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- Photos from The McGladrey ClassicPosted 8 hours ago
- Tiger back to hitting full shotsPosted 11 hours ago
Why a pair of golfers threw down on the course
Scanning news headlines over the past few days, you may have seen the item: "Police: Fight Over Golf Rules Sends 2 To Hospital." If you haven't read the whole story, the core...
Custom Arrival: Bettinardi Atomic Stinger DASS Prototype
From time to time, we like to spotlight some truly awesome custom...
Member Pure745′s Shootout: 2014 Driver Testing
GolfWRX Member Pure745 has become one of the most trusted names in...
GIVEAWAY: Nike VRS Covert Matte Black Edition Drivers!
You've heard of Nike Golf's #PlayInTheNow campaign? We'll we're giving you the chance...
More WRX Forum Buzzz News
R1 v. RBZ Tour, 913D3 and Anser on a Launch Monitor
Just a little video to give you a taste of the sound, first ball was a bit of pull, so I blocked the second one a touch, go figure. Okay onto the thread. Full story can be read...
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First Look: '13 Odyssey White Hot Pro and Versa Putters
GolfWRX is at the Sony Open this week and spotted a line from Odyssey called the White Hot Pro series of putters. Different versions of this in the pictures posted yesterday of the Sony Open. Rumored to...
- Posted 650 days ago
New Golf Pride grips shot at the Sony Open
Take a look at the new Golf Pride grips for 2013 that we spotted at the Sony Open. From left to right: Golf Pride's new Nilon grips — blue, yellow, red, green and white, a Limited Edition New Decade MultiCompound...
- Posted 650 days ago
Who has their Cally X-Utility Thread
by: kekoa Lets face it. the X utility has to be one of the most anticipated clubs of '12/'13. I was able to get my hands on a 21* and 24* both with Pxi 6.0 shafts. Please see the several...
- Posted 653 days ago
Rickie's 3 Wood! And WITB Video from Season Opener
I was watching this video of his WITB from golf channel this week and i noticed his 3 wood is different from the model that is being released to the public. It has a paint break and...
- Posted 653 days ago
Odyssey Versa Putters: In-hand photos, video & specs
Odyssey's Versa putters take alignment in a new direction. Rather than have golfers focusing on the target line using parallel alignment aids, Versa putters were developed to make golfers turn their attention to a black-and-white finish that...
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How and when was GolfWRX created?
By GolfWRX staffer A member in the forums asked in an open forum "How was GOLFWRX created?" His screen name is "scratchswinger" and he went on to say… I have always been interested into hearing the back...
- Posted 660 days ago
Best Pimped out sets of Irons for 2012
How many of us have sat back and watch some of GolfWRX best members pimp thier bag out with some crazy gear. I would like to see some of those sets of irons here so we can...
- Posted 665 days ago
Mickelson won't join group of Padres owners
Phil Mickelson is known as a risk taker on the golf course, but he's proving to be more conservative when it comes to business decisions off the course. Mickelson announced plans to be part of a group...
- Posted 670 days ago
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to all
photo by Robert Matre . Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of our readership, members, staff, volunteers, charter members, partners, sponsors, golfers and even especially those that are in golf rehabilitation from to much time...
- Posted 675 days ago
Coming this week… #CALLAWRX: Callaway Golf hosts GolfWRX. 7 GolfWRX members have been invited to see the ins and outs of Callaway Golf in Carlsbad. Members will be given an R&D-led presentation of the company's 2013 line of...
- Posted 678 days ago
TaylorMade Rocketbladez experience: Videos on Page 8
So we were waiting for the live thread to go up but I guess its up to me for now. The day started by landing in Ft Meyers and then having a driver bring us to Naples....
- Posted 681 days ago
Video Interview: GolfWRX Member plays in the Shark Shootout Pro-Am
GolfWRX Member Dave Decker was the grand prize winner of TaylorMade's Ultimate RocketBladez Experience. He and four other GolfWRX members were flown to Naples, Fla., where they enjoyed an all-expenses-paid four-night stay at the Ritz-Carlton, home of...
- Posted 681 days ago
Titleist 913 Drivers! D2 & D3 Models w/ headcovers
Titleist recently revealed its prototype 913 drivers out on tour. These are only in the hands of pros as of yet, and GolfWRX had an exclusive first-hand look at the new D2 and D3 models. Chris McGinley,...
- Posted 702 days ago
New Cobra AMP Cell Pro Irons — Pic Tweeted by Rickie Fowler
New Cobra AMP Cell Pro Irons – Ricky Fowler, like many tour players, loves to break on his OEM's new gear. Fowler tweeted a pic of the new Limited Edition irons that he's been testing this fall,...
- Posted 702 days ago
I figured out Hogan's secret this weekend
Posted by WRX Member: tylerdurden Click here to read all the comments and discussion in the forums about this original post That's it. People won't believe me but I'm going to say it anyway. I figured out...
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Squish n turn – Instruction & Academy – GolfWRX
Squish n turn – Instruction & Academy – GolfWRX Posted in the forums by member: Vision54 "Squish" said… Once one understands the 7th cervical as the swing center, it proves that golf is not a left or...
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2013 TaylorMade Drivers Buzz- All the chatter…
WRX Member: PingDrv00 I am quite surprised that nothing has leaked up to this point on the TaylorMade drivers for next year. I was really expecting something big after the skipping the RBZ and R11S, and playing...
- Posted 702 days ago
Lucas Glover from Nike to TaylorMade
WRX Member: practicetee Bert LaMar, the founder of Iliac golf, tweeted out today that he played a round of golf with Lucas Glover yesterday and tweeted a photo. It was interesting that in the photo Lucas was...
- Posted 702 days ago
Mickelson using an RBZ 3 wood in China
Many GolfWRXers speculated that Mickelson was playing a 3 wood of some sort with a slot on the bottom at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions in China. While the club appeared to be a black-painted TaylorMade RBZ fairway...
- Posted 718 days ago
Gold Vokeys for Rory McIlroy and 913 fitting in the UK
I was lucky enough to be selected for a 913 fitting at Titleist UK yesterday courtesy of UK's Golf Monthly magazine. Four of us were fitted by 2 guys from the European Tour fitting van, and walked...
- Posted 753 days ago
Callaway VP of Marketing talks to GolfWRX members
Harry Arnett, the EVP of Marketing for Callaway talks to members on GolfWRX.com. Changes at Callaway can be seen in products as well as how the top brass chooses to engage with their consumers. Click here to...
- Posted 754 days ago
Golf WRX or Golf works or golfworks? How do you pronounce it?
People always ask how do you pronounce the name of the site? Do you call it Golf Works or is it golf w-r-x? The answer is Golf W-R-X. That is because that is our legal name and...
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By ROBOPTI I have one now … I'm working on it … Took it to the course. BUT – This isn't a review thread – Just something interesting I ran into with the head. Click here...
- Posted 770 days ago
New Nike 20XI, 20XI-X and ONE RZN Ball Spotted!!!
New balls. Larger RZN core. I can tell you the 20XI feels slightly firmer than the 20XI-S. Played 9 holes with it tonight. haven't hit the X yet. Also, hit the One RZN, a 3-piece surlyn ball....
- Posted 775 days ago
Callaway Utility prototype is coming to retail
…just talked to a sales rep at Callaway pre-owned and he said that Chip was in town last week and confirmed that the X prototype utility is coming to retail in the next few months. Click here...
- Posted 776 days ago
New Odyssey PT Protype Black #2 in hand Pics!!!
Hot of the press. Odyssey new Protype Black. Thinner top lines and thicker faces, and the forged-milled 1025 Carbon Steel. The midnight black finish and black powder coat shafts. Click here to see more photos and read...
- Posted 782 days ago
Sean O'Hair photos of his new RBZ Version "B" Irons
Greg reported today that Sean O'Hair has had these in his bag for a while. Interestingly we didn't know there were any other players other that Camilo that played these rare prototypes. Cast from 8620 soft steel....
- Posted 783 days ago
Footjoy Shoes from the Deutsche Bank Championship
GolfWRX snapped some shots of the Footjoy shoes table that was set up for Players at the Deutsche Bank Championship this week. Click here to see more photos and read the discussion in the forums.
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Mitsubishi Rayon – New Shaft Graphics seen at the Deutsche Bank Championship
New graphics in store for Mitsubishi. What do you guys think? Click here to see more photos and read the discussion in the forums
- Posted 783 days ago
Justin Rose's TaylorMade DA-12 Ghost Forged Milled Putter with Sound Slot!
We captured these from the Deutsche Bank Championship. This has 'the works'. Real interesting to see the sound slot. Click here to see more images and read the discussion in the forums Click here to see more...
