The latest edition of Jihad Bride!---
Don't you people ever learn? Watch what I do not what I say! (See 1 below.)
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Boehner's self-imposed mission. (See 2 below.)
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Strassel on the GOP's 2012 game plan. (See 3 below.)
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The nation's book end states remain in left field. They just don't get it or care to. Perhaps they believe the rest of us will bail them out. (See 4 below.)
However, this editor/publisher disagrees and believes the mid term results were off the mark and wrong-headed. You decide.(See 4a below.)
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Obama sticks to his message that he did not get his message across to frightened Americans.
He has it all wrong. He did get his message across and it frightened Americans. DUH! (See 5 below.)
Even The Economist believes Obama has a tin ear. (See 51 a below.)---
Glick hangs tough and advises Netanyahu 'do the same and do not sell out the Israelis.' (See 6 below.)
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A return to the norm according to Krauthammer and Republicans you did not receive a mandate just a lease for another two years. (See 7 below.)
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More dour dollar commentary. (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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1)Obama Tells Left-Wing MoveOn: I Will Fight GOP
President Barack Obama may have expressed humility during his conciliatory news conference Wednesday over the shellacking he took in the midterm elections, but just hours after speaking to the nation, he made it very clear in a phone call to left-leaning activist group MoveOn that he is not willing to compromise his core beliefs.
“We always knew bringing about change in Washington wouldn’t be easy, and it might get tougher in the days ahead,” Obama told the liberal organization's supporters a day after Republicans won the House in a landslide. “The message I took away from the elections is very simple: The American people are still frustrated. They still want change; we just have to work harder to deliver the change the American people want.”
Obama said he and activist organizations like MoveOn must work harder pushing the progressive agenda “until every American sees real change in their own lives . . . We didn’t sign up for doing what was easy, we signed up for doing what was right,” he said of his policies to fix America. “We are going to continue to take all the time it takes –– and all the effort it takes –– to get our country back on track.”
Obama wants MoveOn to keep the spirit of hope and change alive because it helps him translate that spirit into accomplishment.
“To those who began the journey with me almost four years ago, think about how far we’ve come,” Obama said. “Think about the ups and downs we went through during the course of the campaign. There were times when folks counted us out and we always came back. The same thing is going to happen over the next two years, and the next six years.”
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2)What the Next Speaker Must Do
Secrecy, arrogance, and the abuse of power have shattered the bonds of trust between the people and their elected leaders. Repairing that trust requires sweeping change, beginning with an end to earmarks.
By JOHN BOEHNER
I grew up in a small house on a hill in Cincinnati, Ohio, with 11 brothers and sisters. My dad ran a bar, Andy's Café, that my grandfather Andrew Boehner opened in 1938. We didn't have much but were thankful for what we had. And we didn't think much about Washington.
That changed when I got involved with a small business, which I eventually built into a successful enterprise. I saw firsthand how government throws obstacles in the way of job-creation and stifles our prosperity. It prompted me to get involved in my government, and eventually took me to Congress.
Millions of Americans have had a similar experience. They look at Washington and see an arrogance of power. They see a Congress that doesn't listen, that is ruled by leaders who seem out of touch and dismissive, even disdainful, of the anger that Americans feel toward their government and the challenges they face in an economy struggling to create jobs.
The political landscape has been permanently reshaped over the past two years. Overreaching by elected officials—in the form of pork-laden "stimulus" spending, permanent bailouts, and policies that force responsible taxpayers to subsidize irresponsible behavior—has awakened something deep in our national character. This has led to a surge of activism by citizens demanding smaller, more accountable government and a repudiation of Washington in Tuesday's elections.
Tired of politicians who refuse to listen, Americans who previously were not involved or minimally involved in the political process are now helping to drive it. While their backgrounds are as diverse as the country itself, their message to Washington is the same: Government leaders are servants of the people; the people are not servants of their government.
The members of the 112th Congress must heed this message if there is to be any hope of repairing the shattered bonds of trust between the American people and their elected leaders. And that begins with the speaker of the House, who as leader of the institution must lead by example.
Accordingly, there are several steps I believe the next speaker should be prepared to take immediately. Among them:
No earmarks. Earmarks have become a symbol of a broken Washington, and an entire lobbying industry has been created around them. The speaker of the House shouldn't use the power of the office to raid the federal Treasury for pork-barrel projects. To the contrary, the speaker should be an advocate for ending the current earmark process, and should adhere to a personal no-earmarks policy that stands as an example for all members of Congress to follow.
I have maintained a no-earmarks policy throughout my time of service in Congress. I believe the House must adopt a moratorium on all earmarks as a signal of our commitment to ending business as usual in the spending process.
