Fred writes many things people can disagree with, and many commenters have disagreed with him. But he expresses himself with courtesy and an even temper, and anyone who cares to put in even a modicum of intellectual effort can point out for others the precise areas of disagreement with him.

Childish, lazy temper tantrums are not going to produce better policies in Afghanistan. Grow up, man up, do some homework, drop the foot-stamping and the abusive tantrums, and start putting together some points that serious readers have to reckon with.

And drop the ageist crap, sonny.

By the way, Fred did serve in the US Army.

My understanding is that Obama's positive numbers in Israel are well down in the single digits. That plus the phenomena Bernard describes sure sound like mass hostility to me.

You say the silent majority really support the Geneva but are afraid to voice their support in public. To me, it looks like they really support the settlers, but are afraid to voice that support in public. Their actions speak loudly here.

This can’t be right, Bernard. No doubt, Israelis don’t want to occupy West Bank territory forever. But most of them seem to be willing to occupy it for as long as it takes to accomplish their ultimate ends in Palestine. The more important political realty is that there are quite clearly a very large number of Israelis who want to complete the colonization of “Judea and Samaria”, and then annex those territories. They also want to establish full Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. How large a number are we talking about? It must be a majority. Otherwise, the observed mass public reaction of fear and hostility toward the Obama administration that you are describing would be altogether inexplicable.

Obama only took the position that the Israelis must stop building additional settlements. He didn’t demand that even one single settlement be dismantled or abandoned. And yet, the country of Israel went completely bonkers over this development, as you describe, and an overwhelming majority now regard Obama as their enemy because he made so bold as to insist on this opening gesture of good faith. What more proof do people need that the West Bank expansion and colonization project reflects an ambition that is deeply seated psychologically among a substantial majority of Israelis?

For years we were told that the settlements were mainly the product of an extreme right movement, and that most would be abandoned for the sake of progress toward a final settlement. How can any dispassionate observer believe this legend any longer? Not only are Israelis unwilling to abandon existing West Bank colonies, even the request that they make an opening gesture of halting expansion into further colonies has generated mass hostility.

So it appears to me that outside the 20% or so in the left-wing peace movement, there are only two kinds of Israelis left: There are the ones who, like Spider above, frankly admit and embrace the expansionist agenda; and then there are the ones who support that agenda in their hearts, but who dissemble and rationalize and prevaricate and tirelessly create thick, distracting smokescreens to shield those who are actually carrying the agenda out on the ground. It has also become clear that far fewer Israelis than previously advertised are the secular “moderns” whose pose they strike, but that most practice some degree of theocratic, scripture-based politics.

I have been following this issue for years, and where the West Bank colonies are concerned I have heard every rationalizing narrative in the book from the Israeli right, the center-right, the center and the center-left. These narratives have all now been exposed as fables in the Netanyahu-Lieberman era of unmasking, and are up in smoke and gone with the wind. Why shouldn’t reasonable people conclude that a substantial majority of Israelis are liars, bigots and thieves, and that the only thing they have engaged in more successfully than the aggressive ethnic cleansing and colonization of Palestinian territory is the manufacture of lies, buncombe and balderdash about what they are doing?

Israelis appear perfectly willing, once the coveted West Bank territories have been annexed, to sit out another several decades of opprobrium and opposition as the world fusses and fumes, but then gradually accommodates itself to a blatant seizure of territory by force. Israelis are thoroughly comfortable with paranoia, self-separation and self-pity, and are proud of their success in fighting for everything they have against a world of opponents. And they know that despite the occasional expressions of frustration, and symbolic gestures of disapproval from the world’s major powers, nothing really devastating ever comes from the external disapproval. So there is no reason to think that they look on the prospect of carrying on for many years against widespread disdain and disapproval as a particularly fearsome, or even negative, prospect.

What about the rest of the West Bank? It’s true; the Israelis don’t want to occupy that forever either. Currently, they appear determined to turn those territories into a quasi-autonomous Arab Quarter or principality under an overarching Israeli dominion. Israel’s many wealthy supporters worldwide are more than eager to flood the new Palestinian non-state entity with cash-for-submission dollars to purchase the necessary cooperation from their defeated opponents. And there are already plenty of enterprising Palestinians, exhausted by persistent impoverishment and failure in a losing battle they will never win against Israel and its powerful global backers, lining up to cash in on the new order.

