It's no secret that all sides in the Iranian nuclear standoff are preparing for war. I'm getting ready too and will be on a plane as soon as I am called up.
One thing that may surprise regular readers is that I actually am ok with the Obama approach on this looming conflict. I don't like much about Obama. I tend to agree with those who accuse him of engaging in class warfare (especially since I am a high income earner and thus the target of much of his rhetoric). In fact, I don't think there is much that Obama has done that merits anything more positive than slight disgust (with much of it meriting copious disgust). He's been a horrible President and seems to govern by pitting one group against another (something President Bush never did) and passing off the blame for his failures to prior administrations (even though he was in Congress at that time, so he obviously has culpability for what happened from 2006 onward).
But when it comes to Iran, I think that the "go slow, use sanctions" approach is the right one. This is not because my ass is on the line in any war that breaks out. I've been in combat with Iranian proxies before (Hezbollah) and am not afraid of fighting them again. If I am killed, so be it. I am willing to die to defend my people. And I absolutely believe that the Iranian regime is more than willing to slaughter millions of innocent people in order to strike at Israel. Anyone who has a basic knowledge of post-Shah Iranian history knows that the Iranian theocracy has not hesitated in torturing, maiming and killing their own people in great numbers (read A Time to Betray, a book by a former Iranian Revolutionary Guard, for an excellent glimpse at the Islamic regime's brutality).
So in order to harm the ultimate enemy (Israel and Jews), one has to believe that they will happily exchange hundreds of thousands or millions of causalities (even Muslim ones) to hobble or destroy Israel.
Thus, I am very aware that the Iranian threat is real, that them having nuclear weapons would be catastrophic and that preventing them from obtaining such weapons is worth going to war.
BUT, and I say this with no respect for President Obama otherwise (I keep hearing the voice of Jen Kirkman saying "he's a BIG NERD", from her brilliant CD Hail to the Freaks*), the last thing we need is for the Iranian people, who generally despise the Islamic regime that holds them hostage, to be galvanized against an outside force attacking them.
My hope is that the sanctions will make life so difficult for the Iranian people that they finally rise up against the Mullahs and overturn the entire regime. This nearly happened a few years ago when Ahmadenijad stole the election and I think there is a very good chance of it happening, successfully, if the Iranian people blame their leaders for the suffering they endure from sanctions. It is well known that most Iranians hate their leaders and would institute a less oppressive, less antagonistic regime if they were desperate enough. I think we're on the cusp of that happening now and if the US and/or Israel were to militarily attack Iran the people would have no choice but to back their ruling regime.
I can not emphasize enough how much I dislike Obama, and I don't think he is doing this deliberately, but the use of sanctions rather than military action is the right way to go. At the point where the Iranians are almost in possession of nuclear weapons, this position will change, but for now we have to go with sanctions.
*Yes, I know, I am politically conservative and she is politically liberal, and there is no reason for her to be one of my heroes, but she's smart and funny and if you listen to her comedy or read her tweets you'll see that this is one rare circumstance where a liberal is thought provoking.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Best of 2011
I am particularly proud of my marksmanship skills and 2011 was a year in which those skills were displayed, gloriously. Not counting hunting shots, this is what I am most proud of. I took my .308 bolt rifle out earlier this year and went shooting at a ranch near Shasta.
Keeping this post short, the story is that I set up some targets from 300-400 yards away with a few of them hung on a barbed wire fence. My shooting buddy bet me that I couldn't hit the barbed wire and after a few ranging shots I did it. Then he upped the bet and said my first hit was pure luck and there was no way I could do it again.
So without further delay, pictures of that event.
First pic is my rifle set up with the targets so far away you can't even see them (it was over 3 football fields away).
Second pic is of the target on the barbed wire, before the shot.
Last pic is of the barbed wire, cleanly cut by my bullet.
Maybe I easily impress myself, but being able to put a bullet that is 1/3 of an inch in diameter through a piece of barbed wire from over 300 yards away gives me warm and fuzzy feelings.
Keeping this post short, the story is that I set up some targets from 300-400 yards away with a few of them hung on a barbed wire fence. My shooting buddy bet me that I couldn't hit the barbed wire and after a few ranging shots I did it. Then he upped the bet and said my first hit was pure luck and there was no way I could do it again.
So without further delay, pictures of that event.
First pic is my rifle set up with the targets so far away you can't even see them (it was over 3 football fields away).
Second pic is of the target on the barbed wire, before the shot.
Last pic is of the barbed wire, cleanly cut by my bullet.
Maybe I easily impress myself, but being able to put a bullet that is 1/3 of an inch in diameter through a piece of barbed wire from over 300 yards away gives me warm and fuzzy feelings.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
What this Zhid is thankful for on Thanksgiving 2011
With all the OWS hate directed at corporations, I'd like to dedicate this Thanksgiving to corporations.
I'm thankful for the corporations that built and operated the boats that took my mother and grandmother from Europe to America in 1943, saving them from certain death in a socialist government's death camps, and for the corporations that provided the food, clothing and shelter for my family once they did reach the safety of the United States. I'm thankful for the corporations that gave my family, still in a state of shock from having watched the all-powerful central governments of Europe slaughter their loved ones, an opportunity to start a new life here and reach levels of prosperity that would have never been possible in the killing fields of Europe. And I am thankful for the corporations that have done nothing more than given me an opportunity to become the 1%, without regard to what the socialist governments did to my parents and their families in Europe.
I'm thankful for the corporations that built and operated the boats that took my mother and grandmother from Europe to America in 1943, saving them from certain death in a socialist government's death camps, and for the corporations that provided the food, clothing and shelter for my family once they did reach the safety of the United States. I'm thankful for the corporations that gave my family, still in a state of shock from having watched the all-powerful central governments of Europe slaughter their loved ones, an opportunity to start a new life here and reach levels of prosperity that would have never been possible in the killing fields of Europe. And I am thankful for the corporations that have done nothing more than given me an opportunity to become the 1%, without regard to what the socialist governments did to my parents and their families in Europe.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Friday, October 07, 2011
Yom Kippur Thoughts on the Wall Street Protests
I am increasingly uncomfortable with what is happening at the various “Occupy” protests. From what I can gather, the people behind the protests model their movement on the Egyptian protests from earlier this year. The difference appears to be that the US protesters are not protesting against an oppressive, dictatorial government, as those in Egypt did; rather, they seem to be protesting in favor of an all powerful central government.
To begin with, perhaps the US protesters just didn’t see it, but the Egyptian protests had a very strong, overt and violent anti-Jewish theme. On the one hand they were protesting against the abuses of the Mubarak regime but on the other hand they were protesting against having peaceful relations with their Jewish neighbors. It went as far as resulting in assaults against anyone the protesters thought was Jewish or connected to Israel in any way. While I shouldn’t be surprised that the US protesters take inspiration from an anti-Semitic source, since left wing US protests often have a very strong anti-Jewish/anti-Israel theme, I’m still uncomfortable and concerned with this. My concerns are heightened when I see the US protesters tying Jews to Wall Street and control of the US financial system, something that has happened a number of times at the Occupy Wall Street protests.
What the protesters appear to be asking for, from what I can tell, is government intervention that will result in reducing the influence and activities of corporations and transfering wealth from corporations and “wealthy” individuals to the government, for use by the government to somehow provide jobs, housing, healthcare and other everyday needs to the population. If that’s not nationalization and socialism, it’s damn close.
And with that, I have to run the risk of violating Godwin’s Law, because what the Occupy Wall Street folks are doing and saying sounds a lot like this:
Corporations did not kick in the door of my grandparent’s home in Prague and take my grandmother and mother off to camps. Corporations did not create the Jewish ghettos in Europe. Corporations did not slaughter most of my mother’s family and six million more of my people. Corporations did not slaughter over two million Cambodians. Corporations did not cause the death of seven million in the Ukraine. Corporations did not kill over twenty million people in China. Socialist governments did.
All things equal, I’ll take corporations over an omnipotent central government.
So you’ll have to excuse me if I see the Occupy Wall Street protesters as a very troubling movement, but my family’s history, and the recent history of the world, forces me to be a realist.
To begin with, perhaps the US protesters just didn’t see it, but the Egyptian protests had a very strong, overt and violent anti-Jewish theme. On the one hand they were protesting against the abuses of the Mubarak regime but on the other hand they were protesting against having peaceful relations with their Jewish neighbors. It went as far as resulting in assaults against anyone the protesters thought was Jewish or connected to Israel in any way. While I shouldn’t be surprised that the US protesters take inspiration from an anti-Semitic source, since left wing US protests often have a very strong anti-Jewish/anti-Israel theme, I’m still uncomfortable and concerned with this. My concerns are heightened when I see the US protesters tying Jews to Wall Street and control of the US financial system, something that has happened a number of times at the Occupy Wall Street protests.
What the protesters appear to be asking for, from what I can tell, is government intervention that will result in reducing the influence and activities of corporations and transfering wealth from corporations and “wealthy” individuals to the government, for use by the government to somehow provide jobs, housing, healthcare and other everyday needs to the population. If that’s not nationalization and socialism, it’s damn close.
And with that, I have to run the risk of violating Godwin’s Law, because what the Occupy Wall Street folks are doing and saying sounds a lot like this:
“Hitler, both in public and in private, expressed strong disdain for capitalism, accusing modern capitalism of holding nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan rentier class. He opposed free-market capitalism's profit-seeking impulses and desired an economy in which community interests would be upheld. He distrusted capitalism for being unreliable, due to its egotistic nature, and he preferred a state-directed economy that is subordinated to the interests of the Volk. Hitler told a party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day is the creation of the Jews." Hitler said to Benito Mussolini that "Capitalism had run its course". Hitler also said that that business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them." Hitler admired Napoleon as a role model for his anti-conservative, anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois attitudes.”
Corporations did not kick in the door of my grandparent’s home in Prague and take my grandmother and mother off to camps. Corporations did not create the Jewish ghettos in Europe. Corporations did not slaughter most of my mother’s family and six million more of my people. Corporations did not slaughter over two million Cambodians. Corporations did not cause the death of seven million in the Ukraine. Corporations did not kill over twenty million people in China. Socialist governments did.
All things equal, I’ll take corporations over an omnipotent central government.
So you’ll have to excuse me if I see the Occupy Wall Street protesters as a very troubling movement, but my family’s history, and the recent history of the world, forces me to be a realist.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Jewish Political Lemmings At The Brink
I woke up today, proud of American Jewish voters for the first time in my life. Usually, you can count on American Jews to vote in overwhelming numbers for Democratic candidates and liberal causes. I often think that this voting pattern is a form of self loathing, as liberal/left causes tend to be at odds with Israel and Jewish interests (see, e.g., the anti-war movement, which always includes anti-Israel themes in their protests).
So it was with great joy that I woke this morning to find that my fellow NY Jews (ok, so I'm now on the West Coast, but I am a NY Jew nonetheless) had bucked the decades of lemming like political behavior and elected a conservative candidate to replace Anthony Weiner in Congress with Republican Bob Turner.
The interesting thing is that the Democratic candidate was an orthodox Jew, but like the lemmings who I mentioned earlier, he was a liberal to the core and had adopted liberal politics as his religion. His support for the ground zero mosque and Obama generally was pure liberal dogma.
Conservatives generally are more supportive of Jewish interests (including Israel) and the fact that a New York congressional district has finally acted on this fact, and showed President Obama that his anti-Israel policies are so over the top that not even his core constituency will support him, gives me hope.
There was/is a group in Israel that opposed the deployment of military forces in Lebanon and the territories. While I disagree with what this group does, I have always liked the name of the group: Yesh G'Vul (translated from Hebrew, "There is a limit").
I think that with regard to American Jewish voting patterns, we have finally seen that in the US, as in Israel, Yesh G'Vul. There is a limit to the blind obedience to Democratic/liberal party line and we've reached that limit. The Op Ed by Dan Senor in today's Wall Street Journal does a great job of laying out how the limit was reached. I've pasted it below.
What I'd love to see is a movement in the American Jewish community, one that throws off the yoke of "Jews vote for Democrats" and focuses on getting Jews to vote for conservative candidates. For too long there has been a "look the other way" attitude among American Jews with regard to support of liberal causes that clearly have anti-Jewish agendas.
