By Robert Scheer at the Huffington Post

So, why didn't they give peace a chance? Why did the leaders of Hamas and Israel not wait for the incoming U.S. president's inauguration before mutually escalating hostilities? Here was a president-elect chosen, in part, on the expectation that he could enhance prospects for Mideast peace, even if it meant negotiating with people thought to be enemies.

Why not give that approach an opportunity to succeed regarding the future of Palestine? Why not see if Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose husband had been more successful than any other president in advancing the prospects for peace in the Mideast, could have accomplished more than the lame-duck secretary of state she will soon replace?

The question answers itself.

Unfortunately, neither Hamas' nor Israel's leaders believe that a meaningful peace of the sort all U.S. presidents have endorsed is in their interest. That peace stipulates two independent and viable national entities, one Israeli and the other Palestinian. Clearly, Hamas and its hard-line supporters in the region reject the goal of an Israel at peace with its neighbors and secure within its boundaries, even if those borderlines return to those existing in 1967 at the time of the Six-Day War.

Further, Islamic nations in the region obviously don't want a secure Palestine, as some support only the most radical of Palestinian movements, and the oil wealthy regimes, while eagerly throwing money at Wall Street, refuse to invest in any serious way in the Palestinian economy.

What is less obvious, particularly to Israel's many knee-jerk supporters in the United States, is that the dominant Israeli politicians of all parties just as consistently reject the goal of a meaningful two-nation solution, if by that is meant a vibrant and truly independent Palestinian state. This last sentence represents heresy to those many who insist, as an article of faith and despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, that Israel has never wanted anything but to live in peace with its neighbors.

Their view is colonialist propaganda, pure and simple. I first heard it while reporting from Gaza and the West Bank in the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War, brought on by Egypt and Jordan, which were then the occupiers of what remained of Palestine. Maybe Israel's leaders, most prominently the conquering war hero Moshe Dayan, meant it when they claimed that they had no desire to permanently occupy this land. After all, they were mostly secular Labor Party Zionists, who shunned any notion of a divine mandate to remain in control of the Promised Land.

Whatever their original intentions, the occupation created its own logic of suppression, first breeding discontent and then rebellion. It doesn't matter whether that rebellion takes the form of stone-throwing or rocket launching; the Israeli response will always be wildly disproportionate, further damning the prospect for rational solutions. And uncritically underwriting that disproportionate Israeli response to any and all dissent will be the United States, the supplier of those F-16s doing so much damage in Gaza today.

But most U.S. presidents, with the possible exception of George W. Bush, came to view the blank check for Israel as a loser's game. The madness at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute has been widely acknowledged as the prime source of a much greater madness now codified as terrorism. And even Bush, as represented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, recently has been forced by that reality to put pursuing a meaningful peace back on the agenda.

The fact that settling the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is central to international stability ends up informing U.S. policy, much to the chagrin of the region's hard-liners on both sides. Throw in the prospect of a new U.S. president, who has put the waging of peace into the conversation, and it is understandable why that would threaten many in the Mideast who are wedded to the old ways of doing business. It is why Jimmy Carter, as an ex-president, has worked so courageously to confront that deadly dynamic.

Obama's challenge will be to turn his mantra of change into a practical road map for Mideast peace, a prospect made much more elusive by the Israeli blitzkrieg. But if he fails to do that and simply panders to those who have grown comfortable with this disastrous status quo, he will seriously undermine the prospects for his administration. With our severe economic problems, the last thing we need is increased Mideast instability, driving up U.S. military expenditures and the price of oil.

Free Comments and Graphics

Time magazine has posted a slideshow of Obama's college years, taken by an aspiring photographer named Lisa Jack, to run with its selection of Obama as "Person of the Year."

Read the whole story here.

All right BO lets go... puff puff pass!

Bush wasn’t hit by the shoes, which both sailed over his head after they were thrown one after the other. The president shrugged and said “I’m OK” after the incident in Baghdad today. “All I can report is it is a size 10,” Bush said afterwards.

In Arab culture, throwing shoes is a grave show of disrespect. “This is the farewell kiss, you dog,” the man shouted in Arabic.

After U.S. troops pulled down a statue of former dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraqi bystanders tossed shoes at it, according to news reports at the time. Bush said today’s incident was an example of free speech in a democracy.

The man threw the shoes from about 25 feet away as Bush, standing with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, made formal remarks before the signing of the Iraqi-U.S. agreement. Maliki tried to block the second thrown shoe as it flew toward Bush, according to video of the incident shown on television.

Wrestled to Ground

The shoe-thrower, who was in a group of journalists, was wrestled to the ground and taken away. “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq,” shouted the man, later identified by the Associated Press as Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi- owned station based in Cairo, Egypt.

At the signing ceremony, Bush said a free and democratic Iraq will now become “a force for freedom” and a “source of stability in a volatile region.”

“There is still more work to be done,” Bush said. “The war is not over.” The president said that with the agreement, “and the courage of the Iraqi people, and the Iraqi troops, and American troops and civilian personnel, it is decisively on its way to being won.”

Bush arrived today in Baghdad on a surprise visit -- his last to Iraq as commander-in-chief -- to celebrate the agreement, thank U.S. troops and meet with Iraqi leaders.

It was Bush’s fourth visit to a nation transformed by the U.S.-led war he started in 2003. It follows three weeks after Iraq’s parliament approved an accord with the U.S. that provides for the withdrawal of American troops by the end of 2011.

Much has been made about the prospect that Barack Obama's presidency might, due to economic necessity and the president-elect's interventionist inclinations, be a reprise of the New Deal era.