Let Americans read bills before they are brought to a vote. The speaker of the House should not allow any bill to come to a vote that has not been posted publicly online for at least three days. Members of Congress and the American people must have the opportunity to read it.
Similarly, the speaker should insist that every bill include a clause citing where in the Constitution Congress is given the power to pass it. Bills that can't pass this test shouldn't get a vote. House Republicans' new governing agenda, "A Pledge to America," calls for the speaker to implement such reforms immediately.
No more "comprehensive" bills. The next speaker should put an end to so-called comprehensive bills with thousands of pages of legislative text that make it easy to hide spending projects and job-killing policies. President Obama's massive "stimulus" and health-care bills, written behind closed doors with minimal public scrutiny, were the last straw for many Americans. The American people are not well-served by "comprehensive," and they are rightly suspicious of the adjective.
No more bills written behind closed doors in the speaker's office. Bills should be written by legislators in committee in plain public view. Issues should be advanced one at a time, and the speaker should place an emphasis on smaller, more focused legislation that is properly scrutinized, constitutionally sound, and consistent with Americans' demand for a less-costly, less-intrusive government.
The speaker of the House, like all members of Congress, is a servant of the American people. The individual entrusted with that high honor and responsibility should act accordingly. A speaker's mission should not be to consolidate power in the speaker's office, but rather to ensure that elected officials uphold their oath to defend the Constitution and the American people we serve. If a speaker carries out that mission successfully, the result should be legislation that better reflects the considerable challenges we face as a nation.
The American people deserve a majority in Congress that listens to the people, focuses on their priorities and honors their demands for smaller, more accountable government. Accountability starts at the top, in the office of the speaker.
Mr. Boehner, a congressman representing Ohio's Eighth District since 1991, is the House Republican leader.
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3)The GOP's 2012 Game Plan Sen. Mitch McConnell says Republicans will keep the country focused on the unpopular elements of the president's agenda, especially health care.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
'It's a great first step." That's the way Washington's resident realist, Mitch McConnell, is describing this week's GOP electoral triumph. The Senate Republican leader is known for his long game, and that's what's on his mind even in victory: "We're not going to be able to finish this job until 2012."
Mr. McConnell took some time this week to talk me through the GOP game plan. Let's just say he isn't apologizing for recently suggesting that his priority is to deny President Obama a second term. This week's message was that the American people want a repeal of health-care reform and an end to overspending and job-killing initiatives. If Republicans intend to make good on these public demands, says Mr. McConnell, the end goal has to be putting someone in the White House who won't veto that progress.
History doesn't inspire optimism. Over the past 100 years, every time a president two years into his first term lost Congress, he went on to re-election: Truman in '48, Eisenhower in '56, Clinton in '96. Newt Gingrich even wrote a book, "Lessons Learned the Hard Way," about the GOP mistakes in the wake of 1994. It boiled down to Republicans over-promising and under-delivering—becoming the foil off of which President Clinton was able to skillfully pivot away from his own liabilities.
Mr. McConnell says he too has been through the history books. "I've spent a lot time studying the two years after the opposition took over—or in the case of this week, had a really good day—asking myself and my staff to analyze why the next election turned out the way it did." This time, the GOP has got "to work smarter, and to leave behind for our nominee a playing field that is competitive."
The first help will be the 13 new GOP senators Mr. McConnell welcomes in January. Republicans failed to gain the majority, but Mr. McConnell isn't complaining about a 47-strong caucus. "When you are down around 41, every man is a king and every woman a queen. Lose even one, and you are toast. Now I've got wiggle room." He adds, with his dry wit, that he's also got "23 Democrats up in 2012 who have a newfound appreciation for the problems of spending and debt."
Sen. Mitch McConnell says Republicans will keep the country focused on the unpopular elements of the president's agenda, especially health care.
He and House Speaker-elect John Boehner seem acutely aware of the perils of over-promising, and came out of the gate this week intent on managing expectations. One challenge will be reminding an impatient public that ultimate power still rests in the White House, not Congress. "We are not spiking the ball in the end zone, or acting like we took over the government when we didn't," says Mr. McConnell.
The broader strategy seems to hinge on keeping the focus on Mr. Obama's mistakes, offering him opportunities to correct them, and placing the burden on him if he won't. That means propelling the rollback of ObamaCare to the top of the national agenda, with repeated "proposals and votes for full repeal of health care." The fallback is going after it "piece by piece," attempting to defund it and delay it. The plan is to do the same with aspects of the financial services law and other damaging Obama regulations.
