A survey of Occupy Wall Street protesters, done by the liberal magazine New York, shows that more than one-third – 34 percent – are convinced the United States government is no better than al-Qaeda. (When I sent that figure to a liberal academic acquaintance of mine, he responded, “Not a very big n[umber].” And perhaps that’s true if you were polling the liberal arts faculty of a university.) Another 37 percent say capitalism can’t be saved; it’s inherently immoral. And when asked to explain how they would fix Wall Street, New York magazine received the following responses: “A maximum-wage law.” “President Elizabeth Warren.” And “Burn it down.”

This is the movement to which the Democratic Party – from Barack Obama and Joe Biden to Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman Schultz – wants to tether itself?

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One of the staples of American Jewish history is the periodic surfacing of books or articles dedicated to reviving the tarnished reputation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The one-way love affair that characterized the relationship between FDR and Jews has never quite recovered from the publication of Arthur D. Morse’s seminal 1967 book, While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy, and it was pretty much destroyed by David S. Wyman’s more scholarly and equally important 1984 work ,The Abandonment of the Jews: American and the Holocaust 1941-1945. Both books and the subsequent scholarship they inspired constructed an ironclad case pointing to FDR’s indifference and the impact of his failure to act on the fate of European Jewry.

Yet that hasn’t stopped FDR’s defenders from sallying forth every now and then to restore a bit of the luster to his legacy with varying success. But as wrongheaded as some entries in this genre may be, you’d have to go far to find one as foolish and patently disingenuous as the piece that appeared in the most recent issue of the Forward by former Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau and New York University Law Professor Frank Tuerkheimer. They claim Roosevelt’s “Germany first” war policy saved the Jews of the Middle East. But the notion the fate of the Jews had even the tiniest impact on his decision is not only unproven; it is absurd.

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Since February, when protests swept Bahrain, the Al Khalifa ruling family has responded with sheer brutality. They are not as brutal as Assad or Qaddafi, to be sure, but their security forces have nevertheless shown a willingness to kill unarmed demonstrators. Around 30 have died, and many more have been locked up or dismissed from their jobs: all for the crime of demanding greater freedom and democracy. Bahrain even invited help from the Saudi security forces to complete the crackdown.

There is a sectarian tinge to the protests as most Bahrainis are Shiites while the ruling elite is Sunni, but there is little evidence to buttress the royal family’s charges that the protesters are agents of Iran. No doubt Iran would like to take advantage of turmoil in Bahrain, but the evidence indicates the demonstrations are driven by their anger at inequality and repression—not by a desire to establish a theocratic dictatorship along Iranian lines.

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Via Dan Halper, here’s a clip of Vice President Joe Biden ominously suggesting to a Flint, Michigan audience that Obama’s jobs plan is the only thing standing between them and a downward spiral into violent lawlessness. The relevant comments from the video:

“In 2008, when Flint had 265 sworn officers on their police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city. In 2010, when Flint had only 144 police officers, the murder rate climbed to 65 and rapes – just to pick two categories – climbed to 229. In 2011, you now only have 125 shields. God only knows what the numbers will be this year for Flint if we don’t rectify it…And God only knows what that number would have been had we not been able to get a little bit of help.”

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Barack Obama campaigned on unifying Red and Blue America, as the healer of the breach, as the man who would unify America after years of division. Yet now, less than three years into his presidency, we have seen the rise of two powerful protest movements in our nation – the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. These two movements are in many ways antithetical. But they are alike in this respect: they symbolize a deep and growing alienation with the current political system and its leadership. (40 percent of the Occupy Wall Street protesters who were surveyed said they believed in President Obama and he let them down, while 27 percent say they never believed in him.)

Obama is, in a weird way, unifying polar opposites, at least in the sense of engendering enough anger and anxiety in people that those of vastly different views and ideologies are now taking to the streets.

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Just as important as what we know about Iran’s alleged plot is what we don’t know about the regime and the factions which reportedly ordered the terrorist attack.

While many journalists repeat the myth the United States and Iran did not engage for 30 years until President Obama took his oath of office, the fact is every president: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, actively conducted diplomatic outreach toward the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unfortunately, whether the administration was Democrat or Republican, the diplomacy was always based on Iranian smoke and mirrors and the State Department’s wishful thinking rather than the reality of the Iranian regime.

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After his latest debate disaster, it is difficult to view Rick Perry as the leading standard-bearer for Tea Party and social conservatives in the Republican presidential race. Though his massive war chest may enable him to go on campaigning, his inability to present himself as a plausible alternative dooms any hope he might have had for a comeback. But if Perry can’t win, who will the right look to in a last-ditch effort to stop the Mitt Romney juggernaut?