- Posted 783 days ago
Taylormade R11s V3 Driver in hand pictures
Caught today a new version from TaylorMade on the R11s Driver called V3 short for version 3. Click the link to read the scoop and see more pics… Taylormade R11s V3 in hand pictures
- Posted 783 days ago
Rickie Fowler w/ new Mitsubishi Rayon Diamana
Sorry for the poor quality photos but Rickie got to the range before we did and jetted off to the 1st tee before we could get some good shots of the shaft. We will try to get...
- Posted 790 days ago
Kevin Streelman's yardage book from Barclays @ Bethpage Black
How often do you get to look so close inside the ropes that you can see the yardage book from a PGA Tour player? Here is a close up look at Kevin Streelman's Yardage book. Page by...
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Sneak Peak: Cleveland 588 RTX Wedges and Black Classic XL Drivers
Today your good friends at GolfDiscount.com received a Cleveland catalog. Within that catalog, a few products caught our eye and we felt compelled by duty to share them with you guys. Take a gander at the Cleveland...
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New Titleist golf ball being tested on Tour
Titleist has been field testing golf balls with their staff players since about Quail Hollow. Below are a couple of photos but they are not ready to pass out any info on the ball or it's specs/playing...
- Posted 790 days ago
Ian Poulter testing the new Cobra Ferrari Driver
IJP just picked up his new Ferrari (car) this weekend in Monterrey, Ca and today he was test driving the new Cobra "Ferrari" driver. He had 5 drivers made up so he could find the one with...
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Luke Donald testing the Mizuno MP-64′s on the range at The Barclays
Luke Donald testing the Mizuno MP-64′s on the range at the Barclays. shocking to see him testing during the playoffs but also a testament to Mizuno. The new MP-64 that is a players cavity back iron. This...
- Posted 791 days ago
True Temper's Area 61: R&D and Project PXi
By Zak Kozuchowski GolfWRX Managing Editor Golf equipment companies go to lengths to manufacture the most cutting edge golf equipment designs, and they work equally as hard at marketing their products and facilities under names that describe...
- Posted 797 days ago


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It's nice when you can take what some would consider a silly and substandard television show and elevate its artistic value by taking it into the lofty realm of musical theater. As an aspiring writer of musicals myself, I was just tickled pink when I heard that Rover Dramawerks in Plano is presenting a production of the latest example of this phenomenon, Gilligan's Island: The Musical. No shit, it's really happening. And what's even more awesome is that the genius behind the original TV show, Sherwood Schwartz, co-wrote this musical bonanza, so you can rest assured that quality will just fall from the sky like a coconut conking The Skipper on the noggin. This production features a cast of talented local actors, but when this makes it to Broadway, I picture Jeff Goldblum as The Professor, Nathan Lane (obviously) as The Skipper, Jessica Simpson as Ginger, that chick from Juno as Mary Ann, Betty White as "Lovey," Robert Goulet as Thurston Howell III and, in a bold artistic choice, Robert Downey Jr. as Gilligan. Just think about it. Anyway, come take the best three-hour tour of your life at Rover Dramawerks, Thursday through June 28 (Thursdays through Saturdays) at Cox Building Playhouse, 1517 H Ave. in Plano. Tickets are $15 to $18. Visit roverdramawerks.com for info.
Thursdays-Saturdays. Starts: June 5. Continues through June 25, 2008

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Whitney Houston's "home going" ceremony has turned into a money maker for her Estate -- which very quietly struck a deal to sell the video of the funeral.
Here's how it went down ... Associated Press provided a live pool feed of the funeral to media outlets around the world (including TMZ) on Saturday -- but everyone had to pull the footage 24 hours later. Why?
A rep for the family confirms the family has now "agreed to license footage to several media outlets." The rep says the family is charging "customary fees" to ... "help maximize the estate for the benefit of Bobbi Kristina."
For the record ... TMZ is not one of the chosen ones.
Tacky tacky tacky!
She is of age so now
is a good time to learn
how to make her own way
in life. The money likely
didn't help her mother's
habit and it won't Bobbi's
either. Spoiled.
Are any/all of the well-intentioned friends of Whitney and other faded facetime seekers that sang and said their public goodbyes at the service going to get a piece of the DVD/TV Special action?
Or are they going to get suckered again by the grieving family into "donating" their releases to the "Bobbi and Family's Future Fund?" I'm embarrassed for those fools.
There you are young lady, plenty of money to fuel your addiction...
The whole family sounds F'd.
Of course they did.. anyone who thought they wouldn't are fools. Just what that kid needs. Mo money for mo drugs
more like to pay off Whitney's debt.
...and what about millions of others that lose family, how much money would they mKe selling footage of their funerals? People who struggle every day with the same addictions, bills, etc. I swear I will never get the mindset of these people.
Wouldn't the talent that performed, for free, at her funeral have to sign contracts???
I'm sure BK is going to spend all that money on a proper college education....NOT! That money will go right up her nose and will make some pushers, scammers, and leeches very,very fat and happy until it's all gone!
I fear for bobbi kris with people like this around her. Had it been my mom or sister that died- the LAST thing I'd be thinking about just a day later would be how I could score money off the funeral. Classless.
How tacky. Scratch that. How ghetto.
..I sure hope Whitney had a air tight Will and executors she could trust...who didn't see this coming? It's just the beginning of a onslaught ideas...just hope the right people are involved and not vultures..both on the family and legal side! Good Luck too that poor daughter..she will need it..hope she finds her way and achieves peace on earth..something her mother didn't have unfortunately!
these people are effing sick..idc what her estate is worth..it is what it is..you dont effing sell funeral footage for effs sake! sick ass people..course what do you expect from someone like dionne warwick and her psychic network BS money makin scam! waiting to now see all the bedding etc they didnt want bobby to get ahold of..bobbi kristina will be a broke coke head in 5 years doing porn anyways.
I call BS. The family wants to keep Bobbi Kristina around because she will be the sole heir, unless there was a will giving money to other family members. Nobody's talking about a will, so Bobbi K. is the family's meal ticket.
Typical Gimmecrats.
Hey they had R. Kelly sing at the funeral in a CHURCH!! Didn't he get arrested for urinating on a minor.
What gives all I ask is this family quit acting like they are respectful and Classy. They are just trash.


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Tuesday, October 16, 2012
5:30 - 9 a.m. Jonathon Brandmeier
7:05 a.m. Johnny B has your chance to win Dave Matthews tickets.
9 a.m. - 12 p.m. Mike McConnell
11:05 a.m. In this corner we have Mitt…In that corner we have Barack…Blowing the whistle on them both is political expert Paul Green. He'll give his commentary to Mike McConnell.
12 - 3 p.m. John Williams
1:05 p.m. John Williams welcomes John Hodgemen to the studio to talk about his new book, 'That Is All.'
3 - 7 p.m. Garry Meier
4:12 p.m. Still undecided on your Halloween costume? Garry Meier is giving away zombie makeovers at his Munster Mash broadcast! He'll give you the details.
7 - 8 p.m. WGN Sports Night with David Kaplan, Brian Noonan and Andrea Darlas
7:35 p.m. Could the NHL lockout last the entire season? Kap, Brian and Andrea discuss the scenario tonight on WGN Sports Night.
8 - 9 p.m. The Second Presidentail Debate
8 p.m. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama participate in a town hall meeting live from Hofstra University.
9:30 p.m. - 12 a.m. Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg
9:30 p.m. Milt Rosenberg and a panel of experts offer instant analysis of the presidential debate and examine which party fared better.
12:00 - 5:30 a.m. Bill Leff
12:35 a.m. A straight Christian man pretended to be gay for a year to see people's reactions and gain a better understanding of homophobia. He shares his story and experiences with Bill Leff.
Copyright © 2014, The Morning Call


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text:
Here are a few things that I've been working on for Henley:
I got to travel up and down California to shoot this whole summer lookbook. Here's what we came up with doing shoots the whole summer from San Francisco, Berkley, San Jose, and Los Angeles.
You can see the rest of the look book at http://www.vapeinfinity.com
So the last time I was in Vegas, Gerra and I met up to shoot. She took me to this dope alcohol milk shake place before we were going to shoot. I asked her to take us to the Vegas that most people haven't seen before for the location of our shoot. We went to downtown Vegas, outside of the strip. This is the shots we came up with:
Model: Gerra Bella
Location: Las Vegas


text:
Get Your Knives Sharpened By Mail
Yesterday we had our kitchen knives sharpened by a wonderful woman named Louise. She has a mobile knife sharpening business where she pulls up to your home with a trailer that contains her tiny, perfectly arranged workshop; and for an extremely reasonable price she expertly sharpens your kitchen knives, pruners, axes, reel lawn mowers, and pretty much anything else with a sharp (errr - dull) edge. Our knives are now deliciously sharp, our rusted pruning shears are in great shape, and the lawnmower has been adjusted. She even gave us two BandAids, in case of accidents with our newly sharp knives.
