Last Call

What's this?  The Teabagger Glibertarians at Commentary Magazine believe Rand Paul is not conservative enough?  Oh do go on, boys.

Last week we noted that if Rand Paul wanted to be a serious presidential contender as opposed to a libertarian gadfly he was going to have to distance himself from his father’s extreme anti-Israel views. No one should be holding their breath waiting for the Kentucky senator to speak a word against Ron Paul, but there’s no question he is preparing to cast himself as a different kind of candidate in 2016. To that end, not only did he take the trouble to engage in an exchange with COMMENTARY about his views on Israel, but as Business Insider reported last week, he is also planning a trip to the Jewish state next month.

Trips to Israel by senators and members of Congress are so common that they are hardly newsworthy. But for a devoted opponent of military aid to the Jewish state to be journeying there for the first time is a clear sign that Rand Paul wants to be seen as someone whose views on foreign policy are not the sort of grab bag of libertarian cant and isolationism that characterizes his father’s stance. Even more telling is that Paul will be accompanied on his trip by a group of evangelical leaders. The signal being given here is that the senator wants to be seen by the Republican base as a mainstream conservative and not a libertarian outlier.


Given his opposition to military assistance and his worldview that calls for a weaker U.S. presence in the world, that won’t be easy. But the trip to Israel and Jordan is a start. But the outreach here isn’t to AIPAC and its donors, who rightly regard the younger Paul as just a more presentable version of a father who remains an implacable foe of the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Rand Paul doesn't want to blow up enough Palestinians, and this is why he has zero chance in 2016.  "Why should we give foreign aid to Israel or anybody?" may play well in Bracken County, Kentucky, but it sure as hell is going to be a major problem in states like battleground states like Florida and Virginia, and his "cut military spending" rhetoric sure as hell won't play in deep red states.

But it's his anti-Israel stuff that guarantees he'll be sunk in the primaries long before the other guys.  The big donors will turn their backs on him, and he'll be drowned in negative ads just like his dad.  Hell, it might be bad enough to cost him his Senate seat.

A guy can hope, right?

Peace Through Superior Building Power, Part 3

Apparently we're now at the "good cop, bad cop" part of the routine where the US and EU deal with Israel's latest infrastructure retaliations against Palestinians in the West bank.  Today, the role of bad cop will be played by France.

Israel's decision to approve 3,000 new homes on occupied territory drew sharp condemnation from European allies on Monday, with at least three governments summoning ambassadors to express their disapproval of an action they say undermines an already troubled peace process.

The Israeli envoy to Paris was called to a meeting late Monday morning, according to a statement from the French foreign ministry spokesman, Philippe Lalliot. France, which was the first major European country to announce support for the Palestinian effort to win recognition at the U.N., also sent a letter to the Israeli government, calling the settlement decision "a considerable obstacle to the two-state solution."

Britain and Sweden also summoned the Israeli ambassadors, and Germany said the decision would hurt Israel's ability to negotiate a long-term peace agreement.

None of the European governments openly threatened any concrete measures to punish Israel.

Well of course not, but now the chessboard is set for the US to make a few moves and give Israel some concessions of some sort and look like the good guy.  If you think Israel can freely ignore the Obama administration (which they do), they openly mock Hollande and France (which they will.)

The only question is how much Israel will get in exchange for putting these building plans on hold for a while.  Considering the UN vote, it may take quite a bit to soothe Netanyahu this time around.  It's very likely that Israel will get some serious concessions or some new toys from the Pentagon, or both...but President Obama is going to have to open up the vault in a big way.

For example, I wonder how much of the $120 million in tax revenue the Israelis are holding for the PA they will be allowed to simply keep?

All I know is that Israel will get something nice this holiday season, and the Palestinians will get the back of Netanyahu's hand.

The Kroog Versus The Next Two Years

I happen to absolutely agree with Paul Krugman's assessment of the current fiscal cliff slope talks.

