It’s Tuesday, September 13th, 2011….and here’s the Gouge!

First up, the WSJ‘s Bret Stephens offers his observations on….

Israel’s Predicament

What is Israel’s predicament? It is this: It is surrounded on nearly all sides by enemies who are aggressively committed to its destruction. And too many people who call themselves its friends are only ambivalently committed to its security.

Consider the month that Israel has just had:

• On Aug. 18, eight Israelis were killed in a sophisticated cross-border ambush near the frontier with Egypt.

• From Aug. 18-24, some 200 large-caliber, factory-made rockets and mortars were fired at Israel from Gaza.

• On Sept. 1, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency announced that it was moving the bulk of its enrichment facilities to a heavily fortified site near the city of Qom.

• On Sept. 2, the United Nations released a report on the May 2010 Turkish flotilla incident, which defended Israel’s right to enforce a naval blockade on Gaza and noted that Israeli commandos faced “organized and violent resistance.” The Turkish government responded by yanking its ambassador from Tel Aviv and expelling Israel’s from Ankara.

• On Sept. 4, the U.S. made a final appeal to the Palestinian Authority to drop its bid to seek statehood recognition at the U.N., a bid that sends to the rubbish bin decades of international agreements that a Palestinian state can be established only on the basis of negotiations. The PA rebuffed the American entreaties.

• On Sept. 8, Turkey’s prime minister announced that Turkish warships would escort future Gaza-bound flotillas.

• On Sept. 9, thousands of hooligans stormed and nearly sacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo. Israel evacuated nearly its entire diplomatic mission from Egypt the following morning.

One other item: On Sept. 5, an organization called NGO Monitor reported that an associate director of the New Israel Fund, cited in a February 2011 State Department cable released by Wikileaks, said that “the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.” The NIF describes itself as a group “dedicated to a vision of Israel as both the Jewish homeland and a shared society at peace with itself and its neighbors.”

Maybe the case of the (now former) NIF official is a relatively rare one. Or maybe it’s just rare to have such off-the-record candor find its way into the public domain.

Not rare, however, is the idea that Israel’s legitimacy is a function of its moral performance, and that judgment of its performance lies in the hands of its foreign critics and their designated Israeli scolds. Should the legitimacy of Pakistan or Zimbabwe be called into doubt on account of the wretched mess they have made of their existence as self-governing states? Nobody says this. Nor do many people say that the Palestinian Authority—half of which is ruled by a terrorist group and the other half by a president whose elected term in office expired more than two years ago—hasn’t quite earned the moral right to statehood.

Only Israel is on perpetual trial. Only Israel, by way of this or that policy, is routinely held to moral account for the terrorist outrages committed against it. Only the Jews, as Eric Hoffer put it in 1968, are expected to be “the only real Christians in the world.”

But then the argument is made that Israel is occupying somebody else’s country. And risking its own future as a Jewish democracy, on account of well-known demographic trends. And all of this is corrosive, so it is often said, to Israel’s soul.

Yet the purported concern for Israel’s soul would be more convincing if it were joined by some decent respect for Israel’s mind. Israel today labors under the invidious stereotype that it is too clever to blunder militarily or politically—and therefore that any such blunders are, in fact, acts of malice aforethought. But Israel also labors under the stereotype that it is too stupid or shortsighted to recognize its own strategic interest in coming to terms with a Palestinian state.

Will it some day dawn on Israel’s so-called friends that 18 years of abortive efforts to come to terms with the Palestinians—the spurned statehood offers in 2000 and 2008, the withdrawal of the settlers from Gaza in 2005, the experience of what a “liberated” Gaza soon became—has soured Israelis on the idea of a Palestinian state? Or that the long-term demographic threat is worth risking in the face of the immediate threats of a near-nuclear Iran, a newly hostile Egypt, and a still-irredentist Palestinian leadership? Or that a professed commitment to Israeli democracy means, among other things, some regard to the conclusions Israelis have drawn about the prospects of peace by way of their electoral choices?

No democracy in the world today lies under a darker shadow of existential dread than Israel. And the events of the past month ought to demonstrate that Israel’s dread is not of shadows only. Israel’s efforts to allay the enmity of its enemies or mollify the scorn of its critics have failed. But is it too much to ask its friends for support—this time, for once, without cavil or reservation?

“….the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic“; you know….like all those other functioning democracies in the Islamic world!  Such moronic mindlessness recalls the wisdom of Winston Churchill when he observed, “Democracy is the worst form of government….except for all those others that have been tried.”

