Heaving Venom

It seems some Israelis are less than enamored of the effort by their government to restrict Jewish settlements in the West Bank. CBS News reports that following government destruction of structures in an unauthorized Jewish settlement in the West Bank

Arsonists torched a mosque in an Arab village in northern Israel Monday, setting off protests by residents who clashed with police. Graffiti sprayed at the site suggested Jewish radicals, suspected in other recent mosque fires, were involved.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said carpet was burned inside the mosque in Tuba-Zangria and interior walls were damaged. Copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, were also burned, Israeli media reported.

Sometimes, though, individuals saturated with hatred are fairly indiscriminate in their targets. It is not only the dreaded Palestinians who are attacked. Not only do the far right attack Muslims but also the Israeli military itself, which one would have assumed the militants consider their ally. But no:

The words "price tag" were spray painted on the mosque, Rosenfeld added — a reference to a Jewish settler practice of attacking Palestinians or the Israeli military in retaliation for government operations or attacks against Jewish settlements.

A hunt is on for the perpetrators of these crimes, who if arrested will be prosecuted and punished, as they must be in a nation respecting the rule of law. But as in Israel, in the U.S.A. hateful and bitter extremists strike out in unexpected ways.

Rush Limbaugh, though denying ill intent, continually stereotypes black Americans. Commenting in September on an article which didn't mention music, crime, gangster rap, or race, Limbaugh smirked "This is the New York Times calling for Obama to take the gloves off. They want him to 'go gangsta.'" His disdain and hatred for blacks knows no bounds.

But it isn't only blacks. It's vile and incendiary racial stereotyping which is his stock in trade. For at least the last three days, Rush has been hurling insults at participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Recognizing that even some members of his audience are annoyed at the abuses of major financial institutions, Limbaugh continually has spewed personal invective at the Americans participating in the protests. Typical- yes, typical- was his remark on Wednesday "Are you really working and paying dues so your union can join a bunch of rich white freeloaders who don't want to pay anything?"

At first, there is surprise, modest though it might be- Rush Limbaugh, of all people, putting down white people because of their race! But it really is not surprising at all. Bigots are like that. It's hard for them to confine their animosity to one group. So while Israeli militants attack things Arab or Muslim, they lash out also at the nations's military, bulwark against those very same forces these individuals presumably abhor.

Halfway around the world, one of America's most execrable zealots cannot, or will not, restrict his animosity to minorities. For Rush Limbaugh, blacks or whites, unless wealthy, are beneath contempt and subject to his inflammatory demagoguery.

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New York, New York

"Money talks, b_ _ _ _ _ _ _ walks." Or more delicately, power follows money.

Several days ago, The New York Times reported

In a tense showdown above the East River, the police arrested more than 700 demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street protests who took to the roadway as they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday afternoon.

The police said it was the marchers’ choice that led to the enforcement action.

“Protesters who used the Brooklyn Bridge walkway were not arrested,” Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the New York Police Department, said. “Those who took over the Brooklyn-bound roadway, and impeded vehicle traffic, were arrested.”

But many protesters said they believed the police had tricked them, allowing them onto the bridge, and even escorting them partway across, only to trap them in orange netting after hundreds had entered.

“The cops watched and did nothing, indeed, seemed to guide us onto the roadway,” said Jesse A. Myerson, a media coordinator for Occupy Wall Street who marched but was not arrested.

Myfoxny.com reports that last night, "hundreds if not thousands" of protesters were arrested, not including their photographer, hit in the eyes by pepper spray from a police officer , and their reporter, hit by an officer's baton.

Three thousand miles away in Los Angeles,

the office of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa distributed 100 rain ponchos to the demonstrators on Wednesday while seven of the 15 councilmembers voted in favor of a resolution in support of the Occupy LA protest.

The resolution, which is slated for a final vote next week, called the protest "a peaceful and vibrant exercise in First Amendment rights."

As part of the resolution, the council will vote later this month on a measure that would require the city to divest from financial institutions that have not cooperated with measures to prevent foreclosures.

