++J Street sees the re-election of Bibi as a threat to Israel's Shield--that is America's role at the United Nations to side-track anti-Israel resolutions and to veto more noxious ones. J Street sees the United States going more international in putting pressure on Bibi on the Palestinian issue.
++Fred Kaplan, who doesn't just us WASPs, writes in Slate "Israel Just Lost".Kaplan's point is that Bibi by doubling down on his stance against Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians puts the country into a box. Expect to see the disinvestment movement to become mainstream in our discourse.
++"Bibi Wins,Israel Loses" by Jonathan Alter repeats the themes of most of our op-eds that Bibi took the expedient way but left Israel with longer ,more durable troubles, particularly in the Western world.
++The Imperial Post thinks Bibi brought alot of grief on Israel. But, of course, this makes an Iranian nuclear deal harder?
++What makes the deal harder was that the GOP wants to jump the gun on additional sanctions and this plays into the Iranian hard-liners who can just blame the Zionists and call the whole thing off.
++The United States just took Iran and Hezbollah off the terrorist list. I wish there were objective criteria for both the "terrorist countries" and the "terrorist groups". On both the United States gives them credit for fighting ISIS.
Showing posts with label J Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label J Street. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
More Bibi
++#Bibi Doesn't Speak For me--Is the new J Street twitter account. J Street has asked John Boehner to postpone the speech.
++Senator Leahy is not going to attend the speech because it has gotten so politicized. He called the invitation "tawdry".
++Bibi says he is not going to insult President Obama but talk about what threatens Jews. He calls the speech "existential".
++And you thought Jewish voters were smarter? I did. It seems that 20% of Israelis don't even know who Labor leader Herzog is.
++President Obama, Ayatollah Khamenei, Bibi Netanyahu agree for once. They don't want a "bad deal" on Iran's nuclear program. I am sure all three can't agree on a "bad deal".
++Jennifer Rubin has an op-ed in the Imperial Post detailing what she thinks are deviations by President Obama on the nuclear deal. She also wants to introduce size of warheads and throw weights of missiles into the discussion. She likens the Iranian talks to our nuclear arms discussion with the Soviet Union.
++Slight problem here is that Iran, as every intelligence agency in the world, including Israel, will tell you Iran doe not have a nuclear device. Greater men than me have explained in great detail the problems of designing a nuclear warhead. One thing to remember is that the West has around the table people with many years of experience with nuclear weapons. It is something we actually know something about.
++The real short-term threat to Israel are Ballistic missiles, which can do extraordinary damage with conventional warheads. Remember Rumsfeld's great MOAB, which would create an atomic-like explosion. In a small land-mass like Israel,such weapons would be devastating.
++The problem remains like an EU ambassador said at the start of these talks. We are negotiating over a rug but haven't seen it yet.
++The Israeli press is saying that President Obama can't unseat Bibi like Clinton did or President H.W. Bush did to a prior Prime Minister. Too bad.
++Senator Leahy is not going to attend the speech because it has gotten so politicized. He called the invitation "tawdry".
++Bibi says he is not going to insult President Obama but talk about what threatens Jews. He calls the speech "existential".
++And you thought Jewish voters were smarter? I did. It seems that 20% of Israelis don't even know who Labor leader Herzog is.
++President Obama, Ayatollah Khamenei, Bibi Netanyahu agree for once. They don't want a "bad deal" on Iran's nuclear program. I am sure all three can't agree on a "bad deal".
++Jennifer Rubin has an op-ed in the Imperial Post detailing what she thinks are deviations by President Obama on the nuclear deal. She also wants to introduce size of warheads and throw weights of missiles into the discussion. She likens the Iranian talks to our nuclear arms discussion with the Soviet Union.
++Slight problem here is that Iran, as every intelligence agency in the world, including Israel, will tell you Iran doe not have a nuclear device. Greater men than me have explained in great detail the problems of designing a nuclear warhead. One thing to remember is that the West has around the table people with many years of experience with nuclear weapons. It is something we actually know something about.
++The real short-term threat to Israel are Ballistic missiles, which can do extraordinary damage with conventional warheads. Remember Rumsfeld's great MOAB, which would create an atomic-like explosion. In a small land-mass like Israel,such weapons would be devastating.
