) and so on. …
Along the lines of, “You really can’t make this shit up,” we learned last week Jerry Brown has a secret pension. Roger Simon has the story.
… What’s troubling in all this is not that Brown makes a good pension — or even than there may be some discrepancy about how much he makes versus how much he deserves. It is that the whole thing is SECRET! (rare use of caps and exclaim very deliberate).
Let’s think this through for half a second. At a time when pension funds are bankrupting or potentially bankrupting states all across the country, when aging populations are forcing the reconsideration of all sorts of social security programs on practically every country on Earth (countries that have them, anyway), and when the state of California — the sixth, or is it seventh, biggest economy in the world — is about to, once again, pay its employees with vouchers because it’s got zippity-do-dah in the bank, some officials of that state are receiving pensions whose size and identity we do not know and are not allowed to see.
Yes, there are secret state pensions in California. (Sounds like Novosibirsk, doesn’t it?) And we the citizens of that state are paying for them!
There is only word for this: criminal. …
Here’s an amazing story from der Spiegel.
As Germany’s wild boar population has skyrocketed in recent years, so too has the number of animals contaminated by radioactivity left over from the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. Government payments compensating hunters for lost income due to radioactive boar have quadrupled since 2007.
It’s no secret that Germany has a wild boar problem. Stories of marauding pigs hit the headlines with startling regularity: Ten days ago, a wild boar attacked a wheelchair-bound man in a park in Berlin; in early July, a pack of almost two dozen of the animals repeatedly marched into the eastern German town of Eisenach, frightening residents and keeping police busy; and on Friday morning, a German highway was closed for hours after 10 wild boar broke through a fence and waltzed onto the road.
Even worse, though, almost a quarter century after the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in Ukraine, a good chunk of Germany’s wild boar population remains slightly radioactive — and the phenomenon has been costing the German government an increasing amount of money in recent years. …
This is a good start to the humor section. If you’re wondering what Al Gore is up to, James Delingpole blogging in the Telegraph, UK has an answer.
“This battle has not been successful and is pretty much over for this year,” a shaken Al Gore has told his supporters, conceding that there is now next to no chance of US Congress passing a Climate Bill in 2010. (H/T Julian Morris).
As recorded by Steve Milloy at the Green Hell Blog, the bloated sex poodle was on magnificently paranoid form, lashing out in all directions at the enemies responsible for his mission’s failure, up to and including the US President:
‘ Gore bitterly denounced the Senate and federal government stating several times, “The U.S. Senate has failed us” and “The federal government has failed us.” Gore even seemed to blame President Obama by emphasizing that “the government as a whole has failed us… although the House did its job. [emphasis added]” ‘ …