And we were supposed to do What with Social Security?

Now let me get this straight --

Conservative Republicans have cried for years for that the American system of Social Security should be drastically altered to allow folks to "make their own decisions with their own money" and invest in the stock market rather than pay taxes into the kitty. I guess the idea is that if you make an unusually bad investment with your retirement money your eventual impoverishment in old age is your own damned fault and you can live in the dark and eat cat food.

And now we're being told that the taxpayers must bail out the markets or folks' pensions and retirement funds will be severely affected.

So, which is it? That taxes protect the right of our nation's elderly to live out their lives in decent conditions, or that folks have the right to choose, and will bear the responsibility of having chosen, their own investments?

And in other news ...

As the high drama in Washington consumes all available news bites today and the media feeds us their buy-in on the idea that we must bail out the credit markets (while doing next-to-nothing to keep Americans in their homes and their communities intact) ...

... I'd be surprised to see this rather startling, and refreshing, bit of news from Israel earn any air-time on American networks and cable news. The New York Times did give the story a few inches:

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview published on Monday that Israel must withdraw from nearly all of the West Bank as well as East Jerusalem to attain peace with the Palestinians and that any occupied land it held onto would have to be exchanged for the same quantity of Israeli territory....

“What I am saying to you now has not been said by any Israeli leader before me,” Mr. Olmert told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot in the interview on the occasion of the Jewish new year, observed from Monday evening till Wednesday evening. “The time has come to say these things.”

He said that traditional Israeli defense strategists had learned nothing from past experiences and that they seemed stuck in the considerations of the 1948 war of independence.

Olmert was, of course, Prime Minister during the attacks on Lebanon in 2006 that resulted in severely under-reported (in the U.S., anyway) demolition of the country's infrastructure and the suffering of so many human beings. Since then, having stepped down after allegations of corruption launched a couple of investigations into his activities, he has apparently undergone a deep look into his own conscience and has begun to look reality in the face, without blinking this time.

“With them, it is all about tanks and land and controlling territories and controlled territories and this hilltop and that hilltop,” he said. “All these things are worthless.”

He added, “Who thinks seriously that if we sit on another hilltop, on another hundred meters, that this is what will make the difference for the State of Israel’s basic security?”

Having visited many parts of Israel and the West Bank in the mid-80s, I can report that most of the Israeli Jews I met just wanted to live in a peaceful two-state region, opposed the West Bank settlements, and were in favor of withdrawal from occupied territories. They themselves described the major political problem of their country to be the extent to which a minority of Right-wing religious extremists control the Knesset. One wonders when the people of Israel will finally take to the streets and demand Fairness For All and real movement towards peace. Perhaps Olmert's interview published Monday in Yehediot Ahronot can help ignite such a movement.

To my fellow tribesmen: L'Shanah Tovah. May this year 5769 be truly New.

To every human: Shalom.

Political Tidbit of the Day

... OK, it was really published yesterday, but I got a sad chuckle out of it. Jim Rutenberg in a straight news piece in yesterday's NY Times:

The Wall Street Journal posted an advertisement on its Web site 12 hours early that showed Mr. McCain proudly looking into the distance. “McCain Wins Debate!” read the text.

Ah, the state of U.S. politics. Perennially amazing to me is the gullibility (and, therefore, culpability) of the electorate who -- given that the amount of money such ads cost is only spent after market research into their effectiveness -- are swayed by such 3-word print-bites instead of watching the damned debate and deciding for themselves.

Journalist of the Day: re Mr Smith goes to Washington

The best article I've seen thus far explaining McCain's decision to land in D.C. (one can see the orange jumpsuit, the deck of the aircraft carrier, the Mission Accomplished banner ... oh, wait, that was that other macho American) and then pretend to have been acting in the interest of The People ...

Frank Rich in today's NYT. Warning, Rich is pissed. Perhaps not appropriate material for folks who prefer their politics air-brushed. Here's a sample:

The question is why would a man who forever advertises his own honor toy so selfishly with our national interest at a time of crisis. I’ll leave any physiological explanations to gerontologists — if they can get hold of his complete medical records — and any armchair psychoanalysis to the sundry McCain press acolytes who have sorrowfully tried to rationalize his erratic behavior this year. The other answers, all putting politics first, can be found by examining the 24 hours before he decided to “suspend” campaigning and swoop down on the Capitol to save America from the Sunnis or the Shia, or whoever perpetrated all those credit-default swaps.

To put these 24 hours in context, you must remember that McCain not only knows little about the economy but that he has not previously expressed any urgency about its meltdown. It was on Sept. 15 — the day after his former idol Alan Greenspan pronounced the current crisis a “once-in-a-century” catastrophe — that McCain reaffirmed for the umpteenth time that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.” As recently as Tuesday he had not yet even read the two-and-a-half-page bailout proposal first circulated by Hank Paulson last weekend. “I have not had a chance to see it in writing,” he explained. (Maybe he was waiting for it to arrive by Western Union instead of PDF.)

Photo of the Day

The sheer beauty of carbon free energy.

Quote of the Day

The inimitable Tom Wolfe on the obsolescence of Wall Street:

The Exchange is already an anachronism, like Broadway. Everything is done by computer today. Hanging out on the Floor of the Exchange is like hanging out at OTB.

Read the rest of his Masterful answers to the question, "Where are the Masters of the Universe now?"