++The problem remains like an EU ambassador said at the start of these talks. We are negotiating over a rug but haven't seen it yet.
++The Israeli press is saying that President Obama can't unseat Bibi like Clinton did or President H.W. Bush did to a prior Prime Minister. Too bad.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
When the Neo-Cons Turn
++Robert Kagan tonight writes in the Washington Post why Bibi should turn down the invitation to speak before Congress because it fails the Churchill test,damages US-Israeli relations, does not help the debate over Iran in the United States, and was not thought out by Congress.
++Meanwhile a poll in Israel shows that Herzog and Livini have taken a lead. The reason is because they now claim they are the Zionist ticket and that the others have damaged Israeli identity.
++Josh Marshall is still on the case.
++Democrats in the House are circulating a petition not to have Bibi speak. J Street has instigated this provoking an unusual diatribe from Jennifer Rubin about how J Street can't be called pro-Israel.
++By the way Bryan Fischer is back--that didn't take long. He has a new talk show and says that now he can really tell you what he believes. You can't keep a good man down--or something like that. Rightwing Watch no longer has to worry about programming.
++Meanwhile a poll in Israel shows that Herzog and Livini have taken a lead. The reason is because they now claim they are the Zionist ticket and that the others have damaged Israeli identity.
++Josh Marshall is still on the case.
++Democrats in the House are circulating a petition not to have Bibi speak. J Street has instigated this provoking an unusual diatribe from Jennifer Rubin about how J Street can't be called pro-Israel.
++By the way Bryan Fischer is back--that didn't take long. He has a new talk show and says that now he can really tell you what he believes. You can't keep a good man down--or something like that. Rightwing Watch no longer has to worry about programming.
Friday, January 23, 2015
When You Lose Abe Foxman
++Abe Foxman said today that he was for more sanctions against Iran if the talks failed. He called on John Boehner to rescind the decision to invite Bibi. "The invitation and acceptance is ill-advised for either side. It (the Iran negotiations)is too important an issue to politicize it."
++J Street said they heard from democratic lobbyists that the invitation has backfired and that the sanctions bill will not reach a veto proof majority.
++The organization sent out letters urging congressman not to support the invitation, saying it was an "attempt to scuttle the critical negotiations taking place right now."
++"But a foreign leader lobbying Congress is inappropriate."
++Dylan Williams, the spokesperson for J Street, said,"The greatest danger from this is that it damages the long-term principle of bipartisan support for the special relationship with Israel."
++And one of my favorite Israeli politicians,Tzipi Livni accused Bibi Netanyahu of leading the country into "crisis and diplomatic isolation".
++When asked about the flap,Josh Ernst, President Obama's spokesperson, said that Obama had spoken to Bibi Netanyahu more times in his presidency than any other head of state and that the President remains committed to Israel's security.
++But, Abe Foxman, when he can't get silent you know you are in trouble.
++J Street said they heard from democratic lobbyists that the invitation has backfired and that the sanctions bill will not reach a veto proof majority.
++The organization sent out letters urging congressman not to support the invitation, saying it was an "attempt to scuttle the critical negotiations taking place right now."
++"But a foreign leader lobbying Congress is inappropriate."
++Dylan Williams, the spokesperson for J Street, said,"The greatest danger from this is that it damages the long-term principle of bipartisan support for the special relationship with Israel."
++And one of my favorite Israeli politicians,Tzipi Livni accused Bibi Netanyahu of leading the country into "crisis and diplomatic isolation".
++When asked about the flap,Josh Ernst, President Obama's spokesperson, said that Obama had spoken to Bibi Netanyahu more times in his presidency than any other head of state and that the President remains committed to Israel's security.
