Melting Pots

"You see all the minorities," he said, "and you understand their problems better."

The NYT has an interesting piece on the officer training program in the Israeli military. It talks a little about the debate over the prevalence of 'draft dodging' and implicit is the growing concern that the military's old role as melting pot for Israeli society is being lost.

I know every article can't talk about every aspect of a subject, but I wish more than a passing reference had been paid to the fact that Arab Israeli's are excluded from military service.

Given that Israel is a religious state, I could understand only allowing Jews to serve, but that isn't the case as Druze and Christians do serve. Thus the lesson in the melting pot becomes that anyone can be a good Israeli - except an Arab.

I think the most striking feature of the Arab Israeli conflict is how a classical land/resource conflict was so thoroughly transformed into an existential ethnic conflict in a generation of only occasional hot wars.

Huckabee is on Meet the Press right now making no sense on immigration. Huckabee's plan is that every illegal immigrant should register with ICE within 120 days and then leave the US to return home, then immediately apply for a visa to return (which I presume they would more or less be guaranteed since he is talking about them all coming back).

The kids who are US citizens apparently will just go home with the parents because "they are their parents children first". And the construction and service industry will not collapse, as he previously predicted would happen if illegal immigrants were forced to leave, because they will all be back in a few months.

Of course, the kids could decide not to leave - since they are US citizens - and create a million pissed off, homeless Hispanic kids across the US. And somehow I think shutting down the construction industry for a few months might have some negative effects (though if the housing bubble really bursts, maybe not).

The key thing to keep in mind with Huckabee is that while each sentence individually sounds not terrible, collectively theymake no sense. Rudy or McCain may sound nuts, but at least they are consistently nuts.

Pot calling the kettle black

"My mother always said democracy is the best revenge."

That was Bhutto's 19-year-old son yesterday after he was selected to head the PPP... by his father.

The irony gets better. In case you were wondering why her husband gets to pick the party head, it's because she left the PPP to him in her will. I'm glad to hear Bhutto was so committed to democracy she listed her supporters as assets along side the houses and cars bought with her legendary graft.

For more on her dubious devotion to democracy and subsequent lionization I recommend Matt Yglesias and his various links.

Todays favorite story seems to be the implications of the Presidential candidates responses to the Bhutto assasination. As I called yesterday, the consensus is that every candidate spun it in a positive direction - except for the ridiculous Huckabee responses.

That said, fellow Republicans better be care and use this to argue that Huckabee has no idea what he is talking about IN GENERAL. Leaving it at 'he doesn't know much about foreign policy' isn't actually a winning argument. Most voters don't know much about international affairs so they don't see much reason to care if their President doesn't have an encyclopedic knowledge of georgraphy - so long as he knows we are good and the nebulous 'they' are bad (see Reagan and Bush II).

I promise there are plenty of examples on domestic issues to make the connection, because the 'crazy' or 'out of touch with reality' arguments do work well.

Implosion

http://mobile.nytimes.com/art/128760/19

Unsurprisingly all the candidates are in hyper spin mode talking about why the events in Pakistan mean they are the only person who can lead the US.

Mike Huckabee however seems to have taken the occasion to further demonstrate he has no idea what the fuck he is talking about. While the other candidates spin the implications in the way that helps them - Clinton and McCain talk about experience, Obama judgement, Rudy anti-islam bigotry - Huck has decided the events mean... we need a taller border fence with Mexico?

Once upon a time I used to wonder how a guy could ramble on about the problem of inequality and propose a national sales tax in the same speech. Was the populism a cover for an economic trickster or vis a versa? The reality is he just goes with whatever hair brained scheme pops in his head.

The papers in NH all seem to think Mitt is a huge phoney who must be stopped at all costs. To the NH partisans, I say Huckabee must be stopped at all cost lest we be dupped into a smooth talking looney whose sole allegiance is to whatever divine revelation he is having that day rather than the Constitution and our nation.

'In 2002, the drug maker, Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn., hired Mr. Giuliani and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, to help stem the controversy about OxyContin. Among Mr. Giuliani's missions was the job of convincing public officials that they could trust Purdue because they could trust him.'

Very tasty story on Rudy today that calls our Rudy for being a two-bit media whore willing to trade on his 9/11 myth.