Oh, boy. This isn’t going to end, even when or if a deal is reached on defusing the austerity bomb; John Boehner has just declared that he’s going to hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage every time we hit the debt limit. Nor will it be a case of holding the nation at gunpoint until it meets GOP demands; Republicans are signaling that they don’t intend to make any specific proposals, they’re just going to yell and stamp their feet until Obama soothes them somehow.

And November proved that the vast majority of Republicans in the House are in blood-red districts designed to make sure 95% keep their jobs no matter what they do.  They feel perfectly justified in going right back to the monthly hostage-taking on everything they can just to wreck Obama's legacy, and they feel strongly that voters will blame Obama and punish Democrats with another 2010 style low-turnout backlash election that will give the GOP control of the Senate and set up, you guessed it, the mother of all impeachment battles.

And one thing to think about: if the next two years are, as they seem likely to be, one long Republican tantrum, the 2014 election is not going to be a normal midterm. It will instead be a referendum on GOP obstructionism, which may attract a lot more attention — and much higher turnout — than normal.

That's certainly the hope.  It's going to take a hell of a lot of work on the part of the Dems to get the kind of turnout they'll need to get the House back and keep the Senate, however.

No rest for the wicked, for the wicked aren't taking the next two years off.

StupidiNews!

• US intelligence reports show rising concern that Syria's al-Assad regime may be preparing to use chemical weapons against rebel forces.
• Israel continues to retaliate against the Palestinians for last week's UN observer status vote by withholding $120 million in tax revenues collected for the Palestinian Authority.
• Police continue to investigate the murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs player Jovan Belcher, who killed his girlfriend Kassandra Perkins, then shot himself in front of team officials.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated Germany may be willing to accept a write-off of Greek debt as Greece works towards a buyback program to pay off bonds.
• Microsoft internal documents indicate the Xbox 720 could be on the way as early as Fall 2013.

Last Call

Orange Julius on the debt ceiling:

Congress is never going to give up this power. I've made it clear to the president that every time we get to the debt limit, we need cuts and reforms that are greater than the increase in the debt limit. It's the only way to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would if left alone.

And Boehner says: hostage taking then, hostage taking now, hostage taking forever!

If only President Obama and the Democrats had done the right thing and all resigned from office, right?

Peace Through Superior Building Power, Part 2

If you're wondering what's so awful about Israel's "retaliatory strike" of building more settlements, as Emily L. Hauser explains, it's where the settlements are that matters.  As with any real estate issue, it's location, location, location. (emphasis mine:)

Yet if we’re to be brutally frank, bluster and threats are entirely unnecessary. Israel doesn’t need to convince the world of its position or to take extreme measures to make sure that Palestine’s nascent statehood dies in the cradle. All Israel needs to do is stay its decades-long course and keep sending out bulldozers.

Witness the report that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s morning-after response to the statehood vote is 3000 new housing units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as expedited work in the E-1 “envelope,” a development project intended to geographically join Jerusalem to the settlement of Maaleh Adumim and thus cut the West Bank in half. And thus destroy territorial contiguity for any Palestinian state. And thus drive a final nail in the coffin of the notion of two-state peace.

Though impressive in scope, there is, in fact, nothing new in these plans—indeed, even though Netanyahu committed to President Obama upon taking office that he would not build in E-1, that piece of it can’t be considered a breach with the past either. After all, Israel is forever promising the U.S. one thing and then doing quite another, in particular with regard to the settlements.

So yes, the reaction of the Israelis to the Palestinian recognition vote is very much an act of war.  Building a settlement corridor that would cut the West Bank in two is pretty despicable.  And yet, most Americans will shrug and say "Well how could that be bad?  Why are those awful Arab terrorists complaining about that?"

Now you know.

Existential Polling, You're Doing It Wrong

Nate Silver is rather brutal with his assessment of the Romney campaign's complicit effects in wrecking a number of key firms through their ludicrously incorrect internal polls.

