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Jerusalem Syndrome

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Akiva Eldar hits the nail on the head:

What could they possibly want from us? That was the combined reaction of the president, the mayor, the cabinet ministers and the head of the opposition. After all, they said, Gilo is at the heart of the Israeli consensus. What does that consensus mean? Reminder: In June 1967 Israel annexed to Jerusalem some 70 square kilometers of West Bank territory, including 28 Palestinian municipalities and villages that were never considered part of the city. When Jordan controlled Jerusalem, it was six square kilometers, including the Old City, whose territory is no more than a single square kilometer.

Since 1967, some 30 percent of East Jerusalem land has been appropriated for the construction of new neighborhoods for some 200,000 Israelis. Indeed, there is consensus among Israelis that in a peace agreement that would include exchange of territory, Gilo would remain under Israeli sovereignty. But not in a unilateral step that would not be recognized by any other country. Around the world, there is wall-to-wall agreement that East Jerusalem is at best disputed territory; in the Arab world, the consensus is that it is occupied territory.

Read his whole column about the status of Jerusalem, from today's Haaretz.

Is Everybody Disappointed In Obama?

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I think that President Obama's problems are not reflected in his 49% approval rate in the latest polls. Next week he'll be at 56% or 46%. Whatever. I don't put much stock in them.

But I do put stock in this. I do not know a single person who is not disappointed by Obama's first year in office. And the people I know represent Obama's base. Pretty much all of them supported him in the primaries. They worked like dogs during the general. And they took buses, cars and planes to be at his inauguration.

Today much of their enthusiasm is gone.

And the reason for their disappointment is that they wanted a fighter, someone who would implement campaign promises (at least the ones a President can do unilaterally like gays in the military) and challenge the right's lies. Instead they have a conciliator.

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Intel Inside? Prove It.

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Here is a thought experiment. It is Sunday, and various employees of Intel's R&D and consulting facility in Chantilly, VA, just outside of Washington, are working through the week-end. The facility is suddenly surrounded by several thousand evangelical Christians--mainly educated at Regent University, and led by the aged Pat Robertson--who demand that the company shut down the facility, so as not to violate the holy Sabbath. Windows are shattered by rock throwers. State police move in, but do not disband the mobs.

So Intel's senior management go into a huddle. They authorize the local management team to meet with Robertson's representatives, along with representatives from the Virginia governor's office, now in the hands of rightist Republicans. At first Intel threatens to pull out of Virginia. But finally they approve a compromise agreement. The facility can stay open, the agreement states, but the shifts will be reduced. Also, on Sundays, only non-Christians can work there.

Imagine, in this fantasy, what the Intel board would face at the next shareholders' meeting. Or imagine the employee emails the corporation's global "Director of Diversity," Rosalind Hudnell, would be fielding the next morning.

Well, if haven't already heard, something quite like this just happened in Jerusalem.

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Establishment Reality

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For me the most distressing aspect of American politics over the last 30 years is the realization that the Washington Establishment really does rule the country no matter which party holds the White House or Congressional majorities. Progressives suffered through 12 years of Republican presidents after Reagan's election only to realize that the election of Bill Clinton changed nothing. The military budget didn't shrink, deregulation of business oversight continued apace, duopolies mushroomed, alternative energy strategies sat on the shelf. Now we have to suffer through watching Clinton retreads Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Richard Holbrooke lead Obama down the primrose path to disaster while the financial elites and the defense contractors take home record bonuses.

As some of our correspondents have suggested that the split we may be seeing is not between liberals and conservatives, but between insiders and outsiders--the Establishment vs the People.

So yesterday the outsiders won an important, but little noticed victory (it did not even deserve a headline on the NYTimes.com politics page). Representatives Ron Paul and Alan Grayson managed to pass out of the House Financial Services Committee a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, despite the strenuous objections of Barney Frank, Ben Bernanke, Mel Watt (Bank of America's congressman) and the Washington Establishment. As the Huff Post's Ryan Grim reports, it was all classic establishment playbook, but Grayson managed to rally the Dems behind Paul.

The playbook in Washington often goes like this: When a measure that threatens the establishment builds enough momentum that it must be dealt with, it is labeled as "unserious." The Washington Post editorial board, true to the script, called Paul's measure "an unserious answer to a serious question."

