One night in the 1960s, drunken teenagers in Palmer, Massachusetts decided to spook kids at a Jewish, Hebrew-speaking summer camp. They hurled bottles and catcalls, terrifying 12-year olds in their beds. Two Israeli camp counselors raced into the woods like raging bulls, intending to give the townies more than an escort to the local cops. They didn't catch them, but they set up martial patrols, scaring the campers as much as the rowdies, who never returned.

I am not telling this story to be comical or exculpatory at a time when the UN and the Red Cross have reinforced Darryl Li's claim, presented here on Jan. 4, that Israel has turned Gaza from a Bantustan into an internment camp and worse. I am telling it to offer a glimpse into a part of the Israeli psyche, a mindset that antedates the rockets of today and of 2006, the suicide bombings of 2002 and even the war around Israel's founding in 1948.

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(Hey, it's my day off.) You might not have known, the worldwide financial crisis was caused by black folks trying to buy homes, abetted by those dangerous ACORNs*:

"Republicans have also attempted to link the organization to the current financial crisis. On Friday the McCain campaign posted a Web video that accused ACORN of "bullying banks" and "forc[ing them] to issue risky home loans. The same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we're in today."

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When I heard about the flap regarding Governor Palin's inability to cite a Supreme Court case, I paused to reflect on how many case names I could come up with. After a period of some duration, which on television would have looked like an eternity, I came up with Brown v. Board of Education. So I don't put much in that flap. Its currency is yet another flag to the inanity of our campaign discourse, liberal edition.

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We are tremendously heartened by the choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for Vice President, since she will lead the Republican Party's march to Socialism. Her state government ranks Number 1 in spending per capita. The State has taken into its hands a good bit of the means of production, owning $28 billion in assets, as well as $36 billion in a "Permanent Fund." They return this hoard to the People, in the form of annual checks. In 2007 it was $1,654 for every man, woman and child, of all races, colors, creeds, sexual orientations, disability, genders, and views on evolution. Free money! You don't have to work for it!! What could be better? And where does all this dough come from, you might ask? The answer is, the state government taxes the bejesus out of its oil production. Obama's pissant windfall profits tax is a pimple on the arse of the Alaskan proletarian's ability to milk the profits of his petroleum reserves. His birthright, or if you move there, his squatter's right.

I have seen the future and it works.

Will former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee announce that he's running for President when he appears on Meet the Press this Sunday? According to the Arkansas Times, three sources confirm that he will do just that. The paper adds that Huckabee has appearances scheduled in Iowa next week. Though the Huckabee camp has yet to confirm the paper's report, it did send out a release today saying that Huckabee would be on Tim Russert's show on Sunday morning, where he would be discussing "his future plans."

According to today's Pennsylvania Morning-Call, out-of-state money is gushing into the coffers of incumbent GOP Senator Rick Santorum and challenger Bob Casey race at a startling rate: "Nearly half of the $10.3 million Santorum has received in itemized individual donations during that time came from outside Pennsylvania...Casey's not far behind, drawing more than a third — 38 percent — of his $7.2 million in itemized contributions from the rest of the United States."

Michael Steel, who slammed George Bush anonymously to reporters and was outed for it yesterday, is now looking to repair relations with Bush by referring to the President as his "homeboy." From the Associated Press:

Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele on Wednesday called President Bush his "homeboy," reversed course on having the president campaign for him and said he was joking when he described his Republican affiliation as a scarlet letter.

The Maryland lieutenant governor, under fire for his comments, told WBAL radio that his remarks were supposed to be off the record with a handful of reporters...

"I've been quoted as calling the president my homeboy, you know. And that's how I feel. ... It's a term of affection and respect for his leadership of our country in a difficult time," Steele, who is black, said in the radio interview.

That should patch things up.

ABC News is reporting that the mystery GOP candidate who anynomously slammed Bush and the GOP in today's Washington Post is...

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele.

This is fun. It appears that Dick Cheney has been looking to hire a taxpayer-funded press credit. Over at The Daily Politics, Ben Smith has obtained a privately-circulated email looking for someone to fill the job of Cheney's "press assistant." Here's how part of the email describes the gig:

The Press Assistant is responsible for monitoring media for various national security and domestic issues, informing the Press Secretary and Deputy Press Secretary of issues of note and factual inaccuracies in the media.

Full email text after the jump.

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After a long hiatus, I have returned to TPM Cafe. A combination of a hectic professional and personal life has kept me out of the blogworld for a full month.

Not only have I not posted, but I have not read a blog in that entire time. I must admit that my psychic health has improved tremendously. I can concentrate better at work. I don't preface conversations with, "Well, if you read Josh Marshall today..." or "As I wrote last night at 2 AM..." And most of all, I feel a bit rejuvenated (although getting engaged can do that to a guy!).

