I’m very interested in the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it is such a mess that I rarely hazard an opinion about it. So I was very interested to see an article this morning in Al Jazeera America, Analysis: Israelis Not Ready for Two-State Solution. It is by an Israeli journalist, Dimi Reider, and it is calm—and sad.

His analysis is that the Israeli people are not ready for a two state solution to the conflict. They claim to be for one, but this is mostly just theoretical well wishing. When asked about things like land swaps, which would be necessary for any deal, they disagree. What’s more, public opinion goes down the more an actual plan comes into focus. So it really comes down to the fact that the Israeli people would like peace, but they really aren’t willing sacrifice anything to get it.

Even worse, Palestinian attacks on Israelis end up hurting the poor almost exclusively, “those who would use public transport and shop in outdoor markets.” Thus, the power elite have no reason to want a settlement to the crisis and the poor are angry about the bombings and so become more nationalistic.

The situation on the Palestinian side is far worse. They have largely learned that violence only makes their lives harder. So Palestinian nonviolent protest—never a minor form of political involvement (not that you would know it from western press coverage)—has greatly expanded in recent years. But this puts them in a Catch-22 situation. If they engage in violence, it will make things worse and will not lead to a negotiated settlement. But if they do not engage in violence, there will be no pressure on the Israeli government to do anything and so it will not lead to a negotiated settlement.

The status quo is generally all right with the Israeli people. And so the Israeli government can stand by and allow more and more illegal settlements in Palestinian land—each one of which only makes a final settlement harder. Historically, conflicts like that between Israel and Palestine would have been resolved with a genocide. But with the eyes of the world watching, Israel can’t do that. (I’m not suggesting that Israel is especially bad here; they are the more powerful group; I don’t think the Palestinians would be any different if they were the more powerful group.) But it is hard to see the constant trickle of illegal settlements as anything but a slow motion genocide.

Given all the problems, I think a solution to this situation will take outside help. This is one of the great tragedies of the Bush Jr administration. We gave up a great opportunity to push for an end to this conflict. Instead, we invaded Iraq. So in addition to all of the bad consequences of that war, the opportunity costs were probably even worse. I see the Israel-Palestine conflict as a local infection that poisons the politics of the rest of the region. It seemed like Kerry was interested in addressing the problem. But he’s shown far more gusto for bombing Syria. I have very little hope for the future when it comes to the whole region, and this Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular.

Afterword

For the record, Al Jazeera America is excellent. Its news coverage is broader and less hysterical than any of the American outlets. And it never wastes my time with stupid coverage of things like Ariel Castro’s suicide.

Max Ehrenfreund is running the Political Animal blog this weekend. He’s a smart young man. But he is a bit wrong in his thinking about the recent Australian election that threw the Labor Party out of power and put the conservatives in power. The situation there is quite interesting. The Labor Party has been in power for 6 years and because of their policies, the economy (and much else in the country) is doing pretty well. But there has been a lot of infighting within the party and the people are sick of it. So they threw the bums out!

Where Ehrenfreund gets it wrong is in thinking this means that economics doesn’t matter as much as we have thought. He wrote:

I think what’s gone on is that the people have forgotten just how bad conservative policies are. They are taking the relatively good economy as a given and thinking that they can put the conservatives in charge and everything will be fine. And they might be right. For one thing, the conservatives in Australia are not as bad as the conservatives here in America. And even conservatives here usually take a little time to destroy the successes of liberal governments.

But let’s not forget that Australian unemployment has also been rising the last couple of years. It isn’t a large increase, but it is enough to cause the people to assume that the liberal government isn’t doing that much for them. Sure, they managed the 2009 recession well, but what have they done lately? So it makes some sense for the people to consider trying a new government. And the new prime minister Tony Abbott is not completely unappealing. He panders well to the worst instincts in people like nativism. His economic policies are the same as any conservative: he will cut taxes and regulations. And as usually, this will primarily make the rich richer. It will help the economy a bit because cutting taxes does that. But cutting environmental regulations during a recession is almost certainly counterproductive. And he wants to “cut spending and balance the budget.” So I suspect that the Australian economy will start doing even worse and soon the people will want the liberals back.

Of course, Ehrenfreund is right that the fundamental problem is that voters are not rational enough. In particular, they tend to fall for this same nonsense about cutting spending as though that’s going to make the economy better. But as the conservatives screw up the economy (and they always do), I’m sure we will see the Australian people acting very rational.

