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Friday, April 24, 2015

Is Barack Obama the First Jewish President?

Paul Waldman

March 12, 2012

It's not as crazy an idea as you might think.

If Bill Clinton was the first black president, as Toni Morrison famously observed, then could Barack Obama be the first Jewish president? That's the interesting case Jeffrey Goldberg makes at The Atlantic. Goldberg tells how he gave Obama a copy of a new Haggadah he contributed to:

When I handed him the Haggadah, President Obama, who famously stages his own seders at the White House, (which is a very nice philo-Semitic thing to do, IMHO) spent a moment leafing through it and making approving noises. Then he said (as I told the Times): "Does this mean we can't use the Maxwell House Haggadah anymore?"
George W. Bush was, in his own way, a philo-Semite, but he never would have made such an M.O.T. kind of joke (see the end of this post if you're not sure what M.O.T. means). Once again, Barack Obama was riffing off the cosmic joke that he is somehow anti-Semitic, when in fact, as many people understand, he is the most Jewish president we've ever had (except for Rutherford B. Hayes). No president, not even Bill Clinton, has traveled so widely in Jewish circles, been taught by so many Jewish law professors, and had so many Jewish mentors, colleagues, and friends, and advisers as Barack Obama (though it is true that every so often he appoints a gentile to serve as White House chief of staff). And so no President, I'm guessing, would know that the Maxwell House Haggadah -- the flimsy, wine-stained, rote, anti-intellectual Haggadah you get when you buy a can of coffee at Shoprite) -- is the target, alternatively, of great derision and veneration among American Jews (at least, I'm told there are people who venerate it).

Most conservatives wouldn't go as far as to accuse Obama of being an anti-Semite, but they certainly believe he's anti-Israel. Which is insane, of course, but what I've always found so striking about this question is how sidelined Jews themselves have become in today's discussions of Israel. That isn't to say there aren't particular Jews who are plenty involved, but the American Jewish community as it actually exists in America—mostly politically liberal, living its Judaism more as a culture than as a religion, troubled by the policies of the Israeli government in multiple areas—is increasingly estranged from the discussion, as more and more of that discussion is dominated by people like Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum. It's the world of post-Jewish Zionism, where Israel's most vehement advocates are people who see it mostly as a tool to use in a holy war between Christianity and Islam. As someone who grew up in a household where liberal Zionism was the primary expression of Jewish identity, I can't begin to describe how alienating it is to watch people like Palin waving Israeli flags around. And I'm pretty sure there are lots of other Jews who feel the same way.
Politicians spend much of their time trying to convince voters that they share a cultural understanding and affinity with voters—that they're "one of us," or at least that they get us, whether "us" is people of a particular religion, a particular social class, or a particular region. Their less successful attempts, like Mitt Romney saying "y'all" and proclaiming his newfound affection for grits, are widely noted and mocked. George W. Bush tried with the Jews—as he said, in my favorite Bush quote of all time, "I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah." But here's a case where Obama really does have an ease with, and an understanding of, a particular group. Yet he doesn't get a lot of credit for it.
Or maybe he does. Polls of Jews don't happen that often, because there are so few of them and that makes getting a sample of reasonable size time-consuming and expensive. But in 2008, Obama won 77 percent of the Jewish vote according to exit polls, about what other Democrats have gotten in recent years. For all the bleating from the American Likudniks (and yeah, I'll keep calling them that as long as they keep pretending that the only way to "support Israel" is to support the vision of the right-wing faction in Israeli politics) that Obama is anti-Israel, I don't think most Jews are going to buy it. Between now and November, I'm sure we'll see more articles like this one ("Has Obama Lost the Jewish Vote?"), after which he'll get right around the same proportion of votes from Jews as he did four years ago.

Comments

jnewsham

Mon, 2012-03-12 15:01

Permalink

Granted, there are many left-wing American Jews, but the Israeli left — at least when it is in the opposition — can be much more left-wing (as can the Israeli population at large) than many American Jews.
I also find it interesting that as much as the author decries the rebranding of being pro-Israel as "support[ing] the vision of the right-wing faction in Israeli politics," he buys into their language by billing folks like Palin and Santorum as "Israel's most vehement advocates." Does this mean they're winning?

TuJays

Tue, 2012-03-13 03:46

Permalink

Clinton was a Reptilian. Below is the youtube evidence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4IA8TKAbsA&feature=related
"...the right eye is not the same..."

