Kim Strassel explains that the horde of amendments that Republicans offered during the reconciliation process helped smoke out exactly what Democrats were for and against:
Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) offered language to bar the government from subsidizing erectile dysfunction drugs for convicted pedophiles and rapists. Democrats voted. … No! Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) proposed exempting wounded soldiers from the new tax on medical devices. Democrats: No way! Pat Roberts (R., Kan.) wanted to exempt critical access rural hospitals from funding cuts. Senate Democrats: Forget it! This was Republicans’ opportunity to lay out every ugly provision and consequence of ObamaCare, and Democrats — because of the process they’d chosen — had to defend it all.
And so it went, into the wee Thursday hours. All Democrats in favor of taxing pacemakers? Aye! All Democrats in favor of keeping those seedy vote buyoffs? Aye! All Democrats in favor of raising taxes on middle-income families? Aye! All Democrats in favor of exempting themselves from elements of ObamaCare? Aye! All Democrats in favor of roasting small children in Aga ovens? (Okay, I made that one up, but you get the point.) Aye!
Democrats were miffed, and none more so than the Democrats on the ballot who can see the campaign ads that are sure to follow:
The record now shows that Arkansas’s Blanche Lincoln is on board with higher premiums, that Colorado’s Michael Bennet is good to go with gutting Medicare Advantage, that Nevada’s Harry Reid is just fine with rationing, that New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand is cool with taxes on investment income, that California’s Barbara Boxer is right-o with employer mandates, and that Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter is willing to strip his home state of the right to opt out of the health law.
Democrats insist that the public will be enamored of the bill once they learn what is in it. But the reaction to the amendment flurry suggests otherwise. Democratic leaders were none too pleased to see the component parts of the bill laid bare. Indeed, Democrats seem delighted by the idea of ObamaCare but a lot less thrilled with defending each of its elements. In that regard, the debate – which will now absorb the country and explore the contents of the mammoth deal — may prove distasteful to those who must face their constituents and explain the consequences to employers and ordinary voters. Those leading the “repeal and replace!” charge would do well to highlight the gap between the “historic” happy talk and the grubby details.
“[T]hey view Israel as fighting for its life against an overwhelmingly hostile Muslim world.”
Does anyone actually question whether this “view” is correct?
“Does anyone actually question whether this “view” is correct?”
Only a very strange individual would do so. Of course, you are probably speaking tongue in cheek. You cannot be serious.
No matter how abject and now oft-repeated BHO’s pander to Israel’s amen corner, it is never enough for Ms. Rubin.
Would that he intended to bring a bit of sanity or restraint to our relationship with that constantly demanding “ally.” Wouild that he were prepared to say, “A pox on both their houses!” to both sides. Would that he were prepared to put the US national interest first and recognize that when it comes to that “constant sore,” we have little or none, other than to disengage.
The foregoing is all a pipe dream. BHO will toe the AIPAC line just as most of his predecessors, other than Eisenhower, have done.
Israel may be fighting against a hostile Muslim world, which is no doubt true, but it also continues to steal land, water, and legitimacy from the Palestinians, and to spew out shameless lie after shameless lie on the subject.
“but it also continues to steal land,”
Like Gaza senile old coot?
On March 4, 07 Ali Abunimah, a friend of Obama’s wrote this in the Electronic Intifada”
The question is, how will Obama act once he is in a position to be more “up front”?
Here is another view:
http://tinyurl.com/5lgoxg
I don’t always agree with the source, but it is important to have it out there, if only to prove that even a stopped clock is correct twice a day.
GOM,
Oh yes, those darn Jews, again!
That “amen corner.”
All that land stealing.
And water stealing.
It just goes on and on.
And if only those fifth column Jews (AIPAC) would give up, and those !@#$! Israelis, too.
Because the continuing genocidal fantasies of the greater ummah, and of the arab and persian governments that foment and plan for such a genocide, would simply stop, if only the Israelis would stop stealing water.
