One of the oddities of Israeli politics is that Avigdor Lieberman’s far-right anti-Arab Yisrael Beitenu party is also a staunch upholder of secularism, since its primary source of support is immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who tend to be secular and many of whom like eating pork. And soon before the last election, the ultra-orthodox Shas party stepped up its anti-pork rhetoric. This, according to Jeffrey Yoskowitz, likely helped drive some secular voters away from Likud and toward Lieberman, in order to save their pork:

In lambasting the sausages and pork chops of Russian culture right before the election, Yosef aroused widespread fear among the Russian population of what Shas would do if it won enough votes to enter a governing coalition. “I wasn’t going to vote this year but now my husband says we have to vote for [Lieberman], otherwise [Shas] will shut us down,” Haaretz quoted one Russian shop-owner as saying. “It’s true we don’t sell pork here, but I’m from Russia and that might be enough [to close us.]” Lieberman himself credited Yosef for his bump in support, saying that of all the forces working in his favor, “No doubt, the rabbi deserves first prize.”

Netanyahu was also damaged by the rising Russian tide against Shas. His Likud party had turned to religious parties such as Shas and Agudat Israel to build coalitions in the past, which has facilitated their attempts to ban pork, make selling leavened bread on Passover illegal, and perpetuate many policies that singularly serve the interests of the ultra-Orthodox community. Therefore, while many Russian voters cared about Netanyahu’s security position, Lieberman’s core platform promised both the security of their borders as well as their culture–meats, cheeses, and all. It is not surprising, then, that Lieberman’s gains in support coincided in a drop in support for Likud–which, according to the last published poll before the election (released the day before Yosef’s speech), was slated to win a slim lead over the Kadima party.

He also observes that Israel’s pork community is quite embattled:

Escalating tensions have led to clashes between Russian immigrants and their religious neighbors in a number of cities across the country. In August 2007, for example, a Russian-owned deli was attacked in the northern beach town of Netanya–an occurrence that had become so commonplace that is was a theme canonized in the 2005 Israeli film, The Schwartz Dynasty. A month later, a similar non-kosher shop in Tzfat was attacked, just 24 hours after the Jewish Day of Atonement. The owner of a pork processing factory in Haifa, Dadi Marom, complained to me that every Friday afternoon his weekly sausage and beer tasting is interrupted by ultra-Orthodox protests.

In the United States, of course, Jews are a small numerical minority and the observant and un-observant alike tend to appreciate the dangers of intolerance and the virtues of a state that doesn’t seek to enforce religious taboos.

I’m of the view that the housing plan element of the administration’s three-legged stool (housing/fiscal expansion/banking reform) is pretty clearly the least important. But still, better to do it well than to do it poorly. And Clive Crook makes the case that they’re doing it well.

In March of 1933, the United States of America emerged from its nightmarish flirtation with the ludicrous concept of being governed by a President whose former job was Secretary of Commerce, and returned to the honest and decent practice of picking a relatively inexperienced governor. And along with Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal came a new Commerce Secretary, Daniel Calhoun Roper of South Carolina, one of the white supremacists who made mid-century Democratic Party politics so charming. Roper’s father was a leader of the so-called Scotch Boys (they came from Scotland County, SC) during the Civil War. Roper himself was born shortly after the war’s end, in 1867, and graduated from Duke in 1888.

In 1892 he got himself elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives. Then in 1893, he went to work on the staff of the US Senate’s Interstate Commerce Committee. Starting in 1900, he spent ten years working for the Census Bureau and then joined the House Ways and Means Committee staff. Woodrow Wilson made him first assistant postmaster general, which was an important patronage position at the time, and he served as chairman of Wilson’s reelection campaign. He then became chairman of the 1917 US Tariff Commission, which sounds dull but at the time it was a quite important economic policy position as lowering trade barriers was a major Democratic Party priority. His service in the Wilson administration ended with a stint heading up the IRS from 1917-1920. Then it was into the wilderness for Roper until the Democrats came roaring back with FDR.

In the early New Deal years, Roper was sort of FDR’s envoy to the business community. He set up an outfit called the Business Advisory Council composed of pro-New Deal executives. The National Recovery Administration cartelization policies really were pretty favorable to the interests of big business, but there were tensions over the administration’s pro-union inclinations, which led to the departure in 1934 of some initially supportive BAC members. Still, the BAC helped spearhead some business support for the creation of Social Security, though the majority of the business community was having none of it. He resigned from the cabinet in 1938 and became Ambassador to Canada.

Not only is the Obama administration’s decision to end Bush-era dumb budget gimmicks that made the deficit seem smaller than it really was a good idea, I also think it’s a political no-brainer. For one thing, you’ll get some points from someone for being honest. For another thing, I never really understood what the Bush Gang thought it was accomplishing with this stuff. It served to antagonize the tiny minority of people who care about long-run budget projections and impress . . . who, exactly? People, it seems, who don’t care enough about long-run budget projections to unravel the trivially obvious gimmicks they were using. But why do you care what those people think?

In a lot of ways, the Bush administration always struck me as a group of people who were just so impressed with their own shamelessness and dishonesty that they wildly exaggerated the extent to which lying about stuff is a useful governing tool. They loved the game, they loved the gamesmanship, they held the public in contempt, experts in more contempt, and the press in even more contempt, and so they just went and did it.

Three weeks ago, Darrel Thompson, a senior adviser to Harry Reid, was dispatched to serve as Chief of Staff to Senator Roland Burris to help him put a team together and manage his office. Now Thompson is quitting as Democrats everywhere once again hop off the Burris bandwagon now that it’s come out that he hasn’t been playing it straight about his dealings with former governor Blagojevic. And now Illinois Governor Quinn is calling for a speedy special election process to get the state a senator untainted by this whole mess. That sounds like a very good idea to me.