If We Don't Pay Attention, It Almost Makes Sense

You gotta love that moral equivalence.

It should be troubling that atheists, such as Bill Maher, exhibit the most understanding of the intersection of religion and politics.  Atlantic contributing editor Jeffrey Tayler, an unabashed atheist, claims

What, some might ask, could be wrong with prayer? By common definition, prayer entails someone sitting for a quiet moment and beseeching his or her Lord for intervention in matters of grave import – that it rain on the crops or souls be saved, that gays be “healed” or atheists “see the light,” and so on. In objective terms, however, the supplicant is demanding improbable favors from an imaginary despot...

I would disagree, but it is nearly beyond dispute, as Tayler observes, that when "doing so with lowered head and genuflections and other  toadying gestures of obeisance," it is "behavior that without faith's halo would be classified as symptoms of mental derangement."

Yet, Tayler concentrates on critiquing President Obama's recent speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, where

After the keynote speaker leaves the podium, the president, as a rule, delivers an address – usually pious pablum hardly worth listening to. This year was different: President Obama’s words stirred Republicans to ire: They contended that he, in an excursus apparently of his own composition, drew a false equivalency between the atrocities committed by ISIS and the outrages perpetrated in Christianity’s name, starting with the Crusades and running all the way up to slavery and Jim Crow in the United States.

I’ll discuss what upset the Republicans in a moment. Progressives, it turns out, actually have more reason for rancor.

Tayler argues that Presidents shouldn't attend the National Prayer Breakfast, a legitimate position, but is unfair to Christianity and Judaism in arguing that it "lends credence to faiths that, by any humane standard, long ago discredited themselves and should certainly not be legitimized with Washingtonian pomp and reverence."  More justified, however, is his observation that this government was "proudly founded on the separation between Church and State," with Tayler surprisingly neglecting to add that the Ten Commandments, contrary to the imagination of most conservatives, did not serve as the basis for most of  the nation's laws.

Clearly, Tayler does not disagree with that which most incensed conservatives, the President's comment that (presumably Christian) Americans "too often... justified in the name of Christ" the atrocities of slavery and Jim Crow," a remark besotted with moral equivalence but accurate nonetheless. He is far less sanguine that the President stated

But we also see faith being twisted and distorted, used as a wedge -- or, worse, sometimes used as a weapon.  From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris, we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith, professed to stand up for Islam, but, in fact, are betraying it.  We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism  -- terrorizing religious minorities like the Yezidis, subjecting women to rape as a weapon of war, and claiming the mantle of religious authority for such actions. 

Tayler responds

“Betraying” Islam? Really? The Charlie Hebdo assassins were executing the death penalty against “violators” of injunctions inscribed in the Quran and the Hadith that forbid the depiction and mocking of the Prophet Muhammad. Indeed, Al Qaeda and ISIS, to which the killers may have been linked, find sanction in these texts for beheadings, the enslavement of women and much else. To justifiably claim that any of these jihadis are “betraying” Islam, we have to ignore the meaning of words in such injunctions and interpret them to suit our tastes. Unfortunately, neither the Charlie Hebdo assassins nor the butchers of ISIS choose to do this.

There comes a time that an honest Barack Obama has to come face-to-face with the reality that perhaps many violent Islamists really do understand their own religion, though they choose to manifest them in evil ways. No such luck.

President Obama continued "We see sectarian war in Syria, the murder of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, religious war in the Central African Republic, a rising tide of anti-Semitism and hate crimes in Europe, so often perpetrated in the name of religion." Responding, Tayler contended "the chief impetus for all this bloodshed and mayhem is, obviously, religion- the commonality Obama conveniently skirted."

Well, yes, of course a President (especially the first black President) couldn't say that, just as a President (especially the first black President) couldn't skip a National Prayer Breakfast.  Tayler went on "Had religion not existed, had it waned by our time, all this violence would just not have happened."