David Atkins comments

This is the difference between a city beholden to the vampires in the financial sector, and a city that isn't. It's the difference between a mayor with a community organizing and civic activism background, and a mayor beloved of the corrupt Third Way crowd who "earned" his chops playing games with other people's money. It's the difference between real progressivism, and authoritarian conservatism with a happy, socially liberal smile on its face.

All true and relevant, and a great description of Michael Bloomberg. But there is another factor, given, according to its own website

JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD's main data center.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing "profound gratitude" for the company's donation.

"These officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe," Dimon said. "We're incredibly proud to help them build this program and let them know how much we value their hard work."

This donation, money well spent, came in before the Wall Street protests. Naked Capitalism argues CEO Jaime

Dimon is one of the most powerful and connected corporate leaders in Gotham City. If he thinks the police donation was worthwhile, he might encourage other bank and big company CEOs to make large donations.

And what sort of benefits might JPM get? It is unlikely that there would be anything as crass as an explicit quid pro quo. But it certainly is useful to be confident that the police are on your side, say if an executive or worse an entire desk is caught in a sex or drugs scandal. Recall that Charles Ferguson in Inside Job alleged that the use of hookers is pervasive on Wall Street (duh) and is invoiced to the banks.

Or the police might be extra protective of your interests. Today, OccupyWallStreet decided to march across the Brooklyn Bridge (a proud New York tradition) to Chase Manhattan Plaza in Brooklyn. Reports in the media indicate that the police at first seemed to be encouraging the protestors not only to cross the bridge, but were walking in front of the crowd, seemingly escorting them across....

Whether it's Mayor Bloomberg or the police brass, the powers that run New York City are very, very threatened by this movement. That is partly why Paul Krugman summed it up best when he blogged "Never mind the street theater and annoying antics of some participants; this might be the start of something both big and good."

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Lusting To Be No. 2

Now, he can go back to doing what he set out to do. No, not completing the position to which he was elected in New Jersey, though he rationalized "I could not get by, in my mind, in my heart, the idea that I was going to leave here 20 months into my term. I just couldn’t get by that."

Christie labored hard to convince the media that he was doing it all for his constituents, remarking at his press conference " Now is not my time. I have a commitment to New Jersey that I simply will not abandon." He did not say whether that "commitment" was to continue the destruction of education and public safety in New Jersey, as teachers and police officers fall victim to his ruthless budget-cutting.

Chris Christie wants to be vice-president, the best, and by far the easiest, stepping-stone to the presidency itself. Characteristically, he was witty about it, joking "I don't think there's anybody in America who thinks my personality is best suited to be No. 2." Neither, however, was the personality of Lyndon Johnson or Joe Biden one well suited to take orders from a guy in the Oval Office. Yet both LBJ and JB were selected as running mates because the presidential nominee (rightly) thought that they offered a contrast which would help get them elected.

Christie is charismatic and belligerent; Romney, neither. The New Jersey governor not only chose not to take himself out of consideration for the no. 2 slot; he invited consideration. It's hard not to be considered qualified for vice-president. Sarah Palin was not- but it had nothing to do with personality but a perceived, unique willingness to remain ignorant about major issues. If Christie were nominated, then selected, as vice-president and asked about yesterday's remark about "personality," the query would loom as a hanging curve. Not the best personality, he would gladly admit (even if he doesn't believe it himself); but the best qualified by reason of temperament, experience, and record, he would boast, ludicrously- but credibly in the eyes of the adoring media.

However, while the Governor has not taken himself out of serious consideration for the v.p. slot, he had long ago taken himself out of any realistic possibility of gaining the Republicanpresidential nomination. "You gotta believe in your heart," Christie said on September 20, " that you are ready to walk into the Oval Office and to lead the nation. And I don’t feel like I’m ready.”

The G.O.P. candidates would not have given Christie a pass on that one. Nor would they have let him slide on his occasional forays from extreme conservatism into the mainstream. Herman Cain sent a warning on Sunday, declaring "Most of the conservatives believe that we should enforce our borders. They do not believe people should be here without documentation. They do not believe global warming is a crisis or a threat. Yes it might be a little bit out there, but they don’t see it as a crisis or a threat. And as you go right down the line, he’s going to turn off a lot of conservatives with those positions."

