Maggie's Farm

New York Times: "To Avoid Voter Rage, Democrats Skip Town Halls"

Of the 255 Democrats who make up the majority in the House, only a handful held town-hall-style forums as legislators spent last week at home in their districts.

It was no scheduling accident.

With images of overheated, finger-waving crowds still seared into their minds from the discontent of last August, many Democrats heeded the advice of party leaders and tried to avoid unscripted question-and-answer sessions.

Ain't Democrats' democracy something!

A friend writes me seeking contributions from US Christians and Jews to build a grand cathedral and a grand synagogue in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.  Then leftist clergymen would have a prominent place to conveniently issue apologies for existing to Muslims, at Islam’s spiritual center.

Sounds like a very nice project for those who like self-abasement, doesn’t it?

Problem: Saudi Arabia does not permit any churches or synagogues to exist anywhere in the country.

Er, Saudi Arabia funds mosques throughout the world, many harboring Imams and congregants who mouth, fund and participate in radical anti-West actions.  Have you heard any apologies from Saudi Arabia?

Meanwhile, in the heart of pagan capitalism, close to 9/11’s Ground Zero in New York’s Wall Street area, a $100+ million mosque is planned. The Imam has already plunked down $4.85 million for the property. He is cagey about where the rest will come from. Hmm?  Oh, the Imam is pocket-deep in funding the Gaza flotilla and pals with international anti-Israel radicals.

Youssef Ibrahim, a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal correspondent who covered Islamic fundamentalism extensively overseas and in the USA, finds other journalists oddly lacking in the curiosity to dig deeper.

Look at all these potential contributors, over 8000, who turned out today at the Ground Zero mosque site.

In 1973, Nixon and Kissinger used South Vietnam as a tool to widen the split between China and the Soviet Union. In 2010, Islamists, Iran and other Muslim states use the Obama administration as a tool to split the US from Israel.

Most of us who are still aghast at the Democrat controlled US Congress dooming South Vietnam to fall by cutting off promised arms and air support necessary to its survival also criticized Nixon and Kissinger for walking into the duplicitous trap of the Peace Accords of 1973.  The North Vietnamese rulers had a long, documented history of promising one thing while doing another.

However, Nixon and Kissinger had a bigger game afoot, to reduce tensions with China for our purpose of widening its rift from the Soviet Union, which added pressure on the Soviet Union.

In effect, South Vietnam was a tool to what they had good reasons to believe was a bigger, more important end.  Surely, neither Nixon nor Kissinger expected Nixon’s Watergate downfall and the left Democrats to sweep to Congressional power.

There’s a difference now.

Obama and Clinton may be thinking they are using Israel as a tool to cuddle up to long and continually intransigent Arab states. But they are actually tools themselves of those who seek nothing else than the downfall of Israel and the retreat of the US from confronting their clear goals of dominating the Middle East and, via its oil, Europe.

Obama and Clinton don’t deny the ongoing efforts of Iran in going nuclear or sending men and arms to those attacking US, Iraqi and Afghan troops, to Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. They just avoid the necessary countermeasures and march forward in repeatedly proven delusions of Iran changing its spots and of kumbaya as a replacement for reality.

Nixon and Kissinger had a world view realistically based on US interests furthering a world order of surer peace.  Obama and Clinton, fully consciously or not, have a world view based on US interests being a barrier to a world order of peace, that ignores or excuses or refuses to confront the reality of foes’ unrelenting hate of the US and the West, encouraged by Obamanesque fecklessness.

Oh! Another bit of reality that Obama and apologists can try to ignore: "Iran Revolutionary Guards ready to escort Gaza ships"

- Thanks again, Insty. We appreciate your appreciation, and encourage Insty folks to peruse our eclectic site. You might like it. Or you might not.

P.S.: Hillary Clinton warns Iran not to pull a stunt.  Wake up Hillary, "Iran called our bluff long ago."

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Better appreciations of the facts about the Gaza flotilla (a flatuated term for that motley group of ships) are emerging, after the jumping to jaundiced judgment to jeer Israel.  The key one: Turkey hid behind its radical IHH front to instigate violence and got what it wanted.

Why? The obvious answer is to delegitimize Israel.

True, but there are fathoms below that to delve for some bigger truths.

