From the New York Times:

Israeli settlers have long asserted that the Palestinians are an invented people and that the West Bank’s real name is Judea and Samaria.

Statements of this kind tend to drive me up a wall. All nations are imaginary communities, all ethnic and national groups are invented, all places in the world are likely to have had a bizillion and one different names throughout history.

Saying this sort of thing is as idiotic as announcing with a look of somebody invested with a higher knowledge, “Did you hear? Those Palestinians have heads. That’s so freaky.” Of course, Palestinians have heads just like everyone else does but this inconvenient fact is omitted.

Every attempt of a nation-state (or an aspiring nation-state) to derive legitimacy from being less invented and less historically recent than somebody else are risible and doomed to failure.

This is the 21 century, people. The only way the nation-state can prove its legitimacy at this point is by offering a high standard of living to its citizens. Look at Syrians. They turn around and leave without any consideration for the national mythology of who lived where first, second and last. And they are absolutely right. Keeping people even somewhat attached is hard enough even for the nation-states that are offering a lot more than boring old fairy-tales of nationalism.

Two weeks ago, the White House issued “a stern warning” to Russia not to intervene militarily in Syria’s civil war.

A week later, President Obama condemned Russia for sending weapons and troops to Syria as “a move doomed to failure.”

Yesterday, the White House reversed two weeks’ worth of policy and  reached out to Russia with an offer to cooperate on Syria. The efforts to help anti-Assad rebels were scrapped in favor of propping up Assad with Russia’s help.

For several years, Russia has been demanding that the US drop its opposition to dictator Assad. Today, the US is begging Putin to help out with putting in place what has been Russia’s plan all along.

It is, of course, an absolute mystery why Russians openly and viciously ridicule Obama and call him, among many very racist things, weak.

P.S. Also, please observe how Obama’s foreign policy is identical to that exposed by Donald Trump during the debate on Wednesday. “I’m confident I can have a good working relationship with Putin. I have no idea how but I know I can. I just know if I talk to him, all will be fine.” Identical.

I find it absolutely disgusting, vicious, vomit – producing and hateful that a huge army of pathetic losers is now crawling out of the woodwork to argue that Carly Fiorina’s achievements are not that great and she wasn’t even a real secretary anyway.

The only people who have the right to comment on Fiorina’s achievement are those who have achieved more. Everybody else sounds like a sore loser of massive proportions when he (it’s always some underemployed fellow who does it) begins to assign grades to people with hugely successful careers.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a victim of his own journalistic talent. His articles are meticulously researched, never rushed, always supported by mountains of evidence, and deeply insightful.

In the age of snappy soundbites, though, these skills are not that valued. People skim the headers and write responses to the articles based on what they assume the journalist must be saying. And then Coates has to beg people at least to read what he wrote before opining on it.

It’s not that surprising that careless, stupid journalists proliferate since the readers can’t deal with more nuanced, complex writing.

“People who are willing to admit they are more narcissistic than others probably actually are more narcissistic,” said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and a professor of communication and psychology at The Ohio State University.

“People who are narcissists are almost proud of the fact. You can ask them directly because they don’t see narcissism as a negative quality – they believe they are superior to other people and are fine with saying that publicly.”

This is completely, totally and utterly wrong. Narcissists believe that they are victims of everybody else’s egotism. They see themselves as selfless, altruistic, quiet little victims who are unfairly persecuted by everybody else. Do you know somebody who keeps complaining that other people are too selfish? Somebody who keeps asking, “Why does everybody hate me so much?” or “What have I ever done to people to be treated this way?” Somebody who always feel under-appreciated? That’s your narcissist right there.

Here is a question I have: what is the Liberal philosophy of foreign policy in this country? What is its organizing principle?

The Conservative philosophy of foreign policy exists and everybody knows what it is. Its organizing principle is that the US should strive to be the world’s policeman / arbiter / “a force of good in the world.” Leaving aside the issue of whether this is a good philosophy and whether we agree with it, I want to point out that it exists and everybody is familiar with it, not only here but pretty much everywhere in the world.

Now my question is: what is the alternative? I’ve been trying to find out what the organizing principle behind the Liberal approach to foreign policy is for years but it’s a lot more elusive. Liberal commentators are very open as to what they don’t want to see happening in terms of US foreign policy. They are, however, very reticent concerning what they do want.

Sometimes I think that the ideal foreign policy for Liberals is that of a complete Buchanan-style withdrawal coupled with a stream of payments to poorer countries. This would be akin to paying the world to leave us alone so that we can engage in contented navel-gazing without being disturbed by pesky outsiders.

At other times, it seems like there is not even such a limited philosophy in place, and the Liberal response to every situation that arises is strictly situational and based on “let’s see what the other side is advocating and do the exact opposite.”

Does anybody have an answer?

Shimon Peres gave a talk in Ukraine and encouraged Ukrainians never to go on vacation because vacations are a waste of time and he’s never taken one in his 90+ years of life.

I only have one response when I hear this sort of thing: poor fellow, what a horrible, empty personal life he must have had. Never to have met a person with whom he’d want to spend 6 weeks in bed actively not working. Never to have known the kind of love that makes one want to spend the day, the week, the month looking at the beloved person, walking and talking with her. Never to have been wanted by anybody for three whole days of uninterrupted togetherness.

Yes, I know he had a wife. That must have been a beaut of a relationship if he had to hide from it at work every day of his life.

In case there are people who still haven’t seen the clowns from Spain who got naked to help Palestinians, here they are:

I’m not calling them clowns to be offensive. That’s simply their profession, they work as clowns.

It is not clear how this is supposed to help Palestinians. Palestinians seem to be unclear on that, as well. But things are still quite bad in Spain economically, especially for performers, and the clowns are trying to make themselves known in ways that are often quite weird.

It seemed like it was time for some light-hearted, cheerful news on the blog, and this seemed to work for that purpose.

I just watched Hillary’s first live TV interview in this campaign. She was confident, direct, friendly, and brimming with optimism. And why wouldn’t she if the winner of yesterday’s Republican debate owes her success to imitating Hillary herself passably well?

What was especially great is that Hillary made use of the best argument that the Democrats have and that Obama never managed to drive home forcefully enough: Republicans are incredibly inept on the economy. (Everybody who wants to argue with me on this should read this morning’s post on stupid people and stop being a dick.)

Good interview, great prospects.

The Republican candidates are getting a lot of flak for not managing to name any important American women last night.

I was going to laugh at the poor hapless fellows and the lady who stood out with her great Hillary impression, but then I realized: I would have the same problem they did if asked these questions.

I can spend all day naming the British, Spanish, Ukrainian, French, and even Russian women who achieved greatness but aside from Susan B. Anthony and Rosa Parks, I can’t name any American female greats. Is this my (and the candidates’) ignorance, or do these great women really not exist?

P. S. Please don’t name women whose achievement consists of marrying some important man. I find that sort of thing to be deeply offensive.