The reason I was so late getting the birthday post done today was that I decided to watch Wag the Dog. I’ve been aware of the film since it came out. How can anyone interested in politics and film not be? But I never saw it, probably because I figured that it wasn’t that good. The idea behind it is just too good: political operatives stage a war to distract from a sex scandal. But it is exactly this kind of idea that Hollywood tends to destroy. And the fact that David Mamet wrote it didn’t thrill me. Although I think he is a fine writer, he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. Then again, it was directed by Barry Levinson, who is a good comedic director. Whatever, I hadn’t seen it until tonight.

I enjoyed the first two acts. It is very funny, but only because it is so outrageous. And it really isn’t about Washington at all. It is about Hollywood. And in particular, it is an hour and a half of making fun of the power elite in Hollywood and their narcissism. At the same time, all the characters have less depth than a situation comedy teenager. Dustin Hoffman as the Hollywood producer Stanley Motss is all narcissism and literally nothing else. Robert De Niro as the political operative Conrad Brean is all business all the time. I guess we are supposed to think he is mysterious, but really he’s just empty.

The funny thing about this is that the script was originally written by Hilary Henkin, sort of your typical Hollywood screenwriting hack (that is not an insult—she makes terrible films less terrible). When Barry Levinson came in to direct the film, he asked his old pal Mamet to rewrite the script. After the film was completed, Levinson asked the production company to give sole credit for the screenplay to Mamet. Understandably, Henkin didn’t like that, so she filed a complain with the Writers Guild of America (WGA). Not only did they say credit had to be shared, they said that Henkin had to get top billing. As is always the case with the WGA, they focused on which writer nailed down the structure. Levinson, acting like he knew nothing about screenwriting, complained that the only reason that Mamet’s final screenplay was close to Henkin’s was that they were both based upon the same book.

But he also bemoaned the fact that Mamet had created the two main characters: Motss and Brean. Oh, what an accomplishment! Mamet reached into the Hollywood zeitgeist and pulled out two cliches! I can just imagine how it looks in the script:

What’s especially funny about this is that the filmmakers are making fun of Hollywood and its insular and narcissistic ways, and here is Levinson acting it out in real life.

All of this would have been fine. As I said, the first two acts work. What doesn’t work is the terrible third act. Motss storms out because he wants to tell the world of the great thing that he’s done. So Brean has him killed. There is absolutely no motivation for any of this. It’s true that Motss makes noises throughout the film that he wants to expose what he’s done. But even he must know that were he to do that, it would ruin the art that he had created.

I have what I think it a much better third act. They are so successful at selling this fake war that it gets out of hand that the president actually has to go to war. At this point, Motss freaks out. He’s fine with creating an illusion for the people, but he doesn’t want to be culpable for an actual war. So he goes to a reporter but it is someone who is connected with Brean. Then Motss is killed just like in the actual film.

But I figure they didn’t think they needed for Motss to have any reason for getting killed other than his one defining character trait: narcissism. And Brean didn’t need to have any problems killing him because he’s just an automaton in a business suit (with a beard and a coat when it is cold). As for the politics, all it has to say is that the president is sold like a product. Well, maybe they should have given screenwriting credit to Joe McGinniss, because he wrote that back in 1969.

On this day back in 1705, Rococo painter Matthaus Gunther was born. He did a lot of work; I’m not that fond of any of it, but he was definitely a great artist. The composer Francois-Andre Danican Philidor was born in 1726. Here is a bit from his opera comique version of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones:

Poet Elinor Wylie was born in 1885. The great director Elia Kazan was born in 1909. I do love his work, but I’ve come to terms with his testifying before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In the past, I didn’t know what to think about it. But I don’t forgive him for it because he never apologized for it. He was unrepentant to the end and so as a person, he was an asshole. But he directed a number of great pictures. Since I have to replace this scene in another article, here is the scene from On the Waterfront:

James Van Allen, known for his study of the magnetosphere, was born in 1914. Modern representational painter Jacob Lawrence was born in 1917. Buddy Holly was born in 1936. Here he is doing “Peggy Sue” on the TV box:

Folk singer Ronnie Gilbert is 87 today. Saxaphonist Sonny Rollins is 83. The hilarious and wonderful and beautiful Julie Kavner is 63. Here is a very funny scene from Hannah and Her Sisters:

Chrissie Hynde is 62. Here she is with The Pretenders doing “Kid” (well, it’s the music video but it is about the best thing I could find):

Actor Corbin Bernsen is 59. And great actor Toby Jones is 46.