I’ve been stressing diving for one “big truth.”  (here and here) The Obama administration was deep into pressuring Israel, likely contributing to the outcomes favorable to Israel’s enemies. Washington and Jerusalem should have known better.

The Obama administration, as the US State Department spokesman admitted, “through multiple channels many times” before the interdiction urged Israel to “restrain” itself.  Israel acted with restraint, to the point of ineptitude.  Similarly, the Obama administration at Turkey’s demand urged Israel to immediately release all aboard the Gaza blockade running ships, even though about forty were not identified or their links to Turkey and instructions were not discovered, and Israel promptly complied, allowing Turkey to cover up a key part of its nefarious role.

Credible journalists should be investigating these and probably more instances of the Obama administration’s culpabilities in harming Israel and strengthening US and Israeli foes.  For those journalists who have forgotten how, here’s the basics of their craft when competently practiced: Who? What? Where? When? Why?

Some may find this exercise in truth finding not worthwhile because “everyone already knows the Obama administration is comprised of useful tools of US foes”, as one bluntly put it.  But, not everyone knows, just those not of the Left paying attention.  Most liberals are still in denial. This key truth needs to be prominently driven home for all to face and know.  Such a high-profile event as this is the perfect vehicle to highlighting and verifying what “everyone already knows,” or should know.

There’s a second “big truth” to be brought to the surface.

Since 2002, when Prime Minister Erdogan came to power in Turkey, he has been inching and jumping to move Turkey away from its past of Western orientation that Kemal Attaturk set it on after WWI, instead toward an Eastern (i.e., Islamist) view. Erdogan has played his cards well, and the stale Kemalists not.  September 12 Turkey is to hold a referendum, supported avidly by Erdogan and his party, though by none else, that would cripple separation of powers by placing the judiciary under tighter control by his executive.

In the usual way of rulers who seek more power, Erdogan purposely picked the perfect “us-them” to rouse the 99%+ of Turks who are Muslim, “them” being Israel.

Erdogon and Turkey’s fingerprints on the Gaza instigation needs to be brought to the surface for all to see, including for those Turks who will be repulsed by Erdogan’s dirty deals with radicals for his own self-aggrandizement. The future of Turkey and of its impact on the West is at stake.

There’s a third “big truth” that needs to be brought to the light of day.  That is the utter dangerous inanity of the Obama et. al. world view.  They have repeatedly demonstrated that their view is useless and counter-productive to Western interests.  Former allies and foes are not fools as ours in Washington.  They see the weakness, incompetence and ineptness of the Obama administration. They are, thus, encouraged to be bolder in pursuing policies and actions inimical to the US and to regional or world peace. Consistent with the Obama world view that is indifferent to or hostile toward the West is the casting out of Israel as an ally and measures that weaken its survival.

Surfacing the first “big truth” above is key to taking the blinders off for all to starkly see the others, and get more energized in sending those who have shucked American strength and integrity, and the survival of allies, to the bottom.

P.S.: The Washington Post editorial board connects some of the dots

A reader of Maggie’s Farm manufactures spare parts for military applications.  He emails, posted here with his permission, about our Defense Department preferring Turkish firms above his, “in a way that is rather unique in their dealings with other (NATO) countries.”

By that I mean, Turkey is the only country that they give these orders to, besides maybe an occasional one to Canada. The reason I know this is that everyday I get emailed to me "notices of unsuccessful bid.

I have been dealing with DLA [Defense Logistics Agency] since I began my business in 1986. I broke every rule in the book in starting my business, with regard to undercapitalization. Somehow, (blessed be the Lord),  we made it this far and enjoy a good relationship with the gov't as our primary customer (75%). 99% of what we make are spare parts for military applications- machine guns, tanks, apvs, land, maritime and a smattering of aircraft parts. There's me (veteran), wife, son (veteran), 3 machinists and 2 welders (1 veteran). We've never received a dime of "stimulus" money, but it would be nice if the gov't appreciated the value of having domestic sources and not give so damn much of what we quote to the Turks. Every day I get auction notices for small manufacturing companies going down the tubes. How stupid of us to unthinkingly paint ourselves into a corner for the day when we need stuff and countries like Turkey have us over a barrel. Much of what I make involves an investment of tooling. This enables us to supply parts more quickly in the future. How's it going to be when we need crucial spare parts and the tooling is in Ankara, Turkey- then likely a hostile country?

