Obama and his people are still happiest at what they are good at, making pretty speeches and running for office rather than governing or fighting for anything. They played it safe while the economy tanked and McCain grew old and exhausted before our eyes. With the lousiest president in living memory in office and the economy in shambles he still only took 52% of the vote. Then he and his staff squandered any honeymoon he might have had by protected said lousy president and his cronies from the consequences of their illegal actions and paying off the banking and insurance companies with taxpayer dollars.

Now, he's being slaughtered by the Repubs who have launched a merciless barrage of lies and slanders in his direction while Obama and Rahm and the rest of them look peeved and puzzled that they can no longer control the narrative.

Does Obama have any fight in him? Unlikely. He is like Bill Clinton, a smart guy who thinks he's smarter than he is, a political animal with few convictions and and no stomach for taking on the powers that be. But Clinton was lucky in that Bush had already raised taxes and brought spending under control when he took office, and he rode a secular trend that was globally upward in the 90s. Obama got stuck with a cruddy economy made worse by horrid Bush maladministration and dopey tax cuts. I fear that eight months in he looks like a man incapable to grabbing the bull by the horns and energizing the nation behind his Administration. I am curious how anyone will argue that he can.

I would consider Israel's right to exist sacrosanct. I would also argue that the rights of the Palestinians are equally sacrosanct. I would gladly pledge the full force of American arms to the protection of Israel from invasion. I would not for a picosecond support Israel's right to displace, round up, intimidate, dispossess, and dominate the Palestinians. To quote conservative favorite Milton Friedman, your rights end where my nose begins. Israel's rights end where their 1948 mandate ends (as do the Palestinian's rights). Unless Podhoretz wants to come clean and argue his real opinion, that Arabs are untermenschen and deserving of no rights, while Jews are inherently better and more worthy than non-Jews, he should shut up because he has no viable case (not that such an arguement would be valid, but it at least would be honest).

I am completely unconvinced by this article. Bush shoved through bill after bill, even after he lost his friggin' majority, but Obama is impotent because of the K Street Lobbyists? Granted, the lobbyists matter, but only if you let them. If you are prepared NOT to take their money, or convince them that you are in charge and they better make the best deal with you that they can OR ELSE, then THEY are impotent.

Seems to me Rahm and Obama simply have no desire to fight these guys, or the confidence to spit in thier eyes. Obama seems to me to be a man determined to always follow the path of least resistance.

Nobody thinks of Jews as mindless. Evil, maybe--but mindless, never. If you want to take a stab at comedy, avoid inapt metaphors.

I would have laughed. They are just about stupid and crazy enough to say something like that in Saudi Arabia. But the Swedes? You want to hang the anti-semite tag on the Swedes? Because you are enraged that they run a boring social democracy and it doesn't lead to starvation in the streets and an invasion by the Visigoths? That's lame.

I don't know how long America can keep creating fiat money and mountains of amortized debt and get away with it. I just don't know. But I am sure it is not indefinitely.

I do know that if the idiot brigade got its way and we struck at Iran without any provocation (unless you want to argue that preliminary preparations to "go nuclear" are a provocation, in which case the Arab states would have every right to wipe Israel off the map), that 1) they would be quite capable of striking back at various times and places around the globe and with law then on their side, and 2) any good will the Obama election had garnered would be thrown away and we would be back to square one as international pariahs.

Since Iran poses no significant threat now or for any forseeable future to the United States, all this must be in the service of a foreign power, i.e. Israel. So here's the question: do we want to go to war with a country that cannot hurt us and further destroy international law, all in the name of making the Israelis (who have every capacity to deter any attack on themselves and retaliate if necessary) feel "more secure"? If you think so, your threshold for murdering your fellow man is way too low to support any moral system I am aware of.

If you want to throw away everything that has been accomplished since the founding of the Red Cross and the institution of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, I guess you can. But when the next 9/11 or other atrocity rolls around, know this: you have destroyed any moral or legal grounds to complain. If you want to appeal to the law of the jungle, the laws of civilization no longer apply.