The War Against Christians

Ayan Hirsi Ali, writing in Newsweek:

[A] fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.

A Tory For Obama, Again

Andrew Sullivan makes the case for Barack Obama's re-election. Since the election's likely to be (or had better be) decided on the basis of which candidate has the better chance of boosting GNP growth and getting Americans back to work, here's Sullivan's argument on the economy:

When Obama took office, the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. This was the most serious downturn since the 1930s, there was a real chance of a systemic collapse of the entire global financial system, and unemployment and debt—lagging indicators—were about to soar even further. No fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the next 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment. Economies take time to shift course.

But Obama did several things at once: he continued the bank bailout begun by George W. Bush, he initiated a bailout of the auto industry, and he worked to pass a huge stimulus package of $787 billion.

All these decisions deserve scrutiny. And in retrospect, they were far more successful than anyone has yet fully given Obama the credit for. The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then, the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. That’s not enough, but it’s far better than what Romney would have you believe, and more than the net jobs created under the entire Bush administration. In 2011 alone, 1.9 million private-sector jobs were created, while a net 280,000 government jobs were lost. Overall government employment has declined 2.6 percent over the past 3 years. (That compares with a drop of 2.2 percent during the early years of the Reagan administration.) To listen to current Republican rhetoric about Obama’s big-government socialist ways, you would imagine that the reverse was true. It isn’t.

The right claims the stimulus failed because it didn’t bring unemployment down to 8 percent in its first year, as predicted by Obama’s transition economic team. Instead, it peaked at 10.2 percent. But the 8 percent prediction was made before Obama took office and was wrong solely because it relied on statistics that guessed the economy was only shrinking by around 4 percent, not 9. Remove that statistical miscalculation (made by government and private-sector economists alike) and the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do. It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression.

New Blood Instead Of Weak Tea

Andrew Romano at "Newsweek" believes the GOP will be read for a candidate like New Jersey's moderate Gov. Chris Christie not in 2012 but in 2016:

[H]e will be approaching the end of his second term. Obama will be on his way out. Joe Biden will be too old to succeed him. And the Republican Party will be even more desperate for new blood than it is now.

Check back in. Chances are Christie will feel a little readier then.

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"Bibi's Not Nixon"

Says R.M. Schneiderman.

In Sickness And In Health? Well, Sometimes

A "Newsweek" article makes discouraging reading. A new study, seconded by doctors' experience, shows that when a man gets a disease such as cancer or MS, his wife tends to slip naturally into the role of caregiver:

But husbands were more likely to take off, even if that meant the wife suffered more. And the study found that the medical consequences were considerable. Abandoned spouses, the researchers found, were more likely to be depressed and less likely to complete prescribed treatment or enroll in new therapies. They also spent more time in the hospital and were less likely to enroll in hospice care, probably because that's a service that generally takes place at home, Chamberlain says.

One answer, according to experts, is for doctors and other medical professionals to make sure couples get early access to counseling and other forms of support.

Biden's Not Hidin'

Major "Newsweek" puff piece for the VP.

Settlementary

Having heard about the Israeli settlements on the West Bank, some of us St. John's pilgrims imagined improvised communities of prefab houses or even trailers. They're actually highly engineered, self-contained, well-fortified towns and villages. The third largest, with a population of over 30,000, is shown here, behind Pilgrim Monica. Some demographic insights from the current "Newsweek":

The number of Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories has more than doubled since 1993, but the numbers are misleading. The fastest-growing cohort—nearly one third—are the ultra-Orthodox, who tend to be far less hawkish than the ultranationalists removed from Gaza in 2005. Another third are "economic settlers," who moved to the West Bank for the cheap rents and short commutes to Jerusalem. Many could probably be persuaded to leave with the right financial incentives. And for all the talk of "natural growth," only 9,602 babies were born to settlers in 2007, while 17,007 newcomers moved in, according to Peace Now. Raising barriers to further immigration could have a big impact.