It is debatable that the violence would not have occurred anyway, given that human beings have found many other reasons- property and money come first to mind- to wage war or commit other organized mayhem. Additionally, it is impossible to determine that great acts of violence wouldn't occur without religious devotion inasmuch as, lacking that, human beings would not exist as we now know them.

But Tayler rightly criticized Obama equating "sectarian war in Syria, the murder of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, religious war in the Central African Republic...."  Last October, The New York Times reported

For three years, the northern Bekaa Valley, the birthplace of Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite paramilitary group, has been warding off ripples of war from Syria, just over the mountains. But in recent weeks, encroaching skirmishes have made the area feel more like a front line.

That foreboding was underscored in recent days as Sunni insurgents from Syria fired rockets at the mostly Shiite village of Labweh in retaliation for the Lebanese Army’s operations in Tripoli.

In November, VICE explained

Nearly two months into the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic, a spate of attacks across the country illustrates the shortcomings of the international response to its disregarded conflict.

The mission, dubbed MINUSCA and officially launched on September 15, still has only two-thirds of the 11,800 peacekeepers mandated by the UN Security Council. Other divisions, such as the one for human rights, face even greater staff shortages. Operating alongside roughly 2,000 French troops and some 750 EU peacekeepers, the combined force has been hard-pressed to protect civilians amid continued fighting between predominantly Muslim Seleka rebels and Christian and animist self-defense groups called the anti-balaka in a territory roughly the size of France.

On October 10th in Dekoa, a town 160 miles north of the capital Bangui, armed members of the Seleka stormed a church where civilians had sought shelter. Despite the presence of UN peacekeepers at the entrance of the church, nine people were murdered as they hid inside the compound. French troops eventually arrived to quell the violence, but not before five more civilians were killed in the town. Three women and four children were among the dead.

Yesterday, NBC News reported

Boko Haram forces appear poised to attack Maiduguri, a city of 2 million in northeast Nigeria -- meaning that 200,000 Christians could be at risk of slaughter by the Islamist terror group, say U.S. intelligence officials and experts on Nigeria.

"An attack on Madiguri is very likely," said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Project at the Atlantic Council, echoing U.S. intelligence officials. Pham believes, as do other experts, that Boko Haram has already placed "sleeper cells" among the tide of refugees who have fled the group's murderous rampage through Africa's most populous nation. "They've done it everywhere else they've gone," said Pham. "So why not Maiduguri?"

Admittedly, the brutal fighting in the Central African Republic pits predominantly Muslim Seleka rebels against what VICE terms "Christian and animist self-defense groups called the anti-balaka."

Still, terrorist violence around the globe lacks clear equivalence, which does not deter from equating mass murder perpetrated by Muslims but that (less common) perpetrated by Christians. But the President doesn't stop there when he cites "sectarian war in Syria, the murder of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, religious war in the Central African Republic," therein portraying virtually unspeakable crimes against humanity.

Without missing a beat- in the same sentence- the President adds "a rising tide of anti-Semitism and hate crimes in Europe, so often perpetrated in the name of religion." Taken together, President Obama actually stated "We see sectarian war in Syria, the murder of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, religious war in the Central African Republic, a rising tide of anti-Semitism and hate crimes in Europe, so often perpetrated in the name of religion."

It is a claim of equivalence as astonishing in its implication as in its subtlety.  At least thousands of people have been killed in Nigeria (video, below, describing abductions of Boko Haram), at least tens of thousands in the Central African Republic, and hundreds of thousands in Syria, and the President equates those atrocities with anti-Semitism and hate crimes. He  does so probably because they, he maintains, are occurring in Europe (not so on any other continent, apparently).   He makes sure not to antagonize Muslims across the world- they are, he says, doing only what Christians are doing- while European citizens have the temerity to commit "hate crimes."

Jeffrey Tayler's criticism of the institution of the national prayer breakfast is welcome, or should be. So, too, must the President come under scrutiny for the false equivalence he is so prone to creating.There are implications, not so clear today, to his eagerness to try to pull the wool over our eyes.