It would have been entertaining to view Chris Christie pandering to those he referred to as "the crazies" when opposition arose to his appointment of a Muslim to a judgeship. And pander he would have, and still he would have been wiped out in the nomination process, which would have rendered him an unlikely candidate for the vice-presidential nod. In the process, he would have positioned himself to the far right and taken himself out of a realistic possibility of being re-elected in relatively liberal New Jersey.

Led around by the nose by the narcissistic governor, members of the media thought there was a legitimate chance Chris Christie would run for president. Now that he is running for national office- the vice-presidency- they seem not to notice.

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Oh, No

In politics, as in sports, it's called an "unforced error."

Unforced error, meet President Barack Obama. For George Stephanopoulos of ABC News didn't even inquire whether Americans are better off than they were four years ago. Rather, he asked

There are so many people who simply don't think they're better off than they were four years ago. How do you convince them that they are?

President Obama thus was given the opportunity to argue that George W. Bush deserved to be held responsible for a large share of the economic debacle (as polls indicate most Americans believe) or to cite the measures he has taken to turn the economy around. Instead, he decided to remind voters of what they already knew, admitting

Well, I don't think they're better off than they were four years ago. They're not better off than they were before Lehman collapsed, before the financial crisis, before this extraordinary recession that we're going through.

He continued with his answer, but by then the damage was done. If this is Barack Obama's effort to appear to "feel your pain," Bill Clinton-style, it fell way off the mark. Sure, most people were better off before Lehman collapsed than they are now but the truth can be acknowledged in a more tactful and artful way, perhaps by noting that the country would have been better served if the Republicans had worked with him to create jobs. Even avoiding the question would have been preferable to a statement which will be quoted in GOP debates, speeches, and ads, sometimes accompanied by the assertion "even President Obama admits he has failed."

Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6) captured the presidency from Jimmy Carter by asking "are you better off today than you were four years ago?" Barack Obama should have left it to Republicans to ask that question themselves, rather than answering it for them.

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Guns Galore

If you've been watching the Repub presidential debates, you know that Texas governor Rick Perry has been running a one-man army fighting the Mexican drug cartels. CNN noted in that New Hampshire, he

signaled Saturday he would be open to sending U.S. troops into Mexico to combat drug cartels should the situation arise.

After speaking at a house party in Manchester, the Texas governor was asked a series of questions about the border and his stance on illegal immigration.

He said the leaders of Mexico and the U.S. should meet after next year's elections to address the deadly drug trade in that country.

"It may require our military in Mexico working in concert with them to kill these drug cartels and to keep them off of our border," Perry said.

Campaign press secretary Robert Black said Perry wanted to cooperate with the Mexican government and wasn't ruling anything out.

"He's going to work with the Mexican government to do what's necessary," Black said.

There is something that Perry, as Texas governor, may be uniquely qualified to do- not invading Mexico, but trying to stem purchases of guns in Texas which are transferred to drug cartels. The Houston Chronicle reported in May

Once the federal law banning assault weapons expired in 2004, so-called "straw purchasers“ have flooded U.S. gun stores in the Southwest, mostly in Texas and Arizona, sweeping up these and other weapons. Court documents show such purchasers buying as many as 20 AK-47s at a time, paying as much as $11,000 in cash.

The weapons are sold legally but the purchasers must sign a U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives document saying they are buying the guns for themselves. Straw purchases for others are a violation of federal firearms law.

Typically, the purchaser turns the guns over to a broker who takes them across the border to Mexico, where such weapons cannot be bought legally. The weapons are sold to the cartels, often for three or four times the original price.

MSNBC.com reported in April that global intelligence firm Stratfor maintains

the presence of cartels has been documented in more than 230 U.S. cities.

The number of American deaths pales in comparison to the Mexican death toll from the violence: 15,273 in 2010 alone, according to the Mexican government.

But some U.S. law enforcement officials closest to the border say that new aggressiveness by the cartels — including threats to target U.S. law enforcement officers — and increasing drug gang violence on the U.S. side of the border mean that more Americans will die if the U.S. and Mexico can’t soon turn the tide.

And there is one thing at least Texas can do: tighten its gun laws, nearly the weakest in the nation. It won't end the problem, but it would ameliorate it and is something Rick Perry can do for his country. He'll never be President, but he can do more than almost anyone about violence on the border.