And it particularly rankles the center that a pair of "wingnuts" are behind a successful effort to challenge the prevailing order.

Step Two is for a "serious" compromise to be offered. In this case, it was Watt's amendment. But by the time the vote was called Thursday afternoon, committee members had seen through his measure, recognizing that it was not a compromise effort to bring real transparency to the Fed but an attempt to further shut the the doors.

"The Watt amendment will fully obliterate everything 1207" -- Paul's measure -- "is intended to do," said Paul during Thursday's debate.

For anyone remaining confused, the debate was further clarified by the central bank itself: Federal Reserve Vice Chair Don Cohn and General Counsel Scott Alvarez spent much of the day calling committee members, urging them to oppose the Paul-Grayson amendment in favor of Watt's, a member of Congress who asked for confidentiality told HuffPost.

Paul's opponents also placed a letter from former Fed chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker on the seats of every committee member. Such a move is in violation of House rules and Grayson was able to have the letters removed.


We have to realize there is still a long way before this becomes law. The Senate is the heart of Establishment power. But still, we someday may look back at this day as a day when something slightly unusual happened that began the populist uprising against The Establishment.

The next front in this new coalition against the Insiders is to take on the establishment consensus about Afghanistan as expressed by the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl.

On Afghanistan, in contrast, there is unanimity in the Pentagon and considerable agreement in Congress and among the NATO allies...Almost everyone agrees that accomplishing all those aims will require at least some additional American and NATO troops.

Who appointed bonehead's like Diehl to speak for "almost everyone"? The Wash Po editorial page, which has been remarkably wrong on every foreign policy question in the last 10 years, is just one more Establishment mouthpiece. If more voices on the right like George Will and the Cato Institute start raising their voice against our military adventurism we might actually be able to dig this country out of the massive hole it is in. If you don't believe the world economy is still in a hole Look at The Baltic Dry Index, which tracks world wide bulk dry cargo (Coal, Wheat, Autos, Steel, etc) shipments.

Obama's Mideast Failure: What's Going On? ++ Shocking Gaza Video

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I met the young man last week. We spent some hours together and he's an incredibly brave kid and journalist. This video is the presentation he makes about his home, Gaza, throughout the world.

George Mitchell's job as Middle East Special Envoy has got to be terribly frustrating for a man whose life story has been one success after another.

But the Israel-Palestine conflict tends to be a career destroyer. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was the most popular political figure in the United States when he went to the region to kick-start negotiations during the George W. Bush administration.

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Levin and the War Tax

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Last week I related a fable about War, Taxes and the City State of Florence, the point of which is that when you start taxing the rich for the wars, the wars happen less often. Carl Levin gets behind the idea today.

Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said higher-income Americans should be taxed to pay for additional troops sent to Afghanistan and that NATO should provide half of the new soldiers.

I can't wait for Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to start a 9/12 Protest about the War Tax on their multi-million dollar paychecks.

We Interrupt This Optimism...

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Until recently, I have maintained an attitude of resolute optimism about the myriad challenges of today's world. I told myself that in trying times, politicians around the globe will surely summon their inner statesmen and women and commit themselves to the arduous search for solutions. A more complex world of dispersed power requires new styles of leadership, and the dynamism in the American cultural DNA will help us develop them, in cooperation with others.

Because this is our only hope, I have no alternative but to remain in touch with my inner optimist. So consider this post a pessimistic interlude -- a release valve for darker thoughts, maybe worthwhile if only to remind us what's at stake. In other words, what if we tried to build an international community, and nobody came? I love how people in other countries feel so great about President Obama. It's not clear, though, that they understand how dependent his success is on their help. One of the distinguishing features of Obama's campaign was the prominent use of the first person plural; he ran on a platform on what we needed to do, because he couldn't do them on his own. In the international realm, unless Obama's calls for help are met with greater responsiveness, the Nobel prize really will be a poison chalice. Here's what I mean...

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What is Sarah Palin's Future in American Politics?

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A friend of mine who is the publisher of a very successful news site has a joke: In the future the Internet will consist entirely of Sarah Palin slide shows. Anyone who's ever had occasion to look at traffic statistics for a news website understands what he's saying. Few things draw in readers and garner clicks more reliably than articles (or, even better, pictures) of Sarah Palin. We can't look away. We can't stop talking about her even when we desperately want to. The very fact that we've been blogging about her all week attests to that.