Right.
If only.
That you can continue to write such nonsense is a tribute to your inflated self-regard and the tolerance of the editors here.
Talk about shameless.
Sheesh.
Jay,
Thanks for the link.
Yes, the “right wing smear machine.”
Wow.
The Jews of the Left live in a deluded, solipsistic, and totally dangerous world of their own design.
The pity is they will likely get what they wish for.
The only question is will they be surprised by the destruction of Israel?
And can they be surprised when the Green-Red-Blue-Brown-Pink coalition comes for them next?
Just askin’.
People who advocate a murderous, unlawful, and potentially disastrous (for the US) bombing assault against a distant foreign country, in their minds to protect a third country with which they feel ethnic solidarity, these are “shameless.”
Pointing out the Israeli track record (and the Palestinians’ is pretty bad, too) may annoy some readers on this blog, but lacks the shameless lethality of the carpet bombing too many covet.
It would be nice if Obama decided it was time for the US to butt out, but there’s little reason to anticipate much of a change in policy under BHO.
…yeah, the Palestinian’s are pretty bad, too. Six of one, half dz. of the other, right? Hypothetical nationality, constant aggression, uncountable wars, relentless propaganda offensive fueled by unimaginable volumes of petrodollars vs. self-defense and silly appeasement of genocide-intended Muslim fanatics backed by 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide. Yeah, the Palestinians might be equally culpable for the impasse. Grumpy, take Bob Barr and shove him up yours already,
My point, MTT, was that “the Jews of the left” may well be right; maybe the majority of American Jews, and Americans, reject the hawkish views of Commentary, and frankly, people like myself. My problem with the left in general is the tendancy of some to lapse into red-meat, paranoid rhetoric about “Jewish control.” These people know (or at least they ought to) what an ugly history that phrase has. I don’t believe in ethnic control of our politics, but I do believe that if enough people care enough about advancing their view of a particular cause, they will show up, and decisions, an old phrase has it, are made by those who show up, no matter how they identify themselves.
America’s Israel policy is hawkish because enough people who care about that policy are hawks. Now, I don’t connect with Israel on religious or ethnic grounds; rather, I support it because it is a relatively secular, democratic place in a part of the world that needs more of them.
There simply has never been an organized counterweight to America’s Israel hawks because none of them have ever turned out in any numbers. Let’s have the hawk/dove debate here. I am confident enough in that hawkishness to win it, but it doesn’t help matters any if we are automatically suspicious of an Obama or anyone else to the left of McCain.
Grumpy
Surprise surprise.
You truly are an incorrigible old man with a sick and poisoned mind, after all.
Further, you and your views would, indeed, have fit perfectly with the “soft” fascism of the so-called “Isolationists” and the “America First” movement [in actuality, American promoters and supporters of Hitler's Nazis]of the 1930s.
Other than to refer you to Philip Roth’s more recent novel, “The Plot Against America”, as a possible literary enema, which is to say, a purgative corrective to your insistence on viewing the world from the peculiar vantage point of having one’s head up one’s arse, I fear that you, as with most of your ilk, are, sadly, truly beyond the pale [notwithstanding the fact that you do seem to do it with a little more class than Lesster the beast, or Hartland, who, mercifully, now appears to have abandoned the blogs at Contentions for an alternate environment, one, no doubt, more suitable and receptive to his more basic fascist rantings .
Don’t quite know what it was that made me think that perhaps, just perhaps, you might have been a little more sane than your Nazi comrades, with their hate-filled postings to Contentions, and that you might, at least, have been willing to revisit and re-examine whether the one-trick-pony BS that you have constantly exuded in all of your posts, in regard to Jews, Israel, AIPEC and all the rest, might be, at least in part, misplaced or misguided.
It saddens me, greatly, therefore, that you have shown me up for the poor sucker and hopemonger, that I clearly am.