Yesh G'Vul, American Jews.
So it was with great joy that I woke this morning to find that my fellow NY Jews (ok, so I'm now on the West Coast, but I am a NY Jew nonetheless) had bucked the decades of lemming like political behavior and elected a conservative candidate to replace Anthony Weiner in Congress with Republican Bob Turner.
The interesting thing is that the Democratic candidate was an orthodox Jew, but like the lemmings who I mentioned earlier, he was a liberal to the core and had adopted liberal politics as his religion. His support for the ground zero mosque and Obama generally was pure liberal dogma.
Conservatives generally are more supportive of Jewish interests (including Israel) and the fact that a New York congressional district has finally acted on this fact, and showed President Obama that his anti-Israel policies are so over the top that not even his core constituency will support him, gives me hope.
There was/is a group in Israel that opposed the deployment of military forces in Lebanon and the territories. While I disagree with what this group does, I have always liked the name of the group: Yesh G'Vul (translated from Hebrew, "There is a limit").
I think that with regard to American Jewish voting patterns, we have finally seen that in the US, as in Israel, Yesh G'Vul. There is a limit to the blind obedience to Democratic/liberal party line and we've reached that limit. The Op Ed by Dan Senor in today's Wall Street Journal does a great job of laying out how the limit was reached. I've pasted it below.
What I'd love to see is a movement in the American Jewish community, one that throws off the yoke of "Jews vote for Democrats" and focuses on getting Jews to vote for conservative candidates. For too long there has been a "look the other way" attitude among American Jews with regard to support of liberal causes that clearly have anti-Jewish agendas.
Yesh G'Vul, American Jews.
Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote
He doesn't have a 'messaging' problem. He has a record of bad policies and anti-Israel rhetoric.
By DAN SENOR
New York's special congressional election on Tuesday was the first electoral outcome directly affected by President Obama's Israel policy. Democrats were forced to expend enormous resources in a losing effort to defend this safe Democratic district, covering Queens and Brooklyn, that Anthony Weiner won last year by a comfortable margin.
A Public Policy Poll taken days before the election found a plurality of voters saying that Israel was "very important" in determining their votes. Among those voters, Republican candidate Robert Turner was winning by a 71-22 margin. Only 22% of Jewish voters approved of President Obama's handling of Israel. Ed Koch, the Democrat and former New York mayor, endorsed Mr. Turner because he said he wanted to send a message to the president about his anti-Israel policies.
This is a preview of what President Obama might face in his re-election campaign with a demographic group that voted overwhelmingly for him in 2008. And it could affect the electoral map, given the battleground states—such as Florida and Pennsylvania—with significant Jewish populations. In another ominous barometer for the Obama campaign, its Jewish fund-raising has deeply eroded: One poll by McLaughlin & Associates found that of Jewish donors who donated to Mr. Obama in 2008, only 64% have already donated or plan to donate to his re-election campaign.
The Obama campaign has launched a counteroffensive, including hiring a high-level Jewish outreach director and sending former White House aide David Axelrod and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to reassure Jewish donors. The Obama team told the Washington Post that its Israel problem is a messaging problem, and that with enough explanation of its record the Jewish community will return to the fold in 2012. Here is an inventory of what Mr. Obama's aides will have to address:
• February 2008: When running for president, then-Sen. Obama told an audience in Cleveland: "There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel." Likud had been out of power for two years when Mr. Obama made this statement. At the time the country was being led by the centrist Kadima government of Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Shimon Peres, and Prime Minister Olmert had been pursuing an unprecedented territorial compromise. As for Likud governments, it was under Likud that Israel made its largest territorial compromises—withdrawals from Sinai and Gaza.
• July 2009: Mr. Obama hosted American Jewish leaders at the White House, reportedly telling them that he sought to put "daylight" between America and Israel. "For eight years"—during the Bush administration—"there was no light between the United States and Israel, and nothing got accomplished," he declared.
Nothing? Prime Minister Ariel Sharon uprooted thousands of settlers from their homes in Gaza and the northern West Bank and deployed the Israeli army to forcibly relocate their fellow citizens. Mr. Sharon then resigned from the Likud Party to build a majority party based on a two-state consensus.
In the same meeting with Jewish leaders, Mr. Obama told the group that Israel would need "to engage in serious self-reflection." This statement stunned the Americans in attendance: Israeli society is many things, but lacking in self-reflection isn't one of them. It's impossible to envision the president delivering a similar lecture to Muslim leaders.
• September 2009: In his first address to the U.N. General Assembly, President Obama devoted five paragraphs to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, during which he declared (to loud applause) that "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." He went on to draw a connection between rocket attacks on Israeli civilians with living conditions in Gaza. There was not a single unconditional criticism of Palestinian terrorism.
• March 2010: During Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel, a Jerusalem municipal office announced plans for new construction in a part of Jerusalem. The president launched an unprecedented weeks-long offensive against Israel. Mr. Biden very publicly departed Israel.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton berated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a now-infamous 45-minute phone call, telling him that Israel had "harmed the bilateral relationship." (The State Department triumphantly shared details of the call with the press.) The Israeli ambassador was dressed-down at the State Department, Mr. Obama's Middle East envoy canceled his trip to Israel, and the U.S. joined the European condemnation of Israel.
Moments after Mr. Biden concluded his visit to the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority held a ceremony to honor Dalal Mughrabi, who led one of the deadliest Palestinian terror attacks in history: the so-called Coastal Road Massacre that killed 38, including 13 children and an American. The Obama administration was silent. But that same day, on ABC, Mr. Axelrod called Israel's planned construction of apartments in its own capital an "insult" and an "affront" to the United States. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went on Fox News to accuse Mr. Netanyahu of "weakening trust" between the two countries.
Ten days later, Mr. Netanyahu traveled to Washington to mend fences but was snubbed at a White House meeting with President Obama—no photo op, no joint statement, and he was sent out through a side door.
• April 2010: Mr. Netanyahu pulled out of the Obama-sponsored Washington summit on nuclear proliferation after it became clear that Turkey and Egypt intended to use the occasion to condemn the Israeli nuclear program, and Mr. Obama would not intervene.
• March 2011: Mr. Obama returned to his habit of urging Israelis to engage in self-reflection, inviting Jewish community leaders to the White House and instructing them to "search your souls" about Israel's dedication to peace.
• May 2011: The State Department issued a press release declaring that the department's No. 2 official, James Steinberg, would be visiting "Israel, Jerusalem, and the West Bank." In other words, Jerusalem is not part of Israel. Later in the month, only hours before Mr. Netanyahu departed from Israel to Washington, Mr. Obama delivered his Arab Spring speech, which focused on a demand that Israel return to its indefensible pre-1967 borders with land swaps.
Mr. Obama has made some meaningful exceptions, particularly having to do with security partnership, but overall he has built the most consistently one-sided diplomatic record against Israel of any American president in generations. His problem with Jewish voters is one of substance, not messaging.
Mr. Senor is co-author with Saul Singer of "Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle" (Twelve, 2011). He served as a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
How a man I never met changed the way I look at the world
No one wakes up on a particular day and thinks “today, I will be a hero.” Anyone who would even consider thinking such a thing has no idea what heroism truly is. And, unfortunately, as much as many of us would like for there to be an abundance of heroes, the truth is that most of those deemed to be heroes are far from it.
To our benefit, we do have heroes in our society and they are not the type of people that you’d normally associate with the term. My brother and cousin
currently serve in the military and have been deployed numerous times to fight various wars. My father and uncles served in World War II, from Pearl Harbor through Guadalcanal, the air war over Europe and through the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Japan and the post-war occupation.
They aren’t heroes. They all knew what we were getting into when they enlisted (or were drafted) and they were doing our jobs. If you think that a soldier (or a police officer or firefighter) doesn’t start every day with the realization that this may be the day that he or she will be called upon to visit violence or danger and possibly give up life or limb for the job you are wrong. Putting life on the line is a volitional, deliberate choice made by those in uniform.
I am certain that on the morning of September 11, 2001, as Tom Burnett was rushing to catch an early morning flight, United 93, out of Newark to his home in San Ramon, California (where I am writing this post), the prospect of giving his life in battle that day was the last thing on his mind. As it happened, though, Tom, along with Mark Bingham and Jeremy Glick, fought the first battle against al Qaeda on (or above) American soil and gave their lives that monumental morning. Those who faced death on Flight 93 and chose to defy the certain horror that was about to occur, with the slim hope of survival but the more realistic expectation that they would surely die fighting their executioners, are the rare heroes of our time.
Close to my office is the overpass in the attached picture. This overpass, in Tom Burnett’s last hometown of San Ramon, California, was renamed in Tom’s honor. Most people never notice the sign and as time goes by, fewer people even know who Tom was or what happened that morning on Flight 93. I confidently state that were Tom to have been informed of what would happen prior to his boarding that flight, he would have chosen to not be a hero and would have done everything possible to avoid the flight return to San Ramon alive. That’s the truth about heroes-they never choose their fate and the honor is a woeful consolation to the sacrifices they made. There is something about the banality of an overpass that almost causes me to think that the sacrifices and courage of the passengers on Flight 93 is being trivialized by such a memorial. Monumental heroism and bravery condensed down into a plain sign on an unknown overpass merely mocks the magnitude of what happened that morning.
I avoid driving over the overpass, as I cry every time I see the sign in the attached picture, remembering that terrible morning and contemplating the enormous courage and sacrifice made by those brave folks on Flight 93. Today, I made an exception to tie a yellow ribbon around the otherwise bare signpost in memory of the greatest of American heroes. True American heroes are rare, but Flight 93 was crowded with them that morning.
To our benefit, we do have heroes in our society and they are not the type of people that you’d normally associate with the term. My brother and cousin
currently serve in the military and have been deployed numerous times to fight various wars. My father and uncles served in World War II, from Pearl Harbor through Guadalcanal, the air war over Europe and through the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Japan and the post-war occupation.
They aren’t heroes. They all knew what we were getting into when they enlisted (or were drafted) and they were doing our jobs. If you think that a soldier (or a police officer or firefighter) doesn’t start every day with the realization that this may be the day that he or she will be called upon to visit violence or danger and possibly give up life or limb for the job you are wrong. Putting life on the line is a volitional, deliberate choice made by those in uniform.
I am certain that on the morning of September 11, 2001, as Tom Burnett was rushing to catch an early morning flight, United 93, out of Newark to his home in San Ramon, California (where I am writing this post), the prospect of giving his life in battle that day was the last thing on his mind. As it happened, though, Tom, along with Mark Bingham and Jeremy Glick, fought the first battle against al Qaeda on (or above) American soil and gave their lives that monumental morning. Those who faced death on Flight 93 and chose to defy the certain horror that was about to occur, with the slim hope of survival but the more realistic expectation that they would surely die fighting their executioners, are the rare heroes of our time.
Close to my office is the overpass in the attached picture. This overpass, in Tom Burnett’s last hometown of San Ramon, California, was renamed in Tom’s honor. Most people never notice the sign and as time goes by, fewer people even know who Tom was or what happened that morning on Flight 93. I confidently state that were Tom to have been informed of what would happen prior to his boarding that flight, he would have chosen to not be a hero and would have done everything possible to avoid the flight return to San Ramon alive. That’s the truth about heroes-they never choose their fate and the honor is a woeful consolation to the sacrifices they made. There is something about the banality of an overpass that almost causes me to think that the sacrifices and courage of the passengers on Flight 93 is being trivialized by such a memorial. Monumental heroism and bravery condensed down into a plain sign on an unknown overpass merely mocks the magnitude of what happened that morning.
I avoid driving over the overpass, as I cry every time I see the sign in the attached picture, remembering that terrible morning and contemplating the enormous courage and sacrifice made by those brave folks on Flight 93. Today, I made an exception to tie a yellow ribbon around the otherwise bare signpost in memory of the greatest of American heroes. True American heroes are rare, but Flight 93 was crowded with them that morning.
