surprise!

since construction began in the 1990s, the west bank separation barrier has been controversial. the critics slammed the wall, which in places extended deep into the west bank to encompass various settlements, as nothing but a land grab, to create a de facto border seizing palestinian land to improve israel's position at the bargaining table. the other side, claimed that the barrier wasn't related to the negotiations, it was about security.

in last week's negotiations between israel and the palestinian authority, israel proposed using the wall as a border.

(via)

komen steps in it

it's not just that i disagree with the politics behind the move. putting aside my thoughts about the abortion issue, i think the komen foundation made a really stupid move. part of their success is that the organization was not entangled in partisanship or the culture wars. most people, from every corner of the political spectrum, have friends or loved ones who have fought the breast cancer. the ubiquitous pink ribbons and pink brand tie-ins made it easy for people to send money to komen while feeling confident that they were doing something good. sure, there has been criticism of komen in the past. but that stuff didn't get much attention and never sullied the organization's reputation with the general public.

this, on the other hand, will. the media is interested in the abortion issue. the "pinkwashing" allegations just don't plug into a well-known polarizing issue in the same way. so now pro-choicers will stop funding komen, both through direct donations and by avoiding those pink ribboned products (as mistermix notes the logo is so familiar with the public, it makes boycotts easy). meanwhile pro-lifers will try to throw their support behind the organization, but it won't be enough. the komen foundation benefited enormously from the fact that it was an organization that nearly everyone wanted to support. now there's a large portion of the public that won't.

(image via)

ADDING: and once again, someone else out there makes the same point i was trying to make, but better.  oh well.

half

if this is true, why isn't there more news coverage coming out of "liberated syria"? when rebels took control of benghazi, libya, al jazeera quickly set up operations there and western news organizations quickly followed their lead. so why is coverage of syria still limited by the assad regime's refusal to issue visas to journalists? i'm guessing that the opposition is exaggerating things a bit. either that, or it is counting all the uninhabited bits of the syrian desert as liberated.

back to normal

now that that's over, romney can go back to not caring about hispanics.

iran and israel

stephen walt splashes some cold water on bergman article from sunday's NYT magazine. really all walt is asking is that we keep in mind the motives of the people being quoted. people have been predicting that israel is about to attack iran every year for the past decade. as i said earlier, an israeli strike on iran is more likely in 2012 than it has been before (but that's more about iraqi airspace than anything going on israel or iran).

but i still think it's more likely than not that it won't happen. there's just too much of a risk of blowback. and even though the netanyahu government seems immune to blowback worries (they trashed their relationship with their best ally in the region just to avoid saying "i'm sorry"). but the blowback potential from an iran attack is a lot worse than the other stuff that bibi has faced before.

from the mouths of muppets

schrodinger's president

ali abdullah saleh resigned months ago and yet news articles continue to call him "president".

i'm not faulting the news organizations. it's hardly clear whether the resignation was real. i just find it interesting thato any articles just seem to assume that the "resignation" was basically horseshit. saleh is both president and a former president, depending on who is talking about him.

master debaters

last night, after seeing josh marshall's post that "I think this debate is a bigger mess than any of the previous one", i actually tuned in for a bit. man, that was terrible. maybe i didn't see the good bits.

i did see the part where the palestinian american identified himself as a republican and asked what the candidates would do for the palestinian cause. mitt's answer was that everything bad in the conflict was the palestinians' fault. gingrich's answer was that he would move the u.s. embassy to jerusalem. paul and santorum weren't given a chance to answer. this was just after the candidates piled on president obama for not causing a "cuban spring" that would overthrow the castro regime, like ronald reagan would have done. because we all remember how castro was overthrown when reagan was president.

that was pretty much all i could take. apparently, i came in too late for the best part. but even reading about that it doesn't sound all that great. i should have learned my lesson in october. roger simon is right, obama should just run unedited video of the GOP debates as his political commercials in the general. there's really no better pitch for a second obama term than that.

showing up with a bucket, no one knew why

awesome:

Newt would show up at the campaign headquarters with an empty bucket in his hand — that was a symbol of some sort for him — and I never did know what he was doing or why he was doing it, and I’m not certain he knew either.

reason for some degree of optimism

the this american life episode i mentioned two weeks ago has both prompted a response from apple, and has gotten the NYT to start reporting on the labor practices that produce apple products. this comes just as apple posted record profits. apple's $13.1 billion is the second most profitable quarter for any company anywhere in all of recorded history and it has made apple the most valuable u.s. company.

the timing is actually perfect. plenty of people are making the connection between apple's stellar profits and it's less-than-stellar labor record. there's no question that apple can afford to do better and apple should know that everyone likes to pile on the front runner (even former apple executives are piling on). under the circumstances, i think it's virtually certain that the company is going to try to improve things for the workers. it's now in apple's interest to show real improvement right away.

(various links via techmeme and memeorandum)

actually it is crazy

i've been a sci fi geek for as long as i remember. so it kills me a little inside to come out as anti-permanent moon base. but that's where i am. i just don't see what is to be gained from having one.

sure, there are probably lots of unforeseen benefits to a crash program to establish a moon base. the apollo space program resulted in all kinds of technological advances that no one expected. presumably a new push for a permanent lunar presence would spur other scientific advances that no one has thought of yet. but it's just as sure to have all kinds of unforeseen costs too. it's dangerous and expensive to have people live indefinitely in an environment that is completely unsuitable for their basic biological needs--a lot more dangerous and expensive than just sending a handful of people to the moon to walk around a bit and then come home. it's hardly clear that the unforeseen benefits will outweigh the unforeseen costs. so what foreseeable benefits are there to having people living on the moon? it's not clear there are any that can't be covered by the international space station.

newt seems to be for it for the same reason my gut wants me to be for it, it would be really cool to have a moon base. but newt promises to cut taxes and balance the budget. without cutting defense, that can only mean deep cuts in programs that help actual people. cutting poor people's medical benefits just so we can have a cool moon base is both cruel and crazy, harming actual people for some mad dream.

david weigel says the newt's moon base proposal is "not actually crazy." but he's just talking about political strategy. in a place like florida, where there is a space industry, a moon base proposal effectively comes across as a jobs program. but if you look at it as a policy question and not just a way to buy votes,  especially in the context of newt's embrace of austerity for the non-rich, it is crazy after all.

ADDING: in other words, what atrios said.

the state of the union is sautéed

well lookit that! it's time for my annual post about how much i dislike the state of the union address.

or not. what could i possibly say now that i haven't whined about in any of my eight prior posts? except i've even already said that, i already talked about how i've already aired all my complaints in prior posts in last year's post. have my state of the union whines reached a new meta-meta-level? could they be even more pointless than the actual state of the union? and if i have run out of ideas so completely that i'm even starting to repeat myself when i talk about being out of ideas, will there be any bottom of this barrel to scrape in next year?

the whine cellar: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011

patriots for self-deportation

believe it or not, it looks like this site is not a parody.

and so a bunch of teatards, who are probably unaware that prior to 1921 the u.s. did not bar anyone (other than chinese people and other asians) from legally settling in the u.s. because they were from a foreign country, might go ahead and "deport" themselves to some place they have never been before.

anti-soylant green act

it also bans stem cell research, which is much less funny.