Hamas has lost — often badly — in every military theater it has fought in. Its suicide bombings have been thwarted by fences and walls, its rocket attacks, while a serious problem, do not cause many casualties and whenever Katyushas have been employed Hamas has suffered a stinging response from the IDF. So Hamas is now concentrating its efforts on fighting in the only theater in which it still enjoys superiority over Israel — in the media. Almost everything the terror group does today is oriented toward winning media coverage that condemns Israel and apologizes for Hamas.
Check out Khaled Abu Toameh’s report in today’s Jerusalem Post if you had any doubts. Hamas is now fanatically trying to cause fuel shortages in the Gaza Strip, so that a litany of horrors can be blamed on Israel — hospital closures, blackouts, sewage overflows, pestilence, boils, locusts, everything.
Eyewitnesses in Gaza City said that at least on four occasions over the past few weeks, Hamas militiamen confiscated trucks loaded with fuel shortly as they were on their way from Nahal Oz to the city.
They added that the fuel supplies were taken to Hamas-controlled security installations throughout the city.
“Hamas is taking the fuel for it the vehicles of is leaders and security forces,” the eyewitnesses said. “Because of Hamas’s actions, some hospitals have been forced to stop the work of ambulances and generators.”
PA officials in Ramallah said Hamas’s measures were aimed at creating a crisis in the Gaza Strip with the hope that the international community would intervene and force Israel to reopen the border crossings.
“As far as we know, there is enough fuel reaching the Gaza Strip,” the officials said. “But Hamas’s measures are aimed at creating a crisis. Hamas is either stealing or blocking most of the fuel supplies.”
Hamas has also been exerting pressure on the Gaza Petrol Station Owners Association to close down their businesses so as to aggravate the crisis. Some of the station owners and workers said they were afraid to return to work after receiving death threats from Hamas militiamen and ordinary residents desperate to purchase gas and diesel for their vehicles.
Over the winter, Hamas rode high on a crescendo of international sympathy for Gaza and outrage at Israel when it convinced the world that Israel had caused a blackout of the Strip. Its conduits for doing so were the international press corps and international human rights and aid organizations, all of which (to varying degrees) are deeply invested in advancing the narrative of Palestinian victimhood and Israeli cruelty.
Is there any doubt today that the most important battlefield in this conflict is not in Gaza or Sderot, but in newspaper articles and television broadcasts?
The odds that David Brooks will be right about anything these days is about 1 in a google.
Remember David Freddoso’s indestructible thesis: Obama has never stood up to the powers that be pushing the status quo once in his entire life.
Do we really think he’s going to buck the “old bulls” now?
Sorry, that’s “odds ARE about 1 in a google.”
What Democrats want is an approved stimulus package with Republican backing for cover should it fail to stimulate.
“I won”. Nice.
If this brown sandwich of a bill does go party-line, expect the MSM line to be “Republicans had a temper tantrum at a perceived Obama snub”. Remember the Gingrich-Clinton government shutdown?
Yes, Obama won, but every person he was talking to won their last election as well. They all represent Americans.
No CFB, that’s 1 in a GOOGOL–look it up!
Republicans will be foolish if they do anything other than:
1.) Acknowledge that the economy needs fiscal stimulus and that the banking system needs further restructuring and capital infusions.
2.) Propose a GROWTH oriented stimulus – cutting capital gains and corporate taxes, investment in PRODUCTIVE infrastructure projects, i.e. nuclear power plants, etc.
3.) Vote against the Christmas in February bill that the democrats have proposed.
Obama and the democrats want republican support for one purpose and one purpose only, to deflect blame when it doesn’t work, which it won’t if the purpose is to grow the economy and create jobs.
I assume the Dems have been working on this stimulus package since election day? What they came up with is a package of stuff that looks a lot like every other stimulus package from the last 60 years.
It may work. If it does not, we are seriously screwed I fear.
But Obama needs to get off his bi-partisan pile of horse crap. There was no Republican input into this package.
Apparently Obama is now the democrat version of The Decider; another liberal hysteria-point to be thrown by the wayside.
But you just go ahead, Mr. President, and when the economy goes farther down the crapper even after your stupidity, you can eat those words in 2010.
Massive “stimulus plans” do not stimulate. They depress. They do not encourage lending. They make it impossible. Only a small fraction of the government credit set aside for these plans will actually go to buy equipment and pay workmen now. You can only put so many men to work in the next year. Yet all of the planned expenditures require a commitment to supply credit. Most of the setaside just drains the credit markets because everyone knows it will be spent someday – two, three, five years from now – but few immediate effects are helping anyone. This is a recipe for collapse.