Monday, May 23, 2011
On the meaning of the "1967 Lines"
I have to wonder why people believe that 1967 lines represent some sort of set in stone boundary with regard to a Palestinian Arab state. The one thing that people (especially those who support the Palestinian Arabs) conveniently dismiss is the basic fact that there has never been a Palestinian Arab state. Thus, any borders of a Palestinian Arab state would have to be artificial and arbitrary, so to insist that Israel retreat to the lines pre-6 Day War is nonsense. Those lines had Jordan and Egypt as neighboring countries.
The 1967 lines really are invoked due to UN Resolution 242, and 242 was never intended to be a declaration of the borders of a Palestinian Arab state. The territories referred to in 242 were subject to dispute between Jordan, Egypt and Syria and I think that any honest historian will admit that 242 was intended to ensure that whatever peace Israel made with Jordan, Egypt and Syria, the borders of Israel that existed prior to the 6 Day War would be expanded in some regard. The security of Israel was paramount, trumping the need to hew to some artificial and fluctuating line on a map. The fact that Jordan was considered to be the Palestinian Arab homeland (with Israel being the Jewish homeland) can not be ignored either, as the likely outcome of 242 was expected by many to be the absorption of the Palestinian Arab population in the disputed territories by Jordan, which had and would continue to have a Palestinian Arab majority.
I can’t say what the starting point of negotiations should be, but people should have one thing clearly in mind when discussing lines and borders: unless Jordan and Egypt step up and decide that they will take control of the West Bank and Gaza and absorb the Palestinian Arab populations therein, with full rights as citizens of the respective countries, I don’t think that the 1967 borders should be the starting point for any negotiations that lead to the creation of a new Palestinian Arab state (to me, a non-starter, as Jordan should be recognized as “Palestine” for purposes of the Arab population, even though Jordan made the Palestinian Arabs holding Jordanian citizenship stateless by unilaterally revoking citizenship in recent years.
The 1967 lines really are invoked due to UN Resolution 242, and 242 was never intended to be a declaration of the borders of a Palestinian Arab state. The territories referred to in 242 were subject to dispute between Jordan, Egypt and Syria and I think that any honest historian will admit that 242 was intended to ensure that whatever peace Israel made with Jordan, Egypt and Syria, the borders of Israel that existed prior to the 6 Day War would be expanded in some regard. The security of Israel was paramount, trumping the need to hew to some artificial and fluctuating line on a map. The fact that Jordan was considered to be the Palestinian Arab homeland (with Israel being the Jewish homeland) can not be ignored either, as the likely outcome of 242 was expected by many to be the absorption of the Palestinian Arab population in the disputed territories by Jordan, which had and would continue to have a Palestinian Arab majority.
I can’t say what the starting point of negotiations should be, but people should have one thing clearly in mind when discussing lines and borders: unless Jordan and Egypt step up and decide that they will take control of the West Bank and Gaza and absorb the Palestinian Arab populations therein, with full rights as citizens of the respective countries, I don’t think that the 1967 borders should be the starting point for any negotiations that lead to the creation of a new Palestinian Arab state (to me, a non-starter, as Jordan should be recognized as “Palestine” for purposes of the Arab population, even though Jordan made the Palestinian Arabs holding Jordanian citizenship stateless by unilaterally revoking citizenship in recent years.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
The most despicable political betrayal of my lifetime
The post below says it better than I could have, on my best day, but the sense of betrayal every American Jew should be feeling right now is blood boiling. There is no way Obama should be supported for re-election by any Jew or friend of Israel. What he has done is validate every act of terror, every repudiation of peace, every drop of blood shed by the Palestinian Arabs and their henchmen.
We have seen with Egypt that a peace treaty is worthless. The only thing that counts, in terms of survival, is defensible space. And now, the President of the United States has demanded that Israel give up the slight bit of defensible state it had, with no conditions whatsoever. עין הרע on the despicable Obama.
We have seen with Egypt that a peace treaty is worthless. The only thing that counts, in terms of survival, is defensible space. And now, the President of the United States has demanded that Israel give up the slight bit of defensible state it had, with no conditions whatsoever. עין הרע on the despicable Obama.
President Obama has just finished his speech at the State Department. Much of it, particularly the sections regarding democratization and the Arab dictators whose regimes have begun to fail, echoes in many ways the very policies of the Bush administration — which the Democrats and Obama supporters disparaged and ridiculed when George W. Bush was in power. Indeed, it seems in some ways to be a rejection of his own Cairo speech, in so much as he said that for many of the Arab states, attacking Israel was the only way that Arab rulers could allow their populations to express themselves.
Yet, the bombshell in the speech is the following:
So while the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, and a secure Israel. The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.
What the president has said is essentially that rather than borders and boundaries being established as an end result of negotiations, the two states that will be created should be based on the 1967 lines, a conclusion that gives the Palestinian Authority its own desired boundaries — and takes away from Israel the necessary buffer zone it gained after the 1967 war, and from which it has been able to prevent attacks on its own people.
It is akin to the policy in which the Obama administration focused on their demand that Israel give up settlements, leading Fatah and Abbas to adopt a position that, until then, they were willing to negotiate. Ultimately, it put them in a corner from which they could not back down.
Moreover, the newly developed Hamas-Fatah “unity government” agreement has already made it clear that the Palestinian leadership will not honor the requirement that the existence of a Jewish state in the region must be accepted. As the president put it, “how can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist?” Not only have the PA leadership not provided “a credible answer to that question,” they have in effect done the exact opposite — made it clear that they will never do what is required.
In effect, the president is rewarding Abbas for his bad behavior, after the PA leader’s own recent op-ed in The New York Times in which he revealed his intransigence. Statehood, as he perceives it, is not an end in itself, but is put forth as the new means for waging a continuing war against Israel. That is why Jackson Diehl’s article in The Washington Post is so important. Diehl points out: “Desperate to jump-start an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Obama administration and its European allies are piling pressure on Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu, demanding that he offer a plan, concessions — something — that will provide the basis for starting negotiations with Palestinians.”
Diehl notes that Netanyahu made it clear last week when he announced a willingness to cede much of the West Bank to a new Palestinian state, a major concession. Yet, in contrast, Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the “moderate” wing of the Palestinian movement, “is not only refusing to make any concessions of his own but is also turning his back on American diplomacy — and methodically setting the stage for another Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” His new agreement with Hamas will require him to do exactly the opposite of steps that could lead to peace, including firing the Palestinian PM, releasing Hamas militants from jail, and equipping the new security forces with arms from Iran. Moreover, he is committed to seeking a U.N. General Assembly vote on a Palestinian state which even President Obama called in his speech today a “symbolic” action that is meant to isolate Israel and “won’t create an independent state.”
Abbas means, as he wrote in his op-ed, that he wants to pursue claims against Israel at the U.N., before human rights groups bring Israel to the International Court of Justice — all a path for sanctions against the Jewish state. He favors not a peace treaty leading to statehood, but statehood first and then negotiations, including the acceptance of the so-called “right of return.” Of course, as Diehl writes about the Palestinians, their “return to Israel would mean its demise.” In other words, the very deligitimazation of Israel that our president said today must come to an end would be realized.
So when the president starts by announcing his support for the Palestinians’ favored borders in advance of negotiations, he is actually, as Diehl writes, saying that his policy is: “Now we really have to put the screws to Netanyahu.” And he also, in effect, tells American Jews that “Abbas is ready to make peace,” which of course he is not — and this leads to the false conclusion that “Netanyahu is the problem.”
As Diehl concludes:
The record of the past several years suggests something very different. In 2008, Abbas refused to accept a far-reaching peace offer from Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, even as a basis for discussion; nor would he make a counteroffer. “The gaps were wide,” he later told me in an interview. For two years he has stoutly resisted peace talks with Netanyahu, even while conceding that the nominal reason for his intransigence — Israel’s refusal to freeze settlements — was forced on him by Obama.
Abbas’s goal, of trying to transform the Arab Spring into a new mass movement against Israel, is not what President Obama seems to think the outcome of the awakening in the Middle East will lead to. Only one side — that of Fatah and Hamas — is refusing to make the kind of concessions that will lead to peace. This is why the president’s outrageous endorsement of the ’67 borders only emboldens Abbas in his intransigence, and harms the ability of Netanyahu to make necessary concessions for peace.
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Israeli journalist Yossi Klein Halevi wrote that in his speech to the Knesset last week, Netanyahu ended the ideological impasse in Israel about whether or not there should be a two-state solution, and thus positioned “his Likud Party within the centrist majority that seeks to end the occupation of the Palestinians but is wary of the security consequences. There is no longer any major Israeli party that rejects a West Bank withdrawal on ideological grounds. Instead, the debate is now focused where most Israelis want it to be: on how to ensure that a Palestinian state won’t pose an existential threat to their country.”
To obtain support for this far-reaching concession, “Israel, he said, would insist on retaining the large settlement blocs near the 1967 border — and not, therefore, the smaller, isolated settlements outside the blocs. Israel, he added, would also insist on a military presence in the Jordan Valley — and not, therefore, on retaining settlements there.” Obama’s insistence on the ’67 borders, of course, interferes with precisely this decision of Netanyahu. Halevi writes:
None of this is likely to happen anytime soon. Mr. Netanyahu’s concessions aren’t enough to meet minimal Palestinian demands — and for now at least that hardly matters. Conditions for a resumption of negotiations, let alone for an agreement, couldn’t be worse. With the genocidal Hamas now aligned with the Palestinian Authority, and with PA head Mahmoud Abbas insisting on some form of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, not even Israel’s opposition party, Kadima, would be able to reach a deal.
True, and that is why President Obama’s speech, despite its florid vision of two peoples living in peace, is so dangerous. The president spoke as if it is Israel, and not Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas, who is the obstacle to his desired two-state solution. Hence, if the Arab-Israeli conflict is not to “cast a shadow over the region” anymore, that means there should be a U.S. policy that puts pressure where it should be put — on the Palestinian Authority and not on Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel, as Halevi puts it, will cede the right of return of Jews to a greater Israel in return for Palestinians ceding the right of return of their refugees to greater Palestine. The pragmatic hawks in power in Israel today are willing to do this; the ideological extremists of Hamas and the PA are not. Netanyahu is indeed willing to cede land for peace; the Palestinians seem instead to be ready for all-out war against Israel in defense of gaining all of old Palestine for themselves.
As we prepare to listen to President Obama’s forthcoming speech to AIPAC this coming Sunday morning, do not expect a massive ovation and cheers for the president from what is likely to be a a most skeptical and demanding audience.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
This is what terrorism really looks like
This is terrorism. The response to this, which hopefully is swift and devastating, will be deemed terrorism by the Jew hating world community and the brutal slaughter of this family will be conveniently ignored by those who condemn the Israeli response.
Nostalgia for the Evil Empire
Just a random thought after seeing the Arab world's dictators fall one by one, to be replaced by mobs of fanatics...I'm starting to wonder whether dictatorial regimes are all that bad. Remember back when the Soviet Union existed? The one thing you can say is that they definitely kept a lid on Islamic extremism. I'm wondering whether the evil we know (Qaddafi, Mubarak, Hussein, Assad, etc.), as despicable as they are, is at least predictable and rational, at least to a greater degree than those that fill the power vacuum when they are gone. As one commenter ( Jaysboytoy ) emailed me, there may be some value in rooting for Qaddafi to win. I can't say I understood how Jaysboytoy found Libya to be much like Mill Valley, and I didn't know that hermits actually existed, but the point remains.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
From California to Egypt
I had to take a quick trip from San Francisco to LA yesterday for a meeting. As the plane was preparing to land at Burbank I looked out on the LA area and thought about how large it was and how the geography really resembles part of the Middle East.
Burbank is about 15 miles from the office in downtown LA that I was going to (the evil Latham & Watkins law firm) and on a good day it takes about half an hour door to door from the Burbank airport. As I was in the cab heading down I-5 the news on the radio portrayed an ever deteriorating situation in Egypt and that really struck me, in light of the view from the airplane window a few minutes earlier.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am an unabashed Zionist and I lived in Israel and served in its army for three years after I graduated from college in 1986. Most of the time I was in the army was spent in the north of the country near or in Lebanon but the last few months were spent at the southern tip of the country, along the Egyptian and Jordanian borders on the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba.
