What would the world be like without Israel? That’s what this article from Foreign Policy considers:
Imagine that Israel never existed. Would the economic malaise and political repression that drive angry young men to become suicide bombers vanish? Would the Palestinians have an independent state? Would the United States, freed of its burdensome ally, suddenly find itself beloved throughout the Muslim world? Wishful thinking. Far from creating tensions, Israel actually contains more antagonisms than it causes.
Well worth a read.
I think there are some other similar questions that are worth considering:
What if the United States wasn’t giving military aid to Israel?
My own belief is that U. S. military aid reduces the likelihood of armed conflict between Israel and its neighbors and, consequently, the number of dead Israelis and Arabs.
What if Israel had no nuclear weapons?
My own belief is that, once again, Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons reduces the likelihood of armed conflict between Israel and its neighbors and, consequently, the number of dead Israelis and Arab. Another interesting question arising from this is would Israel’s neighbors stop seeking nuclear weapons if Israel did not have them? Really?
Let me tell you some of the reasons that I love the neighborhood I live in in Chicago. My neighborhood is a residential neighborhood with an amazingly convenient location. We’re 20 minutes from O’Hare, twenty minutes from the Loop, twenty minutes from suburban shopping malls, I’m in easy walking distance of a bank, a drug store, and restaurants. Soon I’ll be in walking distance of a Whole Foods store.
My neighborhood is what’s referred to in Chicago as a “high-clout” sort of neighborhood. Some of my neighbors are police officers, firefighters, heads of city departments, and siblings of Mayor Daley. We get good city services here. Our streets are always plowed when it snows.
But the most important reason I love my neighborhood is my fantastic neighbors. This is a place where the people really care about one another.
I woke this morning to nine inches of snow on the ground. After walking the dogs I began digging us out. While I was sculpting a path out the door and through our sidewalks Dennis across the street had gotten out his snowblower and had plowed the entire block. Why? Well, he likes using his new snowblower, he’s proud of his neighborhood and wants to see it looking tidy and neat, but, mostly, it was just a darned nice thing to do.
Those are our neighbors Ginny and Elizabeth in the picture up there. They’re digging somebody’s car out of the snow. Who’s car? Well, it might be one of theirs or it might be somebody else’s. It’s just a nice thing to do.
A bill that would create a commission to study whether the city should secede from New York state will get another hearing soon — after sitting in the City Council for nearly two years
The bill was introduced on Feb. 26, 2003. A hearing was held shortly after, but no action has been taken on the bill since then.
“I expected delays and opposition when we got to the state level, but I never thought it would be held up for two years trying to get out of a City Council committee,” said Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens), who introduced the bill.
But Councilman Bill Perkins (D-Manhattan) — the chair of the Government Operations committee, where the bill has been held up since May 2003 — told The Post that he plans to hold another hearing on the bill “sometime this year.”
After a disappointing “State of the State” speech two weeks ago, Vallone said this was the perfect time to look at whether the city should secede.
“Ten years of long political speeches and empty promising while New York City residents pay for his mistakes, Gov. Pataki is slapping us on the back with one hand while lifting our wallets with the other,” Vallone said. “We cannot raise taxes any more, nor can we make any further cuts. This may be our only viable option.”
There are two little things standing in the way of the mighty city council of New York—namely, the New York legislature and the U. S. Congress. Turning our eye to the United States Constitution, Article IV, Section 3:
Section 3. New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.
And as far as seceding and forming their own country goes, I seem to remember that a pretty bloody war was fought here on that very subject. How did that turn out, anyway? Why are they wasting their time on this foolishness?
Virginia Mayo has died. She was a vaudevillean and a Goldwyn Girl and is probably best known for the five pictures she co-starred in with Danny Kaye including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Kid from Brooklyn, and Wonder Man. But her best roles were tough broads: Cagney’s girl friend in White Heat and Dana Andrews’s unfaithful wife in the unforgettable The Best Years of Our Lives. My sources—people who went to high school with her—tell me that wasn’t too far from the mark.
Virginia Mayo (originally Virginia Jones) was a St. Louisan. She went to Sumner (or was it Cleveland?—I’ll have to ask) High School (unlike my parents who both went to Roosevelt) and appeared at the St. Louis Muni Opera. Back in those days the Muni was a place for people trying to break into show business. Both Cary Grant and Agnes Moorehead appeared at the Muni before their big breaks.
CORRECTION: My mother, the ultimate authority on all things St. Louis, tells me that Virginia Mayo went to Soldan High School.
This week’s Carnival of the Recipes, recipes from some of the best cooks in the blogosphere, is available. This week it’s being hosted by Caltechgirl of Not Exactly Rocket Science. She’s using a cute abecedaria-style format. There are several recipes I’m very curious about especially a bread pudding recipe. I just love bread pudding.
Last weekend the temperatures were hovering around 0F. The perfect kind of weather for soup. I know they say that milk is the perfect food but for my money soup has a pretty good claim to the title. It’s warming and filling and gives you a real feeling of well-being.