I should add that Republicans must develop their own ideas and recomendations because Obama and the country will need ideas if this same-old package fails.
I think the term is “googal”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googal
I wonder if David Brooks is having a case of buyer’s remorse?
So a $200 million dollar bridge to nowehere was an outrage — but now we’re gonna spend $30 BILLION on infrastructure projects that haven’t even been dreamed up yet, let alone demonstrated any real necessity for.
They’d be better off just flying from sea to shining sea and heaving duffel bags of hundred dollar bills out of the back of a cargo plane.
Holy cow! Who would have believed it? Our new president is a left-liberal and he’s going to pursue a left-liberal agenda no matter how many conservatives proclaim him a “pragmatist” who will be reined in by his awesome responsibilities. HEH.
“Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election.”
Which seems to imply that the minority party may as well just pack up and go home.
Wow. And they said Bush wanted to be a dictator. That’s ironic.
david brooks dares to write nonsense like that? after his salivating and tonguing of obama in the absense of any evidence of the beloved “pragmatism” or “centrism”? not sign whatever the old bulls put on his desk-guess DB, despite his lofty position as the house “conservative” at the NYT, never bothered to check BHO’s history of standing up to those bulls.
Mr. Brooks has it wrong here. President Obama will indeed sign the bill just as Bill Clinton signed, his first year in office, just about everything the Old Bulls put in front of him. A President can’t do a whole lot without the help of Congress (George Bush got a fair bit done the last two years only because the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats joined forces on critical issues). President Obama can’t stand up to the Old Bulls and then ask for their help for his plans on health care, Pakistan, etc.
So of course he’ll sign, and of course the Republicans will vote ‘no’ — what incentive do they have to vote yes? And when the stimulus package is seen not to do any good at all, and when the Democrats achieve a certain cumulative radioactivity based on their own corruption issues (just as the Republicans in 2006), then the 2010 Congressional elections will become very interesting.
Is Paul Volcker really on board with this plan? Is this the same Volcker who has warned so often about the dangers of deficit spending by the US government? Now he apparently feels that it is worth putting those concerns on hold in order to enact a massive spending program, rather than straight tax cuts. This is not your father’s Paul Volcker.
Gee, you’d almost think that the so called “stimulus” package had ulterior purposes. I’m shocked, shocked I say!
Learn from the GOP and ignore the other party. There was no talk of bipartisanship when Bush rammed his billionaire tax giveaways in 2001 and 2003. There was no talk of bipartisanship when the Republicans rammed the best-for-big-pharma Medicare part D. etc etc
Learn from the GOP, Ignore the Republicans
If the Senate Republicans intend to keep their relevance they better wake up and remember what they are supposed to stand for. Filibuster this thing until Republicans are brought into the process. Not that that will help much considering who the Big Gov Republicans in congress currently are, but if they don’t demand a seat at the table now good luck getting it in a few months.
“”Yes, Obama won, but every person he was talking to won their last election as well. They all represent Americans.”"
Hmm, well said. And thank you for posting, because I just wiped Windows and I couldn’t remember your name while reconstructing my bookmarks.
I find that positive views of stimulus are general and unthinking. “Spending money must be good”, “We must do something”, “The free market has failed, so we must use the political market”.
Questions and doubts about stimulus are supported by facts, history, and a simple question: “When has it ever worked?”, and “Did it work last February?. Remember the significant, short-term improvement in people’s lives from the $150 billion stimulus plan Feb 2008? Uh, we don’t remember, because it wasn’t noticeable.
The stimulus proposition: “Give me your savings, and I’ll improve your lives and give you sustainable careers in a brighter future. [psst, aide talks into ear of politician] Uh, I mean, I’ll either do that, or I will prevent things from getting any worse than they really have to be. Trust us to try really, really hard, and if things don’t work out, at least you know that we tried hard.”
Why Spending Stimulus Plans Fail via WSJ.com.
Other articles about stimulus
It’s a perfect plan. It will create a bunch of make-work construction jobs over time which will go to placate the hordes of illegals the Dems will legalize. After all, Robert “Third” Reich already told us white men need not apply.
I’m no economist, but one of the things I’ve read about the Great Depression is that government borrowing overwhelmed the credit markets. Instead of loaning money to businesses and people, the big institutions invested in government bonds, which were relatively risk-free, even if the returns weren’t great.