My first experience of this Sarah Palin effect came during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. As a progressive opinion journalist who routinely reports on conservatives, you come to develop a kind of practiced disassociative state when behind enemy lines. You'd never be able to gain any understanding whatsoever if you spent all your time arguing with and hectoring people at evangelical colleges or anti-immigration rallies, so it's both psychologically and professionally necessary to put yourself in a state of mind where you simply listen.

On the night Palin gave her big debut national speech, I sat through the speeches that preceded hers in that same slightly removed state. Then Palin came to the stage. The crowd grew more and more raucous, and the room began to feel like a Roman Colosseum. When Palin went after the "reporters and commentators" in the "Washington elite" for having disparaged and condescended to her, the crowd erupted and began pointing and jeering at Tom Brokaw, sitting in the NBC booth. I watched all this still, I thought, with equanimity.

About a third of the way through the speech, when she delivered her infamous potshot at community organizers--

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities"--

I suddenly felt like the room was 100 degrees. Realizing my face was burning with heat, I went to touch my cheeks, which felt feverish. I couldn't for the life of me understand what was going on, and was about to get up for a breath of fresh air or water until it hit me: I was furious.

My father is a community organizer and spent years toiling in some of the poorest neighborhoods in New York, doing the painstaking, unglamorous work of attempting to build power among people who were routinely getting screwed over. And Sarah Palin had just spit in his face.

Despite my best efforts, she had gotten to me.

What I was experiencing was a strange kind of dislocation: Palin had managed to bypass one part of my brain and reach down deep into another. There are two kinds of politics: There's politics of the prefrontal cerebral cortex, the politics of analysis and facts and discussion, and there's politics of the limbic system, the sub-rational, emotional, ancient part of the brain that controls the bodily responses like the blood flushing my cheeks in that seat in the Xcel Energy Center.

As degraded as our politics may be, it's impossible for me to imagine a politician as purely limbic as Sarah Palin ever managing to ascend to the White House. But democratic politics in a heterogeneous society like ours is inevitably tribal, and millions of Americans view her as their vessel and their chief. The political potency of someone who can provoke that kind of visceral reaction shouldn't be underestimated.

Chris Hayes, along with Jane Hamsher, Amanda Marcotte and Michael Tomasky, speculate more on Palin's political future and a 2012 run for the Presidency in the closing forum of "Going Rouge: An American Nightmare," from OR Books. Comments and discussion are welcome though: After all we've seen this week, what is she up to? Is she running in 2012, or just trying to cash in?

Sullivan and Goldberg Battle It Out On Settlements (Sully Is Right)

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It's getting fun over at the Atlantic.

Andrew Sullivan has been getting better and better on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. After a decade or so of keeping quiet on the 42-year occupation (probably to avoid offending his Likud mentor, Martin Peretz), Sullivan is saying what he really thinks.

And Sullivan's current Atlantic colleague is taking it personally. Jeff Goldberg complains about Andrew breaking with him publicly on Israel. "This is the thanks I get," Goldberg writes, "for defending him [Sullivan] as a Zionist."

Of course, not everyone thinks being labeled a Zionist is a compliment. It seems to me that Sullivan is even-handed, as sympathetic to Palestinian aspirations for a state in West Bank/Gaza/East Jerusalem as he is to a Jewish state within the '67 borders.

He is also one of the most influential journalists in the world.

Goldberg, ever predictable, is discomfited by Sullivan who is anything but. The Gaza war has succeeded in opening another pair of very significant eyes.

Also, Phil Weiss on New York Times columnist Roger Cohen demolishing WSJ's Brett Stephen on Iran at a synagogue debate. Beautiful.

NOTE: MEDIA MATTERS will begin distributing my weekly column on the Mideast after Thanksgiving. If you want to received it by e-mail, write to me at mjrosenberg8@gmail.com. Write subscribe in the subject line.

Harry Reid, and What Happened to the Public Option

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First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada -- which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)

So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a "Medicare-like plan" that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.

So the compromise was to give the public option only to Americans who wouldn't be covered either by their employers or by Medicaid. And give them coverage pegged to Medicare rates. But private insurers and ... you know the rest.