++But, Abe Foxman, when he can't get silent you know you are in trouble.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
EQUIPOISE
EQUIPOISE, Nice find by David Brooks to compliment President Obama on his confident, calm, and reflective response to a series of multiple crises from the oil spill to the collapse of Greece and to the alleged terrorist plots. Brooks' comments reflect the reason why Barack Obama obtained the largest number of popular votes in American history. As Peggy Noonan, Reagan's speechwriter, noted in her eulogy to her old boss "character does matter". While I love to swim in the ideological broth of American politics, I have to be honest that the American voter doesn't vote on ideology, something today's Republican party seems to have forgotten. This is especially true in American presidential politics where people take the measure of the man. President Obama wants to be a transformational President but my fears are that he absolutely must be if the country is able to turn the corner into a brigher future. But it is nice to be reminded by a conservative writer that our President is Cool.
The employment numbers are coming out tomorrow. Preliminary reports show that about 200,000 jobs were created this past month. Vice President Biden had predicted that the economy would show in a few months job creation at 250,000 to 500,000 per month. All this is good until you realize at this pace, the job losses from the Great Recession would only be recouped in roughly three years. That's with a strong recovery. As President Obama stated in Iowa, American businesses have used this recession to become more efficient and cost-cutting and hence may not be hiring back the employees they laid off. In out of the way places like MIT, NASA and a wind turbine plant, President Obama has been talking about his future for the American economy post-Recession. Without a basic economic transformation of this country, we are looking at a status quo of roughly 8% unemployment and the development of a permanent underclass that will require an expansion of a welfare safety net.
There seems to be one good development. Gotcha Politics, which we no longer can afford, seems to be failing. The Gulf Oil spill as Obama's Hurricane Katrina seems not to be gaining any traction. Rasmussen buried the findings about how the President rates on his handling of the crisis way down in his latest poll numbers. 20% rate the President's handling excellent, 23% good, 28% fair and 26% poor. Given his overweight to Republicans, the President is doing well.
Bad news for the birther cause. Governor Linda Lingle, the Republican Governor of Hawaii, gave an extended radio interview where she voiced her annoyance with all the requests for the President's birth certificate. She recalled how she was campaigning with John McCain in 2008 and began to take endless calls from her office on the subject. She had her own Health Director, a physician, to go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the Department of Health. She told her radio interviewer that Barack Obama was born at Kapi'olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii and that's the end of the matter. The Free Republic have absolutely gone nuts over this interview.
Mountebank. A nice find of Keith Olbermann to describe Rush Limbaugh but it can apply to so many on our cultural scene. One prime candidate is Rev.Rekers, who rented a male companion for his overseas vacation. The escort named "Lucien" agreed to be interviewed by a Miami paper in the wee-wee hours of the morning and admitted he was paid to have sex with the minister and once a day performed a naked massage on the clergyman. Lucien called his specialty the Long Stroke, a complex massage that entails a caress "across his penis, thigh..and his anus over the butt cheeks". With the teabagging visual I mentioned yesterday, conservatives will have a fuller array of sexual techniques at their disposal.
Franklin Graham showed up this morning at the Pentagon parking lot to pray, even though he was disinvited to the Pentagon's National Prayer Task Force meeting. Franklin accuses the President of being too tolerant of islam but too dismissive of Christians like himself. Billy's son claims that Christians are being persecuted for their beliefs and will soon not be able to prayer in public. As Jesus told his disciples in Matt. 6:6, you pray to God in private.
Joe Lieberman's bill to strip Americans of their citizenship is going ahead. The State Department would make the decision unilaterally and it would be automatic. Jonathan Turley pointed out that the bill would be instantly unconstitutional. But he also pointed out that the State Department's own terrorist list is fraud with problems. So if you have one ambiguity about what support means for an alleged terrorist group, and add it to the ambiguous nature of the terrorist designation in the first place, you have a royal legal mess. For instance, the ANC was only taken off the terrorist list last year, despite three democratic elections in post-apartheid South Africa. So, should Randall Robinson be automatically stripped of his American citizenship for his years of advocating the cause of the ANC? Contrary to what Joe Lieberman and John McCain think, a person stripped of their citizenship still receives Miranda rights.