So for our Sunday evening meal I made cioppino (cho-PEE-no)—Italian fish soup. Not only is it a great soup but it’s soup with a little bit of sunshine. And this is a recipe with a story. I’ve made cioppino by more-or-less this recipe for more than twenty-five years and sometimes for a hundred or more people. A dear friend told me that a few years back she ordered cioppino at a local (to her) restaurant. When she’d tasted it she said “a friend of mine makes better cioppino than this”. She ended up giving the cook the recipe I’d given her some years before. And they started making cioppino according to my recipe. So, somewhere in the wilds of Manhattan Beach, there’s a restaurant that’s making my cioppino.
Cioppino
Serves four
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
1 medium leek, cleaned thoroughly and chopped (white part only)
3 Tbsp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled, crushed, and minced (optional)
1 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes
½ tsp. fennel seeds
1 tsp. dried marjoram
Pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)
1 bay leaf
4 cups fish stock, clam juice, or a combination
½ lb. bay scallops
½ lb. medium shrimp, shells removed and deveined
Salt and pepper to taste
Saute the onion and leek in the olive oil over medium heat in a non-reactive soup pot until the onion is transparent.
Add the optional garlic and saute for 1 minute.
Add the tomatoes, fennel, marjoram, the optional cayenne pepper, bay leaf, fish stock or clam juice, salt, and pepper and stir thoroughly.
Simmer the soup for a half hour partially covered. If it gets too thick, add more stock or clam juice.
Ten minutes before serving add the scallops and shrimp. Stir it in and cook ten minutes.
Serve this soup with some good Italian bread and a little dry red wine. Anything is better with a little dry red wine.
This soup is fantastic when you make it for a crowd. When you make it for a large number of people, just increase the ingredients proportionally. A combination of sea food is best, the more the merrier. The ideal combination is a mixture of flaky fish like turbot for texture, firm fish like monkfish for heartiness, and shellfish like shrimp, scallops, or mussels. Use 1/4 lb. of seafood per person. Do not use fatty fish like salmon, tuna, or mackerel.
While medical reimbursement declines, dentistry is booming. Which makes doctors the poor relations of dentists.
I’ve got quite a few dentists who are clients. In my
professional capacity I have found them personable,
respectful, grateful for services rendered, not technology-averse,
and extremely hard-working in improving their businesses
as businesses. For dentists the greatest business
challenge is finding and retaining good staff.
I’ve had medical doctors as clients, too. They’ve been
smart, peremptory, technology-averse, knew more than
I did about my own specialty (or gave that impression at any
rate), jealous of their prerogatives, and slow to pay. I’m
not sure what the greatest business challenge for medical
doctors is today. It may be reimbursement.
That having been said I think that there are other reasons
for the change in fortunes of dentists.
First, dentists don’t seem to be quite as beholden to insurance
companies as medical doctors are. Quite a few of my dentist
clients don’t accept insurance at all. And government doesn’t seem quite as involved, either. It may be that entrepeneurialism is a more successful strategy than rent-seeking.
Second, dentistry is structured quite a bit differently than medicine.
The really successful dentists of my acquaintance are not just
billing their own time but have quite a team of hygienists, etc. whose
time they’re billing.
Have I mentioned that most dentists’ offices (scores) I’ve been in are cleaner
than the doctors’ offices (also scores) I’ve been in?
The pomp and circumstance of the inauguration and the festivities surrounding the inauguration don’t interest me very much and I won’t be following them, analyzing them, or writing about them. But there are a couple of points I do want to make.
The ritual of the inauguration doesn’t seem particularly important to me. But the fact of the inauguration is enormously important.
The election of George Washington and both of his inaugurations were important. But they weren’t of critical importance. It was Washington’s voluntary leaving of power and John Adams’s inauguration in 1797 in a manner proscribed by law and according to the will of the people that was of critical, earthshaking, world-changing importance. And every inauguration that has followed it including this one commemorates that momentous event.
That kind of peaceful transfer of power in a manner proscribed by law and according to the will of the people remains all too rare in the world today. Everywhere it exists there is peace and, in varying degrees, prosperity. That’s something worth contemplating.
I do have one final thing to say about the inauguration celebration. Cancelling the inauguration festivities would take money from the hands of cooks, waiters, chauffeurs, custodians, florists, delivery people and hundreds or thousands of plain working people who need that money to support their families. Unlike the thousands of other government doings this affair doesn’t put money in the hands of a standing bureaucracy who should be ashamed of themselves and go out and get honest jobs, it puts money directly into the hand of a lot of actual workers.
So, sure, there’s a war on. Sure, there was a horrible disaster in the Indian Ocean. Let’s abolish the NEA or the Department of Labor or the Department of Commerce or any of the thousands of welfare programs for corporations and the middle class. But leave the inauguration alone. It employs a lot of poor working stiffs and pumps money into a segment of the local economy in DC that really needs it.
Let me tell you some of the reasons that I love the neighborhood I live in in Chicago. My neighborhood is a residential neighborhood with an amazingly convenient location. We’re 20 minutes from O’Hare, twenty minutes from the Loop, twenty minutes from suburban shopping malls, I’m in easy walking distance of a bank, a drug store, and restaurants. Soon I’ll be in walking distance of a Whole Foods store. 