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A Charmed Life

It has been said that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had a very bad 2014. That is much exaggerated.

Oh, yes, he had the best running back in the NFL, Adrian Peterson of the Vikings, charged with child abuse. (Peterson eventually pled guilty to misdemeanor reckless assault.)  The battering of his fiancee (degeneracy at a casino? my heavens!) by Ray Rice had proven to be the league's greatest scandal in recent years and especially for Roger Goodell, who at first didn't realize a two-game suspension might be a mite insufficient for a vicious assault caught on tape.

There were other NFL players, such as the Giants' Luke Petitgout and the Panthers' Greg Hardy, charged this year with some sort of assault, black eyes for the league. And there is the continuing problem of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

The latest scandal to hit the NFL, obviously, is "Deflategate," in which 11-12 of 12 footballs the New England Patriots' offense used in its defeat of the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC championship game were found to be under-inflated.

Fortunately for the Patriots- and for Goodell's NFL- the Patriots annihilated (figuratively, not literally) the Colts that day, especially in the second half, played after the problem was discovered and rectified. That led observers, some posing as intelligent, to conclude that the increased pressure on the balls had nothing to do with the outcome, a curious assumption given if the discrepancy had been ongoing (as is likely), the Patriots might not even have been in that game.

And so the Patriots' victory in the Super Bowl, resulting (perhaps not coincidentally) from inarguably the worst significant play call in NFL playoff history, also was a great win for Roger Goodell. The league's investigation (such as it will be) of probable cheating will go on, though exonerating the franchise will be made easier by its unparalleled success and the canonization of quarterback Tom Brady.

There is a declining likelihood that Robert Kraft's team will be significantly punished- and a Super Bowl victory is a small price to pay for any punishment. Additionally,there may be a growing (though unspoken) realization that commission of child abuse and domestic violence are committed off the field and hence largely invulnerable to action by the league office.   That will be a plus for Goodell's reputation- but will pale in comparison to his great good luck in having these scandals completely overshadow CTE, the most significant, and by far most deadly, transgression of the league.

And now comes along another stroke of good fortune- or at least not the bad fortune it should be for the league's commissioner.  Luke Brinker of Salon sets the table with

Here’s a protip: When you’re putting together your professional football team’s calendar, it’s best not to feature a guy caught on tape making racial slurs for Black History Month.

But that’s just what happened with the Philadelphia Eagles, whose wide receiver Riley Cooper is the featured player for February in this year’s team calendar. This, despite video of Cooper spouting ugly racial epithets at a 2013 Kenny Chesney concert.

Cooper profusely apologized for his statements, pronouncing himself “ashamed and disgusted” with his conduct. The Eagles, obviously, kept him on, and it seems that the designers of the team’s 2015 calendar could think of no better month than one dedicated to the history and heritage of African Americans to spotlight him.

Apparently, David Duke was unavailable. Neither was Mike Huckabee's fav, NRA enthusiast and white supremacist Ted Nugent, available to commemorate May, the month of Martin Luther King's assassination.

At first glance, the calendar malfunction should be attributed to someone in the Philadelphia Eagles' organization who was sufficiently negligent not to review something, distributed to the public, with which the team is identified. (Video below of the completely clueless Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless. Keep shilling for the NFL, guys.) But it's far more than that, for ESPN reports

The Philadelphia Eagles on Thursday said they were not responsible for an unfortunate juxtaposition in the team's official 2015 calendar.

A photo of wide receiver Riley Cooper is featured for February, which is Black History Month. Cooper drew criticism nearly two years ago after an online video appeared in 2013 showing him using racial epithets during a concert.

"We do not oversee the production of the annual team calendar," the Eagles said in a news release. "We do not provide any input about the players who are featured or where those pictures appear in the calendar. The NFL licenses the production of that calendar to a third party, and we do not have an opportunity to review the material."