Mr. Obama can veto some of these efforts, but he'll have to defend his actions. House ownership also allows the GOP to start bringing "serious, not frivolous" oversight to the ballooning Obama bureaucracy created for his agenda—from the EPA to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Also important will be the "mega issue," as Mr. McConnell describes it, of "putting government on a diet." Republicans will use their new heft to "concentrate on the basic work" of passing appropriations bills that "present the president with the opportunity to spend less."
Mr. Boehner is proposing freezing spending at 2008 levels. If the president passes on that opportunity, Americans will know how serious he is about fiscal responsibility. (On the flipside, Mr. Obama will be offering Republicans plenty of opportunities to spend with him. Here's to hoping Mr. McConnell and Mr. Boehner understand that nothing will derail their message faster than failing to keep their own old-guard spenders on ice.)
Equally, if not more importantly, Republicans will promote their own pro-growth, pro-job agenda. This starts with taxes. Mr. McConnell says a big takeaway for his caucus from Tuesday is that Americans appreciate principled stands against bad policy, and Republicans remain united against the Obama tax hikes.
The Senate GOP leader remains entirely open to working with the president, so long as Mr. Obama wants to "meet" the GOP on "spending and debt," the end of "job-killing initiatives," or issues like the stalled Korea trade agreement. After all, said Mr. McConnell at a speech at the Heritage Foundation yesterday, he doesn't "want the president to fail." He wants him to change. If Mr. Obama won't, there's always 2012.
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4)The Two Left Coasts
Why the GOP wave didn't wash over New York and California
Tuesday's GOP landslide didn't spare many Democrats, but it did stop at the state lines of California and New York. These coastal exceptions deserve some explanation, because they illustrate the difficulties Republicans will face if they fail to reform entitlements, taxes and public spending.
In California, Senator Barbara Boxer cruised handily to a fourth term, defeating Carly Fiorina by nine percentage points and change. Democrats also notched a victory with Jerry Brown's restoration to the Governor's mansion; he won 54% to 41% despite being outspent 4 to 1. Democrats widened their margins in the state assembly and picked off the Republican incumbent for lieutenant governor and took insurance commissioner.
It looks as if Republicans turned over merely one of California's 53 House districts, though they may still also unseat Democrat Jerry McNerney, who is only leading by about 100 votes in San Joaquin County. Meanwhile, voters overwhelmingly rejected Proposition 23, which would freeze the state's climate regulations when joblessness is high, and they even passed another ballot measure that erodes the supermajority requirement for tax increases.
Back in New York, the party saw more success, stealing five House seats from the Democrats, one on Staten Island and the rest upstate. In the district that connects Syracuse to the Rochester suburbs, Republican Ann Marie Buerkle also edged into a 659-vote lead yesterday. But the GOP botched the 23rd district, again, which had been safe since 1992 until last year's intraparty feud helped elect a Democrat.
In the state Comptroller's race, Thomas DiNapoli eked out a win over Harry Wilson, a talented Republican who ran on rationalizing public pensions. For Attorney General, voters broke for Albany denizen Eric Schneiderman over Dan Donovan, another promising Republican. And of course Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo trounced the catastrophe known as Carl Paladino, who harmed down-ticket races statewide.
At some level, this Democratic immunity can be blamed on unforced errors like the dysfunctional Empire State GOP establishment, or on the fact that California's Democratic voters outnumbered Republicans by 13 points over the national average, according to exit polls. But the larger warning concerns the power that lies at the iron triangle of public employee unions, high taxes and social budgets that are larger than the economies in other states.
The fiscs in both Albany and Sacramento are perched atop a shrinking base of taxpayers, many so wealthy that they don't care what tax rates are. The highest-earning 1% funds nearly half of the New York budget. The liberal political class then feeds these dollars to its union constituents—not least in the form of gold-plated benefits and pensions—who in turn spend mightily to protect their patrons, even as the state budgets lurch ever closer to Grecian territory.
One of the most powerful forces in Golden State politics is the militant California Nurses Association, which might as well be a government workers union given the size of MediCal, the state Medicaid program. The nurses call Ms. Fiorina "Princess Carly." In New York, there's the Working Families Party, which is an adjunct of the public-sector labor movement and spent heavily to elect the Cuomo-DiNapoli-Schneiderman triumvirate.
As this agenda squeezes the middle class and drives jobs out of state, it leaves politics to a coalition of well-off knowledge professionals, public employees and lower-income workers who depend on the state for transfer payments. The well-paid elites in finance, fashion, media, tech or Hollywood tend to view environmental issues like cap and tax as enlightened social statements unrelated to economic growth.
We should add that much of the funding to defeat Proposition 23 came from a Silicon Valley that is deeply invested in green technology and its iron lung of government subsidies. After Dodd-Frank, Wall Street is also now more than ever tethered to Washington.