At the time, there was a fairly nasty war still raging between Israel and Lebanon (unfortunately, it still exists and the sons of my fellow early 20s soldiers are now serving along the Lebanese border, fighting the same war we were fighting) but there was calm in the south. There was a peace treaty in effect with Egypt and a peace treaty with Jordan was all but in existence (it took a few more years to be finalized and signed, but the relations were good).
There was a massive surrender of territory by Israel as part of the Egypt peace treaty (the entire Sinai peninsula, an area larger than the remaining land of Israel) and we were told that if Israel would give up more land in Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and withdraw from Lebanon, there would be peace on all borders.
The peace with Egypt wasn’t perfect but it was workable. I sometimes joke that I invaded Egypt in 1988 and there is a bit of truth to it. Some tourist companies in Eilat, Israel (not far from the base I was stationed at in the south) used to have gambling cruises on the Red Sea, departing from Eilat, cruising south past Aqaba, Jordan, along the Israeli sea border with Egypt and turning around before hitting the western border of Saudi Arabia (it may sound like a large area but it’s just a few miles).
I went on one of these cruises one weekend on leave from the base. I didn’t realize that the cruise went past the curfew that the base had so as we were still heading south along the Egyptian border I asked the ship’s captain if there was a way to get me back to Eilat. He obliged with one of the lifeboats (a tiny little thing with an outboard motor like you’d see on a small lake) and one of the ship’s staff to drive the boat. It was dark, to the west was Egypt, to the southeast Saudi Arabia and to the north Israel and Jordan. I had no idea where we were, precisely, and trusted the guy driving the boat to get me to Eilat. Sooner than I expected, he runs the boat ashore and tells me that the lights that we could see in the distance were Eilat and he had to leave me at this spot. Oh, by the way, I was in uniform at the time.
So I got off the boat and started walking up the dirt road to the lights. I reached them to find out that they were not Eilat. Rather, they were the border between Egypt and Israel and I was on the Egyptian side. In an Israeli army uniform. Luckily, after the Egyptian border guards recovered from the shock of seeing an idiotic Israeli soldier wandering in their desert, they laughed at my story, asked me for cigarettes (which I had, and which I gave them eagerly) and called a cab from Eilat to pick me up.
There are a few points to this story.
First, the distances in the Middle East, in regards to Israel, are much smaller than most Americans would imagine. You can easily cross a border by mistake. And the populated areas are even closer than that. Going back to the Burbank to downtown LA point, the distance from Tel Aviv, on the Mediterranean shore, to Jerusalem, which is where the West Bank would start under certain proposed peace plans, is about 35 miles.
That’s Burbank to Torrance.
It’s also the same distance from the border with Egypt to Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv to the Lebanon border? About 75 miles. That’s roughly Burbank to Riverside.
We’re talking distance within the metropolitan Los Angeles area that encompass the entire area of the populated areas of Israel.
Second, we have always been told that if Israel would simply give up more territory there would be peace.
The events taking place in Egypt make clear how useless a peace treaty is. Consider this quote from a recent news story:
If the people of Egypt hate Israel so much that even now, 30 years after a peace treaty was signed, they are invoking the symbol of Israel to express their hateful rage at their own leader, and consider Israel to still be their “archenemy”, what will happen when Mubarak falls and someone who is more in line with the people’s will comes into power?
If you lived in downtown LA and the people of Riverside were hanging you in effigy and calling for your death would you want a pretty strong wall around LA? Would you be willing to give up land that provided you with a security barrier in exchange for a piece of paper that clearly has absolutely no meaning and provide no security?
The third point, and hopefully the one that ties together the story and the previous two points, is that there is no peace possible right now in the Middle East. You can’t demand that one party give up something that can never be recovered (land) in exchange for the other party’s unenforceable pledge of peace.
This isn’t California to Iowa type of distances we’re talking about. It’s not even Los Angeles to San Diego.
I wish I had a better answer for how to bring peace to the Middle East but the one thing I know is that making an already difficult to defend land mass even smaller, with nothing more than a pledge of non-violence by a government that is hated by its own people in return, does not work.
I’m pretty sure that the answer is a generational one. We Israelis (and I count myself as one, even though I was born in the USA and live in the USA and only spent three years living in Israel) are not angels. The one thing I know, however, is that we don’t hate our neighbors. We’re afraid of them, and we sometimes do terrible things as a result of fear, but I assure you that if Israel disarmed there would be no hesitation on the part of the Arab countries to destroy Israel.
I’ve seen children’s TV shows from Arab countries that teach kids that Jews are evil and the enemy. No such thing exists in Israel. If you want peace, you have to first stop the indoctrination of hate, wait for the current generation to die off and then hope that the next generation can develop into peace loving people.
But handing over land to someone who is hung in effigy by his own people with the symbol of your people splattered on his corpse is not going to work.
Burbank is about 15 miles from the office in downtown LA that I was going to (the evil Latham & Watkins law firm) and on a good day it takes about half an hour door to door from the Burbank airport. As I was in the cab heading down I-5 the news on the radio portrayed an ever deteriorating situation in Egypt and that really struck me, in light of the view from the airplane window a few minutes earlier.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am an unabashed Zionist and I lived in Israel and served in its army for three years after I graduated from college in 1986. Most of the time I was in the army was spent in the north of the country near or in Lebanon but the last few months were spent at the southern tip of the country, along the Egyptian and Jordanian borders on the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba.
At the time, there was a fairly nasty war still raging between Israel and Lebanon (unfortunately, it still exists and the sons of my fellow early 20s soldiers are now serving along the Lebanese border, fighting the same war we were fighting) but there was calm in the south. There was a peace treaty in effect with Egypt and a peace treaty with Jordan was all but in existence (it took a few more years to be finalized and signed, but the relations were good).
There was a massive surrender of territory by Israel as part of the Egypt peace treaty (the entire Sinai peninsula, an area larger than the remaining land of Israel) and we were told that if Israel would give up more land in Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and withdraw from Lebanon, there would be peace on all borders.
The peace with Egypt wasn’t perfect but it was workable. I sometimes joke that I invaded Egypt in 1988 and there is a bit of truth to it. Some tourist companies in Eilat, Israel (not far from the base I was stationed at in the south) used to have gambling cruises on the Red Sea, departing from Eilat, cruising south past Aqaba, Jordan, along the Israeli sea border with Egypt and turning around before hitting the western border of Saudi Arabia (it may sound like a large area but it’s just a few miles).
I went on one of these cruises one weekend on leave from the base. I didn’t realize that the cruise went past the curfew that the base had so as we were still heading south along the Egyptian border I asked the ship’s captain if there was a way to get me back to Eilat. He obliged with one of the lifeboats (a tiny little thing with an outboard motor like you’d see on a small lake) and one of the ship’s staff to drive the boat. It was dark, to the west was Egypt, to the southeast Saudi Arabia and to the north Israel and Jordan. I had no idea where we were, precisely, and trusted the guy driving the boat to get me to Eilat. Sooner than I expected, he runs the boat ashore and tells me that the lights that we could see in the distance were Eilat and he had to leave me at this spot. Oh, by the way, I was in uniform at the time.
So I got off the boat and started walking up the dirt road to the lights. I reached them to find out that they were not Eilat. Rather, they were the border between Egypt and Israel and I was on the Egyptian side. In an Israeli army uniform. Luckily, after the Egyptian border guards recovered from the shock of seeing an idiotic Israeli soldier wandering in their desert, they laughed at my story, asked me for cigarettes (which I had, and which I gave them eagerly) and called a cab from Eilat to pick me up.
There are a few points to this story.
First, the distances in the Middle East, in regards to Israel, are much smaller than most Americans would imagine. You can easily cross a border by mistake. And the populated areas are even closer than that. Going back to the Burbank to downtown LA point, the distance from Tel Aviv, on the Mediterranean shore, to Jerusalem, which is where the West Bank would start under certain proposed peace plans, is about 35 miles.
That’s Burbank to Torrance.
It’s also the same distance from the border with Egypt to Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv to the Lebanon border? About 75 miles. That’s roughly Burbank to Riverside.
We’re talking distance within the metropolitan Los Angeles area that encompass the entire area of the populated areas of Israel.
Second, we have always been told that if Israel would simply give up more territory there would be peace.
The events taking place in Egypt make clear how useless a peace treaty is. Consider this quote from a recent news story:
Two effigies of Mubarak dangled from traffic lights. On their chests was written: “We want to put the murderous president on trial.” Their faces were scrawled with the Star of David, an allusion to many protesters’ feeling that Mubarak is a friend of Israel, still seen by most Egyptians as their country’s archenemy more than 30 years after the two nations signed a peace treaty.
If the people of Egypt hate Israel so much that even now, 30 years after a peace treaty was signed, they are invoking the symbol of Israel to express their hateful rage at their own leader, and consider Israel to still be their “archenemy”, what will happen when Mubarak falls and someone who is more in line with the people’s will comes into power?
If you lived in downtown LA and the people of Riverside were hanging you in effigy and calling for your death would you want a pretty strong wall around LA? Would you be willing to give up land that provided you with a security barrier in exchange for a piece of paper that clearly has absolutely no meaning and provide no security?
The third point, and hopefully the one that ties together the story and the previous two points, is that there is no peace possible right now in the Middle East. You can’t demand that one party give up something that can never be recovered (land) in exchange for the other party’s unenforceable pledge of peace.
This isn’t California to Iowa type of distances we’re talking about. It’s not even Los Angeles to San Diego.
I wish I had a better answer for how to bring peace to the Middle East but the one thing I know is that making an already difficult to defend land mass even smaller, with nothing more than a pledge of non-violence by a government that is hated by its own people in return, does not work.
I’m pretty sure that the answer is a generational one. We Israelis (and I count myself as one, even though I was born in the USA and live in the USA and only spent three years living in Israel) are not angels. The one thing I know, however, is that we don’t hate our neighbors. We’re afraid of them, and we sometimes do terrible things as a result of fear, but I assure you that if Israel disarmed there would be no hesitation on the part of the Arab countries to destroy Israel.
I’ve seen children’s TV shows from Arab countries that teach kids that Jews are evil and the enemy. No such thing exists in Israel. If you want peace, you have to first stop the indoctrination of hate, wait for the current generation to die off and then hope that the next generation can develop into peace loving people.
But handing over land to someone who is hung in effigy by his own people with the symbol of your people splattered on his corpse is not going to work.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Further to the coverage of the politicization of the shooting of Rep. Giffords, I saw the following quote in a Politics Daily piece:
It's odd that the notion of public vitriol and how it can trigger violence in unstable people is just coming up now. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and for as long as I can remember there have been left wing protests in the streets of San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland and other local cities. One of the most popular protest topics is Israel and the protesters here are allowed to say things that exceed any level of vitriol ever produced by a tea party gathering. The link below is just one example of the things that you see at a Bay Area liberal protest against Israel.
http://zombietime.com/gaza_war_protest/
So if we are now to moderate our passions and speech to ensure that unstable people aren't motivated to violence can I expect to see a ban on anti Israel protests in San Francisco?
The sheriff of Pima County, Clarence Dupnik, said "the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government" may have triggered Loughner's rampage. "There's reason to believe that this individual may have a mental issue and I think that people who are unbalanced are especially susceptible to vitriol," he said at a Tucson news conference.
In an indictment of Arizona's political culture, Dupnik described his state as ground zero for vitriol. "The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous," he said. "And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry." He said the country is no longer "the nice United States of America that most of us grew up in" and it's time for some "soul-searching."
It's odd that the notion of public vitriol and how it can trigger violence in unstable people is just coming up now. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and for as long as I can remember there have been left wing protests in the streets of San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland and other local cities. One of the most popular protest topics is Israel and the protesters here are allowed to say things that exceed any level of vitriol ever produced by a tea party gathering. The link below is just one example of the things that you see at a Bay Area liberal protest against Israel.
http://zombietime.com/gaza_war_protest/
So if we are now to moderate our passions and speech to ensure that unstable people aren't motivated to violence can I expect to see a ban on anti Israel protests in San Francisco?
Saturday, November 20, 2010
The Zhid Issues A Fatwa Condemning National Geographic
Sorry for the lengthy absence, dear readers, but the Zhid was deployed yet again and has been busy fighting the forces of evil (or something like that).