We’ve often been accused of possessing an overly-simplistic world-view, seeing black and white where our more “liberal” minded acquaintances see multitudinous shades of gray.  But when it comes to the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict, we’re not afraid to admit we see only tallit blue!

And we’ll unabashedly, unreservedly and unswervingly support Israel against her enemies, foreign or domestic, as long as she stands alone against implacably evil foes.

Speaking of implacable evil, Bill Meisen forwarded the latest screed from Paul Krugman:

The Years of Shame

This from the odious little toad that penned, as James Taranto notes, these words on September 14, 2001:

Reckonings; After The Horror

It seems almost in bad taste to talk about dollars and cents after an act of mass murder. Nonetheless, we must ask about the economic aftershocks from Tuesday’s horror.

These aftershocks need not be major. Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack — like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression — could even do some economic good….

“It seems almost in bad taste to talk about dollars and cents after an act of mass murder,” he observed, then went ahead and did so: “If people rush out to buy bottled water and canned goods, that will actually boost the economy. . . . The driving force behind the economic slowdown has been a plunge in business investment. Now, all of a sudden, we need some new office buildings.”

Best of the Web went on to list the reactions of a number of individuals to Krugman’s baseless banality:

As the Village Voice’s Nick Greene sums it up: “I need to get something off my chest today, but you can’t.”

Blogger Ed Morrissey adds:

After reading this, you seriously have to remind yourself that the New York Times pays Krugman to write it; this wouldn’t even pass muster for a Letter to the Editor at most newspapers. It’s so trite, sad, and cliched that it’s hardly worth the effort to rebut….

[Glenn] Reynolds offers some advice: “Don’t be angry. Understand it for what it is, an admission of impotence from a sad and irrelevant little man.”

Which was followed by Taranto’s closing: “Indeed. That post was monstrous, but it was trivial in equal measure. Paul Krugman is history’s smallest monster.”  Like his lord and savior, B. Hussein Obamao, an overwhelming sense of inadequacy has caused Krugman to engage in transference, ascribing to others motives and characteristics found only in himself.

“Odious little toad” hardly constitutes reasoned debate; but then, Krugman set the ground rule….and if the shoe fits….?!?

In another shame-related item, here’s the “Your Tax Dollars At Work!” segment, courtesy today of PBS and Speed Mach:

PBS alters transcript to hide Obama gaffe

Barack Obama has gone to Congress asking for more money to spend. The President, in a rambling and tedious exercise mixing blame with demands, made quite a few dubious statements in laying out the case for Congress to vote for the plan which as yet does not exist. Much like Obamacare, Congress must ultimately vote for the bill to know what is in it.

At one point Mr. Obama made a major gaffe; he identified Abraham Lincoln as the founder of the Republican Party. Lincoln did not join the Republicans until 1856, over two years after the party was founded. The first Republican convention was held in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854.

Such a gaffe would have brought huge amounts of ridicule and derision on George W. Bush, but in the case of Obama the media yawned. Actually, they did more than yawn; government-funded PBS has altered the transcript of the President’s speech, removing the offending comment.

The New York Times transcript has the following quote:

“We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union.  Founder of the Republican Party.  But in the middle of a civil war, he was also a leader who looked to the future — a Republican President who mobilized government to build the Transcontinental Railroad — (applause) — launch the National Academy of Sciences, set up the first land grant colleges.  (Applause.)  And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.”

But how does it appear in the PBS transcript?

“We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. (?!?) But in the middle of a Civil War, he was also a leader who looked to the future – a Republican president who mobilized government to build the transcontinental railroad; launch the National Academy of Sciences; and set up the first land grant colleges.  And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.”

So PBS has purposely altered a transcript containing a major gaffe by the President. See a screen shot:

Sure; we have a fair and balanced media! The best government money can buy!

Update: Brian Birdnow adds:

Shocking, but not surprising!  B-Ho was also wrong on saying that Lincoln started the first land grant colleges.  Each state is in charge of its own educational institutions and most of the states entering the union after 1815 had designated state universities,with grants of land, in their state constitutions.  That is the reason that major state universities are in near the geographic center of their respective states, and not located in the major urban areas.

Were this the first time a MSM outlet had covered up, or as has been far more frequently the case, refused to cover, one of The Obamao’s gaffes, we might have chalked it up to an honest mistake.  But from the moment B. Hussein began his run for the White House, (visiting 57 of 59 states in the process!), Liberal media outlets have made a concerted, coordinated effort to obscure any and every miscue this Marxist’s made….a policy that stands in stark contrast to their treatment of every Republican since Gerald Ford.