It's telling that the coastal-state regions where Republicans did best on Election Day—upstate and exurban New York, California's central valley—are demographically and economically closer to Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin than to Santa Barbara, Marin County or the tonier precincts of Greater New York City.
In other words, the results in California and New York are an instructive lesson in what happens when government doesn't serve a state but holds it hostage.
4a)An Undeserved Win for the GOP
Conventional wisdom says the president was too liberal and tried to do too much. Nonsense.
By KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL
This was an unearned win for the Republican Party. The election was fundamentally about one thing—the rotten economy—and Democrats paid the price as voters expressed their discontent. Conservatives in both parties who claim the vote represented an ideological shift to the right are plain wrong.
The quickly congealing conventional wisdom is that President Obama tried to do too much and was too liberal. The opposite is true: Voters were alienated because they didn't believe his team had fought aggressively enough for the interests of working- and middle-class citizens.
For 30 years, these Americans have seen their incomes stagnate as the top 1% accrued a staggering percentage of the nation's wealth. By rescuing the big banks and failing to place demands on them, the White House economic team, led by Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, ceded populist energy to the tea party. The inadequacy of the recovery program—largely a result of concessions to the GOP—became a political catastrophe for the White House.
In the face of this anemic economy, the president failed to convince voters he was on a consistent course that would turn things around. Furthermore, the absence of a clear explanation about how conservative policies have failed in the past and will continue to fail allowed a right-wing narrative of empty slogans to gain traction. Mr. Obama abandoned his smart argument about building a new foundation for the economy, embracing deficit reduction instead. This only left voters confused about the White House's recovery plan.
Going forward, Mr. Obama would be wise to lay out a bold plan to create jobs. He should take the advice of the more than 300 economists, including former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich, who have urged his administration not to undercut the recovery by focusing prematurely on deficit reduction. Joining Republicans' embrace of Social Security cuts and austerity makes for bad policy and bad politics. Instead, Mr. Obama and Democrats should promote sensible investments, particularly in vital infrastructure like roads and rail, as well as green energy initiatives.
If, as University of Massachusetts economist Robert Pollin and others argue, the single most important reason for the failure of economic recovery is that private credit markets are locked up, especially for small businesses, then the federal government could help by expanding existing federal loan guarantees by $300 billion. Meanwhile, excess cash reserves held by banks—now estimated at an unprecedented $1.1 trillion in Federal Reserve accounts—should be taxed an initial 1%-2%. Mr. Pollin estimates that this combination could generate about three million new jobs if it succeeds in pumping about $300 billion into productive investments. This plan should get bipartisan support.
As the president made clear in his press conference Wednesday, he remains committed to a politics of "civility and common ground." Common ground is fine, so long as it makes the government more responsive to the needs of the majority of Americans. This means investments in people and deteriorating infrastructure; ending a wasteful and futile war in Afghanistan; and enacting ethics and campaign finance reform that levels the playing field so ordinary Americans' voices aren't drowned out by covert political money. If this sensible agenda is met with Republican obstruction, as is likely, Mr. Obama should channel Harry Truman and come out fighting against a know-nothing, do-nothing GOP.
Common ground and common sense also demand that the president listen to and remobilize the base that is the heart of his party. An empowered Democratic electorate—the young, Latinos, African-Americans, single women, union folks—will be an effective counterweight to the assaults of the GOP and its corporate funders.
The Republicans have won control of the House, but they do not have a mandate to dismantle government. According to many polls, majorities across party lines want government to work. They aren't interested in rolling back decades of social and economic progress, abolishing the Education Department and the minimum wage, or privatizing Social Security and Medicare—issues that many tea party candidates touted.
More than 20 million Americans are out of work or underemployed. These people are interested in real solutions. They will not find them with a GOP committed to slashing billions from key domestic programs even as they make tax cuts for the rich permanent.
All of this presents an opportunity for Mr. Obama to show he stands with working people and the middle class. This not a time to retreat. This is a time for the politics of conviction that Mr. Obama has said so many times he believes in.
Ms. vanden Heuvel is the editor and publisher of the Nation.
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5)Obama acknowledges his message didn't get through
President Barack Obama is acknowledging in the wake of this week's election rout that he hasn't been able to successfully promote his economic-rescue message to anxious Americans.
Obama says in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" that he "stopped paying attention" to the leadership style he displayed during his run for the presidency.
Obama also said he recognizes now that "leadership is not just legislation," and that "it's a matter of persuading people. And giving them confidence and bringing them together. And setting a tone. And making an argument that people can understand."
"And I think that - we haven't always been successful at that," he said. "And I take personal responsibility for that. And it's something that I've got to examine closely as I go forward."
The president recorded the interview, to be broadcast in full with CBS's Steve Kroft on Sunday night, before leaving on a 10-day trip to Asia.