Now that I have some time to post, though, I thought I'd issue the first ever Zhid Fatwa against National Geographic. No, not because of their publication of nude females (I suppose that would be a proper subject for a real Fatwa, but since I'm a Jew and I like images of nude females it would be a very silly Fatwa, at least as a first ever Fatwa).
What has National Geographic done to deserve the horrible sufferings that follow a Fatwa?
This.
What "This" is is a story by the infidel Robert Draper titled "Kings of Controversy: Was the Kingdom of David and Solomon a Glorious Empire-Or Just A Little Cow Town?"
The story delves into the politics (both political politics and religious politics) of modern archeology in Israel and the competing theories that underlie biblical references and physical evidence that would corroborate the text of the bible.
Ok, I have to admit, the story was fascinating and well written. If you don't subscribe to National Geographic, you should, because even today, with all the advances in online publishing, there is nothing that beats a well produced, well written, well photographed glossy magazine like National Geographic.
But back to my Fatwa...
There are two main protagonists in Draper's story. First, there is Eilat Mazar, an archeologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Mazar's work provides evidence (if not absolute proof) that the Old Testament passages describing King David are based in fact. Second, there is Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University.
Don't let the first name throw you off. Mr. Finkelstein, as the story states, "has made a career out of merrily demolishing [the assumptions upon which Ms. Mazar bases her work]." As opposed to Ms. Mazar, whose work supports the notion that King David was at the center of a "glorious empire", Mr. Finkelstein claims that David and the bible stories about him are nonsense. Well, let me just quote from the story.
And thus, the Fatwa.
In case there's any confusion, the Zhid doesn't issue Fatwas. However, I would like to point out that had this been two archeologists debating the Koran, with one describing Mohamed in the same manner as Finkelstein described David (and generally casting doubt on the veracity of anything and everything in the Koran), National Geographic would have NEVER published the story.
Can you imagine what would have happened if National Geographic described Mohamed's followers as "people with sticks in their hands, shouting and cursing and spitting" or the Muslim holy cities as cow towns?
The point, of course, is that this story is a dramatic illustration of a primary difference between modern Jewish society (including Israel) and modern Muslim society.
I have never heard of orthodox Jewish organizations rioting in the streets, calling for Finkelstein's head on a platter. I assure you, though, that if the subject had been Mohamed or the Koran, you wouldn't have a problem finding mobs of people with sticks in their hands, shouting and cursing and spitting (and calling for the head of Finkelstein...even if his name was something less Jewish).
This is not a surprise anymore, since we've all seen the types of intolerance by Muslims that I've just described. However, the fact that National Geographic published this story, with no punches pulled and no hesitation exhibited, and there has been utter acceptance (or ambivalence) on the part of orthodox Jews of the right of National Geographic to publish the story and further the debate has to be acknowledged.
I wonder when National Geographic will publish a similar article on Mohamed...
Now that I have some time to post, though, I thought I'd issue the first ever Zhid Fatwa against National Geographic. No, not because of their publication of nude females (I suppose that would be a proper subject for a real Fatwa, but since I'm a Jew and I like images of nude females it would be a very silly Fatwa, at least as a first ever Fatwa).
What has National Geographic done to deserve the horrible sufferings that follow a Fatwa?
This.
What "This" is is a story by the infidel Robert Draper titled "Kings of Controversy: Was the Kingdom of David and Solomon a Glorious Empire-Or Just A Little Cow Town?"
The story delves into the politics (both political politics and religious politics) of modern archeology in Israel and the competing theories that underlie biblical references and physical evidence that would corroborate the text of the bible.
Ok, I have to admit, the story was fascinating and well written. If you don't subscribe to National Geographic, you should, because even today, with all the advances in online publishing, there is nothing that beats a well produced, well written, well photographed glossy magazine like National Geographic.
But back to my Fatwa...
There are two main protagonists in Draper's story. First, there is Eilat Mazar, an archeologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Mazar's work provides evidence (if not absolute proof) that the Old Testament passages describing King David are based in fact. Second, there is Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University.
Don't let the first name throw you off. Mr. Finkelstein, as the story states, "has made a career out of merrily demolishing [the assumptions upon which Ms. Mazar bases her work]." As opposed to Ms. Mazar, whose work supports the notion that King David was at the center of a "glorious empire", Mr. Finkelstein claims that David and the bible stories about him are nonsense. Well, let me just quote from the story.
During David's time, as Finkelstein casts it, Jerusalem was little more than a "hill-country village," David himself a raggedy upstart akin to Pancho Villa, and his legion of followers more like "500 people with sticks in their hands shouting and cursing and spitting—not the stuff of great armies of chariots described in the text.
And thus, the Fatwa.
In case there's any confusion, the Zhid doesn't issue Fatwas. However, I would like to point out that had this been two archeologists debating the Koran, with one describing Mohamed in the same manner as Finkelstein described David (and generally casting doubt on the veracity of anything and everything in the Koran), National Geographic would have NEVER published the story.
Can you imagine what would have happened if National Geographic described Mohamed's followers as "people with sticks in their hands, shouting and cursing and spitting" or the Muslim holy cities as cow towns?
The point, of course, is that this story is a dramatic illustration of a primary difference between modern Jewish society (including Israel) and modern Muslim society.
I have never heard of orthodox Jewish organizations rioting in the streets, calling for Finkelstein's head on a platter. I assure you, though, that if the subject had been Mohamed or the Koran, you wouldn't have a problem finding mobs of people with sticks in their hands, shouting and cursing and spitting (and calling for the head of Finkelstein...even if his name was something less Jewish).
This is not a surprise anymore, since we've all seen the types of intolerance by Muslims that I've just described. However, the fact that National Geographic published this story, with no punches pulled and no hesitation exhibited, and there has been utter acceptance (or ambivalence) on the part of orthodox Jews of the right of National Geographic to publish the story and further the debate has to be acknowledged.
I wonder when National Geographic will publish a similar article on Mohamed...
Friday, March 12, 2010
This is such utter crap
Here's the headline:
I won't even bother to paste the entire story, as the story is utter crap.
I'm coming up on 50 years old in a few years and since at least late 1967 the common refrain has been that Israel's "occupation" of certain lands (including east Jerusalem) is the reason there is no peace in the region.
Bullshit.
There is no peace, and there is no peace process, because the Palestinian Arabs do not want to make peace. If the Palestinian Arabs showed that they were serious about living in peace alongside the State of Israel there would have been peace decades ago.
The Palestinian Arabs imperil the peace process because they want to exist ATOP the former State of Israel. East Jerusalem and what Israel does there has never been the real issue.
The real issue is the fact that Palestinian Arabs do not accept the right of Israel to exist. It always intrigues me that the media can ignore things like, oh, missile attacks targeting Israeli civilians or suicide bombers attacking shopping centers, and somehow decide that building some houses is the real reason peace has not been achieved.
Israeli Settlements in East Jerusalem Imperil Peace Process
I won't even bother to paste the entire story, as the story is utter crap.
I'm coming up on 50 years old in a few years and since at least late 1967 the common refrain has been that Israel's "occupation" of certain lands (including east Jerusalem) is the reason there is no peace in the region.
Bullshit.
There is no peace, and there is no peace process, because the Palestinian Arabs do not want to make peace. If the Palestinian Arabs showed that they were serious about living in peace alongside the State of Israel there would have been peace decades ago.
The Palestinian Arabs imperil the peace process because they want to exist ATOP the former State of Israel. East Jerusalem and what Israel does there has never been the real issue.
The real issue is the fact that Palestinian Arabs do not accept the right of Israel to exist. It always intrigues me that the media can ignore things like, oh, missile attacks targeting Israeli civilians or suicide bombers attacking shopping centers, and somehow decide that building some houses is the real reason peace has not been achieved.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Hardly botched
It's been a while since my last post but I just had to take the time to comment on the alleged botched hit in Dubai. The Jersualem Post's commentary, pasted below, hits most of my points, but there is one additional point that is important.
If you're an Islamic terror operative, do you now feel comfortable anywhere? If you get in an elevator in a hotel in a friendly country and two guys walk in in tennis garb, do you smile at them or do you think "they look just like the guys who took out Mabhouh in Dubai"?
The hit team successfully carried out its objective and returned to wherever home is without incident. The fact that there are closed circuit cameras just about everywhere these days, and the Dubai authorities may have assembled a video collage of how the hit was carried out, simply shows the terrorists that wherever they go, no matter how safe they feel, they can be hit and even the most innocuous
passerby or elevator passenger could be the guy or gal who is about to send you to paradise.
To me, this is even better than had no film ever been made public about the mechanics of the hit. From this point on, any terrorist who values his life (and I think most of the leaders do) will live in fear of the two guys carrying tennis rackets in a Dubai hotel, and people who live in fear are less likely to be able to plan and carry out terror attacks.
If you're an Islamic terror operative, do you now feel comfortable anywhere? If you get in an elevator in a hotel in a friendly country and two guys walk in in tennis garb, do you smile at them or do you think "they look just like the guys who took out Mabhouh in Dubai"?
The hit team successfully carried out its objective and returned to wherever home is without incident. The fact that there are closed circuit cameras just about everywhere these days, and the Dubai authorities may have assembled a video collage of how the hit was carried out, simply shows the terrorists that wherever they go, no matter how safe they feel, they can be hit and even the most innocuous
passerby or elevator passenger could be the guy or gal who is about to send you to paradise.
To me, this is even better than had no film ever been made public about the mechanics of the hit. From this point on, any terrorist who values his life (and I think most of the leaders do) will live in fear of the two guys carrying tennis rackets in a Dubai hotel, and people who live in fear are less likely to be able to plan and carry out terror attacks.
Analysis: Dubai hit was not a botched job
BY YAAKOV LAPPIN
18/02/2010
Irrespective of who carried out the assassination, the operation was meticulously planned and successfully executed.
Irrespective of who carried out the January 19 assassination of senior Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, the operation was meticulously planned and successfully executed, and despite a surprisingly impressive investigation by Dubai police, the hit cannot be considered a botched job.
Foreign sources continue to hold the Mossad responsible for the killing, though Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.
Unlike the failed 1997 Mossad assassination attempt on Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Jordan, local security forces in Dubai were unable to capture the assassins. Today, there are no urgent and massive potential repercussions for diplomatic relations with an Arab state that is regionally vital to Israel, as was the case in 1997, when Jordanian-Israeli relations were strained nearly to the breaking point.
A diplomatic fallout with London, caused by the use of forged UK passports, seems a very real possibility if UK authorities officially blame Israeli intelligence for the Dubai slaying. But such a development would surely have been factored into any decision to take Mabhouh out. The diplomatic friction now building up would have been deemed bearable before any go-ahead was given for the killing.
Given all of these factors, the very fact that the operation went ahead seems to indicate the degree to which Mabhouh was viewed as an extremely valuable target.
According to reports, Mabhouh oversaw the smuggling of Iranian long-range rockets into Gaza, enabling Hamas to threaten the densely populated Gush Dan region, home to more than three million Israelis and the scene of the country’s financial hub.
In a video made two weeks before his death and broadcast on Al-Jazeera earlier this month, Mabhouh said he had kidnapped and murdered two IDF soldiers, Ilan Sa’adon and Avi Sasportas, in 1989. Mabhouh said he had disguised himself as an Orthodox Jew during the attack.
Dubai police have not discussed the purpose of Mabhouh’s visit to the Gulf state.
According to Ynet’s security analyst, Ron Ben-Yishai, the olim who found their names on the Dubai police’s wanted list will not encounter great difficulties in clearing their names, since most of the details in the forged documents were changed from the originals. The assassins apparently went to great lengths to ensure that the olim could distance themselves from the incident, changing passport numbers, inserting bogus middle names and altering dates of birth.
Most importantly, the passports used by the assassins have been officially declared by European governments to be forgeries, thereby clearing the olim.
There can be little disagreement over the considerable capabilities displayed by Dubai’s police in their investigation, which was as swift as it was effective. The Gulf state, keen to preserve its name as a neutral financial haven, free from the violent woes that afflict other parts of the Middle East, has gone out of its way to try and embarrass the assassins and those who sent them. Such efforts, presumably, would have been foreseen by the mission’s planners as a possible outcome, and deemed acceptable.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Thank goodness Obama is President!
