QuickSilver
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Dems consider boycott Netanyahu address to Joint Congress
- Thread starter QuickSilver
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Debby
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lol!! ya think??
Here's how Republicans have worked with Obama..
Republicans: "Can we burn your house down?"
Obama: "no"
Republicans" "Well, then can we just burn the 2nd story??
Obama " No!"
Republicans: "Then how about just 2 or 3 rooms?"
Obama: "NO!"
Republicans: "Ok then, how about just your garage?"
Obama: "I told you... NO!"
Republicans: " You simply won't cooperate and compromise, will you!!"
Cute example but I don't think it really answers my question which was, 'have the Republicans not made an effort to not work with Obama in the same way they accuse him of not making any effort to work with them'. The above sounds like Obama is simply refusing to go along with a request.
QuickSilver
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No... and this example while facetious certainly sums it up.. Republicans filibuster nearly every piece of legislation put forward for the last 6 years. BUT that is not the issue here Debby..... It's the lack of protocol..... the obvious attempt to sabotage negotiations with Iran... AND the attempt to make Obama look weak and ineffective. Not to mention that established policy is that a sitting US President does NOT meet with a foreign leader so close to there re-election bid. He is not refusing ANYTHING... and HAS met with Netanyahu extensively in the past. It was a partisan political STUNT.... nothing more nothing less..
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0LA1AG20150206
Reading this makes a bit more sense that lots of these recent posts. It helps explain the purpose of this meeting and what Israel will speak about. The Congress is trying to pass a bill so that Iran will never be allowed nuclear power and weapons. That makes sense to many people and if Obama's ways fail, this bill will be ready to apply. It seems that more than 8 years of trying to control Iran and no progress at all should bring us to an end of the allowing Iran to progress on and on while we sit around and do nothing at all.
Reading this makes a bit more sense that lots of these recent posts. It helps explain the purpose of this meeting and what Israel will speak about. The Congress is trying to pass a bill so that Iran will never be allowed nuclear power and weapons. That makes sense to many people and if Obama's ways fail, this bill will be ready to apply. It seems that more than 8 years of trying to control Iran and no progress at all should bring us to an end of the allowing Iran to progress on and on while we sit around and do nothing at all.
AZ Jim
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Debby, When the President won his first term the Republicans went on record as saying "our goal is to make this him a one term President!" That philosophy is still their goal.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...9fd5cd8-0696-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html
QuickSilver
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Not to mention the now well known meeting of TOP Republicans the very night of Obama's inauguration in 2009... to derail all his proposed legislation
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/robert-draper-anti-obama-campaign_n_1452899.html
-- As President Barack Obama was celebrating his inauguration at various balls, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to submarine his presidency at a private dinner in Washington.
The event -- which provides a telling revelation for how quickly the post-election climate soured -- serves as the prologue of Robert Draper's much-discussed and heavily-reported new book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives."
According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 people in total) included Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-lawmakers present included Newt Gingrich, several years removed from his presidential campaign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican wordsmith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) -- who, Draper writes, had an acrimonious relationship with Luntz.
For several hours in the Caucus Room (a high-end D.C. establishment), the book says they plotted out ways to not just win back political power, but to also put the brakes on Obama's legislative platform.
Thanks for that note. Was never aware of it then not till now. But what is the problem with folks having a meeting and trying to figure out how to do whatever in the future. Sure bet none of the Democrats have ever done that - have they? All this nonsense about the Republicans as being evil, why not some about the Democrats too. As they are also quite evil. Look what they have done to the US budgets and our national debt in the last 8 years of Democrat denomination of the congress. That is a pretty sad view of what some call progress. Our nation went from $7+ trillions to $18 trillion under the Democrat leadership of the Congress. Pretty shameful to say the least.
I don't think the administration planned the scenario but is exploiting the situation to their advantage. Letting congress express opinions and take a stance they say they are moving away from lets the US speak out of both sides of it's mouth as far as Iran is concerned. For Iran it comes down to calling Bonher's bluff or taking what Obama will give them now.
I also find it curious that this report came out now.
https://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/...illed-key-hezbollah-leader-mughniyeh-in-2008/
Is someone reminding somebody of a favor?