I think what caught Bruce's attention was the reference I made to a letter I got back through my congressman, Pat Tiberi, from the Director of Procurement of DLA. In that letter (which I still have)*, a response to my complaint about all the work that was going (and still is) to Turkey, I was given a wonderfully unvarnished bit of information; that under the "Buy American Act", Turkey is a qualified country. Thank God for the occasional bit of honesty from a bureaucrat! No way you'd ever hear that from an elected official.

I hope you find this educational.

Cordially yours,
Steve Boggs
Boggs & Associates, Inc
Columbus OH 43227
614-237-0600

*Another line I remember was something like this- "Furthermore, it is DoD policy the the Buy American Act does not apply." This blew the mind of a friend who practiced law specializing in federal contracts.

The US is aiding Turkey's "final solution" for Israel.

BTW, Steve's son is a two-tour veteran of Iraq.

Hizbollah, Iran’s tool in Lebanon, is in virtual control of its government, armed with thousands of missiles from Iran directly and via Iran’s Syria conduit, the missiles able to reach all of Israel.

As US Secretary Of Defense Robert Gates said last month:

"Syria and Iran are providing Hezbollah with rockets and missiles of ever-increasing capability," he said at a joint news conference with his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Barak.

"And we're at a point now, where Hizbollah has far more rockets and missiles than most governments in the world, and this is obviously destabilizing for the whole region and we're watching it very carefully."

Hizbollah is encouraged by the hamstringing of Israel by the Obama administration and Israel’s allowing it in dealing with the Gaza blockade runners, coupled with the hypocritical outcry of international abettors and appeasers of Hamas.

If Israel has its way and does what’s necessary, Hizbollah should think twice before attacking Israel, unless Washington again tries to hobble Israel and Israel allows it.

Israel is focused on dealing a severe blow to Hizbollah.  Defense News, a leading authoritative US publication on military matters, reports “Israel’s New Hard Line on Hizbollah.” Letting Lebanon, Hizbollah and the world know what’s in store is called deterrence, or stand-by-for-an-ass-whipping.

The last time war broke out along the Lebanese border, Israel acted clumsily and lost its aura of invincibility. If there is a next time, Israel's military brass vows, things will be different.

Under a strategy honed since the 2006 Lebanon war and rehearsed in microcosm in the late-2008 Gaza incursion, a new fight against Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hizbollah would see an all-out assault on the party's arsenals, command centers, commercial assets and strongholds throughout the country.

But it also would include attacks on national infrastructure; a total maritime blockade; and interdiction strikes on bridges, highways and other smuggling routes along the Syrian border with Syria. Meanwhile, land forces would execute a ferocious land grab well beyond the Litani River that Israeli brigades belatedly hobbled toward yet failed to reach in the last war….

In a May 23 interview, Gantz [IDF General Staff] warned that it could take repeated rounds of high-intensity wars to remove the Iranian-trained and financed threat from the north. The aim, he said, is to prolong the periods of relative quiet between war fighting.

"Israel cannot exist with protracted peaks of warfare," he said. "Therefore, we have to reduce them to reasonable levels - similar to the way we drove down terror in the aftermath of Defensive Shield [the IDF's 2002 operation in the West Bank]. That way, we allow our people to live reasonably under a protracted emergency situation until we fix it, and then we go back to square one.

"I doubt there will be peace afterwards, but at least we'll be able to extend the time between peaks ... Through strategic attrition - one round and then another round - we'll create a situation where each new round brings worse results than the last. And that, in and of itself, brings a formidable deterrent."

Here’s a video of tank defense technology that Israel is rapidly implementing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62jzAupr044

Here's Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's letter to NY Senator Chuck Schumer about illegal immigration.  Summary: Get real Chuckie.

Or, read it all.  It's a real "straight talk express."

The US pressured Israel for, in effect, a cover-up demanded by Turkey of exactly who are all the blockade runners. No one even knows the names or the affiliations of many of the passengers on the ships that tried to run the blockade of Gaza.  All, except a few Israeli-Arabs, have been released by Israel.

Why? The US persuaded Israel to release all quickly, to appease Turkey.

Gerald Seib writes in the Wall Street Journal on US “mediation” between Israeli and Turkish officials:

Ultimately, the mediation succeeded in ending what had emerged as the most immediate cause of rising tensions: the detention in Israel of hundreds of Turkish citizens who formed the bulk of the pro-Palestinian activists removed from the ships….