So, I return to TPMCafe, but this will be the last post at Early Returns. Trying to run a business, launch a new "ideas" project to be revealed later, and do my own writing is a bit too much for this blogger to handle. Perhaps it's a generational thing -- after all, I am posting this via dial-up!

So, as the new year starts for some, I will be joining the fray of the main Coffee House. For a natural critic like myself, it's a good fit. And I am sure that my Wilsonian/Zionist/reform/market-friendly/good government/New Dem perspective will spur some lively conversation.

Thanks again to Josh for giving me this platform. Thanks to those who posted comments and to the thousands more who read me anonymously. And see you all at the main table.  

There are few people who know New York City politics better than Fred Siegel (who one TPM reader once called a "Giulianist" to my and Fred's amusement). And there are few times better to care about New York City politics than now -- five days before the New York City mayoral primary. Fred's guest-blogging over at the New Republic. Check it out.

From the Wall Street Journal:

In Meraux, the smell of petroleum hung thick in the air. Across the highway from a Murphy Oil Corp. U.S.A. refinery, two men in yellow hazmat suits drained the contents of tanker into a canal, using a thick black hose. The canal smelled like gasoline. Asked what they were doing the men declined to comment. "I got a family, I'm not talking," one man said.

Will any of the thousands of law enforcement personnel get around to investigating this? One has to wonder what environmental degradation will occur in New Orleans not only because of the flood, but also from a sense that no one's looking. Then again, if Bush's press ban stays in effect, no one will get reports like these -- and anything goes.

How much will it cost to clean up and rebuild the Gulf Coast? Harry Reid says $150 billion. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg says it could go as high as $200 billion. That's more than three times what has been spent by all levels of government on post-9/11 aid in current dollars.

At some point, someone's going to have to figure out how to pay for this clean-up; after all, there's only so much we can ring up on the national MasterCard, isn't there?

A good place to start is the $286.4 billion highway bill passed about a month ago. As John McCain pointed out in opposing the bill, it contained a record number of pork-barrel projects -- 6,376 or about five times the amount in 1998 -- totalling $24 billion. It's not nearly enough to cover the Katrina's total tab, but it's the most obvious place to look when it comes to cuts.

Now, asking Senators and Members of Congress to cut out the goodies they just got is about as easy as ripping a steak out of the jaws of a lion -- unless, of course, there's leadership. All it takes is someone to tell the American people that their fellow Americans need their help -- that the new biking trails, $223 million bridges to nowhere, horse-riding centers, and "Motorcycle Crash Causation Study Grants" will have to wait. Fortunately, we all know that almost all Americans would gladly go along, and unfortunately, that neither the President nor the congressional leadership has the courage to ask for this sacrifice.

No one can doubt the long hours the New Orleans Police Departement has put in under impossible conditions. They have seen devastation and been put under stresses that most cops don't experience in an entire career.

They deserve a break -- a day or two off to recharge and regroup. But free trips to Vegas?

According to the New York Times, Mayor Nagin is planning to send 1,500 cops, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel on five-day vacations to Atlanta and Las Vegas. The tab will be picked up by the City of New Orleans.

Officials explain that Vegas was chosen as a site because of the available hotel rooms. That may be true (yet, there are no available rooms in, say, Phoenix, Philly, or Chicago?), but the optics and politics on this are horrendous. Has Nagin ever heard of Nero?

Trying to make sense of the chaos from New Orleans, my finger began pointing first at the Mayor for being no Giuliani, then at the Governor for being less than ringing in her denunciation of looting, and finally at the Bush Administration for both gutting FEMA and denying needed funding for the flood-control system in the Mississippi delta.

Although according to this account, Mayor Nagin has shown a steely calm on the ground and the federal government finally has come around to take control of the disaster, it seems that the logistical chaos in post-flood New Orleans has its roots in an over-optimistic -- and perhaps negligent -- attitude toward the risks involved. The Wall Street Journal's tick-tock of what went wrong (and their subscription firewall) makes it worth quoting in full:

Despite decades of repeated warnings about a breach of levees or failure of drainage systems that protect New Orleans from the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, local and federal officials now concede there weren't sufficient preparations for dealing with a catastrophe of this scale. Guidelines for coordination of emergency operations between state, federal and local agencies were also incomplete.

