Rabbi Lerner’s Response to President Obama’s Middle East Address is posted on the truthout web site.

The response has some good points, but expects an awful lot from President Obama.  This Palestinian/Israeli issue is such a tough one, that it may be too much to expect that anyone can come up with a solution that both sides will buy into.

As a comment on this article, I reiterated my thought about the position of denying the right of the UN to vote on a solution.

It is interesting that no vote in the UN should be allowed to create a Palestinian state although that is exactly how the state of Israel was created.

How convenient to realize that such an imposed solution is bad policy and should never be followed again just at the point where one side has already benefited from that policy and the opposite side is just now requesting the same.

In a less serious moment, I thought what poetic justice it would be to repeat the history of the formation of Israel.  Let the UN decide on the initial borders of the new Palestinian state and then let the people of the region fight a war to decide where the borders will actually be.  I am not an authority on the history of the beginning of Israel, so there is a good chance that my understanding of what happened has been warped by my upbringing.

Obama may have said that he was only stating publicly what has been assumed privately for a long time. In newspaper reports, I have read that this position has been stated openly by Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Bush during their administrations.

See the article Obama rejects controversy over his stance on Middle East peace talks.

If you go beyond the video clip above, apparently Obama also said:

“There was nothing particularly original in my proposal; this basic framework for negotiations has long been the basis for discussions among the parties, including previous U.S. administrations,”

Despite what I read on some blog comments, The Jerusalem Post is not in total agreement with Obama, but here is one of their more positive articles about what Obama said, PM: Disagreement with Obama blown out of proportion

In the article Obama: Borders will be different from June 4, 1967 lines, The Jerusalem Post quoted Obama’s speech

“Peace cannot be imposed on the parties to the conflict. No vote at the United Nations will ever create an independent Palestinian state,” he declared. “And the United States will stand up against efforts to single Israel out at the United Nations or in any international forum.”

I would think that such a comment needs a lot of explanation. A vote at the United Nations is exactly how the state of Israel was created. Maybe Obama is referring to how badly that turned out as far as creating peace in the middle east. Of course it is fine to say, well we made a mistake with that one, so we are not going to do the same thing to rectify that original mistake. However, that leaves the aggrieved people with with an unacceptable status quo. Not exactly fair. That is why I said the words need explanation. I did not say that they could not be explained.

I have always thought that the there is a reason why Republicans know how to pick the most awful thing to accuse the Democrats of wanting to do so that public emotions will be stirred up to reject the idea. They just pick something that they want to do that they would most like to hide from the public.

I am now getting to an age where that grandma and grandpa that go over the cliff could be Sharon and me.

I found the above clip on the pages of Rawstory.com

According to Paul Krugman’s piece, Making Things in America the answer seems to be not much.

First, what’s driving the turnaround in our manufacturing trade? The main answer is that the U.S. dollar has fallen against other currencies, helping give U.S.-based manufacturing a cost advantage. A weaker dollar, it turns out, was just what U.S. industry needed.

Yet the Federal Reserve finds itself under intense pressure from the right to make the dollar stronger, not weaker. A few months ago, Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, berated Ben Bernanke for failing to tighten monetary policy, declaring: “There is nothing more insidious that a country can do to its citizens than debase its currency.” If Mr. Bernanke had given in to that kind of pressure, manufacturing would have continued its relentless decline.

This follows the thesis that I have been presenting here on this blog that in order for our manufacturing industries to become competitive again, our costs have to start to balance out with the competing countries.

I can think of  two ways to make this happen.

One way is to let the value of the dollar fall.  That will cut into everyone’s wealth that is denominated in US dollars.  However, the decline in wealth will be relative to people in other countries and will be little noticed by people here.  The workers and the super rich will all share in the decline.