One Philadelphia-area beat writer for the team was right on top of the story with these tweets on his Facebook page:



Ed Kracz
February 12 at 6:06pm · 
Riley Cooper graces the ‪#‎Eagles‬ calendar for February. Why is this a problem? Read this: http://bit.ly/1EiE19R
Like · Comment

Ed Kracz
February 12 at 2:29pm · 
‪#‎Eagles‬ (cont): ... the production of that calendar to a third party and we do not have an opportunity to review the material.”
Like · Comment

Ed Kracz
February 12 at 2:28pm · 
‪#‎Eagles‬ on calendar: "We do not oversee the production of the annual team calendar. We do not provide any input ...
Like · Comment

Ed Kracz
February 12 at 2:26pm · 
‪#‎Eagles‬ release statement on snafu of having Riley Copper as poster boy for February on the team calendar. February is Black History Month
Like · Comment


Yo, Ed, do you think there was room amongst those 140 (times 4) characters for "NFL?" Neither Mr. Kracz nor the team may utter those three little letters.  The commissioner of the league that let the contract to the "third party" which produces team calendars is ultimately responsible, but his is a name that cannot be uttered.

Roger Goodell is getting a pass. He has, so far, gotten a pass for the prevalence of concussions in the NFL, and when he exonerates the NFL's King of Cheats for Deflategate- or announces a relatively paltry penalty- he will ride it out. Tough job, that Commissioner of the National Football League thing, and at only $43 million a year.










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Imagine What Happens If Bruce Springsteen Retires

Despite being- no, because- he is an unabashed liberal, E.J. Dionne is typically fair-minded. After the "dueling stories" of Jon Stewart and Brian Williams hit recently, the columnist wrote

Be a media critic and ask: why did I put Steart first? Because he embodies so many of the changes I’m talking about. He is a gifted comedian, of course, but more than anything else, he is a media critic. He constantly upbraids journalists for how they’ve covered stories, and perhaps more significantly, what they’ve failed to report.

Dionne notes that  "Stewart's ridicule almost single-handedly killed CNN’s 'Crossfire' for a while" and was "a mistake" because "All the clever irony in the world can’t get us past the fact that passionate, if sometimes contrived, disagreement is an essential part of democracy."    (It should be seen as an even greater mistake given its eventual metamorphosis, since mercifully cancelled.) However, Dionne adds

Nonetheless, Stewart is more often right than wrong. He excels at poking at pomposity. What’s not to like about that? He explains complicated matters when regular journalism doesn’t. And he has drawn people into politics through the medium of laughter — a blessing when so much of our political discussion is grim and angry.

Never mind that Stewart, a skillful interviewer and prodigious reader, long ago ceased being amusing, except to viewers drawn to frequent contortions of the face and voice.  That escaped the attention of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which in its embarrassing idolatry neglected the complexity Dionne  recognized.  On Wednesday evening, it sent out an e-mail gushing

The Daily Show set the bar for making politics funny, combining hard-hitting news analysis with a large dose of humor. In his nearly two decades on the air, Jon has never been afraid to take hypocritical politicians and their outrageous agendas to task. We’ll miss looking forward to 11 p.m. on weeknights to see how he responds to the day’s news.

The DSCC added "Sign our card to thank Jon and wish him luck in whatever he does next- you can even add a personal note!"

Thanks, Jon, for making that sacrifice- and at only $25 million per year! You always will be our heartthrob.

Slate's Jamelle Bouie defends Stewart's temper tantrum on Crossfire but, more importantly, adds

Cable, however, isn’t the only forum for debate, and most political conversations aren’t as shallow as the ones you see on TV. On op-ed pages and around dinner tables, Americans have substantive conversations about politics. And while the facts aren’t always right, the discussion is often valuable. Stewart gives short shrift to that kind of talk. Instead, in the world of The Daily Show, the only politics is cable politics, where venality rules, serious disputes are obscured, and cynicism is the only response that works.