A little harshness, equally-applied, we can take; it’s hypocritical double-standards we cannot abide. 

Which brings us to this next item from the WSJ‘s James Bovard, who offers the cold, hard facts on job “training”:

What Job ‘Training’ Teaches? Bad Work Habits

A 1969 government study warned that teens in federal jobs programs ‘regressed in their conception of what should reasonably be required in return for wages paid.’

Last Thursday, President Obama proposed new federal jobs and job-training programs for youth and the long-term unemployed. The federal government has experimented with these programs for almost a half century. The record (like almost every other federal “relief” program!) is one of failure and scandal.

In 1962, Congress passed the Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) to provide training for workers who lost their jobs due to automation or other technological developments. Two years later, the General Accounting Office (GAO) discovered that any trainee in this program who held a job for a single day was counted as “permanently employed”—a statistical charade by the Department of Labor to camouflage its lack of results. A decade after MDTA’s inception, GAO reported that it was failing to teach valuable job skills or place trainees in private jobs and was marred by an “overriding concern with filling available slots for a particular program,” regardless of what trainees actually needed.

Congress responded in 1973 by enacting the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). The preface to the new law noted that “it has been impossible to develop rational priorities” in job training. So instead of setting priorities, CETA spent vastly more money, especially on job creation. Notorious examples reported in the press in those years included paying to build an artificial rock for rock climbers, providing nude sculpture classes (where, as the Pharos-Tribune of Logansport, Ind., explained, “aspiring artists pawed each others bodies to recognize that they had ‘both male and female characteristics'”), and conducting door-to-door food-stamp recruiting campaigns.

Between 1961 and 1980, the feds spent tens of billions on federal job-training and employment programs. To what effect? A 1979 Washington Post investigation concluded, “Incredibly, the government has kept no meaningful statistics on the effectiveness of these programs—making the past 15 years’ effort almost worthless in terms of learning what works.” CETA hirees were often assigned to do whatever benefited the government agency or nonprofit that put them on the payroll, with no concern for the trainees’ development. An Urban Institute study of the mid-1980s concluded that participation in CETA programs resulted in “significant earnings losses for young men of all races and no significant effects for young women.”

After CETA became a laughingstock, Congress replaced it in 1982 with the Job Training Partnership Act. JTPA spent lavishly—to expand an Indiana circus museum, teach Washington taxi drivers to smile, provide foreign junkets for state and local politicians, and bankroll business relocations. According to the Labor Department’s inspector general, young trainees were twice as likely to rely on food stamps after JTPA involvement than before since the “training” often included instructions on applying for an array of government benefits.

For years the Labor Department scorned the mandate in the 1982 legislation to speedily and thoroughly evaluate whether the programs actually benefitted trainees. Finally, in 1993, it released a study that showed participation in JTPA “actually reduced the earnings of male out-of-school youths.” Young males enrolled in JTPA programs had 10% lower earnings than a control group that never participated.

The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) replaced JTPA in 1998. Congress required a thorough evaluation of the law’s impact on trainees by 2005. At last report, the Labor Department is promising it will be completed by 2015.

In his speech to Congress, Mr. Obama called for funding hundreds of thousands of summer jobs for teens, which he labeled “investing in low-income youth and adults.” Yet such programs have been blighting work ethics for decades.

The GAO warned in 1969 that many teens in federal summer jobs programs “regressed in their conception of what should reasonably be required in return for wages paid.” A decade later, it reported that most urban teens “were exposed to a worksite where good work habits were not learned or reinforced.” And in 1985, a National Academy of Science study found that government jobs and training programs isolated disadvantaged youth, thus making it harder for them to fit into the real job market.

More recently, Mr. Obama’s 2009 stimulus package expanded federally funded summer jobs. And so young men and women used puppets to greet aquarium visitors in Boston. Teens in Washington, D.C.’s Green Summer Jobs Corps maintained “school-yard butterfly habitats.” And summer workers in Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reported, “practiced firm handshakes to ensure that employers quickly understand their serious intent to work.”

Did any of this “investing” work? There’s no evidence it did.

Mr. Obama also wants a new federal initiative to be based on Georgia Work$, which the president describes as a program in which “people who collect unemployment insurance participate in temporary work as a way to build their skills while they look for a permanent job.” But Georgia Work$ has produced far more headlines than jobs—fewer than 200 this year, according to a recent article in Politico.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/09/09/obamas-job-training-program-model-in-georgia-nearly-bankrupt/

Begun in 2003, Georgia Work$ gives people a chance to “train” at an employer for eight weeks. They receive no salary but continue collecting unemployment compensation and as well as a $240 weekly stipend from the state of Georgia. Last year, the stipend was increased to $600 a week and anyone who said they needed a job was allowed to participate. After costs exploded, Georgia Work$ was scaled back early this year.

