The Sunday talk shows were not kind to ObamaCare:
“So we’re in the position of dialing down some of our expectations to get the costs down so that it’s affordable and, most importantly, so that it’s paid for because we can’t go to the point where we are now of not paying for something when we have trillions of dollars of debt,” said [Sen. Chuck] Grassley, R-Iowa.
“And we anticipate paying for it through some savings and Medicare, and from some increases in revenue,” he said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she wasn’t certain there are enough votes in the president’s own party to support the proposal.
“I think there’s a lot of concern in the Democratic caucus,” she said.
The overhaul’s chief proponent in the Senate, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, urged patience as lawmakers continued working on the bill. However, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the bill’s cost was problematic.
“You do the math,” McCain said. “It comes up to $3 trillion. And so far, we have no proposal for having to pay for it.”
The CBO estimates “were a death blow to a government-run health care plan,” Graham said. “The Finance Committee has abandoned that. We do need to deal with inflation in health care, private and public inflation, but we’re not going to go down to the government-owning-health-care road in America and I think that’s the story of this week. There’s been a bipartisan rejection of that.”
At some point the White House will have to get into the game rather than allow Congress to thrash about endlessly. The president will have to make clear what his bottom line is and how he’s going to pay for it. Until now Obama has largely relied on Congress to come up with the details of his agenda (e.g. on the stimulus, climate control, and healthcare) but when the liberal leadership in the House and Senate can’t find a majority for their proposals then the president will need to try to round up the votes that Pelosi and Reid haven’t been able to find, craft a compromise that will disappoint his base, or let his top priorities founder.
Obama during his brief tenure in the Senate was never a deal-maker or legisltive craftsman. Now he — or his aides — will need to do the hard work of governing. It’s obviously not their favorite activity nor one which Obama is comfortable doing, but the time for dog-and-pony shows has come and gone.
Lieberman’s Israel: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html
No matter what else, don’t ever say that it’s Lieberman’s Israel. No matter how sorely tried and surrounded, Israel will never embrace his kind of gross corruption and naked racism. He more correctly belongs to Russian authoritarianism.
How much can Netanyahu really do to placate the part of the “international community” that should matter to Israel, namely the U.S. and Europe. With Obama committed to pressuring Israel to cough up a state to the PA and Hamas and uncommitted to stopping Iran, Netanyhau must be prepared to stand firm, and not be spooked by the coldness and even hostility that will come Israel’s way from Obama. Can he do this with Ya’alon and Benny Begin now out of the positions in the government they expected to occupy?
Dan, that’s a provocative link. However:
1. Whatever the opportunistic, sometime leftish Lieberman’s traits, he is hardly responsible for the gathering post-Oslo, post-disengagement fury among Israeli Jews.
2. Nor is he to blame for the increasingly libertarian culture that countenances extreme self-expression.
3. Such manifestations apparently exist side by side with increasingly fastidious rules of actual combat engagement by the IDF, suggesting that they represent a kind of armchair fascism at worst.
4. Speaking of odd paradoxes, are you the same Dan who advocates compensated transfer of all Arabs to the Hejaz?
Sometime leftish?
Sure, fuster. He favors civil marriage (ie breaking the clerical monopoly), has a practically Meretz-like territorial stance and helped prop up Olmert for a year and a half. I bet that loyalty stuff is mostly for show. All bark, no bite.
If I understand Lieberman’s territorial stance, it revovles around using territorial exchanges in order to effect ethnic separation, based upon the idea that citizenship should be homogeneous.
This is not my understanding of “leftish.”
Would I be wrong in assuming that people on the rightish side might just as soon forego the honor of association with Lieberman and be a mite too generous in offering him to the left?
#7–Leftists come late to fastidiousness about ethnic cleansing: If Stalin & Mao are too odorous for you, how about the Democratic and Labour governments in the US & the UK in immediate post-WW II Europe? Huge, forced and quite bloody displacement of Germans from territories in many instances occupied by same for centuries–and quite right, too, unless one wanted to replay the Sudentenland fracas every generation.