Campaigns should foster organizational cultures in which their pollsters are enabled to provide the most value.

Campaigns might consider how pollsters are compensated; they could tie some of the pollster’s compensation to the accuracy of its final polls, for instance.

Some campaigns have had success with hiring more than one pollster and having them work relatively autonomously from one another. This can serve as a check against groupthink — and may increase the likelihood the different assumptions that the pollsters might introduce will be thought over and debated.

But most important, campaigns would be wise not to have their pollsters serve as public spokesmen or spin doctors for the campaign. Campaigns have other personnel who specialize in those tasks.

The role of the pollster should be just the opposite of this, in fact: to provide a reality check such that the campaign does not begin to believe its own spin.

Ouch.  And yes, he's talking to you, Gallup.

Suboptimal Subsidies For Suckers

As American corporations continue to collect record profits, let's remember that it's coming at the expense of schools, roads, infrastructure, highways, bridges, and social programs.  In many cases, that's direct loss:  the business world now expects cities, counties and states to give corporations massive tax incentives or they simply walk.  The problem is that taxpayers are now giving $80 billion yearly to corporations in what it in effect massive bribes, as the NY Times investigates.

The Times analyzed more than 150,000 awards and created a database of incentive spending, which is searchable on the newspaper’s Web site. The survey was supplemented by interviews with more than 100 officials in government and business organizations as well as corporate executives and consultants. 

A portrait arises of mayors and governors who are desperate to create jobs, outmatched by multinational corporations and short on tools to fact-check what companies tell them. Many of the officials said they feared that companies would move jobs overseas if they did not get subsidies in the United States. 

Over the years, corporations have increasingly exploited that fear, creating a high-stakes bazaar where they pit local officials against one another to get the most lucrative packages. States compete with other states, cities compete with surrounding suburbs, and even small towns have entered the race with the goal of defeating their neighbors. 

While some jobs have certainly migrated overseas, many companies receiving incentives were not considering leaving the country, according to interviews and incentive data.

And almost a quarter of that comes from one state:  Texas.

The Times analysis shows that Texas awards more incentives, over $19 billion a year, than any other state. Alaska, West Virginia and Nebraska give up the most per resident. 

For many communities, the payouts add up to a substantial chunk of their overall spending, the analysis found. Oklahoma and West Virginia give up amounts equal to about one-third of their budgets, and Maine allocates nearly a fifth. 

In a few states, the cost of incentives is not significant. But several of them have low business taxes — or none at all — which can save companies even more money than tax credits. 

Far and away the most incentive money is spent on manufacturing, about $25.5 billion a year, followed by agriculture. The oil, gas and mining industries come in third, and the film business fourth. Technology is not far behind, as companies like Twitter and Facebook increasingly seek tax breaks and many localities bet on the industry’s long-term viability.

This is what should be the final, paradigm-shattering and myth-shattering moment of the ridiculous notion of the "job creator class".  it should end the myths of the "makers versus takers" too, because every industry sector gets billions a year directly from taxpayers.  It's organized extortion on a national scale.

The next time Rick Perry says Texas can't afford to expand Medicaid for Texas's poor, ask him why his state is giving nearly $20 billion to businesses in taxpayer money every year. 

This is why we can't have nice things:  American corporations are some of the biggest takers on the planent.

The View From The Top Of The Slope

Time for a substantial round of "I told you so's" about the debt ceiling deal that has put us on top of the "fiscal cliff slope".  Pay attention, because I've got a lot to say.

First of all, it's not like I didn't call this a year ago or anything, right?

The size of the debt hike -- easily getting the country through 2012 without having to bring it up during the election -- and the timing seems to indicate to me that A) this was done on purpose, B) it was done to pants the GOP, and C) most importantly the Obama administration understands full well that raising the debt ceiling was going to be portrayed by the GOP as an impeachable offense no matter what the President actually did about it.   So the White House is looking to get this out of the way.

