(no subject)

Special Relationships: Obama and Israel

I'm not doing politics this year, but I found this opinion piece intriguing, partly because I've just been reading about Ancient Egyptian politics. (Oh, I am going to write such a massive NK bronzepunk saga. You watch me.) Ancient history is of course all about who conquered whom. That can look like a mere shopping list of greedy, violent robberies, but it has to be conceded that once you've got everyone working together, the resulting stability is a godsend. (OTOH the Nubians are an incorrigibly cheeky lot, always causing trouble and having to be Subdued. If nothing else this gives each new pharoah something to do.) The article talks not just about Obama's strong Jewish connections, of which I knew nowt, but also the divisions within Israel and within Palestine that scupper efforts to sort things out. Oh! Cf that editorial in Mojo: "When one side's goal is to stonewall and destroy rather than discuss and engage, we get paralysis — it takes two to tango, but only one to stonewall." Even Ramesses and the Hittites managed to hammer out a face-saving agreement.

ETA: The Coffee Party USA

Demographic victories

While I'm not doing politics, here's a book review lending insight into the changing status of women in the US, and especially the role of powerful conservative women ("One sign of our cultural memory disorder is that you can describe a female governor of a state as 'traditional' and not get laughed at.") My favourite bit:

"When Gloria Steinem wrote... that 'Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton,' [Leslie] Sanchez was outraged. She tells us, 'As I read that, it means, "you can run, Sarah Palin, but you won't get my support because you don't believe in all the same things I believe in."' More precisely, Palin believes in almost none of the things that Steinem believes in. But for people like Sanchez — for people who are concerned chiefly with demographic victories — that’s a trivial point."