But Louise only serves a small local area. What if you don't have easy access to knife sharpening in your area? Well, you can always get your knives sharpened by mail - and it doesn't even cost that much.
Knife sharpening was historically a home-to-home business. An expert knife sharpener would travel a circuit between towns and stop at homes once or twice a year to sharpen the household blades. These days it's a little harder to find someone to come to your home. We usually resort to taking ours into a cookware shop, or even to a local JoAnn Fabrics on their free knife sharpening day.
The only problem is that knife sharpening is best done by a trained craftsman. Often these free knife sharpening opportunities, and even the ones in cookware shops, are done with machines. Hand sharpening is more rare. We prefer to have our blades hand sharpened by someone like Louise who is a craftsman and who pays careful attention to the unique character of each knife and tool. (She gave us a small lecture on the character of each of our blades, and tips for knowing when they need to be sharpened.)
One other option for this kind of craftsmanship is The Knife Guy's mail-in knife sharpening service. For $45 he will send you a special pre-paid postage box. You ship him up to 5 of your kitchen knives, and he'll sharpen and send them back. $45 covers the 3-way shipping and the sharpening. Repeat customers keep the box and only need to pay $35 for subsequent sharpening sessions. This price (about $5-7 per knife) is comparable to what you'd pay at other knife sharpeners.
He also promises fast turnaround times: 3-5 days total. The convenience of course is another benefit; not many places sharpen while you wait, so you often have to drop your knives off somewhere, then pick them up a couple days later. This cuts out those extra errands and brings your sharpened knives straight to your door.
We highly recommend keeping your knives sharp; dull knives are more likely to cut you, since you have to apply more pressure to chop. The knife slips more easily than a sharp, precise blade. We were so delighted to have all our blades ultra-sharp again! It makes cooking more fun. Be sure to check out the Knife Guy's reasons why even cheap, dull knives are worth sharpening.
• The Knife Guy's Mail-In Sharpening Service
And if you're in central Ohio, check out Louise Radanovich's business. Highly recommended!
Related: Knife Skills: Keeping Your Knife Sharp
(Images: The Knife Guy)
8 Comments
My parents just got their knives sharpened at a shoe repair store. $5 a piece isn't too bad
Here's a blog post I did on a mobile knife sharpener I came across a few weeks ago:
If you are in Chicago, Northwest Cutlery has a sharpening service.
I'm not sure if the little shop in North Beach in SF is still there but it was just like a stationary version of the little man that sharpened my knife with his mobile cart.
I may not be as good as a pro, but I like to sharpen my own knives. Or ask mi padre to do it for me. He's much better at it than I am.
when i was a kid my father's friend would sharpen knives for us and my dad's ax.
Or you can just learn how to sharpen your own knife and save the cash and time. I don't know about most people but I can't live without my knifes for 1 - 2 weeks. I'll admit my early attempt at sharpening wasn't pretty but I started to get the hang of it after a while. It takes me maybe 10 minutes now to get my 10" chef's knife sharp enough to shave with (which is kinda pointless because how often do you shave with your chef's knife?). Korin has a how to DVD which is nice enough http://www.korin.com/product.php?pid=193&df=knife
I like in an old Italian neighborhood in brooklyn, and every few months a guy drives his truck around ringing a bell, advertising knife sharpenign out of his truck (kind of a gourmet's ice cream truck?). I've never taken him up on it, because i've never seen anyone ELSE take him up on it, and seeing some old dude in a truck offering to sharpen knives seems kind of random to me. He could be great, or he could be awful, and my knives would be ruined. At least if i take them to a cookware shop and they get mauled i could theoretically raise hell and get my knives replaced, but by a travelling salesman....
The lady in Chelsea Market on Saturday's is great. I don't remember what I paid, but it wasn't much and the turnaround was only an hour or so (enough time to run a few errands then pick them up on the way home).
Wow. Bots are getting smarter. Pretty soon they will take over the world.


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"Old Man Cam" Vault: Jimmy & Olympics Legend Eric Heiden
by WILLY J. February 19, 2014 11:32 AM
Jim Celania
Upon graduating from college, Jim became the youngest TV sports...Read More
On this week's episode of "Old Man Cam," we dig into the Jim Celania vault to see his story on Eric Heiden during the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid.
On this day (Feb. 20th) in 1980, American former long track speed skater Heiden won all the men's speed skating races, and thus an unprecedented five individual gold medals
He set four Olympic records and one world record at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, but instead of receiving fame and notoriety, he left it all to be an average joe.
Watch his old interview at the Olympics above.


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Just got this email from Alligator Purse last night about a Theory Trunk Show today. A rep from the Theory line is coming in from New York to be at the show. Wish I would have known about it earlier, I would have stopped in. I really like Theory. Especially their dresses. I could see myself in every single one of the dresses posted on their site. They're professional enough to wear to work or at a work function, and fashionably funky enough to wear out with the girls. Hopefully you can stop in to Alligator Purse today to see the show. Perfect day for a glass of wine on Teller's rooftop patio and a stroll in Hyde Park, too! Ah, the life I'd live if I didn't have to work…
PS: They sponsored our Bras with Flair on the Square fashion show last year. Click here for all the fab fashions they had in the show. I loved them all!
Posted in: Cheap Chic, Fashion
Tags: Alligator Purse


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Effortless style awaits you.
We've all seen another friend, colleague or stranger walk down the street looking beautifully put together with just a few simple pieces and all the right accessories. She's confident, comfortable and looks like effortlessly chic.
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This is a tumblelog, kinda like a blog but with short-form, mixed-media posts with stuff I like. Scroll down a bit to start reading, or a bit more to read more about me.
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Best Movie Ever!
Do Right And Kill Everything


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Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) serves up an involving and alarming analysis of America's crumbling education system and its 'drop-out factory' schools.
A persuasive blend of real-life stories and dinky animated statistics pins the blame on obstructive teachers' unions as the bogeyman.
But though acute about the problem, the film is over-reliant on one proposed remedy – charter schools – whose 'good teachers make good schools' shtick runs through the worthy extras like lettering through rock.
Not so much An Inconvenient Truth as A Self Evident Truth.
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What Comes After The Turkish Protests
June 5, 2013 § 15 Comments
Events in Turkey are still taking their course and so it is obviously premature to write any type of postscript, but I thought it might be useful to try and look ahead and game out some of the longer term consequences of the protests. First though, it is important to dispense with two quick points that I have seen floating around in various places. First, the Turkish government unquestionably displays some authoritarian tendencies and even more unquestionably has a distinct illiberal and majoritarian bent, and the excessive use of teargas on peaceful protestors is nothing short of shameful. Turkey is not, however, a fascist state and neither is it a dictatorship, and throwing those charges around in a vociferous manner won't make them any less inaccurate. Second, Prime Minister Erdoğan is not going to resign, no matter what some stunningly ignorant folks might speculate. The AKP was elected with 50% of the vote in the last election, which was more than double than the share received by the second place CHP, and Erdoğan does not have any serious challengers in the party who would even think about trying to depose him. When these protests die down, Erdoğan will still be the prime minister, albeit a weakened one and maybe – but not likely – a chastened one, and the AKP will still be Turkey's governing party. And furthermore, if I had to wager today, I'd bet with a large degree of confidence that the AKP will be Turkey's governing party after the next election as well.
So how does this thing end? As Claire Sadar noted among other points in an excellent post, the comparisons to the Arab Spring are particularly inapt for a few reasons. The first and most obvious one is that, as I pointed out above, Turkey has free and fair democratic elections by even the strictest standard, and Erdoğan is not an unelected autocrat. The thousands of protestors in the street are shouting for Erdoğan to resign because they are unhappy and it is a convenient slogan to use, but I highly doubt that many of them – and this is certainly the case with my own friends currently manning the barricades in Istanbul and Izmir – have any reasonable expectation that this will happen. Everyone knows that Erdoğan will leave government the same way by which he entered, which is through elections, and because this is his last term as prime minister anyway, the protests are not going to change the timeline of his departure.
Another way in which this differs from the Arab Spring protests in Egypt and Tunisia in particular is that the military is highly unlikely to get involved. The Turkish armed forces have been brought to heel, first by the democratic reforms that placed the military under true civilian control for the first time in Turkey's history, and then by the far less democratic witch hunt that jailed over 20% of Turkey's active and retired officers for alleged coup plots against the government. Civil-military relations in Turkey have been transformed in a way that cannot be overstated, and while I would never go so far as to say that a military coup is absolutely impossible given Turkey's history, the chances of one happening are infinitesimal.