If you thought Bush was a corporate crony willing to sell out the country, wait till you see Giuliani. We now have confirmed reports that he has taken cash from Hugo Chavez, a sheik who hid and supported Bin Laden, the mob, and the maker of the most abused persciption drug in the US who was looking to avoid extra regulation that would have saved lives at the expense of their profit margin.

One small note on the McCain ascent. Everyone notes that nationally it is basically a bounce from NH. But what everyone misses in NH is that it has nothing to do with Rudy's fall (though most of the new supporters are naturally - as you'll see in a moment - from the Rudy personality cult) or Lieberman. Two weeks ago McCain started running an ad with Curt Schilling - the baseball pitcher and local god - endorsing him.

While I am largely indifferent to the Dem primary race (as far as I can tell they are the same and the battle is over electability and symbolism), Obama may want to take note of this and have Oprah cut some solo spots to air during the daytime soaps rather than wasting her on a political stage and reporters. Frankly, two egos that big clash (why you rarely see Hill and Bill together on a stage).

RIP Benazir Bhutto (1954 - 2007)

My condolences go out the her family, supporters, and all Pakistanis.

It is nice to hear Pres. Musharraf condemning the assassination. But as we talk about the 'terrorist' problem facing Pakistan, it is important to remember that most of them are tacitly (and sometimes directly) supported by the ISI, which is his biggest backer.

Merry Christmas

http://mobile.nytimes.com/art/128439/19

All Big Business wanted this year was to be able to cut off the health care to my grandmother and millions of others like her. Well, yesterday thr EEOC delivered.

The new rule let's employers now give you retirement benefits that expire at 65 if they don't feel like paying for them anymore. Two important things to keep in mind:

1. Everyone seems to forget but retirement benefits are compensation just like a pay check. If a company called you in on payday and said 'by the way, turns out we think we are paying you too much, so this weeks check is only for half what it was supposed to be. Be a team player and don't complain or else we will just shut down and give you nothing' you would probably laugh in your managers face and tell him to go where the sun doesn't shine. For those with total faith in the market, remember that all those people made a ton of economic decisions all based on the assumption that they would get the benefits they were promised. If they don't appear their employer was essentially cheating both them and the market.

It is also important to remember that for five years middle class wages has been stagnant. Couple that with the systematic erosion of benefits and reneging on promises andf it is fair to say the lot of you is getting SCREWED by the fat cats sucking up you annual 3% productivity gain.

2. This is yet another straw to the camel's back that is our public health system. The lynchpin of the EEOC rule is that everyone should get on (and only on) Medicare at 65. Personally I do strongly agree that health insurance should be decoupled from your job on both social justice and economic grounds. Starting the next Microsoft or Boeing is really hard when you have to provide things like this. A family can dip into savings and survive on a dream much better if their sick child can still get her medicine.

But these things are sold as cost cutters in the sense that 'we will kick these people over to the government and then lobby to make sure our taxes don't go up to pay for them' rather than 'if we put everyone into a single basket, cut out aetna's profit margin, and imposed cost saving controls we could insure everyone for less than our current balkanized system'.

AQI and Glasgow

http://mobile.nytimes.com/art/125593/19

Britain has finished an inquiry into the Glasgow and failed London bombing last summer and one finding is that the two bombers were motivated by their anger over Britains role in Iraq and received some level of support from Al qaeda iraq (which in the IC just means someone who doesn't like us, blows things up, and isn't angling for a cabinet job in the iraqi parliament).

Apparently the who 'we are fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here' thing doesn't apply to Britain. Turns out it in practice it is more like 'we are pissing them off and providing them training opportunities over there so they will be inspired and capable to fight us here'.

As someone who focuses on organizational behavior, this has always been one of my pet peeves about the war. Getting things done in an organization requires three things strategic direction, tactical capacity, and motivated people.

The direction was always there, but it should be noted that everytime we get outmaneuvered in this idiotic 'democracy promotion' game and replace an AQ-hostile regime with an AQ-friendly regime it crosses something off their list and puts a bigger bulls eye on our back.

Death to Peace

http://mobile.nytimes.com/art/18258/19

I know if I was making a good faith effort this week to end the P-I conflict I would definitely spend this week announcing new settlements in the West Bank, step up the bombings in Gaza, send in some bulldozers (which have huge symbollic meaning after years of plowing under houses), and throw Abbas under a bus by saying nothing can be agreed to until he retakes Gaza.