Jewish political views are consistently more feminized than is characteristic of the local environment, so it’s doubtful we’ll see any born-again hawkishness. Btw, I recently heard a Christian Zionist radio show featuring random interviews with Israelis re the Kuntar deal: Probably 90 percent supported it. This kind of downright ovarian thinking cries out for biological, not to mention psychological, analysis. I’m beginning to wonder if male Jews have an extra X chromosome to compensate for the Y. I’m not indulging the annoying conceit of Jewish “sensitivity” here, especially as the latter can be a serious strategic liability. I really think this issue deserves academic study.
Seth, your explanation is far from obvious. Many modern Jews have not been brought up with the classical Jewish world view at all, but with the views of liberalism and socialism (which today may be the same).
Bob, the comparatively feminine values of Jewry extend back at least two millenia to the Roman Conquest. You can’t blame liberalism or socialism for that. For that matter, today’s ultra-orthodox Jews are disproportionately anti-Zionist and also eschew military service. And as I’ve opined elsewhere, the prevalence of marriage among Jews may have something to do with it, inasmuch as married men reportedly have physiologically lower aggression levels than the unmarried. All food for thought in any case.
Wow. I must have hit a nerve.
If to oppose an unlawful and foolish war is to have one’s head wedged, I must live with the contortion. Apparently to point out, without rebuttal as opposed to invective, the constancy of the settlement enterprise since 1967, the “peace process” to the contrary not withstanding is to resurrect Julius Streicher.
All of this reminds me of some middle-of-the-night cult session, which Commentary and this blog seem to have become, secular Branch Davidians or Moonies. Exorcise Obama and pray for war. I can see the flickering candles and hear the constant drumming. I can imagine Caroline Glick, a maenad wearing a neckless of skulls, dancing her crazed ritual dance.
Unfortunately, this little corner of American opinion is not merely paranoid and hysterical, but dangerous. It has rhetorical skill and considerable influence.
As for America First, read its history, and you will see, beside fascist infiltrators, a coalition that included democratic socialists, prairie progressives, and Republicans of the now-extinct Bob Taft variety. The wily Roosevelt and the foolish Japanese high command made the organization ultimately irrelevant, but it’s not the bogeyman some believe.
Seth,
I’m probably going to get into trouble here because genetics is such a contentious issue, but Jews have been persecuted severely for a long time? Under such conditions it would be surprising if most of the overall group weren’t adapted to seek political cover by accommodation and, yes, appeasement because those were the kinds of traits that paid off in the eras of short term pogroms.
Genetics isn’t everything but if you persecute all the fruit flies who emerge into the light for a few generations you end up mostly with strains of fruit flies that avoid the light.
Israelis are mostly the descendents of self selected non-appeasers. American Jews are less predominantly the descendents of non-appeasers. Hence American Jews are more likely to appease.
about one thing at least grump is right: skulls are typically neckless.
#18
“Neckless.” Touché. I never have a copy editor when I need one, which is all the time. Put a “necklace” on scary Caroline.
While I’m at it, “notwithstanding,” non “not withstanding.”
Sully. you obviously won’t get into trouble with me. But I do think that on balance Jewish Israelis are almost as accommodating (“appeasing” if you will) relative to Arab-Islamic or other hostile political cultures as Jewish Americans seem to be. Indeed, native-born Israelis recently (at least) stereotyped American Jewish immigrants as right-wing cowboys. Of course, halakhic Jews in Israel are more Jewish culturally than halakic Jews in America. But I doubt the genetics are different. The Israelis I’ve met who were not from American backgrounds were very laid back. And most Israelis are or are descended from relatively non-ideological Jews who were simply looking for a tolerable place to be Jewish –much like the ancestors of most American Jews. Only a minority were ever Zionist pioneers. A few hundred thousand were forced out of Europe during the fascist period, another million were expelled from Arab countries after 1948 and another million got out of Russia during the post-Gorbachev thaw. Plenty of Israeli Jews have settled in America or Europe. Anyway, I think it’s way too early to do a Darwinian analysis of Israelis per se. Charles Murray, however, has broached some intriguing theories about the genetic interplay between Jews and Judaism, meaning since Moses. He doesn’t think Jewish IQs are a biological accident. I see no reason why persistently observable Jewish cultural traits should be considered off-limits to comparable inquiry.