Then Bouie gets at the main problem with Stewart's approach- which, while the DSCC seems not to notice, characterizes the Republican-excusing mainstream media. Bouie adds

Not only does this discourage people who want to make a difference—like the earnest young viewers of Stewart’s audience—but it blurs the picture and makes it hard to see when those arguments really matter. It’s how we get the spectacle of Stewart’s rally, when tens of thousands of liberals gathered on the National Mall in Washington to hear an ode to civility—with an extended metaphor about the Lincoln Tunnel—as if Washington gridlock were a case of bad manners and not deep-seated ideological differences about government and its place in the world.

The DSCC plea highlights the caricature by conservative Republicans of  Democrats as captive to the entertainment industry.  Instead of sending a card to a near-billionaire who is positioned to make lots and lots more now, perhaps the DSCC ought to encourage supporters send condolences to the parents of this individual:

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Two Americas, Still

Once Craig Stephen Hicks turned himself into a Clayton County, NC sheriff's officer for the murder of three young Muslim residents of Chapel Hill, reaction was swift. The Raleigh News-Observer reported

The news spread fast on social media, where many didn’t believe the killer’s motive could be explained by an argument about parking. Relatives were quick to call the slayings of three American Muslims a hate crime. “I mean, who would kill somebody over a parking spot?” said Abdel Kader Barakat, a cousin of Deah Barakat.

The women’s father, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, who has a psychiatry practice in Clayton, said regardless of what prompted the shooting Tuesday night, Hicks’ underlying animosity toward Barakat and Abu-Salha was based on their religion and culture.

“It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” Abu-Salha said. “This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.”

Abu-Salha said his daughter, who lived next door to Hicks, wore a Muslim head scarf and told her family a week ago that she had “a hateful neighbor.”

“Honest to God, she said, ‘He hates us for what we are and how we look,’ ” he said.

Barakat’s family held a press conference in Raleigh on Wednesday, urging people to celebrate the memories of the students. They also said authorities should treat the deaths as a hate crime.

Chapel Hill police, however, maintained "Our preliminary investigation indicates that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking." Craig Hicks' wife Karen evidently agreed, stating  “I can say that it is my absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims’ faith, but in fact was related to long-standing parking disputes my husband had with various (neighbors) regardless of their race, religion or creed."

One woman living nearby added "Anytime that I saw him or saw interaction with him or friends or anyone in the parking lot or myself, he was angry. he was very angry, anytime I saw him." Hicks' ex-wife explained that while she was married to Craig, her husband "incessantly" watched Michael Douglas' 1993 film "Falling Down" and found the star's shooting rampage "hilarious. He had no compassion at all."

Hicks apparently was an angry, libertarian atheist with a permit to carry (photo below from the Independent of the UK). There is enough there to satisfy big-government conservatives, gun control supporters, theists, even psychologists. But as Will Bunch notes, "the jury is still out on what motivated the murders, and no one should jump to a conclusion... in either direction."

Nonetheless, one fact is incontestable: this was a hate crime.  Craig Hicks hated Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. Murder is not an act of love.

This is not to minimize the possible influence of religious bigotry upon Hicks' offense and that as well as other factors probably entered into its commission.  Multiple motives are not uncommon, especially in offenses not motivated primarily by greed and/or precipitated by substance abuse.

The incidence of street crime has declined markedly in the nation since the early '90s, while a disturbing pattern of senseless violence has arisen. Blogging for Hullabaloo, Tom Sullivan attempts "to put this violent incident into a larger context for a moment" as he found on the front page of Raw Story Thursday morning these headlines:

Tech mogul John McAfee reveals he now lives in Tennessee and is ‘constantly armed’ 

Chris Kyle called man who killed him ‘nuts’ just before shooting: attorney

Tennessee man forces ex to carve his name into her skin with box cutter, then rapes her

Indian man paralyzed after Alabama cop body-slams him for walking in wealthy white suburb

Woman miscarries after Georgia cop who didn’t ‘appreciate her tone’ tackles and sits on her: lawsuit

Sullivan remarks "notice anything in common about the geography of those stories? "

Indeed.

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Don't Confuse What I Think With What I Believe

Sometimes, Mr. President, it's best just to keep quiet.