So the compromise that ended up in the House bill is to have a mere public option, open only to the 6 million Americans not otherwise covered. The Congressional Budget Office warns this shrunken public option will have no real bargaining leverage and would attract mainly people who need lots of medical care to begin with. So it will actually cost more than it saves.

But even the House's shrunken and costly little public option is too much for private insurers, Big Pharma, Republicans, and "centrists" in the Senate. So Harry Reid has proposed an even tinier public option, which states can decide not to offer their citizens. According to the CBO, it would attract no more than 4 million Americans.

It's a token public option, an ersatz public option, a fleeting gesture toward the idea of a public option, so small and desiccated as to be barely worth mentioning except for the fact that it still (gasp) contains the word "public."

And yet Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson mumble darkly that they may not even vote to allow debate on the floor of the Senate about the bill if it contains this paltry public option. And Republicans predict a "holy war."

But what more can possibly be compromised? Take away the word "public?" Make it available to only twelve people?

Our private, for-profit health insurance system, designed to fatten the profits of private health insurers and Big Pharma, is about to be turned over to ... our private, for-profit health care system. Except that now private health insurers and Big Pharma will be getting some 30 million additional customers, paid for by the rest of us.

Upbeat policy wonks and political spinners who tend to see only portions of cups that are full will point out some good things: no pre-existing conditions, insurance exchanges, 30 million more Americans covered. But in reality, the cup is 90 percent empty. Most of us will remain stuck with little or no choice -- dependent on private insurers who care only about the bottom line, who deny our claims, who charge us more and more for co-payments and deductibles, who bury us in forms, who don't take our calls.

I'm still not giving up. I want every Senator who's not in the pocket of the private insurers or Big Pharma to introduce and vote for a "Ted Kennedy Medicare for All" amendment to whatever bill Reid takes to the floor. And if this fails, a "Ted Kennedy Real Public Option for All" amendment. Let every Senate Democratic who doesn't have the guts to vote for either of them be known and counted.

Senate Bill: Two-thirds of Newly Insured in Public Plans

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- Hundreds of Billions of Dollars for State Public Plans in Bill

Here's the good news from the Senate bill: of the 31 million uninsured projected to gain coverage under the Senate plan by 2018, the Congressional Budget Office projects that two-thirds of them will gain coverage via some form of public plan. Yes, the limited public option will enroll only a projected 4 million folks, but expansions in Medicaid and SCHIP will enroll 15 million more people than would be expected under current law. 54 million people will be covered by Medicaid, CHIP or the public option by 2018.

Step back from the mechanics and the dollars invested are impressive. $347 billion in additional funds will go directly to Medicaid and CHIP programs.

  • By 2014, most nonelderly people with incomes below 133 percent of the federal poverty line would be made eligible for Medicaid. The government would pay for this whole expansion through 2016 and roughly 90% of the costs thereafter.
  • Federal support for childrens health insurance plans (CHIP), which cover kids much farther above the poverty line, would expand to an average of 93% of costs under the bill.
  • States would pay a total additional $25 billion over the ten-year period.
On top of those directly in public plans, there will be $447 billion in federal funds to subsidize individuals buying into health insurance exchanges and $27 for small employers to subsidize employee health care.  The projection is that the average subsidized enrollee in the exchanges will receive $5500 per enrollee to help pay their health insurance costs.

But here's the better news, under Section 1332 of the bill, states could apply for waivers and convert their state residents' share of health insurance exchange credits and small employer credits into their own more comprehensive state health care program.

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Palin's Blame Game

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Sarah Palin did not write Going Rogue. And neither did her ghost writer, evangelical author Lynn Vincent. They may have put the words on the page, but they did not control the message of the book.

It's obvious to anyone who has been following Palin since before her VP pick that what she has done in this book is to methodically collect every criticism and accusation that has been leveled against her, and then attempted through the book to explain it away either by blaming others or by flat out denial. This book was really written by those that Palin calls the "opposition research." It's a strange peek into Palin's brain that leaves one wondering whether she is a consummate psychological manipulator, or whether she is simply a reactionary who portrays the world she inhabits in her own mind.

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The Great Disconnect Between Stocks and Jobs

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How can the stock market hit new highs at the same time unemployment is hitting new highs? Simple. The market is up because corporate earnings are up. Corporate earnings are up because companies are cutting costs. And the biggest single cost they’re cutting is their payrolls. So they let people go and, presto, their balance sheets look better and their stock prices rise.