Dopey: “Wow. I must have hit a nerve.”
Yes, with me anyway, given his deceptively casual assertion that “BHO will toe the AIPAC line just as most of his predecessors, other than Eisenhower, have done.” Obama’s predecessors? He’s already been elected? How? When? Did a maenad wearing a neckless of skulls, dancing her crazed ritual dance sway the electorate against McCain? Or did Obama’s Zionist overlords simply steal legitimacy from McCain?
I meant to write that halakhic Jews in Israel are typically more religiously Jewish (ie observant) than halakhic Jews in America.
Sully, if I may presume to call you that, and Seth Halpern are onto something here, although I fear that the ultimate finding will probably be along the lines of “damned if they do, and damned if they don’t”.Nevertheless.
On the matter of the proposed male appeasement DNA studies among Israeli versus American Jewish males, let’s just say that I’m of the view that there’s a whole lot more possibility of striking statistical gold in examining, at greater length and in greater depth, the nurture rather than the nature aspects of this question. Loads of this “appeasement” stuff is to be gleaned, or mined, depending on one’s prefered mode of scratching, from a controlled study and observation of various behaviours of Homo Judaicus Galutus, and also from observation of the lesser known Israelius Erectus, even those of the pre-viagra paleontological period.
Somewhere in all of this, and as part of one’s preliminary methodological protocol, one would want to ask such questions, I would think, as why perfectly loving Jewish parents would have countenanced in the past, or even encouraged their male offspring to literally shoot themselves in the foot, or to puncture their ear drums, in order to avoid serving in the Tsar’s army, and to what degree this act made possible the larger migratory settlements of Homo Judaicus Galutus Americanus.
Then, of course, there’s Bialik’s “City of Slaughter” about the Kishinev Pogrom, as opposed to all them other lesser pogroms, where, it must be assumed, that a certain amount of adaptive learning [a la Judt and Finklestein] must also have been taking place, and which accounted for at least some of the unexplained variance among those delicate Jewish males who elected to hide under their wives, rather than their mother’s skirts, to avoid, or “appease” the wrath of the big bad goy cossack and his drunken ensemble.
And then there’s the much vaunted myth of the Israeli macho male, to be found among those of them who actually manage to beat the sweats, and the post combat stress reaction symptoms, and where, exactly, they fit into the appeasement prone male Jewish Question.
I do believe it was someone among the Contentions bloggers, who pointed out that over 90% of Israelis, of whom, one must assume that some 50% were males, agreed with and supported a goverment ruling to release a child murderer who smashed the skull of a four year old child, in the name of some enlightened higher morality, though one certainly wouldn’t want to cynically refer to that very enlightened action as a precurser to further such acts of “appeasement” towards an increasingly threatening and hostile world.
So, two thousand and more years later, here we are, and the appeasement gene, which our world surely knew how to knock into them stubborn and stiffnecked Jew heads, but good, is, it would seem, and sad to say, indeed a well learned and oft employed gambit of survival of the Jewish male of the species, wherever he resides. Although, it could probably be argued that the Middle Eastern Jewthrapoid males have, on balance, developed the better adaptation and coping skills, certainly as regards survival in their own little neck of the woods, or wadis.