Obama said that's the response he's giving to "some of my Democratic supporters who express some frustration."
Obama's Democratic Party lost control of the House in Tuesday's midterm elections, as Republicans picked up a net gain of at least 60 seats, setting up a more divided government — or shared governance — in January, depending on the extent to which the two parties can reach accommodation on such vexing issues as the economy, energy, immigration, education and the war in Afghanistan.
Democrats had held sway in both the House and Senate since the 2006 election. The balloting Tuesday also puts House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio into position to be the next speaker, succeeding California Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., seems set to take position of House majority leader.
Democrats did retain control of the Senate, although their majority margin has been substantially decreased.
5a)That tin ear
An impenitent president
NOW it is official: Barack Obama does not do contrition well. The usual form after your party has had an electoral thrashing is to appear on television looking ashen and justly chastised, promising to heed the message of the voters and reform your ways. That is what Bill Clinton did with superb theatricality after suffering his own mid-term setback in 1994. Mr Obama’s manner in this week’s day-after White House press conference was one of sombre defiance, in which he appeared graciously to forgive voters for their natural impatience at the pace of economic recovery.
True, the president conceded that he had received a “shellacking” at the polls, and that “some election nights are more fun than others.” He accepted that the ultimate responsibility for the disappointment of voters rested with him. He claimed to be ready for compromise with the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, offering to “mix and match” ideas and, where necessary, disagree without being disagreeable. “I’ve got to do a better job, just like everybody else in Washington does,” he said. But the strenuous efforts of the White House press corps to get Mr Obama to say that his policy decisions of the past two years on health care, the stimulus package or anything else might have been mistaken came to naught.
As to that mixing and matching, the president said that the parties ought to be able to work together on energy and education, hinted at flexibility on the expiring Bush tax cuts and allowed that he might “tweak” health care here and there. But he also gave warning against spending the next two years “relitigating” the battles of the past two. Perhaps mercifully, he was due to escape Washington on November 5th for the pomp of a ten-day visit to Asia. It will not be an easier town to work in when he returns.
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6) Column One: We are not for sale
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
If Netanyahu wishes to be remembered as something more than another hack, no different from Livni and all the rest, he should end these destructive talks and tell the Obama administration the truth.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is playing with fire. And Israel is getting burned. Over the past week, it has been widely reported that the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government are conducting secret negotiations regarding future Israeli land surrenders to the Palestinians in the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem. According to the reports, the Obama administration has presented Netanyahu with a plan whereby Israel will cede its rights to eastern Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians and then lease the areas from the Palestinians for a limited period.
The reports on the length of the lease vary. Some claim that the White House is offering a seven-year rental. Others claim the Americans are offering Israel leases for Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley for several decades before it relinquishes them completely.
Netanyahu has reportedly accepted Obama’s proposal in principle. The only remaining dispute is the length of the lease. Netanyahu is demanding that Israel be permitted to lease Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley from the Palestinians for somewhere between 40 and 99 years. The Americans foresee a shorter timeframe.
The fact that these discussions are taking place is deeply disturbing both for what they tell us about the Obama administration’s view of Israel and for what they tell us about Netanyahu’s wisdom and character.
By calling for Israel to cede the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians, US President Barack Obama is ignoring the most fundamental reality of the Middle East: Israel is besieged by its neighbors who seek its destruction. Without the Jordan Valley, Israel would become the modern day equivalent of Czechoslovakia stripped of the Sudetenland in 1938. It would be utterly indefensible.
None of Israel’s neighbors has accepted Israel’s right to exist. The absolute majority of the Arabs in all of the states neighboring Israel wish to see Israel destroyed. By relinquishing the Jordan Valley, Israel would be committing national suicide by inviting an invasion it would be incapable of staving off.
This is the truth today, and given the depth of Arab hatred of Jews, in all likelihood, it will remain the case in 40 years and in 99 years. At any rate, Obama’s suggestion that Israel entrust its future to an unsubstantiated hope that the Arab world will be fundamentally transformed is both ignorant and dangerous.
As for Netanyahu, he has no right to gamble away Israel’s future. He has no right to commit future generations to strategic suicide on the basis of Obama’s strategic myopia.
The very notion that Israel ought to ever surrender control over the Jordan Valley is egregious and unacceptable. And by proposing that Israel do so, the Obama administration is destroying the last vestiges of its credibility as an ally to the Jewish state. But that is not the worst aspect of the reported US proposal to Israel.
The worst aspect of the US proposal is that it calls for Israel to cede Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians and then lease them from the Palestinians.
Speaking to Army Radio, Science Minister Daniel Herschkowitz explained, “If we agree to the offer, we will be broadcasting to the Palestinians that the land is actually theirs.”
