A Hebrew Who Thinks Netanyahu is a Political Hack

And if Israel reelects this guy, they deserve whatever they get.

It is completely unprecedented for a foreign leader to so thoroughly identify with one political party in another country when historically both political parties in that country have been friendly ideologically with the foreign country.  The foreign leader is basically inviting that other political party to disavow any special relationship with that country as long as it is led by that leader.

What I think Netanyahu forgets and underestimates is the fact that 70% of American Jews support ending the West Bank Settlement program and giving up settlements to secure a two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian land and governance dilemma.  70% of American Jews know that if Israel doesn't do this, they are going to end up going down the road of South Africa and creating an apartheid state.  They are already somewhere down that road and Netanyahu seems intent on moving further in that direction.  If is really unfortunate that the 30% of American Jews who support or are indifferent to the Settlements, are the people who the Israel government listens to.

At this point, I must say that even though I was born in 1953, nothing has made a bigger impact on my view of the uncertainty of life and the role of religion than the Holocaust.  I have always believed Israel to be in the right until this Settlement Policy started to demonstrate a lack of good faith on the part of Israel in respecting the Palestinians as human beings with a right to govern themselves.

Netanyahu worked with Romney early in both their career's.  I get that if he were an American he would believe that the GOP is the better party for his support.  What I don't understand is why he is so adamant that he cannot even have a discussion with the Democrats.  Does he not like it that 70% of American Jews think his policies are nuts and he doesn't want to hear it?

I think power has gone to his head.  He enjoys the power of being President.  He has kept that power by not challenging the conservatives who support the Settlements and I guess like John Boehner, he has to keep the conservatives happy even if it will lead to ruin in the long run.  No one would accuse the Romanov's or the Habsburg's of not being conservative for their time and both saw the destruction of their borders.  Such an outcome would be a disaster for Israeli citizens and that is why Netahyahu's lack of flexibility in foreign affairs is such a disaster.  He doesn't even try to figure out a way to get along with others.

That is why he fits in so well with the House GOP and it is also why Democrat's who care less about Israel will find it harder to support Israel.  That is not good for Israel, which has historically also been a friend to the U.S.  Friendship cannot be a one way street and views between friends should be respected even when you don't like the message.  Trying to understand where the message comes from and debating that is what friends need to do and sometimes you have to admit your wrong.

I actually hope Netanyahu loses the election but whatever will be will be.  But the one thing Israeli's cannot say is that American's are indifferent to their security.  What 70% of American Jews believe is that ending the Settlements is critical to Israel's security and that is what Netanyahu doesn't want to hear.

GOP Policy Challenges

Will this reasonable column by Ross Douthat get him labeled a RINO in the blogosphere the way David Brooks is?  Quite possibly, but I believe it describes a reality that the GOP Presidential wanna be's have to address if they want to be in a position to stack the Supreme Court with more Neanderthal conservative Justices between 2017 and 2020.


Link to Douthat Column



I quote below the best part.

Not coincidentally, they’re policy tests that Obama-era Republicans have often conspicuously failed. On taxes, the party has been enamored of reforms — some plausible, some fanciful — that would cut taxes at the top while delivering little, or even higher taxes, to most taxpayers. (It’s an odd position for a party that is officially anti-tax to take in an age of wage stagnation, but at least the donors have been happy.) On health care, the G.O.P. has profited from the unpopularity of Obamacare, but we are now at Year 6 and counting without anything more than the pretense of a conservative alternative.

These failures have not been for want of policy options; they’ve been for want of ingenuity and will. The list of plausible conservative health care alternatives now literally fills a book — “Overcoming Obamacare,” from The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein, which any G.O.P. presidential contender would do well to at least pretend to have read. The best of these alternatives would allow a Republican candidate to promise, as Romney did not, to mostly maintain Obama’s coverage expansion (albeit with less comprehensive coverage) while lowering health insurance premiums for most Americans.

Pipeline NIMBY's

Do you  really think this is preferable?