But there will be no "new New Deal" if Americans simply look to Obama to lead them out of the domestic quagmire into which Bill Clinton and George Bush led the country with a toxic blend of free-trade absolutism, banking deregulation and disdain for industrial policy. Just as Roosevelt needed mass movements and militancy as an excuse to talk Washington stalwarts into accepting radical shifts in the economic order, so Obama will need to be able to point to some turbulence at the grassroots.

And so he may have it.

After the Bank of America -- a $25-billion recipient of Bailout Czar Hank Paulson's "Wall Street First" largesse -- cut off operating credit to the Republic Windows and Doors company, executives of the firm announced Friday that they were shutting its factory in Chicago.

Instead of going home to a dismal Holiday season like hundreds of thousands of other working Americans who have fallen victim to the corporate "reduction-in-force" frenzy of recent weeks -- which has seen suddenly-secure banks pocket federal dollars rather than loosen up credit -- the Republic workers occupied the factory where many of them had worked for decades.

Members of United Electrical Workers Local 1110, which represents 260 Republic workers, are conducting the contemporary equivalent of the 1930s sit-down strikes that led to the rapid expansion of union recognition nationwide and empowered the Roosevelt administration to enact more equitable labor laws. And, just as in the thirties, they are objecting to policies that put banks ahead of workers; stickers worn by the UE sit-down strikers read: "You got bailed out, we got sold out."

"We're going to stay here until we win justice," says Blanca Funes, 55, of Chicago, who was one of the UE members occupying the Republic factory over the weekend for several hours.

Most of Republic workers are Hispanic and they want answers from the Bank of America and the company.

According to the UE, the workers hope "to force the company and its main creditor to meet their obligations to the workers."

"Their goal is to at least get the compensation that workers are owed; they also seek the resumption of operations at the plant," explains the union. "All 260 members of the local were laid off Friday in a sudden plant closing, brought on by Bank of America cutting off operating credit to the company. The bank even refused to authorize the release of money to Republic needed to pay workers their earned vacation pay, and compensation they are owed under the federal WARN Act because they were not given the legally-required notice that the plant was about to close."

UE is an independent union that is not affiliated with the AFL-CIO, although its roots go back to the militant labor organizing of the 1930s that gave rise to the groundbreaking Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Some of the solidarity of old has been on display in Chicago this weekend, as UE members have been supported by unions that are affiliated with both the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition of major unions.

Recognizing the absurdity of taxpayer-funded bailouts that enrich banks that in turn cut credit for American manufacturers, Richard Berg, president of Chicago's powerful Teamsters Local 743, said. "If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country."

Invoking Chicago's rich record of labor struggle -- from the Haymarket Martyrs in the 19th century to the steel industry organizing of the 1930s -- American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 regional director Larry Spivack hailed its latest expression.

"The history of workers is built on issues like this here today," Spivack told union members at the plant.

Spivack's right.

But it is not just the history of workers that turns on struggles such as this. It is the history of presidents and the United States.

Barack Obama will not be the new FDR, and this coming period will not see a "new New Deal" unless labor is inspired to fight once more to keep workers on the job, plants operating and American manufacturing industries muscular enough to survive in the global market. Then, the proper demands can be made on an Obama administration to back up not just unions but their expanding membership.

If the right history of this time is written, it will be said that the new New Deal began in Chicago -- not just because Obama comes from the city but because workers there chose to stand up by sitting down.

For updates on developments in Chicago, UE website.

I pray that the employees at the Republic Windows and Doors company are successful in their endeavor.

National Security Adviser
General James Logan Jones, Jr.

General James Logan Jones, Jr. (USMC, Retired) (born December 19, 1943) is the former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) (2003-2006) and the Commander of the United States European Command (COMUSEUCOM) (2003-2006); and served as the 32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps (July 1999-January 2003). Jones retired from the United States Marine Corps on February 1, 2007 after 40 years of service

Defense Secretary
Robert Michael Gates

Robert Michael Gates (born September 25, 1943) is currently serving as the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense. He took office on December 18, 2006. Prior to this, Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and under President George H. W. Bush as Director of Central Intelligence. Before he joined the CIA, he served with the United States Air Force (USAF). After leaving the CIA, Gates became president of Texas A&M University and was a member of several corporate boards. Gates also served as a member of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan commission co-chaired by James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton, that has studied the Iraq War. He was also the first pick to serve as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security when it was created following the September 11, 2001 attacks, but he declined the appointment in order to remain President of Texas A&M University

UN Ambassador
Dr Susan Rice

Susan Elizabeth Rice (born November 17, 1964) is an American foreign policy expert. Rice served on the National Security Council and as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the second Bill Clinton administration, from October 1997 until January 20, 2001. She is currently on leave from the Brookings Institution, having served as a senior foreign policy advisor to Senator Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign. On November 5, 2008, Rice was named to the advisory board of the Obama-Biden Transition Project. On November 30, 2008, The New York Times reported that she was named by Barack Obama to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Attorney Genral
Eric Holder

Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. (born January 21, 1951), is a former Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, United States Attorney and Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He is currently a senior legal advisor to President-elect Barack Obama, a position he also held in Obama's campaign. He was one of three members of Obama's vice-presidential selection committee.

Homeland Security
Janet Napolitano

Janet Napolitano (born November 29, 1957) is the current governor of the U.S. state of Arizona, and a member of the Democratic Party, originally elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. She is Arizona's third female governor, and the first woman to win re-election. In November 2005, Time magazine named her one of the five best governors in the U.S.She served as the Chair of the National Governors Association in 2006-2007. In February 2006, Napolitano was named by The White House Project as one of "8 in '08", a group of eight female politicians who could possibly run for president in 2008. On November 5th, 2008, Napolitano was named to the advisory board of the Obama-Biden Transition Project.

Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (born October 26, 1947) is the junior United States Senator from New York, and was a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election. She is married to Bill Clinton—the 42nd President of the United States—and was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001.