Indeed, we would. But it is worse than that.
Jerusalem is the center of Jewish history, civilization, culture and faith. It is the lifeblood of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. As for the Jordan Valley, Jerusalem cannot be defended without it. When the US asks Israel to lease the areas from the Palestinians, what the US is telling Israel is that it rejects the very notion of Jewish national rights to the State of Israel.
Perhaps one day Israel’s leaders may be foolish enough to withdraw from Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. Perhaps one day they will be stupid enough to withdraw from the Galilee and the Negev. But no Israeli leader has the right to cede the Jewish people’s national rights to the Land of Israel to anyone.
At heart, the US proposal entails an Israeli submission to the Palestinians. It requires Israel’s leaders to say that the Palestinians have all the rights. We just have some minor security and political considerations. These considerations in turn are of limited duration and once they are settled, we will be out of everybody’s way. The Palestinians will be free to enjoy all of their rights without the troublesome Jews around bothering them.
NETANYAHU KNOWS full well that Israel cannot survive without the Jordan Valley. He also knows that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people and that we are the rightful owners of this land. So what explains his actions?
In acting as he is, Netanyahu is clearly trying to avert yet another crisis with the Obama administration. No doubt he believes that the Palestinians will save the day again by refusing to make a deal with Israel. Just as the Palestinians refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist, just as they refuse to give up on their demand that Israel destroy itself by accepting millions of foreign-born Arabs as full citizens in the framework of a “peace” agreement; and just as they refuse to accept any limitations on the sovereignty of a future Palestinian state, so Netanyahu believes, they will refuse to lease the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem to Israel for 40 or 99 years.
Netanyahu may be right to think this. The Palestinians may reject the deal. But he is taking an enormous risk.
Yasser Arafat didn’t have a problem lying to Yitzhak Rabin in 1993. To get Rabin to set up the Palestinian Authority, arm the PLO, raise billions of dollars in international aid for the PA, and allow it to expand to the outskirts of Israel’s major cities, Arafat lied and said that the PLO recognized Israel and would live at peace with the Jewish state.
It is easy to imagine Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s deputy of 40 years, acting in a similar fashion.
And then what would Netanyahu do?
If Netanyahu’s tactics could only cause Israel tactical damage, his gamble that the Palestinians will also refuse this deal might be defensible. But his tactics cause Israel strategic harm even if the Palestinians reject this deal as well. And so they are inexcusable.
Israel cannot survive without the Jordan Valley. By negotiating a surrender of the Jordan Valley, Netanyahu makes it acceptable for the US and the rest of the world to demand that Israel commit national suicide.
Even worse than that, Netanyahu’s willingness to negotiate with the US on the basis of a plan that rejects the Jewish people’s right to the Land of Israel confuses Israel’s friends and so dooms their defenses of Israel to failure.
By accepting the legitimacy of this proposal, Netanyahu is telling Israel’s supporters abroad that the Palestinians are right. Israel belongs to the Arabs more than it belongs to the Jews. With this message, the only thing supporters of Israel can do is encourage the Israeli government to make territorial concessions that are suicidal for the country.
This disastrous belief has been engendered since the inception of the Oslo process in 1993. Its deleterious influence abroad is evidenced by the flood of statements over the years by Israel’s supporters claiming that Israel must vacate Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights.
Take a recent statement by the American pollster Frank Luntz. Luntz often advises American pro-Israel groups about how to improve Israel’s image in the world. Yet as this friend of Israel sees things, “The only way for Israel to create sympathy is to be the side working hardest for peace. The best case for Israel is to demonstrate that she is willing to go twice as far as her neighbors to establish peace.”
AND WHILE moves like Netanyahu’s confuse Israel’s friends abroad, his willingness to consider a plan that denies Jewish rights to Israel and calls for Israel to make suicidal withdrawals demoralize Israelis at home. For evidence of this demoralization, one need only look to the Kadima Party.
As Kadima’s leader Tzipi Livni reminds us every time she opens her mouth, Kadima’s plan is for Israel to destroy itself by withdrawing to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines as quickly as possible.
Livni says day in and day out that Israel’s interests are best served by surrendering Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley as quickly as possible. To the extent that Netanyahu tries to withstand US pressure to surrender all these areas, Livni accuses him of endangering the country.
Livni’s most recent broadside came on Wednesday at the Knesset. There she attacked the Netanyahu government for purportedly reacting with happiness to the news that the Republicans won control of the US House of Representatives in Tuesday’s elections.
As she put it, “For those of you who believe that Obama’s loss is good for Netanyahu, I ask myself have you all gone crazy?... He who says that a... weak American president is good for Israel is not just speaking stupidly, they are encouraging something that endangers Israel itself.”