Back to more of the Omar Khadr trial. The disgraced interrogator continued to testify in the trial. He said that they used the fear of rape on Khadr. He said that they used 4 big black guys to catch little Afghan boys in the showers at the Bagram Air Force Base. The Afghan captives were afraid of being gang-raped to death by these American soldiers. So the interrogators used this fear and told Khadr himself that he would be raped once he was transported to Gitmo. He said that the detainees were chained into stress positions and routinely trussed up into a cage "in one of the worst places on Earth". They called Omar Khadr, then a teenager, 'Buckshot Bob' because he had three holes in his body from wounds and shrapnel in his face.
J Street has a new poll of the American Jewish community on U.S.-Israel relations.
69% firmly support active American engagement in bringing about Middle East peace, even if it means publicly disagreeing with or exerting pressure on both Arabs and Israelis. It was 66% eight months ago;
69% support the U.S. working with a unified Hamas-Fatah Palestinian Authority government to achieve a peace agreement with Israel, even when informed the U.S. does not recognize Hamas due to its status as a terrorist organization and its refusal to recognize Israel. The Truman Institute at Hebrew University reported that 69% of Israelis also think Israel should negotiate with a joint Hamas-Fatah government;
By a 76-24% margin, American Jews support a two-state, final status deal between Israel and the Palestinians along the lines of the agreement nearly reached eight years ago during the Camp David and Taba talks;
By a 69-31% margin, American jews opposed Avigdor Lieberman's calls for requiring Arab citizens of Israel to sign loyalty oaths as well as his threats against Arab members of the Knesset.
Marco Rubio has reversed his position on the Arizona immigration law because of the recent revisions. J.D. Hayworth is asking that the Phoenix Sons apologize for their opposition to the llaw. SIEU has announced it's going to boycott Arizona.
Charlies Crist. now feeling his freedom as an independent, has suggested he will veto the Flordia abortion law requiring women watch ultrasound pictures of the fetus prior to abortion.
A new candidate for best political ad is the Democratic Party's "Demon Sheep II", which attacks Carly Fiorina for her incompetence as HP CEO, her outsourcing 28,000 California jobs to India, buying two yachts and 7 jets and her golden parachute package of $21 million. Nice job but they didn't get her placing HP profits in offshore bank accounts to avoid US taxes, which she is on record as saying, and her love of the Celtic Tiger. But there is still time for more.
Haley Barbour says the oil spill in the Gulf "isn't especially damaging to offshore drilling."
President Obama threaten to veto the financial reform bill if it contains the GOP consumer agency, which he called "worse than the status quo" and he's made noises over the provisions to audit the Fed. The beat goes on.
The employment numbers are coming out tomorrow. Preliminary reports show that about 200,000 jobs were created this past month. Vice President Biden had predicted that the economy would show in a few months job creation at 250,000 to 500,000 per month. All this is good until you realize at this pace, the job losses from the Great Recession would only be recouped in roughly three years. That's with a strong recovery. As President Obama stated in Iowa, American businesses have used this recession to become more efficient and cost-cutting and hence may not be hiring back the employees they laid off. In out of the way places like MIT, NASA and a wind turbine plant, President Obama has been talking about his future for the American economy post-Recession. Without a basic economic transformation of this country, we are looking at a status quo of roughly 8% unemployment and the development of a permanent underclass that will require an expansion of a welfare safety net.
There seems to be one good development. Gotcha Politics, which we no longer can afford, seems to be failing. The Gulf Oil spill as Obama's Hurricane Katrina seems not to be gaining any traction. Rasmussen buried the findings about how the President rates on his handling of the crisis way down in his latest poll numbers. 20% rate the President's handling excellent, 23% good, 28% fair and 26% poor. Given his overweight to Republicans, the President is doing well.
Bad news for the birther cause. Governor Linda Lingle, the Republican Governor of Hawaii, gave an extended radio interview where she voiced her annoyance with all the requests for the President's birth certificate. She recalled how she was campaigning with John McCain in 2008 and began to take endless calls from her office on the subject. She had her own Health Director, a physician, to go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the Department of Health. She told her radio interviewer that Barack Obama was born at Kapi'olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii and that's the end of the matter. The Free Republic have absolutely gone nuts over this interview.