What kind of warnings were there? I'm sure they were just some stuffy academic articles that no one read. Well, actually:

Local officials and government engineers have long known the risks faced by the city. A publicly funded study begun in 2002 concluded that a slow-moving Category 3 hurricane would flood "the bowl of New Orleans north of the Mississippi River, locally known as the East Bank." Katrina hit New Orleans as a stronger Category 4 storm, and the East Bank is an area of the city that has sustained major damage. That study also identified at least 110,000 people who would need assistance in being evacuated, including the elderly and those with medical problems.

Three years ago, an article in Civil Engineering magazine indicated that the region was ill-prepared and that the original levee system was based on "rudimentary storm modeling that, it is now realized, might underestimate the threat of a potential hurricane."

Then, there was the active hurricane season of last year. That should have jolted the federal government into action, right?

After last summer's deadly hurricane season, Army Corps engineers compiled a list of about $18 billion in projects needed to shore up Louisiana's levees and other flood defenses. But this June, the Army Corps' New Orleans district heard from Washington that under a House proposal it could expect its annual budget to fall by as much as 20 percent in 2006, to $272 million from $343 million. The Senate in July proposed slightly increasing the funding for the New Orleans district, and a compromise measure between the two chambers was supposed to be worked out in September.

The feds held back the money. State, local, and federal officials failed to adequately plan and drill a devastating scenario that had a decent chance of happening. As Todd Gitlin argues, a long hard analysis must be done of the engineering and political failures. And months from now a full accounting must be made -- by Louisianians and by people across the country.

We have reached the first test of Israel's disengagement from Gaza -- and it comes from the Israelis, not the Palestinians. Today, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu -- former Prime Minister and most recently Finance Minister -- announced that he is challenging Ariel Sharon for chairmanship of the Likud (and, by extension, to be the party's candidate for the premiership).

Bibi hopes to tap into the huge disenchantment with disengagement among the 3,000 members of the Likud Central Committee -- who, like primary voters in the US, are more extreme than the rank-and-file -- and defeat Sharon as party leader, inevitably forcing early elections. (For an excellent run-down of the events that could lead to the fall of Sharon, go here).

Recent polling shows that Bibi has more than a good shot at winning the Central Committee vote (he led a poll taken last week, 47 percent to 30.5 percent), but it may be a Pyhrric victory. Sharon is significantly more popular among the general electorate, and most likely could beat Bibi (and a weak Labor candidate) in a general election match-up. All he needs is a party to do so. This, in turn, has raised the possibility of Sharon forming a centrist party with the pro-disengagement Likudniks, hawkish Laborites, and the secular Shinui party (which is now the third-largest party in the Israeli parliament).

While recent experiments with centrist parties led by venerable Israeli leaders have not fared well (the Center Party won 5 percent of the vote in 1999 and quickly dissolved into the political landscape), none of them have been led by a sitting, popular prime minister. And none have appeared at a time as tense as this one.

A few weeks ago, Michael Lind floated that idea that the US was undergoing an electoral realignment. Josh, myself, and others chimed in that this was the furthest thing from the case, and in fact, there was a good amount of stasis in US political system. To see what the conditions for realignment are: one can look to Israel. The Gaza disengagement has crystallized cleavages within Israeli society -- between religious and secular, or as Hirsch Goodman of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies put it on NPR this morning, between consolidationists and expansionists. The current political system does not accurately reflect these divides; there's a precipitating critical event (Gaza disengagement); and the personalities needed to lead people out of there long-standing partisan attachments are there. Realignment seems possible.

As a political scientist, the prospect of such a transformation in Israeli politics is exciting (political scientists' search for realignments is only rivaled in intensity by astronomers' search for extra-terrestial life). But the significance goes way beyond the academic.

The outcome of this next election in Israel will have a huge impact on the shape of the Middle East. Relying so much on the right wing of Likud, a Netanyahu victory would embolden the expansionist and religious elements within Israel, and leave the rest of the electorate that yearns for security and hopes -- but not naively -- for peace without a clear leader or even a clear partisan choice. As with disengagement, Sharon is, improbably and once again, the indispensable man.

Having followed the unfolding coverage of Pat Robertson's call for the assassination of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez for the past three days, I am left with one question: why does Robertson care? That is, why is Venezuela becoming an issue for him -- or for the Christian right?

Is it rooted in a nostalgic and vociferous anti-Communism or anti-Castroism? Is it because Venezuela -- which is 96 percent Catholic -- can become, in Robertson's words "a launching pad for...Muslim extremism all over the continent?" It is because the oil wing of the GOP got to Robertson ("this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly")?

Or is it simply because Pat Robertson is totally insane?

Walking to work today, I caught the Washington Post's headline, "Democrats Split Over Position on Iraq War," and for a few seconds thought how strange it was that no one bothered to change the papers in that box for more than two years.