Finally, the situation in Egypt was marked by scenes of non-uniformed government thugs attacking protestors, armed clashes between supporters of the government and opponents of the government, and a general violent breakdown along sectarian and ideological lines pitting civilians against other civilians. Despite the abhorrent police behavior – and reports indicate that police brutality seems to be slowing down as well – so far we have not seen bands of AKP supporters attacking protestors, and this is a good thing on many levels. When something along those lines occurs, it creates the likelihood of the situation spiraling out of control in unpredictable ways, and hopefully the fact that it has not happened yet means that Turkey is going to avoid large scale violent unrest.
What the situation in Turkey does remind me of in some ways is the J14 social protests in Israel in the summer of 2011, during which hundreds of thousands of Israelis were in the streets protesting over the high cost of living for everything from housing to cottage cheese. Many predicted that this was going to mean the downfall of the government and a radical sea change in Israeli politics, but what actually happened was that Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Likud government were reelected less than two years later. The primary reasons for this were that Netanyahu and Likud still remained popular with a large segment of the population, and perhaps more importantly there was no strong opposition party able to take advantage of the situation and unseat Netanyahu. Labor, which was the main party on the left, was fractured and disorganized, and Kadima's constituency was not one that had social justice concerns as its main priority as Kadima had never embraced such a platform in any way. Similarly, it's important to remember that the AKP has enormous support in Turkey, and this might diminish that support but it will not undo it. The economy is strong, many Turks have conservative values that the AKP embodies, and if you are not an educated urbanite or a persecuted minority (such as a Kurd or an Alevi), you are still relatively happy with the job the government is doing. Even more crucially, Turkey has no viable opposition at all. The CHP is little more than a joke, completely feckless and politically tone deaf and with no vision at all other than opposing anything the AKP does out of spite. There seems to be a constituency of Turks who crave a more liberal party that will be a bit more humble and protect the rights of all Turks while keeping in mind that differences of opinion do exist. There is no party currently in existence that can fill that role though, as the CHP is Turkish political equivalent of the Washington Generals and the BDP is too narrowly focused as a party representing Kurdish interests to attract true widespread support. The upshot of this is that when the next elections roll around, I expect the AKP to win again handily, albeit with a smaller total vote share than it received in 2011.
That does not mean that the path of Turkish politics will not be altered. The new presidential system that Erdoğan has been trying to push through is now, in my opinion, dead and buried. Nobody, and that includes people within the AKP, is going to be supporting a system in which Erdoğan gets to be a powerful president, particularly after he has complained that the American presidency is inadequate for his needs because the U.S. president has insufficient power due to having to deal with Congressional checks. This means that President Gül may continue as president without a hitch, but I think what this actually brings about is Gül as the next Turkish prime minister. Gül likely has no desire at all to serve as PM under a President Erdoğan who actually holds the real political power in Turkey, but serving as prime minister in the current system is an attractive proposition. In the last few days Gül has been distancing himself from Erdoğan, first disagreeing with Erdoğan's contention that elections confer upon the government the right to do anything it pleases, and then implying that he might not approve Erdoğan's new law restricting the sale of alcohol. These are moves designed to shore up his support within the party and to appeal to AKP members for whom Erdoğan's scorched earth approach is wearing thin.
The irony in all of this is that the likelihood of the party splitting apart is now lessened than it was even a week ago. When Erdoğan stood the chance of becoming the president in a new presidential system, which would have meant unseating Gül in 2014, it would have led to a clash between the two men and the distinct possibility that the AKP would divide into two camps. If the system remain as it is, however, Gül can become a prime minister who actually has real political power, and so despite what appears to be growing enmity between the two longtime friends and political partners, I think the AKP actually stands a better chance now of remaining united, even as it is will be weaker following the damage that Erdoğan has wrought over the past week.
Bibi's Coalition Gamble
February 20, 2013 § 6 Comments
It has been almost a month since the Israeli election, and yesterday finally brought us the first move to form a coalition as Tzipi Livni's Hatnua party agreed to join up with Bibi Netanyahu and Likud Beiteinu. I have been skeptical throughout the campaign and the election's aftermath that Livni would come to an agreement with Netanyahu given her efforts to convince Ehud Olmert and even Shimon Peres to run; her failed maneuvering at uniting Hatnua, Labor, and Yesh Atid into an anti-Bibi bloc; her constant railing against Netanyahu as a danger and a failed prime minister; the fact that Hatnua includes former Labor leaders Amir Peretz and Amram Mitzna, neither of whom are exactly Netanyahu cheerleaders; and finally, her refusal to join with Bibi after the last election when her party – which was then Kadima – had the most seats in the Knesset and she would have been able to work out a deal in which she served as co-prime minister. Nevertheless, Livni has now reversed course and has accepted the positions of Justice Minister and chief negotiator with the Palestinians, and she will be reporting to Netanyahu rather than the eventual Foreign Minister in this latter gig.
Many people are now speculating on what this means for the peace process and whether Livni's overseeing negotiations means that we can expect some real movement ahead. I don't think this changes anything and I wouldn't be taking any investment advice from people who think that Livni is going to pull Netanyahu along rather than the reverse, but the really interesting angle here is the political one. Bringing Livni into the coalition is not about Netanyahu signaling anything on the peace process, but about putting pressure on Naftali Bennett to join the government. The thinking on Netanyahu's part goes as follows: he now has 37 seats lined up and getting Kadima and its 2 seats is a given, and he is on the verge of adding Shas (his real goal all along) and its 11 seats, which means that he can then turn to Bennett and Habayit Hayehudi and use their 12 seats to get past the magic number of 61. Netanyahu is gambling that once he adds Kadima and Shas, he will present Bennett with an ultimatum of joining the government or calling new elections, and that Bennett will not be able to withstand the pressure ensuing from calls for him to join a rightwing coalition and so he will crack. Essentially, Netanyahu is betting on Bennett's alliance with Yair Lapid and Yesh Atid not being strong enough to buck the rightwing nationalist forces in HH who want to band together with Likud and the religious forces in HH who don't see why serving in a government with Shas is the end of the world. Hence the immediate rumors that negotiations with Shas are proceeding and that it too will join the coalition imminently.
This plan of Bibi's seems nicely formulated, but ultimately I don't think it will work. More importantly, if Bennett is smart he will make sure that it doesn't. The success of Bibi's strategy turns on the idea that Bennett will do anything to avoid going to another round of elections, but much as I thought (correctly, as it turned out) that Netanyahu miscalculated in allying with Yisrael Beiteinu, I think he is miscalculating here as well. Netanyahu's gamble is that new elections will cost Bennett seats and weaken his position, and that might have been true before yesterday, but bringing in Livni changes things in a big way. If I am a HH voter, I am not going to punish the party for not joining with its natural Likud partner by fleeing and and now voting for Likud since bringing Tzipi Livni on board to deal with peace process issues makes Likud untrustworthy. Looking at this map of election results and seeing where HH got votes makes this point abundantly clear; voters in Elon Moreh and Karnei Shomron are not now going to give up on Bennett and vote for Bibi given his most recent coalition choice.
In addition, many Likud voters are not going to be terribly happy now that Netanyahu has banded together with Livni, and I don't see how doing so possibly increases his share of votes at all in a hypothetical new round of elections. If anything, it drives even more people away and into the arms of Bennett, and if you need some further proof, just look at Moshe Feiglin's crack today that he hopes Likud will be in the coalition too. Furthermore, by trying to repeat history and bring Shas – his most pliable partners – into the coalition, Netanyahu is turning his back on the draft issue, which is one of the most popular issues in Israel today and which Lapid rode to his stunning success. Not only is Netanyahu potentially angering his base by bringing Livni in, he is angering many other voters who don't understand why he insists on bringing Shas into the government despite the massive popular will for reforming the draft. Given what has transpired, if new elections were held today, I think that Likud would drop even further while Habayit Hayehudi and Yesh Atid would pick up some new mandates.
Netanyahu is behaving as if bringing first Livni and then Shas into the government gives him all the leverage he needs over Bennett to break up the YA-HH alliance, but I think he has things wrong. If he brings in Shas, he will then be unable to form a government without Lapid or Bennett (I am operating on the assumption that Labor is not joining at this point), and so in reality Bennett will be the one with the leverage over Netanyahu. Reports are that Bennett is feeling heat from within his party over his footdragging to run to Likud and his head-scratching unbreakable bond with Lapid, but by brining Livni into the government, Netanyahu actually did Bennett a favor. He now has a good excuse to sit tight, and once Netanyahu strikes a deal with Shas, he benefits further from sticking to his guns on the draft issue and staying out. If I were Bennett and Netanyahu presented me with the ultimatum to join the coalition with Shas or go to new elections, I would be printing up new campaign posters before even getting off the phone.