In the book "Believer" written by former Obama adviser David Axelrod and released earlier this week

“I’m just not very good at bullshitting,” Axelrod reports Obama telling him after a 2008 campaign event in which the then-candidate discussed his opposition to same-sex marriage. At the time, Obama said he was in favor of civil unions.

“Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’” Axelrod explains in the book.

Obama shifted his public stance only after Vice President Biden came out in support of same-sex marriage in a May 2012 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“If Obama’s views were ‘evolving’ publicly, they were fully evolved behind closed doors,” Axelrod writes.

For people on the left or on the right, none of this comes as a surprise. During the 2008 campaign and in the early part (before Biden boxed him into a corner) of the 2012 campaign, practically no one outside of the mainstream media took Barack Obama seriously when he said he was opposed to same-sex marriage.  Now, the practice is legal in 37 states and soon to be approved nationwide by the judiciary, assuming Chief Justice Roberts doesn't find some bizarre way to split the baby.

Gay marriage supporter Mark Joseph Stern of Slate observes

For most of his first term, Obama simply lied about whether he thought gay people deserve equal rights, and told the truth only once he felt he could withstand any political blowback. It seems the president’s evolution on the topic had less to do with his private views on gay marriage and more to do with his readings of public opinion polls.

Clearly, and when a lie is revealed, further discussion are unlikely to help the fabricator. Nevertheless, in an interview conducted by Ben Smith on Tuesday

Obama told BuzzFeed News that his own reversals on same-sex marriage — he supported it in a questionnaire he filled out in 1996, opposed it in the U.S. Senate and as president, and then “evolved” toward supporting it again — had taught him a lesson about politics.

“These are the kinds of things you learn as you move forward in public life: that sometimes you can’t split the difference,” Obama said. “That sometimes you just have to be very clear that this is what’s right.”

That's rather odd. While largely defending Obama's shifting positions on same sex-marriage, gay rights activist Dan Savage told MSNBC's Chris Hayes Tuesday evening

Nobody I think in the LGBT civil rights movement believed him when he went from being pro marriage equality in 1996 to oppose to for it again. That's not the way that people evolve on this issue. People evolve in one direction. People move from opposition to support. I never heard of a case, except for the president, where we are supposed to buy somebody evolving on it then devolving on it then revolving on it as the president did.

Obama, writes Smith,

disputed, however, the contention of his former top political adviser, David Axelrod, that he had misled voters in 2008 when he opposed marriage equality. Axelrod wrote in his new memoir that Obama “modified” his position because his aides worried about alienating black Christian leaders, and then complained that he didn’t like “bullshitting” voters about it.

“I think David is mixing up my personal feelings with my position on the issue,” Obama said. “I always felt that same-sex couples should be able to enjoy the same rights, legally, as anybody else, and so it was frustrating to me not to, I think, be able to square that with what were a whole bunch of religious sensitivities out there.”

We now learn that Obama believes personal feelings have nothing to do with his stated positions, given that "David is mixing up my personal feelings with my position on the issue."  The man who once asserted it was only "the pundits (who) like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states" became concerned because of "a whole bunch of religious sensitivities out there."

The President's phraseology is reminiscent of the days when people referred to minorities as "them."  There were no longer Americans with a different view, but "a whole bunch out there" opposing same-sex marriage only because of "religious sensitivities."  Not religious faith or religious belief- but religious "sensitivities."  Buck up, you un-evolved Cro-Magnons!

We all know now what most of us knew then: Barack Obama merely was trying to curb the impact of a wedge issue so that his opponents wouldn't exploit in a campaign (cartoon by Watson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch).  It's a tactic politicians routinely employ, though few try to rationalize it in such a patronizing fashion.

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Europe Is Just A Four-Letter Word

Following the Charlie Hebdo slaughter, which left twelve people dead, four customers at a Jewish delicatessen in Paris were murdered in a related attack.  Unsurprisingly, President Obama generically blamed "vicious zealots" because they "behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks."