Mountebank. A nice find of Keith Olbermann to describe Rush Limbaugh but it can apply to so many on our cultural scene. One prime candidate is Rev.Rekers, who rented a male companion for his overseas vacation. The escort named "Lucien" agreed to be interviewed by a Miami paper in the wee-wee hours of the morning and admitted he was paid to have sex with the minister and once a day performed a naked massage on the clergyman. Lucien called his specialty the Long Stroke, a complex massage that entails a caress "across his penis, thigh..and his anus over the butt cheeks". With the teabagging visual I mentioned yesterday, conservatives will have a fuller array of sexual techniques at their disposal.
Franklin Graham showed up this morning at the Pentagon parking lot to pray, even though he was disinvited to the Pentagon's National Prayer Task Force meeting. Franklin accuses the President of being too tolerant of islam but too dismissive of Christians like himself. Billy's son claims that Christians are being persecuted for their beliefs and will soon not be able to prayer in public. As Jesus told his disciples in Matt. 6:6, you pray to God in private.
Joe Lieberman's bill to strip Americans of their citizenship is going ahead. The State Department would make the decision unilaterally and it would be automatic. Jonathan Turley pointed out that the bill would be instantly unconstitutional. But he also pointed out that the State Department's own terrorist list is fraud with problems. So if you have one ambiguity about what support means for an alleged terrorist group, and add it to the ambiguous nature of the terrorist designation in the first place, you have a royal legal mess. For instance, the ANC was only taken off the terrorist list last year, despite three democratic elections in post-apartheid South Africa. So, should Randall Robinson be automatically stripped of his American citizenship for his years of advocating the cause of the ANC? Contrary to what Joe Lieberman and John McCain think, a person stripped of their citizenship still receives Miranda rights.
Back to more of the Omar Khadr trial. The disgraced interrogator continued to testify in the trial. He said that they used the fear of rape on Khadr. He said that they used 4 big black guys to catch little Afghan boys in the showers at the Bagram Air Force Base. The Afghan captives were afraid of being gang-raped to death by these American soldiers. So the interrogators used this fear and told Khadr himself that he would be raped once he was transported to Gitmo. He said that the detainees were chained into stress positions and routinely trussed up into a cage "in one of the worst places on Earth". They called Omar Khadr, then a teenager, 'Buckshot Bob' because he had three holes in his body from wounds and shrapnel in his face.
J Street has a new poll of the American Jewish community on U.S.-Israel relations.
69% firmly support active American engagement in bringing about Middle East peace, even if it means publicly disagreeing with or exerting pressure on both Arabs and Israelis. It was 66% eight months ago;
69% support the U.S. working with a unified Hamas-Fatah Palestinian Authority government to achieve a peace agreement with Israel, even when informed the U.S. does not recognize Hamas due to its status as a terrorist organization and its refusal to recognize Israel. The Truman Institute at Hebrew University reported that 69% of Israelis also think Israel should negotiate with a joint Hamas-Fatah government;
By a 76-24% margin, American Jews support a two-state, final status deal between Israel and the Palestinians along the lines of the agreement nearly reached eight years ago during the Camp David and Taba talks;
By a 69-31% margin, American jews opposed Avigdor Lieberman's calls for requiring Arab citizens of Israel to sign loyalty oaths as well as his threats against Arab members of the Knesset.
Marco Rubio has reversed his position on the Arizona immigration law because of the recent revisions. J.D. Hayworth is asking that the Phoenix Sons apologize for their opposition to the llaw. SIEU has announced it's going to boycott Arizona.
Charlies Crist. now feeling his freedom as an independent, has suggested he will veto the Flordia abortion law requiring women watch ultrasound pictures of the fetus prior to abortion.
A new candidate for best political ad is the Democratic Party's "Demon Sheep II", which attacks Carly Fiorina for her incompetence as HP CEO, her outsourcing 28,000 California jobs to India, buying two yachts and 7 jets and her golden parachute package of $21 million. Nice job but they didn't get her placing HP profits in offshore bank accounts to avoid US taxes, which she is on record as saying, and her love of the Celtic Tiger. But there is still time for more.
Haley Barbour says the oil spill in the Gulf "isn't especially damaging to offshore drilling."
