Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

In the news yesterday was announced a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The deal, brokered by the US, Qatar, and Egypt, would see Israeli hostages held in Gaza returned and a number of Palestinian prisoners in Israel released in the first of three phases. The first phase would also involve Israel withdrawing its troops from most of Gaza and allowing humanitarian aid to flood in. Example news coverage: CNN.com article, 15 Jan 2025.

One might wonder while hearing this objectively good news, Why now? What took so long? This war, now in its 16th month, was instigated by Hamas's surprise October 7 attack on Israel killing 1,400 people and taking as hostages over 100 people, most of whom were civilians. One ceasefire was attempted over a year ago; it lasted less than a week. And the framework agreed to yesterday is one US negotiators in the Biden administration first proposed last May. They've been working on getting acceptance for 8 months.

So why now? Why after 16 months of grinding war and significant humanitarian crisis, and after 8 months of negotiation on the same framework? Well, first, such negotiations are never fast. The sides have got to fight it out until their positions, and future possibilities, become clear enough. Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously said, with slight paraphrasing, "War is diplomacy by other means." But still, why now? What changed recently to get the parties to shift their form of diplomacy from guns and bombs to words and handshakes? To me it's three things:

1. Hamas's military support has been significantly degraded. Destroying Hamas's own means of making war and launching terrorist attacks has a constant in the conflict since its start. Even six months ago a lot of it had been destroyed... and what was left was very well hidden. But what's really changed in the past few months is that Hamas's allies have suffered major losses. Hezbollah lost hundreds of its leaders in a carefully orchestrated, intelligence-driven attack by Israel a few months ago. You may remember that as the one with the exploding pagers. And walkie-talkies. Then last month rebels swiftly ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad, who fled to Russia. The common denominator behind all three of these— Hamas, Hezbollah, Assad— is that they've been propped up by Iran. Iran has lost significant resources and international standing as its clients have been beaten. Plus, tough international sanctions against Iran have continued to bite. The bottom line of Iran having fewer proxies and less money to throw at them is that Hamas military leaders now no longer see themselves being as capable of achieving anything, even their leaders' personal survival, through continued war.

2. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is in a stronger position domestically. It's been charged many times over the past umpteen months that one reason Israel reached a ceasefire agreement is because it doesn't want one. While that statement on its face may seem like a tautology, what it's pointing to is Netanyahu's precarious position in Israeli politics. He's been clinging onto power by a small margin and will face prosecution on corruption charges once he's no longer in power. Thus he's kept the country in a state of war, many allege, because the active war blunts his opponents' push to remove him. And he's held onto a slim governing majority that includes far-right parties that are war-mongers. With recent successes such as that exploding-pager victory over Hezbollah, and Assad's fall in Syria, Netanyahu is enjoying broader support at him. He finally has enough political margin to risk crossing his far-right coalition members.

3. The President Trump Wildcard. One thing I wondered right away when I heard news of the ceasefire agreement yesterday morning was why this thing negotiated by President Biden's envoys was coming to fruition only in the last few days of his administration. Was "Get it done before Trump comes in" a factor? Indeed, president-elect Trump claimed credit for the agreement on his Truth Social media platform even before President Biden announced it officially in a news conference. But did Trump really do anything? I'd say yes and no. No, he didn't participate in the negotiations directly. His people were involved at the very end, as part of the Biden team's commitment to a smooth handover— something, I'll note, Trump and his team absolutely did not do in January 2020— but they certainly weren't involved in the 8 months of negotiating it took to get to yesterday's agreement. And Trump's personal contribution was his fear factor. As he's signaled unconditional support for Israel throughout his campaign, called for even tougher actions against Hamas, and rejected all concerns about humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Hamas's leadership had to realize that making a deal under Biden was their last, best chance.

Update: Even as I posted this journal entry, the ceasefire deal was already getting wobbly with threatened resignations from Netanyahu's coalition and ongoing attacks.

President Joe Biden delivered the annual State of the Union address on Tuesday evening. I'm not sure I've ever watched a SOTU live before. Usually I figure I'll just read the highlights the next morning. This time I decided to stream it on my laptop computer while I was cooking and eating dinner.