Seems then, also, that not all that much has changed since the time of Devorah [strange, even then, her cowardly general's name was Barak......our Barak, not yours] and that we still, to this very day, boys and girls, still have to rely on those such as Caroline Glick and her sister polemical warriors over at the Eishet Chayil Society, to do the heavy lfting for their appeasement impaired brothers.
hamutzi, just to clarify, I’m not saying that traditional, seemingly ingrained Jewish domesticity (including any possible nature/nurture interplay) is a bad thing, just that it carries risks in a violent environment. Israel’s leaders, indebted to the likes of Orde Wingate, once understood this, at least implicitly. Such cannot be said of Samurai Olmert. Barak’s purely professional military (as opposed to political) capability I do not question, btw, though you may have better information on which to base an opinion.
Jay,
America’s Israeli policy is hawkish? What’s hawkish about pressuring Israel into countless concessions to its implacable tormentors? Next you’ll claim that Israel’s desire to exist is hawkish.
Hamutzi – “over 90% of Israelis, of whom, one must assume that some 50% were males, agreed with and supported a goverment ruling to release a child murderer who smashed the skull of a four year old child, in the name of some enlightened higher morality”
My first reaction to that decision was pity for weakness and the thought that it would encourage more hostage taking, etc.
But then I remembered that the cousin I learned to stay near on a bad street in my youth was the one who was retiring, reasonable, mild, accommodative and placatory in a threatening situation – right up until he turned into something with no governor mechanism willing to use anything available until everybody threatening was down and quiet.
Meting out justice on the child murderer is an objective, as is building reputation to disarm one’s enemies, but survival is THE objective. Israel has survived for a lot more years than anyone would have laid odds on in 1948.
Thank you both, Seth Halpern and Sully, for taking the trouble to comment on my, I suppose, less than admiring and probably overly “angry” response to past examples of “Jewish helplessness”, which responses do not, in my view, seem to have been indicative of any long term survival strategy, at least as regards the survival of any Jewish collective, inasmuch as that idea, itself, carries any inherent value as a desired goal, worthy of a well considered survival strategy.Guess it’s pretty clear where I stand on that issue.
I am most respectful, however, of what either of you have to say on most any subject canvassed on the Contentions blogs, including your comments on the “feminized” nature of the male Jewish response towards external aggression, which is what I see the present blog as being all about.
Seth Halpern, I have no better information, nor basis for comment than youself, for making any professional judgements about Barak’s abilities, either as Minister of Defense, or on the adequacy of his performance as Chief of Staff of the IDF. [The urban legends about Barak in Zahal are that he was, in fact, an incredibly brave and innovative soldier, especially in anti-terror operations] It is in the field of ethical leadership [not the pragmatics of military ops] that I entertain grave doubts about the man’s lack of readily observable character strengths.
Yes, Sully, it is, ultimately, about seeking to ensure “survival”, and Israel has done a great job of doing so, for the last sixty years. But surely there must come a time when, like every other country, the question then becomes:
Now that our [intermediate] survival has been assured, where do we go from here, in creating our own little “Great Society” and in contributing to the greater welfare and quality of life of our people and, wherever possible, to that of the larger world community?
In order to be able to reach such a point and to ask this question, “survival” must no longer still be the central preoccupation. Nor can such a preoccupation, solely with physical survival, suffice to motivate and guide the actions of a whole country, on a day to day basis, and into an open-ended future.
Just some musings after your comments.I really haven’t taken matters much further, have I?
Hamutzi,
For sixty years Israelis have lived dangerously in a modern state. For those same sixty years the Palestinians and almost all Arabs have lived dangerously in hovels.
That it didn’t have to be that way if the Arabs had ever been willing to meet Israel half way is unfortunate but given the choice I’ll take the first.
As to ““survival” must no longer still be the central preoccupation. Nor can such a preoccupation, solely with physical survival, suffice to motivate and guide the actions of a whole country, on a day to day basis, and into an open-ended future.”
I’m a very fortunate American but I’ve always tried to remember, and tried to ensure that my son and nephews and nieces remember that even survival is not ensured in this world – never has been and never will be.
And I’m enough of a technologist to understand that Israeli science has done a lot for the world over the past 60 years.