Negative Outlook?

New York Times piece on Ben Stiller and how he's been working a lot with Jack Black, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, and Owen Wilson.

Another piece here on Janeane Garofalo in today's Times. I've always liked Stiller and Garofalo and share their sense of humor. Stiller tries to be cool and "hip" - worst word in the English language - even though he isn't, like most of us, but since he knows he isn't, that makes him cool. Garofalo doesn't seem to care, which makes her cool, and seems to have a thicker skin, but not thick enough for political mudwrestling. You have to be able to take it if you dish it out, but her not-quite-thick-enough skin makes her more sympathetic. Unfortunately, Garofalo was an early opponent of regime change in Iraq:

"She was willing to be one of the earliest and most articulate voices" opposing the administration's policies, Mr. Greenwald said. "Every time I'd call and ask her to do something, whether it was a small radio station in Kansas or a rabid right-wing talk show, she didn't hesitate. She was totally fearless."

And Matt Stone and Trey Parker's movie Team America, drew blood.

Which isn't to say that Ms. Garofalo enjoys being a target. When "Team America: World Police," from the "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, hit movie theaters last year, it featured a Janeane Garofalo marionette whose head was blown off. The real Ms. Garofalo, hearing this from a friend, promptly burst into tears.

A year ago, she was a talk-radio novice:

"The first few weeks were pretty awkward," she confessed. They still sputter and stutter a fair amount, and Ms. Garofalo berates herself because "my mind starts racing and I try to fit 15 thoughts into one sentence."

(On the subject of talk radio, see this very interesting Atlantic Monthly cover story by David Foster Wallace.) "An HBO documentary chronicling [Air America's] early tumult, "Left of the Dial," will have its premiere on Thursday.
...
In fact, Ms. Garofalo is taking two weeks off next month to shoot an NBC pilot called "All In," in which she'll co-star as a professional poker player. If the network picks it up - always an iffy proposition - she'll do the comedy series in New York while simultaneously being host of "The Majority Report." Meanwhile, coming months will bring the releases of a TV movie for the Oxygen cable channel, a feature directed by Marc Forster, and the independent "Duane Hopwood," recently shown at Sundance." If you get a chance, check out the last movie Stiller and Garofalo did together, Mystery Men.

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A special Easter of the living dead.
(or "Please, don't kill me!")

If Terri Schiavo and a babbling Pope John Paul II showed up at my door step on a dark, foggy night, I'd be nervous and call the cops.

Frank Rich has a good memory.

Within hours [Bush] turned Ms. Schiavo into a slick applause line at a Social Security rally. "It is wise to always err on the side of life," he said, wisdom that apparently had not occurred to him in 1999, when he mocked the failed pleas for clemency of Karla Faye Tucker, the born-again Texas death-row inmate, in a magazine interview with Tucker Carlson.

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The Fourth Wave

I was hoping to get to my thoughts on the Left within the context the end of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, "globalization," and domestic American politics but events in Kyrgyzstan, Bahrain, and Belarus have precluded this. Thursday, March 24th Dan Drezner suggested that maybe we're seeing the beginning of another wave of democratization hit the planet.

The good news is that democratic uprisings are hitting autocratic American allies, i.e. countries containing U.S. bases, and not just pariah states. (Proponents of regime change like Hitchens have noted this possibility in the past.) With the Cold War long gone, the U.S. has less incentive to back friendly dictators and oppose nationalist anti-colonial movements like the one in Vietnam back in the 1960s. Kyrgyzstan has an American base and it just overthrew its autocrat. In a new development which must horrify dictators everywhere, looting was directed at the businesses of the ruler's family. (On Central Asia, Ahmed Rashid's Jihad is a must read.) Belarus, Europe's last dictatorship, saw protests from its brave, but outgunned, opposition. The Associate Press writes "The Belarusian Foreign Ministry on Friday harshly assailed the Kyrgyz opposition, warning that its action could destabilize the entire region. 'The unconstitutional overthrow of the government in Kyrgyzstan could have fatal consequences for peace, stability and prosperity in the country, as well as in the Central Asian region as a whole,' it said."

