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It was our intention to leave the Middle East speeching for awhile, but John Podhoretz brings us back. We’ll move on next week. In the meantime, this is too much fun.
The score: Bibi 3, Barack 0.
In a demonstration of political and policy haplessness almost without precedent, the president of the United States decided last week for the third time in three years to go after a beloved ally of the United States with no practical goal and for no practical purpose.
And for the third time, he has had his hat handed to him.
President Obama put conflict with Israel front and center last week by including a new description of the borders of a future Palestinian state in his remarks on Thursday — an endorsement of boundaries for Israel based on the lines that preceded the Six Day War in 1967.
The president did this with deliberate aforethought, we are told by the reporting of New York Times White House correspondent Helene Cooper — precisely because he wanted to upstage and overshadow Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington.
Instead, he was upstaged and overshadowed.
It was Netanyahu, not Obama, who electrified Washington. …
If you missed a chance to hear or read Netanyahu’s speech, here it is.
… As the great English writer George Eliot predicted over a century ago, that once established, the Jewish state will “shine like a bright star of freedom amid the despotisms of the East.” Well, she was right. We have a free press, independent courts, an open economy, rambunctious parliamentary debates. You think you guys are tough on one another in Congress? Come spend a day in the Knesset. Be my guest.
Courageous Arab protesters, are now struggling to secure these very same rights for their peoples, for their societies. We’re proud that over one million Arab citizens of Israel have been enjoying these rights for decades. Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights. I want you to stop for a second and think about that. Of those 300 million Arabs, less than one-half of one-percent are truly free, and they’re all citizens of Israel!This startling fact reveals a basic truth: Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East. …
… I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace. As the leader of Israel, it is my responsibility to lead my people to peace.
This is not easy for me. I recognize that in a genuine peace, we will be required to give up parts of the Jewish homeland. In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We are not the British in India. We are not the Belgians in the Congo.
This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace. No distortion of history can deny the four thousand year old bond, between the Jewish people and the Jewish land.
But there is another truth: The Palestinians share this small land with us. We seek a peace in which they will be neither Israel’s subjects nor its citizens. They should enjoy a national life of dignity as a free, viable and independent people in their own state. They should enjoy a prosperous economy, where their creativity and initiative can flourish. …
Roger Simon reviews Mamet’s book.
With all the talk of Hollywood liberalism — the endless leftist blather from Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, the cozying up to Castro and Chavez by Oliver Stone and Danny Glover, the jejune Iranian peace-making by Annette Bening and Alfre Woodard, etc., etc — it’s fascinating that the two leading playwrights in the English language (the smart guys) — Tom Stoppard and David Mamet — identify as conservative/libertarians.
For Stoppard — born in Communist Czechoslovakia — this was natural, but for Mamet — a Chicago Jewish child of the sixties — it was a considerably longer slog. As he relates in his superb new book The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, “I had never knowingly talked with nor read the works of a Conservative before moving to Los Angeles, some eight years ago.”
Mamet certainly made up for lost time. Barely ten pages into his book, you know this man has read, and thoroughly digested, the major conservative works of our and recent times, from Friedrich Hayek to Milton Friedman and on to Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele. And he is able to explicate and elaborate on them as well as anybody. …
Paul Johnson says our debt has become a moral issue.
I wish people everywhere were encouraged by politicians, the media and their places of worship to see indebtedness in moral as well as economic terms.
There is nothing wrong with borrowing money. It’s a natural part of the capitalist system, whereby those who are frugal and have savings are enabled to use them to help those who wish to expand their businesses, receiving reasonable interest on the loans. But if you borrow, three conditions are necessary for your actions to be righteous:
- The money borrowed should be of reasonable size commensurate with your resources and prospects.
- From the outset a program of repayment should be in place.
- The repayment plan should have priority over any other commitment, especially any personal spending plans. …
David Harsanyi defends marriage.
When an actress — no, an artist — the caliber of Cameron Diaz weighs in on the future of social institutions, America has an obligation to listen.
And listen we did. In a widely discussed interview with Maxim magazine, Diaz offered America a peek at her body, her relationship with Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez (which, needless to say, is “awesome”) and her views on the future of matrimony. Does she think marriage is a dying institution? “I do,” she explained. “I think we have to make our own rules. I don’t think we should live our lives in relationships based off of old traditions that don’t suit our world any longer.”
Let’s for a moment pretend that we share a world with Cameron Diaz. Does marriage suit this domain? …
Shikha Damlia says there is no chance GM will pay back its loans. This inspite of the recent $3.2 billion quarter.
… No doubt, $3.2 billion is a big number. But an even bigger number is $60 billion. That’s what this administration and the last one together sank into GM (not to mention another $20 billion or so they dumped into Chrysler). When President Obama gave GM this money, he insisted that it was not a handout but an “investment” that would cost taxpayers “not a dime.”
But if there was ever any doubt that this wasn’t going to happen, this earning report dispels it.
For starters, included in the $3.2 billion figure is the net $1.5 billion that the company generated from the one-time sale of Delphi, its auto parts supplier, and Ally Financial, its financial arm. Subtract that, and its performance looks much less impressive, especially compared to its rival Ford that really didn’t receive a dime from taxpayers yet made $2.6 billion last quarter—or nearly a billion more than GM. …
The BizJournal tells us about the job engine that is Texas.
Texas added more jobs in the past 10 years than the total jobs of the 19 states, including the District of Columbia, that were positive for job growth.
Texas has enjoyed an unequaled economic boom the past 10 years.
The inventory of private-sector jobs in Texas increased by 732,800 between April 2001 and the same month this year, according to an On Numbers analysis of new federal employment data.
No other state registered an increase of more than 100,000 private-sector jobs during the decade. Only 19 states and the District of Columbia posted any gains at all. …