The day, however, belongs to the great American primitivist painter Anna Mary Robertson Moses, who was born on this day in 1860. Better known as Grandma Moses, she is the best known artist of the movement for a very good reason: her Yankee charm is overwhelming as you can see in this painting Bennington:

Happy birthday Grandma Moses!

Afterword

I am more fond of her contemporary Bernard Frouchtben. In fact, I own one of his paintings through a weird twist of fate. It is unfortunately in very bad shape but I hope someday to be able to spend the thousand or so dollars it will take to restore it. I should really write an article about Frouchtben. He deserves it.

I’ve begun to think about trillion dollar platinum coins again. In particular, I’ve been wondering if President Obama is thinking about them. This is the idea that rather than raise the Debt Ceiling, the government can just mint platinum coins of arbitrary value. It is just an accounting trick, but then so is the Debt Ceiling. Basically, it is either the platinum coin (or a similar device to ignore the Debt Ceiling) or the government defaults on its debt, which will cause a crisis and hopefully that would cause the Republicans to finally raise or even repeal the Debt Ceiling.

At this point, I don’t have much confidence in the Republican Party. Too much of the party just believes that through Pure Force of Will they will be able to get what they want. By this thinking, any complaints that reaching the Debt Ceiling will be bad are just negotiating tactics of the Democratic Party. And many of those who do understand the danger think it is a good thing. One of the main issues with hitting the Debt Ceiling is that it will greatly increase the borrowing costs of the United States government. What does that matter to Republicans who want to cut spending for the sake of cutting spending? I doubt it occurs to them that doing such a thing would pretty much require raising taxes—but again, that’s where the Pure Force of Will comes in.

Yesterday, Peter Schroeder at The Hill reported, House GOP Says it Will Raise Debt Ceiling by Mid-October. That’s a deceptive title. All the article says is that Eric Cantor has sent a memo to GOP lawmakers saying that the House will vote to raise the Debt Ceiling but only if they get “fiscal reforms and pro-growth policies,” which is defined as balancing the federal budget in 10 years.

There are a few things to bear in mind about balancing the budget in 10 years. First, it is a stupid idea. There is no reason to balance the budget ever. As long as the debt level as a fraction of GDP is going down, all is well. That’s how we reduced the debt year after year until Reagan got into power. Second, cutting spending during an economic downturn like the one we are in is catastrophic. Can you say, “Bad jobs report“? Third, the Republicans are big on coming up with grand announcements about cutting the budget, but they never, never, never give specifics. When it comes to actual spending cuts, they can’t agree on anything. Here is the proposed 2013 discretionary spending:

See the problem? This takes me back to my childhood when it seemed that every politician everywhere was going to fix all of our funding problems by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse.” We still hear it today. The problem is that most government programs are really quite efficient. It turns out that “waste, fraud, and abuse” only gets you about 2% if you are lucky. Then you have to start hurting actual people—most of the time, rich people who will not only tell you but make you feel it during your next election.

So the question is whether Obama is going to do the right thing and use some loophole or technicality to avoid government default. The other option is to allow us to hit the Debt Ceiling and thus do grievous harm to the economy and also effectively destroy the Republican Party. At this point I’d love to see the Republican Party go away. As I’ve noted before, the Democratic Party really needs to be broken up into two parties: conservative and liberal. The United States is not served well by a revolutionary party. But I think that would not be sufficient consolation for the terrible effects on our economy. So I hope that Obama goes with the platinum coin. Or the Republicans may just kick the can down the road a few months again. And again. And again. But the problem with that is that they will eventually screw up. Republicans are not particularly good at governing.

The Italian Baroque composer Isabella Leonarda was born in 1620. Here is her Twelfth Sonata in D Minor for Violin:

German Baroque composer Sebastian Knupfer was born in 1633. Here is his Was Mein Gott Will, das G’Scheh Allzeit:

Jewish Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn was born in 1729. The great chemist John Dalton was born in 1766. Archaeologist Zelia Nuttall was born in 1857. Social worker Jane Addams was born in 1860. Composer Walford Davies was born in 1869. Here is his Solemn Melody:

Physicist Edward Victor Appleton was born in 1892. The great biochemist Luis Federico Leloir was born in 1906. And Christopher Nolan was born in 1965—not to be mistaken with Christopher Nolan and Chris Nolan.