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(If there's one thing we know about comment trolls, it's that they're lazy)

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Fleet of Iranian ships heading to Yemen turns around after being tracked by US warships

By Lucas Tomlinson

Published April 23, 2015

FoxNews.com

Now Playing Iranian warships arrive nears the coast of Yemen

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A nine-ship Iranian convoy believed to be laden with weapons bound for rebels in Yemen turned around Thursday after being followed by U.S. warships stationed in the area to prevent arms shipments, multiple sources in the Pentagon told Fox News.
The sources said the nine-ship convoy is south of Salalah, Oman, and now headed northeast in the Arabian Sea in the direction of home. The ships, which include seven freighters and two frigates, had sailed southwest along the coast of Yemen heading in the direction of Aden and the entrance to the Red Sea. They appeared to drop anchor in the north Arabian Sea, after the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the USS Normandy and a half-dozen other American ships arrived in the Arabian Sea on Monday, and U.S. officials said that they could intercept the convoy.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt, a 100,000-ton nuclear-powered aircraft carrier known as the “Big Stick” and her escort, the USS Normandy, a guided missile cruiser, have been shadowing the convoy for the past few days, the sources said.
Fighter jets taking off from the carrier have been relaying the convoy’s location to the U.S. Navy's higher command since the start of the week.
The Iranian Navy ships are characterized as "smaller than destroyers," a Pentagon official with knowledge of the convoy said Tuesday. Asked what type of weapons the freighters are carrying, one Pentagon official said, "they are bigger than small arms."
The reversal was welcomed by Pentagon officials, but they expressed caution saying, “this isn’t over yet,” and insisted Roosevelt will maintain observation on the convoy.
Iran backs the Houthi rebels, who chased the Yemeni president from Sanaa and are fighting for control of the Gulf nation. Warships from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who back Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, are positioned to the southwest of the convoy, forming a blockade of the Gulf of Aden and the port city of Aden.
Western governments and Sunni Arab countries say the Houthis get their arms from Iran. Tehran and the rebels deny that, although Iran has provided political and humanitarian support to the Shiite group.
The U.S. also has been providing logistical and intelligence support to the Saudi-led coalition launching airstrikes against the Houthis. That air campaign is now in its fourth week, and the U.S. also has begun refueling coalition aircraft involved in the conflict.
The campaign meant to halt the rebel power grab and help return to office Hadi, a close U.S. ally who fled Yemen.
The defiant Shiite rebels pressed their offensive in the country's south on Thursday, apparently ignoring an overture from Saudi Arabia earlier this week, while the kingdom's warplanes continued to target their positions, officials said.
The rebels’ prized goal -- the port city of Aden -- remained an elusive one, in part thanks to the Saudi-led airstrikes.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's top leaders, including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif, arrived Thursday in Saudi Arabia to push for negotiations in the Yemen conflict. The two are to meet with King Salman to discuss the crisis, according to Pakisitan's Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam.
Both predominantly Sunni majority countries, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are close allies, and Islamabad has supported the Saudi-led coalition, though it declined to send troops, warplanes and warships to join it.
The kingdom and Gulf Arab allies launched the airstrikes March 26, trying to crush the Houthis and allied military units loyal to ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The Saudis believe the rebels are tools for Iran to take control of Yemen.
Loud explosions shook the cities of Taiz and Ibb in western Yemen on Thursday, as well as Aden when coalition warplanes bombed the rebels and their allies, witnesses said.
Residents also said the Houthis and Saleh's forces were attacking the city of Dhale, one of the southern gateways to Aden, with random shelling.
All Yemeni officials and witnesses spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media or feared for their safety amid the fighting.The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Five Signs the World is Now On the Cusp of All Out War

By MONEY MORNING STAFF REPORTS

Should the rise of conflicts across the Middle East and Ukraine serve as a warning sign that something much more dangerous is approaching?
According to Jim Rickards, the CIA's Asymmetric Warfare Advisor, the answer is yes.
In a startling interview he reveals that all 16 U.S. Intelligence Agencies have begun to prepare for World War III.
Making matters worse, his colleagues believe it could begin within the next 6 months.
However, the ground zero location for this global conflict is what makes his interview a must-see for every American.
Take a few moments to watch it below and decide for yourself.

New eruption at Turrialba produced ash column reaching more than 6,500 feet

Posted on April 23, 2015 by The Extinction Protocol

April 2015 – COSTA RICA – Costa Rica’s Turrialba volcano erupted again Tuesday afternoon, producing a column of ash, gas, and water vapor that reached some 6,500 feet over the volcano’s crater, according to the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (OVSICORI). The eruption began at 4:04 p.m. and continued for 22 minutes, according to OVSICORI. Constant seismic activity has been recorded at the volcano since Saturday, and local residents have reported a strong smell of sulfur for the last several days.