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Charity Begins With One's Enemies

Democrats and Independents who lean Democratic, David Atkins observes, are significantly less enthusiastic about voting in 2012 than are Republicans. The "professional left," critical of the White House's approach and derided (at least until recently) by the Administration, seems to have been right all along.

Atkins cites three reasons for the enthusiasm gap: 1) "playing nice with Republicans is a fool's errand;" 2) "playing nice with Wall Street is pointless;" and 3) "abandoning the base is a very dangerous thing to do politically."

Whoa. Let's go back to #2.

Atkins points out that Wall Street has turned against the President, switching allegiance to the Repub Party (as it did in 2010) and especially to Mitt Romney. The Los Angeles Times cites hurt feelings when Obama referred to "fat cat bankers." But as Joan Walsh writes (and with which Atkins surely would agree), little has been effectuated to reform the financial sector, given

whether it’s “Volcker’s Rule” keeping banks out of speculative, proprietary trading; Gensler’s effort to force the trading of poorly understood derivatives on “exchanges” where their shady contents could be better examined; or Bair’s push for a contingency plan to force the toxic behemoth Citibank into bankruptcy; the tough reforms never materialized. They were watered down to insignificance, or as in the case of the Citi breakup, abandoned completely.

Jon Stewart, therefore, asked on September 20 of Ron Suskind, author of Confidence Men, the key question (video below):

We keep hearing that the Wall Street guys hate Obama, and my sense is ‘why?’ They’ve had it as good as anyone in this country over the past two and a half years, probably better. What’s their beef?

That elicited the answer that sums up this Administration better than has almost anything. Suskind responded

I asked the same question. I talked to a senior Wall Street guy. I said '"what gives with this thing with Obama? You're after him; he's anti-business. God, he couldn't have done more. He basically opened the federal purse for you guys. He saved your skin." This guy says "you bet, you bet.'" And he says "no, no, you see. Of course, he's not anti-business. But when we say he's anti-business, he just ends up dong more for us. So we're going to keep saying it."

You, the reader, suspected this. But now we know it.

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Policing, New York-Style

There has been an outbreak of "attempts" of sexual assault, mostly "groping or grabbing," in Brooklyn, NY. The Wall Street Journal reports

Lauren, a South Slope resident, was walking home three blocks from the gym on Monday when she was stopped.The 25-year-old, who did not want her last name to be used, was wearing shorts and a T-shirt when she claims a police officer asked if she would stop and talk to him. He also stopped two other women wearing dresses.

According to Lauren, the officer asked if they knew what was going on in the neighborhood. When they answered in the affirmative, he asked if they knew what the guy was looking for."He pointed at my outfit and said, 'Don't you think your shorts are a little short?'" she recalled. "He pointed at their dresses and said they were showing a lot of skin

."He said that such clothing could make the suspect think he had "easy access," said Lauren.She said the officer explained that "you're exactly the kind of girl this guy is targeting."Asked whether officers were warning women against wearing shorts or skirts, the New York City Police Department responded in no time.

The Police Department has a response-sort of.

"Officers are not telling women what not to wear—there's a TV series that does that," quipped Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne in an email. "They are simply pointing out that as part of the pattern involving one or more men that the assailant(s) have targeted women wearing skirts."

Not having ever been involved in sexual assault, I cannot say for sure whether the likelihood of commission of such a crime is affected by what a woman wears. But a couple of decades ago, police departments and sheriff departments commonly posted in their public area posters advising people how to avoid becoming victims of crime, especially of burglary (that pretentiously called "home invasion" now). It was wrong then, and it's wrong now, when done in such a manner as to suggest that full responsibility does not lie with the offender. The message sent- inadvertently or intentionally- was that the perpetrator was not alone responsible for his crime but that the victim shared responsibility.

Of course, there is an additional problem. As Lauren told the Wall Street Journal" Where do you draw the line? I can't wear shorts? Besides the fact that I wasn't wearing anything that was inappropriate or provocative….I don't think that should be part of the problem. At all."

When one cannot tell except by glancing at the masthead whether an article comes from a straight news source or from the Onion, there is a problem, and it's not with the women wearing skirts.

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