Michael Oren notes [$$ ?] that Israelis are feeling both stumped and betrayed by Bush’s mystifying new “policy” toward the Israelis and the Palestinians:

No wonder Israelis are stumped. While the old George Bush deemed the end of terror as imperative for peace and the containment of Iran as the prerequisite for eliminating terror, the new George Bush focuses on Israeli settlement-building and hesitates to confront Tehran. It is uncertain which of the two is visiting Israel today and what policies he may pursue. …

Presidential visits are always characterized as “historic,” but Mr. Bush’s trip to the Jewish state is marked by a lack of momentousness. Cross-signals and contradictory policies have clouded a celebration for one of Israel’s firmest friends. Israelis will greet Mr. Bush exuberantly, but his departure may leave them grappling with terror largely on their own.

Meanwhile, Walt and Mearsheimer are still pissing all over Israel and its American “false friends” who (conspiratorially, through the media and the power of money) insist that America support Israel without qualifications. This time they’ve added to the conspiracy Jewish voters, who are heavily represented in states with many electoral votes [e.a.].

Such pandering [by all presidential contenders] is hardly surprising, because contenders for high office routinely court special interest groups, and Israel’s staunchest supporters — the Israel lobby, as we have termed it — expect it. Politicians do not want to offend Jewish Americans or “Christian Zionists,” two groups that are deeply engaged in the political process. Candidates fear, with some justification, that even well-intentioned criticism of Israel’s policies may lead these groups to turn against them and back their opponents instead.

If this happened, trouble would arise on many fronts. Israel’s friends in the media would take aim at the candidate, and campaign contributions from pro-Israel individuals and political action committees would go elsewhere. Moreover, most Jewish voters live in states with many electoral votes, which increases their weight in close elections (remember Florida in 2000?), and a candidate seen as insufficiently committed to Israel would lose some of their support. And no Republican would want to alienate the pro-Israel subset of the Christian evangelical movement, which is a significant part of the GOP base.

What would Walt and Mearsheimer suggest as a solution to the vexing problem of the sinister influence of Israel, Zionism, and American Jews on the American voter, citizen, and imagination? Allow only a certain number of Jewish voters into polling places, perhaps? Or none at all?

Before they can get our vote, presidential hopefuls must get our attention. Hillary did that, intentionally or not (I think her tearing up wasn’t intentional but that she immediately recognized that she could make it work for her and that she seized the moment), and it worked. The other day, the New York Times, describing the desultory state of Rudy Giuliani’s campaign, said [e.a.]:

Mr. Giuliani’s campaign has been marginalized in recent weeks. Efforts to inject itself into the news cycle - including the release of a television commercial featuring Osama bin Laden and the smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center - have had mixed results and been largely overshadowed by the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The real contest is for our attention.

Giuliani shouldn’t feel too bad. As I write, our president is in the Middle East trying to suggest that he’s making peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians (a burning issue for 60 years), and even he can’t get any press.

Brian Williams clarifies that NBC wasn’t pulling for Obama the other night—the network’s reporters were just really, really excited:

Lee covers Obama for us, and we’re lucky to have him on our roster… he is one of the very best in the business. In the interview, which you can see right here, Lee admits “…it’s almost hard to remain objective…” which as he implies is our goal in our work every day. He’s referring to what all of us who have covered campaigns have felt from time to time: it’s impossible to get the long view…the view from 40,000 feet…while operating at sea level, and inside the bubble.

There’s a simple solution, BriWi: get outside the bubble, where the MSM belongs.

Williams wrote the blog post in response to attacks from “rival campaigns” of Obama’s:

Today we learned that rival political efforts were spinning this as some kind of “bias” on the part of either Lee, or me, or this News Division, and that’s just ridiculous.

What a great, professional word from a “newman”: ridiculous.

Actually, what’s ridiculous is something that Matthew Yglesias picked up on: that there was almost no coverage of the Republican side of the race last night—it was all about the Democrats:

It’s interesting how much more interested the press seems to be in the Democratic race than in the GOP one. When after Iowa there was tons of attention showered on Barack Obama and nothing on Huckabee, I figured that was just part of the vast pro-McCain conspiracy. But after the media got the McCain victory it was hoping for, there’s still more talk about the Democratic result.

Of course, Pew’s studies have been showing for months and months that the MSM skews toward covering the Dems.

BriWi’s grumbling about “rival” (Dem) campaigns doesn’t take possible complaints from the Republican side (not to mention the independent, nonpartisan, interested “news” viewer side) into account at all.

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama wants the United States to sit down and talk and negotiate and talk and negotiate some more with the lying sacks of shit who claim to speak for the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Contrast the position of, say, Rudy Giuliani—also a clever lawyer, and for my money a lot cleverer when it comes to negotiating from a position of strength than Obama—here.)

I just thought I’d remind you of Obama’s judgment that the United States should be serene in the face of bellicose provocation, that the United States should give, give, give, give, give, and get nothing in return.

All that is by way of introducing a link to pictures, the story, and a video of the highly provocative incident:

 

The U.S. Navy released dramatic video and audio of this weekend’s stand-off with Iran. The video shows Iranian speedboats swarming around three American warships going through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.

At the chilling culmination of the tape, a voice can be heard over the radio, apparently from the Iranians, saying, “I am coming at you. You will explode after a few minutes.”

Go to the link, watch the vid, and marvel at the calm that prevails on board among the sailors of the United States Navy. And remember that Andrew Sullivan (Obama’s biggest fan) supports a fresh start in foreign policy.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Too bad that it’s the same old troubled world out there, with a lot of bad actors intent on doing harm to the United States and its people.