San Jose’s Tobias Bolanos Airport announced a partial closure of the airport Tuesday evening due to potential ashfall, but was back to normal operation by Wednesday morning. An eruption of similar magnitude most recently occurred on Tuesday, April 7^th. One of Costa Rica’s most well-known volcanologists, Gino Gonzalez of the National Seismological Network (RSN), said in December that Turrialba could remain active and belching ash for as long as two years. –Inside Costa Rica

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Alabama Senate Opens With Prayer Seeking ‘Forgiveness for Allowing Sexual Perversions’

April 22, 2015 | Filed under: Law & Government,Life & Society,Top Stories | By: Heather Clark

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – The Alabama Senate was opened with a prayer on Tuesday that sought forgiveness for the nation’s embrace of sexual perversion.
“Forgive us for allowing sexual perversions to be considered as normal,” prayed David Gonnella, pastor of Magnolia Springs Baptist Church in Theodore.
He was later approached by Mike Cason of AL.com, who asked if his words pertained to homosexuality. Gonnella said that he was referring to anything that God considers an abomination.
However, he noted that he disagrees with January’s federal court ruling surrounding the state’s Sanctity of Marriage Act and supports Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s efforts to uphold the state Constitution. The amendment at issue, passed in 2006 with 81 percent of the vote, states that “[m]arriage is inherently a unique relationship between a man and a woman.”

“The people of Alabama voted that marriage should be between one man and one woman and that should be what is done,” Gonnella said.
As previously reported, in 2013, two lesbians in the state sued Gov. Robert Bentley, Attorney General Luther Strange and Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis—among others—in an attempt to overturn the law after one of the women was denied from adopting the other woman’s child. U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade ruled in favor of the women, stating that the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Act “harms the children of same-sex couples.”
But Moore found the ruling to be tyrannical, and forbid probate judges throughout the state from issuing same-sex licenses.

“Lower federal courts are without authority to impose their own interpretation of federal constitutional law upon the state courts,” he wrote in a statewide memo. “Not only is the Mobile federal court acting without constitutional authority, but it is doing so in a manner inconsistent with the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
Moore also called upon Gov. Bentley to uphold the state Constitution and reject the ruling. He additionally pointed to the Scriptures in his plea, as Jesus declared in Mark 10:6-9 that “from the beginning of creation God made them male and female, [and] for this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.”
The high court justice noted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from 1885, which was reiterated in 1908, which stated that the foundation for marriage and family is “the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony.”
But Bentley, a former Sunday school teacher and elder, said that he felt he must uphold the ruling despite his disagreement with it. Bentley’s pastor, Gil McKee of First Baptist Church Tuscaloosa, has been encouraging Bentley that it is the Christian’s duty to obey God rather than men, just as God’s people did in Scripture.
“There’s nothing grey about this issue—not if you’re going to go with what God says, and God has made it clear that marriage is between one man and one woman, period, and that settles it,” he said in a sermon in February. “The issue is, are we going to go with God, or are we going to go with somebody else?”

Drone with radioactive material found on Japanese prime minister's office roof

By Jake Adelstein

Japan: Drone apparently carrying small amount of radioactive fluid found on prime minister's roof

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was traveling in Indonesia when drone was found by office staff

A small drone aircraft containing what was believed to be a minute amount of radioactive cesium was discovered Wednesday morning on the heliport above Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s office.
No one was injured, and Abe was traveling in Indonesia at the time the drone was found by office staff, but police said they were investigating the incident as possible terrorist threat.
The drone was plainly marked with the universal sign for radiation, and authorities said they had detected minute levels of radiation from it.
Tokyo police sources said the drone had four propellers with a diameter of about 18 inches, plus a small camera and plastic container attached. The container, about 1 inch by 4 inches, held a small amount of a radioactive liquid, they said.
The Tokyo police bomb squad was called in to investigate the device but found no explosive materials. The levels of radiation detected from the drone were far too low to affect human health, officials said.
Police did not immediately determine who piloted the drone or when it landed atop the office.
According to the Transport Ministry, Japan has no laws regulating drone flights at altitudes below about 650 feet, and it is not illegal to fly drones over government buildings or even the prime minister’s residence.
A police source, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said officers were investigating whether anti-nuclear activists landed the drone on the office to call attention to the government’s handling of nuclear issues.
The Abe government has been pressing forward with plans to restart Japan’s nuclear reactors despite substantial public opposition lingering from the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in March 2011 after the country was struck by a massive earthquake and tsunami. On Wednesday, minutes before the drone was discovered, a district court in Kagoshima approved the restarting of a nuclear power plant in southwest Japan.
Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said at a news conference that police were investigating the situation and that the government would take steps to prevent further incidents. He noted that Japan had begun studying possible counter-measures against unmanned aircraft after a drone crash-landed on the White House grounds in January.
In that case, the man who had been in possession of the drone was not charged; he told authorities he had borrowed the drone from a friend and lost control of craft while attempting to fly it. Forensic analysis later indicated that the drone was not under control of the operator at the time it crashed.
Adelstein is a special correspondent.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Obama Kept Iran's Short Breakout Time a Secret