Welcome to Israeli Election Day
January 22, 2013 § 2 Comments
Finally, the day we've all been waiting for – Israelis go to the polls today to elect a new Knesset and a new government for the first time since 2009. Despite the fact that we don't have any results yet, I thought I'd set out a list of things we know and things we don't.
Things We Know:
–Bibi Netanyahu and Likud Beiteinu are going to win the most seats in the Knesset and Likud will be the largest party. This is an easy one given the polls, since even with the Likud Beiteinu list losing about a seat a week for months now, no other party is going to come close to the 32-36 seats LB is likely to take. The irony of course is that Netanyahu created the joint list in order to create an unbeatable force, yet Likud might have done better on its own as banding together with Avigdor Lieberman and Yisrael Beiteinu likely cost Netanyahu seats for a host of reasons (and from the Department of Shameless Self Promotion, remember who told you months ago that this was a very bad idea on Bibi's part). Despite the blunder, Labor is probably going to come in second with 15-18 seats, and Habayit Hayehudi and Yesh Atid are going to be battling for 3rd and 4th place. It is possible that the LB list will have twice as many seats as the next largest party despite its free fall in the polls, although this is a bit misleading since the two parties agreed to merge until only 30 days past the election, at which point they are free to revisit their agreement and separate. The most interesting little nugget about Likud being the largest party in the Knesset is that despite having served two terms as prime minister, this will be the first time that Netanyahu leads his party to a Knesset victory. When Netanyahu was elected in 1996, Israel was in the midst of its decade-long experiment of directly electing the prime minister, and so while Netanyahu beat Shimon Peres by 1% in the prime ministerial vote, Likud won 32 seats to Labor's 34. In 2009, Likud came in second to Kadima, but after Tzipi Livni was unable to form a government, Netanyahu swooped in and cobbled together a governing coalition despite controlling the second largest party in the Knesset rather than the largest. By the end of today, Netanyahu will finally be able to say that he led his party to an electoral victory.
Things We Don't Know
–Everything else. And I mean that. Aside from Likud Beiteinu winning the most mandates, I cannot say with 100% certainty what else will happen. I am 99% sure that Netanyahu is going to be the next prime minister, but there are enough weird things going on to give me that minuscule 1% pause. To begin with, there are an unusually high number of undecided voters, and while they might break Bibi's way, I don't think that Bibi's base is one that is marked by indecision, unless that indecision comprises whether to continue to vote for Netanyahu or to go with the trendier rightwing choice of Naftali Bennett and Habayit Hayehudi.
Furthermore, Netanyahu's margins are going to be very tight, and this means there is an outside chance that he pulls a Livni and can't pull off putting together a viable government. I am as confident as I can possibly be that HH is going to be in the coalition, but then the coalition math becomes very tricky. It involves bringing in a centrist party such as Yesh Atid, which will clash with HH and the more extremist Likud voices over peace process issues, or going with Shas and UTJ, who are toxic to HH over the draft and toxic to Yisrael Beiteinu over both the draft and the religious-secular divide. Then there is the possibility that Aryeh Deri's return to Shas means it is no longer so reliably rightwing and will give Netanyahu a harder time when it comes to coalition bargaining.
To throw another monkey wrench into this, there are the rumblings from all sorts of quarters that the electorate has shifted in the past few days and that the leftwing and centrist parties are going to do better than their polling indicates. If voter turnout is high, it means that left and center parties are going to do better than expected, in which case there is even a possibility that Netanyahu is denied the first chance to form a government. Last month I brought up the possibility of a unity government, which started to look ridiculous in the interim but now I am not so sure that I was off-base. Then there are the rumors that were flying around last night that Ehud Barak is going to be defense minister and Tzipi Livni foreign minister, which I find to be completely far-fetched given the rancor toward Barak exhibited by all sorts of newly influential Likud members and the fact that Netanyahu would never give Livni any real power as foreign minister while Livni would never accept the position to be a mere figurehead. All of this is to say that while Bibi is almost definitely going to remain as prime minister, the possibility of a black swan would not be entirely out of the blue. As for what type of coalition he will put together assuming he remains prime minister, your guess is as good as mine. If I have to predict something, it's that we will see a nationalist bent due to the inclusion of Habayit Hayehudi, that the haredi parties are going to be left out, and that Yesh Atid will be brought in. This will allow Bibi to keep his rightwingers happy on peace process and settlements, let Yesh Atid have its pet issue of reforming the draft, and not have to worry about the secular-religious divide issue bringing down the government. I can also see Labor being brought into this mix if Netanyahu wants to have the coalition be as big as possible or if the numbers are such that he needs another party but wants to avoid bringing in Shas. Whatever happens, the next few weeks promise to be an entertaining ride.
Following Up On E1 And A Unity Government
January 4, 2013 § 2 Comments
There are a couple of news items today related to two predictions I made last month – that Israel is not actually going to build in E1 and that there is a decent likelihood of a Likud-Labor unity government after the elections in a couple of weeks – so I figured I'd take the opportunity to revisit the topics and see where things currently stand.
In the E1 department, Netanyahu has delayed the plans for building despite the Defense Ministry approving the blueprints and the Civil Administration approving the plans. Predictably, this has raised rightwing ire as there is no word as to when the prime minister's office is going to file the plans with the zoning committee or what is causing the delay. As you may recall, I argued that this is precisely what was going to happen:
The reason for this is that building homes in E1 has been a longstanding red line for both the United States and the European Union, and that line won't dissipate just because the Palestinian Authority decided to defy Israeli and American wishes against pursuing a statehood claim at the U.N. The U.S. response to the E1 announcement was unambiguous, labeling it counterproductive and a threat to the two-state solution, and pointing out that settlement building in E1 makes direct negotiations harder, which is a not-so-subtle reminder that this is the exact charge Israel has leveled at the Palestinians over the U.N. strategy…
The U.N. vote came as a surprise to Jerusalem, and Netanyahu knows that actually sending construction crews and cement mixers into E1 will worsen Israel's image problem. I also imagine that there have been some extremely unpleasant conversations with White House and State Department officials this past weekend given that the E1 announcement came on the heels of unwavering American support over Gaza and at the U.N. As dedicated as Netanyahu has been to the settlement project, even he must now realize that building Mevaseret Adumim is a bridge too far…
Following the embarrassingly lopsided U.N. vote and the criticism from his right that he did not go far enough during Operation Pillar of Cloud, Netanyahu needed to make a big gesture before the January 22 election to demonstrate that he is committed to settlements and that he will not take the PA's new statehood status in stride. E1 is an enormous deal to the settler wing of Likud, and declaring a new planning and zoning stage is red meat to Israeli right-wing partisans in a variety of camps, whether they be pro-settlements or have a religious or nationalist attachment to an eternal undivided Jerusalem.
The fact that this—just like the Levy Report—is an announcement that will never be acted upon does not negate the fact that it is good politics for Netanyahu. He is going to perform a delicate balancing act, in which he doubles down on settlementsfor a domestic audience while assuring the U.S. and the EU that E1 will remain a barren tract of land.
What has changed since I wrote this is that Naftali Bennett's Habayit Hayehudi party has skyrocketed in the polls while Likud-Beiteinu has plummeted. The latest poll of polls has LB at 34 Knesset seats and HH at 14.5, which is the continuation of the trend of HH gaining about one seat a week and LB losing about one seat a week in opinion polling. When Netanyahu decided to create the joint Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu list, the idea was to co-opt Lieberman from taking away votes on his right, but he did not foresee another rightwing party posing a serious challenge and siphoning away votes from the LB creation. Now he is dealing with a serious HH presence in the next Knesset, which might be enough of a scare to change his E1 decision. Despite this, I am holding to my original prediction, because while Likud-Beiteinu is going to be a lot weaker electorally than Netanyahu originally envisioned, it does not change the fact that E1 is still a much bigger deal for the U.S. and Europe than almost any other settlement in the West Bank. What I think we are likely to see is Netanyahu keep E1 on the back burner while fast tracking building in East Jerusalem neighborhoods such as Gilo and Har Homa, which will mollify rightwingers somewhat without risking an enormous clash with Western states.
On the unity government front, Labor leader Shelley Yachimovich yesterday indicated that she will not join a Likud government which at first glance seems to blow up my previous analysis. A few point to keep in mind, however, before deciding that Labor is definitively going to be in the opposition. First, Israeli opposition politicians are notorious for blasting the prime minister and making claims about never joining the government right before doing exactly that. For a recent example, go back and look at what Shaul Mofaz was saying about Netanyahu and Likud last spring literally just days before agreeing to form a unity government with Likud. Whatever Yachimovich says know in the heat of an election campaign should be taken with a grain of salt.
