COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Friday, September 04, 2015

Versailles on the Potomac - Trump Folds

Pressured by party, Trump signs Republican loyalty pledge

By:


Of course Donald Trump was going to sign the pledge. Was there ever any doubt?
I mean, Trump is now the king. No king anywhere has ever had a problem reciting some variation of these words:
“I pledge allegiance … to the king, and to the kingdom, for which the king stands.”
It’s only been four weeks since the Fox debate in which this whole third-party controversy was ginned up. Even then, it appeared that someone might emerge from the pack to challenge Trump. Someone almost always does. Nature abhors a vacuum and all that.
But the more we see of the rest of this 17-candidate field, the clearer it becomes that like Gertrude Stein’s Oakland, there is no ‘there’ there.
It’s a cavalcade of clowns. Juan Ellis Bush is now baring his lapdog teeth, trying to play the tough guy.
Yesterday, Juan went on the morning shows and promptly reinserted his foot in mouth.
“I think,” he mused, “that Donald Trump is trying to insult his way to the presidency. It’s not going to work.”
Maybe not, but neither is doing what Juan did next, in Hampton, N.H. As he began his monotone drone on a factory floor, a woman in a Red Sox cap promptly fell asleep. Spreading narcolepsy across the fruited plain is not a winning formula, nor is whining, nor is rhapsodizing about all the “vitality” that illegal aliens are bringing to the U.S.
Then there’s Chris Christie, another aspiring tool of the Chamber of Commerce. He was on Fox yesterday morning. The news was that Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republicans In Name Only National Committee (RINONC) would be flying to New York to get Trump to sign the pledge. The host handed Christie the pledge and a pen, which he grabbed like it was a Boston Creme with rainbow jimmies.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said. “And I don’t need Reince Priebus to come and meet with me.”
Later, at the press conference in the lobby at Trump Tower, the Donald was asked about Christie’s snide comment. Trump smiled and mentioned another new national poll, from Christie’s home state of New Jersey. Trump was tops, with 30 percent. Gov. Krispy was clinging to ninth place.
“Met?” Trump said. “You don’t have to be ‘met’ when you’re at 2 percent. It’s one of those things. That’s the way life works. And I like Gov. Christie, by the way.”
Then he mentioned the low return his rivals have reaped with their attacks on him. For instance, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry — “he’s dropping out,” Trump announced.
As he said that, Perry was waiting in Austin for his own live shot, his goofy glasses perched precariously on the bridge of his nose. A few minutes later the Fox anchor asked him, is what Trump said true? Are you dropping out?
Perry flashed that Dumb-and-Dumber grin.
“You know,” he drawled, “a broken clock is right once a day.”
Not twice, once. I pledge allegiance to the king ...
Listen to Howie from 3-7 today on AM 680 WRKO.

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51 comments:

  1. That didn’t take long, did it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Trump had the GOP oligarchs nervous or at least twitchy. The political duopoly is the source of elite power in Washington. The threat of a third party could permanently end that and Trump had a shot. Someone bought him, promised him something or caught him cross-dressing. Oh wee, it was fun while it lasted. We get fed the illusion of change but in reality it is only the small change.

    Never mind, we all know that it is theater of the surreal. So it shall always be

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Non sense.

      What you can do is get off your complaining ass and get out there and vote for the best man/woman in either party, and that would be this cycle Dr. Ben Carson.

      You and Quirk have this 'they are all dicks' attitude in common that is not the truth and is only self and socially defeating.

      Delete
    2. Already Mr. Trump has earned a Noble Prize for:

      Liberating Language From Political Correctness


      This in itself is a true gift to American politics.


      We can now go back to calling a perv a perv.

      I think this truly wonderful.............

      Delete
    3. It is childish too, the attitude of Quirk and yourself.

      It is not much to ask of a candidate running in a particular party to pledge to support that party's eventual nominee.

      What in the world is wrong with this ?

      Why should any party accept a candidate as one of their own if said candidate will not pledge to support that party's eventual nominee ?

      Seems perfectly normal and reasonable to me.

      Delete
    4. Let's say that Quirk, for instance, decided to throw his hat in the ring "as a Republican".

      We all know what a swindle this would be......are we not to be allowed to ask the Gentleman to sign something saying he will support the nominee of his temporarily adopted party ?