Link to what I could not cut and paste; Oil train derails

And if you don't want a natural gas pipeline bringing you heat, you need an oil pipeline bringing oil to the refinery.  And without the competition from natural gas, you will pay through the nose for your oil heat.

I wish NIMBY's would think logically.

Time to Revisit Putin

You can't say the Western Government's don't give Putin a chance to reform his ways.  But you also cannot say that Putin ever reforms his ways.

So let us remember the blood on Mr. Putin's hands?  It is now into the thousands of people.  There were the innocents on the Malaysian Air Flight, the contributing Ukrainian rebels who have lost their life's, the unfortunate Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting to protect the Ukraine's borders, and untold number of Ukrainian citizens who happen to live in the rebel zone which means some support the rebels and some do not, but all have come into harm's ways.

It is quite clear that the West needs to do 3 things:  Wean themselves off Gazprom somehow (U.S. exports anyone?), tighten the economic sanctions, and send the Ukraine airplanes full of anti-amour weapons.  Only when the Russian people feel the pain, will there be any pressure on Putin to change. And the pain must include the unfortunate reality of casualties to the Russian mercenaries (who knows whether they are formally in the military or not, they seem like a shadow army in any case).

I know enough Russians to know they are the victims of totalitarian leadership, but only when the masses turn on Putin will he change and we must pressure the masses.  That is how the Communists overthrew the Tsar whose ancestors, Peter the Great, I believe Putin models himself on.

I am not sure why China supports Putin so much, you would think they would be nervous about his unbridled quest for influence.

Science Denial Explained

This column is rather long, but it does a reasonable job of explaining why science denial is so widespread in various societies.


Why Science is so hard to believe


Of course, if you choose to be a science denier on the principle that anything you don't understand with a basis in science, you will end up with the following conditions.

Vaccinations are bad, so we will not get our children vaccinated.  Polio, measles, mumps will return to prevalence.  (and this will put you in the same bed as the Taliban)  Children will die and be crippled and the cost of care will mount.

Flouride is a bad chemical and a communist plot to poison us.  or in liberal Portland, Orgeon a bad chemical that should not be added to water.  Never mind that it promotes better tooth enamel for everybody at a very low cost and is a natural occurring substance that is in some water naturally (that is how it was discovered) and causes no harm.  So bad teeth for everyone shortening lives.

GMO food is bad for you because it is unnatural.  Starvation for some people somewhere and a higher cost of food everywhere else will be the outcome.

And if you believe GMO food is OK, how can you not believe that Global Warming is real and deserving of being addressed.  Of course, the higher cost of food that will result from global warming is all part of the natural way of things.  It is inevitable and society should not have to deal with inevitable issues.  That sounds like gridlock to me.

Anyway, back to my path of science denial.  So once you disbelieve all that, of course evolution is the next thing to be disbelieved.  Dinosaurs never existed, which despite all the skeletons in museums, seems a preferable belief to the one in Kentucky where all the dinosaurs co-existed with early human life in the aftermath to the Garden of Eden, within the last 6000 years, which is all the earth had existed for these people.  And just where did all the fossil fuels come from if that is your belief.  And why doesn't the Old Testament discuss dinosaurs?

I know this is getting a bit stretched, but if you are going to deny one slice of science, you have to deny all of it if you are being logical.  And if you accept a few slices of science (say chemistry and biology, I don't know anyone who can explain Physics to me, so I cannot be sure they really understand Physics and I have had numerous discussions with Physics majors and read Steven Hawking), then don't you have to accept everything about science and rely on the vast body of scientists who make a living trying to reprove and disprove everyone else's work to arrive at a consensus.

But let me continue briefly down this path of science denial.  Once you are here, you are back in the middle ages and believing that the sun rotates around the earth, Galileo was a dangerous heretic and witches should be burned at the stake, not mention we can let sewage and rats lie freely in gutters promoting plagues.