Second, in parsing what Yachimovich said, contrary to the reporting and the headlines she actually did not definitely rule out anything and gave herself lots of wiggle room. She said that she wants to be prime minister but that she will lead the opposition if she's not, and explicitly made clear that she had decided not to join the coalition because of recent radical positions taken by Likud and because of Netanyahu's embrace of Avigdor Lieberman. According to her, under the current circumstances she cannot work with Likud because "this is not the Likud we all know." This formulation is expressly designed so that it can be walked back if needed. After the election, with Lieberman's status uncertain and the electioneering over, Yachimovich can easily say that she has spoken with Netanyahu and that they have agreed on a set of broad principles, coupled with a statement or two from Netanyahu reaffirming his commitment to a two-state solution and finding a solution to the problem of social inequality. Framing her opposition to joining a Likud-led coalition in the terms that she has is not a categorical denial that she will ever agree to form a unity government, but rather a very temporary hurdle that she can dismantle anytime she wants. All that needs to be done is to declare that Likud is actually more reasonable than she originally thought and that she is joining the coalition because it is in the best interests of the country. A General Sherman type blanket denial this was not. Does this mean that a unity government is guaranteed to happen? Of course not, since the fact still remains that Likud and Labor have many sharp disagreements and the coalition politics might be tricky. All I'm saying is that yesterday's statement does not rule out the possibility.
Domestic Politics Vs. International Politics In The Israeli Election
December 26, 2012 § 7 Comments
As regular O&Z readers know, if this blog has any sort of running theme it is that domestic politics is often decisive in determining foreign policy. When I wrote last week for The Atlantic about the rightwing political competition that is driving settlement activity, a close friend emailed, "So you're saying it is local politics at work…#ImagineMySurprise." I have pointed to domestic politics to argue that Israel and Turkey won't be normalizing relations any time soon (and I'll try and write about the recent NATO news tomorrow, but no, I don't think it signals that anything is going to imminently change) and to predict that there was not going to be an Israeli strike on Iran last spring, summer, or fall. Does this mean that domestic politics is always decisive in every situation? Of course not. There are plenty of times in which other considerations are at work; the months-long push on the Turkish government's to get NATO to intervene in Syria is one such instance. Nevertheless, I maintain that a lack of focus on domestic politics and the constraints it imposes leads to lots of shoddy analysis from both professionals and casual observers.
Over the next few months, Israel is going to be a great petri dish for watching these trends at work. On the one hand, influential and respected defense and security experts like Amos Yadlin are warning that Israel is losing its international support and status because of its footdragging on the peace process, Tzipi Livni has founded a new party devoted solely to reviving talks with the Palestinians, and there is chatter that the EU is losing so much patience that it is going to try and force Israel and the Palestinians into a deal. Last week the State Department issued a harsher than usual condemnation of Israeli settlement activity, as did the fourteen non-U.S. members of the Security Council. By any measure, Israel's settlement policy and reticence on the creation of a Palestinian state is become increasingly costly. Looking at it from a black box perspective, you have a state living in a hostile neighborhood with an enormous qualitative military edge over its neighbors that is facing a dangerous potential dip in support from its main external allies and is facing increasing international isolation over the Palestinian statehood issue, which does not present an existential security threat by any means. The state is facing what it believes is an existential threat from Iran, and on that front it needs all the help it can get from its main allies. Given everything involved, you'd expect Israel in this situation to take moves to forestall its isolation and shore up its relationship with the U.S. and EU – which are its primary providers of military and economic aid and diplomatic support across the board – by making some serious concessions on the Palestinian front. After all, even if settlements in the West Bank are viewed as a security buffer, keeping them from a security perspective given Palestinian military capabilities pales in comparison to risking the cessation of purchases of military hardware and transfers of military technology, and enabling the risk of complete diplomatic isolation.
Given all of this, one might expect to see an Israeli coalition after the election that includes Livni's Hatnua party and that undertakes serious initiatives on the Palestinian statehood and peace process fronts. Such a coalition would under no circumstances include Naftali Bennett and Habayit Hayehudi, as Bennett wants to annex Area C and does not support the creation of a Palestinian state. Indeed, there have been moves in that direction as far as keeping Bennett out is concerned, and there have also been reports that Netanyahu and Livni are exploring the possibility of Hatnua joining the coalition after the election, which would almost necessarily mean her return to the Foreign Ministry and a greater push for a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.
On the other hand, taking domestic politics into account would point to a different path. As I wrote last week, the idea behind the joint Likud-Beiteinu list was to create a right-wing monolith that would put an electoral victory out of reach for Israel's left and to also present rightwing voters without a real alternative. Netanyahu wanted to eliminate any challenges from his right flank by co-opting Lieberman, but it now turns out that he has to deal with Bennett on his right and a swift migration of voters (so far, at least) away from Likud and to Habayit Hayehudi. It is also the case that Israeli voters do not care about the Palestinians or the peace process, which is why Hatnua is stuck in single digits, Labor and Shelley Yachimovich barely mention anything other than social issues and the economy unless absolutely forced to, and Bennett is gaining a larger following based partly on a perception that Netanyahu is actually not hawkish enough. Taking all of this into account means a coalition that includes Bennett, continues to take a hardline on a Palestinian state, and bemoans the lack of support from European states rather than constructing a policy meant to change that reality.
So which will it be? Unsurprisingly, my money is on the second option, but the first one is certainly plausible. It really just depends on how much weight you place on the domestic political calculus. Netanyahu's history is that he pays attention to his domestic political survival above all else, and I see no evidence that he has suddenly become a changed man. To my mind, Israel's long term health necessitates the first path, while Netanyahu's lies with the second. Let's hope that events in 2013 prove me wrong.
Israel's Next Unity Government
December 18, 2012 § 8 Comments
In the time leading up to an Israeli election, one always gets the impression that Israel's political system is the most fractured on Earth. Outrageous charges are hurled back and forth, and this year Kadima took things to a new level by adopting an anti-Bibi slogan superimposed on a picture of a nuclear mushroom cloud as its campaign poster. Nevertheless, as Israeli parties and politicians all jockey and maneuver before the January 22 election, it seems to me that if the poll numbers remain relatively stable, there is a good chance that Israel is headed toward a unity government comprised of Likud and Labor. While nobody will come right out and admit that while campaigning, the inter-party dynamics, Bibi Netanyahu's past preferences, and Labor leader Shelley Yachimovich's interview over the weekend are all pointing in that direction.
The latest polling – and the first to be released after Avigdor Lieberman's resignation as foreign minister – confirms the trend that has been taking place for weeks, which is that the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu joint list is polling in the mid to upper 30s range for Knesset seats and is likely to garner fewer seats than the two currently have now (and don't forget where you first heard that this arrangement was going to backfire). In addition, the Habayit Hayehudi list under Naftali Bennett is holding steady at 11 seats, and is Netanyahu's natural coalition partner given its rightwing stance. While there are rumors that Netanyahu would rather not deal with Bennett, he cannot afford to have Bennett constantly sniping at him from his right flank, particularly given how rightwing voters appear to be leaving Likud and flocking to Habayit Hayehudi. Including Bennett gets Netanyahu to just under 50 coalition seats, leaving him 10-12 short depending on how things precisely shake out. In the past, Netanyahu has turned to Shas and UTJ to fill this gap, and indeed together they are currently at 16 seats, which would get Netanyahu past the magic number of 60 seats and allow him to continue as prime minister. The problem is that Yisrael Beiteinu has been adamant about not wanting Haredi parties in the coalition, and Bennett last week demanded that Netanyahu take away the Interior and Housing ministries from Shas as part of his general argument that Haredi parties should be kept out of the next coalition. Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid party might not get enough seats to fill the gap, and even if it does, it will still leave Netanyahu with a very narrow margin and no wiggle room. Tzipi Livni's Hatnua party is probably out too, as Livni and Netanyahu do not like each other and Livni has turned down multiple opportunities to join with Netanyahu in the past. As demonstrated by his move to form a unity government with Kadima last spring, Netanyahu clearly likes to keep as many options open to him as possible, and his current narrow one has been a disaster, with infighting over the Tal Law and Haredi military service being a particular problem. This means constructing a coalition with as many seats as possible and without a big issue that will prove enormously divisive and impossible to overcome.