President Obama threaten to veto the financial reform bill if it contains the GOP consumer agency, which he called "worse than the status quo" and he's made noises over the provisions to audit the Fed. The beat goes on.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Under Great White Northern Lights
Wow. Halfway through The White Stripes new album--a live set of songs played during their July-August 2007 tour of Canada. I've always said Jack White is insane--and musically gifted. The first eight cuts make me think the next step for him is to have the Melvins as his backup band. A run-through of his peculiar genius--and it is peculiar--is the album Icky Thump. But this new one magnifies his sound to a nice deafening level. Probably you shouldn't tell Glenn Beck about Jack White. Let him take another ten years to catch up.
Eric Holder is fighting back against his critics. Finally, someone in officialdom said," We aren't going to capture Bin Laden." He going to be killed or killed by his colleagues to avoid capture."We'll be reading Miranda rights to a corpse." Since the Clinton Administration, there has been this very strange conceit we want to or will capture Bin Laden. Clinton spent millions on a design for an ergonomic chair that would encase Bin Laden for a flight back to the United States. The CIA used to house it. Holder further lectured the House subcommittee just how the Administration is fighting terrorism and that law enforcement is secondary to killing them. I thought he got the better of the Republicans who sounded confused by hearing about the real policy , not the one their staff imagined for them.
J Street, the organization of moderate and liberal Jews for the defense of Israel, is offering a petition to be signed and sent to Congress supporting the Obama Administration and its calls on Israel to enter into a peace process. AIPAC has virtually declared war on J Street and sought to prevent a meeting between them and the Israeli ambassador. Fights have already broken out in Jerusalem over the Levittown idea. J Street's simple point is that the security of Israel can not be secured by the endless building of settlements and ignoring the need for entering into peace negotiations with the Palestinians. As I wrote before, Bibi has lit an exploding cigar and his actions since the rebuff of Joe Biden have not soothed things.
I received a strange e-mail from Organizing for America. It asked me to contact "wavering Republicans on healthcare." Like whom? The House with the exception of Cao is a unanimous block against the bill and in the Senate, we will have to wait to see if anyone believes they are missing an historic moment. The Medicare vote in the 1960s saw a few stragglers at the end.
The White House released a powerful video from yesterday's trip to Ohio by Barack Obama urging for passage of the bill. Watching it, I realized this really is about his mother and the impact of his mother's cancer on him. Throughout the campaign, he would talk about her on the phone to the insurance company while dying of cancer. And he frequently said that his mistake was writing a book about his father and not his mother. If that is the experience that motivates him, go for it. That's why I never understand the criticism of Barack Obama that he doesn't understand the experiences of real America. On the contrary, he has lived them much more than Peggy Noonan, who is the one talking head who keeps raising this.
The Republicans held a press conference denouncing Obama for "nationalizing student loans". This is reference to the Administration's plan to give student loans through the government and not through private banks. All he is doing is cutting out the banks, who got the money from the government in the first place. The idea is to lower the interest rates and eliminate the overhead costs. I still don't get how you can make hay out of this one.
The great state of Oklahoma has decided unilaterally to ignore the new Hate Crimes Law ,which covers gays and lesbians. This is the same state who took the President's picture down from the legislature. It's also the same state which sends Jim Imhofe to the Senate so he can declare climate change a hoax.
As Bob Dylan sang, The Night is falling from the Sky and the teabaggers have wrapped it up. Just to make them feel good, two million came out in force today. Actually, it was 300ish, according to the DNC. Of that over half were staffers from the Republican congressmen, who spoke to the throng, about another half from nearby conservative think-tanks and the remaining, actual people who drove into Washington. But they did get media coverage. I never saw the coverage of Howard Dean's first rally of over 10,000 for healthcare or Dean's rally/protest last week, which had about 2,000 marching against the insurance companies.
Again we had the Death Panel lies. All the media nonsense on the procedural process and the Democrats not wanting to vote on the bill was all lies, concocted by the Republicans, who actually did this over eight years. When the dust settles and the ceiling doesn't cave in,will the people who lied about this bill be held accountable? Will people who lean Republican just shrug their shoulders and claim the GOP had to do these things to stop the bill and to get the media's attention or will some voters understand you can't trust these people with any real authority?