Obviously Livni is wrong. Israel is not best served by preferring the political fortunes of a hostile US president to its national interests and rights. If Netanyahu and his associates expressed happiness at the outcome of the US elections they would be fully justified in doing so. The overwhelming majority of Israelis – who rightly view Obama as hostile – understand this.
But despite the idiocy of Livni’s arguments and the lunacy of Kadima’s policy, consistent opinion polls show Kadima closely trailing Likud. And Netanyahu deserves a large share of the blame for this state of affairs.
When Netanyahu agrees to negotiate from a position of moral weakness and strategic blindness, the message he sends the public is that we should take the likes of Livni seriously. He tells us that the difference between Kadima and Likud is one of tone, not substance.
They are all shoving us off the same cliff, so we might as well go with Blondie.
For 17 long years, successive Israeli leaders have come into office committed to defending the country, only to be reduced within a few short months to quibbling over the price of surrender. Leaders from the Right hoped that the Palestinians would scuttle the deals. Leaders from the Left begged the Palestinians to accept them.
If Netanyahu wishes to be remembered as something more than another hack, no different from Livni and all the rest, he should end these destructive talks and tell the Obama administration the truth: Israel’s survival is nonnegotiable and the rights of the Jewish people are not for sale.
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7)A return to the norm
By Charles Krauthammer
For all the turmoil, the spectacle, the churning - for all the old bulls slain and fuzzy-cheeked freshmen born - the great Republican wave of 2010 is simply a return to the norm. The tide had gone out; the tide came back. A center-right country restores the normal congressional map: a sea of interior red, bordered by blue coasts and dotted by blue islands of ethnic/urban density.
Or to put it numerically, the Republican wave of 2010 did little more than undo the two-stage Democratic wave of 2006-2008 in which the Democrats gained 54 House seats combined (precisely the size of the anti-Democratic wave of 1994). In 2010 the Democrats gave it all back, plus about an extra 10 seats or so for good - chastening - measure.
The conventional wisdom is that these sweeps represent something novel, exotic and very modern - the new media, faster news cycles, Internet frenzy and a public with a short attention span and even less patience with government. Or alternatively, that these violent swings reflect reduced party loyalty and more independent voters.
Nonsense. In 1946, for example, when party loyalty was much stronger and even television was largely unknown, the Republicans gained 56 seats and then lost 75 in the very next election. Waves come. Waves go. The republic endures.
Our two most recent swing cycles were triggered by unusually jarring historical events. The 2006 Republican "thumpin'" (to quote George W. Bush) was largely a reflection of the disillusionment and near-despair of a wearying war that appeared to be lost. And 2008 occurred just weeks after the worst financial collapse in eight decades.
Similarly, the massive Republican swing of 2010 was a reaction to another rather unprecedented development - a ruling party spectacularly misjudging its mandate and taking an unwilling country through a two-year experiment in hyper-liberalism.
A massive government restructuring of the health-care system. An $800 billion-plus stimulus that did not halt the rise in unemployment. And a cap-and-trade regime reviled outside the bicoastal liberal enclaves that luxuriate in environmental righteousness - so reviled that the Democratic senatorial candidate in West Virginia literally put a bullet through the bill in his own TV ad. He won. Handily.
Opposition to the policies was compounded by the breathtaking arrogance with which they were imposed. Ignored was the unmistakable message from the 2009-10 off-year elections culminating in Scott Brown's anti-Obamacare victory in bluer-than-blue Massachusetts. Moreover, Obamacare and the stimulus were passed on near-total party-line votes - legal, of course, but deeply offensive to the people's sense of democratic legitimacy. Never before had anything of this size and scope been passed on a purely partisan basis. (Social Security commanded 81 House Republicans; the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 136; Medicare, 70.)
Tuesday was the electorate's first opportunity to render a national verdict on this manner of governance. The rejection was stunning. As a result, President Obama's agenda is dead. And not just now. No future Democratic president will try to revive it - and if he does, no Congress will follow him, in view of the carnage visited upon Democrats on Tuesday.
This is not, however, a rejection of Democrats as a party. The center-left party as represented by Bill Clinton remains competitive in every cycle. (Which is why he was the most popular, sought-after Democrat in the current cycle.) The lesson of Tuesday is that the American game is played between the 40-yard lines. So long as Democrats don't repeat Obama's drive for the red zone, Democrats will cyclically prevail, just as Republicans do.
Nor should Republicans overinterpret their Tuesday mandate. They received none. They were merely rewarded for acting as the people's proxy in saying no to Obama's overreaching liberalism. As one wag put it, this wasn't an election so much as a restraining order.