Pretty sure this was the plan all along, and the GOP is now facing having to blow their vacation or miss their big chance at portraying the President as the most vile of all villains when of course previous Presidents jacked up the debt limit all the time, including Dubya's seven times and Reagan's 18 times.   Your move, Republicans.  You already lost that fight once.

You mad, bro?  If you ask me, President Obama's got them by the short hairs.  Again. 

All that still applies.  That deal led directly to where we are right now.  Remember that last spring, the Village declared the deal an utter disaster for the President that would cost him reelection:

But interviews with most of the central players in those talks — some of whom were granted anonymity to speak about the secret negotiations — as well as a review of meeting notes, e-mails and the negotiating proposals that changed hands, offer a more complicated picture of the collapse. Obama, nervous about how to defend the emerging agreement to his own Democratic base, upped the ante in a way that made it more difficult for Boehner — already facing long odds — to sell it to his party. Eventually, the president tried to put the original framework back in play, but by then it was too late. The moment of making history had passed.

The actions of Obama and his staff during that period in the summer reflect the grand ambitions and the shortcomings of the president’s first term.

The emoprog Villagers too proclaimed the President was done.  Jon Chait accused President Obama of selling out liberalism.

Chait argues that President Obama wanting a deal -- any deal, mind you -- led him to treat the GOP as good faith partners when they were clearly not.  Republicans, he goes on to say, were going to screw POTUS and the country no matter what Obama did.  This is where Chait's argument turns into purist whining:  There was nothing President Obama could have done that would have changed the outcome of the GOP screwing us over (indeed, the GOP is now signaling that it will simply ignore the debt deal), and at the same time he didn't do enough to change the outcome.  It's just meaningless stupidity, brought about by the "liberal" Washington Post unloading this hit piece on the President, and Chait absolutely takes the bait, re-fighting the same arguments we had in 2010 and 2011 about "but if Obama had done THIS and LISTENED TO HOW SMART I AM..." five minutes after saying there was nothing he could have done.

There's nothing productive about this civil war re-enactment other than Chait scratching his own "Tell Obama what to do" itch that so many of our professional pundit class seem to suffer from.  But generating that itch was the entire point of the Kaplan piece.  Chait performed admirably, attacking the President from the left.  After all, attacks from the right aren't working too well, since the wingers keep putting most of their ammo into their own feet.  Whenever the left is winning, we have to be demoralized into our own worst enemies, and we're damn good at it.

And yet despite the best efforts of folks like Chait, President Obama continues to have outfoxed all of his critics and put the GOP in a massive bind, again.  Because all of them underestimated President Obama.  Again.  And now they look very foolish.

Again.

You would think people would stop betting against the President on things.  But some people never learn.

Now the right is scrambling to find any way out of this mess.  Increasingly they are pointing out that the same Simpson-Bowles plan they hated before would at least have the added benefit of making liberals miserable as well, so that they should push that plan:

Best case scenario: Republicans catch Democrats off-guard, and (much or most of) the plan is adopted.  At the very least, GOP negotiators would gain major leverage in fashioning a less horrific final compromise.  Worst case scenario: Democrats firmly reject the plan, further talks stall, and the we go over the cliff.  But even under this scenario, Republicans would have very prominently done their part to try to avoid the impasse, and the public's assignment of blame would be rendered far more complex than simply, "the Republicans did it."  Bottom line: I'm not completely convinced that this is the best course of action, but given the dismal alternatives, it's at least putting out there for consideration.

Simpson-Bowles as the GOP's starting point?  That's a complete Obama win.  And that's the view from the top of the fiscal slope, where President Obama is in control of the long game and always, always has been for the last 4 years.

