I've been thinking about why the White House Party Crashers have attracted so much media attention and I've concluded it's because they represent everything that is screwed up about America at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century.

To begin with, they have no shame. They lie, they cheat the little people in their lives, they run fake charities, they welsh on their obligations, and they value and pursue everything that is fake and shallow--and then they have the chutzpah to ask a network to pay them to tell their lies on TV.

In an earlier age in America, we would put them in the stocks in the middle of the public square for a public shaming. But in an era of "John & Kate Plus Eight", the concept of shame has been banished from the public square. Bruce Springsteen called reality TV the "theater of humiliation", but what's amazing is how many people are so willing to trade humiliation for that greater currency of this decade--Celebrity. The New York Times' Bill Carter suggests there may be 10,000 of these talentless but needy reality show "performers" floating around our current cultural wasteland.

It's easy to blame the TV network programmers for the plague of forgettable strivers like the Salahi's. But every channel surfer who pauses in slack-jawed amazement for more than five minutes on Flavor of Love, or Real Housewives of Orange County is encouraging this garbage.

The Salahi's are living proof you get the culture you deserve.

Ben Bernanke's column in the Washington Post has to be absolutely infuriating to anyone old enough to remember the events of 2008. In this column, Bernanke lectures the public about the need for the Federal Reserve Board to preserve its independence from Congress, explaining that:

"The government's actions to avoid financial collapse last fall -- as distasteful and unfair as some undoubtedly were -- were unfortunately necessary to prevent a global economic catastrophe that could have rivaled the Great Depression in length and severity, with profound consequences for our economy and society. (I know something about this, having spent my career prior to public service studying these issues.) My colleagues at the Federal Reserve and I were determined not to allow that to happen."

It's nice to talk about the Fed's response to this crisis, but Mr. Bernanke's studies apparently did not tell him the obvious, that allowing an $8 trillion housing bubble to grow unchecked would lead to an economic disaster like what we are now experiencing. He and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve Board either could not see, or did not care about, this huge bubble. As a result, Ben Bernanke has been running around for much of the last year and a half telling us about his knowledge of the Great Depression.

It is worth quickly explaining why a collapsed housing bubble leads to a recession, since the policy people responsible for this disaster have done so much to try to obscure the obvious.

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Barack Obama can do virtually nothing to halt the mounting fear among Israelis that he is hostile to them: no visits, no speeches, no jets. If you need proof, and don't know Hebrew, just look at the body language of Ben Caspit, the populist-journalist host of the very widely watched "Journal" program on Channel One, Friday nights.

Caspit fancies himself the voice of the common people, or at least its conscience, sort of like Chris Matthews. He may, God help us, be right, at least for the moment. This past Friday, he was (let's call it) interviewing two relatively moderate members of Knesset, one from Likud, and one from Kadima, both of whom support the settlement freeze, both of whom insist that this is not just a sham, for all of its qualifications. Kadima's Gideon Ezra, the former deputy director of the Shavak (the state security services), even insisted the freeze was very late in coming, for all the obvious strategic reasons; he implied that Kadima might well be prepared to join the coalition if Netanyahu required their support to pursue a deal with the Palestinians.

Both of these responses might have raised the antennae of an interviewer. Caspit was having none of it. Instead, he wanted to talk about the public statement Friday by Likud's Limor Livnat, a formidable minister in Netanyahu's coaliton, that the freeze only proves Obama is anti-Israel, that "we have fallen into the hands of a terrible administration."

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Right after Thanksgiving dinner, my son, Nick, asked if I had seen Lin-Manuel Miranda (the Latino creator, writer, and star of "In The Heights") perform his rap about Alexander Hamilton at the White House in front of the first family.

I hadn't seen it. And it's amazing.

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It is horrific to contemplate what Gilad Shalit and his family have been subjected to for over three years. Not only has he been imprisoned but the ups and downs of the prisoner exchange negotiations must be torture for his family (and for Gilad himself if he knows what has been going on).

But most maddening is, in my opinion, the racial implications of the Shalit saga. It does not matter that Israelis and Palestinians are racially indistinguishable. The fact is that the Israelis are "white" in terms of their status in Israel-Palestine and the Palestinians are not.

The Shalit story is reminiscent of the way Americans become obsessed with crimes committed against whites while generally indifferent to identical crimes committed against people of color. The media will devote endless hours and days of coverage to the tragedy of a white woman gone missing while ignoring similar disappearances of black women. The same applies to stories of child kidnappings and other crimes of violence.