The Palestinian cause is probably lost. So what is next? At some point, the world needs to wake up to the fact that it has a dangerous, nuclear-armed theocracy on its hands in Israel, and that this theocracy will be emboldened by its impending success in its long 100-year war for the conquest of Palestine.

Of course Security Council resolutions have legal standing. They are appealed to frequently by jurists as a basis for international law. The UN Charter is a legally binding treaty, and in signing and ratifying that treaty members of the UN agreed to adhere to resolutions of the Security Council.

Who's fascinated? The media work groping themselves in their own virtual reality hall of mirrors.

I thought you took a lot of shit for comparing Obama to certain notorious European fascists of the past, and also for getting into some very weird stuff about Obama's choice of a darker skinned black woman as his mate.

Your critique at the time seemed a lot closer to the teabagger nonsense than to the things MJ is talking about now.

Clinton would have hired roughly the same crowd of DLC Third Wayers that Obama did, and made her pitch toward the middle in standard Clintonian fashion. And I suspect most Democrats would feel the same kind of disappointment right now.

The Party is still coming to grips with the fact that the Great Recession has pushed almost all of us further toward the left, and intensified desires for vigorous, even radical progressive economic reforms. But the leadership of the party is still in the hands of a neoliberal, Wall Street elite that opposes many of the things the rest of us want.

I feel better about some of the people in the House, especially those in the Progressive Caucus. And my opinion of Nancy Pelosi has gone up substantially. I'd love to see the all-out fightin' and fun that would occur if she ever got a crack at the presidency.

First, Obama ran as a conciliator and bridge-builder: "no red America; no blue America", etc. etc. And that's the approach he has taken. I don't know where in the world people would have gotten the impression that he was going to launch a barrage of highly partisan inquisitions into the misdeeds of the Bush administration.

Obama also supported a rather moderate health care reform program in his campaign - one that didn't even include a mandate. The one that is coming up is probably more progressive than the one he actually ran on.

He also promised to draw down in Iraq so that more resources and attention could be shifted to Afghanistan. And that's pretty much what he has done.

A whole bunch of Democratic voters seemed to have harbored secret hopes that Obama didn't really believe the things he was saying, and that he was really some sort of Stealth Kucinich. But he isn't any such thing. Instead, he is pretty much as advertised.

Nevertheless, I am disappointed in a few things:

Obama is supposed to be a great communicator. And I expected a much better, and more assertive communications operation from this White House. On the days when Obama is not making a big speech, his administration always seems to be playing defense and falling behind.

Like other recent Democratic political operations, they have a passive and overly-deferential attitude toward public opinion. When they find out that they slightly out of step with current public opinion, their first instinct is to say, "How do we have to change our position so that it is more in line with public opinion?" They don't ask themselves nearly enough, "How do we change public opinion so that it is more in line with our positions?" What is even worse, they constantly fail to exploit their edge when they do have public opinion on their side. When they're up 60-40 on something they act like they are down 40-60.

Obama has also shown surprising shortcomings in his ability to connect in a fundamental, emotional way with ordinary Americans. I thought he would be much better at that. He doesn't do enough to project the sense that the problems of ordinary people are uppermost in his mind. He comes off as way too friendly with Beltway, Wall Street and elite university technocrats, and is missing a populist note.

I also expected more of that "bottom-up" politics he talked about during the campaign. But instead, we have the same old rule by technocrat. He seems to decide what the policies are going to be within his own inner circle and in consultation with the powerful, and then he expects his army of voters to support them, no questions asked. He is not doing enough to listen to popular demands, and build policies that respond to them in a collaborative way.

And finally, I am extremely disappointed in the team he chose. I expected a more creative group, with a mix of new and old blood and some "new generation" thinking. But instead, we have a lot of old-school, 90's-style Third Wayism, and an approach to policy which is ... well, boring. So far, Obama seems oriented toward turning the clock back to the good old days in a "return to normalcy". I'm not seeing many signs that he is capable of responding boldly and creatively to new challenges.

Then you're a boob who knows nothing about the history of the church you allegedly studied. For example, the celibacy requirement is several hundreds of years old.

And your analogy with quitting the country is moronic. To quit the US, one would have to physically leave the country, at a minimum. As long as you're here, the agents of the US government will still require you to pay your taxes, and obey other US laws on pain of imprisonment. Now that's enforcement.

