In about 4 more days Israel will have been one month without a government, which is about the worst situation -- even worse than having a coalition -- it can be in. I'm very glum. The Israeli system is really bankrupt.
This time around, the negotiations between the parties have not made a lot of headlines, so it is very difficult to determine just what is happening [if indeed anything is]. Bibi will continue as Prime Minister. Whether he will be able to govern in any meaningful way or be held hostage by competing interests is unclear.
And apart from the coalition infighting, Lieberman is going on trial: the joker in the pack. Whatever agreements are carved out now between the parties with the largest electoral blocs, it will all be moot when the verdict on Lieberman comes in. Watch his party bolt the coalition if he doesn't get his job as FM back; watch Yesh Atid or Bayit HaYehudi bolt if he does.
ANTIGONOS' BRAIN
| Your Brain is Green |
 |
Sunday, February 17, 2013
My Problem with Hagel
To be honest, I'd never heard of him until Obama put his name forward, so I don't have any premeditated feelings one way or the other about him. Maybe he's an anti-Semite, or anti-Israel [points of view which often overlap]. Maybe he doesn't like homosexuals. He is apparently on record as being willing to believe anything the ayatollahs say, and completely unwilling to force confrontation with them. Maybe he steals ice cream from children. I don't know.
But what is obvious to me is that he is currently tailoring his opinions to suit whatever Congress wants him to say, just in order to get confirmation. He apparently will take ANY position which will get him into the Cabinet. What's to say that tomorrow, as Secretary of Defense, he changes like a weathercock with every twist and turn Obama wants him to perform? This does not seem to be a person anyone can trust, and THAT makes him unsuitable to be in the Cabinet. IMO, it's not a partisan issue at all.
But what is obvious to me is that he is currently tailoring his opinions to suit whatever Congress wants him to say, just in order to get confirmation. He apparently will take ANY position which will get him into the Cabinet. What's to say that tomorrow, as Secretary of Defense, he changes like a weathercock with every twist and turn Obama wants him to perform? This does not seem to be a person anyone can trust, and THAT makes him unsuitable to be in the Cabinet. IMO, it's not a partisan issue at all.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Sunday, January 27, 2013
A Question
Adam Zyglis The Buffalo News Jan 26, 2013 |
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Bringing You Up to Date, part 1
The Husband and I got back to Israel on November 18, I being firmly resolved to sit down and chronicle our cruise, and my reactions to the US Presidential election, and the current Israeli situation, and reply to Friar Yid's several posts on Jewish identity...
And guess what? It is the 12th of January already. It is only a tiny excuse that the Redskins went on a winning streak, and my granddaughter finally let go and is now toddling around, without holding on to anything, at something approaching the speed of light. Her mother, my youngest daughter, and her husband began to be very busy by the middle of December, with the yearly inventory of the family auto parts supply business owned by his father [is there a generic term, like "father-in-law" for the father-in-law of my daughter, like "grandparents-in-law" maybe?], for whom they both work, due to be completed by Dec.31. Granddaughter Shir contributed to the sense of chaos by developing a high fever and cutting her last two molars. So it was SuperSavta to the rescue! I slept over at their house and she came to visit with me for a night or two. I have real difficulty realizing that, physically, I ain't what I was 30 years ago. That might seem obvious, but since my head is only 35, I often forget that my body is about 100. And anyway, although my replaced hip is fine, my knees are getting stiffer and stiffer -- enough so that keeping up with the guides on the tours at the various sites we visited on the cruise was not easy. Good thing Shir is walking; hoisting her into her high chair or the bathtub just about devastated my back, and she's not a fat child.
OK, I'll get finished with the election first. Things transpired pretty much as I expected; I hadn't much hope that Romney would win, but I did hope that the Democrats would lose control of both Houses. Obama with his hands tied is really the worst case scenario, because the US can't afford total paralysis, but Obama unchained is maybe even worse. The damage to the US, both domestically and in foreign policy, will only become apparent after 2016, IMO. He can probably stave off the worst of the bills until he's out of the White House. Presidents usually spend the first part of each first term dealing with the financial situation left them by their predecessor. Maybe he'll come down with antibiotic-resistant pneumonia from exposure to Washington's winter weather at the Inauguration. No, maybe better not. If Obama snuffs it, the US will have Joe Biden for President.
As far as his foreign policy goes -- as far as I can figure out that he even has one -- it will be more of the same, leading to an even greater decline in the status of the US as a world power. The Islamic threat will increase the more it is perceived that the US is weak and unwilling to spend more than some conciliatory words. And the Islamic threat is worldwide, not just directed against Israel.