QuickSilver
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The "UGLY TRUTH"? What kind of crazy website is that? Wouldn't be one of them there conspiracy sites now.. would it???? lol!!
Debby
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- East coast of Canada
So in other words, what you and QS are saying is that the Republicans are almost entirely oppositional? Well that must get things done eh? Can you imagine what kind of things might actually be accomplished if those bozo's would actually learn to cooperate and find a common ground?
Well Debby, I don't think there is a common ground. For the many bills sent from the House to the Democrat Senate, most were never opened and considered by the Democrats. So the opposition is just as bad as they claim the Republicans are. Two year and we will have a new President of one or the other party. New House and Senate members mixed in with the older bunch. I wonder how cooperative that group might be. I would expect another messed up situation if government is not all of one party. But it should not be so. Until recent years the anger was in the election year and the results did work together to get things done. Which is what our Constitution is supposed to inspire.
QuickSilver
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When republicans can come up with ANYTHING that appears to be "common ground".... realistic common ground without demanding their way or the highway.... I'm sure Democrats will listen...
QuickSilver
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I don't feel he "attacked" Christianity at all.. That is a perception of Christians that are still holding a persecution complex.. and believe me... that's many of them. I believe all he did was remind us of an unpleasant FACT... perhaps one that some just don't want to face. That is not attacking.. it's trying to remind folks of reality.. That's want a GOOD leader does you know.
Maybe after the next election we will have a good leader from either party. The one we have now is not a good leader at all. Our debt level of $18 trillion is one proof of poor leadership and our reduced military strength is another indication of poor leadership. Two more years and then, hope for a better leader. Hillary possible, especially if she listens to her husband Bill Clinton for advice. He was bringing down our national debt while he was in.
Josiah
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The following quote is from Kevin Drum's blog
"Poor John Boehner. You almost feel sorry for the guy sometimes. President Obama has been running rings around him for months now, infuriating the Republican caucus and causing Boehner endless headaches over Cuba, immigration, net neutrality, Homeland Security shutdowns, and dozens of other subjects. No matter how hard he tries, Boehner just hasn't been able to get ahead of any of this. Instead he's been forced over and over to respond to Obama's agenda while desperately trying to keep the peace among the tea partiers who control his future.Then, finally, it looked like he'd pulled something off. He announced the Netanyahu speech two weeks ago, catching the president off guard and garnering huzzahs from every corner of the the conservative movement. Finally, a victory!
But now it's all turned to ashes. His big spectacle is in tatters, with Democrats in open revolt and pundits of all stripes agreeing that he overreached by going around the White House on a foreign policy matter. It's been nothing but a headache, and even Netanyahu has joined the lynch mob now. What's worse, there's nothing he can do. The speech is still four weeks away, and Boehner has no choice but to let the whole dreary debacle play out. He already knows his show is a flop, but the curtain has to come up anyway and Boehner has to keep a stiff upper lip the whole time.
Poor guy."
"Poor John Boehner. You almost feel sorry for the guy sometimes. President Obama has been running rings around him for months now, infuriating the Republican caucus and causing Boehner endless headaches over Cuba, immigration, net neutrality, Homeland Security shutdowns, and dozens of other subjects. No matter how hard he tries, Boehner just hasn't been able to get ahead of any of this. Instead he's been forced over and over to respond to Obama's agenda while desperately trying to keep the peace among the tea partiers who control his future.Then, finally, it looked like he'd pulled something off. He announced the Netanyahu speech two weeks ago, catching the president off guard and garnering huzzahs from every corner of the the conservative movement. Finally, a victory!
But now it's all turned to ashes. His big spectacle is in tatters, with Democrats in open revolt and pundits of all stripes agreeing that he overreached by going around the White House on a foreign policy matter. It's been nothing but a headache, and even Netanyahu has joined the lynch mob now. What's worse, there's nothing he can do. The speech is still four weeks away, and Boehner has no choice but to let the whole dreary debacle play out. He already knows his show is a flop, but the curtain has to come up anyway and Boehner has to keep a stiff upper lip the whole time.
Poor guy."