Meantime, Mr. Obama also called an angry Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The conversation showed that the Israeli-Turkish relationship was in bad shape, but also that the burning issue for Turkey was winning the rapid release of several hundred Turkish citizens who had been taken off the ships by Israeli soldiers. "The immediate tourniquet that could be put on this arterial bleed, if you want, had to do with getting the Turkish citizens home," Gen. Jones said….

Mr. Netanyahu's government agreed to quickly clear an internal legal hurdle that was standing in the way of an immediate release: It persuaded the country's supreme court to deny appeals by some Israeli groups calling for charges to be pressed against those taken off the ships.

The result:

UAE TV reports of those sent to Jordan: “…126 international activists arrived in Jordan….The International activists received an official and public welcome….”

Deutche Welle reports:

Three planes carrying nearly 500 activists from the Gaza aid flotilla arrived in Istanbul early on Thursday, and were welcomed by a crowd of supporters, many of whom waved Palestinian flags and shouted anti-Israel slogans....

Most of the activists were Turkish, but participants from at least 38 different nations were also involved, including Israelis, Palestinians and more than 100 Europeans….Turkey's deputy prime minister, Bulent Arinc [says] "Israel will be asked within the framework of laws to pay for the murders it has committed," [and] Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for Israel to be punished for what he called "state terrorism."

That’s the thanks Israel gets for acceding to Washington.

BTW, no not really by the way but central to understanding the whys of the snafu at sea, I’m still waiting for journalists or insiders to reveal, those who care enough and have the integrity to know and report, about the “explosive question” to find out exactly what the Obama administration told Israel "through multiple channels, many times" before the raid on the ships about being restrained, as the US State Department spokesman admitted to the Washington Post, and what exactly those in the Netanyahu administration did about it, that may have contributed to the snafu at sea.

There's shame deserved in Washingtom and Jerusalem for expecting thanks or constructive results for self-hobbling. Make the facts public.  If citizens of Israel are expected to die in defense of their country, or be killed for just being in Israel, and if the US is expected to be useful for peace instead of a useful tool for enemies of the US and Israel, we all deserve to know, now.

PowerLine links to my earlier post, "EXPLOSIVE Question" (link to it above).  There are now two instances known of Obama administration pressure on Israel to, in effect, commit "suicide."  When will the major media start demanding to know all the facts, in Washington and in Jerusalem, of these and other instances and when will some brave soul come clean?

Turkey Hash: The Turkish Prime Minister says, “I do not think that Hamas is a terrorist organization."  He also says "the Ten Commandments prohibits Jews from killing." Actually, it says "murder." Perhaps he should talk to his Hamas buddies, eh?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOGG_osOoVg&annotation_id=annotation_665723&feature=iv

"U.S. urged Israel to use caution and restraint with aid boats heading to Gaza" reports the Washington Post's Scott Wilson and Glenn Kessler: 

"We communicated with Israel through multiple channels many times regarding the flotilla," P.J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement issued in response to a question from The Washington Post. "We emphasized caution and restraint given the anticipated presence of civilians, including American citizens."

One wonders whether the Washington Post reporters followed up for details or, if not, why not.  This may be an explosive key to why the snafu at sea.

Israeli investigations of itself are notable for their comprehensiveness, self-criticism, and transparency.  What exactly did the Obama administration say to Israel, and what exactly did Israel do in response?

Israelis and analysts friendly toward Israel are aghast and confounded the Israeli commandos were lowered one at a time into an armed, violent gang, on board to physically attack Israelis, and the commandos were instructed to use paintball guns to disperse attackers.

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, traveling in Israel, had this encounter:

I just met with the son of a friend who serves in an elite Israeli army unit, one very much similiar to Flotilla 13, the Naval commando unit deployed so disastrously against the anti-Israel flotilla, and he explained the shame this way: "These soldiers are the best we have. We are Israel's deterrent. People in the Middle East need to think we are the best, and we are the best, except that when we're sent into situations without any intelligence, without any direction, with paintball guns instead of sufficient weapons, with no understanding of who we're fighting.

Israelis, Americans, the world deserves an answer to whether and, if so, to what extent Obama administration admonitions created the conditions that allowed thugs afloat to damage Israel and encourage Hamas’ ruthless terror of Gazans and of Israelis.