...because had the GOP and Bush suppressed free speech like this there would have been rioting in the streets.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Shut Up And Get Out Of My Way
I know it's been a long time since I posted anything of substance here. Apologies.
So recently President Obama said, with regard to those who speak out against his administration's agenda "I don't want the folks who created the mess do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking."
It's really a shame that this kind of response is only now acceptable. I really like how President Obama constantly prefaces any of his remarks with a reminder that he "inherited" the problems that affect the country. I wholeheartedly approve of this approach, as I always believed that President Bush spent far too little time reminding the country that the Bush administration's actions in dealing with 9/11 were immune to criticism since 9/11 was something Bush inherited from the prior administration.
I supposed that we can now wipe clean all of the criticism against the Patriot Act, the alleged "torture" of terrorists and government programs that involved wiretapping, surveillance and alleged suppression of civil liberties. All those lefties who spent 8 years screaming about Bush should have been told that they shouldn't be doing a lot of talking, as they caused the problem that President Bush was fixing.
So recently President Obama said, with regard to those who speak out against his administration's agenda "I don't want the folks who created the mess do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking."
It's really a shame that this kind of response is only now acceptable. I really like how President Obama constantly prefaces any of his remarks with a reminder that he "inherited" the problems that affect the country. I wholeheartedly approve of this approach, as I always believed that President Bush spent far too little time reminding the country that the Bush administration's actions in dealing with 9/11 were immune to criticism since 9/11 was something Bush inherited from the prior administration.
I supposed that we can now wipe clean all of the criticism against the Patriot Act, the alleged "torture" of terrorists and government programs that involved wiretapping, surveillance and alleged suppression of civil liberties. All those lefties who spent 8 years screaming about Bush should have been told that they shouldn't be doing a lot of talking, as they caused the problem that President Bush was fixing.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Show Us The Money
So I'm reading about the new plan proposed to help those who face the risk of defaulting on their home loans and losing those homes through foreclosure. Without even getting into the very thorny issue of how dangerous it is for the government to intervene in free markets to eliminate risk and its consequences (and I'm talking about the banks, the automakers and other companies too), I think that when the economy stabilizes and starts to improve, the government is going to be sitting on a ton of cash.
First, the government received preferred equity stakes in the companies that it bailed out over the last few months. Those interests that the government holds will be paying rich returns, assuming that the banks, etc. return to profitability.
Second, the government is now going to own a preferred equity stake in millions, perhaps more than 10 million, single family residences. Now the government will have a stake in the next housing boom!
What? You say that Obama isn't requiring homeowners to give up the same preferred equity stake that the corporations gave up in order to get bailed out?
Never mind...
First, the government received preferred equity stakes in the companies that it bailed out over the last few months. Those interests that the government holds will be paying rich returns, assuming that the banks, etc. return to profitability.
Second, the government is now going to own a preferred equity stake in millions, perhaps more than 10 million, single family residences. Now the government will have a stake in the next housing boom!
What? You say that Obama isn't requiring homeowners to give up the same preferred equity stake that the corporations gave up in order to get bailed out?
Never mind...
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Life imitating art, and not in a good way
I was shocked to see this story linked to on Drudge today:
There's more to the story, but I couldn't stomach having the rest of it printed here.
So we are now at a crossroads in history, where the United States goes from waging war against its enemies to...writing letters to them.
You know where this is going. Obama has become...yes...Hans Blix.
Revealed: the letter Obama team hope will heal Iran rift
Symbolic gesture gives assurances that US does not want to topple Islamic regime
* Robert Tait and Ewen MacAskill in Washington
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 January 2009 01.44 GMT
Officials of Barack Obama's administration have drafted a letter to Iran from the president aimed at unfreezing US-Iranian relations and opening the way for face-to-face talks, the Guardian has learned.
The US state department has been working on drafts of the letter since Obama was elected on 4 November last year. It is in reply to a lengthy letter of congratulations sent by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on 6 November.
Diplomats said Obama's letter would be a symbolic gesture to mark a change in tone from the hostile one adopted by the Bush administration, which portrayed Iran as part of an "axis of evil".
It would be intended to allay the suspicions of Iran's leaders and pave the way for Obama to engage them directly, a break with past policy.
State department officials have composed at least three drafts of the letter, which gives assurances that Washington does not want to overthrow the Islamic regime, but merely seeks a change in its behaviour. The letter would be addressed to the Iranian people and sent directly to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or released as an open letter.
One draft proposal suggests that Iran should compare its relatively low standard of living with that of some of its more prosperous neighbours, and contemplate the benefits of losing its pariah status in the west. Although the tone is conciliatory, it also calls on Iran to end what the US calls state sponsorship of terrorism.
The letter is being considered by the new secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, as part of a sweeping review of US policy on Iran. A decision on sending it is not expected until the review is complete.
There's more to the story, but I couldn't stomach having the rest of it printed here.
So we are now at a crossroads in history, where the United States goes from waging war against its enemies to...writing letters to them.
You know where this is going. Obama has become...yes...Hans Blix.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Duck, Duck, Goose...In that order
So we're coming up on the end of duck season and Sunday will be the Zhid's last hunt. So far this season has not been great but there have been some good takes. Earlier in the week the Zhid went up around Colusa and found the ducks hard to come by. The geese, however, were turning the sky dark. After much waiting for ducks, the Zhid picked off one low flying goose (his first goose ever) and is now hooked on goose hunting.
I sort of blew the goose's head entirely off..
But it was still a good size specklebelly (i.e., white fronted) goose.
I butchered it right in the driveway when I got home and fried up the liver and heart within 10 minutes of taking it out of the goose. Mmmmmm
I sort of blew the goose's head entirely off..
But it was still a good size specklebelly (i.e., white fronted) goose.
I butchered it right in the driveway when I got home and fried up the liver and heart within 10 minutes of taking it out of the goose. Mmmmmm
Friday, January 16, 2009
The Farewell Speech President Bush Should Have Made
I support President Bush more than the average American but I think he's done a pretty poor job overall. His major failing was his reliance on a small group of people who he allowed to run things without significant oversight (e.g., Rumsfeld). I think that Bush was a very poor commander in chief of the military and made just about every wrong move possible in managing the wars.
But I do think that President Bush was stellar in one regard, and it is such an important area that it goes a long way towards making up for his other flaws. He is perhaps the only American leader who grasped the magnitude of the threat posed by radical Islam and he is surely the only world leader who has ever had the courage to do the only thing appropriate in the face of such a threat-wage a relentless and thorough war against the enemy.
So with that, I think that his farewell speech from yesterday should have gone like this:
But I do think that President Bush was stellar in one regard, and it is such an important area that it goes a long way towards making up for his other flaws. He is perhaps the only American leader who grasped the magnitude of the threat posed by radical Islam and he is surely the only world leader who has ever had the courage to do the only thing appropriate in the face of such a threat-wage a relentless and thorough war against the enemy.
So with that, I think that his farewell speech from yesterday should have gone like this:
"My fellow Americans. I know that I'm leaving the country in pretty bad shape, but I want to explain something to you. Most of you are naive. When Islamic terrorists first attacked the World Trade Center in the early 1990s, you didn't understand how serious the threat was. When Islamic terrorists attempted to destroy numerous passenger jets and assassinate the pope as part of Operation Bojinka in the mid 1990s most of you shrugged it off as an unlikely plot by a group of harmless bumblers. Later in the 1990s, as Islamic terrorists launch successful attacks on Americans at the Khobar towers and the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, you showed little concern as the attacks were so far from our soil.
And then, September 11 came and you saw with your own eyes how serious our enemies are. But in the days, weeks and months following September 11, the images of thousands of American corpses on the streets of American cities faded from your consciousness. Those images, and the threat posed by Islamic terrorists, never faded from my consciousness.
Many of you believe that the war in Iraq was and is unjustified and oppose the actions we've taken to discover the plans of those who seek to attack us again.
Seven plus years have passed since 9/11/01 and we haven't had a single terrorist attack in the United States. Do you think that our enemies have given up?
Just as you underestimated the threat posed by Islamic terror before 9/11, you have underestimated the continuing threat after 9/11. The strict measures we implemented, which included renditions, setting up the facilities at Guantanamo Bay and even subjecting certain suspected terror leaders to extreme interrogation measures, were necessary to keep you safe.
I was charged with making a choice on 9/11: Does the United States allow its citizens to be put at risk in order to maintain the moral and ethical high ground, or does the United States put the safety of its citizens first and undertake certain actions, repugnant as they may be to the traditions and history of this country, to ensure that we are not attacked again?
I made the hard choice and kept you safe for the past seven years. Some of you, perhaps many of you, would have rather seen me make the easy choice. Had I done that, thousands of you would likely have perished after 9/11.
So I made a tough decision that put lives ahead of principles. You can complain about torture from now until the end of days, but it was my position that I'd rather torture the guilty than allow the innocent to be slaughtered.
This is all hindsight, but I believe that in the next four years you will see that the words I've just spoken are the truth. A new President will be leading this country and he has pledged to not make the choices that I've made. Let's see if four years of terrorist attacks will be preferable to seven years of waterboarding our enemies."
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Clarification on the prior post
A big thanks to National Review's The Corner for the link.
An anonymous commenter to the prior post read my reference to "occupied Gaza" to mean that I believed Israel was occupying Gaza. To clarify, my reference was to the Palestinian Arab occupation of Gaza. Israel can not occupy land which is rightfully its own.
Also, I've received a number of emails complaining about the alleged slaughter of Palestinian Arab children by Israel (as if that were justification for attacks on Jews around the world). Let me remind those of you with short memories of the slaughter of eight Jewish rabbinical students in Jerusalem in March 2008.
Story here
Video here
A few points on this.
First, Hamas and the residents of Gaza (not all of them, but a large number) praised the slaughter of the Jewish students and promised that more such acts would occur in the future.
Second, it's quite well known that many rabbinical students receive an exemption from serving in the Israeli military.
My point is that there already is a long history of Muslims and those who support the Palestinian Arab position attacking Jews, rather than Israeli targets (e.g., if you go to a yeshiva to slaughter people, you are going there to kill the people who are LEAST likely to be connected to Israel's military). There's also a long history of Hamas, and Palestinian Arabs in occupied Gaza, celebrating the slaughter of Jewish civilians.
So to me, it's quite clear that Hamas, Palestinian Arabs and many other Muslims and their supporters are very happy to ignore all distinctions between Israel and Jews in general and as long as Jewish blood is shed the mission has been accomplished. It's also clear that whatever civilian casualties are inflicted by Israel, they are absolutely not intentional and thus can not be seen as the type of collective punishment that Hamas, Palestinian Arabs and their supporters inflict on Jews.
I just wish that some government (other than Israel) and the media would acknowledge the double standard that exists between the collective punishment that Muslims are protected from and that which is inflicted upon Jews.
An anonymous commenter to the prior post read my reference to "occupied Gaza" to mean that I believed Israel was occupying Gaza. To clarify, my reference was to the Palestinian Arab occupation of Gaza. Israel can not occupy land which is rightfully its own.
Also, I've received a number of emails complaining about the alleged slaughter of Palestinian Arab children by Israel (as if that were justification for attacks on Jews around the world). Let me remind those of you with short memories of the slaughter of eight Jewish rabbinical students in Jerusalem in March 2008.
Story here
Video here
A few points on this.
First, Hamas and the residents of Gaza (not all of them, but a large number) praised the slaughter of the Jewish students and promised that more such acts would occur in the future.
Second, it's quite well known that many rabbinical students receive an exemption from serving in the Israeli military.
My point is that there already is a long history of Muslims and those who support the Palestinian Arab position attacking Jews, rather than Israeli targets (e.g., if you go to a yeshiva to slaughter people, you are going there to kill the people who are LEAST likely to be connected to Israel's military). There's also a long history of Hamas, and Palestinian Arabs in occupied Gaza, celebrating the slaughter of Jewish civilians.