That leads in to our upcoming elections. I'd really rather ignore them, because I think that our politicians are no better or worse than any other country's but our system is horrible. Proportional representation guarantees coalitions, and no one votes for a coalition, so in effect, Israel has never had a democratically elected government. [We do have democratically elected -- sort of -- MKs. You can join a party and participate in the primaries, which return a slate of potential Knesset members, based on the percentage of votes that particular party gets in the general election. However, only an inner circle decides who will have which seat on that slate. In reality, very few Israelis bother with party membership, so the average voter has no idea who he's voting for on the individual level, there is no one like a Congressional Representative or a British MP, who has a regional constituency. And of course, the voter has no control over the compromises, etc. his party of choice will make in order to get into the coalition. That, in a nutshell, is how the haredim have prostituted themselves ever since 1948 -- their allegiance [and it is very considerable] is contingent on massive amounts of money and perks extorted from either Labor or Likud [they prefer the latter but they'll go with whomever promises the most]. Their children have a long school day, hot lunches, transportation to and from school, and don't have to worry about going to the army -- as a result, secular children sit, in classes of 40, in unheated classrooms, must pay for meals if they get them at all, use public transport, and go to the army to keep the malingering, cowardly haredim comfortable. I reiterate, it's the system that's to blame. If Likud loses substantial support to the new, Rightist "Jewish Home" party, as looks likely, Bibi will still be the Prime Minister [he is really the only viable candidate running], but he will have to devote himself to pandering to the special interests of his coalition partners rather than dealing primarily with national issues. This happened to him in his very first term as Prime Minister and led to his ultimate downfall. Considering the relationship with Obama, which I think will only get worse, this is not good for Israel.
At least this is turning into the rainiest winter in 20 years, and we've just had our heaviest snowfall in that time, too [roughly 4 inches of slush in Jerusalem; gone entirely within hours] This, of course, is entirely due to the fact that a number of desalinization plants are due to begin functioning this coming summer, as the water situation was becoming very dire indeed. We cannot rely on Turkey to sell us water in future droughts.
And so we get into local politics. Syria seems no closer to any resolution apart from total anarchy; Assad can probably keep bombing his own people for a long time yet, and there's little real unity amongst the rebels, with certain definitely scary Islamic radical, both Sunni and Shi'a, groups who will slug it out once Assad is toppled [I am not in fact convinced he will be, btw] Lebanon, as a result, is even more unstable than usual. Turkey seems to be determined to march forward toward the Ottoman empire, which means confrontation with Syria now and Iran later. "Peaceful" Iran is not only developing The Bomb, it's developing missiles which can hit Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, or Vienna. I still contend that Israel is only a secondary target for the Iranians; although they might hold Israel "hostage" if they want to threaten Europe. Egypt is tragic, alas, and stability there is far away. It doesn't look too good for the secular intelligensia and especially for the Copts. We sit by and wonder how world Christendom can just sit by with Islamic countries maltreating their Christian citizens -- it is so alien to the Jewish view of collective responsibility. "Not our kind of Christian". Huh?
Next: The Cruise. Keep tuned to this station
And guess what? It is the 12th of January already. It is only a tiny excuse that the Redskins went on a winning streak, and my granddaughter finally let go and is now toddling around, without holding on to anything, at something approaching the speed of light. Her mother, my youngest daughter, and her husband began to be very busy by the middle of December, with the yearly inventory of the family auto parts supply business owned by his father [is there a generic term, like "father-in-law" for the father-in-law of my daughter, like "grandparents-in-law" maybe?], for whom they both work, due to be completed by Dec.31. Granddaughter Shir contributed to the sense of chaos by developing a high fever and cutting her last two molars. So it was SuperSavta to the rescue! I slept over at their house and she came to visit with me for a night or two. I have real difficulty realizing that, physically, I ain't what I was 30 years ago. That might seem obvious, but since my head is only 35, I often forget that my body is about 100. And anyway, although my replaced hip is fine, my knees are getting stiffer and stiffer -- enough so that keeping up with the guides on the tours at the various sites we visited on the cruise was not easy. Good thing Shir is walking; hoisting her into her high chair or the bathtub just about devastated my back, and she's not a fat child.
OK, I'll get finished with the election first. Things transpired pretty much as I expected; I hadn't much hope that Romney would win, but I did hope that the Democrats would lose control of both Houses. Obama with his hands tied is really the worst case scenario, because the US can't afford total paralysis, but Obama unchained is maybe even worse. The damage to the US, both domestically and in foreign policy, will only become apparent after 2016, IMO. He can probably stave off the worst of the bills until he's out of the White House. Presidents usually spend the first part of each first term dealing with the financial situation left them by their predecessor. Maybe he'll come down with antibiotic-resistant pneumonia from exposure to Washington's winter weather at the Inauguration. No, maybe better not. If Obama snuffs it, the US will have Joe Biden for President.