The polls say the most likely candidate for displaced conservatives to embrace is Herman Cain. Cain was, after Romney, the focus of the most attention at last night’s debate in New Hampshire. Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann skewered his 9-9-9-tax scheme, but Cain kept his cool and left the stage undaunted. Most polls show Cain in second place behind Romney, and with Perry fading fast, his numbers may well increase. But the rise of the former Godfather Pizza executive is more a confirmation of the inevitability of Romney than a sign Cain has a realistic chance of being nominated.

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The White House may have suffered a blow last night when the Senate rejected Obama’s jobs bill. But simply the fact that we’re calling it a “jobs bill” – and not a stimulus or a spending bill – shows the White House has at least been successful in defining the debate.

Now that the plan will be broken up and voted on piecemeal, Republicans have a chance to change things. The GOP will be able to highlight the more controversial aspects of the legislation – like the tax hikes – while supporting other measures. It will make it more difficult for Obama to accuse Republicans of obstructionism on “job-creation.”

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While Israelis and their friends have been debating the morality of the prisoner exchange for the freedom of Gilad Shalit, Palestinians have been joyously celebrating the success of the kidnapping plot. The release of more than 1,000 Arab prisoners in the deal, including many murderers and terrorists, is viewed as a great national achievement for the Palestinian people and Hamas.

The ransoming of Shalit ought to serve as a reminder that despite the hubbub at the United Nations last month over the demand for Palestinian statehood, such a state already exists in all but name. Hamas-ruled Gaza is the real Palestinian state. The success of its terrorist masters in forcing Israel to free so many killers must be viewed as a body blow to the pretensions of the Palestinian Authority to legitimacy both abroad and home.

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Chris Christie’s endorsement of Mitt Romney was pretty much expected, but what prompted him to announce it so early? Tim Pawlenty reportedly got some debt help after his speedy endorsement of Romney. Should we assume Christie has his eye on something as well?

“Of course, he’d be on anyone’s shortlist,’’ Romney said of Christie in a TODAY interview Wednesday. “He may take himself off the list and say, ‘No way.’ He’d have no interest. But the truth is that Gov. Christie is one of the leading figures in the Republican party, and of course anyone who becomes our nominee is going to look at people like Gov. Christie and say, ‘Well, that would be a terrific person to have on the ticket.’’’

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Yesterday’s news that the U.S. stopped an Iranian plan to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in Washington naturally inspired immediate debate over how the White House should respond. Tougher economic sanctions–or at least stricter enforcement of existing sanctions–seemed to be an obvious element of American action.

But that discussion shows just how difficult the sanctions process–which does seem to have accomplished some of its aims–has been diplomatically. You would think authoritarian regimes in the East are the main impediments to reining in Iran’s nuclear program, as they are on Syria. But just two days prior to yesterday’s revelation, Benjamin Weinthal reported that Germany remains the West’s primary obstacle:

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At the Examiner, Conn Carroll wonders whether Perry should just give up on the debates after his awful performance last night:

Perry has performed poorly in all four of the GOP debates in which he has participated. Even the candidate himself seems to acknowledge that debates can only hurt his campaign. So why show up? The Perry campaign is telling every reporter who will listen that debates don’t matter. OK. If they really believe that, then why have Perry show up at all? Why not just work crowds, raise money, and run TV and web ads? We know Perry can’t debate, so let the headlines be about what he CAN do.

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Discussing the Iranian plot with the New York Times, an anonymous senior administration official (in the Bush administration, that meant the National Security Advisor or the Secretary of State) promised the Obama administration would send Iran a strong message. “’We’re going to work with allies and partners to send Iran a message: we don’t tolerate the targeting of foreign diplomats on our soil, said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.”

Obama and his advisers shouldn’t waste their breath: If the strongest message they send Iran after a plot to kill Americans and foreign diplomats in Washington is to beg and plead with Moscow and Beijing at the United Nations, then the leadership in Iran can rest secure.

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Here are some morning-after thoughts on Tuesday’s GOP presidential debate:

1. Rick Perry’s quest for the presidency is finished, even if his campaign is not. The Texas governor won’t withdraw — and he’s raised enough money to go on for a while. But Perry, desperately in need of a superior debate performance, once again whiffed. He looks like a man who would rather be anywhere on earth than on the debate stage. At this point he cannot undo the damage he’s inflicted on himself; he simply doesn’t have the skill set to do so. Perry will continue to slide in the polls and, I suspect, end up being a fairly marginal figure in the race.

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Alana Goodman is right to reflect what Iran’s alleged terrorism plot means for the U.S. posture toward Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons:

If Iran feels safe planning a U.S.-based attack now, imagine how much more blatant its aggression would be if it had nuclear weapons. Some people like to pretend Israel is the only country that would be seriously threatened by a nuclear Iran. This case is a prime example of how wrong that assumption is.

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