Obviously, I consider science denial a plague of its own, but at least I now understand its origin:  fear of that which is hard to understand, a need to belong to a group that agrees with what I believe no matter how irrational that belief, and the power of the internet, which allows those who can profit from science denial to continue to promote it.  Follow the money, as always.

George Will Writes an Intelligent Column

I used to read George Will regularly and enjoy his insights.  That was back in the 1980's when the two parties had philosophical overlap and before partisanship and hatred for the opposition forced one to decide which side we are on, regardless of our propensity to see things in the middle.

Anyway George Will's column today is thoughtful and supportive of President Obama's foreign policy.  I thought I should point that out.

Link to George Will's column

The Market Cannot Solve Everything, Government Cannot Solve Everything, Individuals Must be Self-Reliant

If I were to expound upon all my thoughts in that headline, this would be a very long and tedious blog.

So instead, I will provide a link to David Brook's column today about thought pieces that Marco Rubio and Larry Summers have produced on income inequality and middle class wage stagnation.

Link to David Brooks Column


I have to admit when Marco Rubio speaks about policy, he comes across as a reasonable human being.  His style of politics in the Grid Lock Senate though has given me a bad impression of him.

Meanwhile, the Congress is about to show why they cannot be trusted with National Defense.  Rather than pass something with compromise in it, they are threatening to not pass anything because to the GOP it will not be strong enough and to the Democrat's it is too strong.  So people should not wonder why Presidents resort to Executive Action.

Separation of Church & State, The Cost of College

Watching an Alabama Probate something or other say on TV last night that his Christian faith did not allow him to issue marriage certificates to gay couples, I was struck with the revelation that is exactly why the Founding Fathers insisted on separation of church and state.

A marriage license is a legal document.  If it is your job to issue legal documents on behalf of the state, you need to follow the law and do it in a legal manner.  You don't get to claim your faith in your church doesn't allow that.  The only thing your faith in this manner qualifies you for is resigning from your job because you are not performing the functions of employment.

Meanwhile, there is once again a a tussle over state funding of college and how should we measure the value that a university is putting forth for the monopoly pricing that is in place.  There is a focus on making sure students get an economic payback for their investment in this political statements.

I am sympathetic to the pressures of costs and subsidies but at the same time annoyed that the liberal arts is getting short shrift in these discussions.  Yes, I know people make poor choices and major in English or Art History and then wonder what they will do for a living.  But everybody makes their choices and has to live with the consequences of them.

Life is all about education on a continual basis and a base in liberal arts is a critical part of that.  Exploring what you are good and not good at is also part of the liberal arts tradition.  In college, I learned that I was good at economics, ok at political analysis, above average in math & statistics, had an interest in computer programming and was good at it (this was before I knew you could get filthy rich with a talent like that, it was 40 years ago), did not comprehend psychology and learned how to analyze how a picture was made.  Along the way, I also got a touch of philosophy, science, and English (another topic where the analysis was incomprehensible to me).  That was an education, and I still needed to go to grad school to be employable.  But I did all that and had a wonderful career.

The state can't control that. They have to encourage that within reason.  I also went to a great liberal arts college and had some brains.  Not everyone is smart.  That is what community college is for and that is what BOCES is for in high schools.  Teaching students trades when they are not capable of much more.  But even they deserve the opportunity to have exposure to English, psychology or philosophy if they are interested in trying.

TNR 1st Issue Post Everything Turmoil Musings: Maternity Leave, Liberal Politics

OK, I have just finished reading The New Republic's first print issue under the new regime.  I am disappointed that they will publish only 1 issue a month and have not, as yet, extended our subscription to reflect the issues we have and will not received.

But, as for the content, I found a sufficient number of interesting articles to read that I would consider continuing my subscription for the right price.  And perhaps, I should use our electronic access to the website.

There was an interesting article on the state of conflict in the reality of motherhood and the necessity for women to work (both in terms of the stability of family and overall economic strength).  What struck me reading the article is the widespread support for formal maternity policies from people under 40 and the widespread opposition to formal maternity policies from white men over 40.