As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said on Wednesday, "This was not a 'Love Boat', it was a hate boat." Another question to be answered: Was he influenced by the Obama administration admonitions and, if so, specifically how?

P.S.: Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine notices this in "More bad advice from the U.S. to Israel." Still waiting for politicians, major media, and blogs to ask the big questions.

P.P.S.: I emailed the Washington Post reporters Scott Wilson and Glenn Kesler, via the Washington Post email link to them (click on each's name), to ask, simply, whether they or the Washington Post were following up to find out the details.  As yet, no reply. Hopefully that's because they are hot on the trail, as should all real journalists.

Welcome PowerLine readers. See "That's the thanks Israel gets for acceding to Washington" for another instance of US pressure on Israel, to please unpleasable, hostile Turkey.

Mercenaries Identified: June 4, why not before?

The IDF identified a group of about 50 men – of the 700 on board – who were well-trained and were stationed throughout the ship, mostly on the upper deck, where they laid an ambush for the IDF soldiers who rappelled onto the deck from helicopters.

The members of this violent group were not carrying identity cards or passports. Instead, each of them had an envelope in his pocket with about $10,000 in cash. The defense establishment suspects the funding for the mercenaries may have come from elements within the Turkish government.

According to sources within the defense establishment, one member of the group, who appears to have been the ringleader, traveled to the city of Bursa in northwest Turkey and allegedly recruited mercenaries for the flotilla there.

In videos from the Marmara released this week by the IDF, this group of men can be seen preparing to confront IDF commandos. The videos, taken by the ship’s security cameras, show the group of activists brandishing metal bars, slingshots, and other assorted weaponry.

The group was split up into smaller squads that were distributed throughout the deck and communicated with one another with handheld communication devices. The men wore bulletproof vests and gas masks.

One video clearly shows a member of the group throwing a stun grenade onto the IDF commando vessel that pulled up alongside the Marmara. Another video shows how groups of at least four or five men swarmed each commando that landed on the top deck, beating them with metal bars, and in one case throwing a soldier off the third deck.

Soldiers testified that in at least two instances their sidearms were taken from them, as were their helmets and vests. Two soldiers jumped off the ship into the water to save themselves from being lynched.

On Wednesday, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i told a Knesset hearing that all nine men killed on the Marmara were “involved in the fighting.”

“There were no innocents among the dead,” Vilna’i said.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Media Watch reported Thursday that three of the four Turks killed on ship sought a martyr’s death.

Stay to the end to witness the ignorance that is the fertile ground in which hate is planted.

Pilar Rahola is a Spanish politician, journalist and activist. She is a passionate defender of the United States and Israel and an indefatigable fighter against anti-Semitism. All these despite being ideologically from the left. Read it all.

Her conclusion:

I am not Jewish. Ideologically I am left and by profession a journalist. Why am I not as anti Israeli as my colleagues? Because as a non-Jew I have the historical responsibility to fight against Jewish hatred and currently against the hatred for their historic homeland, Israel. To fight against anti-Semitism is not the duty of the Jews, it is the duty of the non-Jews.

As a journalist it is my duty to search for the truth beyond prejudice, lies and manipulations. The truth about Israel is not told. As a person from the left who loves progress, I am obligated to defend liberty, culture, civic education for children, coexistence and the laws that the Tablets of the Covenant made into universal principles. Principles that Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. That is to say that as a non-Jew, journalist and lefty I have a triple moral duty with Israel, because if Israel is destroyed, liberty, modernity and culture will be destroyed too.

The struggle of Israel, even if the world doesn’t want to accept it, is the struggle of the world.

We have a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Congress controlled by the Democrats, uncaring about its impacts on our health, finances, or national security. The Congressional Democrats are deserving of repeal in November.

Don’t bother to ask what is really within the thousands of pages of ObamaCare, and tell Americans lies. --  The Director of the Congressional Budget Office does tell, despite the assurances that ObamaCare would somehow reduce health care costs and government spending on healthcare:

In CBO’s judgment, the health legislation enacted earlier this year does not substantially diminish that pressure. In fact, CBO estimated that the health legislation will increase the federal budgetary commitment to health care (which CBO defines as the sum of net federal outlays for health programs and tax preferences for health care) by nearly $400 billion during the 2010-2019 period….