President Obama made it clear today that any Democrat who opposes healthcare reform will not get funding from the party and he won't campaign for them. The last time a President did this was Ronald Reagan on his tax cuts. He told Republicans the same thing. Hopefully, this time it works again.
Bart Stupak is camping out at Fox News. He's complaining that the House leadership no longer consults with him. Fox, which enables Stupak's lies about the 12 votes he controls, asked him why. He says they are waiting to the end of the process. He did admit they are getting his colleagues separately.
Besides Lawrence O'Donnell, who continues his one-man bummer campaign, I also nominate "fake progressive" Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, who writes such nonsense about the bill. Today, she said she was doing whip counts with--tea party people. Both sides, luckily, concluded the house had the votes. But she is shameless. First her alliance with Grover Nordquist to kill the bill. Then her piece in Huffington Post about Obama's attacks on women who are defending "choice". Puh-Lease!
Michael Moore championed Dennis Kucinich as the only politician with courage to stand up for the right kind of health care. Terrific, that and a couple of bucks will get you a cup of coffee. Tonight, Howard Fineman claims that Dennis the Menace will vote for the bill. Dennis actually sent out a press release late this afternoon announcing he would declare his decision around 9am.
I am waiting word from Iraq about how far the fraud has gone in this election and whether the results will be honored. But Mookie Sadr is inching into third place. In some ways, that country deserves him.
General Petraeus ruined his Republican presidential prospects by testifying why it's time for openly gay people to be allowed to serve in the military.
This week there was a pretty disgusting episode where a woman Jene Newsome was thrown out of the National Guard because some cops saw her Iowa marriage license naming her female spouse through a window and contacted her base. Previously, she had been obeying the DADT policy. The ACLU is taking up her case.
NOM, the organization who campaigns against same-sex marriage, is now back in California. Their target now is the very staid, conservative Republican Tom Campbell, who is running for the GOP Senate nomination. You see Campbell is socially a libertarian and he wrote an article against Prop 8 in Reason magazine. So now he is the moral equivalent of Barbara Boxer. I always liked Campbell, even though he is ineffective and his economic philosophy is not suited to these dire times.
Yes, the Cleveland Clinic, who is treating Natoma Canfield, the heroine of Obama's speech, says she will not lose her house. So I think Tan Man Boehner should address the House that this fact alone means healthcare reform isn't necessary.
Eric Holder is fighting back against his critics. Finally, someone in officialdom said," We aren't going to capture Bin Laden." He going to be killed or killed by his colleagues to avoid capture."We'll be reading Miranda rights to a corpse." Since the Clinton Administration, there has been this very strange conceit we want to or will capture Bin Laden. Clinton spent millions on a design for an ergonomic chair that would encase Bin Laden for a flight back to the United States. The CIA used to house it. Holder further lectured the House subcommittee just how the Administration is fighting terrorism and that law enforcement is secondary to killing them. I thought he got the better of the Republicans who sounded confused by hearing about the real policy , not the one their staff imagined for them.
J Street, the organization of moderate and liberal Jews for the defense of Israel, is offering a petition to be signed and sent to Congress supporting the Obama Administration and its calls on Israel to enter into a peace process. AIPAC has virtually declared war on J Street and sought to prevent a meeting between them and the Israeli ambassador. Fights have already broken out in Jerusalem over the Levittown idea. J Street's simple point is that the security of Israel can not be secured by the endless building of settlements and ignoring the need for entering into peace negotiations with the Palestinians. As I wrote before, Bibi has lit an exploding cigar and his actions since the rebuff of Joe Biden have not soothed things.
I received a strange e-mail from Organizing for America. It asked me to contact "wavering Republicans on healthcare." Like whom? The House with the exception of Cao is a unanimous block against the bill and in the Senate, we will have to wait to see if anyone believes they are missing an historic moment. The Medicare vote in the 1960s saw a few stragglers at the end.