Well, you are partially right. Obama has for six years now pretended the he was our king and had no reason to listen to the Congress for anything at all. Reid was one of Obama's best supporters and would never take any items from the House, read them in the Senate, then act on them, up or down. We have not had a legitimate government for 6 years now. I don't expect we will till after the next election and some real US type of person, Democrat or Republican, gets elected.
Here's an article about Netanyahu and the republicans. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/netanyahu-republicans
There is a measure of truth to this story, but it obscures a more significant reality. In their wars of ideas and political networks, Netanyahu’s Likud and his American supporters are an integral part of the Republican Party’s camp, and Israel is too involved in the American political landscape and defense establishment for Netanyahu to be considered as distant as a foreign leader.
Netanyahu and Obama are at odds not only diplomatically, in their positions on Iran, but in their affiliated political parties and overarching strategic visions.
Dermer once worked for the Republican strategist Frank Luntz; before moving to Israel, he helped to design the Contract With America.
Netanyahu has been a member of the Republicans’ neoconservative circle since the Reagan years; when I interviewed him in 1998, during his first term as Prime Minister, he took up the first ten minutes reading me a column by Charles Krauthammer.
Before the 2012 U.S. election, Netanyahu received Mitt Romney in Jerusalem in a series of encounters arranged by his adviser Dan Senor, once a spokesman for George W. Bush’s Iraq czar, L. Paul Bremer, and the co-author of a gushing book about Israel’s entrepreneurial economy.
These encounters were clearly calculated to undermine the President’s reëlection efforts.
Netanyahu, moreover, openly solicits financial support from Sheldon Adelson, who is estimated to have donated at least a hundred million dollars to Romney’s electoral efforts, and who has spent tens of millions subsidizing the freely distributed Israel Hayom, which boosts Netanyahu and tears down his opponents.
Netanyahu may fancy himself a Winston Churchill, warning the U.S. about Hitler’s threat to Britain. Instead, all this makes you wonder if he isn’t more like Texas
Governor Rick Perry, warning about the threat posed to his state by the President’s executive order on immigration.
Netanyahu’s invitation to speak before Congress has precipitated a crisis with the White House, but the clarity it offers comes as a relief. The strategic conflict is not between American and Israeli interests but rather between rival conceptions of how the two countries should exert and coördinate their respective national powers, the United States globally, and Israel regionally.
Each conception has organized advocates in each country—roughly, the Likud with Republicans and Israeli center-left parties with Democrats. One leftist Israeli party is petitioning the election commission to prevent Netanyahu’s speech from being broadcast.
Obama has kept Netanyahu from bombing Iran, but their differences have hardly been resolved. Increasingly, these conform to party lines. Obama and Kerry take what Steven Simon, the former senior director for Middle East and North Africa affairs in the Obama White House, has called a classically realist approach to global affairs. “Obama was both willing to deal with Egyptian President Morsi and also refused to label his overthrow as a coup, subordinating his concerns about Egyptian domestic political arrangements to a strategic concern for regional stability,” Simon told me.
Similarly, the realist move for Israel, with regard to the Palestinian territories, would be to strike a deal that reduces the risk of their being inflamed by neighboring conflicts. Obama, Kerry, and many Democrats are joined in these views not only by Labor Party and centrist leaders but also by former Mossad leaders Efraim Halevy, Meir Dagan, and Amiram Levin, and by Yuval Diskin and Yaakov Perry, former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency.
Simon adds that Obama’s realism is reflected in his management of the Iranian threat, which isn’t popular in Netanyahu’s circle but is certainly understood by many Israelis.
All Israelis are insistent that Iran’s proxy Hezbollah not threaten Israeli positions on the Golan Heights. But, on the question of how to respond to Iran’s nuclear program, there are differences of degree.
Realists generally suppose that the value of nuclear weapons lies in deterring their use by others; they don’t consider them useful for much else, although, Simon added, “One cannot be sure that Iranian officials will think them valueless during the period when they adjust to having them.” In fact, Iran may be emboldened to act rashly, believing that its nuclear capability gives it some sort of immunity against a punishing conventional response from Israel, which could spin out of control. Obama’s repeated assertions that the U.S. would not permit Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon reflect this concern.
Obama seems sincerely determined to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capacity, which would trigger a regional arms race.