[I]t is not clear what specific policies the federal government can adopt to generate fundamental changes in the health system; that is, it is not clear what specific policies would translate the potential for significant cost savings into reality. Moreover, efforts to reduce costs substantially would increase the risk that people would not get some health care they need or would like to receive.

Don’t bother to find out how the military could adjust to openly gay enlistees or the effects on recruitment and retention, readiness, or military families (half of the military are married).  Tell the members of the Joint Chiefs, responsible for military personnel, and the military that their views don’t count.

Democrats ignored those pleas and voted anyway. Their concern was that if they waited until the Gates study is complete, after the November elections, Republicans could pick up enough seats to block repeal in 2011.

Perhaps the biggest affront was the fact that the White House, Mr. Gates, Adm. Mullen and Democrats settled on a compromise without allowing the four service chiefs to see it or comment.

Don't ask how we get out of the mess if you don't tell in November, and before in letters, meetings, and contributions to and participation in campaigns.

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs gathered senior Israeli generals to outline the basics of Israeli defense issues and policy, "Israel's Critical Security Needs for a Viable Peace." 

The link has several illuminating videos as well as the reports.  I won’t use up bandwidth or delay it loading on your end by presenting the videos or reports.  If any are interested in the hard facts, please go to the site and see for yourself, including why much of the commentary and suggestions offered by armchair generals and ignorant politicians are dangerous illusions and hogwash, indeed further the aims of Israel and the West's enemies. Security is the object of diplomacy, not to be compromised or sacrificed for "process" or photo-ops that avoid the core issues.

Let’s cut out the crap from the international sob-sisters and abetters of Gazan Hamas thugs. Let the UN Security Council show this video upon its big screen, and then choke on the hasty lies swallowed by puerile politicians of pusillanimity pontificating from far away, and the media that vomited the lies upon its viewers and readers. Those who say anything Israel did was disproportionate parrot the word on cue, without any sense of what it means, in definition or actuality.

There are only two things disproportionate: 1. Israelis were armed with paintball guns and did not use more force to quickly quell and control those violently prepared upon the Mavi Marmara. Instead, Israel, as usual restrained itself, while no such self-control was planned by or exerted upon those on the ship. 2. The usual crowd of sympathizers to terror and antagonists to self-defense knee-jerk echoing of clearly wrong, inane and antagonistic charges against Israel, even despite the clear evidence to the contrary.

The blockade of Gaza is to prevent war material from entering. It preserves the peace. The convoy was offered but refused to have its cargo inspected and if humanitarian transferred to Gaza.

The convoy was not humanitarian in intent or action.  It was a blatant political propaganda ploy, intentionally belligerent in leadership, word and deed, to provoke in order to pressure Israel to commit suicide, opening Gaza’s borders to the type of infusion of deadly weapons and missiles for Hamas to attack Israel that flows unimpeded into Lebanon.

Any who defend the convoy or its passengers are actually furthering avoidable death and war.

P.S.:  I'm just too angry to write more right now. My friend Bookie has a good roundup. She points us to this that if President Obama plays his usual games of currying favors, which are not returned by any to whom he has, he will speed and impel Israel to take its survival in its own hands. PowerLine also has proportionate sense to offer: don't "bring a toy gun to a knife fight." AllahPundit wonders about the immediate convening of the UN Security Council to condemn Israel, compared to it not meeting when North Korea torpedoed and sunk a South Korean ship. See Useful Idiots At Sea and other posts at Contentions.

The analysis of Elena Kagan "The Soliciter General Lays An Egg" begins:

Before the fuss over Arizona’s immigration law, there was a different fuss over a different Arizona immigration law.

Now the first fuss is coming back to haunt the Obama Administration, the professionals in the office of the Solicitor General, and maybe even Elena Kagan.

The analysis concludes:

It’s still a crappy, crippled wisp of a brief...

Read between the lines, read it all, about the Kagan knuckleheaded knot-kneading knosense of Obama administration immigration enforcement policy.

Till Bruckner worked for NGOs in Georgia and Afghanistan before managing Transparency International's Georgia’s aid monitoring programme in 2008-2009. He writes in Aid Watch: Just Asking That Aid Benefit The Poor about Secret NGO Budgets.

Are you ashamed of your organization’s budgets? Do you think your supporters would be shocked if they could see exactly how you are spending their money? Do you feel the need to keep your finances hidden from your local partners and clients? If you answered all three questions with “yes,” you might be working for an international NGO.