Perhaps you didn't know this has been happening routinely. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough did, however, for on Monday he complained (video below) to co-host Mika Brzezinski and Repub Nicole Wallace on Morning Joe "I wouldn't be quite so smug about mocking somebody as Jews are being gunned down in the streets of Paris and being attacked across Europe."

This was part of a rant Scarborough's rant against the Democrats who have criticized John Boehner's invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, issued without notification to the President and in the midst of a political campaign in Israel.

Perhaps you also didn't know Scarborough, raised as a Southern Baptist, is Jewish, or at least has some special insight into Jewish feelings and sentiment, presumably gained by being a GOP politician turned media star. He added "Go ahead, be smug about it. You don't understand what Jews are going through. You go ahead and be smug."

Give the former congressman credit. He himself was not being smug (and Brzezinski, whatever her faults, is anything but smug). Intemperate, irrational, and presumptuous, obviously; smug, not.

Scarborough was outraged over some of the reaction to the forum offered the Prime Minister, who undoubtedly (initially) thought he had scored a coup by securing an invitation to speak before the legislative body of the world's major superpower and most important and loyal ally of his beleagured nation, home to more Jews than any nation but Israel itself. Netanyahu also has decried the negotiations being conducted by the Administration and other nations with Iran over the Persian state's nuclear program.








But Scarborough's tirade is significant for other reasons, reflecting a blind spot of both the President and the right.

In June, 2009 Obama plead in Cairo for understanding of "the Palestinian people," specifying "Muslims and Christians," neglecting to include the Jewish people, who settled long ago in the land of Palestine. He proceeded that omission by stating

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust.  Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed -- more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today.  Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

The President acknowledged that Jews had been persecuted "around the world," though unhelpfully he added "for centuries," implying that the worldwide persecution was from a far-off time. He then spent the next four-and-a-half sentences over-emphasizing the impact of the Holocaust in inspiring a Jewish nation.

Similarly, Scarborough put unnecessary emphasis on one attack (as horrific as it was) in Paris, echoing the remark by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in January, 2003 when he stated

Germany has been a problem and France has been a problem. But you look at vast numbers of other countries in Europe, they're not with France and Germany... they're with the US.You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe....

If you're looking at the entire NATO Europe today, the centre of  gravity is shifting to the East.

Freedom fries, old Europe, and a stealth swipe at Europe from the President. Neither Republicans nor the President, however, took note when following the attacks upon Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Casher supermarket the Wall Street Journal explained

Three-quarters of France’s roughly half-million Jews are, like Ms. Bettach, of North African origin, Jewish community officials estimate. Their families moved to the safety of France mostly in the period between Israel’s creation in 1948 and Algeria’s independence in 1962, as persecution and discrimination emptied out the once-huge Jewish communities of former French possessions across the Mediterranean.

There was muted criticism by the GOP of the President's Cairo speech and- predictably- little or none of Obama trying to ascribe justification of the Jewish state almost to the Holocaust, and the Holocaust alone.  Republicans are too busy criticizing Barack Obama for trivial or trumped-up reasons. Figuratively blind with rage against liberal Democrats, Joe Scarborough characteristically missed the point on Monday.



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Good Work If You Can Get It

Charles P. Pierce, the most colorful progressive political blogger in the nation, calls Politico "Tiger Beat on the Potomac" because it

is a content-producing machine. It is a brand that runs in and of itself. It has a Web site and a magazine. It produces its own videos. It conducts policy forums for which it sucks down corporate sponsorships. (More about those in a moment.) As a news operation, it’s half gossip rag and half tip sheet. As the former, it’s not as good as the National Enquirer, and as the latter, it’s way up the track, just behind the Daily Racing Form. 

Though a font of Washington Wisdom, Politico does produce some fodder for blogs, in part because of its superficiality. And once in a while, one of its posts or articles is worthwhile. Today, we can read two pieces about Mitt Romney's decision to forego a 2016 run, "Mitt had the heart, but not the guts" by Roger Simon and "The Death of the Three-Time Candidate" by Josh Zeitz.  One of these is spot-on, the other nearly spot-off.

