Netanyahu's Speech to Congress

Yeah okay. Be proud to repeat the exact phrases you hear on radio.

Socialist dictator!!! Mental disease liberalism! I'm sure you came up with that genius yourself LOL

 

Ugh, I read this fool won the election

 

This already happened. It's was called the GW Bush presidency.

 

I don't listen to radio.m but from time to time I catch up on current events and I can see what liberalism is doing to this country. All you do is attack people personally. There is no substance to any of your posts. It's typical liberal m.o. because any real discussion of facts you will get owned on and revealed as a socialist.

 

More drama incoming.

 

And exactly when did the Dems undermine Bush's foreign policy with a letter to a head of state?

 

Over dramatize much?

 

If Iran gets a bomb they will use it, end of story. This whole open discussion, "negotiation" "deal" it's creating nuclear desire from other Arab nations as well. Now, the Saudis want a bomb.

I've been pretty fair with Obama (like how the economy has come back), but this "deal" with Iran ranks among the worst Presidential policies, ever.

 

You're right, they didn't write any letters. They just went and met foreign heads of state in person to do their dirty work. Re: Pelosi's visit to Assad in 2007 as an example.

 

Revenge politics. Never the solution to partisan pollution.

Replace with statemanship, a forgotten art in today's 'cable network' pantheon of vindictive-minded bloggers posing as journalists, preaching to their respective blindly partisan choirs.

Unfortunately, people's habitual tendencies be they social, psychological, or whatever, can cause them to wear down a 'groove' in their critical thinking mechanism, creating an intellectual 'rut' if you will and from there they become increasingly vulnerable to falling into those 'political snares' that further promote gridlock--simply put, partisans blindly following party lines. Fortunately, this died-in-the-wool partisanship that manifests itself with defensive, knee-jerk rejection of the other side’s ideas can be offset by self-affirmation. When people are encouraged to comfirm their sense of self-worth, they can escape this political trap, i.e. everything "we" is good, everything "them" is bad. And should the day ever come when people start viewing themselves (and others of a dissenting political philosophy) more as good people and not mearly good partisans, they become more tolerant of opposing viewpoints and look to engage them with greater clarity which brings nuance to the debate versus blindly rejecting it as some intellectually inferior threat to their own political identity and beliefs.

Take this amusing partisanship-on-steroids gem and try it on for size: Nancy Pelosi: "we have to pass the bill to know what's in it." Think about that for a second: what if the shoe where on the other foot and some GOP hack ran that by you as a member of the house. Or better yet: "hey Cman, you first have to buy the new car that's behind curtain #2 to know what it is." Now anyone in their right, 'self-affirming' mind viewing this outside a partisan prism could tell you that this claptrap was beyond mere GOP arm-twisting and that it at its core was a galling insult to the intelligence of every single one of you-and-I "unwashed masses." And to bring this full circle, while G.W. Bush to me represents something akin to our country getting a very regrettable tattoo (screwup that he way), that's besides the point. The point is, to suggest that our current president is alone in the amount of emnity and malevolence he's had to put up is the "currency" of a partisan, one-sided coin. Revenge politics. We're better than that....or we sure as hell better be. Regards.

 

I have long been a supporter of Israel, but this election has undermined my support for them. Put aside the partisan politics here in the US for a second. Bibi flew over here knowing he was messing in our domestic politics, then insulted the American people with his W like Manicheanistic reasoning without offering any alternative. So far, it was bad but not worse, which it did get when he went on a racist tirade against Arab Israelis voting. That of course followed his flip flop on the two state solution to pander to the Orthodox and hard right parties.

ANd then the Israeli voters said yeah, that's the way to go, Bibi!

Seems like they are saying they want to go their own way. I am not heartened by European fecklessness, and think Hamas was insane to think their practice of shooting dumb rockets at Israel's civilian population encouraged anyting other than feed the bloodlust of reactionary elements in Gaza and the West bank. But it did do one other thing, it fed right into Bibi's narrative.

Still, if Israeli voters want to approve of someone who insults us, who shows hte Euros we have no leverage over them, who in effect allows Hamas to say see, they don't want peace, they want their Arab citizens to disappear, they want to build settlements and encourage the hard right orthodox parties, if that's what they want, then I don't have to support them anymore.

 

While revenge politics does not serve to create a positive direction for the country, it might still be better than some other alternatives. As long as the GOP fails to identify a positive direction, and instead wants to thwart anything the Dems want to do, it may be that of the available options the Dems might achieve the most that is possible by preventing the GOP from making things worse. That is better than in effect allowing the GOP to follow their destructive tendencies.

 

"Twart anything?"

Beyond the 'revenge politic' intro., the saliancy of my post had to do with 'self-affirmation' versus the lazy, partisan way out, i.e., describing "everything 'them' = bad" and "everything 'us' =good." Take the previous Pelosi example for example: how anyone (left, center 0r right) could not be totally cheesed-off at the unmittigated gall with her steamrolling behavior underscores my point about people blindly allowing themselves to fall into intellectual ruts. Not only was partisan politician Pelosi not willing to "give a little/take a little" (e.g. the single payer argument), she wanted--demanded--that it be passed lock, stock and barrell without so much as an over-the-weekend look/see at a 1,400 page document.

Having said that, you want an other-side-of-the-aisle example to sate your bi-partisan (wink) sensibilities? Fair enough, here's another "Washington is not your friend' example: this cynical swill that once came out of Tom DeLay's piehole: "It is not the principled partisan, however obnoious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled stateman who elevates compromise to a first principle."

 

I did not respond to your particular point for a number of resons. First of all as i recall the specific matter your characterization of what Pelosi meant is misleading. More to the point it was one case, and Pelosi does not talk for the whole Democratic party.

But the most important point is that one case of Pelosi's take on one issue is peanuts compared to The GOP's reflexive and absolute opposition to EVERYTHING, mostly without offering an alternative. Faced with such an approach, that allows for no reasonable compromise, it makes no sense either tactically or strategically to allow them to proceed when it suits them if you can stand in their way.

Sometimes fighting fire with fire is the best you can do.

 

"...it was one case" was more about in the interest of brevity--no need to take 'inventory'. As for does not talk for the whole Democratic party, she nevertheless was Speaker. This is going nowhere so I'm not going to belabor the point except to offer the following and to move on because I don't want to hi-jack this thread with some domestic, in-house bickering. Ftr, my on-topic take was that the "letter to Iran" was a rash "end around" and Netanyahoo's intractability I find to be an increasing turn-off. That said (and suffice to say), fighting fire with fire is 'revenge politics' however you wanna paint it and revenge politics as a matter of course always translates to in the long run as 'stagnation'. Instead of 'no' rubberstamping, I'd force compromise or would adopt a Dave Brubeck-esque approach, silly as it may sound: "can't get 6?.......take 5."

 

For the most part I do not disagree with you. My only clarification is that stagnation has already been the order of the day at least since the new House was seated after the 2010 election.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pentagon-loses-500-million-weapons-yemen-141526040.html

 

It could be a couple of things. For example I think I am usually pretty good at interpreting what people are trying to say. But he's a challenge in that regard.