Plenty of other examples available. Too bad the left balks at it when it comes to Israel–one suspects that has everything to do with Israel’s democratic and Jewish character, and nothing to do with reluctance to move populations for convenience sake–after all, I don’t hear lefty squawks about the Jews forced out of Arab lands, or the Arab passion to make the entire Middle East Judenrein.
Are Stalin and Mao too odorous for you? If not, enjoy.
If they are, why give not apply the smell test to Lieberman’s policies? They certainly do nothing to confirm Israel’s “democratic character”.
#1: “Lieberman’s Israel?”
Lieberman is not even mentioned in the referenced article!
Is Netanyahu going to be able avoid including Lieberman?
Hey guys stay on topic. Hazony’s post is about Barak, not Lieberman. If Barak manages to get into the forming coalition that would isolate Livni and Kadima. I wonder how much longer she can hold out being left out?
The question here is not whether Lieberman will be able to implement key chunks of Israel Beitenu’s platform- he won’t. The question is whether he has the ability to make Israel’s case in the coming confontation with Obama(and Jones, Clinton, Scowcroft and Baker-like types in State etc) with key players such as the U.S. Congress, and Eastern European countries friendly to Israel whose vote might help to stay EU actions against Israel.
Marty Peretz is probably right when he speaks of Lieberman is thuggish in his general demeanor, besides his bearing great ill-will toward Israeli Arabs. How will Lieberman function as an Israeli diplomat given that his achievements have been in the fields of avarice and demogoguery?
Demogoguery is about right. (Cf. The One, ditto avarice.)
——————-
U.S. President Barack Obama is using a “new language” in relations with the Middle East and an official overture towards Hamas is only a matter of time, the Islamist group’s leader Khaled Meshal said in a newspaper interview.
“A new language towards the region is coming from President Obama. The challenge for everybody is for this to be the prelude for a genuine change in U.S. and European policies. Regarding an official opening towards Hamas, it’s a matter of time,” Meshal told Italian daily La Repubblica in an interview published on Sunday.
——————
What change is Meshal talking about? So far, the Arabs have resisted emphatically all changes but the one that hasn’t been suggested by the west.
#7: This is not my understanding of “leftish.”
That’s your problem, as someone impervious to facts.
Two positions of Liebeman listed by Seth Halpern
prove his point decisively: civil marriage and a “Meretz-like”
map of territorial settlement.
Lieberman’s participation in Olmert’s adiministration is something
else: a matter of political tactics, not of policy.
It is true that not all of Lieberman’s views are leftish: they
transcend the traditional divisions. However, his views are
not eclectic: traditional divisions are eclectic.
There is no inherent connection between a clerical monopoly
on marriage and emphasis on defense; their union,
on the right, is a union of political expedience.
Lieberman’s views are rational and consistent: territorial
concessions and the loyalty test idea (one leftish, the other rightish)
are both based on the recognition of the same demographic danger
to Israel’s survival as an ethnic Jewish state – which is of course
her whole raison d’être.
I think he’s right on this – more right than the Right and the Left.
Both sides, in different ways, ignore the ethnic-demographic
danger.
#8: I bet that loyalty stuff is mostly for show. All bark, no bite.
It is a beginning. Things previously taboo (and taboo for wrong reasons!)
are now debatable.
IMO, just by this “bark” he has already done a great service
to his country. His is a fresh prespective, a welcome change to
the endless left-right tug-of-war in Israel’s politics.
16- Do you feel like the Israeli Arabs are stabbing Israel in the back?
#9: “Are Stalin and Mao too odorous for you? “
You miss the point, fuster.
Maynard did not cite Stalin and Mao for their moral odor –
but for being unquestionably left-wing.
This was in rebuttal to your claim that the idea
of population exchange along ethnic lines contradicts
your notion of what is “leftish”.
The cases of Stalin and Mao prove your notion to be wrong.
Concede that. Then, if you want now to make a new claim –
that such an exchange can only be pursued by monsters
like Stalin and Mao – then make it.
It will be easy to refute by other examples…
Read the rest of #9. Digest and return
#17: Do you feel like the Israeli Arabs are stabbing Israel in the back?
I do not believe in collective guilt.
Israeli Arabs are many and have different views and attitudes.
This was also true of the Sudeten Germans; they became,
however, a grave, even fatal, problem for Czechoslovakia.