Enter Labor, which is second in the polls behind Likud Beiteinu, and Yachimovich, who has repeatedly declined to rule out joining a Likud-led coalition and who has insisted that Labor is not a leftwing party but a centrist party. Yachimovich wants to join the next coalition because she has never served as a minister and is relatively inexperienced and untested. Serving in the government will provide her with some more gravitas and do away with the impression that she isn't quite ready for prime time, and lay the foundation for a future chance at expanding Labor's seats and competing to be prime minister. In this vein, yesterday she gave an interview in which she said that the budget for settlements should remain untouched in the absence of a peace agreement with the Palestinians and stressed Labor's history of building settlements when in government and that Labor has always had a hawkish element, including Yitzhak Rabin. This drew immediate responses from Lapid and Meretz chief Zahava Gal-On, but Yachimovich does not appear to be worried about Gal-On or other leftist parties damaging her credibility. Instead, she is clearly appealing to the fact that Israel's electorate is far more hawkish on the Palestinians and the West Bank than in the past, and is laying the groundwork to be able to join a Likud-led coalition in which support for settlements is going to be a must. It is not accidental that Yachimovich broke her laser-like focus on economic and social issues to talk about settlements rather than Iran, the peace process, Gaza, etc. If there is one issue that will make it possible for Netanyahu to invite Labor into the coalition without risking a rightwing revolt it is support for the settlement budget, and Yachimovich's interview was an attempt to forestall any criticism that might emerge on this front. While there will invariably be differences in opinion between her and Netanyahu on socioeconomic issues and on the peace process, there is now no daylight on the question of support for settlements. While I am loath to predict anything with certainly when it comes to coalition politics – particularly as I have been burned in the past – the signs as I read them point to a Likud-Labor unity government once the dust settles after the election.
Israeli Politics Should Be Serialized on HBO
December 7, 2012 § 2 Comments
On many Fridays I highlight some of the more ridiculous things that I have read over the past week, but today there is no need to link to or comment on specific articles and op-eds because the most entertaining spectacle of the week has been the maneuvering, pettiness, backstabbing, and theater of the absurd that is Israeli politics. At the heart of all the shifting back and forth are a number of personal relationships characterized by deep animosity that are manifesting themselves as shifts in political loyalties, and it is all making for the most mesmerizing election season that I can remember, in Israel or anywhere else.
First up is the curious case of Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister and previously the number two person behind Avigdor Lieberman on Yisrael Beiteinu's party list. On Tuesday, while he was on his way to the press conference announcing YB's party list and just two hours before it was scheduled to begin, Ayalon received a call from Lieberman informing him that he was leaving Ayalon off YB's Knesset slate for the January 22 election. Leaving aside the Night of the Long Knives quality to all of this in terms of its suddenness, the move to sideline Ayalon is puzzling in the extreme. Not only is Ayalon a top Foreign Ministry official and a former ambassador to the U.S., there was little hint that relations between him and Lieberman were so bad as to warrant this type of excommunication. In fact, Ayalon's increasingly extreme rhetoric and behavior, such as his purposeful humiliation of the Turkish ambassador in January 2010 by making him sit on a low chair before television cameras and not displaying the Turkish flag and for which Ayalon was later forced to publicly apologize, seemed to be driven by the need to placate his boss. While Ayalon has reverted to his former more diplomatic self and has refused to make a scene, his father did not take the news terribly well and gave an interview in which he called Lieberman a "little Stalin." Rumors abound as to why Ayalon was dumped, and the most likely explanation seems to be that Lieberman thought Ayalon had a history of leaking to the press and that he might not have been a fan of Ayalon's high public profile. In any event, it is difficult to see how this makes Yisrael Beiteinu any stronger or inspires much confidence in Lieberman's leadership.
Next is the fallout between Labor leader Shelley Yachimovich and former party head Amir Peretz, who was third on Labor's list until yesterday, when he announced that he was leaving Labor and joining up with Tzipi Livni and her new Hatnua party. Is Peretz leaving because he feels that Labor is no longer a suitable ideological home for him, or because he has a close and longstanding relationship with Livni, or because he thinks that boosting Hatnua is in his country's best interests? If you guessed any of these options, you'd be wrong. Peretz is bolting from Labor at the last minute, and literally only one week after Labor's members deemed him to be such an important member of the party that he got the second most votes in the party's primary, because he is jealous of Yachimovich and felt that she wasn't giving him, a former defense minister and the man who is in some ways the godfather of the Iron Dome missile defense system, the requisite amount of respect. To put this into perspective, the former head of Israel's largest trade union and Israel's largest and most prominent leftwing party has just left his longtime political home despite its current laserlike focus on social and economic issues – Peretz's bread and butter – to join a party led by a former Likudnik and erstwhile Kadima head whose track record of commitment to liberal social causes is tenuous at best. The personal rivalry between Peretz and Yachimovich is so intense that he is actively hoping that Labor will go down in flames so that he can oust Yachimovich from the party leadership the next time around, and is willing to join up with a party and a politician with whom he shares no common cause other than a hatred of Bibi Netanyahu just so that he can punish Yachimovich. Isn't it a shame that Shakespeare isn't around to catalogue all of this?
Finally we have Tzipi Livni and her various hangups with her former allies and fellow travelers on the right. The relationship between her and Shaul Mofaz, who only months ago launched a palace coup and replaced her as head of Kadima, is obviously terrible, and so she undoubtedly took extra special joy in siphoning off seven members from Kadima on Monday. The reason this matters is that seven is the magic number that allows a faction to break off from a party and bring campaign funds with them, so now not only has Livni taken her revenge on Mofaz by guaranteeing Kadima's electoral death, she is likely saddling him with debt as well by taking campaign money too. Then there is her longstanding refusal to join up with Netanyahu in a coalition following the elections no matter the outcome. While such declarations in Israeli politics obviously must be taken with a grain of salt – see Shaul Mofaz's rhetoric right before banding together with Likud earlier this year as Exhibit A – Livni's stance can probably be viewed as ironclad given the various opportunities she had to form a unity government following the 2009 elections that she turned down. She seems determined to spend the rest of her life trying to topple her former Likud buddy Bibi, and she doesn't care how long or how many elections it takes. So we are left with the prospect of former Labor leaders Peretz and Amram Mitzna flocking to a party led by a right-winger claiming to be undergoing a conversion later in life, and the possible eventuality of the former Likud and Kadima official Livni refusing to join a coalition with Netanyahu after the elections while Labor under Yachimovich jumps at the chance. Is any of this logical? Nope, not really. But there's Israeli politics for you, and if you're not watching this drama as it unfolds, you're missing the world's greatest show.


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Perhaps you've read the weirdly fawning praise of Bob Dylan's tenth installment in his famed Bootleg Series, Another Self Portrait 1969--1971. ("One of the most important, coherent and fulfilling Bob Dylan albums ever released," some buffoon for Rolling Stone just claimed!) Perhaps, while in your ... More >>
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Well, seeing as how it was Mother's Day today – and I am a mother – silly me, I assumed that I'd be able to do something I wanted to do and get my scrap on at some point. I mean, wouldn't you think?
Here is what happened instead:
– DH had to work. Shizzle. Bad sign.
– I told the kids the night before that they could serve me cereal in bed; I ended up making them French toast. I opened cool gifts from them and got in a really good Mommy Love session of hugs and kisses. I saved the gift from DH to open later when he's home.
– After breakfast, I went back to lounge in bed and fell asleep reading the new Creating Keepsakes I bought lastnight at Target.
– Upon waking, I was informed that "we" were going to play Clue.
– After an exhausting game in which Colonel Mustard was found to be the culprit, the players were famished so I played short order cook and made multiple lunches, then washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen.
– Wouldn't you know? After lunch, it was so hot, I was recruited to watch the kids swim. The water was too cold for me (kids are freaks, aren't they?), so I hosed off all the patio furniture for the beginning of swimming season and got everything arranged and Windexed to within an inch of it's life. I also babysat the puppy the entire time, who was quite disturbed that "his people" were jumping in this huge blue tub of water. He wasn't clear on the whole concept and alternated between yelping, barking, licking wet people, and attacking defenseless towels.
– After sending everyone off to the showers, throwing beach towels in the dryer, feeding and watering the pup, and hanging up swimsuits to dry, I finally got in some Mother's Day Relaxation….by doing 5 loads of laundry and cleaning the house.
– I then made tacos, cleaned the kitchen once again, and made sandwiches for school tomorrow. Washed out and refilled sports bottles, called my mom, and put a slipcover on hubby's recliner to surprise him when he gets home.
– Before I knew it, it was reading and tuck in time. I watched Desperate Housewives and a recorded episode of THE MILLIONAIRE MATCHMAKER, e-mailed CATHY ZIELSKE (I know!), caught up on my message board reading and posting, wrote an entry for my transcription blog, tweeted a bit on TWITTER, and wrote out this blog entry.
Oh yeah, I was gonna' scrap today, wasn't I? Gah!