Isn’t there a major possibility here that the credit markets will just invest in all of the new government bonds floated to pay for all of this and thumb their noses at the businesses and people that really need the credit?
We are well on the way of bankrupting America.
Yes, then the Republicans should vote against it, just like they voted against Bill Clinton’s 1993 budget.
If republicans want to regain any credibility and get people to come back to them they need to stop acting like watered down democrats and stop spending like democrats. If they think this will actually stimulate the economy then vote for it, but its time the consevatives got a backbone and stopped acting like John Mccain and passing crappy bills that only help the democrats.
If the dems want this thing so much and its a pork filled monstrosity, then the conservatives should let the dems run with it and accept all the blame or credit. If the dems are so keen on passing this, they can do it themselves.
If the dems are so keen on passing this, they can do it themselves.
You know, I agree. I think the Republicans should vote against it, en masse.
Do you go to an arsonist to ask them how to put out a fire? No? Then why do you expect government to get us out of the mess that it itself created?
With MSM covering for the Dems, the Reps only response on this is to make very clear why they are voting no and let the Dems own it. No more blaming Bush, No more blaming Republicans (look at the desperation of the Dems to get Reps in the House to vote for the bailout). If Reps really feel strongly against this package, then stand up and vote against it. Let the chips fall where they may. If it works, great. If it fails, then the blame gets place where it belongs. Boy, if we had term limits, stuff might get done if we didn’t have constant prepping for the next election and people afraid to vote the way they really feel.
I’d like the Republicans to vote against it, but they won’t do so. The reasons are political. If they vote against it, they’ll look like they don’t want to do anything in the midst of a crisis that the public broadly (and correctly) blames their president for creating. If they vote against it and it fails, the public won’t penalize the Democrats, because the public understands that the problems are deep and won’t be fixed quickly.
By the way “failure” is going to be hard to establish, because Obama has set expectations low. He’s told the public to expect a bad 2009 and a rough 2010, with rising unemployment and bad news. So, the public isn’t going to be expecting quick fixes, and Republican criticism will fall flat if it’s a matter of your side carping about economic decline this year and next.
However, if things begin to improve later this year or in 2010, then Obama will get credit. If the Republicans opposed his plan and it worked, they’ll get creamed in two years. If they opposed it and it didn’t work, they’ll get creamed anyway because the public will be seeing this as Bush’s Republican depression.
Man oh man, it just ain’t fair, is it?
Why don’t they just make layoffs and pay cuts illegal? then everyone with a job can be confident and keep on spending. The bailout wouldn’t be needed.
Then they can just make injury and illness illegal and save all kinds of money on healthcare.
Then the UN can outlaw war, and we can cut defense spending to zero.
Another nice thing about all of this is that it splits the Republicans between their ideological purists and their pragmatists. Obama is widely seen to have put a bunch of tax cuts in that plan as a sop to bipartisanship. If the Republicans spurn it, then they’ll have slapped away the hand of cooperation. This is what the pragmatists know. If they accept it and support the plan, then they’ve been coopted and lose most of their complaining rights — for no gain if it works, but only a softening of losses to come.
It’s a real Hobson’s choice. A classic squeeze play, all the more effective because it’s being offered with such a reasonable face. Your side is between a rock and a hard place. In a damn tight spot, if you ask me. ‘Tis a pity.
Republicans will be foolish if they do anything other than:
[...]
3.) Vote against the Christmas in February bill that the democrats have proposed.
You don’t really believe that Republicans are going to put on some sort of united front, do you?…
Not only are you in a tough spot, but you damn well know you are, and that’s irritating. Think of it, only three days into Obama’s presidency and he’s got you in a vise. If your side complains too much, you’ll look like you don’t want to solve the nation’s problems. If you don’t complain enough, then your faithful lose (even more) faith.
You know, if this sort of thing continues, it just might cause your heads to explode. Imagine that.
This is the way to create a 3ed world economy. This isnt just big government it is big pork and big earmark. Remember Japan tried to spend their way out of their stagnation and spent 10 years going nowhere.
The fruitlessness of caviling over the numbers and specifics, when you have already conceded the principle, is being thrown into strong relief here.
The Congressional Republicans in this instance are an inverse of the woman in the joke, who agrees to sleep with a man for $1 million. When he begins bargaining for a lower price, she asks, “What do you think I am?”