Ethnic tensions have ruined Lebanon, have torn Cyprus apart,
have ravaged North Ireland and Bosnia, etc. etc.
The probem is especially grave in case of Israel, a Jewish garrison
state in a hostile Arab environment, with a growing Arab
commmunity inside; especially in view of the birth-rate disparity,
and of the end of massive Jewish immigration.
It is a question of arithmetic, not of back-stabbing.
If Arab voters become a decisive bloc in matters of national
security and immigration laws, one cannot reasonably expect
them to take care of maintaining the Jewishness of Israel…
contra, territorial divestment and loyalty tests may be meant to ensure ethnic integrity, but the former will create an existential risk while rendering the latter a virtual dead letter as the Arabs are increasingly emboldened and the Eurabianized Jews increasingly relegated to ethnic enclaves. The idolatry of the demographic is no more valid than the idolatry of the land. Israel needs the WB indefinitely for her safety, and its Arabs should make do with communal autonomy unless and until they prove themselves capable of decent behavior.
SH- you have a time frame during which the WB Arabs should make do with communal autonomy?
#22-Permit me to venture an answer: since it’s “until they prove themselves capable of decent behavior,” and we’ve been waiting since the 7th century, “Til hell freezes over” would seem to fit, no? I mean, at some point doesn’t any sane person say: “Guys, come on–you weren’t worth a pot of piss before Israel came along, so it’s got to be something else, and until you get that figured out, we simply can’t let you play with the rest of us.” Wouldn’t a little tough love serve everyone, most certainly including the Arabs, better than the endless denial?
It’s an answer one hears, but it leaves problems, doesn’t it? Things like an endless state of war.
It IS an endless state of war, just as there is an endless state of war against disease, vermin and natural disaster. We can accept that there will always be threats from diseases both known and yet to be recognized, insects that adapt to all attempts to exterminate them, and hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. We simply must deal with them as they come along. And so it is with this threat as well. It may never go away. It may be a feature of life forever.
Indeed–and unless one is prepared for an endless state of war, one will have either…an endless state of war, or slave status. Surely Mr. Fuster doesn’t imagine that Israel’s disappearance would mark Islam’s/Arabia’s “last territorial demand,” so his point is unclear. Perhaps he has the soul of a serf.
maynard, it’s blessed of you to worry about my soul. My concern about an endless state of war is that Israel need only lose once. As wise and enlightened as you are, I would have deemed it certain that the thought would have dawned upon you.
Is Israel able to sustain endless war? Will it be willing to endure the loss of life? Can it win a war of attrition?
Beyond that, can Israel pay for endless war? I doubt that it can expect other countries to continuously support the effort.
I don’t hope to see Israel reduced to slave status, but I doubt Israel’s ability to endlessly subjugate others.
Well, its economy’s been growing while it’s been “subjugating others,” so maybe you better recalculate.
maynard, read this concerning the economy
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/971928.html
and then think some more about the three or four billion from the US that isn’t always going to be there.
Well, if they’re doomed either way, might as well take out a bunch of Arabs & Iranians on the way out, eh?–little return on our investment. An ill wind, and all that.
Ha! I might agree with ya about the Iranians.
On the other hand, try letting go of the West Bank. Not only this country, but the Egyptians and even the Saudis will line up to kiss Israeli cheeks.
#13: “achievements have been in the fields of avarice and demogoguery”
Demagoguery…
That’s how a successful politician is normally seen
by those who dislike his politics.
a) Barak unlikely? Ask Ofra residents: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/130553
b) and as for “If I understand Lieberman’s territorial stance, it revovles around using territorial exchanges in order to effect ethnic separation, based upon the idea that citizenship should be homogeneous. This is not my understanding of “leftish.”
No? What was the Gaza disengagement? What is the demand for dismantlement of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and the expulsion of the revenant Jewish population?
33- The return of captured land in Gaza and the West bank is the return of captured land in Gaza and the West Bank.
The dismantlement of the settler communities and the return of the Israelis to Israel is indeed because of racism of Arabic society.
Even a “leftish” person such as myself recognizes that. I, however, won’t change the definitions to allow of words to comfort those advocating that Israeli politics be an instrument of an equivalent racism.