Juan Cole comments on the significance of massive peaceful protests in Bahrain. "The US has a naval base in Bahrain and its king has been a helpful ally. Will George W. Bush support Shaikh Salman or King Hamad?" Would it be petty to note that had Americans chosen to follow the left's advice and Cole's, rather than Bush's, democratic opposition leader - and Shia - Shaikh Salam would have been in a much weaker position to lead his campaign against King Hamdad?

Cole has nothing to say about Kyrgyzstan. Nor does much of the anti-war left. Matthew Yglesias seems to be alone in discussing it.

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leftwing first principles and goals

BORING, right? Not when the Left has taken a wrong turn at the crossroads. (Don't they have access to MapQuest, or do they solely rely on leftist magazines and blogs for directions?) Obviously, the left has to respect the truth, especially during these highly-spun, Internet-dominated days. Even if the truth helps the "other side," it can not and should not be denied. For example, in a March 18th editorial reflecting on the second anniversary of the war on/liberation of Iraq, the New York Times wrote:

There were no weapons of mass destruction to destroy. Worse, the specialized machinery and highly lethal conventional weaponry that Saddam Hussein did control was looted during the invasion and is now very likely in the hands of terrorists. As James Glanz and William Broad reported in The Times, among the things missing is high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms. The WMD argument was not only wrong, but the invasion might have also created a new threat.

I'm curious as to what Clinton's director of central intelligence George "Slam Dunk" Tenet would make of this paragrah. Did he know about the "high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms"? Does the NYTimes's point seem slightly contradictory? The problem is that much of the left believed Saddam Hussein to be "contained" and underestimate how dangerous he was. They can't be proven wrong on this point since now we'll never know what Saddam Hussein would have done had he remained in power. We do know for a fact that after his years of exhorbitant behavior, including the genocide of the Kurds; the annexation of Kuwait; the slaughter of the Shia in the south; the ecological destruction of the Kuwaiti oil-fields and Marsh Arab ecosystem, he was surrounded by no-fly zones in the North and South of Iraq, US army bases to the West in Saudia Arabia and a hostile Iran to the East. With all of this, he still wouldn't come clean about his pursuit and/or possession of WMDs. This is all well-established fact.

Maybe he was encouraged not to come clean because containment was breaking down. The high-cost sanctions weren't effective. Osama bin Laden, we learned, was unhappy about the infidel bases in Saudi Arabia. Bush removed the US bases in Saudi Arabia after the Baathist regime was toppled iin 2003. Was this in acquiescence to bin Laden's 9.11 statement? We'll never know, but for Bush to have withdrawn troops from Saudi Arabia while containment and sanctions were becoming increasingly ineffective would have been the height of irresponsibility. America gave diplomacy and sanctions a try with Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War up until early 2003.

Nor can the idea that the Middle East would have improved anyway with Saddam Hussein left in power be proven wrong. We'll never know. However, we can see that the Middle East is improving and for the left to fail to give the Iraq intervention some credit for this is uncomprehensible.

Antiwar activists are constantly imploring hawks to have empathy for the American and Iraqi dead and their grieving families. War should not be taken lightly. However, when confronted these same activists know little about the history of Iraq, nor how terrible a regime Iraqis were forced to live under. Their lack of knowledge only bolsters my conviction that the hawks are right about removing Saddam Hussein. On this point, this bit from Zoe Heller's NYTimes review of Ian McEwan's new novel Saturday, sums up my thoughts nicely:

Even without such literal intrusions on his privacy, Perowne's right to forget is constantly being assailed by the promptings of his own ethical imagination. His son, Theo, protected by the self-absorption of youth, manages to shut out the large, grim stuff of world affairs through his ability to ''think small'' -- concentrating on the short-range pleasures offered by an upcoming snowboarding trip or a new girlfriend. Perowne's mother, too, is afforded a kind of serenity by old age and senility. But for an able, sentient adult like Perowne, empathetic engagement with the world -- and all the moral confusion that such engagement entails -- is not really a choice. He cannot help seeing things from the viewpoints of others: his children, his mother and his Iraqi patient, whose stories of torture in one of Saddam's prisons have persuaded him that the invasion of Iraq is probably a good idea. Empathy, once granted admission, has a way of multiplying its demands. While buying the ingredients for a fish stew he plans to make for supper, Perowne ponders the latest scientific research indicating that fish have a higher degree of capacity for pain than has previously been assumed. ''This,'' he thinks, ''is the growing complication of the modern condition, the expanding circle of moral sympathy. Not only distant peoples are our brothers and sisters, but foxes too, and laboratory mice, and now the fish.'' If empathy is the antidote to cruelty, the essence of what it is to be human, how far to extend it? To fish? To foxes? To jihadists who wish you dead?

More on the Cold War, Vietnam, and American domestic politics in a bit.


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The United Nations is going through them changes

WASHINGTON, March 19 (Reuters) - Secretary General Kofi Annan's expected proposals for sweeping changes to the United Nations will be presented Monday, The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. The plan will include the expansion of the Security Council and changes to a human rights panel, The paper reported.

Samantha Power writes about Josh Bolton's nomination to be Ambassador to the U.N.

At the State Department, Bolton, a protégé of Vice- President Dick Cheney, has behaved more like a grandstander at a conservative think tank than like a diplomat. Colin Powell endured the collateral damage caused by his outbursts, but Rice made it plain that she would have none of it, and passed over Bolton for Deputy Secretary of State. Cheney reportedly then insisted that Bolton get the U.N. When Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke were appointed U.N. Ambassadors, President Clinton announced the nominations. Bush did the same for his first-term nominees, John Negroponte and John Danforth. Rice, in naming Bolton herself, sent a not so subtle signal that she expects to remain boss.

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If it looks like an assassination and smells like an assassination, it probably is one
(or It's the Occam's Razor, Stupid!)

If you are interested in the current events in Lebanon, the NYTimes lengthy, above-the-fold story today on the deteriorating relationship between Bashar al-Assad and Rafiq Hariri before Hariri's assassination is a must-read.

On an unseasonably mild day last August, a small group of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's closest political allies could tell from his flushed face and subdued manner that something awful had happened in the Syrian capital of Damascus, where he had been summoned to a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad.
...
After a few moments, he leaned forward and described how the Syrian leader had threatened him, curtly ordering him to amend Lebanon's Constitution to give President Émile Lahoud, the man Syria used to block Mr. Hariri's every move, another three years in office.

"Bashar told him, 'Lahoud is me,'" Mr. Jumblatt recalled in an interview. "Bashar told Hariri: 'If you and Chirac want me out of Lebanon, I will break Lebanon.'" He was referring to the French president, Jacques Chirac.

In the month since Mr. Hariri was assassinated, members of Lebanon's anti-Syrian opposition have pointed to that Aug. 26 encounter in Damascus as fateful. Although opposition leaders acknowledge that they lack firm evidence tying Syria or its Lebanese agents directly to Mr. Hariri's assassination, they link that day to his slaying on Feb. 14.
...
Syria is used to acting with impunity in Lebanon.

But by 2004, the Lebanese were expecting something different from Mr. Assad, not least because the United States had signaled by invading Iraq that business as usual was unacceptable.
...
The end for Mr. Hariri as prime minister came in October after the Syrians sent him a message to step aside. He resigned on Oct. 20, somewhat relieved, his aides said.

The next months were consumed mostly with planning for parliamentary elections due in the spring and wrangling over the election law. The Syrians were trying to gerrymander districts around Beirut and the rest of the country to weaken the opposition. But the Christian-Sunni Muslim-Druse coalition appeared to grow ever more formidable.