"Sarah, You're No Nixon": Fineman

Months ago I outlined how Gov. Palin might become the new Nixon. It's not happening, writes Howard Fineman at "Newsweek," though he leaves a candle lit on the way out by saying that she should listen to Roger Ailes. My suggestion would be Ray Price.

Altering History

In a new collection of his writings, Jonathan Alter of "Newsweek" reprints his April 1994 obit of President Nixon and writes in a blurb that some had accused him of spitting on RN's grave. He adds that the director of the Nixon Library, "the friend I tapped to bring Nixon to 'Newsweek' in 1988," had never spoken to him again. Excuse me if I didn't get the quote exactly right. I didn't buy the book. That library director, now former, is I. And I'm confounded.

First of all, I wouldn't say Alter and I were friends. We went to the same prep school, but he's three years younger, so our paths barely if ever crossed. When I was working for President Nixon in New York City in the 1980s, we talked a few times, though my recollection is that it was always in connection with his duties at the magazine. We had lunch once, too.

In 1986, President Nixon ran into Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham at a publisher's conclave in San Francisco, after which, it's widely understood, she, not Alter, tapped the former President for the famous "He's Back" cover for "Newsweek." Alter wrote the article. I don't remember reading his 1994 obit. I didn't read it tonight, either, when I spotted the book at Border's. I would have, but the subplot about moi was far too distracting.

As for my never talking to Alter again, I don't know why I necessarily would have, since we didn't have a social relationship. In any event, Alter's statement in his book is false. We definitely did speak after his obit, and there were thousands of witnesses. A year or two after RN's death, we debated one another on a cable TV show. I expected the conversation to be reasonably friendly, since we did know each other, but Jonathan had a better understanding than I of the emerging etiquette of cable news channels. He ripped into Nixon and taunted me personally for defending him. If Alter means I hadn't talked to him since that episode, he's right. Actually, I've always assumed that he wouldn't have wanted to talk to me.

Obama Is The New Spock

Steve Daly in "Newsweek":

It's the Spock plot strands that give the new "Trek" its best shot at once again commanding the zeitgeist. Spock's cool, analytical nature feels more fascinating and topical than ever now that we've put a sort of Vulcan in the White House. All through the election campaign, columnists compared President Obama's unflappably logical demeanor and prominent ears with Mr. Spock's. But as Spock's complicated racial backstory is spun out in detail in the new "Trek"—right back into childhood—the Obama parallels keep deepening. Like Obama, Spock is the product of a mixed marriage (actually, an interstellar mixed marriage), and he suffers blunt manifestations of prejudice as a result. As played by Zachary Quinto, the young Spock loves his human mother, but longs to assimilate completely into his Vulcan father Sarek's ways, eschewing messy emotions the way all Vulcans do. Young Spock is constantly being told by Vulcans and humans alike that he's either seething with inappropriate emotions—indeed, he takes Kirk by the throat at one point—or that he's not emotional enough and shouldn't be so repressed. Obama may or may not be a fan—the White House says he isn't, but Trekkies have claimed him as one of their breed ever since he said, "I grew up on 'Star Trek'—I believe in the final frontier," at a campaign stop last year. If he does check out the new movie, I can imagine he might feel a special empathy for Spock's position, given the chattering class's insistence that he needs to show more emotion, too.

Having Your Coal And Burning It, Too

The article's in "Newsweek." It says that our nation's energy crisis is artificially induced, that the government has chosen to cut off sources of supply that could keep prices low while reducing our dependence on foreign suppliers. It opposes cap and trade. It strikes this Nixonian note:

What America needs is a rational energy policy that utilizes all our homegrown energy resources while protecting the environment.

The author is Newt Gingrich. Go here if you're interested.