Once again.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• As World AIDS Day marks another sober milestone, China may now be the HIV pandemic's largest victim.
• Economic conditions and lack of a national immigration solution have combined to rank 2011 as the lowest yearly birth rate since 1920 in the US.
• Midwestern lawmakers are asking President Obama to direct the Army Corps of Engineers to keep the Mississippi River clear as drought has dangerously lowered the water level.
• A former GM engineer and her husband have been convicted in federal court in Detroit for stealing trade secrets from the automaker and trying to sell them to Chinese competitors.
• The US Supreme Court will take on a challenge to the practice of patenting human genetic material for testing for and treating diseases like cancer.

Last Call

A very cool cryptography story to end the week with, as the nearly 450-year old coded writings of Rhode Island co-founder and 17th century theologian Roger Williams have finally been cracked by a Brown University team.

Historians call the now-readable writings the most significant addition to Williams scholarship in a generation or more. Williams is Rhode Island's founder and best known as the first figure to argue for the principle of the separation of church and state that would later be enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

His coded writings are in the form of notes in the margins of a book at the university's John Carter Brown Library. The nearly 250-page volume, "An Essay Towards the Reconciling of Differences Among Christians," was donated in the 1800s and included a handwritten note identifying Williams as the notes' author — though even that was uncertain at first.

A group including former library director Edward Widmer, Williams scholar and Rhode Island College history professor emeritus J. Stanley Lemons and others at Brown started trying to unravel the so-called "Mystery Book" a few years ago. But the most intense work began earlier this year after the university opened up the challenge to undergraduates, several of whom launched an independent project.

"No one had ever looked at it systematically like this in generations," said Widmer. "I think people probably looked at it and shrugged."

And once again math for the win.

Senior math major Lucas Mason-Brown, who has done the majority of the decoding, said his first instinct was to develop a statistical tool. The 21-year-old from Belmont, Mass., used frequency analysis, which looks at the frequency of letters or groups of letters in a text, but initially didn't get far.

He picked up critical clues after learning Williams had been trained in shorthand as a court stenographer in London, and built his own proprietary shorthand off an existing system. Lucas-Brown refined his analysis and came up with a rough key.

Williams' system consisted of 28 symbols that stand for a combination of English letters or sounds. How they're arranged is key to their meaning; arrange them one way and you get one word, arrange them another, you get something different. One major complication, according to Mason-Brown: Williams often improvised.

From there, Mason-Brown was able to translate scattered fragments, and the students determined there were three separate sections of notes. Two are Williams' writings on other books, a 17th century historical geography and a medical text. The third — and most intriguing — is 20 pages of Williams' original thoughts on one of the major theological issues of the day: infant baptism.

Some of the most famous minds in history kept their notes in coded fashion like this, precisely to keep knowledge and discussions of controversial topics out of the hands of people who would, you know, stone you or behead you for talking about things like "separation of church and state".  It's gratifying to know that centuries later, one American historical figure has a wealth of new knowledge to pass to us.

Now that deserves a round.

Peace Through Superior Building Power

Israel's response to Thursday's UN recognition vote granting Palestine "observer" status:  Kinda hard for you guys to have a country if we put our houses all over it.

Israel plans to build thousands of new homes for its settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, an Israeli official said on Friday, defying a U.N. vote that implicitly recognized Palestinian statehood there.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conservative government had authorized the construction of 3,000 housing units and ordered "preliminary zoning and planning work for thousands" more.

The official would not elaborate. But Israeli media said the government sought to hammer home its rejection of Thursday's upgrade, by the U.N. General Assembly, of the Palestinians to "non-member observer state" from "entity".

Hammer, nails, brick, mortar, drywall, concrete, bulldoze and shingle home that rejection, too.   Let's not forget the US has asked Israel before to chill with the settlement expansion in the West Bank, and that went nowhere fast as Netanyahu told President Obama to stick a 2 x 4 where the sun don't shine and Obama backed off.

Now after voting against the recognition of Palestine yesterday, it's not like the Obama administration can say a damn thing about this new and massive round of expansion, and the collective punishment of Palestinians continues unabated.