During this period, while he was planning his comeback, Mr. Hariri seemed to become his old self again, friends and allies said. Mr. Renaud, the European Union ambassador, recalls visiting him at his combined office and mansion right after Christmas and seeing him emerge from behind his desk waving a sheaf of papers and grinning, saying, "We are going to win the elections!"
...
By late January, Mr. Hariri was feeling confident enough that he decided he would not accept any Syrian-nominated members on his election list, his advisers say. His 19-member bloc in Parliament included three men chosen by Rustom Ghazale, the head of Syrian intelligence based in Anjar in the Bekaa region, and the man Lebanese believe really ran their country, his aides said.

Mr. Hariri invited Mr. Ghazale to lunch in late January and told him about the decision.

"They were not happy," said Ghazi Aridi, a former minister of information who resigned in September over the Lahoud extension. He recalls Mr. Ghazale telling Mr. Hariri, "You have to think about it and we have to think about it."

It was beginning to look like the opposition could capture about 60 seats in the 128-seat Parliament, enough to elect a president other than Mr. Lahoud. Around this time, Mr. Hariri and Mr. Jumblatt, the Druse leader, had a meeting. Mr. Hariri's earlier confidence that he would not be assassinated had slipped; the two men figured one or the other would be killed soon.

"Any field where you challenge them, they get mad," Mr. Jumblatt said. "Such totalitarian regimes cannot understand that you can have the freedom to chose your own M.P.'s, or you choose your own local administrators or I don't know what."

Two weeks after that conversation, the huge bomb that rocked all of Beirut struck Mr. Hariri's motorcade. He, along with 18 other people, died.
(emphasis mine)

Assassinations are not unheard of in the Middle East. Israel assassinated leaders of Hamas recently, as well as other members of the resistance. The difference one could argue, is that Hariri was resisting by peaceful means.

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Iraq and Religious Law

Leading Left intellectual Juan Cole reports:

Jaafari: Iraq headed toward Religious Law

...Prospective Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari has given an interview to Der Spiegel, to appear Tuesday, in which he says his government will press for the implementation of religious law in personal status matters:

'"It's understandable in a country where the majority of people are Muslim . . . Iraq should become a Muslim country but without falling under the influence of Iran or Saudi Arabia . . . Everyone will have the same rights, even members of the many minor religious communities," he said, explaining there would be multiple forms of jurisprudence.'

However the NYTimes reports:

American and Iraqi officials say that in a gesture to the Kurds, leaders of the Shiite alliance, which has 140 seats in the assembly, have signaled that they will not press for Islam to be the central source of power in a new government, but the Kurds are holding out for an independent Kurdish militia and effective control of Kirkuk.

"Jaafari: Iraq headed toward Religious Law in Personal Status Matters" just doesn't have the same ring to it. Are "Personal Status Matters" a central source of power for a government? I'd agree with the pro-choice movement that they are.

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American Left Commits Seppuku

Salon gives Juan Cole the lead op-ed today where he discusses the Right's attempt to take credit for the spreading of freedom across the Middle East. Showing what a weak hand he holds, he trots out obnoxious rightwingers like Max Boot and Mark Steyn to put those who differ with him in the worst possible light. It's called guilt by association. He does acknowledge the reality that some liberals and war critics believe prospects for the Middle East have improved: "Even some of the president's detractors and those opposed to the war have issued mea culpas. Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star, a Bush critic, wrote, "It is time to set down in type the most difficult sentence in the English language. That sentence is short and simple. It is this: Bush was right." But then it's down the memory hole. If you disagree with Cole and Salon, George Bush is your hero and Boot and Steyn are your buddies.

Next, Cole tries to bolster his own authority by giving a little history:

"In fact, regime change in the Middle East has often come about through foreign invasion. Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser intervened militarily to help revolutionaries overthrow the Shiite imam of Yemen in the 1960s. The Israelis expelled the PLO from Lebanon and tried to establish a pro-Israeli government in Beirut in 1982. Saddam Hussein briefly ejected the Kuwaiti monarchy in 1990. The U.S. military's invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein were therefore nothing new in Middle Eastern history. A peaceful evolution toward democracy would have been an innovation. "

Israel in Beirut sounds more like an *attempted* regime change. There have been many more of those which Cole fails to mention. To take a few, there was the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. And let's not forget the Iraq-Iran war. Cole's being very selective here, especially by saying Hussein "ejected the Kuwaiti monarchy." Saddam did a bit more than that.