We tend only to care if the victim is white.

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It seems that the folks in power have a hard time doing anything that doesn't end up making the Wall Street boys even richer. We are constantly told that they simply could not think of any way to rescue the economy that didn't involve making Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and the rest of the crew incredibly rich. Of course the rest of the economy didn't especially get rescued (10.2 percent unemployment and 2 million foreclosures a year is pretty damn bad), but Wall Street is doing just great.

In this context, it is worth thinking about efforts to push mortgage modifications that ostensibly have the purpose of keeping homeowners in their homes. The government is using up to $70 billion of TARP money for this purpose. Effectively, the government is handing money to banks to get them to reduce monthly mortgage payments and/or principle.

This a lot of money to be handing banks. This is an actual gift from the government to the banks.

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Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement "falls short" (in George Mitchell's words) on so many dimensions, reasonable people will conclude that it is simply a piece of theater, meant to appease the Obama administration, and public opinion around the world, particularly in the wake of the Goldstone report:

The freeze allows for the completion of 2,500 partially-built housing units and the construction of 492 new apartments. It does not apply to buildings like schools and synagogues. It does not take into account that the actual drivers of new settlement are not in the government, but fanatic settlement organizations that have been acting more or less independent of government decisions for years, and which the state does not have the manpower (or the army, the stomach) to confront with military force. The freeze does not apply to East Jerusalem, a greatly expanded zone (70 square kilometers) in the heart of the West Bank--historically, Palestine's biggest city, commercial hub, and the site of the mosques. Oh, and it last only ten months.

In effect, Netanyahu has followed the route of Sharon and Olmert before him on "Judea and Samaria," running like Menachem Begin and governing like Golda Meir: at first refusing to budge, then offering to take a five foot leap over the eight foot pit. No wonder the PA's Saeb Erakat announced almost immediately that the Israeli government's step was "unsatisfactory." No wonder, almost immediately, Avigdor Lieberman told Israel's Reshet Bet early this morning, "the response of the Palestinians is the last consideration the Israeli government's order of priorities." The point, he said, was mainly to attend to relations with Israel's friends, the (so he says) "17 countries" around the world that supported Israel about the Goldstone report but have been drifting into hostility. (When you have Lieberman in the government, leaks are superfluous.)

AND YET LIEBERMAN'S admission is precisely what should get our attention.

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Prime Minister Netanyahu today announced a partial 10-month settlement freeze. And, understanding that Netanyahu's freeze is meaningless, the far right is backing him 100%.

According to the New York Times, "A statement from Mr. Netanyahu's office said the moratorium would be in Judea and Samaria, the biblical names of the West Bank, meaning it would not include Jerusalem, and would not apply to new residential building, so existing construction would continue and public structures like schools and community centers would be unaffected." (And, I'd guess, also parks, hospitals, day care centers, bakery cooperatives, Weight Watchers centers, synagogues, more synagogues, Arthur Murray's dance studios, aviaries, fine restaurants, zoos, etc).

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Jim Carroll's column (or poem, or blessing) for Thanksgiving. It is too lovely to link to. Here are his words in full:

THANKSGIVING IS THE preferred American holiday not just because it is free of commercial pressures, denominational exclusiveness, and the insatiable longing of children. A month shy of the winter solstice, it is also less prone to inflict seasonal affective disorder, but that does not explain its appeal either. Nor does its distance from the frenzy of New Year's. Thanksgiving's place at the center of national good feeling might seem to derive from the sweet, if ahistorical, morality tale of amity between Pilgrims and native peoples. As the universal occasion of family reunion, what else is needed to account for its sanctity?

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Both Anne Applebaum and Dan Drezner have pinpointed Barack Obama's overarching foreign policy problem: sitting at the apex of the international pecking order brings a lot of headaches and apparently very little camaraderie. Neither of them quite hits the mark, however, for how the United States should handle this strategic loneliness.

Applebaum thinks Obama will have to swing the pendulum back toward unilateralism, and Drezner says the US should start to take its hands off the wheel and see if the free-riders move up to the front. I'm sympathetic to both of their frustrations and believe the spirit of their approaches can and should be incorporated into the strategy of engagement.