In the old-fashioned kind of recession decades ago, big companies laid off people with the expectation of rehiring them when the economy turned up. Then a few recessions back, companies started laying off people for good, never rehiring them even when the economy recovered.

In the Great Recession of 2008-2009, companies are going a step further. They’re using this sharp downturn to cut payrolls even below where they were when times were good. Outsourcing abroad, setting up shop in China and elsewhere, contracting out, replacing people with software and automated machines – they're doing whatever it takes to get payrolls down so earnings bounce up.

Caterpillar earned $404 million in the third quarter, or 64 cents a share. Analysts had expected only 5 cents. Caterpillar’s stock is up 165 percent since March. How did Caterpillar do it? Not by selling more bulldozers. It did it by cutting over 37,000 jobs.

The result, overall, is an asset-based recovery, not a Main Street recovery. Yes, the economy is growing again, but the surge in productivity is a mirage. Worker output per hour is skyrocketing because companies are generating almost as much output with fewer workers and fewer hours.

The Fed, meanwhile, has become an enabler to all this, making it as cheap as possible for companies to axe their employees. Money costs so little these days it’s easy to substitute capital for labor. It’s also easy to buy up foreign assets with cheap American money. And it’s now blissfully easy for Wall Street to borrow money almost free and buy all sorts of interests in foreign assets, especially commodities. That's why we're seeing the prices of foreign commodities and other assets go through the roof.

At the same time, the Treasury continues to be fixated on keeping banks afloat. The Administration's mortgage mitigation efforts are lagging. Small businesses are starved of credit. The White House has announced a "jobs summit," which is better than nothing but not nearly as good as pushiing immediately for a larger stimulus, a new jobs tax credit, and a WPA-style jobs program.

The Fed and the Teasury have, in effect, placed a huge bet on a recovery driven by asset prices. That’s a bad bet. The great disconnect between the stock market and jobs is pushing stock prices way out of line with the real economy. This isn't sustainable.

No economy can recover without consumers. Yet American consumers, who constitute 70 percent of the U.S. economy, are facing mounting job losses as well as pay cuts. They’re in no mood to buy and won’t be for some time.

Where is this heading? No place good. Without a major shift in policy -- both at the Fed and in the White House -- the economics point to a big stock-market correction and a double dip. The politics point to substantial losses for Democrats next year.

The Independence of the Fed at Risk: Watt versus Paul-Grayson (Remember Iceland -- An Independent Central Bank)

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Representative Mel Watt (D-NC) is out to protect the independence of the Fed from the risk of an intrusive audit from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The risk comes in the form of a bill initiated by Ron Paul and Alan Grayson that calls for an audit of the Fed. The bill, which now has more than 300 co-sponsors, would allow Congress to find out who the Fed lent more than $2 trillion to through its special lending facilities, and under what terms. Congress would also be able to find out which countries were allowed to take advantage of dollar swaps at the peak of the financial crisis last fall.

Allowing our elected representatives to know what our central bank (the Fed) is doing with our money might seem reasonable, but not to Mr. Watt. He has proposed an alternative which would keep this information secret. According to Mr. Watt, the prospect of a full GAO audit poses a huge risk to the Fed's independent conduct of monetary policy.

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Is Islam Uniquely Violent?

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The neocons (Bill Kristol. Jeff Goldberg, Frank Gaffney, John Bolton, Martin Peretz, Daniel Pipes, Charles Krauthammer, etc) are arguing among themselves about how much blame Islam deserves for the Fort Hood slaughter.

In response, Americans for Peace Now produced a little primer on Israeli or (using the neocon categories) Jewish religious violence.

And this primer, helpful as it is, barely scratches the surface. The entire settlement enterprise in the occupied territories was ignited by religious fanatics. And the settlement enterprise is violent by its very nature -- displacing Palestinians, starving Gaza, restricting Palestinian movement and, when convenient for religious settlers and/or soldiers, beating and killing those who get in the way. The religious crazies -- supposedly so deeply in love with the Land of Israel -- also rip out olive groves and literally poison the land with chemicals to destroy Palestinian agriculture.

So is Judaism violent? No, but Jewish extremists are, just like their Muslim counterparts. As for Christianity, one need hardly elaborate on the Christianity-blessed extermination of native peoples worldwide or the Holocaust's Christian roots.

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