Following his selective history lesson, he comes out and says what appears to be the new pacifist/realist left's line:

"The Baath in Syria shows no sign of ceasing to operate as a one-party regime. When pressured, it has offered up slightly more cooperation in capturing Iraqi Baathists. Its partial withdrawal from Lebanon came about because of local and international pressures, including that of France and the Arab League, and is hardly a unilateral Bush administration triumph. "

A unilateral Bush triumph? Cole starts his polemic with the question "Is George W. Bush right to argue that his war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is democratizing the Middle East?" Did Bush claim the overthrow of Hussein is "unilaterally." I don't even think Boot or Steyn claimed that.

After pointing out Iraq is a mess and disparaging Egyptian and Saudi Arabian electoral reforms as minimal, Cole delivers his money line (shot): "Bush also wants Syria out of Lebanon, in part because such a move would strengthen the hand of his ally, Israel." Again, the strategy is to tarnish by employing guilt by association.

Look to the language and revel in the bias:

"On March 9 the Shiite Hezbollah Party held massive pro-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut that dwarfed the earlier opposition rallies. A majority of Parliament members wanted to bring back Karami. Both the Hezbollah street demonstrations and the elected Parliament's internal consensus produced a pro-Syrian outcome obnoxious to the Bush administration. Since then the opposition has staged its own massive demonstrations, rivaling Hezbollah's."

"Rivaling" Hezbollah's? According to objective news outlets, they "dwarfed" Hezbollah's.

"So far, these demonstrations and counterdemonstrations have been remarkable in their peacefulness and in the frankness of their political aims." Except of course for the Hariri assassination which started the whole ball rolling.

Next Cole contradicts himself by saying, in fact, Beirutis aren't habitually violent:

"Lebanese have been holding lively parliamentary campaigns for decades, and the flawed, anonymous Jan. 30 elections in Iraq would have provoked more pity than admiration in urbane, sophisticated Beirutis. " Excuse my sarcasm, but yes it's such a pity that Iraqis defied the murderous insurgents - those who are making Iraq a basket case - and it's such a pity that Iraqis are no longer voting 99% in favor of murderous thug. I doubt Beirutis pity the fact politics have returned to Iraq. Is Juan Cole just trying to provoke? Is this what Salon and the anti-war left/right have come to?

For instance, towards the end of the piece, Cole writes another remarkable sentence "Arab intellectuals are, however, often coded as mere American and Israeli puppets when they dare speak against authoritarian practices." Didn't Cole do a form of the very same "coding" earlier in this very same piece?

Cole ends with the guerilla war in Iraq and questions if there has been any progress. "The Middle East may open up politically, and no doubt Bush will try to claim credit for any steps in that direction." At the very least, he should decide if the Middle East has opened up politically. The list he provides at the beginning suggests it has:

"In the wake of the Iraq vote, anti-Syrian demonstrations in Lebanon, the Egyptian president's gestures toward open elections, and other recent developments, ..."

I'd give it a 9.0 on the Cognitive Dissonance scale.

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Never Follow Bad Money with Good Money

Matt Yglesias reports:

"In what's probably the most important Social Security development of the day, The Washington Post reports, that "The Financial Services Forum, an association of 19 chief executives of large financial services companies, has decided to withdraw from Compass, the group that is leading industry's effort to gin up support for the president's plan outside the Beltway."

Did someone say something about rats and a sinking ship?"

They did win on bankruptcy "reform" however.

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The most powerful military force in human history

Via Hit and Run:

One Difference Between the United States and Israel
Ynetnews is claiming that Israeli soldiers who play Dungeons & Dragons are considered "detached from reality" and given a low security clearance.