To quit the Catholic Church, all one has to do is stop going to church. That's it; you're done. They won't draft you into an army; they won't send agents to collect your taxes; they won't throw you in jail.

Now, please explain how I am controlling you in fascist and absolutist fashion from my remote position across the internet. Perhaps you just don't like to confront positions with which you disagree, and childishly think any attempt to express such a position is an attempt to "control" you.

And what the hell are you talking about with the label "pseudo-Christian"? Did I ever purport to be a Christian? I am not a member of any church or adherent to any religion. My point was that people should simply liberate themselves from self-induced pain, and separate themselves from any religious organizations with which they profoundly disagree, instead of groaning under their own self-imposed psychic bondage to these organizations, and grasping onto the bizarrely conflicted and perverse loyalties, and stupid guilt-complexes, that keep them attached to the cults of their youth.

Don't nail yourself to the fucking cross and then whine about how much your hands hurt.

I know all about the mistrust of the Vatican by American Catholics. I was born into an Irish Catholic family, and an attempt was made to raise me as one, but I left at a very young age because I don't accept Catholic doctrine. And you know what? No diabolical Vatican KGB agents tracked me down and tried to force me to be a Catholic. They don't bother me and I don't bother them. You can just walk away. It's easy.

I would take issue with the term "enforced celibacy". The men who become priests chose to join the priesthood. They weren't kidnapped off the streets and packed off to secret Catholic torture seminaries. If they don't like the celibacy rules, then they shouldn't have joined the priesthood. And if they thought it was a good idea originally, but now think it was a mistake, they can quit. And contrary to all extravagant fears of the Romaphobes out there, they won't be persecuted and hunted down by the Dark Lords and Jesuitical secret agents of the Vatican. They won't be disappeared by Opus Dei. Yes, it's always hard to quit a job and a vocation. But people do it all the time.

I can't stand people whining about how they are enslaved and oppressed by others, and having things "forced" upon them, when the only real means of coercion are the ones these people have placed upon themselves. Hearing someone complain that the Church "forces" guys to be celibate is like hearing a husband complain that his wife "forces" him to do the dishes and be nice to his sister-in-law. The man chose his own relationships. If he finds their rules too burdensome then he is free to end his current relationships and find new ones.

I also don't have a lot of sympathy for the complaint that the Catholic Church "meddles" in politics in some inappropriate and particularly troublesome way. Yes, the Catholic Church is an organization with a moral and metaphysical world-view, and they push their world view very aggressively, just like many other organizations. They assertively tell their members to support the same views, and to make the Church's moral vision a reality through political activism. Big deal. That's what politics is all about. Every organization in America is free to do the same.

The Church basically says, "We strongly support X, Y and Z. And if you do not advocate X, Y and Z; support candidates who advocate X, Y and Z; and oppose candidates who oppose X, Y and Z, then we will not regard you as a member in good standing, and we will believe all sorts of nasty things about you."

OK, so? If someone doesn't want to support and politically back the Church's positions, then why the hell are they still a Catholic? Just quit, tell the Church to fuck off, and then quit bitching. It's like someone who joins the Communist Party but doesn't want to support worker's rights, the ascendancy of the proletariat and worker ownership of the means of production. Would they then complain about "enforced love of workers"? Catholic Church teachings have been fairly consistent for many years. There is no big sneaky secret about what they are. Why are people members of organizations whose positions they don't endorse?

If people don't like the Catholic Church then they should just freaking quit it, and find a new church ... or no church. But they shouldn't chain themselves to a rowing station in the Roman boat, and then complain about the evil conspiracy to turn everyone into a Roman galley slave.

That's because the underlying political problem isn't with the form of the policies involved; it's with the inherently uphill and game-changing nature of the agenda itself. No matter how you slice it, progressive health care reform comes down to this: To deliver better health care to more people for lower average cost means taking something of value from some people and transferring that value to others. There is no way around this, and no politically pain-free way to avoid the bitter fight that will be required in order to succeed.