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This is definitely worth reading. But this piece by Steve Clemons of New America Foundation is even better.

I have been in Washington since I volunteered for the McGovern campaign. Gregory Craig -- who was essentially dumped for trying to make the administration live up to its campaign pledges on Guantanamo and other civil liberties issues -- is the rare Washington insider I have never heard anything bad about.

On the contrary, everyone I know who knows him says that he is a dedicated liberal, a policy wonk, and a guy with no hidden agendas. Unlike 90% of the people in this capital (including pretty much the entire Congress with a few sterling exceptions) he puts country over personal aggrandizement.

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Despite President Obama's soft-pedaling the time frame for his goal of a world without nuclear weapons, announced in his April Prague speech, it may be quite possible during his lifetime, though certainly not within his presidency. Whatever the timeline, charting the course all the way to zero is too complex to try at this point. The early moves in this direction, on the other hand, are quite clear. One of the most significant, the Nuclear Posture Review that determines the policy and strategic basis of US nuclear forces, is currently being prepared for the president's signature.

In fact, the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is probably the most important bureaucratic process you've never heard of. (Find more details in Martin Butcher's background paper or Joe Cirincione and Andrew Grotto's report for CAP.) Important because the resulting documents will determine the purpose of America's nuclear arsenal, which in turn will send a clear signal to the rest of the world. And unless the review sharply curtails the function of nuclear weapons purely to deter others from nuclear attack (aka a pledge of no first use), that signal could land with a diplomatic thud and undercut the Obama administration's credibility.

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Anyone who still doubts the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis (that the lobby tries to squelch debate on Israel-Palestine) should check this out.

It is a piece by Rabbi Brian Walt who was scheduled to participate on a panel called "Palestinian Human Rights: Your Involvement" until Goucher's President banned the session from taking place.

According to the college newspaper, Sanford Ungar, President of Goucher, put the kibosh on the session, saying: "We don't want Goucher to end up on a list of schools with a reputation of bringing vehemently pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli speakers to campus. I don't think it would be good for enrollment."

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The Jerusalem chapter of Search for Common Ground, along with the Washington Post's "On Faith" section, asked me to contribute 800 words on how Jewish values animated participants in J Street's October conference in Washington. So--not without hubris--I did:

During the first night of the J Street conference, when delegates were just getting settled, a half dozen speakers -- activists, rabbis and students -- unexpectedly poured their hearts out. The 1,500 people in the hall, the speakers insisted, were not only gathered to represent the majority of American Jews who think U.S. policy should put its weight behind bringing about a two state solution. We were gathered also to redeem "Jewish values." You heard a good deal of the phrase "Tikkun Olam," the repair of the world, that night. And I confess to cringing at times. Was social improvement a peculiarly Jewish desire? Could Tikkun Olam, a kabalistic concept turned into a leftist cliché, cancel out the fact that the Occupation is advanced by zealots of Jewish law, or that rightist, neoconservative ideas are particularly strong (so polls show) among the quarter of American Jews who attend synagogue at least once a month?

And yet something in the claim of these J Street speakers seems vaguely true. After all, 78 percent of American Jews voted for Barack Obama. Why, as the neoconservative Commentary Magazine complained in 1969, do Jews not just vote Republican and advance their class "interests?" Wasn't McCain a more avid "supporter of Israel?" Sure people who have been pushed around as much as Jews might be expected to be for the underdog, including Palestinians under occupation. But suffering, though ingrained in Jewish literature, is not uniquely Jewish either; nor does it necessarily make you peaceful or empathic. Are we to believe then that this desire for social improvement springs from Jewish tradition and if so, can it be redeemed by, of all things, J Street's American liberalism?

Actually, this begs the question, not of who is a Jew, but what is a tradition.

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I'm glad to see that Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has launched a site with a petition calling on Harry Reid to lower the cloture number required to stop a filibuster from 60 to 55. Moderates ought to approve: It's a moderate move.

I don't think Harry Reid can pull this off by himself, but it's good to know that there's some buzz on the progressive side in the Senate to change the Senate rules so that majorities can legislate. That would seem a small accomplishment. It's going to be a major one. It will take years of work.

Let's get to work.

White House, this means you.

P. S. The estimable Ed Kilgore clinches the point about how much is at stake:

Since the Senate already has a built-in red-state bias, a supermajority requirement would basically represent a death sentence for progressive initiatives in the near future.