      Why should any Republican support him if he refuses to do so ?

      Delete
  3. Donald Trump talks tough and he likes to continually remind us that he's a "tough negotiator" and so we can trust him on Iran and getting the Mexicans to pay for our border wall for instance. And it did look like Trump was tough when he stood on stage with nine other Republican candidates for the GOP nomination and did not raise his hand when asked who onstage would agree to support the eventual nominee. That gave him an edge as the "I'm my own man" candidate and it gave him leverage over the GOP since the prospect of a third party conservative would all but insure that a Democrat was elected. Trump, of all people, ought to know the value of leverage.

    But as soon as push came to shove Trump caved and just gave that leverage away by today signing the pledge to support the eventual nominee that Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus put in front of him. So much for his negotiating skills. Pundits are saying that the pledge isn't legally binding so it doesn't really matter but having signed it he would look like a real snake if he then went back on his word. Voters would not likely appreciate so obvious a double dealer.

    Trump reversed himself the very first time his position was challenged and gave away the store doing it; would we really want a guy like that negotiating nuclear deals with Iran?


    - See more at: http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2015/09/some-tough-negotiator-trump-folds-cheap-suit#sthash.5ohlPin1.dpuf

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unborn Lives Matter


    Ben Carson, the Superior Outsider

    By Rich Lowry

    09/02/15, 10:04 PM EDT
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    While Jeb Bush feuds Donald Trump and others kowtow to him, only one candidate is seriously gaining on him.

    Ben Carson is now tied with Trump in one Iowa poll and is close in others, an especially notable result given that The Donald has jammed a lifetime's worth of free media into the past couple of months.

    Carson's rise suggests that it's possible to catch the populist wave roiling Republican politics and yet not be an obnoxious braggart who abuses anyone who crosses him and will say or do anything as long as he's getting attention. Ben Carson is a superior outsider to Donald Trump.

    He is more gentlemanly and more conservative, with a more compelling life story. Carson is a man of faith who, despite his manifest accomplishments, has a quiet dignity and winsome modesty about him. Ben Carson is a throwback, whereas Donald Trump is a bold-faced name straight out of our swinish celebrity culture.

    What they have in common is that they are political neophytes light on policy details who are memorable communicators precisely because they speak and carry themselves so differently from other politicians. Although the similarities stop there — Carson is what Trump calls "low energy," and yet he makes it work for him.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. At the Faith and Freedom event in Washington in June, Carson gave a speech that had no obvious applause lines, never rose above a conversational tone, had very little political content — and left perhaps the best impression of any presentation by a candidate.

      Few politicians have ever wielded soft-spokeness to such rhetorical effect. Carson aced the Fox debate when in his closing statement he didn't puff himself up and attempt to soar like candidates always do, but gently said a few nice things about his background as a surgeon, with a touch of humor. It was a hit.

      If Carson's surge continues, one wonders if other contenders now doing all they can to kowtow to and copy the bombastic real-estate mogul will instead decide to kowtow to and copy the mild-mannered retired neurosurgeon.

      Carson is a more natural fit for conservatives than Trump. If you like your outsider not to favor higher taxes, not to have once opposed the ban of partial birth abortion, not to speak favorably of socialized medicine, not to have been an erstwhile booster of Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, and not to have experience buying off politicians, Ben Carson (or Carly Fiorina) is a much better bet than Donald Trump.

      And Carson is altogether a more sympathetic figure. He rose from nothing; Trump took over the family real-estate business. Carson's mom was one of 24 kids, had a third-grade education and worked as a domestic; Trump's father built tens of thousands of apartments in Brooklyn and Queens and amassed a fortune of $300 million.

      Carson is a serious Christian who has a powerful testimonial about getting down on his knees as a young man unable to control his temper and saying, "Lord, unless you help me, I'm not going to make it."

      Carson tells of how he prayed to God to give him the right woman and how he has been married to his wife, Candy, for 40 years; Trump brags about the beautiful women he has bedded.


      Trump says he likes "The Art of the Deal" better than any book except the Bible, but he appears to have read just one of them. His evasions when he was asked a few basic questions in a Bloomberg interview about the Good Book were hilariously ham-fisted (he can't answer what his favorite verse is because that's too personal a question).