Overall the president's message was upbeat. He hit three themes repeatedly: 1) We're actually doing reasonably well, all things considered. 2) But there are still clear problems we need to fix— so "Let's finish the job." And 3) For all the gnashing of teeth about a politically divided country we actually can get things done, and have gotten things done, bilaterally.

There were a few times the president slipped on his words. That's unfortunate because the right will pounce on them as indicative of some secret agenda accidentally revealed. The truth is far simpler: Joe Biden has suffered a stuttering problem since childhood. Him tripping on words occasionally is not a sign that he's stupid, uninformed, or lying. It's a condition he was born with, one that's shared by an estimated 3 million Americans.

The highlight of the speech was when Biden went "off script" to respond to hecklers. He accused Republicans of proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Many shouted "Liar!" and other things arguing that wasn't true. Biden insisted he has the receipts. I agree; I saw the proposals from a few GOP members in Congress in the news a few weeks ago, too. But rather than just leave the interruption at "No we didn't/Yes you did" Biden engaged in a bit of real-time deal making. "So we're agreeing that Social Security is off the books?" he prompted. (This was a minor word slip; the proper colloquial phrase was off the table.)

This was a great bit of extemporaneous speaking. The president took an interruption, meant by his opponents to subtract from his speech, and turned the tables to make it an added win in his column. It's doubly nice because Biden's opponents like to paint him as old, doddering, and incapable. Here Biden displayed a benefit of his age and experience.

Decades ago politicians engaged in actual debate when speaking. There's still debate today, but it's more commonly an exchange of one-sided salvos, buttressed by teleprompters and made-for-TV sets. Biden's been in politics for decades. He drew on his old-school experience to engage critics in meaningful repartee.

As a technical matter, technical in the sense of public speaking skills, Biden demonstrated a critical point about preparing for a speech. You don't memorize your speech, you internalize your speech. The difference is when you memorize it, if something interrupts you you may lose your place and stumble. You go off script and it's bad. When you internalize your speech, interruptions don't faze you so bad. You can extemporize. And if you're really good, you can flip the tables on people interrupting you and trying to play "Gotcha!"

Update: More extra-curricular activities from the SOTU: Mitt Romney rebukes George Santos for his lying ways.

President Biden on Thursday pardoned all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession. It's widely seen as a first step toward decriminalization of marijuana. Example news coverage: CNN.com article, 6 Oct 2022.

"Wow, this must affect a lot of people," I thought at first. I've been hearing from marijuana legalization advocates for decades that some 90% of all people in federal prison are there on nonviolent drug convictions. So I skimmed through news articles such as the one linked above to find how many people would be freed, and it's... zero. "Officials said there are currently no Americans serving prison time solely on federal simple marijuana possession charges," the article reports. The government estimates, though, that there are 6,500 people convicted of such crimes in the past.

So where are all these nonviolent simple drug possession offenders, this supposed 90% of all convicts, being imprisoned? They're not in state prisons. Ten years ago I asked a brother-in-law of mine who's a state prosecutor about the 90% statistic. He just laughed. "If that were true, given the short sentences that crime carries, marijuana possession would be 98% of my office's cases. It's more like zero. Maybe that 90% is the feds."

Well, the numbers from drug legalization advocates are clearly hokum. (Is anyone really surprised?) But that doesn't mean Biden's pardon is wrong. I'm in favor of correcting government drug policy to be rational and evidence based. Marijuana was miscategorized by the federal government decades ago, contrary to available facts and for openly racist reasons. Biden is working on changing that, too. He says he will instruct the HHS and Attorney General to review the facts and set new policy as appropriate. We'll see how long that takes.

President Biden today is catching a lot of heat for, basically, speaking plainly about the situation with Russia massing troops on Ukraine's border.

He made apparently two missteps in public comments. One, that he thinks it likely Russia will invade Ukraine. Two, that the US and EU will respond strongly to a "major" incursion— implying, by omission, that a minor incursion would be tolerated.