Simon says

Running for president is a grueling test, a meat grinder. And why shouldn’t it be? The presidency is a tough job, and it demands a tough test to weed out those without the stamina and strength to perform in it.

So 21 days after sticking his toe in the water, Romney withdrew it.

“I am convinced that we could win the nomination,” he told supporters in a conference call, “but fully realize it would have been a difficult test and a hard fight.”

He got some credit from Republicans for dropping out. But some Democrats crowed. 
“Congratulations to Mitt Romney for finally saying something the American people want to hear,” John Dingell, a former congressman from Michigan, tweeted.

Mitt Romney made the right decision. Why should he want difficult tests and hard fights?

Running for president is a trial by combat. You can’t get there by riding in a car elevator.

(Photo above is of the car elevator-house, in San Diego, by Gregory Bull/AP.)

Zeitz believes it would have been much tougher than a difficult test and hard fight. He argues

Richard Nixon and Thomas Dewey, Hubert Humphrey and Adlai Stevenson, William Jennings Bryan and Henry Clay—all could run, and run again, and run again, because they ran in an era when politics was a tightly held concern. To be sure, political campaigns since the Age of Jackson were great public spectacles. They were designed to engage, entertain and enliven the party faithful. But ordinary citizens held little sway over who got nominated, and formidable party machines could be counted on to mobilize voters regardless of who held the standard.

That system held up for a surprisingly long time. Only in the past 40 years has the presidential nomination system become truly democratic. That’s a good thing. As our country has grown more diverse and inclusive, so should its politics. Yet the system has also become much more celebrity-driven. It is arguably the longest-running nighttime soap opera on TV. Its first episode ran in the summer of 1968, and it’s been airing regularly since. That might not be a good thing. Writers like Hunter Thompson realized early that modern candidates were in danger of becoming pop culture commodities. As with any market for a commodity, success breeds success, and failure creates obsolescence.

Mitt Romney commanded an unparalleled fundraising base. Having lived through two national campaigns, he was in most ways a far more credible and tested candidate than his primary rivals. But the narrative was slipping away from him. The teaser for tomorrow’s episode strongly hinted that he couldn’t possibly run again.

Once upon a time, 10 GOP state chairmen could have converged in a smoke-filled room and let Romney take another turn at bat. Something in him understood that there are no more Henry Clays. There are only Harold Stassens. His was a sober but not altogether incorrect calculation. The only dignity was in bowing out.

As history, this is a good lesson. As political behavioralism, it's way off base.  Romney could have run, especially if he had the "unparalleled fundraising base" Zeitz attributes to the former governor. And with no commanding favorite (John Ellis Bush?- please)- unlike in the Democratic Party- Romney had a reasonable chance of earning the nomination by gaining some support because he was the guy who gamely took on executive order issuing, free phone giving, socialist health care creating, america dividing Barack H. Obama.

If he had won the nomination, all bets taken would be off. Twenty-one months out, it looks like the Democratic nominee, presumably Hillary Clinton, will be elected. But things change swiftly in American politics.  The Democratic incumbent had a 49% approval rating a few weeks ago according to a Gallup poll taken 1/19/15-1/25/15.  Two-and-a-half months earlier, when President Obama's popularity would have helped Democrats in congressional races, it stood at 40%.   Mitt Romney might have found in autumn of 2016 a favorable terrain to defeat Mrs. Clinton.

It wouldn't have been easy for Romney to get the nomination. He would have had to compete for funds from John Ellis Bush, who is a little like Romney, but pleases the corporatists with his support of expanding the labor pool (by comprehensive immigration reform). But Romney has been through this before, fairly recently; Bush has been out of the game for quite some time, and will find that running for president is not the cakewalk he may think it is.

So there was no particular "dignity" in "bowing out."  There was only a billionaire who figured he shouldn't have to work so hard to get himself a job which would pay him only a small fraction of what he could make staying home and doing nothing.







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