How Reporters Could Do Better

"Newsweek"'s Jonathan Darman visits Orange County, California, buys a copy of the Register, does a Google or two about the demographic and political changes that everyone in the world knows about, conducts one interview (at least, one that he produces a quote from), and writes, "Something is not right in Orange County, though at first it's hard to see." Among the findings of this relentless, sidewalk-pounding investigator:

On its front page, The Orange County Register announces a new arrival, John Yoo, distinguished visiting professor at Chapman University's School of Law. In blue enclaves, Yoo is reviled for his advocacy of torture during his time in the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel. At Berkeley, where he previously taught law, he clashed with "hippies, protesters and left-wing activists," he says. Orange County is different. Yoo loves the lifestyle, a "total change of pace."

But the Register itself, the nation's premier clearinghouse for Western conservative thinking, is losing money and readers.

Call the non sequitur busters! Irrespective of the kind of thinking that "Newsweek" and its parent, the Washington Post, are clearinghouses for, they're losing money and readers, too.

None Of Us Likes Being Dropped Or Poked

In "Taken," a riveting thriller with poor values, a daughter tells her ex-spy father to stop worrying. "You might as well tell water not to be wet," he says. I can relate. Except for a couple of years after my ordination as a priest, I usually wake up worried. This fascinating "Newsweek" article is about good stress (which helps make us creative) and bad stress (which can make us ill).

Here's one way I make the distinction. Sometimes a person is on my mind as I awaken -- someone who needs a phone call or whom I realize I haven't seen for a while. These impulses, signs from God or the subconscious or both, are actionable intelligence. Other times, I experience the worry without knowing what I'm worrying about, like a torpedo that hasn't found a target. That's the stress I could do without and that is the focus of my spiritual discipline.

In "Newsweek," reporter Mary Carmichael tells this story about the father of modern stress research, Hans Seyle, and his work in the 1930s:

Selye had virtually no lab technique, and, as it turned out, that was fortunate. As a young researcher, he set out to study what happened when he injected rats with endocrine extracts. He was a klutz, dropping his animals and chasing them around the lab with a broom. Almost all his rats—even the ones he shot up with presumably harmless saline—developed ulcers, overgrown adrenal glands and immune dysfunction. To his credit, Selye didn't regard this finding as evidence he had failed.Instead, he decided he was onto something.

Selye's rats weren't responding to the chemicals he was injecting. They were responding to his clumsiness with the needle. They didn't like being dropped and poked and bothered. He was stressing them out. Selye called the rats' condition "general adaptation syndrome," a telling term that reflected the reason the stress response had evolved in the first place: in life-or-death situations, it was helpful.

Disaster Averted?

In a "Newsweek" article about the former CIA chief who now runs intelligence for the NYPD, a glimpse of how dangerous the city remains:

In 2003, two alleged Iranian agents caught photographing the No. 7 subway line beneath the East River were surprised to find themselves confronted by a cop who spoke fluent Persian. They quickly left the country. In 2003, a young undercover officer born in Bangladesh penetrated a small group of angry young immigrants, two of whom had started plotting to blow up targets in Staten Island and the subway station at Herald Square.

If The President Does It, That Mean's It's Legal

Mark Hosenball in "Newsweek":

In a closed-door appearance before the Senate intelligence committee, White House counsel Gregory Craig was asked whether the president was required by law to follow executive orders. According to people familiar with his remarks, who asked for anonymity when discussing a private meeting, Craig answered that the administration did not believe he was. The implication: in a national-security crisis, Obama could deviate from his own rules. A White House official said that Craig's remarks were being "mischaracterized."

Some Capitol Hill sources and intel officials said Craig's private remarks constituted a big loophole in new guidelines, one that would allow Obama to behave much like President Bush. "I don't think there's a really big change, sub rosa," said one veteran undercover spy. Intel sources cautioned that Craig's declaration does not mean Obama plans to issue secret orders that would contradict his public anti-torture stance. (During his confirmation hearing, Dennis Blair, Obama's new intel czar, said emphatically that there would be no torture "on my watch.") What it probably means in practice, the spy said, is that Obama could, in a dire emergency, issue a secret presidential "finding" instructing the CIA or another agency to overstep boundaries of public policy.