As far as his foreign policy goes -- as far as I can figure out that he even has one -- it will be more of the same, leading to an even greater decline in the status of the US as a world power. The Islamic threat will increase the more it is perceived that the US is weak and unwilling to spend more than some conciliatory words. And the Islamic threat is worldwide, not just directed against Israel.
That leads in to our upcoming elections. I'd really rather ignore them, because I think that our politicians are no better or worse than any other country's but our system is horrible. Proportional representation guarantees coalitions, and no one votes for a coalition, so in effect, Israel has never had a democratically elected government. [We do have democratically elected -- sort of -- MKs. You can join a party and participate in the primaries, which return a slate of potential Knesset members, based on the percentage of votes that particular party gets in the general election. However, only an inner circle decides who will have which seat on that slate. In reality, very few Israelis bother with party membership, so the average voter has no idea who he's voting for on the individual level, there is no one like a Congressional Representative or a British MP, who has a regional constituency. And of course, the voter has no control over the compromises, etc. his party of choice will make in order to get into the coalition. That, in a nutshell, is how the haredim have prostituted themselves ever since 1948 -- their allegiance [and it is very considerable] is contingent on massive amounts of money and perks extorted from either Labor or Likud [they prefer the latter but they'll go with whomever promises the most]. Their children have a long school day, hot lunches, transportation to and from school, and don't have to worry about going to the army -- as a result, secular children sit, in classes of 40, in unheated classrooms, must pay for meals if they get them at all, use public transport, and go to the army to keep the malingering, cowardly haredim comfortable. I reiterate, it's the system that's to blame. If Likud loses substantial support to the new, Rightist "Jewish Home" party, as looks likely, Bibi will still be the Prime Minister [he is really the only viable candidate running], but he will have to devote himself to pandering to the special interests of his coalition partners rather than dealing primarily with national issues. This happened to him in his very first term as Prime Minister and led to his ultimate downfall. Considering the relationship with Obama, which I think will only get worse, this is not good for Israel.
At least this is turning into the rainiest winter in 20 years, and we've just had our heaviest snowfall in that time, too [roughly 4 inches of slush in Jerusalem; gone entirely within hours] This, of course, is entirely due to the fact that a number of desalinization plants are due to begin functioning this coming summer, as the water situation was becoming very dire indeed. We cannot rely on Turkey to sell us water in future droughts.
And so we get into local politics. Syria seems no closer to any resolution apart from total anarchy; Assad can probably keep bombing his own people for a long time yet, and there's little real unity amongst the rebels, with certain definitely scary Islamic radical, both Sunni and Shi'a, groups who will slug it out once Assad is toppled [I am not in fact convinced he will be, btw] Lebanon, as a result, is even more unstable than usual. Turkey seems to be determined to march forward toward the Ottoman empire, which means confrontation with Syria now and Iran later. "Peaceful" Iran is not only developing The Bomb, it's developing missiles which can hit Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, or Vienna. I still contend that Israel is only a secondary target for the Iranians; although they might hold Israel "hostage" if they want to threaten Europe. Egypt is tragic, alas, and stability there is far away. It doesn't look too good for the secular intelligensia and especially for the Copts. We sit by and wonder how world Christendom can just sit by with Islamic countries maltreating their Christian citizens -- it is so alien to the Jewish view of collective responsibility. "Not our kind of Christian". Huh?
Next: The Cruise. Keep tuned to this station
Friday, December 28, 2012
Sunday, December 16, 2012
The US Is Too Much In Love With Guns To Ever Control Them
I wrote yesterday that soon we'd hear that the reason the children were massacred in Connecticut was that there weren't enough guns around, well, the victims aren't all buried yet, and it's begun... Along with the rationalizations why the US can't ever have gun control.
What was that about "fast as a speeding bullet"? Oh, that was how fast Superman was supposed to be able to move. So are the pens of the gun lovers very fast.
What was that about "fast as a speeding bullet"? Oh, that was how fast Superman was supposed to be able to move. So are the pens of the gun lovers very fast.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Reflections on the US's Latest Gun Tragedy
When the first news broke of the school massacre, my husband asked "Arabs?", meaning "is this an Islamic terrorist attack?" THAT is completely understandable to him. I replied that it most probably was an ex-school employee who'd been fired or some other borderline lunatic who'd snapped, and my husband's next question was "Why didn't the school guards stop him?" to which I had to reply that schools in the US do not usually have guards at the gates as all of our schools do.