      Delete
    2. Trump is the most blatantly secular major presidential candidate since Howard Dean, and of course, he is running as a Republican, not a Democrat. Trump will have to do well in the Iowa caucuses that have been won most recently by Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and George W. Bush — a devout Catholic, an ordained Baptist preacher and an evangelical, none of whom were prone to fits of awkwardness and shyness when the Bible came up.

      Trump is, to say the least, not of this mold. He is a successful creature of our culture of conspicuous display and tasteless braggadocio. It's no accident that he played himself in WWE wrestling dramas, or that he names everything after himself, or that he doesn't have enough superlatives for own personal qualities and wealth and accomplishments.

      Not content simply to brag about his real achievements, Trump says things that are obviously self-inflating fables. Does anyone really believe that other candidates came up to Trump after the Fox debate and told him he had won, as he maintained in his post-debate interview with CNN's Don Lemon?

      Carson has certainly made the most of his own renown, churning out best-sellers and raking in the speaking fees, but he operates from a baseline of self-respect and respect for others.

      It's impossible to imagine him engaging in juvenile insult wars with random targets of his ire. Or imagine him calling a female journalist a "bimbo" for asking questions that he found unwelcome. Or commenting crudely on women's appearances.

      Like Trump, Carson excoriates the culture of political correctness and has said his share of outrageous things, but he also doesn't consider it beneath him to occasionally apologize.

      America long ago turned its back on self-restraint and gentlemanliness. Conservatives were the last holdouts, but their dalliance with Trump makes you wonder if they, too, are willing to surrender to celebrity excess as the new norm.

      Ben Carson stands for something different. His personal story shows how true class isn't about riches, but about character. Donald Trump has all the finest things and I'd hazard to guess barely as much class as Ben Carson's penniless mother struggling to raise her sons had in her pinky.

      Carson may not ultimately have the political pull of Trump, who is more mediagenic and can potentially spend much more money. Yet, if conservatives want to flirt with an unconventional candidate, Carson provides the opportunity to do it without a guilty conscience.

      http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/ben-carson-the-superior-outsider-213291

      Go Ben !

      Delete
  5. "The same can be said for most “whites.” The Poles, with their country stolen out from under their feet, brutalized by no less than three empires. The southern Italians, enslaved by the Normans, the Turks, and “da Moors” (according to Dennis Hopper), not to mention their own northern brethren. The Jews, chased from pillar to post across entire continents and finally subjected to the greatest horror ever witnessed by history. You’d have to search for quite some time to find an ethnicity that benefitted from “white privilege.” White skin never saved anyone from persecution, torment, slavery, starvation, or anything else."

    Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/09/a_brief_history_of_white_privilege.html#ixzz3klRCr2Pt
    Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

    Articles like this are why I like American Thinker.

    Read it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Somebody actually ran the numbers, and they came out like many of us expected.

    If Trump had just sold his father's property, and invested the money in an index fund he would be worth more, today, than he is.

    All that noise, and all those bankruptcies have yielded less that the S&P 500.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Now, back to politics: the salient point isn't that the white "race" in the U.S. is expanding less rapidly than the non-white; it is that the white race is actually in Decline - not in percentage, but in actual nominal numbers.

    Obama only got 39% of the white vote, and yet, beat Romney fairly handily.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What I want is an immigration system that actually privileges those with some BRAINS, like my Niece for instance, who knows five languages and speaks English just like us. and is getting her Ph.D. from Max Planck.

      Of course my lawyer and I suggested she become an American citizen.

      She is thinking about it. "It takes so long, Uncle Bob"

      To which I replied, only half jokingly, "well then, I will divorce my wife, and marry you, and you're in, then when you find Mr Right, I will sign our divorce petition, Dear Niece".....

      hehe....

      Delete
    2. Happily, this divine woman may end up in 'USA', as she calls it.

      He new boyfriend has Hindu relatives that are citizens and reside here....

      I am hoping for that, that if she marries they settle here.

      Delete
    3. Then I can doddle her kids on my old knee, and die happy.

      Delete
  8. The USA had the highest GDP, last qtr. of any country in the history of the world (including our own.)

    ReplyDelete
  9. The "smarts" are taking the under in today's jobs report. They're probably right, I guess. August is the most heavily upward revised month of the year.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Meanwhile, out this way, the uber poor are still holding their card boards signs outside of Wal-Mart:

    "Please help tough times God Bless"



    ReplyDelete
  11. Not a "steaming" jobs report, but pretty good.