The lazy days of August have the Post reporting on the renewed calls, especially in the blogosphere, for Democrats to call for a specific timeline to bring troops home from Iraq. In this story, Russ Feingold is J. William Fulbright, whose opposition to the Vietnam War brough anti-war sentiments into the mainstream.

The argument within the party has been played out through blog posts and random quotes in newspapers across the country. But while there is contentiousness, there is hardly a debate. There is a vocal group on the left who is angry -- at the Democratic establishment and the foreign-policy establishment. Yet, the establishment is relatively quiet in its response. In many ways, this silence only magnifies the perceived influence and power of the Democratic left (which, while possessing its own unique power, has yet to prove the hold it purports to have on the zeitgeist of the Democratic rank-and-file: beat a more hawkish Democrat in a primary or win a general election, and then you'll have some weight behind your claims.)

That there are disagreements over foreign policy within the Democratic Party is hardly news. As I've written about before, there are deep divisions within the Democratic Party on Iraq, the War on Terror, and international economics. Instead of trying to make nice all the time, we Democrats owe it to ourselves to use this time in the wilderness to have a robust debate about what our vision is of America's role in the world. Some of that is happening over at America Abroad and other sites. Some of it is going on in the think tanks and foreign policy journals. But these ideas need to enter the political arena -- and Democrats need to debate their merits. That is to say that the Democratic presidential hopefuls -- as well as candidates for Congress and Senate -- won't be able to position themselves through this issue. It's too complicated and moving too fast. So do the honest thing: learn the issue, hear the debate, and pick a side. We'll fight it out during the 2008 nominating campaign. If we don't, and try to finesse a position in order to give people what we think they want -- we'll end up looking weak on the most important issue of our time, and we'll lose once again.

Will Hillary Clinton run in '08 or not? That's the biggest question looming in the minds of the political junkie set.

But there's a bigger question to consider as we look to the '08 nominating process: will it or won't it? That is, will the Commission reviewing the Democrats' nominating calendar tinker at all with the order or pace of the primaries -- or will it pass on the opportunity?

I hope that it does make some small, but significant changes -- and in this on-line piece for the New Republic, I outline a plan that will make the process of choosing the top Democrat more democratic.

Predictably, Fox News is all over the use of United Nations Development Program funds for anti-Israel propaganda.

Evidently, the UNDP -- in addition to paying for political banners and, as Fox News reveals, giving money to organizations tied to Hamas -- is also selling T-shirts: "On Tuesday, as Israeli security forces clashed with angry Jewish settlers protesting their eviction from the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia wore a T-shirt saying, 'Today Gaza. Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem.'"

No word yet when and if UNDP will be printing bumper stickers for Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming run for Likud party leader.

In newspapers across the country today, the Bush Administration is being lauded for a "federal budget deficit picture [that has] turned brighter" as new numbers from the Congressional Budget Office show that the budget deficit for this year would be $331 billion this year, lower than the $412 billion of last year.

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Is the UN anti-Israel?

It's been 30 years since the United Nations passed its now infamous resolution equating Zionism with racism -- and 14 years since it was repealed.

But, according to the New York Times, the UN Development Program has its own agenda:

Around the corner was a banner from the Palestinian Authority, which is dominated by a more secular faction, Fatah. "Gaza today," it read, "the West Bank and Jerusalem Tomorrow." A tag line said the banner was paid for by the United Nations Development Program.

For liberal internationalists the choice is simple: let anti-UN conservatives use this to demonize the UN and undermine its work -- or take up the critique yourself and lead the way to reform.  

PS: Thanks to TPMCafe reader, MJG.

Let me join Josh in taking exception to Michael Lind's claim that 2004 was a "realigning election."

As I was told time and again by my first advisor in grad school, "You have to first define your terms." And by the definition of "realigning election" that the political scientists who study and obsess over these things use, 2004 was not by any stretch of the imagination a realigning election. The basic definition of a "realignment" is when there is a significant alteration of the basic partisan attachments of the electorate. And in 2004 there was absolutely none of that. As Harvard's Barry Burden summed up the 2004 elections: "[T]he overwhelming pattern is one of stasis."

To be fair, I remember sitting in downtown Manhattan hours after the Twin Towers fell, thinking - bizarrely, I know -- that I may have just lived through a realigning event. That is, a crisis that precipitates a realignment (i.e. the Great Depression led to the realignment of 1932). Yet, so far, there is no sign at all of a realignment.

I can be as pessimistic about the future of the Democratic Party as the next guy, and I'm eager to hear what Lind has to say about the death -- and rebirth -- of the Democrats. But don't succumb to the hyperbole -- and bad political science.