Two Topics for the Price of One!

Luckily there is no statute of limitations on how long I can wait before posting on a subject and this blog is not exactly CNN when it comes to breaking news. So, though it is old news, I am going to go ahead and have my say on Joe Biden's ridiculous comments vis a vis Barack Obama. First off, it's not hard to call his words dumb; they certainly are. Lots of things Joe Biden says over the next few months will be dumb, though most will not get the attention that these brought. Second, I think he was fairly clearly trying to pay Obama a compliment, and I don't want to overanalyze his syntax in an effort to parse down to his true meaning. Third, and lastly, I hope this incident spurs Biden to drop out of the race. Perhaps you are thinking now, "Wait a moment, didn't he just claim that Biden's remarks really weren't that big of a deal? Why is he saying Biden should drop out?" Well reader, here is the answer: Biden should never have run in the first place, and I'll hop on any transgression in order to push him out of the field. He neither has a realistic chance of winning, nor does he bring any sort new ideas into the debate. All he does is hog up time. Some no-chance candidates, Kucinich being the best example, bring certain ideas into the debate that would not be present without that candidate. It's good that Kucinich is there to say we should have a Department of Peace and single-payer universal health insurance (though I am holding out hope that maybe a mainstream candidate will also endorse that position). Other candidates, like Biden or Chris Dodd, are not substantially different from Hillary Clinton or John Edwards and are not valuable additions to the dialogue. They just have a lot of vanity and will be making meaningful debate more difficult for the people who will actually get the nomination. Joe Biden: Drop Out.

For a brief encore, I wanted to touch on Jimmy Carter's recent book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. I freely admit that I am no Middle East scholar and not fit to debate every point of the book, but I do want to say that I believe it is a positive step forward that this book has been getting attention, and I hope that it can help to focus on the substance of the struggle in the Holy Land. Many Americans know there is some kind of intractable feud between Israel and the Palestinians, but they don't know anything about the actual points of disagreement. The book makes clear that both sides have acted without good faith, but also drives home the point that Israel is ultimately the one with the power to change the situation--a power they have instead chosen to use in order to keep the Palestinians occupied and oppressed. A short perusal of criticism of the book seems to indicate to me that there are objections over possibly copyrighted maps that were reproduced in the book, improper footnoting, and the like. Obviously these should be corrected in future editions, but these sorts of complaints are tangential at best when it comes to breaking down the book's thesis. I believe that the history and argumentation are essentially correct, and in some cases do not go far enough.

A personal anecdote about the book: having dinner with an extremely intelligent Jewish couple with whom I am friends, and this book came up. I had not yet read it, and didn't feel I could defend something I did not know about, so I didn't really reply, but one of my friends came right out and called Carter an anti-Semite and claimed the book was full of untruths. She had not read the book at that point either. Let me say for the record that I do not believe Carter is an anti-Semite and that this sort of criticism is largely propaganda from reflexively pro-Israel sources. Chances are that the person saying this has no idea what they are talking about.