My own unworthy thought was, yes, it is really terrible, but what can one expect when guns are so readily available to the sane, the insane, and the mildly mentally deranged.? Someone once estimated that if one-tenth of one percent of Americans were crazy enough to want to assassinate the President, that meant the Secret Service had to keep tabs on over 30,000 people. I'm waiting for the NRA or the gun lobby to claim that the massacre could have been averted, not with stricter gun control, but if more citzens packed six-shooters and so could have "taken out the shooter" before he managed to kill so many.
And then I thought, to all those American parents in towns all over the US, who have children in unguarded classrooms, now you know how we feel every single day, since we don't have to fear the lone meshuggeneh but tens, if not hundreds, of thousands who plan to do this to our children [and us] all the time. [And there are rumblings, following the Hamas rally in Hebron yesterday, that another intifada might erupt soon]
But we have guards at the gates, everywhere. And strict gun laws. And no Palestinian school bus, or school, has ever been attacked by us.
My own unworthy thought was, yes, it is really terrible, but what can one expect when guns are so readily available to the sane, the insane, and the mildly mentally deranged.? Someone once estimated that if one-tenth of one percent of Americans were crazy enough to want to assassinate the President, that meant the Secret Service had to keep tabs on over 30,000 people. I'm waiting for the NRA or the gun lobby to claim that the massacre could have been averted, not with stricter gun control, but if more citzens packed six-shooters and so could have "taken out the shooter" before he managed to kill so many.
And then I thought, to all those American parents in towns all over the US, who have children in unguarded classrooms, now you know how we feel every single day, since we don't have to fear the lone meshuggeneh but tens, if not hundreds, of thousands who plan to do this to our children [and us] all the time. [And there are rumblings, following the Hamas rally in Hebron yesterday, that another intifada might erupt soon]
But we have guards at the gates, everywhere. And strict gun laws. And no Palestinian school bus, or school, has ever been attacked by us.
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
Catching UP
There's been rather a gap, occasioned [mostly] my the cruise my husband and I took at the beginning of November, and then, we returned to a "war", and my granddaughter decided to stop holding on to things and we haven't caught up with her yet...and more routine things like cleaning a house which had been shut up for two weeks, shopping, doing two weeks' worth of laundry, doctors' appointments, and so on.
Friar Yid has made a number of interesting posts on his blog, which deserve longer comments than one usually puts on a blog, FY, you're not forgotten!
I've got a bit to write about our cruise, and what impressed me most, and of course, the recent outbreak of hostilities with Hamas. Going back a bit, I think the US elections deserve a certain amount of attention, especially since I think the reason Hamas was more antsy than usual was because they thought Obama wouldn't support Israel any more than he has done previously.
It just happened that my computer went blooey two days before we went on vacation, and I didn't get it back from the "computer hospital", where it underwent a total reinstall of Windows, until about a week after we returned. The new install required reinstallation of a lot of programs [fortunately most data was stored on an external hard drive, but I had to completely rebuild my iTunes library, and I have about 200 GB of music and audiobooks, all lovingly categorized into playlists, and that vanished with the program]. Moreover the nice guys who repaired my computer installed Office 2007 -- I'd previously had Office 2003 -- and that took some getting used to. I'm still wrestling with Excell. The old version allowed me to simply enter number series; this version tries to turn any combination of numbers into a two decimal number as if it was money. There must be a way around this, but I haven't discovered it yet.
So bear with me, eventually I'll have some uninterrupted time to pontificate on the state of the world, or at least Antigonos' part of it.
Friar Yid has made a number of interesting posts on his blog, which deserve longer comments than one usually puts on a blog, FY, you're not forgotten!
I've got a bit to write about our cruise, and what impressed me most, and of course, the recent outbreak of hostilities with Hamas. Going back a bit, I think the US elections deserve a certain amount of attention, especially since I think the reason Hamas was more antsy than usual was because they thought Obama wouldn't support Israel any more than he has done previously.
It just happened that my computer went blooey two days before we went on vacation, and I didn't get it back from the "computer hospital", where it underwent a total reinstall of Windows, until about a week after we returned. The new install required reinstallation of a lot of programs [fortunately most data was stored on an external hard drive, but I had to completely rebuild my iTunes library, and I have about 200 GB of music and audiobooks, all lovingly categorized into playlists, and that vanished with the program]. Moreover the nice guys who repaired my computer installed Office 2007 -- I'd previously had Office 2003 -- and that took some getting used to. I'm still wrestling with Excell. The old version allowed me to simply enter number series; this version tries to turn any combination of numbers into a two decimal number as if it was money. There must be a way around this, but I haven't discovered it yet.
So bear with me, eventually I'll have some uninterrupted time to pontificate on the state of the world, or at least Antigonos' part of it.
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