There is an existing health-industrial complex, composed of some very wealthy people - but also lots of ordinary managers, service-providers and laboring wage-earners - and that vast industry depends on the preservation of the status quo to hang onto the mountains of wealth created and reaped by their industry, and on which their accustomed livelihoods depend. They will fight like wolves to preserve what they have now, no matter how we endeavor to take it away from them, and the supporters of progressive health care reform need to be prepared to fight back just as hard, and compete unsentimentally for a larger piece of the economic pie.

People sometimes talk about high and unnecessary "costs" and "waste" in health care as though they are talking about money that is literally being burned in wood stoves or flushed down toilets. But that's not how waste occurs. Everywhere money moves, it moves out of one pocket and into another. If the expenditure is deemed wasteful, then that means you have a situation in which goods and service that are currently being exchanged for a certain quantity of money either don't need to be provided at all, or are being provided by suppliers who are vulnerable to being hard-bargained into providing those goods and services at a lower cost. In either case, the elimination of that waste means that that supplier gets less and the customer gets more.

For any instance of waste you care to identify in the health care industry, eliminating that waste means imposing a financial hit on somebody, somewhere: some medical supplier who is getting away with charging one price for supplies when he could be squeezed into charging much less; some doctor who is making $500,000 a year when he and his peers could be squeezed into accepting $200,000; some CEO who is making $10 million a year who could be replaced with one making $1.5 million; some medical insurance salesman who is making one level of commission who could be forced to accept a lower one. If progressive health care succeeds, many of these people are going to be hurt economically. That's a clod, unavoidable fact.

The system is indeed full of fat, waste and exploitation; and as a result most of us get worse, less reliable and more expensive health care than we might otherwise have with a leaner and more efficient system. To serve the broadest public interest, we the members of that public are going to have to put our hands around the necks of the people who are profiting most handsomely from the current system, and wring more out of them. We need to push them up against a wall, turn them upside down and shake the loose change out of their pockets. The public has to begin to deal with this massive complex the way a large wholesaler deals with its vendors: by banging their estimable market power and market share down on the table to demand the most goods and services at the lowest possible price, and by creating, or threatening to create, nonprofit government alternatives when private industry won't play ball.

But if the health-care consuming public continues to be divided and fragmented into millions of little customers, their potential market power and leverage will remain diluted, and the health biz will remain a sellers' market.

You are going to get the same fight if you go the purely regulatory route. If you regulate the policies insurers can offer, the prices they can charge, the restrictions they can impose, the risky customers they must accept, the deductibles they can require, the salaries they can pay, the minimal levels of service they are responsible to provide, then you are going to have the same fight all over again, even if the whole system remains "private". In the end, the powerful beneficiaries of a system that is working for those people are going to fight to oppose changes that make the system worse for them so it can be better for others. It doesn't matter whether the threat to their interests comes in the form of a new government-operated competitor, or a whole bunch of government legal rules that grab hold of the market and direct it away from laissez faire market decisions into publicly-mandated ends.

We can succeed in getting more for less. We this all the time in the business world. Industries slim down, smarten up, work harder and reorganize their work forces when they are forced to do so by the competitive environment. To succeed, we the health-care consuming public have to build ourselves into an awesome competitive force to get a better deal for ourselves. But if we and our legislators are afraid to play hardball, we will lose.

I believe a public option is vital, because it gets the public's very large foot in the door, wearing the heavy shoes of the United States Government. Once that foot is in the door, even if only a little bit initially, we can pry it open wider and wider. We can adjust and augment the public option in future legislative sessions, and threaten to make it bigger, more comprehensive and more muscular if private industry doesn't deliver more on their own. We need to get our hands on that hammer.

Allowing states to opt out of the public option will allow insurance companies strikes me as very risky business. Insurance companies might be able to target opt-out states and sell insurance at cut rates there as a "loss leader". Then they can say, "Look at how much better health insurance is in Alabama than Oregon! That's because Oregon employs that damn public option!" They can conspire to kill the option with games of this sort if all of our states aren't required to opt in.

Winning a better and fairer economic outcome for ourselves and our posterity is going to be a sometimes ugly, painful and ruthless competitive business. We need to be prepared to go up against ruthless, serious people who fight these kinds of business battles every day. But the American public is throwing fortunes away on health care costs - fortunes they can save if they get their act together to pool their market power and throw their weight around. So let's stop pussy-footing around, and let's get on with it. Americans have to turn themselves into a large 10,000 pound gorilla, and start sitting on people to get what we want.