So to me, it's quite clear that Hamas, Palestinian Arabs and many other Muslims and their supporters are very happy to ignore all distinctions between Israel and Jews in general and as long as Jewish blood is shed the mission has been accomplished. It's also clear that whatever civilian casualties are inflicted by Israel, they are absolutely not intentional and thus can not be seen as the type of collective punishment that Hamas, Palestinian Arabs and their supporters inflict on Jews.
I just wish that some government (other than Israel) and the media would acknowledge the double standard that exists between the collective punishment that Muslims are protected from and that which is inflicted upon Jews.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Why can't Jews be treated like Muslims?
I'm just wondering when someone is going to treat Jews like Muslims. Right now there are protests around the world against Israel's defensive military action in occupied Gaza and without exception you will find the protesters attacking (verbally, though sometimes physically as well) Jews as part of the protests.
After the 9/11 terror attacks we were told that we must not condemn Islam and Muslims when we express our anger at the acts of terror. The government bent over backwards to call Islam a "religion of peace" and the media went so far as to embark on a multi-year, gratis public relations campaign to put a positive face on Islam and Muslims (see, e.g., the New York Times).
So I'm just waiting for all of these entities to condemn anyone who would say negative things about Jews in connection with protests against Israel.
I'm going to not hold my breath...
After the 9/11 terror attacks we were told that we must not condemn Islam and Muslims when we express our anger at the acts of terror. The government bent over backwards to call Islam a "religion of peace" and the media went so far as to embark on a multi-year, gratis public relations campaign to put a positive face on Islam and Muslims (see, e.g., the New York Times).
So I'm just waiting for all of these entities to condemn anyone who would say negative things about Jews in connection with protests against Israel.
I'm going to not hold my breath...
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
For those of you wondering whether this hunting season was better than last...
The answer is yes.
Here's the first pheasant kill, courtesy of the awesome flushing skills of my beloved lab
And here's the result of yesterday's duck hunt, from field to freezer
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Here's the first pheasant kill, courtesy of the awesome flushing skills of my beloved lab
And here's the result of yesterday's duck hunt, from field to freezer
href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Fk_SFZhcUZY/SUmlxvtq-lI/AAAAAAAAAus/tOacvNOc7ME/s1600-h/IMG_0807.JPG">
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Monday, December 08, 2008
While we're waiting for the end of the world to end...
...here's a picture of the Zhid's new rifle, bought on election day, 2008 (at least the lower was). Sun Devil made the lower, Del-Ton supplied the rest (directly or as a reseller, like for the Magpul CTR stock) and the Zhid built it over about an hour last week.
Seems to be quite solid, compared to the last AR class weapon the Zhid had extended experience with (that would be circa 1986 in the IDF, and the M16 did not impress the Zhid).
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Next year in Washington
Assuming that Obama "wins" the election and takes office next year, I'm wondering whether these things, which were a centerpiece of opposition party politics over the past eight years, will still be acceptable...
Can we still refer to the President as "chimpy"?
Will dissent still be the highest form of patriotism?
Will it be permissible to state that Obama is "Not My President"?
Will we be able to claim that everything Obama does is a lie?
Can we insist that Obama stole the election?
Can we plaster our cars with "IMPEACH OBAMA" stickers?
Can we call him "Worst. President. Ever" from the day he takes office?
I'm betting that any of the above will be met with allegations of racism by the press and the rest of the left wing.
I'm also betting that all of a sudden no one blames the President for the problems in the economy or the world or society in general once Obama takes office. Of course, the fact that Congress has been controlled by Democrats for the last two years seems to have been lost on most pundits anyway.
Can we still refer to the President as "chimpy"?
Will dissent still be the highest form of patriotism?
Will it be permissible to state that Obama is "Not My President"?
Will we be able to claim that everything Obama does is a lie?
Can we insist that Obama stole the election?
Can we plaster our cars with "IMPEACH OBAMA" stickers?
Can we call him "Worst. President. Ever" from the day he takes office?
I'm betting that any of the above will be met with allegations of racism by the press and the rest of the left wing.
I'm also betting that all of a sudden no one blames the President for the problems in the economy or the world or society in general once Obama takes office. Of course, the fact that Congress has been controlled by Democrats for the last two years seems to have been lost on most pundits anyway.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
What about the children?
With all the talk about how many kids Palin has, and that Palin's daughter is pregnant, I have to wonder what the Democrats are trying to say.
Let me remind my readers of the exchange (the subject was the war in Iraq) between Senator Boxer and Secretary of State Rice during a Senate hearing in early 2007 (Boxer is the speaker, referring to Rice)
Hmmm. As I recall, not only does Palin have kids (and soon a grandchild), she has a son who is in the military and headed to Iraq. And, I believe, McCain has two sons in the military.
I guess this means that Boxer is going to come out in support of the McCain/Palin ticket, right?
Let me remind my readers of the exchange (the subject was the war in Iraq) between Senator Boxer and Secretary of State Rice during a Senate hearing in early 2007 (Boxer is the speaker, referring to Rice)
Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families. And I just want to bring us back to that fact.
Hmmm. As I recall, not only does Palin have kids (and soon a grandchild), she has a son who is in the military and headed to Iraq. And, I believe, McCain has two sons in the military.
I guess this means that Boxer is going to come out in support of the McCain/Palin ticket, right?
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Sarah Connor for VP
My old liberal pal from Marin county has been sending me countless emails attacking McCain's choice for VP, so I thought I'd vent a bit here.
This is to all you libtards...
First, stop trying to compare Palin to Obama. One is a candidate for VICE President, the other is the candidate for President. Compare her to Biden. Obama has virtually no experience as a leader or as a politician and comparing him to the other candidate's VP choice is just plain STUPID. Palin is not running for the Presidency. Got it?
Second, the idiotic "one heartbeat away from the Presidency" line is getting to me. When was the last time a President died in office? Kennedy, and he was a young President who was assassinated, not an old President who died of natural causes. The odds of a President dying in office are very low.
Third, with all the racist lunatics running around, there is a far greater chance that Obama will die in office than that McCain will. So the real question is who would you rather have running the country-Palin or Biden? I'd be much more comfortable with Palin.
Fourth, we've had plenty of Presidents who had extensive experience and qualifications and they have all been pretty crappy Presidents. While I don't like either McCain or Obama, I would not withhold a vote for Obama because of his lack of experience. Likewise, I wouldn't care what the experience level of the VP pick was. I would care about his or her positions, and I like Palin's positions.
In many ways, I think that the best thing the country could have is a real change, and that means a total outsider as President. If this election is to hinge on the VP choices, I'm going with the hunting, fishing, smart hockey mom who has five kids, one in the military and one with Downs Syndrome, over the career politician with a history of plagiarism and liberal nannystateism.
This is to all you libtards...
First, stop trying to compare Palin to Obama. One is a candidate for VICE President, the other is the candidate for President. Compare her to Biden. Obama has virtually no experience as a leader or as a politician and comparing him to the other candidate's VP choice is just plain STUPID. Palin is not running for the Presidency. Got it?
Second, the idiotic "one heartbeat away from the Presidency" line is getting to me. When was the last time a President died in office? Kennedy, and he was a young President who was assassinated, not an old President who died of natural causes. The odds of a President dying in office are very low.
Third, with all the racist lunatics running around, there is a far greater chance that Obama will die in office than that McCain will. So the real question is who would you rather have running the country-Palin or Biden? I'd be much more comfortable with Palin.
Fourth, we've had plenty of Presidents who had extensive experience and qualifications and they have all been pretty crappy Presidents. While I don't like either McCain or Obama, I would not withhold a vote for Obama because of his lack of experience. Likewise, I wouldn't care what the experience level of the VP pick was. I would care about his or her positions, and I like Palin's positions.
In many ways, I think that the best thing the country could have is a real change, and that means a total outsider as President. If this election is to hinge on the VP choices, I'm going with the hunting, fishing, smart hockey mom who has five kids, one in the military and one with Downs Syndrome, over the career politician with a history of plagiarism and liberal nannystateism.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Chickens Coming Home To Roost On McNerney's Doorstep
Not long after Jerry McNerney took over from Pombo in the House of Representatives I* wrote him a letter outlining my concerns about the unchecked development in the central valley/tri valley area. Among my points was that neither the cities nor the developers were thinking about the long term effects of putting up so many new houses. In particular, I asked McNerney to consider using his influence to slow down growth, as the cities and developers had no idea what they were going to do when the housing market slowed down.
Of primary importance to me was the destruction of farmland and open space for the horrendous developments, especially since most of the demand for the things was being fueled by speculation.
McNerney did respond and promised to do absolutely nothing.
Well, much as I hate the NY Times, they have an article in today's business section that provides an outstanding chronicle of how my fears turned into reality and how Jerry McNerney's inaction has caused permanent damage to the environment.
Had McNerney stepped in over a year ago when I asked him to provide oversight to the greedy and short sighted cities and developments we wouldn't have to read stories about ghost towns that have replaced open space and farmland.
It's a long article but well worth a read.
* If you click on the link and read the post it is important to note that I may or may not be my neighbor.
Of primary importance to me was the destruction of farmland and open space for the horrendous developments, especially since most of the demand for the things was being fueled by speculation.
McNerney did respond and promised to do absolutely nothing.
Well, much as I hate the NY Times, they have an article in today's business section that provides an outstanding chronicle of how my fears turned into reality and how Jerry McNerney's inaction has caused permanent damage to the environment.
Had McNerney stepped in over a year ago when I asked him to provide oversight to the greedy and short sighted cities and developments we wouldn't have to read stories about ghost towns that have replaced open space and farmland.
It's a long article but well worth a read.
* If you click on the link and read the post it is important to note that I may or may not be my neighbor.
August 24, 2008
In the Central Valley, the Ruins of the Housing Bust
By DAVID STREITFELD
MERCED, Calif.
ELLIE WOOTEN, the likable mayor of this likable Central Valley city, is on her way to the office when her cellphone rings. A constituent wants her mortgage payments reduced, and is hoping that the mayor has some clout with her lender.
Although Merced has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, this borrower isn’t in such dire straits. She’s not even behind on her mortgage. But her oldest daughter is turning 18, which means an end to $500 a month in child support. She just wants a better deal.
The mayor hangs up and shrugs: “It’s a surprise her daughter is turning 18? You’d think she could have planned ahead.”
But hardly anyone in Merced planned very far ahead.
Not the city, which enthusiastically approved the creation of dozens of new neighborhoods without pausing to wonder if it could absorb the growth.
Certainly not the developers. They built 4,397 new homes in those neighborhoods, some costing half a million dollars, without asking who in a city of only 80,000 could afford to buy them all.
Obviously not the speculators turned landlords, who thought that they could get San Francisco rents in a working-class agricultural city ranked by the American Lung Association as having some of the worst air in the nation.
And, sadly, not the local folk who moved up and took on more debt than they could afford. They believed — because who was telling them differently? — that the good times would be endless.
“Owning a home is the American dream,” says Jamie Schrole, a Merced real estate agent. “Everybody was just trying to live out their dream.”
The belief that this dream could be achieved with no risk, no worry and no money down was at the center of the American romance with real estate in the early years of this decade, and not just in Merced.
How long will the economy have to pay the price for that illusion? The experience of Merced, which rose higher and fell faster than nearly anywhere else, suggests that recovery from the national real estate debacle will be painful and protracted.
In the three years since housing peaked here, the median sales price has fallen by 50 percent. There are thousands of foreclosures on the market. The asking prices on those properties are so low that competitive bidding, a hallmark of the boom, is back.
But almost no homeowner can afford to sell. If you cannot go as low as “the foreclosure price” — the cost of a comparable bank-owned house — real estate agents say you might as well not even bother listing your home.
And so most people do not: three out of four existing-home sales in Merced County are now foreclosures, the highest percentage in the state, according to DataQuick Information Systems. The only group for whom selling makes sense, real estate agents here say, are the elderly entering assisted-living facilities, who often have decades of appreciation built into their home’s value.
As Merced goes, so might go much of the nation. With as many as 2.5 million homes in the United States entering foreclosure this year and, at best, sales of only five million existing houses, the foreclosure price is becoming the rule in many areas. In Los Angeles County, whose 10 million people make it the most populous county in the United States, a third of the sales are foreclosures.