Mark Butler, Georgia’s current labor commissioner, stated that the program suffered from a “lack of oversight” before he took over in January. At last report, only 14% of trainees were hired by employers—a success rate akin to other unemployed Georgians who do not participate in the program.

Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office reported that there were 47 different federal employment and training programs, costing taxpayers $18 billion a year. There is massive overlap and duplication, and few programs seriously evaluate their impact on trainees.

If federal job training efforts worked, Congress would not have thrown out the programs it has created every decade or so and enacted new ones. In reality, government training has always been driven by bureaucratic convenience, or politicians’ re-election considerations. There is no reason to believe the latest round of proposals will be any different.

Unless of course The Obamao’s training them to be hard-working….er,….observers….

….for all those suddenly-shovel-ready infrastructure projects!

Oh….by the way….are we the only one left wondering why, if Congress needs to pass this bill NOW, the Boy Genius waited a month to unveil it?

On the Lighter Side….

And in Tales From the Darkside….

Ex-NBA Player Accuses Restaurant of Racism

A federal jury is hearing a lawsuit filed by a retired NBA All-Star who claims a ritzy Atlanta restaurant discriminated against him and a friend when waiters insisted they give up their seats to white women. Joe Barry Carroll in the 1980s played parts of 10 seasons in the NBA for several teams. He and attorney Joseph Shaw are suing the Tavern at Phipps. They will try to prove during the trial that began Monday that the restaurant has a systematic plan to discourage black patrons.

The two men, who are black, said they were removed by security guards when they refused to leave their seats. The restaurant has said it often asks men to give up their seats to women at the bar and has denied the discrimination accusations.

In a 2010 court hearing, U.S. Magistrate Janet King found there was no direct evidence of racial discrimination. But she did find enough circumstantial evidence to let a jury decide whether racial animosity was why the management removed Carroll and Shaw from the restaurant. King cited testimony by a former employee who said she had been told by management that the Tavern’s desired clientele for the bar were white businessmen and buxom, blonde women.

Soooo….this is a problem?!?

Finally, we’ll wrap things up with the “Yet Another Reason We’ll Never Believe Anything Ben Bernanke Says” segment, courtesy of Stephen Cervieri:

Bernanke offers no hints of further aid to economy

Bernanke surprised by weak consumer spending but offers no hints of further aid for economy

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday that he’s surprised by how cautious consumers remain more than two years since the recession officially ended. But he offered no hints of further steps the Fed might take to try to boost the weak economy.

Bernanke noted that several factors have kept consumers from spending more: from high unemployment and falling home values to still-heavy debt loads and higher gasoline prices. “Even taking into account the many financial pressures they face, households seem exceptionally cautious,” Bernanke said in a speech in Minneapolis to the Economic Club of Minnesota.

Bernanke said that higher prices for gas, cars and other consumer goods were due, in part, to temporary factors, such as supply disruptions stemming from Japan’s earthquake and nuclear crisis. (Gee….wonder where Ben sourced those talking points?!?) As those factors continue to ease, the Fed chief said he expects inflation to moderate in the coming months.

Senor Cervieri said it best when he noted, “Is it any wonder his policies are so counterproductive when he cannot figure out simple things the average person can see so clearly?

Magoo

P.S.  Regarding Tim Pawlenty’s endorsement of Mitt Romney, we agree with James Taranto when he observes:

Tim Pawlenty, the first Republican to withdraw from the presidential nomination race, this morning endorsed erstwhile rival Mitt Romney–first in an appearance on Fox News Channel, then in a blog post for National Review, which opens as follows:

Great crises often produce great leaders. Unfortunately, sometimes the timing isn’t right, and neither is the leader.

That’s less than ringing, isn’t it? If you read through to the second paragraph, it turns out the leader who “isn’t right” is President Obama, not Romney, but you do begin to understand why Pawlenty’s campaign never took flight.

The former Minnesota governor is actually quite generous in praising the former Massachusetts one. On Fox Pawlenty said: “I think he’s going to be a transformational and great president for this country.” We suppose it’s unsporting to make fun of a politician for being insincere, but we’ll do it anyway. If that’s the way Pawlenty feels, why didn’t he just endorse Romney to begin with?