Bruckner also writes at NGO Watch, "How Corrupt Is The World Food Program?"

Private donors in wealthy countries simply lack the information needed to hold aid and development NGOs to account for how their donations are used thousands of miles away. The only information available is that which is voluntarily provided by the NGOs, which are extremely reluctant to open their operations to scrutiny....

Institutional donors like USAID usually do have a presence on the ground in developing countries, but they rarely directly monitor NGO activities in the field. Instead, they usually, though not always, rely on information provided by their grantees. Interviews with dozens of donor and NGO representatives in Georgia, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan suggest that neither NGOs nor donor country offices have an incentive to document instances in which aid money is stolen, wasted, or unwisely spent. Projects are almost invariably portrayed as successful, irrespective of realities on the ground....

Aid organizations have responded to concerns about their lack of accountability through a variety of initiatives and mechanisms intended to create transparency within the aid community. Senior staff members at NGOs’ global headquarters readily sign up to noble-sounding initiatives and commit their organizations to meeting certain standards. But these measures lack teeth and often require organizations to act as a whistleblower against a partner agency. As a result, they are almost universally ignored in practice.

A respondent to Bruckner's top piece says he's afraid to alarm the natives:

Although open accounting can seem like a good practice, it is very tricky in poor countries. I have been running international projects for twenty years. The rent on my house is higher than the salary of many of my staff. My salary is nearly triple the highest local salary. Additionally, my top staff is paid well–many times more than what our beneficiaries receive. I think that telling our beneficiaries how much we earn would reinforce the gap between them and us. It would also complicate relations with our government partners (who earn less). I am always happy to share general information about costs (our program in the Haitian-Dominican borderlands is around $650,000/year), but see little upside to sharing details.

I bet he votes Democrat.

Today is the birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge, opened in 1883, ranked as one of the technological wonders of the world for its great span and innovative construction methods. Next to the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge was iconic of the United States’ reach for freedom and for advancement.

Gabriel Cohen tells the history of the con game named after the bridge.

Since the bridge was completed in 1883, the idea of illegally selling it has become the ultimate example of the power of persuasion. A good salesman could sell it, a great swindler would sell it, and the perfect sucker would fall for the scam.

Today’s political con artists don’t have a bridge to stand on. They peddle the illusion that spending money one doesn’t have is the path to freedom and advancement instead of to digging holes in the water that will drown us and our children in debts that will enslave and regress us to the control of those who direct our labor and choices to feed their power.

Harvard professor Ruth Wisse, author of Jews and Power, argues that the defensive self-blame and even self-abasement that Jews adopted in the millennia since the fall of the Temple is counterproductive to survival.

This argument is at the heart of today’s critiques of Obama’s feckless and failing foreign policy.

On May 20, Wisse addressed the thirteen Jewish cadets graduating West Point.the Naval Academy.  The Weekly Standard has the text.

Wisse uses the humor about schlemiels to make her point.  There are many definitions of the Yiddish term, mostly varying in emphasis, but basically a schlemiel is naïve, gullible, even a simpleton.

Wisse starts with some Old World jokes about schlemiels in combat who don’t recognize they are in a mortal situation.  Then Wisse comments:

Hilarious in Yiddish, this joke hardly works in English, which has trouble imagining someone so unworldly that he cannot grasp that a man may be shot just for stepping on the wrong side of a border. The joke may likewise fall flat because we now know what happened to the people who created those jokes. They were slaughtered in the millions. What we call the Holocaust targeted precisely the population that created schlemiel comedy. We learned from that episode that sweetness was no laughing matter and that joking—which momentarily releases tension—offered no defense against real belligerents. The schlemiel who initially made us laugh also taught us to raise our guard.When I wrote about the schlemiel in the 1960s, I had in mind the culture of Jews, but nowadays, we Americans similarly confront enemies who intend to destroy our way of life. Like the Jews of Europe, we are tempted to ignore them. We enjoy getting along with the rest of the world. We have no passion for war, favoring peace and prosperity. Like the schlemiel, some among us think that warfare is a ridiculous pursuit….

A schlemiel doesn’t know how to find the notch in a saw.  Sound like Obama? Oy vey!