Local markets will not truly begin to recover until their foreclosures are absorbed, but just as few in Merced saw reasons for caution at the height of the boom, hardly anyone is optimistic now. Bank repossessions are accelerating as overleveraged owners see the value of their properties sink. Merced County had a record 523 foreclosures in July, quadruple the rate of a year earlier, according to DataQuick.
The repossessions are accelerating as overleveraged owners see the value of their properties sink and can find no way out.
Beverly Red, the woman who called the mayor to get a better deal, says she started working months ago to renegotiate her loan into something she could better afford on her receptionist’s salary. No one takes her seriously, she says, because she is not behind on her payments, which, of course, is exactly what she is trying to avoid.
“This has been my home for 10 years,” says Ms. Red, a divorced mother of three. “It won’t be good for me, or my neighbors, or the bank, or Merced, if I lose it. Yet that’s where I’m headed. It’s very frustrating.”
THE boom here allowed some people to become rich overnight and gave many more the idea that they could do it, too. Ms. Schrole, a single mother of four, succumbed to temptation too late: she bought a home as an investment, sold her own home, bought a much more expensive one, and lost both. “I was stupid,” she says. “I didn’t get in until things started to tank.”
Ms. Schrole is in bankruptcy. Other homeowners are taking their declining fortunes into their own hands. On a recent Sunday evening, an extended family of a dozen children, teenagers and adults is unloading a U-Haul into a house in a two-year-old subdivision called Summer Creek. The patriarch takes a break from wrestling with a refrigerator to explain he has abandoned his house a few miles away and is now renting this nearly-new five-bedroom.
The result, he says happily, is a drop in his monthly housing bill to $1,200 from $3,400. Somewhere a lender is recording yet another foreclosure.
Businesses in Merced are struggling. Downtown buildings are festooned with “for lease” signs. Unemployment, consistently high here, rose to 12.1 percent in July.
Among those trying to adapt to this miserable new time is the mayor. Mrs. Wooten, 74, has been selling real estate for three decades. In the old days, she worked for people selling their boom-inflated homes and moving into something better. Now she mostly represents banks, selling their foreclosures. She has 27 at the moment.
In her windowless city office, she takes a call from a man in Seattle who is interested in a 1947 home in bad repair in a bad neighborhood, but which has a large yard for his dogs.
In November 2005, the house sold for $126,000. The bank, which took it back last spring, is asking $59,000. The Seattle man offers $40,000.
The mayor says the lender is not desperate enough to take that big a haircut. “Not going to happen,” she says. “Not this year.” She laughs. “Call me in January and I’ll let you know.” Mrs. Wooten is wearing a red shirt that says, “Merced: Invest in California’s Future.” Which is pretty much how all the trouble began.
Starting in 2000, investors came over the mountains from San Francisco, up Interstate 5 from Los Angeles and out of the woodwork from many a surrounding hamlet. Over the next five years, prices in Merced rose 142 percent, a growth rate that ranked it in the top five communities in the country, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.
One thing above all drew the investors: the prospect of a University of California campus on the edge of Merced, the first new campus in the state system in 40 years. They envisioned something resembling Davis, another Central Valley university town.
The University of California, Davis, however, has more than 30,000 students and is within easy reach of San Francisco and Sacramento. U.C. Merced, which opened in 2005, has fewer than 2,000 students and isn’t near much except Modesto. Instead of students or professors renting their houses, speculators say, they had welfare recipients or no one.
Many in Merced blame out-of-town buyers, who at the peak made up more than a quarter of the local market, for their current woes.
Now there are investors again. Mark Seivert, an accountant who lives in the neighboring town of Atwater, didn’t buy anything during the boom. Anyone, he says, “could have figured out that too much inventory and not enough bodies was a recipe for disaster.”
This summer, the numbers are sweet. He is working on a deal for a short sale, in which a lender agrees to let a house go for less than it is owed in return for getting the property off its books immediately.
Mr. Seivert is going after a house that the owners bought 13 years ago for $86,000 and refinanced six times, taking advantage of rising values to get cash that, in part, they spent on the house. It has a pool with a small waterfall, a TV room in the converted garage, a deluxe outdoor barbecue setup and a kitchen with all the latest gadgets.
The owners, who owe $350,000, can no longer make their mortgage payments. Mr. Seivert is negotiating to buy the house for $170,000 and then rent it back to the couple, who have jobs in the area. They will pay $1,100 instead of their current $2,600 a month.
“This could be a win-win,” the accountant says. “In four or five years, when their credit is better and the market has recovered, I’ll sell the house back to them.”
Longtime renters are also seizing the moment. Sally Johnson just bought a house that had been foreclosed at the edge of Bellevue Ranch, a huge master-planned community north of town. She paid $164,900, half the price the previous owners paid two years ago.
The market is “probably going to go lower,” says Ms. Johnson, who works at a local jewelry store. But time is on her side: She got a 30-year fixed-rate loan. The landscapers will be by shortly to breathe new life into her golden lawn.
Next door is Sheng Lee, who bought at the top with a “pick a payment” loan, which allows borrowers to make less than their fully amortized payments, but only for a few years. Since Mr. Lee, a high school aide, doesn’t have enough equity to refinance, he now needs a loan modification or a miracle. “I’ll try my best to pay my mortgage, but if not I’ll have no choice to leave like the other people,” he says.
Mr. Lee harbors no bitterness that his new neighbor got a slightly smaller house for half the price. “It’s her luck. Why would I be mad at her?” he asks. He brought her fried rice and noodles as a house-warming gift.
Another neighbor, Van Lewis, fits somewhere in between Mr. Lee and Ms. Johnson. He also bought two years ago, but says he is in a position to ride out the slump. “You have to plan for the long term,” he says. “If you don’t, the short term can kill you.” In any case, he adds, he has “too much stuff” to ever go back to an apartment.
Opposite their houses is an immense scrubby field. Until recently, it was overgrown, and Mr. Lewis says he has seen evidence of fires started by youths or vagrants. “There were supposed to be stores and a fire station over there,” he says with more resignation than anger. “We could all march down to city hall and picket, but what’s really going to happen with that?”
Things could be worse. Crime is up only marginally. There has been no major upswing in homelessness; the theory around city hall is that foreclosed families are either renting or have left the area.
Yet things may well become worse soon. During the good times, Merced built up a $17 million rainy-day fund. Now the city has a revenue shortfall. “We’ll bridge that gap by using the reserves,” says James Marshall, the city manager, “but over time the bridge ain’t long enough.”
FLIPPERS and speculators who had nothing invested in Merced beyond money were the first to abandon the community.
Many real estate agents and loan brokers, their customers gone, soon followed. So did commuters who thought they could spend four hours a day making round trips to the San Francisco Bay Area. And the spinners, young men and women hired by the developers to stand at intersections and literally point the way to the new developments, disappeared.
Now developers are pulling out.
Pacific Pride, a Central Valley developer, announced plans to build a 124-house neighborhood but gave up after paving streets and installing a wall as a partition from the railroad tracks. Graffiti runs the length of the wall. The site was declared a public nuisance by the city last winter. Messages left on a voice-mailbox belonging to Pacific Pride were not returned.
Moraga, built by Lakemont Homes of Roseville, Calif., was designed to include 500 luxury homes that ranged in size up to 3,500 square feet, boasting such amenities as butler pantries, double ovens, master suites with walk-in closets, five-foot-long soaking tubs and three-car garages.
The subdivision centerpiece, completed first, is an expansive and pleasant park, with two baseball fields, basketball courts, a picnic area and children’s playground. All that’s missing are many houses. Only about 24 were built. One was just listed as a foreclosure for $219,000, a deep discount to the already discounted price of $310,000 for that model. The Lakemont agent says that there have been no sales for a long time.
At least Lakemont is still keeping up appearances. At Gardenstone, part of the Bellevue Ranch development, the doors of the sales office are covered with plywood, as if a big storm were coming. A few blocks away is Riverstone, probably the bleakest Merced subdivision. A dozen houses were started here and then the construction workers went away. The wooden frames have been bleaching in the sun and sand for more than a year.
Both Gardenstone and Riverstone are the work of Crosswinds Communities, a developer based in Novi, Mich., that is owned and run by Bernie Glieberman. Reached at his office, Mr. Glieberman is asked if he and his fellow developers perhaps got a bit —
“No question,” he interrupts enthusiastically. “I would never deny we all got greedy. Everyone was setting records. Nobody was there to take away the punch bowl.”
He was selling houses for $300,000. That means a buyer would have needed a household income of about $100,000 to comfortably make the payments. But Merced’s per capita income of $23,864 ranks among the lowest for metropolitan areas in the country. “None of us paid much attention,” Mr. Glieberman says.
Yet he says the real problem was not over-eager developers but underhanded buyers — which is to say investors.
“We didn’t know we were selling to speculators,” the builder says. “They swore they were going to live in the houses.” He says he found out otherwise only after the plunge began and people started trying to get refunds on deposits of as much as $60,000.
Some said that they had lost their jobs, others that there were illnesses in their families. And some said they should get a refund because, as investors instead of owner-occupants, they should never have been allowed to buy the house in the first place. By then, it didn’t matter. Crosswinds didn’t refund any deposits.
Mr. Glieberman says that he intends to come back and finish those houses, that he is confident Merced will turn around.
For that to happen, banks will have to become more willing to lend. At the moment, however, they’re growing ever more reluctant.
Consider the experience of a couple moving to Merced last month from a nearby town. Their mortgage broker set up a Federal Housing Administration loan for them, which meant that it would be guaranteed by the federal government.
To finance the loan, the broker went to the HSBC Mortgage Corporation. At the last minute, HSBC said no, giving reasons that had nothing to do with the couple’s finances or their new house.
“Property is unacceptable due to high foreclosure rate and volatility of subject market,” HSBC informed the couple via fax. Apparently, even a government guarantee wasn’t enough.
Such emphatic declarations bode ill for a recovery, says Robert Gnaizda, general counsel of the Greenlining Institute, a housing advocacy group. “If a few institutions take the position that prices in the Central Valley are still excessive and they need to wait to finance houses there, you’ll have the total collapse of the market.”
A spokeswoman for HSBC says it has financed 36 mortgages in Merced County this year but declined to comment on the fax.
THE real estate boom, while it lasted, made Merced prosperous. Now the question is what can make it thrive once more, presumably on a more sustainable basis.
The university is an asset that will take time to develop. This is excellent farm country, but these days agriculture is not an occupation that creates a broad middle class.
Wal-Mart Stores is proposing to build a distribution center in Merced, but there is a movement against it among residents who say that trucks shuttling around the complex will worsen the breathing problems of the city’s children. Merced County has one of the highest percentages of asthmatic children in the state, according to a 2001 state health survey. Many children carry inhalers to help them breathe.
In the midst of all the wreckage caused by the real estate boom and bust, some think that they have found a way forward: build more houses, thousands and thousands of them.
On the western edge of Merced County, near the Diablo Range that separates the Central Valley from the Pacific Coast, is a stretch of empty land that a coalition of landowners has wanted to build on for years. The plan calls for the eventual construction of a city of 16,000 houses called the Villages of Laguna San Luis.
In many ways, the idea makes sense. The pass over the mountains is winding and slow, but if a proposed high-speed train is ever built, the Villages could end up being a bedroom community for San Jose. By 2025, California is projected to grow to 44 million people from the current 37 million. They will need somewhere to live.
This summer, the Villages came up for a vote with the Merced County Planning Commission. Cindy Lashbrook, a commissioner who is a fruit-and-nut farmer, says the project was basically well thought out. But all the cars that came with all those new houses would cause even more pollution. And in a state suffering from drought, where would the water come from?
“We have to stop thinking that more growth is always the answer,” Ms. Lashbrook says. “We have more housing than we need. We need jobs.”
She voted against the project, which faltered on a 2-to-2 split, with one commissioner absent. That meant supporters could bring it up again before the full commission, which they did. They won the second round, 4 to 1.
Rudy Buendia, the commissioner who dissented along with Ms. Lashbrook on the first vote, was in favor the second time around. Reached on his cellphone, Mr. Buendia said he was out hanging drywall on a construction project and did not have time to talk.
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