Unlike Netanyahu and the Republicans, however, he wants to play out the negotiations without undermining his interlocutors’ standing with Iranian hardliners. He knows that the other side has hardliners—that is, an internal politics to which he needs to be sensitive.
He obviously supposes, but cannot be so undiplomatic as to say, that the best way to lower the flame under Iran’s nuclear program, and eventually to undermine the regime’s Islamist xenophobia, is to penetrate the country with Western investment (as happened in China in the seventies). Netanyahu says that he is adamantly against Iran gaining a “threshold” capability.
Obama, reasonably, is less concerned. He knows that he has the military means to prevent an Iranian bomb, even at the eleventh hour. Why bring things to the point of war before it becomes absolutely necessary?
“I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says, unless you adopt an unwavering, pro-Likud approach to Israel, that you are anti-Israel—and that can’t be the measure of our friendship,” Obama told a Cleveland audience in 2008. He has not said anything so sharp since then. What’s stopping him now?
The Netanyahu speech has brought the Likud alliance with the Republicans into the open, and to his doorstep. Why shouldn’t the Obama Administration and the Democratic leadership make their alliance with Netanyahu’s opponents just as plain?
The Israeli election is six weeks away, tight as a drum, and will be decided by unaffiliated and not very subtle voters. As I wrote in December, Netanyahu is stoking swing voters' fear of Arab enmity. His chief opponents, Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, are provoking their concern about global isolation and wrecked relations with Washington. Hezbollah and Hamas are inadvertently helping Netanyahu. Are not Obama, Kerry, and the Democrats—by holding to the fiction of bipartisanship, and refusing to embrace European initiatives to pressure Netanyahu’s benighted government—unnecessarily doing the same?
There is a measure of truth to this story, but it obscures a more significant reality. In their wars of ideas and political networks, Netanyahu’s Likud and his American supporters are an integral part of the Republican Party’s camp, and Israel is too involved in the American political landscape and defense establishment for Netanyahu to be considered as distant as a foreign leader.
Netanyahu and Obama are at odds not only diplomatically, in their positions on Iran, but in their affiliated political parties and overarching strategic visions.
Dermer once worked for the Republican strategist Frank Luntz; before moving to Israel, he helped to design the Contract With America.
Netanyahu has been a member of the Republicans’ neoconservative circle since the Reagan years; when I interviewed him in 1998, during his first term as Prime Minister, he took up the first ten minutes reading me a column by Charles Krauthammer.
Before the 2012 U.S. election, Netanyahu received Mitt Romney in Jerusalem in a series of encounters arranged by his adviser Dan Senor, once a spokesman for George W. Bush’s Iraq czar, L. Paul Bremer, and the co-author of a gushing book about Israel’s entrepreneurial economy.
These encounters were clearly calculated to undermine the President’s reëlection efforts.
Netanyahu, moreover, openly solicits financial support from Sheldon Adelson, who is estimated to have donated at least a hundred million dollars to Romney’s electoral efforts, and who has spent tens of millions subsidizing the freely distributed Israel Hayom, which boosts Netanyahu and tears down his opponents.
Netanyahu may fancy himself a Winston Churchill, warning the U.S. about Hitler’s threat to Britain. Instead, all this makes you wonder if he isn’t more like Texas
Governor Rick Perry, warning about the threat posed to his state by the President’s executive order on immigration.
Netanyahu’s invitation to speak before Congress has precipitated a crisis with the White House, but the clarity it offers comes as a relief. The strategic conflict is not between American and Israeli interests but rather between rival conceptions of how the two countries should exert and coördinate their respective national powers, the United States globally, and Israel regionally.
Each conception has organized advocates in each country—roughly, the Likud with Republicans and Israeli center-left parties with Democrats. One leftist Israeli party is petitioning the election commission to prevent Netanyahu’s speech from being broadcast.
Obama has kept Netanyahu from bombing Iran, but their differences have hardly been resolved. Increasingly, these conform to party lines. Obama and Kerry take what Steven Simon, the former senior director for Middle East and North Africa affairs in the Obama White House, has called a classically realist approach to global affairs. “Obama was both willing to deal with Egyptian President Morsi and also refused to label his overthrow as a coup, subordinating his concerns about Egyptian domestic political arrangements to a strategic concern for regional stability,” Simon told me.
