The election is under way with the traditional attacks on the Gaza Strip to prove that the current government is the only way Israelis can feel safe. It failed the last time when Kadima did it.

There is a common question asked by Likudniks: “What would the US do if they were being attacked by Mexico?” For some reason they don’t like my response: “Just what the Palestinians are doing – retaliating with everything we have.”

Israelis also fixate on on Palestinians “recognizing Israel’s right to exist”. There is no such “right”. The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, as well as sundry empires throughout history are all gone. If the Ottoman Empire hadn’t come unglued there would be no Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, etc. The US Declaration of Independence is based on the notion that governments are temporary, but people have “inalienable rights”.

Why don’t the Palestinians spend money on schools, hospitals, and infrastructure? Simple, because the Israeli blockade prevents it. When outsiders attempt to aid the Palestinians with building and medical supplies, the Israeli government uses force, including deadly force, to stop it.

I would hope that this ‘campaign’ ends like the last one, with a change in government, but a lot of innocent people are going to die before it is over.

Two from CBS about the CEO/MBA-class preventing competition in the job market:

Feds sue eBay, accuse ex-CEO Whitman of enforcing noncompetitive agreement

WASHINGTON: The Justice Department alleged Friday that Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay (EBAY), was intimately involved in making an anticompetitive agreement that prohibited eBay and Intuit (INTU) from hiring each other’s employees.

Twinkies maker Hostess going out of business

IRVING, Texas: The maker of the iconic U.S. snack Twinkies said Friday it is going out of business and laying off all of its 18,500 workers after a national strike crippled its operations.

EBay and Intuit sought to cap salaries for tech workers by agreeing not to hire from each other, i.e. not to compete for labor. When you are in the field you normally sign a contract that limits your ability to move to a competitor of your employer, but EBay and Intuit aren’t competitors for anything except labor.

In the case of Hostess, the hedge fund that owns the operation had already extracted concessions in a 2004 Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and was demanding more concessions from workers. Management hadn’t developed new products to boost its falling sales, they were simply milking the operation for every dime it could produce. They were always going to shut down, or they would have developed something to appeal to the current generation of consumers.

They had no intention of negotiating with the workers, they were simply seeing how low they could go with wages and benefits before shutting the operation down.