In case anyone was fooled by last months charade in Annapolis, Israel continues to make clear it has no intention of a peace deal. And that's too bad for everyone.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/art/124468/19

Everyone who cannot possibly understand why Iran could possibly want civilian nuclear power please note:

'Indonesia has already made this flip (from an exporter of oil to an importer). By some projections, the same thing could happen within five years to Mexico, the No. 2 source of foreign oil for the United States, and soon after that to Iran, the world's fourth-largest exporter.'

Tragicomedy

Sometimes even the biggest train wreck can make you chuckle for a second.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/art/123831/19

The President unveiled his big plan for helping home owners in trouble and his finger prints are all over it.

First, at the announcement he gave all those listening the wrong number to call for information if they qualify. Then again since almost no one does I guess he is just creating some extra aggrivation rather than extra disappointment for most of them (then again, I don't know if anyone not getting paid to do so actually listens to the President anymore).

The 'plan' itself is even more humorous. The reason the plan is voluntary is because it is so utterly stupid and hated by everyone that no one would agree to it.

I mean, at least if it was 'everyone with a subprime is a bad person, so we are going to take their house and make them keep paying back the mortgage and freeze all Federal dollars for homeless shelters' I would just assume his nephew got a vp job at goldman or a hedge fund and it would make sense.

Seriously, I cannot emphasize how utterly Solomonic - and sophomoric - his plan is.

The Many Faces of Democracy

Nothing annoys me more about politics than politicians' casual, imprecise, or intentionally misleading use of words that is intended for nothing but to stir knee-jerk emotions on the other end of the communication pipeline.

Clearest cases:
Democracy -- Good
Dictatorship -- Bad

Slightly less clear cut (although probably agreed among a majority of Americans):
Welfare-state / Socialist -- Bad (brews lazy-no-good leechers!)
Laissez-faire / Generally non-interventionist (unless really necessary) Gov't -- Good

It is despicable how President Bush uses "democracy" according to definitions that he fancies for that particular day, or for that particular occasion.

VENEZUELA IS A DEMOCRACY (and as DMA points out, the recent developments clearly demonstrate it isn't a dictatorship). Their democratically aggregated preferences just so happen to result in a leader (and policies) that the US doesn't like, and is friends with leaders and countries that the US is at odds with.

More importantly, contrary to what the president says, people don't like the US not because "they just loathe the idea of a free, democratic society", but exactly because how "undemocratic" (if viewed from a world sphere) the US is in the way it interacts with its less powerful counterparts. [Shut up you realists, I know what you're going to say.]

At the same time though, Carl Rove and co. and their dirty tricks are just as much a legitimate part of the democratic process. OK, granted many of the things they did are indeed illegal, but they also did loads of things that are borderline-just-kinda-legal but utterly low and unethical.

I fault the shortcomings of a democracy not on democracy itself; it's just a mechanical construct, not a magical potion to all the world's problem. I fault them on the blueprint on which democracy operates -- the constitution & laws, aka the rules of the game. The challenge lies in what rules we should write down to give democracy the best shot it has, and even more critically, how we can get there and stay there given the current rules.

Just another one of my usual nerdy rants...

Vanezuela Addendum

For all the insinuations about Chavez controlling all the 'levers of power', don't forget that we have proof that millions of dollars of public money were directed by Carl Rove to vulnerable Congressional districts in 2006. I can only laugh at the hypocracy when the architects of that strategy attack the same thing there. There is no difference between the US and Venezuela except that Chavez occassionally does things supported by more that 30% of the country.

Democracy is Alive

http://mobile.nytimes.com/art/122885/19

In all the coverage of the Venezuelan referrendum it is important to remember one thing:

The measure was defeated. Let me repeat that, CHAVEZ LOST. The are certainly dictatorships that hold elections, but they don't lose!

For all the talk of Chavez controlling all the levers of power, the only difference between this and other recent elections in the country is that this time he was trying to do things that are unpopular. And the result was that people voted against his plan. I know this concept can be hard for some Americans, but in some countries the huge swath of poor workers neither disenfranchised nor deeply commited to voting for people that think their millionaire bosses need to pay even less in taxes and consolidate their economic position at the expense of the rest of the country.

And unlike the US, there as of yet is no indication that Chavez will go to the Supreme Court filled with his daddy's friends to get the voters choice overturned.