    Wages Up 0.3%.

    Hours up 0.1 / week to 34.6

    Unemployment Rate down to 5.1%

    A tick up in "part-time" workers, however.

    B or B-

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Average weekly earnings still up only 2.49% YOY, though.

      Delete
    2. The freakin' wheels have evidently come completely off in China.

      We don't export a lot To China, but we export a Lot to countries that do export to China.

      It's going to be hard to keep an expansion going when the rest of the entire world is in recession.

      Delete
    3. .

      The US is the largest consumer economy in the world. We don't export we buy and we use.

      Our exports amount to third in the world by dollar value but that is only because of the massive size of our economy. Our exports, at about 13% of GDP, are the smallest percentage of any industrialized country. In fact, there are only about 5 or 6 countries in the world that have a smaller percentage of exports and these are countries like the Sudan or others you have never even heard of. Heck Haiti has a higher percentage than the US.

      This is why I am against these trade deals. It is certainly the reason I am against granting the president 'fast track' authority.

      Having the largest market in the world, the US has the most bargaining leverage in the world. Yet, the trade agreements we have negotiated for the last 25 years have been to the benefits of the rich and the large corporations. It has led to the rapid reduction in decent jobs here which corresponds to the rapid growth in size and profits of the multinationals.

      .

      Delete
    4. .

      If Trump had just sold his father's property, and invested the money in an index fund he would be worth more, today, than he is.

      Trump's a billionaire. He is hardly hurting. More important are the thousands of jobs his ventures support.

      Nothing like taking all your assets and sticking them in a bank to jump start the economy.

      .

      Delete
  12. .

    I was disappointed in Trump signing the pledge only because not signing it was an in your face slam at the establishment.

    There may be something in the idea that signing the pledge takes leverage away from Trump with the GOP. That may be true. The counterargument, of course, is that when he refused to make the pledge he needed to have leverage with the GOP. Now? Not so much.

    In the end, it is probably a small thing in the big picture. Trump based his decision on getting a 'fair shake' from the GOP. He basically defines what a fair shake actually is. If it didn't work out with the GOP and he still wanted to run for president he is in a position to claim he wasn't given a fair shake by the GOP and run as an independent. Lying and equivocation are the mother's milk of politics. Trump is quickly transitioning to becoming a politician.

    Finally, speaking of leverage or loss of it, it would probably be a mistake for the GOP to think they have Trump in their pocket with this pledge. He is like a crime boss or capo demanding 'respect'. If he doesn't get it, he is liable to go rogue despite the consequences.

    .

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  13. The only Republican that has even an outside, dogs-breath chance of winning the Presidency is Jeb! Bush.

    47% of the hispanic/latino vote is the absolutely minimum amount that makes victory possible, and Jeb! is the only Republican with a prayer of getting to that level.

    (actually, 47% probably wouldn't do it - unless said Republican can get 60% of the white vote - but it would put him in the realm of the possible.)

    ReplyDelete
  14. JERUSALEM—In early August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood in front of 22 Democratic U.S. lawmakers. He closed the door and instructed an aide to clear his schedule for the afternoon. There was nothing more important, he told the members of Congress, than answering their questions on the Iranian nuclear deal, however long it took.

    For the next two hours, the prime minister worked the room, according to many of the lawmakers present. His props included a large white board on which he wrote their questions. At one point, he drew what he called a “nuclear gun” to underline his fears. Although Mr. Netanyahu didn’t explicitly tell them to vote against the deal, his feelings were clear. It would seriously jeopardize Israel’s security, he told them.

    “They weren’t twisting my arm but they were certainly trying to convince me,” said Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a New Jersey Democrat, one of the House freshmen attending the meeting. “What a showman!” another lawmaker said.

    The Aug. 9 session in the prime minister’s office was a telling moment in an extraordinary campaign by Mr. Netanyahu to scuttle the agreement. Both supporters and opponents say they can’t recall any other foreign government inserting itself so directly into an American political debate, especially against a deal the White House considers a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s legacy.

    he high-stakes Israeli campaign has left the White House infuriated and many Democrats resentful. It also appears to have failed to secure the votes which Mr. Netanyahu needed to block the agreement. The Obama administration cleared an essential obstacle this week by securing more than 34 votes in the Senate, the minimum needed to sustain a presidential veto of a resolution seeking to undo the pact. A vote on a resolution approving or disapproving the deal is expected in coming weeks.