It's getting tiresome.

Opening Salvos From The Slope

President Obama's opening fiscal cliff slope offer, made through Tim Geithner, was a dose of cold, hard reality for the Republicans.  Naturally they're in full panic mode and screaming to the "liberal media" to punish the President for daring to make such an offer.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday rejected a White House offer to avoid the "fiscal cliff" that would include $1.6 trillion in tax increases, $400 billion in spending cuts and a more permanent increase in the debt ceiling, Republican aides said.

Aides said the offer was made by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Rob Nabors, a top White House adviser, during their meeting with Republican leaders in the Capitol.

While the Obama administration described the offer as reducing the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years, Republicans told The Hill its tax increases amount to $600 billion more than what the Democratic-led Senate passed earlier this year when it approved legislation that would allow tax rates on top earners to rise.

“We’ve offered a balanced approach to deal with the fiscal cliff: raising revenue in a way that protects jobs while cutting spending,” said a Republican congressional aide familiar with the proposal. “But, after two weeks of discussions, the offer the White House made today is completely unbalanced and unreasonable, and amounts to little more than reiterating the president’s budget request — which failed to get a single vote in the House or Senate.”

As BooMan suggests, the Republicans are more than a little stunned by the boldness of the offer.  This is what President Obama's second term mandate means for them, and they don't like it a bit. They now know the President isn't bluffing.

The administration is threatening to weaken their ability to obstruct in the Senate or to blow up the economy by holding the debt ceiling hostage, while also demanding their tax hikes on the rich and refusing to offer anything remotely satisfactory (from the Republicans' point of view) in spending cuts.

Give the president what he wants or over the cliff we go. And the GOP gets the blame no matter what happens. Maybe you shouldn't have fucked with the president so much. 

Indeed, GOP meatheads like Newt Gingrich and El Rushbo are already saying the Republicans need to announce they are walking away from the table and that they don't care if the country burns if they go over the cliff slope.

Briar patch.  Just like it's been for the last four years.  Advantage:  Obama.  You can tell he's winning because the usual Village suspects are having a collective heart attack. 

Watch the fun begin.

StupidiNews!

• Egyptian lawmakers have quickly passed a draft Constitution in response to President Morsi's assumption of powers in the interim.
• The US, Israel, and Canada are among nine countries who voted against and condemned a UN resolution overwhelmingly passed Thursday giving Palestine neutral observer status.
• Republicans are flatly rejecting the White House's latest fiscal cliff slope offer of $600 billion in new taxes and $50 billion in job stimulus.
• Eurozone unemployment rose to a new record in October, hitting 11.7% across the 17-nation bloc.
• New data shows that as many as 20% of internet sites may sell your online information to advertisers, and more than half reserve the right to keep your data indefinitely.

Last Call

The first casualty of any Arab Spring war is truth.  The second casualty is apparently reliable internet service, as Syria's civil war moves into its final phases with the capital of Damascus now under rebel attack.

A blog post on Renesys, a U.S. company which tracks Internet traffic worldwide, said that at 12:26 p.m. in Damascus, Syria's international Internet connectivity shut down completely.

Syria's minister of information said "terrorists" were responsible, a pro-government TV station said.

The past two weeks have seen rebels overrunning army bases across Syria, exposing Assad's loss of control in northern and eastern regions despite the devastating air power that he has used to bombard opposition strongholds.

Rebels and activists said the fighting along the road to Damascus airport, southeast of the capital, was heavier in that area than at any other time in the conflict.

"No one can come in or out of the airport," said Abu Omar.

Airport and internet down?  Yeah, the al-Assad regime is not long for this earth, I believe.   Whichever side knocked out the net in Syria, it was a smart move tactically and strategically...which goes to show you just how important the internet is as part of a nation's infrastructure.

Something we should consider investing in more ourselves.