Censorship, inhibition of free thought, and intimidation of writers are once again the order of the day since Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, according to the Observer:

After the 1979 Islamic revolution, the government imposed strict rules on book publishing. Since then, the Ministry of Culture has been charged to vet all books before publication, mainly for erotic and religious transgressions. All books, including fiction, are required to conform to Islamic law.

Iranian literature showed brief signs of resurgence during the cultural thaw that took place when Mohammad Khatami became President in 1997. Khatami created a more open cultural atmosphere by allowing a huge number of books to be published. But the literary spring of Khatami’s era was fleeting.

A new regime of censorship began when Ahmadinejad took office. The cultural ministry imposed rules requiring renewed permits for previously published books. As a result, many books have been deemed unsuitable for publication or reprinting.

Many world classics, contemporary novels and dozens of international bestsellers have been banned, including a Farsi translation of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece The Gambler, Tracy Chevalier’s bestseller Girl With a Pearl Earring, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and some books by Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Dan Brown and Woody Allen.

Next time you hear from a whippersnapper that Iran isn’t a totalitarian country, it’s only “repressive,” please remember that the Iranian government controls what can and cannot be published. That, dear readers, is evil, because it suppresses the human rights of individuals to freedom of thought, regardless of what you call it.

Listen to the punishment meted out to one writer who crossed the hard-line censors [e.a.]:

The novelist Yaghoub Yadali was recently illegally imprisoned for 40 days by the government for several passages from his novel Mores of Unrest, a book which had ministry permission. He was eventually charged with dissemination of falsehood and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, as well as being required to write three mandatory articles.

Chilling.

This led to an outcry among many Iranian writers, who believe that the government is invading the imagination.

Yes, and that is the ultimate punishment—something out of science fiction—to have the government prescribe what you can and cannot write, or must or must not write, or can or cannot think.

It’s possible for people to resist this, of course. People have, and do. But why should they have to? Totalitarianism is very cruel. Not many can resist. Eventually, most go into hibernation, like this man:

‘It’s almost nine months since my translation of Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without a Country was given to the ministry. Since then we have had no response,’ says Mojtaba Pourmohsen, whose interview with Saghi Ghahraman, an Iranian lesbian poet based in Canada, published in Shargh Daily, became an excuse for the government to close down the most prominent reformist paper of the country. ‘I’m too tired now. I have no energy to go on with literature in Iran.

There’s a slim ray of hope, though—due to the technological revolution:

Reza Ghassemi, an important Iranian novelist based in France, recently published his new novel, The Abracadabra Murmured by Lambs, on the internet in a free ebook PDF format instead of facing government censorship and the formal permission procedure. His enovel has been reviewed and welcomed by the huge Iranian blog community much more warmly than if it had been published on paper.

Change happens slowly, but enlightenment will win the day … I hope.

Comparing the results to the polls, Matthew Yglesias says there was a surge for Hillary, and he’s got full-color art to support his assertion:

People who were undecided as of the last round of polling seem to have gone overwhelmingly in her direction.

Think Progress quotes Bill Kristol:

10:42 PM: Bill Kristol: “It’s the tears. She pretended to cry. The women felt sorry for her. And she won.”

Could be! Only I don’t think she pretended. She was feeling (uncharacteristically) sorry for herself. It may have worked (at least in this particular race, a squeaker), simply because it showed—finally!–that she is human.

This is also possible evidence of Feiler Faster at work. Obama was surging in the polls, no question. Then Hillary’s “It’s not easy” *** Diner Moment erupted and went into heavy rotation on cable last night and continued this morning—probably the last thing that people saw on their morning shows before they walked out the door for the day. And the voting booth was one of their stops before they came back home for the night.

Makes a good story, anyhow.

—————-

*** I’ve never heard a woman of Hillary’s age (and our cohort) say, “Things are hard.”

When middle-aged women—the generation in between (parents and children)—talk among themselves about life, they say, just as Hillary said: “It’s not easy.”

I love horse race coverage! This has been fun, exciting, and completely unpredictable—the very essence of entertainment (not to mention democracy).

What I mean about the essence of entertainment is this:

It was only four days ago that Mike Huckabee had the MSM and the blogosphere and the pundits eating out of his hand. Now, it’s Mike Who? (Intellectual honesty also compels me to mention Rudy Giuliani’s seemingly dire straits. I told you I’m not a politico.

What a ride. She who was declared deader than a doornail by the most level-headed commenters only hours ago has been chosen by the Democrats of New Hampshire. Against all expectations.

In her acceptance speech, Hillary said she’d found her own voice. Interesting. I wonder what that will sound like. (Terry McAuliffe is already spreading the meme.)

Crazy! It was impossible not to get caught up in Obama-mania. Has it been deflated? Who knows!

Kevin Drum, for one, is counting his blessings:

I have several reasons for being pleased with the results of tonight’s Democratic primary:

Hillary Clinton’s victory felt to me an awful lot like a repudiation of the mainstream pundits who spent the entire weekend first dumping all over her and then playing the “Hillary in tears” tape on practically a continuous loop yesterday.

Yep, that’s a good one. Here’s an even better one:

Hillary’s victory should amp up Andrew Sullivan into even greater feats of CDS hysterics than we’ve seen so far. If that’s possible. In any case, he seems to thrive on a state of constant agitation and stomach-churning nausea, so I figure Hillary’s victory is probably good for him.

And it was the bitches in the house that came out to support her: Hillary beat Obama with women voters by 13%.

Best of all, this is a win for America (I mean that all of it—including the highly contested and jam-packed campaign, the many debates, the incessant infotainment-heavy media coverage), because people are showing an increased interest in the political process.

And that, dear readers, is why I think that Infotainment Rules! (It grabs your attention—sometimes even in the public interest and to the benefit of our vibrant democracy.)