People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.

— Dan Quayle

Is Bobby Jindal the next Barack Obama?

No less an aspiring kingmaker than Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist of McCain’s failed presidential bid, sees Jindal as the Republican Party’s destiny. “The question is not whether he’ll be president, but when he’ll be president, because he will be elected someday.” The anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist believes, too, that Jindal is a certainty to occupy the White House, and conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh has described him as “the next Ronald Reagan.”

Jindal is, above all else, a political meteor, sharing Obama’s precocious skills for reaching the firmament in a hurry. It was just four years ago, after losing a gubernatorial election, that he won election to Congress, and only this year that he became Louisiana’s governor, the first nonwhite to hold the office since Reconstruction. And now, 10 months into his first term, the talk of a presidential bid is getting louder among his boosters.

… or the next William Jennings Bryan?

The record is still evolving, like the rest of him. But social conservatives like what they have heard about the public and private Jindal: his steadfast opposition to abortion without exceptions; his disapproval of embryonic stem cell research; his and his wife Supriya’s decision in 1997 to enter into a Louisiana covenant marriage that prohibits no-fault divorce in the state; and his decision in June to sign into law the Louisiana Science Education Act, a bill heartily supported by creationists that permits public school teachers to educate students about both the theory of “scientific design” and criticisms of Darwinian evolutionary concepts.

Former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon has a thoughtful piece in Azure Magazine: Israel and the Palestinians: A New Strategy.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German priest executed by the Nazis, once wrote, “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.” Fifteen years ago, the signing of the Oslo accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) raised hopes that Israel had boarded the “peace train.” Over the years, however, it became clear that the train was not headed for the promised destination. Nevertheless, Israel’s leadership has been pointlessly running along the corridor ever since.

The shattered hopes left in Oslo’s wake have been the subject of numerous books, articles, and opinion columns. Most attempt to identify a single cause for the collapse of the peace process, be it the Hebron massacre, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership, the lack of chemistry between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, Operation Defensive Shield, IDF roadblocks, or the expansion of the settlements, to name just a few. Such explanations naturally involve playing the blame game or—particularly in the case of many Israeli analysts—engaging in self-flagellation. The problem with these assessments is that any attempt to single out a particular point in time at which the “peace train” derailed usually betrays an unwillingness to face an uncomfortable yet undeniable fact: It was the wrong train to begin with.

If we truly seek to understand why the Oslo peace process failed, we must reevaluate the fundamental principles of the strategy employed by the architects of the agreement, one of which—arguably the most important—was the assumption that bold diplomacy is the driving force behind historical compromise between two nations. Accordingly, the logic that dominated the Oslo process was based on the idea that negotiations and agreements are a necessary prologue to the achievement of tangible change in security, economic, and social conditions. Put simply, Israeli statesmen hoped that diplomatic breakthroughs reached at the negotiating table would pave the way to ending the larger conflict. They believed that treaties, goodwill gestures, and territorial concessions would ease tensions and violence in the region, and, as a result, security and stability would return to Israel’s narrow strip of land.

This doctrine had already begun to falter before the outbreak of the Palestinian war against Israel in September 2000, but the extent to which it was in truth a monumental mistake has since become abundantly clear. Over the past eight years, the gap between the aspirations of the peace process and the dismal reality on the ground has expanded ad absurdum.

Ostentatious international summits and the celebrated declarations they produced—including the pretentious Annapolis summit in November 2007—have yielded nothing but broken promises. In the face of the Palestinian Authority’s descent into corruption and violent chaos, the “peace process” has turned out to be an empty delusion.

In light of this, Israel and the West have no choice but to revise their entire policy toward the Palestinians. This requires not merely cosmetic alterations, or still more intensive efforts to advance the old Oslo process, but an alternative strategy that will redefine our objectives and the means necessary for their realization.

In outlining such a strategy, we must learn from our bitter experience, and realize, once and for all, that even the most impressive treaties carry no weight if one of the signatories is unable—or unwilling—to fulfill its commitments. Therefore, we need to turn the Oslo approach on its head: Instead of trying to achieve historical change “from the top down,” exaggerating the importance of declarations handed down to the masses as if from the peak of a diplomatic Mount Olympus, we should adopt a new, more pragmatic policy that promotes change “from the bottom up.” Such a strategy should seek to establish stability and security first, to be followed only later—and perhaps after a great lapse of time—by peace.

Read the whole thing…

A Sky News report from Mumbai has footage from a cellphone camera showing a furious crowd beating terrorist Azam Amir Kasav (aka Ajmal Qasab) before he was arrested and taken away.

(Hat tip: Gateway Pundit.)

No, it’s still not over. The Dow index was down by nearly 700 points at the end of trading today, approaching the 8,000 line.

Just another open thread…

No surprises here, just the expected announcements: Obama announces Clinton, Gates for Cabinet.

CHICAGO – President-elect Barack Obama picked a national security team headed by former campaign rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bush administration holdover Robert Gates on Monday, and said he wants to consult with military commanders before settling on a firm timetable to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq. …

Obama named Clinton, a New York senator, as secretary of state and said Gates would remain as defense secretary, a post he has held for the past two years.

Yet another adviser that Barack Obama tossed under the bus during his campaign has been quietly reinstated: Adviser Who Insulted Clinton Has Role in Transition.

Samantha Power, the Harvard professor who was forced to resign from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign last spring after calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton “a monster,” is now advising the president-elect on transition matters relating to the State Department — which Clinton is slated to head.

Power is listed on Obama’s transition Web site as part of the team reviewing national security agencies. Her duties, according to the site, will be to “ensure that senior appointees have the information necessary to complete the confirmation process, lead their departments, and begin implementing signature policy initiatives immediately after they are sworn in.”

In short, she is part of a team that is likely to work directly with Clinton, a potentially awkward situation for the two women. Obama is expected to officially announce Clinton as his choice for secretary of state after the Thanksgiving holiday.

As we pointed out last March, this isn’t the only weird and disturbing statement Power has made; in a 2002 interview in Berkeley, she actually advocated for the US to invade Israel, in order to protect the Palestinians from “genocide.”

Zombie’s latest photo essay shows us that the election of Barack Obama won’t change the ever-loveable antics of the moonbat left, as “Iraq Veterans Against the War” stages a demonstration in San Francisco’s Union Square the day after Thanksgiving, complete with moonbats acting the part of crazed US soldiers, stalking the shopping mall and making imaginary shooting gestures: Operation First Casualty. Good grief.