    But even if they lose that vote, Mr. Netanyahu and his allies could still try to find other ways to threaten the agreement down the road.

    It is common for foreign governments to lobby U.S. lawmakers on a wide range of issues. But administration and congressional officials said the Israeli effort, and its partisan nature, went far beyond the norm.

    “What you’re seeing with the Israelis, with the way they have inserted themselves into the debate publicly, is without parallel,” said Daniel Harsha, a veteran Democratic House national security staff member now at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

    ReplyDelete
  15. INTERESTING

    On the subject of the Iran pact, congressional aides said there have been meetings between European ambassadors and members of Congress and more are scheduled. British and French ambassadors have so far spoken to more than 80 members of Congress to urge support for the agreement, embassy officials said.

    To counter Mr. Netanyahu’s appeals, the White House mounted its own aggressive campaign for votes, which included a flurry of presidential phone calls to lawmakers and Situation Room briefings. Congressional aides said they have rarely, if ever, seen the Obama administration mount such intensive outreach.

    Mr. Netanyahu’s approach scored points with Israelis who agree with his decision to challenge Mr. Obama, but within Israel’s security establishment, some officials privately said they are deeply worried about the consequences of Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign on U.S.-Israel relations. Public criticism in Israel of Mr. Netanyahu’s intervention in Congress has come mainly from former security officials, who say they aren’t afraid to speak their minds.

    “I’ve never seen such an effort, almost in broad daylight, to involve ourselves in internal American politics, to work on the ground to try to effect a political outcome,” said Ephraim Halevy, who served as director of Israel’s spy service, the Mossad, from 1998 to 2002. Added Meir Dagan, who succeeded Mr. Halevy: “Friendly countries are not supposed to do this to each other.”

    U.S. administration and congressional officials said no other country in the world would be able to pull off a similar campaign, because no other country has Israel’s access or deep well of domestic support, led by the powerful pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as Aipac.

    A former aide to Mr. Netanyahu said he and his ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, who has held similar meetings with lawmakers in Washington, don’t see themselves as foreigners intervening in the U.S. political process because of their backgrounds in the U.S. and close contacts in Congress.

    “They think it’s their home turf,” the aide said. Mr. Netanyahu spent years as a youth in the U.S. and then returned later for university. Mr. Dermer was born in the U.S., moved to Israel as an adult and formally renounced his American citizenship in 2005 when he began serving the Israeli government in the U.S.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. FOR THE REST

      http://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-israels-bid-to-derail-iran-pact-1441329584

      Delete
    2. Every non-hyphenated non-loyalty conflicted American should be seething with anger over this affront to US sovereignty, but that should be minor compared to the treachery of the GOP.

      Delete
  16. .

    In the beginning, I expected Bush would walk away with the GOP nomination; however, his little cat fight with Trump seems to have hurt his brand. Hard to say if it is a permanent set-back. However, if Bush got the nomination or worse yet the presidency t would be deja vu all over again. In the end, he is simply a life long pol bought and paid for. The same for the rest of the GOP field with the exception of Trump, Carson, or Fiorina.

    Trump, without a personality transplant, would be a disaster at president. Fiorina will likely make it to the big stage in the next debate but she may end up agreeing with the idea of be careful what you ask for. We will see. She might have a shot at Vice President if she doesn't completely blow it. Carson still developing. Sounded like an idiot in the beginning but now learning a little. Can he make it in the long-term? Questionable.

    The Dems? Same ol' same ol'. Hillary is the epidimy of the political class, venal, privileged, incompetent, and corrupt. She has it all. Sanders, like Trump, Fiorina, and Carson, is a different kind of cat. Haven't been following him seriously under the assumption he doesn't have a chance. Don't know were Biden is at on the economy. No need looking at him and Sanders until Hillary fades a lot more.

    Bottom line, there is a high probability we will be stuck with the same kind of dick we have suffered under for decades.

    .

    ReplyDelete
  17. Netanyahu has fucked up. This type of power works best when it's hidden. The light of day is not a good thing when you're trafficking in treachery, and corruption.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael Bennett, Co., is number 38 to support Iran Nuclear Deal.