Jeff Patterson, who sent me the story, comments that "this is a far cry from the old Marines ads where a knight slays a magma beast."

Posted by Jesse Walker

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Bush Announces Iraq Exit Strategy: 'We'll Go Through Iran'

In reality, Bush is turning down the heat on Iran and its client Hezbollah.

Europe and the U.S. just agreed on a joint carrot-and-stick approach to Iran. As the NYTimes reports:

After years of campaigning against Hezbollah, the radical Shiite Muslim party in Lebanon, as a terrorist pariah, the Bush administration is grudgingly going along with efforts by France and the United Nations to steer the party into the Lebanese political mainstream, administration officials say.

The administration's shift was described by American, European and United Nations officials as a reluctant recognition that Hezbollah, besides having a militia and sponsoring attacks on Israelis, is an enormous political force in Lebanon that could block Western efforts to get Syria to withdraw its troops.

The shift coincides with Syria presenting a timetable for the complete withdrawal of its troops and intelligence services from Lebanon.

JEDEIDET YABOUS, Syria (AP) -- President Bashar Assad reiterated his commitment to withdrawing all Syrian troops and intelligence agents from Lebanon, a U.N. envoy said Saturday, indicating that he had received a timetable for the pullout. Meanwhile, a convoy of Syrian troops returned home to a rousing welcome.

The long convoy of vehicles carrying Syrian soldiers returned home amid a heavy snowfall early Saturday to the cheers of Syrian well-wishers, who chanted "Syria! Syria!" handed out flowers and threw rice.

U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen did not give any details about timing after meeting with Assad in the northern city of Aleppo but said he would discuss the matter at the United Nations next week.

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Kurt Andersen responds to James Wolcott's attack.

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"Realists" vs. "Hawks"

Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria. Have American interventions in the Muslim world helped progressive forces in these countries?

In an early post, for some reason I misread Matthew Yglesias's comments on the Cedar Revolution. I missed this important sentence about Bush:

I tend to think that John Kerry would have done essentially the same things had he been in office since January (if you can find examples of leading Kerry foreign policy advisors condemning Bush's recent initiatives with regard to Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon I'd be interested in hearing it).

Michael Young does an effective job of tackling Flynt Leverett, formerly of the NSC and the Kerry campaign, who had an op-ed in the New York Times about Syria.

Leverett's piece appeared a day after Yglesias's blog entry and is titled "Don't Rush on the Road to Damascus." It takes the "realist" view on Iraq and applies it to Syria next door.

Although, of course, I don't agree with everything they write, the following "hawks" are worth reading to help counter the arguments of the "realists," anti-war liberals and leftists, and isolationist rightwingers:

Hitchens

David Aronovich

Michael Young

Michael J. Totten

Norman Geras

Michael Ignatieff

Thomas Friedman

Fareed Zakaria

Daniel Drezner

Greg Djerejian

Paul Berman

Michael Walzer

David Ignatius

Bernard-Henri Lévy

Andrew Sullivan

David Brooks

No doubt there are others.

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Danny Postel interviews Ron Aronson about Camus and Sartre.

Doug Ireland comments on Aronson and the interview.

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The Cedar Revolution
(or In Like a Lion and - hopefully - Out Like a Lamb)

At the increasingly interesting Hit and Run:

Charles Paul Freund says to keep your eye on the autocrats.

Nick Gillespie writes about defining progress in the Middle East.

Elsewhere in the "MSM," the New York Times quotes Michael Young. And still employs the phrase "Arab street."

Fareed Zakaria joins Tom Friedman in a quixotic quest to get the West to moderate its oil consumption.

In the blogosphere:

Greg Djerejian at Belgravia Dispatch gloats.

MaxSpeaks says you can't trust the government, yet wants to save Social Security from the "private" sphere.

Others on the left and anti-war right really aren't discussing what could be another 1989/fall of the Berlin Wall (except, admittedly the Israelis just built one).

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