Odds and ends.

Another week down-still not sure how many to go. I’m more than a little stir crazy at this point, but hey what’s a fellow to do? Have spent the morning, sleeping, eating, paying bills, and catching up on paperwork and expense reports. Another pretty nice day and not to hot here in “the Paris of eastern Europe” (Ummm…I don’t think so).  Have been purusing all the news I missed last week so here, in no particular order are some random thoughts.

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Jeffery Goldberg (Not to be confused with Jonah Goldberg-the idiot who wrote Liberal Fascism and continues to write stupid posts over at NRO) has a new article in the September edition of the Atlantic magazine.

 What is more likely, then, is that one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran—possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft. (It’s so crowded, in fact, that the United States Central Command, whose area of responsibility is the greater Middle East, has already asked the Pentagon what to do should Israeli aircraft invade its airspace. According to multiple sources, the answer came back: do not shoot them down.)

In these conversations, which will be fraught, the Israelis will tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. The Israelis will also state that they believe they have a reasonable chance of delaying the Iranian nuclear program for at least three to five years. They will tell their American colleagues that Israel was left with no choice. They will not be asking for permission, because it will be too late to ask for permission.

Such an event would no doubt be hailed by “William the Bloody” Kristol and his other dimwit followers as a great event-but Goldberg lays out very precisely in this scenario that there is no free lunch-for either Israel or the US. The roof will most assuredly cave in -presenting the country with hideous consequences.

…..they stand a good chance of changing the Middle East forever; of sparking lethal reprisals, and even a full-blown regional war that could lead to the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Iranians, and possibly Arabs and Americans as well; of creating a crisis for Barack Obama that will dwarf Afghanistan in significance and complexity; of rupturing relations between Jerusalem and Washington, which is Israel’s only meaningful ally; of inadvertently solidifying the somewhat tenuous rule of the mullahs in Tehran; of causing the price of oil to spike to cataclysmic highs, launching the world economy into a period of turbulence not experienced since the autumn of 2008, or possibly since the oil shock of 1973; of placing communities across the Jewish diaspora in mortal danger, by making them targets of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks, as they have been in the past, in a limited though already lethal way; and of accelerating Israel’s conversion from a once-admired refuge for a persecuted people into a leper among nations.

Which was exactly the point Fox Fallon was making back in 2008 before being eased aside to make room for “an ass-kissing little chickenshit” -and a whole lot of other wiser folks have made since then, but that does not seem to have dampened the appetite of some people for war with out end.

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In Bucharest the word “sidewalk” is synonymous with “parking lot”.

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How stupid can your average American be? Pretty stupid, evidently. Consider this latest poll result:

 Roughly one in five Americans wrongly says President Barack Obama is a Muslim, according to two new US opinion polls out Thursday amid a furor over a planned mosque near New York’s “Ground Zero.”

And about 30 percent of Americans say followers of Islam should be barred from running for president or serving on the US Supreme Court, according to one of the surveys, published in Time magazine and available on Time.com.

That last little tidbit is pretty interesting, since it is in defiance of the Constitution, a document that the people who rant such idiocies pretend to hold dear.

Take it away Jon Stewart:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Extremist Makeover – Homeland Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

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Meanwhile, over here in Bucharest, I am waiting for the teabaggers to be out in full force in Revelutionary square any minute:

The government has approved the first budget rectification this year, cutting the budgets of several ministries and offering more funds in particular for the payment of pensions, of unemployment benefits and of other social benefits in order to avoid “the eruption of social conflicts.”

Romania has budget problems that make ours look small in comparison. However you don’t see folks out on the street holding stupid signs. What’s up with that?

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Sarah Palin and Dr. Laura get a civics lesson:

[T]he First Amendment doesn’t guarantee that speaking your mind will have no economic consequences. Proclaiming that those without thick skins probably shouldn’t marry outside their race is always going to be, let us say, commercially risky if you’re aiming for a broad audience — or if your sponsors are. General Motors and Motel 6 both reportedly pulled their sponsorship over the flap, prior to Schlessinger’s decision to leave her show. But whether that’s the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, it doesn’t implicate the government; it implicates the profit motive.

In fact, the organization of a boycott is itself the exercise of First Amendment rights — GLAAD, or the American Family Association, or Sarah Palin, or Laura Schlessinger, anyone can publicly advocate for an end to the economic support of someone else’s speech. If you want, you can boycott them back — “Okay, if GLAAD is boycotting Laura Schlessinger, then I’m boycotting anybody who donates to GLAAD.” It becomes reductive and unhelpful at some point, and it may or may not be justified, and one side or the other may be substantively right or wrong — but all of it, from every angle and every political position, is consistent with the idea of free expression.

Because the “free” in that concept means “free from government interference,” not “free from consequences.” 

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And finally on a lighter note.

H/T to Spike!

Have a good weekend!