      Cardin the 3rd. execrable, treasonaous, piece of shit Democrat to oppose.

      Delete
    2. I'm afraid Obama will miss his 41 by one. I'm doubtful on Peters, and Manchin.

      Delete
    3. Cardin is no longer part of the conflicted loyalists. He is all in with The Likuds Force:

      Washington (CNN)In a setback to what has otherwise been a largely successful White House drive to secure enough support to implement the Iran nuclear deal, Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin announced Friday he will oppose it.

      Cardin, who is Jewish and the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, is only the third Senate Democrat to oppose the deal, which is otherwise nearing enough support to prevent a GOP-authored resolution of disapproval from even getting to a final vote.

      Delete
    4. If Harry Reid has any balls, Cardin should be ex- top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.

      Delete
    5. Harry just wants to go home and play with the girls. That fall seems to have taken a toll on him.

      Actually, the filibuster is probably dead:

      Getting three more in support wouldn't be enough since agreement supporter Chris Coons of Delaware has said he wants an up or down vote in the matter, and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia—who has not yet stated his position on the agreement one way or the other—has said he would not back a filibuster.

      Delete
  18. Surely there is one Republican not bought, paid for and owned by the Lobby. One with some American blood? No, not one, none?

    ReplyDelete
  19. The pro-Israel lobby was never the shadowy, government-controlling entity portrayed by its most paranoid critics. It was, however, an important influence on American politics. Zionism is to Jews what the civil-rights movement is to African-Americans, a political program organized to protect basic survivalist concerns. Jews participate disproportionately in political life in every way: voting, intellectual debate, donating, and organizing. The pro-Israel lobby organized an important constituency in American politics that shared a relatively unified understanding of its collective self-interest.

    A month ago, that lobby was gearing up for a massive national campaign to block the Iran nuclear deal, using every medium at its disposal: television ads, face-to-face lobbying, impassioned pleas from the bimah and in the Jewish press. The campaign has not only failed, it has appeared almost completely ineffectual, and its failure has left its members stupefied. The deal’s anticlimactic success shows that the world has moved beyond them, and they fail to understand how or why this happened.

    The miscalculations by opponents of the Iran deal began with a poor grasp of public opinion. They imagined they could foment a broad public backlash, and opponents frequently, and triumphantly, cited opinion polls showing more respondents disapproved than approved of the Iran deal. But the results of these polls varied widely. Small changes in wording produced wildly varying results, reflecting the fact that few people knew or cared much about the issue. Turning a foreign-policy issue with no immediate salience to American security — even a nuclear-armed Iran, a worst-case scenario, would not involve an attack on Americans at home or abroad — into an issue Americans would actively care about was never realistic.

    A Republican leadership aide, speaking to the Los Angeles Times, blamed Donald Trump’s candidacy for distracting the public. (“The GOP leadership aide, granted anonymity to discuss the setback, said billionaire Donald Trump’s attention-grabbing presidential campaign, along with scrutiny of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email server, overshadowed all other issues this summer, making it harder for the Republicans’ message to attract attention.”) Their plan could have worked! If only the atmosphere had been, as they apparently assumed it would be, completely devoid of a presidential campaign or other news.

    {...}

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  20. {...}

    The deal’s opponents not only misjudged public opinion as a whole, but more astonishingly, they misjudged the state of American Jewish opinion in particular. Congress might have been moved to oppose the Iran deal if the American Jewish community had viewed it as an existential threat to Israel. But Jews did not, on the whole, take that view. A detailed survey of American Jewish opinion by The Jewish Journal found, on the whole, that American Jews support the deal, 53 percent to 35 percent. How could that be?

    Liberals like the deal, and conservatives don’t, by roughly equal margins. But most Jews are liberals. Rising polarization of American life has cleaved in two everything in its path. There is no more "Israel lobby"; there is a red Israel lobby and a blue one.

    The implications of this cleavage made blocking the Iran deal hopeless from the outset. As a simple matter of political mechanics, acquiring a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress meant hawks needed liberal Democrats to take their side. But they did not have arguments that could appeal to liberals — even liberals with a deep emotional connection to Israel. Nonproliferation experts strongly supported the agreement as the best way out of a difficult circumstance. Even Israel’s security establishment disagreed with Benjamin Netanyahu and the pro-Israel right. The technical case for the strength of the inspections and the enforcement mechanism was strong; the case against leaned heavily on apocalypticism.