The Republicans won by default. And their prize is nothing more than a two-year lease on the House. The building was available because the previous occupant had been evicted for arrogant misbehavior and, by rule, alas, the House cannot be left vacant.
The president, however, remains clueless. In his next-day news conference, he had the right demeanor - subdued, his closest approximation of humility - but was uncomprehending about what just happened. The "folks" are apparently just "frustrated" that "progress" is just too slow. Asked three times whether popular rejection of his policy agenda might have had something to do with the shellacking he took, he looked as if he'd been asked whether the sun had risen in the West. Why, no, he said.
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8)The age of the dollar is drawing to a close
Currency competition is the only way to fix the world economy, says Jeremy Warner.
By Jeremy Warner
Right from the start of the financial crisis, it was apparent that one of its biggest long-term casualties would be the mighty dollar, and with it, very possibly, American economic hegemony. The process would take time – possibly a decade or more – but the starting gun had been fired.
At next week's meeting in Seoul of the G20's leaders, there will be no last rites – this hopelessly unwieldy exercise in global government wouldn't recognise a corpse if stood before it in a coffin – but it seems clear that this tragedy is already approaching its denouement.
To understand why, you have to go back to the origins of the credit crunch, which lay in the giant trade and capital imbalances that have long ruled the world economy. Over the past 20 years, the globe has become divided in highly dangerous ways into surplus and deficit nations: those that produced a surplus of goods and savings, and those that borrowed the savings to buy the goods.
It's a strange, Alice in Wonderland world that sees one of the planet's richest economies borrowing from one of the poorest to pay for goods way beyond the reach of the people actually producing them. But that process, in effect, came to define the relationship between America and China. The resulting credit-fuelled glut in productive capacity was almost bound to end in a corrective global recession, even without the unsustainable real-estate bubble that the excess of savings also produced. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened.
When politicians see a problem, especially one on this scale, they feel obliged to regulate it. But so far, they've been unable to make headway. This is mainly because the surplus nations are jealous defenders of their essentially mercantilist economic models. Exporting to the deficit nations has served them well, and they are reluctant to change.
Ironically, one effect of the policies adopted to fight the downturn has been to reinforce the imbalances. Fiscal and monetary stimulus in the US is sucking in imports at near-record levels. The fresh dose of quantitative easing announced this week by the Federal Reserve will only turn up the heat further.
What can be done? China won't accept the currency appreciation that might, in time, reduce the imbalances, for that would undermine the competitiveness of its export industries. In any case, it probably wouldn't do the trick: surplus nations have a habit of maintaining competitiveness even in the face of an appreciating currency.
Unable to tackle the problem through currency reform, the US has turned instead to the idea of measures to limit the imbalances directly, through monitoring nations' current accounts. This has already gained some traction with the G20, which has agreed to assess the proposal ahead of the meeting in Seoul. As a way of defusing hot-headed calls in the US for the imposition of import tariffs, the idea is very much to be welcomed, as a trade war would be a disaster for all concerned. China, for one, has embraced the concept with evident relief.
Unfortunately, the limits as proposed would be highly unlikely to solve the underlying problem. Similar rules have failed hopelessly to maintain fiscal discipline in the eurozone. What chance for a global equivalent on trade? With or without sanctions, the limits would be manipulated to death. And even if they weren't, the proposed 4 per cent cap on surpluses and deficits would only marginally affect the worst offenders: for a big economy, a trade gap of 4 per cent of GDP is still a massive number, easily capable of creating unsafe flows of surplus savings.
No, globally imposed regulation, even if it could rise above lowest-common-denominator impotence, is unlikely to solve the problem, although it might possibly stop it getting significantly worse. But what would certainly fix things would be the dollar's demise as the global reserve currency of choice.
As we now know, dollar hegemony was itself a major cause of both the imbalances and the crisis, for it allowed more or less unbounded borrowing by the US from the rest of the world, at very favourable rates. As long as the US remained far and away the world's dominant economy, a global system based on the dollar still made some sense. But America has squandered this advantage on credit-fuelled spending; with the developing world expected to represent more than half of the global economy within five years, dollar hegemony no longer makes any sense.
The rest of the world is now openly questioning the merits of a global currency whose value is governed by America's perceived domestic needs, while the growth that once underpinned confidence in its ability to repay its debts has never looked more fragile.
Already, there are calls for alternatives. Unwilling to wait for one, the world's central banks are beginning to diversify their currency reserves. This, in turn, will eventually exert its own form of market discipline on the US, whose ability to soak the rest of the world by issuing ever more greenbacks will be correspondingly harmed.
These are seismic changes, of a type not seen for a generation or more. I hate to end with a cliché, but we do indeed live in interesting times.
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