There was also too long an article on Uruguay's outgoing President.  My takeaway was liberal politicians risk getting too little done because they try accomplish too much across a wide breadth of issues.  This is what happened to President Jose Mujica.  Conservatives don't suffer from this because their focus is always on cutting taxes and reducing regulation.  They don't care about anything else.  But for liberals to tackle anything else, they have to overcome both conservative opposition and the need to convince the center that the details of the proposal make sense.  This takes an enormous effort  and requires concentration.  You can't tackle too many issues at once or the effort becomes distracted and doomed to failure because the convincing message is not developed.  Rescuing the economy, fighting terrorist Jihad, Dodd Frank and the Affordable Health Care Act doomed Cap & Trade and Tax Reform.  One president can only accomplish so much because they must run the government and can only focus on policy change in a limited number of ways.

There was also a nice book review of Kim Gordon's new book.  I didn't know she even wrote a book.

I didn't find a movie review and there was no pro-Netanyahu rant at the back of the magazine.

Our Real Medicaid Cost Problem

Dementia

1 in 9 senior citizens has dementia.  For all but a few, with either resources or sufficient long term care insurance, the only end result will be spending down their wealth and going on Medicaid.

Right now Dementia absorbs roughly $150 billion a year from Medicare (I'm not sure how that is actually) and Medicaid (I do know how this happens).  We spend a total of $772 billion on Medicare and Medicaid, so Dementia is responsible for 19.4% of Medicare and Medicaid spending.  And senior represent only 9% of those covered by Medicaid.

So when states complain about the ever increasing cost of Medicaid, they are implying that is the poor who in their minds are lazy and shiftless.  But in reality they are just poor and generally younger and healthier and cheaper to cover for what medical needs they have.  It is Dementia that is out of control, has no solution other than euthanasia which every conservative and most everybody else are  adamantly against.

We examined our living wills to see if we could withhold water at some point if we had dementia and found out that no matter what our living will says, NY State law forbids the withholding of water from anyone, no matter what their physical or mental condition.

I don't have a solution for Dementia, but I think some honesty in policy discussions about where Medicaid is really seeing its cost spiral out of control is a necessity if we are to have a rational policy that balances medical care with the cost.

Should I Run for the NY State Assembly?

I wouldn't need any outside income so I could be an honest legislator.  And my Assembly person, Amy Paulin couldn't work fast enough to support Carl Heastie to be the new Assembly Speaker.  I used to think Ms. Paulin was an honest legislator.  Now I am not so sure.  She doesn't seem to care about clean government and has been there for 15 years now.  If she were honest, she would not have run so fast to support Mr. Heastie.

Speaker Heastie's unsavoriness is now coming out in more detail.  There's only smoke, but when it comes to the New York State Assembly, where there is smoke, there is usually a fire.

This is how corruption is so endemic in the New York Assembly.  Budgets are passed at the last minute so no watch dog organization or legislator can look at the details.  Now we find out that Speaker Heastie funneled money to a non-profit that (i) went bankrupt, (ii) paid money to undisclosed people in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, while (iii) Mr. Heastie sponsored "discretionary funding" for the organization worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Meanwhile, Mr Heastie is disclosing little outside income and credit card debt north of $50,000; all while living on a salary of $70,000 in NYC.  Something stinks to high heaven in that picture as the numbers don't add up and who would want such an irresponsible person managing the NY State budget?  Who would want them to be Speaker of the Assembley or even a member of the legislature?

I need to get through my current endeavor (3/25 is the make or break date for success) and start exploring whether it is a fool's errand to run for the NY State Assembly.

Our dinner partner last night, who has work experience with the NY State Government, said I would go nuts there as I would be dealing with idiots with power and he cannot imagine anything more frustrating.  But I am already going nuts watching those idiots fail to improve NY State and if good people don't run, then the idiots have no one to challenge them.