Another way is to drastically lower the wages in this country in terms of a strong dollar whose value is not declining.  This will be rapidly be noticed by the workers in this country as their debts will stay at fixed amounts, while their resources to pay those debts will decline.  This seems to have the nice effect for the rich in that the money owed to them is not losing purchasing power.  As with the housing bubble, they seem to forget that it makes no difference if the money owed to you stays constant when the people who owe it to you cannot pay it back.  I cannot understand how people who are supposed to be capitalists have such little grasp of this elementary principle of capitalism.

The Kochs Take One On The Chin is a little article by Jim Hightower.

It’s always good to see a corporate bully get popped right in the snout by those it’s bullying – and what bully is more deserving of a comeuppance than Koch Industries?

James Fallows has an article On The Atlantic web site.  He highlights the following two charts:

These charts come from the report from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Economic Downturn and Bush Policies Continue to Drive Large Projected Deficit.

Related info can be found on the White House web page in the article Moment of Opportunity: President Obama on the Middle East & North Africa.

While I felt that the message that President Obama presented about his vision for the Middle East was a strong one, I often wondered about applying this vision in the USA.

I noted a number of ideas in his speech that could use application here.

Promote open access to the internet. In 21st century information is power. Will oppose any group that tries to restrict the right of others and tries to hold power through coercion and not consent.

Relates to the insistence of net neutrality in this country. This is strongly opposed by Republicans and their big corporate backers.

Broaden our engagement beyond elites. Reach the people who will shape the future, particularly the young people. Expand education. Combat disease. Connect with and listen to the voices of the people.

Ideas also opposed by Republicans who just want to take care of the elites. They want to diminish support for educational opportunity. They do not support health care for all.

Respect for the rights of the minorities. All faiths are respected. Rights of women. Child and maternal health.

None of the above are firmly supported by the opposition in this country.

The President mentioned concern for Young people are well educated but cannot find a job.

The opposition in the US is more concerned with blocking women’s rights to health care than they are about creating jobs.

Greatest untapped resource is the talent of its people. Economic growth to solidify the accomplishments of the street. Success of democratic expansion depends on growth and broad-based prosperity.

How about some of that broad-based prosperity here? Taking an average where the top few percent have most of the prosperity is not a good measure of how we are doing here.

He talked about the importance of financial stability.

Our opposition here wants unbridled and un-policed capitalism despite the instability and havoc that this causes.

Can’t have a dialog when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail.

What about the civil rights of Bradley Manning who has not been convicted of anything, yet? How about stopping his torture that serves no useful purpose let alone the illegality and immorality of such torture?

What the President proposed for the middle east seems down-right un-American by the standards of the elites of this country. Maybe we need to look at ourselves with a little of the humility Obama proposed for our actions in other countries.

In the article, The Great Switch by the Super Rich, Robert Reich has made a very interesting point.

Forty years ago, wealthy Americans financed the U.S. government mainly through their tax payments. Today wealthy Americans finance the government mainly by lending it money. While foreigners own most of our national debt, over 40 percent is owned by Americans – mostly the very wealthy.

This great switch by the super rich – from paying the government taxes to lending the government money — has gone almost unnoticed. But it’s critical for understanding the budget predicament we’re now in. And for getting out of it.

By paying the rich to fund the government we are giving them an opportunity to make money without putting in any effort at productive economic activity.

This will kill the US economic competitiveness faster than any other economic policy that has been tried in our history.

Why not focus on the damage that this tax policy is causing to our economic health?

Just like grape vines make for better wine when they undergo a little stress, capitalists make for better economic growth when they have to work a little to make money.

For proof of this last point see my previous post, Higher Marginal Tax Rates Spur Economic Growth.

I found the article BREAKING: Jerome Corsi’s Birther Book Pulled from Shelves! on the Esquire Magazine web site.  The article starts with the following introductory paragraph:

In a stunning development one day after the release of Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President, by Dr. Jerome Corsi, World Net Daily Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah has announced plans to recall and pulp the entire 200,000 first printing run of the book, as well as announcing an offer to refund the purchase price to anyone who has already bought either a hard copy or electronic download of the book.