(1) is a statement that I think anybody who's paying attention to the situation would have to agree is true. Putin has been building toward this for years with actions out in the open— including, not least of all, actually invading Ukraine in 2014 and annexing Crimea, which Russia still holds. In recent months he's set up all the same conditions all over again, plus has apparently attacked Ukraine's civilian infrastructure via information warfare. Sadly this is a situation where plain talk freaks people out because only vapid happy talk, like "We're going to stop Putin," is deemed palatable.

(2) is an accurate statement of realpolitik. Again, not the vapid happy talk people have become conditioned to expect, but a sober assessment of what likely what will happen if/when (1) comes to pass. I mean, again, Russia annexing Crimea already happened 7 years ago. We've got experience to draw from, here. Western democracies deplored the military attack and enacted a bunch of sanctions, initially. In the ensuring months and years most removed those sanctions and resumed doing business with Russia whenever there was a nontrivial benefit to them in doing so. Plus, outside North America and the EU few nations if any cared enough even to impose ineffectual sanctions. People need to understand that currently there's no meaningful deterrent to Russian aggression.

The Senate on Tuesday passed a $1.1 trillion plan for investing in America's infrastructure. It contains spending for everything from the relatively obvious traditional infrastructure such as crumbling roads and bridges, aging rail and transit systems, and crowded ports and airports; to less traditionally thought-of infrastructure such as getting broadband Internet to poor people who don't have access to it today. The bill needs to be approved in the House, then will go to President Biden for signature. Example news coverage: AP News article 10 Aug 2021, CNN.com article 10 Aug 2021.

This action in the Senate is a long time coming. In the 2016 presidential campaign candidate Donald Trump promised massive investment in America's infrastructure, mirroring a promise by candidate Hillary Clinton. With both candidates, and presumably both parties, behind it it seemed like a bipartisan sure thing. During Trump's presidency, though, it became obvious that infrastructure, like so many things in Trumpworld, was simply a talking point, not an action point.

"Infrastructure Week" became a running joke during the Trump administration. Trump repeated his infrastructure promise countless times as president. "Infrastructure Week" was seemingly always next week, though, as he never showed any interest in actual policy, just 3-second sound bites and angry tweets. Moreover, Republicans in Congress, who for Trump's first two years in office controlled both the House and the Senate, never offered an infrastructure bill nor acted on proposals being made by Democrat minority members.

Now with Democrat President Biden in office and (slim) Democrat majorities in both the House and Senate, we finally get an infrastructure bill. And it's even gotten bipartisan support in the Senate. In a vote of 69-30, nineteen Republicans crossed party lines to vote for it.

Don't mistake that this is really a Republican priority, though. Republican leadership has been quite transparent that these 19 yea votes were strictly a political calculation. They voted on a bill they thought was watered down as much as possible yet just good enough for Democrats to blunt their willingness to eliminate the filibuster rule in the Senate. If the filibuster were eliminated Dems would be able to pass a much larger bill— their original proposal was over $3 trillion— with a simple majority vote. Indeed you'll note, because people like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tell you, the 19 yea votes were all from senators not facing reelection next year. Republicans know they can't sell this bill to their base, because the Republican party doesn't actually want new spending or programs, even for publicly popular infrastructure, so they have their members facing the least reelection risk take the hit now to avoid larger losses later.

Oh, and Donald Trump, who kept promising "Infrastructure Week" during his presidency? He's released almost daily press releases (no longer tweets since he's banned from Twitter) savaging this bill and the Republicans who voted in favor of it. That just shows it was never about doing anything for infrastructure, it's only ever been about getting favorable headlines in the right-wing press.

Today was Inauguration Day in the US. President Joseph Biden was sworn in as this country's 46th president. In a return to normalcy from the crazy past 4 years, the (new) president said nothing ridiculous, bigoted, false, or hopelessly self-absorbed. Several former presidents joined to honor him in the ceremony. Notable, though not surprising, in his absence was the most recent former president. "Number 45" left town this morning, slinking away like a dog with its tail between its legs.