549 Apr 21, 2015 6:00 AM EDT

By Eli Lake

The Barack Obama administration has estimated for years that Iran was at most three months away from enriching enough nuclear fuel for an atomic bomb. But the administration only declassified this estimate at the beginning of the month, just in time for the White House to make the case for its Iran deal to Congress and the public.
Speaking to reporters and editors at our Washington bureau on Monday, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz acknowledged that the U.S. has assessed for several years that Iran has been two to three months away from producing enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. When asked how long the administration has held this assessment, Moniz said: "Oh quite some time." He added: "They are now, they are right now spinning, I mean enriching with 9,400 centrifuges out of their roughly 19,000. Plus all the . . . . R&D work. If you put that together it's very, very little time to go forward. That's the 2-3 months."
Brian Hale, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, confirmed to me Monday that the two-to-three-month estimate for fissile material was declassified on April 1.
Here is the puzzling thing: When Obama began his second term in 2013, he sang a different tune. He emphasized that Iran was more than a year away from a nuclear bomb, without mentioning that his intelligence community believed it was only two to three months away from making enough fuel for one, long considered the most challenging task in building a weapon. Today Obama emphasizes that Iran is only two to three months away from acquiring enough fuel for a bomb, creating a sense of urgency for his Iran agreement.
Back in 2013, when Congress was weighing new sanctions on Iran and Obama was pushing for more diplomacy, his interest was in tamping down that sense of urgency. On the eve of a visit to Israel, Obama told Israel's Channel Two, "Right now, we think it would take over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon, but obviously we don’t want to cut it too close."
On Oct. 5 of that year, Obama contrasted the U.S. view of an Iranian breakout with that of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who at the time said Iran was only six months away from nuclear capability. Obama told the Associated Press, "Our assessment continues to be a year or more away. And in fact, actually, our estimate is probably more conservative than the estimates of Israeli intelligence services."
Ben Caspit, an Israeli journalist and columnist for Al-Monitor, reported last year that Israel's breakout estimate was also two to three months away.
A year ago, after the nuclear talks started, Secretary of State John Kerry dropped the first hint about the still-classified Iran breakout estimate. He told a Senate panel, "I think it is fair to say, I think it is public knowledge today, that we are operating with a time period for a so-called breakout of about two months."
David Albright, a former weapons inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told me administration officials appeared to be intentionally unspecific in 2013, when the talking points used the 12-months-plus timeline. "They weren't clear at all about what this one-year estimate meant, but people like me who said let's break it down to the constituent pieces in terms of time to build a bomb were rebuffed," he said. Albright's group released its own breakout timetable that focused solely on the production of highly enriched uranium, not the weapon itself. It concluded Iran was potentially less than a month away.
When USA Today asked a spokeswoman for the National Security Council about Albright's estimate, she responded that the intelligence community maintained a number of estimates for how long Iran would take to produce enough material for a weapon.
"They have made it very hard for those of us saying, let's just focus on weapons-grade uranium, there is this shorter period of time and not a year," Albright told me. "If you just want a nuclear test device to blow up underground, I don't think you need a year."
This view is supported by a leaked document from the International Atomic Energy Agency, first published by the Associated Press in 2009. Albright's group published excerpts from the IAEA assessment that concluded Iran "has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device based upon (highly enriched uranium) as the fission fuel."
Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst who is now an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution, told me that most of the technical estimates about an Iranian breakout were not nearly as precise as they are sometimes portrayed in the press. "The idea there is such a thing as a hard and fast formula for this is nonsense," he said. "All the physicists come up with different answers depending on what inputs they use."
In this way, Obama's new, more alarmist figure of two to three months provides a key selling point for the framework reached this month in Switzerland. When Obama announced the preliminary agreement on April 2, he said one benefit was that if it were finalized, "even if it violated the deal, for the next decade at least, Iran would be a minimum of a year away from acquiring enough material for a bomb."
Hence the frustration of Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "We've been researching their claim that a deal would lengthen the breakout time for Iran from two to three months to a year," he told me of the administration. "We're just trying to confirm any of their numbers and we can't confirm or make sense of what they are referencing."
Nunes should hurry. The Iranian nuclear deal is scheduled to breakout in less than three months.
To contact the author on this story:
Eli Lake at elake1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor on this story: