The Gaza Strip Shuffle

Now Egypt has gotten into the fray by opening their Gaza border crossing to all Palestinians until further notice in protest of Israel's actions on Monday.  Reuters:

The move, urged by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against whom the embargo has been directed, prompted dozens of people to race to the crossing point in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, though the gates appeared still to be closed.

It is the only point on Gaza's borders that is not fully controlled by Israel. Cairo, coordinating with Israel, has opened it only sparingly since Hamas Islamists, who are allied to Egypt's opposition, seized control of Gaza three years ago.

A permanent opening of the crossing, which lies above a stretch of desert frontier riddled by hundreds of smuggling tunnels, would be a major boost for Hamas and a blow to efforts by Israel and its Western allies to cripple the Islamists.

The Interior Ministry run by Hamas since it seized control of the Gaza Strip from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007 said in a statement: "Rafah crossing is open every day from 9 a.m. (0600 GMT) to 7 p.m." Since Hamas took over, Egypt has opened the crossing only sporadically and with restrictions.

An Egyptian security source told Reuters: "Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip on Tuesday to allow humanitarian and medical aid to enter the Strip.

"The border will remain open for an unlimited time," the source said, letting Palestinians enter and leave Egypt.

Aid convoys, to which Egypt has in the past allowed only limited access, would be allowed to use the crossing, subject to following Cairo's limitation that only food and medical supplies be transported.

"Hard materials" -- apparently including concrete and steel which Gazans want to repair damage from last year's Israeli offensive -- would have to go via Israel, the Egyptian source said. Israel has made clear since it halted a Turkish-backed aid convoy at sea on Monday that it will not ease its embargo.

Now things get interesting.  Turkey could choose to route aid through Egypt now.  Will they continue to try to send in an aid flotilla and escort it with warships?  How will Israel respond to Egypt?  How much and what kind of aid will Egypt allow through?  How long will they keep their border crossing open?

We'll see.

And So It Begins

Expect an overwhelming majority of Congress to respond to the Israel/Turkey situation like Dem Rep. Anthony Weiner.

"This was about instigating an altercation and they succeeded," Weiner, one of Israel's leading allies in Congress, told me. He insisted that the activists piloting the flotilla were offered other alternatives by Israel, such as docking the ship and transporting the supplies to Gaza by land.

"If you want to instigate a conflict with the Israeli navy it isn't hard to do," Weiner continued. "They were offered alternatives. Instead they chose to sail into the teeth of an internationally recognized blockade."

Pushed on whether the Israeli response, which killed at least nine, was disproportionate, Weiner wouldn't acknowledge it. "It's always easy to criticize the response to a hostile act, but for a week at least the Israelis were trying to prevent this altercation," Weiner said, adding that the Israelis had been "set upon."

"It's very easy now to say they should have come in using water cannons and harsh language," Weiner said, speaking of the Israeli commandos.


When I asked Weiner whether it was legit for the activists to use the flotilla to draw global attention to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, he suggested that wasn't the real motive. "If they were truly interested in providing aid, there were ways," Weiner said. "This was about instigating an altercation and they succeeded."

Pressed on whether it was defensible for Israel to authorize the boarding of the flotilla, given that such a move was certain to provoke an international outcry, Weiner again turned the blame back on Turkey and the activists.

"Anything that israel does would create an international outcry," Weiner said. "This entire effort was intended to create an international outrcry."

It's all Turkey's fault.  They made Israel kill people, you see.  As I said yesterday, Congress has made Obama's decision for him.  He has no choice but to fully back Israel and throw Turkey under the bus, and unless he can stop the next aid flotilla, the Middle East may come apart at the seams.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Brad DeLong asks:

Have decades of widening wealth inequality created a chattering class of reporters, pundits and lobbyists who’ve lost their connection to mainstream America? Has the collapse of the union movement removed not only labor’s political muscle but its beating heart from the consciousness of the powerful? Has this recession, which has reduced hiring more than it has increased layoffs, left the kind of people who converse with the powerful in Washington secure in their jobs and thus communicating calm while the unemployed are engulfed in panic? Are we passively watching an unrepresented underclass of the long-term unemployed created before our eyes?

Short answer, yes.

Long answer, do you think the GOP is going to actually do anything to make the economy better when they can let it burn, make sure nothing happens, blame Obama when we plunge into the second half of this recession, and then benefit at the polls?

If you were the Republican Party, why would you lift a finger to do anything to improve the economy right now when by doing nothing, you stand to gain House and Senate seats?

Why should the GOP agree to do anything to reduce unemployment right now?

Orange Julius Versus Orange Goop

If you're wondering why the GOP has been mostly silent on the BP oil spill, it's because they're too busy being the Party of No and proud of it.

For Boehner, being called the “Party of No” isn’t a regrettable invective. It is a strategy aimed at highlighting the contrast between those running things and those who want to run things. That deafening silence you hear from Republicans about the gulf oil spill? All the better for Americans to hear the glubglubglub of Democrats and the administration going down the drain.

And if you have any illusions about what a GOP congress would mean, it's shutdown time:

Boehner is reluctant to speculate about November, when 100 seats will be in play. If things should go bump on election night -- and should Boehner replace Pelosi as speaker -- expect to see lots of blood on the floor. First to get the hatchet would be health-care reform, which Republicans would seek to replace with "common sense" measures to reduce insurance costs and secure jobs. Other priorities would include line-by-line budget cuts, entitlement reform and restoration of the integrity of the House, which Boehner says has been damaged by previous speakers' emphasis on partisan gains. "That's why the Congress of the United States is broken and I aim to fix it." 

Defunding programs right in the middle of what will most likely be a double-dip recession.  That'll help!  Glad to see the Republicans have so many solutions to the issues that we face:  the oil in the Gulf, the Koreas on verge of war, Turkey and Israel going at it, a stumbling economy, and the GOP House leader's plan is to say "Well, we're not in charge!  Vote for us!"

How gratifying.

More Primary Impetus

Primary voters will take to the polls Tuesday in Alabama, Mississippi and New Mexico.  TPM has the races to watch, but here are my three:

AL-02: Three Republicans are competing to take on freshman Rep. Bobby Bright, a conservative Blue Dog Democrat who has voted against many parts of the national Democratic agenda. The three main candidates are Montgomery City Councilwoman Martha Roby -- an NRCC "Young Gun" candidate, representing a top tier of national GOP endorsement -- state Board of Education member Stephanie Bell and businessman and Tea Party activist Rick Barber. The district voted 63%-37% for John McCain in 2008.

This one's important because you have NRCC candidate Martha Roby going up against Tea Party candidate Rick Barber.  The GOP leadership is firmly behind Roby.  But the Tea Party grassroots anger is firmly behind Barber.  Bell is the wild card, so anything could happen here.

MS-01: Three Republicans are competing to go up against Blue Dog Democratic Rep. Travis Childers, who was first elected in a May 2008 special election. The three candidates are the establishment-backed state Sen. Alan Nunnelee, former Europa Mayor and ex-Bush Administration Justice Department official Henry Ross, and Fox News commentator Angela McGlowan. The district voted 62%-37% for John McCain in 2008. As with Alabama, a candidate will need 50% of the vote to win outright.

McGlowan has the national FOX recognition and the tea Party cred, Ross has the local boy and Beltway pull, and Nunnelee has the state politics angle covered.  Again, any of the three of them could win.

NM Republican gubernatorial primary: Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson is term-limited, and Lt. Gov. Diane Denish is the presumptive Dem nominee. Five Republicans are competing for the GOP nomination: attorney Pete Domenici, Jr., a son of former Sen. Pete Domenici.; Doña Ana County District Attorney Susana Martinez; businessman and political activist Doug Turner; state Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones; and businessman and former state GOP chair Allen Weh, who played a role in the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias.

The TPM Poll Average gives Martinez 31.4%, Weh 25.4%, Domenici 13.8%, Turner 7.5%, and Arnold-Jones 3.1%.

Martinez is leading right now, but Weh has a lot of clout in the NM GOP.  It's going to be a close race.

The question here is will the GOP establishment-backed candidates win, or will the Tea Party folks upset the apple cart?  Is Dominici's name recognition in New Mexico really hurting him badly in 2010?  Can NRCC "Young Gun" Roby beat back her Tea Party challenger in Alabama?

Tuesday evening should be pretty interesting.

Israel Goes Cold Turkey

So what if Turkey is serious about sending another aid flotilla, this time protected by Turkish warships, to Gaza?  If Israel doesn't intercept it, the Netanyahu government collapses.  What it will be replaced by, I couldn't tell you for sure, but there's a very good chance that the Netanyahu government would be replaced by something far more hard line that may try to force the United States into another war, possibly with Iran.

And so help me, that's not the worst-case scenario.

If Israel does intercept it, NATO collapses.  NATO command will refuse to go to war with Israel at Turkey's request, and the entire structure falls apart, NATO allies will all withdraw their troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the US will now have to go it completely alone, isolated militarily for good.  Nobody will ever trust us again.

As StrangeAppar8tus said yesterday over at Rumproast, this is Obama's Kobayashi Maru moment.  Whether or not he can pull a Captain Kirk and cheat the system, I don't know.  Maybe he can convince Turkey not to send the escort at all.  Maybe he can transfer the aid to the UN.  Maybe he can find another way around this nightmare.

Because if he doesn't, we're in a lot of trouble.

StupidiNews!

• The UN Security Council condemned Israel's fatal raid yesterday on a Turkish aid shipment to Gaza, calling for a "transparent" investigation.
• BP CEO Tony Hayward is under fire for denying the existence of huge underwater oil plumes.
• Congress is expected to make its final push towards passing financial reform legislation this month.
• World stock markets are down today as China manufacturing news and BP's failed "top kill" procedure puts stocks in the red.
• Ars Technica examines the pros and cons of having the FCC monitor online "hate speech".

Last Call

And the oil geyser news just keeps getting worse.

The disaster, in its 42nd day Monday, is already the largest oil spill in U.S. history and officials are treating it it as the country's biggest environmental catastrophe.

Although Louisiana's wetlands and fishing grounds have been the worst hit so far by the spill, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said moderate southerly and southwesterly winds this week may start moving oil closer to the Mississippi Delta.

"Model results indicate that oil may move north to threaten the barrier islands off Mississippi and Alabama later in the forecast period," NOAA said in its 72-hour prediction on the expected trajectory of the huge oil slick.

Mississippi and Alabama have escaped lightly so far, with only scattered tar balls and "oil debris" reaching its coasts.

But the NOAA forecast was a sober reminder that oil from the unchecked spill, broken up and carried by winds and ocean currents, could threaten a vast area of the U.S. Gulf Coast, including tourism mecca Florida, as well as Cuba and Mexico.

Seven weeks in, no end in sight.  Could be another 2 months and change before it stops, too.  Should BP's latest plan fail, and the sawed off riser pipe increases the spillage by another 20-25%, then who knows.

That worst-case scenario of hundreds of billions in damage is looking more and more like reality every day.

A Slick Takeover

Former Clinton Treasury man Robert Reich argues it's time for the government to take over BP's operations until the geyser is capped.

It's time for the federal government to put BP under temporary receivership, which gives the government authority to take over BP's operations in the Gulf of Mexico until the gusher is stopped. This is the only way the public will know what's going on, be confident enough resources are being put to stopping the gusher, ensure BP's strategy is correct, know the government has enough clout to force BP to use a different one if necessary, and be sure the president is ultimately in charge.

If the government can take over giant global insurer AIG and the auto giant General Motors and replace their CEOs, in order to keep them financially solvent, it should be able to put BP's north American operations into temporary receivership in order to stop one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

The Obama administration keeps saying BP is in charge because BP has the equipment and expertise necessary to do what's necessary. But under temporary receivership, BP would continue to have the equipment and expertise. The only difference: the firm would unambiguously be working in the public's interest. As it is now, BP continues to be responsible primarily to its shareholders, not to the American public. As a result, the public continues to worry that a private for-profit corporation is responsible for stopping a public tragedy.

He goes on to list five reasons:

1. BP continues to lie.
2. BP has no accountability.
3. The plans from here on out get riskier and riskier.
4. The government has no authority to force BP to use other strategies.
5. The President has no legal authority otherwise.

Probably worth looking into, I would think...

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

In all seriousness, does somebody want to explain to me how Israel's move today wasn't a message to Barack Obama consisting of the words "screw" and "you"?

BooMan games out the world response, especially from Turkey, who is now on the brink of turning this into a much, much bigger problem by withdrawing its ambassador from Israel and vowing to send another aid flotilla.

If Turkey is promising to send new supplies with naval escort, then we're headed for an epic showdown between two of Americas closest allies. I don't think Obama is getting too much rest and relaxation this Memorial Day.

Meanwhile, the Arab League will meet tomorrow and put immense pressure on Egypt to lift their portion of the Gazan blockade. I can't imagine that Egypt will refuse. In fact, I think Israel has jeopardized their peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan.

All this, and for what? To keep construction materials from the Gazan people? Israel is not behaving in anything resembling a rational manner. They just lost the only friends they had not named America. And who can help them now but Big Daddy? The problem is that Big Daddy has more to consider than Israeli's deluded interests. We have to worry about our own image and international relationships. 

Israel is now forcing us to choose between them and the Islamic world.  Obama's decision will shape our country for a generation.

No pressure, Mr. President.

Close All Shops In The Mall, Cancel The Three Ring Circus

The Economist has a good point: if you think President Obama hasn't done enough in the Gulf, shouldn't you be advancing the idea that we should shut down all offshore oil rigs?

Who's raising concrete critiques of administration policy? Chiefly Mr Obama. Last Thursday he laid out a series of mistakes he felt he had made. Chief among them was taking oil companies at their word when they claimed to have the capability to cope with worst-case deep-sea drilling catastrophes. Now, if we feel that the president has failed to act aggressively enough on this issue, both before and since the accident, then what course of action should we now be calling on him to take? One logical step might be for the government to immediately shut down every offshore drilling rig in proximity to America's coasts, pending the development of redundant, fail-safe capacity for capping and remediating catastrophic blowouts. Is this a good idea? I don't know. But if you wanted to argue concretely that the administration had not been acting aggressively enough in this crisis, then this is the sort of more-aggressive action you might be calling for.

And of course if Obama did this, he'd be slaughtered in the media and by the Republicans.  The Village cries out for "Daddy" to save us, but if Obama did that, he would be immediately portrayed as a fascist dictator of the highest order.

What we're seeing here is a perfect circus of media nothingball: people aggressively criticising the administration for not acting aggressively enough while aggressively ignoring the fact that they oppose anything aggressive the administration does.

It's almost like the entire Village is running on an irrational knee-jerk reaction to attack anything that Barack Obama does.

I wonder if there's a name for that?

The Kroog Versus Neo-Hooverism

I like Paul Krugman, he's a smart guy, a brilliant economist, and he knows what he's talking about on the fiscal side of things.  But on the politics side, he comes across as a bit naive at times, like he does today as he talks about the growing crusade to cut the deficit in the middle of the worst unemployment in a generation.

A similar argument is used to justify fiscal austerity. Both textbook economics and experience say that slashing spending when you’re still suffering from high unemployment is a really bad idea — not only does it deepen the slump, but it does little to improve the budget outlook, because much of what governments save by spending less they lose as a weaker economy depresses tax receipts. And the O.E.C.D. predicts that high unemployment will persist for years. Nonetheless, the organization demands both that governments cancel any further plans for economic stimulus and that they begin “fiscal consolidation” next year.

Why do this? Again, to give markets something they shouldn’t want and currently don’t. Right now, investors don’t seem at all worried about the solvency of the U.S. government; the interest rates on federal bonds are near historic lows. And even if markets were worried about U.S. fiscal prospects, spending cuts in the face of a depressed economy would do little to improve those prospects. But cut we must, says the O.E.C.D., because inadequate consolidation efforts “would risk adverse reactions in financial markets.”

The best summary I’ve seen of all this comes from Martin Wolf of The Financial Times, who describes the new conventional wisdom as being that “giving the markets what we think they may want in future — even though they show little sign of insisting on it now — should be the ruling idea in policy.”

Put that way, it sounds crazy. And it is. Yet it’s a view that’s spreading. And it’s already having ugly consequences. Last week conservative members of the House, invoking the new deficit fears, scaled back a bill extending aid to the long-term unemployed — and the Senate left town without acting on even the inadequate measures that remained. As a result, many American families are about to lose unemployment benefits, health insurance, or both — and as these families are forced to slash spending, they will endanger the jobs of many more. 

Now Krugman's correct on all this...except for the why.  He attributes it to craziness when he should be attributing it to old fashioned greed.

Look folks, the powers that be have decided that the continuation of the covenant between government and worker is unsustainable.  That's not true of course, but to keep this up, the wealthiest would actually have to, you know, pay more taxes.  That will not be allowed to happen.

So, the notion that we have to cut spending, that government is evil and inefficient, and that those who are out of work are simply lazy and undeserving parasites, well that's all over the newspapers and blogs these days.  The GOP is more than happy with it, and the Democrats are increasingly falling for it.  After all, poor people don't get into Congress, ya dig?  They don't matter.

Let them suffer.  The wealthier will grow more wealthy, and that's the way the world is supposed to work, right?

StupidiNews Focus

The Gaza flotilla story is a grim one.

The Israelis are basically saying that this was suicide by soldier, and that the aid workers killed were shot in self-defense as Israel was maintaining its naval blockade in its own waters.  The entire mission was a trap, the Israelis say, and that they had no choice but to open fire.  Two commandos were wounded in the exchange.

The Palestinians on the other hand say the flotilla was boarded in open, international waters, and that means the Israelis were committing international piracy, and that the aid workers grabbed whatever was handy to try to defend themselves from the Israeli commandos.  They lost badly and were slaughtered as a result.

Neither side is fully telling the truth, I suspect.  But the ship was either in international waters or it wasn't.  If it was in international waters, then Israel has a lot to answer for.  Turkey has already recalled its ambassador to Israel, the EU is furious, and even the White House is demanding a full investigation.

If the ship was in Israeli waters however, that's blockade running.  The Israelis used excessive force to stop the flotilla, but a naval blockade on your own nation's waters is perfectly legal.

The key is where the flotilla was at the time of the attack.  Somehow, I doubt we will never know the truth there.

And the clock ticks closer to a Israel/Iran conflict.

StupidiNews, Memorial Day Edition

• An Israeli raid on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza Palestinians has left ten people dead, drawing international condemnation.
• This Memorial Day, the cost to America of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pass the one trillion dollar mark.
• The remote Kiska Island off Alaska's coast continues to hold one of the most intact WWII-era battlefields remaining.
• German President Horst Koehler has resigned after criticizing Germany's military efforts in Afghanistan.
• The battle over illegal downloading and sharing of the war film The Hurt Locker is just beginning.

Last Call

More than 50,000 protested against Arizona's Papers Please law this weekend.  But nobody cared.

Critics and supporters of Arizona's crackdown on illegal immigrants held separate rallies in the state on Saturday, highlighting the deep rift over immigration ahead of congressional elections this November.


Thousands of civil rights and labor activists from across the United States -- carrying banners that read: "Obama Keep Your Promise" -- rallied in Phoenix to protest the law, which requires state and local police to investigate the immigration status of people they suspect are in the country illegally.

No Sarah Palin.  No Rand Paul.  No Michele Bachmann or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.  So it wasn't news.  But if you're a Latino in this country or know anyone who is, then it should damn well matter to you.