Similarly, the realist move for Israel, with regard to the Palestinian territories, would be to strike a deal that reduces the risk of their being inflamed by neighboring conflicts. Obama, Kerry, and many Democrats are joined in these views not only by Labor Party and centrist leaders but also by former Mossad leaders Efraim Halevy, Meir Dagan, and Amiram Levin, and by Yuval Diskin and Yaakov Perry, former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency.
Simon adds that Obama’s realism is reflected in his management of the Iranian threat, which isn’t popular in Netanyahu’s circle but is certainly understood by many Israelis.
All Israelis are insistent that Iran’s proxy Hezbollah not threaten Israeli positions on the Golan Heights. But, on the question of how to respond to Iran’s nuclear program, there are differences of degree.
Realists generally suppose that the value of nuclear weapons lies in deterring their use by others; they don’t consider them useful for much else, although, Simon added, “One cannot be sure that Iranian officials will think them valueless during the period when they adjust to having them.” In fact, Iran may be emboldened to act rashly, believing that its nuclear capability gives it some sort of immunity against a punishing conventional response from Israel, which could spin out of control. Obama’s repeated assertions that the U.S. would not permit Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon reflect this concern.
Obama seems sincerely determined to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capacity, which would trigger a regional arms race.
Unlike Netanyahu and the Republicans, however, he wants to play out the negotiations without undermining his interlocutors’ standing with Iranian hardliners. He knows that the other side has hardliners—that is, an internal politics to which he needs to be sensitive.
He obviously supposes, but cannot be so undiplomatic as to say, that the best way to lower the flame under Iran’s nuclear program, and eventually to undermine the regime’s Islamist xenophobia, is to penetrate the country with Western investment (as happened in China in the seventies). Netanyahu says that he is adamantly against Iran gaining a “threshold” capability.
Obama, reasonably, is less concerned. He knows that he has the military means to prevent an Iranian bomb, even at the eleventh hour. Why bring things to the point of war before it becomes absolutely necessary?
“I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says, unless you adopt an unwavering, pro-Likud approach to Israel, that you are anti-Israel—and that can’t be the measure of our friendship,” Obama told a Cleveland audience in 2008. He has not said anything so sharp since then. What’s stopping him now?
The Netanyahu speech has brought the Likud alliance with the Republicans into the open, and to his doorstep. Why shouldn’t the Obama Administration and the Democratic leadership make their alliance with Netanyahu’s opponents just as plain?
The Israeli election is six weeks away, tight as a drum, and will be decided by unaffiliated and not very subtle voters. As I wrote in December, Netanyahu is stoking swing voters' fear of Arab enmity. His chief opponents, Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, are provoking their concern about global isolation and wrecked relations with Washington. Hezbollah and Hamas are inadvertently helping Netanyahu. Are not Obama, Kerry, and the Democrats—by holding to the fiction of bipartisanship, and refusing to embrace European initiatives to pressure Netanyahu’s benighted government—unnecessarily doing the same?
QuickSilver
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Debby
Well-known Member
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- East coast of Canada
'.....Are not Obama, Kerry, and the Democrats—by holding to the fiction of bipartisanship, and refusing to embrace European initiatives to pressure Netanyahu’s benighted government—unnecessarily doing the same?'
While I'm not sure what it is that they are doing the same (helping Netanyahu, provoking concern about globe isolation or stoking fear of Arab enmity???), the other part that I've underlined is probably a reference to the BDS movement against Israel that I think I read is gaining traction. BDS is 'boycott/divest/and sanction. Basically companies and individuals refusing to do business with Israel because of how they treat the Palestinian people. So the author is saying that by holding to the fiction of bipartisanship and by refusing to go along with the BDS movement they are .......doing the same????
You're right, that's very confusing!
I don't see the issue of Israel and the Palestinians to be the true statement at all. What is happening in the coastal Palestinian territory or Gaza Strip is Israel is busy on occasions fighting the Hamas. As far as those inland Palestinians living in the West Bank, there seems to be no troubles.