“Honey, we’ve already established what you are,” the man says. “Now we’re just haggling over the price.”
He who would vote for an economic stimulus plan is a statist big-spender. Now the Democrats are just demanding a new price for the same agreement.
whitehouse. gov is not accepting comments.
The chosen one asked for the job. He assured us he was uniquely qualified to fix our problems for us. All of them. So give him the rope and watch him do what he will inevitably do with it.
Even better, let him seize the rope over republican objections, and watch him do what he will inevitably do with it.
We’ll remember President Puberty’s words (if and when) Republicans ever regain control of ANYTHING.”Bi-partisanship” is the biggest scam that Republicans have ever allowed themselves to be inflicted with – and the stupid party still hasn’t figured it out yet.
The original Clinton Largest Tax Increase in American History was passed without a single Republican vote in the House. The Republicans need to make sure this budget-busting monstrosity does not attract a single vote, and show a responsible alternative.
”Bi-partisanship” is the biggest scam that Republicans have ever allowed themselves to be inflicted with
I’d say that Barack Obama is a uniter, not a divider, wouldn’t you?
Well, I think the stimulus package says you should get back into the market….DE, CAT, BDK, SWK, etc. They don’t use many shovels doing construction these days, but big equipmnent and tools wil be in demand. Casinos, brothels, brewers and distillers should benefit, too.
John Hartland’s bravado sounds a lot like whistling past the graveyard.
That’s should actually be “once in a googol”. A google is a website, a googol is a number.
Wow, PP! You taught me something. I thought I already knew these things. googol=10^100. Impressive!
Obama touted breaking down political barriers all throughout his campaign, but now we’re seeing this type of flamboyant smugness? I suppose Barack is just another US politician…
Read more on this topic at:
http://politic.ology.com/2009/01/23/obama-woe-be-to-the-vanquished-gop/
This stimulus package proves that the U.S. Congress is even more witless than anyone dreamed. Has there been any analysis of this joke in the media by anyone but Keynesian income redistributionists?
John Hartland’s bravado sounds a lot like whistling past the graveyard.
Yes, a Republican graveyard.
By the way, there is always this little tidbit: Turns out that infrastructure spending (and the taxes to finance it) is popular even with most Republicans. Not with the crazed wingnuts that call themselves Commentarians, but with the non-vampire crowd.
John Hartland,
Sooooo, super genius, how much of this wonderful infrastructure spending you love so much will end up in the pocket of organized crime?
#51-I don’t think anyone’s dreams could be that horrible.
Hartland are you really that stupid or are you just making fun of Democrats? None of that infrastructure money will get spent for years. You can’t build a government project without years of NEPA studies and years of NIMBY litigation. That money will sit there doing no good except make lawyers rich unless you are willing to waive the environmental requirements and the envirowackos won’t go for that.
Further, you are such an ignoramous you don’t even know what Keynes actually said. He said you could in some cases “prme the pump” of the economy. He would never have endorsed spending in the name of creating wealth or spending of this magnatude. There is a famous story about him meeting with a bunch of FDR people and saying “everyone there was a Keynsian but me”. This isn’t Keynsianism. It is just a mass looting of the country.
It is all about stealing
A massive infrastructure program will have trouble creating jobs. Back in the ’30s, there was more of a culture of manual labor than there is now. You could hand an unemployed man a shovel, tell him to build roads or plant trees and he could manage. Not any more. Fewer Americans are familiar with that type of work, and the work itself is far more complex now.
So the infrastructure spending will either a) narrowly benefit the specialists in infrastructure construction, or b) turn into a massive boondoggle of featherbedded make-work. Think of Boston’s Big Dig writ large. We will get jobs or we will get infrastructure improvements, but we won’t get both.
Of course, what really got us out of the Depression was WWII. Pakistan, anyone?
how much of this wonderful infrastructure spending you love so much will end up in the pocket of organized crime?
I wasn’t aware that the highway money would be spent to bail out banks.
I’ll take that to mean Hartland thinks 100% of bailout bucks will go to organized crime.
I see that so far none of the commenters have pointed out that in fact the whole “CBO study” thing is in fact a scam by the Republicans. As for the organized crime question, I didn’t know that the RNC or any of its associated groups could dip into the money.
That “I won” sounds suspiciously similar to “I’m the decider.”
It also kind of reminds me of “My way or the highway.”
Weren’t the Democrats whining about those attitudes a week ago?
I wonder what changed their minds.