The White House released a powerful video from yesterday's trip to Ohio by Barack Obama urging for passage of the bill. Watching it, I realized this really is about his mother and the impact of his mother's cancer on him. Throughout the campaign, he would talk about her on the phone to the insurance company while dying of cancer. And he frequently said that his mistake was writing a book about his father and not his mother. If that is the experience that motivates him, go for it. That's why I never understand the criticism of Barack Obama that he doesn't understand the experiences of real America. On the contrary, he has lived them much more than Peggy Noonan, who is the one talking head who keeps raising this.
The Republicans held a press conference denouncing Obama for "nationalizing student loans". This is reference to the Administration's plan to give student loans through the government and not through private banks. All he is doing is cutting out the banks, who got the money from the government in the first place. The idea is to lower the interest rates and eliminate the overhead costs. I still don't get how you can make hay out of this one.
The great state of Oklahoma has decided unilaterally to ignore the new Hate Crimes Law ,which covers gays and lesbians. This is the same state who took the President's picture down from the legislature. It's also the same state which sends Jim Imhofe to the Senate so he can declare climate change a hoax.
As Bob Dylan sang, The Night is falling from the Sky and the teabaggers have wrapped it up. Just to make them feel good, two million came out in force today. Actually, it was 300ish, according to the DNC. Of that over half were staffers from the Republican congressmen, who spoke to the throng, about another half from nearby conservative think-tanks and the remaining, actual people who drove into Washington. But they did get media coverage. I never saw the coverage of Howard Dean's first rally of over 10,000 for healthcare or Dean's rally/protest last week, which had about 2,000 marching against the insurance companies.
Again we had the Death Panel lies. All the media nonsense on the procedural process and the Democrats not wanting to vote on the bill was all lies, concocted by the Republicans, who actually did this over eight years. When the dust settles and the ceiling doesn't cave in,will the people who lied about this bill be held accountable? Will people who lean Republican just shrug their shoulders and claim the GOP had to do these things to stop the bill and to get the media's attention or will some voters understand you can't trust these people with any real authority?
President Obama made it clear today that any Democrat who opposes healthcare reform will not get funding from the party and he won't campaign for them. The last time a President did this was Ronald Reagan on his tax cuts. He told Republicans the same thing. Hopefully, this time it works again.
Bart Stupak is camping out at Fox News. He's complaining that the House leadership no longer consults with him. Fox, which enables Stupak's lies about the 12 votes he controls, asked him why. He says they are waiting to the end of the process. He did admit they are getting his colleagues separately.
Besides Lawrence O'Donnell, who continues his one-man bummer campaign, I also nominate "fake progressive" Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, who writes such nonsense about the bill. Today, she said she was doing whip counts with--tea party people. Both sides, luckily, concluded the house had the votes. But she is shameless. First her alliance with Grover Nordquist to kill the bill. Then her piece in Huffington Post about Obama's attacks on women who are defending "choice". Puh-Lease!
Michael Moore championed Dennis Kucinich as the only politician with courage to stand up for the right kind of health care. Terrific, that and a couple of bucks will get you a cup of coffee. Tonight, Howard Fineman claims that Dennis the Menace will vote for the bill. Dennis actually sent out a press release late this afternoon announcing he would declare his decision around 9am.
I am waiting word from Iraq about how far the fraud has gone in this election and whether the results will be honored. But Mookie Sadr is inching into third place. In some ways, that country deserves him.
General Petraeus ruined his Republican presidential prospects by testifying why it's time for openly gay people to be allowed to serve in the military.
This week there was a pretty disgusting episode where a woman Jene Newsome was thrown out of the National Guard because some cops saw her Iowa marriage license naming her female spouse through a window and contacted her base. Previously, she had been obeying the DADT policy. The ACLU is taking up her case.
NOM, the organization who campaigns against same-sex marriage, is now back in California. Their target now is the very staid, conservative Republican Tom Campbell, who is running for the GOP Senate nomination. You see Campbell is socially a libertarian and he wrote an article against Prop 8 in Reason magazine. So now he is the moral equivalent of Barbara Boxer. I always liked Campbell, even though he is ineffective and his economic philosophy is not suited to these dire times.
Yes, the Cleveland Clinic, who is treating Natoma Canfield, the heroine of Obama's speech, says she will not lose her house. So I think Tan Man Boehner should address the House that this fact alone means healthcare reform isn't necessary.
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