Hope you had better luck than me, and enjoyed some scrappy time this weekend. Tell me about your Mother's Day, whether you're a mom or not…
9 Comments on A Scrappy Mother's Day? Um, No…
Had a great Mother's Day. With my kids and dh there is always a meal but no scrapping LOLReply
Loved reading about your day! My moms day was bittersweet.. I saw my girls and my mom in Canada, and had to say bye to my girls last nite.. they live 3 hours from us… but I enjoyed my day with them. I love those two girls.. soo sooo much. They make my life worth living.. and despite the busyness, the traveling, I am just thankful to be with them.Reply
Yeah, I'm with ya on the 'not about mom' moms day! I think next year I'm going to have hubby pull the trailer out to the mountains and leave me and it there BY MYSELF with all my scrappy supplies and a good stockpile of wine! lol…You never mentioned what your hubby got you for Mother's Day!Reply
"We" don't celebrate made up Hallmark holidays around here (and by "we" I mean my husband) so it was just another day. I did get to spend it with my mom though. Thankfully she DOES celebrate made up Hallmark holidays so she was quite glad we were there! ;-)Reply
LOL! Love how you relax! You probably don't really want to know what I did…it involved paper and glue and stuff.Reply
Thanks for all the fun details! Hope you can relax today!!!Reply
(((hugs)))..i had a great day, but it was low-key….my gift was a tanning pkg (i know, it is bad)…did mother's day shopping for my mom & Gma…went to church….the best part was my dd was a willing participant for our annual mom/dd photo shoot…pics are on my blog….Reply
Hi! I had a decent day… I had to get up at 7:30 am to shower and get ready to leave by 8:30… no sleeping in for me. Went to Starbucks along the way to get coffee so I could "enjoy" it in the car. Trying to stir sugar in your coffee while dh drives is not an easy task. Then we got on the turnpike and had to pull over to let my son throw up… well, you can't turn around on the turnpike, so we just continued on after I let him sit up front and I got to sit in the back after I cleaned the seat off… did I say I had a decent day…. actually it wasn't all bad, after the initial rough start. My son felt better, we had brunch at 9:45… who knew I could eat seafood etouffee that early in the morning? The mimosa helped immensely! ;)Reply
You'll have to take a day off to do something scrappy!


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Andy Murray returns to Wimbledon on Monday as the reigning champion, the first British man since Fred Perry in 1936 to defend the title.But the pressure to defend the title cant match the pressure Murray felt in the years leading up to last years triumph that ended the nations collective angst at not having had its own countryman raise the championship trophy in 77 years.When Murray defeated Novak Djokovic 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 in front of an adoring Centre Court crowd, Murrays place in British sporting lore was set.Murray, however, didnt do it by himself. Part of the credit has to go to another former champion, Ivan Lendl, who converted Murray over the course of two years from a talented yet tormented player into a focused, determined Grand Slam champion. The pairing resulted in two Grand Slam titles and an Olympic gold medal.Murray and Lendl parted ways this spring in what was described at the time as a mutual decision. It was later revealed in interviews with the British press, however, that the split was not Murrays idea. He admitted to Simon Griggs of The Daily Telegraph to being wounded deeply that the two couldnt come to a workable agreement. Murray took his time finding a new coach, finally turning to another Wimbledon champion French great Amelie Mauresmo, who won Wimbledon in 2006 and coached Marion Bartoli to last years Wimbledon title.Amelie is someone who is able to take all the stress away and make you feel extremely comfortable, Bartoli told the BBC. She prepares you for the worst and gives you some advice in order to deal with that, so when you start to face that situation you are ready. I really felt she was a tremendous help to me ... especially in the final and semifinal.The mens game is also nothing new for Mauresmo, who briefly coached Frenchman Michael Llodra in 2010. The choice of Mauresmo is a good one, according to 18-time Grand Slam champion Chris Evert.Mauresmos very qualified obviously, Evert said. Amelie, shes been a good coach before. I think she and Andy click well together. I like the line he said: My mom, Ive always had sort of the female influence around me concerning my tennis. Women listen more, which is probably true.But the great thing about Andy now is he still has that influence from Lendl. I think there was nobody better for him at that time, a couple years ago, than Lendl.Murrays success with Lendl has prompted other top player to turn to former champions in an effort to find that winning edge.Roger Federer, a 17-time Grand Slam champion, has turned to Stefan Edberg, who has six majors to his credit. Boris Becker, another six-time champion, has joined Novak Djokovics team, which includes longtime coach Marian Vajda.And thats just the tip of the iceberg. Former French Open champion Michael Chang has guided Kei Nishikori of Japan into the top 10, Marin Cilic is working with Goran Ivanisevic, Richard Gasquet has teamed up with Sergi Bruguera, and Ivan Ljubicic has been coaching Milos Raonic.Former Wimbledon runner-up Mark Philippoussis likes the combination of Federer and Edberg, especially at Wimbledon.I believe [Federer] has one more Grand Slam in him, and his best chance is at Wimbledon, Philippoussis told The Irish Times. Working with Stefan Edberg leading up to this, Roger has been more attacking, and if he plays again like [he did] at the Australian Open, then I am calling him to win this one.Dark horses Grigor Dimitrov and Milos Raonic John McEnroe: Two guys that I think have made the biggest advances, who weve been waiting on the longest to potentially do some serious damage at a major event, and theyre starting to show that. That would be Milos Raonic and Grigor Dimitrov. Two guys, if they had a little bit of luck, things fell their way, they could make a real run in this tournament. Dimitrov, a 23-year-old Bulgarian, arrives at Wimbledon ranked No. 13 having won his third tournament of the year last week at the grass-court tuneup at Queens Club. Raonic, a 23-year-old big-serving Canadian, is ranked No. 9 and has the game suited for Wimbledon. Hes consistently been a quarterfinalist all year. Eugenie Bouchard Chris Evert: I think Bouchard has shown a lot of positives in the last six months as far as stepping up, not being afraid to play the top players, not to be afraid to play on a stadium court, dealing with the pressure so well. Especially after the French, she almost beat Maria Sharapova [in the semifinals]. She likes grass. She likes to step in and take the ball early. She has power. I think shes one to watch. The 20-year-old Canadian is ranked No. 13 and has reached the semifinals at both majors this year. She has won 10 of her last 11 matches and is on the verge of breaking into the top 10 for the first time in her career.High and dryWho needs a roof anyway? Weather conditions at Wimbledon are forecasts to be unseasonably warm and dry, at least for the first week of the tournament. Tennis Channel analyst Justin Gimelstob said the warmer weather will result in faster conditions due to lighter air and the ball moving through the air quicker. When the weather is warm, especially for long stretches, the courts get harder and the balls bounce higher, creating a dynamic where the ball picks up speed upon contact with the court surface, Gimelstob said.American hopes WomenTop-ranked Serena Williams hasnt advanced past the fourth round at the years first two majors, but shes a five-time Wimbledon champion and will be the favorite. It wouldnt be a huge leap to see Sloane Stephens make an extended run, as well. But after Saturday, there are two others Americans for fans to keep an eye on No. 47-ranked Madison Keys won her first WTA title at the Aegon International in Eastbourne, England, with a 6-3, 3-6, 7-5 victory over No. 9 Angelique Kerber, and No. 69-ranked Coco Vandeweghe won her first WTA title at the Topshelf Open in the Netherlands with a 6-2, 6-4 grass-court win over Zheng Jie. MenIt will be a long time before top-ranked American John Isners name disappears from the Wimbledon record books after his legendary 11-hour, 5-minute, 183-game marathon against Nicolas Mahut in 2010, but his serve makes him a threat to make a deep run on grass. Seven other Americans are in the top 100, including two-time NCAA champion Steve Johnson, who reached the quarterfinals in grass-court tuneups in Nottingham, England, and Halle, Germany. Notable• Its been 10 years since a 17-year-old Maria Sharapova shocked Serena Williams in the Wimbledon final. Sharapova is coming off her second French Open win.• French Open runner-up Simona Halep has never gone past the second round at Wimbledon, but has seven WTA titles in the last 12 months.• Two-time Australian Open winner Victoria Azarenka is returning from a long layoff because of a foot injury. She has reached the semifinals at Wimbledon twice.• The Big Four of mens tennis Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray has won 35 of the past 37 majors.TV coverageThe ESPN networks will provide 140 hours of live coverage at Wimbledon. For the first four days, ESPN will begin at 6 a.m. for coverage that transitions to ESPNEWS at 10:30 a.m., with ESPN2 simulcasting from 1-2:30 p.m. On Friday, ESPN will begin at 6 a.m. with Breakfast at Wimbledon. ABC (WFAA/8) will provide first-week highlights on Sunday when no play is scheduled. ESPN will air the mens and womens finals live at 8 a.m. July 5-6, and ABC will replay the finals at 2 p.m. ESPN3 will have 1,000 hours of live coverage online from up to nine courts.
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