Actor Jane Curtin is 66 today. Artist Ali Divandari 56. And comedian Jeff Foxworthy is 55.

But there are two other birthdays that I want to point out because I dislike them both so much. First is Carly Fiorina who is 59. I don’t dislike her simply because she got paid huge amounts of money to almost destroy Hewlett-Packard. That’s pretty typical and it is one of the reasons everyone should know that we live in a class society. People like her get paid well not because they are brilliant but simply because they are the sort of people who get paid really well. The reason I most dislike her is that I’ve seen her on political talk shows and she doesn’t know anything about business or economics. All I’ve ever heard from her is typical Very Serious statements that are simply false.

The other person is Chris Christie who is 51, the truly vile governor of New Jersey. The only reason the man wins elections is because he has the whole New Jersey rudeness thing down. So he’s great at signaling to the voters that he’s one of them. And talk about your “idiot America,” the people vote for him despite the fact that pretty much everything he stands for goes against what the people of New Jersey believe in. But in America, style matters far more than substance. I hope he goes away very soon, even though there are tons of assholes just like him.

The day, however, belongs to former Pink Floyd frontman, Roger Waters who is 70 today. I am a fan, although he seems to be a fairly terrible human being. Here he is doing “Comfortably Numb”:

Happy birthday Roger Waters!

All this week, people have been very hopeful about today’s jobs report. It was gonna be good—green shoots, turning corners, whatever handy platitude that was available. And then the jobs report came out and it was bad: the economy added only 169,000 jobs. Neil Irwin did a great job of putting this in perspective. For the last three months, the economy averaged 148,000 new jobs per month. For the last six months it is 160,000 jobs. For the last year it is 184,000 jobs. In other words, far from our economy taking off, it is stalling out. Similarly, the employment to population ratio is exactly the same today as it was six months ago. Go team!

But what should we do about this terrible situation? I say we all go out and play Frisbee! Look: playing Frisbee won’t help the economy at all, but it is fun. What all the economic reporters are calling for is more Quantitative Easing (QE), which also won’t help, but isn’t fun at all. QE is the process by which the Federal Reserve buys financial assets from private businesses. It is the weakest of tea. In general, I’ve been for it because it isn’t hurting anything and it perhaps helps around the edges. But for the last several months, Bernanke and company have been talking about reversing course because of the supposed economic recovery.

We didn’t need this bad jobs report to know that this was nonsense. For one thing, as minor a thing as QE is, when the Fed talked about stopping it, the markets flipped out. They saw it as an indication that the Fed was going to tighten up the money supply and start raising interest rates. So bond rates went up. From my perspective, the Fed can do very little in the current situation to make things better. But it has almost unlimited power to harm the economy.

Everyone writing about the jobs report this morning is pointing out that it should prove to the Fed that it needs to reverse course on reversing course on QE. Okay, fine. But that’s not the source of our economic woes. This year, we’ve had two changes in federal government policies that are doing great harm to the economy. The first was the Fiscal Cliff deal that raised taxes. That took money away from people who would spend at least part of it and gave it to the government. That would have been fine if the government spent the money. But it didn’t! It just sat on it in the name of lowering the budget deficit. So that’s money that could have gone to employing people that isn’t. The second was even more important: the Sequester. That took money that the government was spending and again just sat on it in the name of lowering the budget deficit. That’s lots more money that could have gone to employing people that isn’t.[1]

The problem we have now is that the Federal Reserve can do very little about our poor economy. What we need is fiscal stimulus. Last week, Paul Krugman wrote about what it would mean to our national debt to have gotten us back to full employment. It would have meant raising our current debt by 4 percentage points. That’s what we needed to do and that is what we still need to do. But most economic observers have become so disillusioned that they don’t even talk about us doing something that would work because it is politically impossible (at least right now). So instead, they focus on extremely marginal Federal Reserve policy.

Anyone up for a nice bit of Frisbee?

[1] In a good economy, this policy would be fine. The money the government sat on would be loaned out to businesses that would invest it. But now there is way more money than people want to borrow. So the money just sits around doing nothing and millions of people are forced to do the same.