But, it's even worse than that among many leading Jews, as Jennifer Rubin points out about the Rabbis selected as safe for Obama to meet with:

This is what passes for “leadership” in American Jewry. A kabuki dance is orchestrated by an Obama fan to gather other Obama fans to air the mildest criticism and to avoid challenging the factual representations of an administration that is the most hostile to the Jewish state in history. As one Israeli hand who definitely isn’t going to be invited to any meetings with this president put it: “They may be fine rabbis, but they are out of their league here.” And by not directly and strongly taking on the president, they are, in fact, enabling the president’s anti-Israel stance. It is, come to think of it, more than an embarrassment; it is an egregious misuse of their status and it is every bit as dangerous as the quietude of American Jews in the 1930s.

Same goes for the Americans of the 1930s.

The New York Times report on President Obama’s speech today to West Point’s graduating class is headlined “President Lays Out Security Strategy Based in Diplomacy.”

That “security strategy based in diplomacy” is actually based in both self-delusion and believing that other nations and foes can be similarly deluded.

“Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system,” the president told graduating cadets. “But America has not succeeded by stepping outside the currents of international cooperation. We have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice, so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities, and face consequences when they don’t.”

Mr. Obama said the United States “will be steadfast in strengthening those old alliances that have served us so well” while also trying to “build new partnerships and shape stronger international standards and institutions.” He added: “This engagement is not an end in itself. The international order we seek is one that can resolve the challenges of our times.”

On the other hand of reality, as Belmont Club’s Richard Fernandez sums up the dysfunctional Obama foreign policy, that no one abroad wants much part of:

It’s easy to believe the dysfunction is real. Faced by the linked yet separate crises in the Middle East and in Northeast Asia the Obama administration is acting like it was shot through the central nervous system, acting in uncoordinated jerks. The alliances with Korea and Japan and the special relationships with Israel and Britain lie almost forgotten like neglected toys on the floor of a spoiled child distracted by his latest bauble. Gone are the heady prospects of Grand Bargains with the Muslim world kicked off by dramatic speeches in Cairo. Gone is the idea of a swift drawdown from Iraq; or of a comprehensive solution in the Middle East. Gone is the promise of catching Osama Bin Laden. Gone is the notion that Europe, which once hated America because of George Bush, would turn like a blossoming rose to Obama. In their place are half-finished begun threads without closure: a growing Hezbollah menace in Lebanon; a defiant Iran; a belligerent North Korea; a buffoonish but menacing Chavez; a drug war on the southern border; an Eastern Europe with the shadow of the Russian bear growing ever longer across it.

Good luck, West Pointers.

Peter Beinhart’s essay in the leftwards, critical of Israel New York Review of Books, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment”, is garnering praise from the usual quarters for asserting based on a seven-year old focus group that younger American Jews are not as committed to, even conscious of, Israel as their elders.  Beinhart: “One reason is that the leading institutions of American Jewry have refused to foster—indeed, have actively opposed—a Zionism that challenges Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and toward its own Arab citizens.”  The mission: “Saving liberal Zionism in the United States—so that American Jews can help save liberal Zionism in Israel—is the great American Jewish challenge of our age.”  Beinhart’s “liberal Zionism” is difficult to distinguish from that of ultra-left Jews who bash Israel or demur to the bashers and apologize for Obama’s dangerous domestic and foreign inanities.

In effect, Beinhart is saying that he wants to export American liberal illusions to Israel, which would increase the support for Israel among liberal Americans, Jewish or other.  Beinhart’s cure for the failure of American liberals’ illusions is to enlarge the illusion by blaming its failures on those who live in the real world for not embracing it.

There’s another approach to criticizing much of the American Jewish leadership.  They forget when liberalism entailed recognizing the difference between friend and foe, and cling to liberalism’s current inability to be willing to deal with unaffordable largesse and unpersuadable enemies. Most are in schizo crisis between their attachment to the Democrat Party and their own access to the halls of power versus their recognition that it has become an undependable ally of Israel.

Israel is successful, exists, because – aside from a vocal but tiny minority clustered behind Ivory towers – it prospers due to the breakout of entrepreneurs from past socialist dominance over the economy and it endures due to being willing to fight when necessary.

Beinhart is simplistically blind to his and fellows’ priority in being part of the liberal herd, regardless the consequences.  Following the Beinharts of American liberalism is to leap with the lemmings.

P.S.: Another critique.