    And this underscores the most important tectonic forces moving beneath the Israel lobby’s feet. Over the last 15 years, the foreign-policy debate in Israel has moved steadily rightward. (In the last election, left-of-center Israeli parties relied on domestic issues, rather than appealing for territorial compromise.) The Israeli right favors either permanent occupation of the West Bank, or an occupation that lasts until such time as the Palestinians produce a pro-Zionist government, which is functionally the same thing.


    {...}

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/iran-deal-and-the-end-of-the-israel-lobby.html

      Delete
  21. Anyone who paid even the slightest amount of attention to this deal realized that the Zionists/ Republicans came out against the deal without even having had time to read it.

    How could they be taken seriously?

    ReplyDelete
  22. Jews are 2% of the US population. There are 7 billion on the planet who are not Jews. How smart was it to irritate so many of them? Obama did them a favor.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Leaning yes, but hesitant (2)

    Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.): "I have not made a decision about whether I will vote to reject the agreement or not. And I think that there are weaknesses in this agreement. The president has said, he's right, no agreement is perfect," he told constituents in Connecticut in August.

    Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.): "I believe that American strength is rooted in both military might and diplomacy, and I am pleased that we have given diplomacy a chance. However, we still need to look at the agreement in its entirety before passing judgment."

    Purely undecided/Unknown (2)

    Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.): She's approved tough sanctions on Iran in 2012 but has been quiet on the deal so far. On July 23 she told Politico: "It’s a really busy time around here and people are trying to do other things. And so if you don’t have to decide in the next two days, then people will take their time."

    Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.): Peters was an original co-sponsor of the 2015 Kirk-Menendez Iran sanctions bill that Obama said would put unnecessary pressure on the negotiations.

    So, even if Obama runs the table, he still can't mount a filibuster w/o Manchin, and/or Coons taking part. It looks like the veto will be necessary.

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    1. There is One super-long shot: Ron Wyden is being counted as a "no," but he hasn't come out definitively against the deal.

      As I said, run the table (including, Peters,) And flip Wyden.

      Oh, well . . . . . . . . :)

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  24. .

    I'm doubtful on Peters, and Manchin.

    Peters is a likely no vote. He is bought and paid for. He is on a list of the top 10 recipients of funds from the Lobby. He receives more money than John Boehner.

    The only reason I can see for him waiting is that he wants to see which way the wind blows and which way the vote will affect him politically.

    One thing we should remember is even if the deal passes here, it still has to pass in the Iranian parliament. There are a lot of hardliners there against the deal (although if you can believe some people the only real vote rests with ye old ayatollah).

    .

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  25. Deuce ☂Fri Sep 04, 02:59:00 PM EDT

    Jews are 2% of the US population. There are 7 billion on the planet who are not Jews. How smart was it to irritate so many of them? Obama did them a favor.

    .................

    Jews are 0.2 % of the population of the world.

    If the fucking Moslems didn't want to exterminate this small and creative group of people, we would not be talking about them.


    "First the Saturday people (the Jews), then the Sunday people (the Christians)" is one of their many genocidal slogans.....

    The 'Sunday people' are most likely YOU, dear reader, whether you are churched, or not, atheist, theist, don't know folk, whatever...

    YOU are the 'Sunday people', dear Reader

    Over 90% of the conflicts in the world are the fucking Moslems vs Whoever Is Neighbor

    The 'Jewish Question' makes up about 90% of the commentary here........

    That's all right, I'm not complaining.......

    The United States has done well up to now in supporting Israel. We should have done so, and we should continue to do so.

    They are our good older brothers in our minds.....our cultural cousins.....

    Obama is betraying these fine people....he is betraying me, and my better nature....I hope our country rights itself in the coming election.....

    Again, a heavy majority of the American people support Israel, always have and always will.....

    It is Saul Alinsky Obama and the current crap Democratic Party that do not.....

    Vote these assholes out of office !!

    Now !!


    Go Ben Carson

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    1. My Niece has an immediate understanding of just what's up with the fucking Moslems.

      Believe me, this wonderful woman KNOWS

      Delete