WELL-WRITTEN AND WRONG

The WSJ published an op-ed that offers a defense of Zionism and it amounts to a FAIL because of statements like this one:

The answer is simple: Zionism worked.

This is an example of Zionism "working" in Gaza -

A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION

Back in 2011, I was surprised to learn that at least one group of Orhtodox Jews doesn't think modern-day Israel is authorized by God and I just found a little more evidence:

THE ISRAEL-FIRSTERS PROBABLY WON'T MENTION THIS...

because it goes against one of their favorite memes: Democrats & Pres. Obama are anti-Israel.

House Clears $225 Million in Funding for Israel's Iron Dome Defense System
By Siobhan Hughes
 Updated Aug. 1, 2014 10:24 p.m. ET
WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON—The House on Friday cleared a bill to provide $225 million in emergency aid to Israel for its Iron Dome defense system, sending the measure to President Barack Obama in a congressional effort to support the nation amid increased fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The measure passed 395-8. Mr. Obama, who requested the money, is expected to sign the bill. 

Earlier in the day, the Senate approved the measure by unanimous consent on a day when most senators had left Washington for a five-week recess.

I. F. STONE WAS ALSO CORRECT

(h/t billmon)

His 1967 article in the NYRB is online  and this is all that needs to be said about the Mid-East:

Now to find a solution which will satisfy both peoples is like trying to square a circle. In the language of mathematics, the aspirations of the Jews and the Arabs are incommensurable. Their conflicting ambitions cannot be fitted into the confines of any ethical system which transcends the tribalistic.

BIBLICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR GENOCIDE?

This is a follow-up to the immediately preceding post.

You may recall that the Israelites killed everything that lived in the city of Jericho and another town and now I find there are two other savage incidents, this time in the Book of Samuel:

1 Samuel 15:13-18 (New International Version)

13 When Samuel reached him, Saul said, "The LORD bless you! I have carried out the LORD's instructions." 14 But Samuel said, "What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?" 15 Saul answered, "The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the LORD your God, but we totally destroyed the rest." 16 "Stop!" Samuel said to Saul. "Let me tell you what the LORD said to me last night." "Tell me," Saul replied. 17 Samuel said, "Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel. 18 And he sent you on a mission, saying, 'Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; make war on them until you have wiped them out.'

1 Samuel 22:11-19 (New International Version)

11 Then the king sent for the priest Ahimelech son of Ahitub and his father's whole family, who were the priests at Nob, and they all came to the king. 12 Saul said, "Listen now, son of Ahitub." "Yes, my lord," he answered. 13 Saul said to him, "Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, giving him bread and a sword and inquiring of God for him, so that he has rebelled against me and lies in wait for me, as he does today?" 14 Ahimelech answered the king, "Who of all your servants is as loyal as David, the king's son-in-law, captain of your bodyguard and highly respected in your household? 15 Was that day the first time I inquired of God for him? Of course not! Let not the king accuse your servant or any of his father's family, for your servant knows nothing at all about this whole affair." 16 But the king said, "You will surely die, Ahimelech, you and your father's whole family." 17 Then the king ordered the guards at his side: "Turn and kill the priests of the LORD, because they too have sided with David. They knew he was fleeing, yet they did not tell me." But the king's officials were not willing to raise a hand to strike the priests of the LORD. 18 The king then ordered Doeg, "You turn and strike down the priests." So Doeg the Edomite turned and struck them down. That day he killed eighty-five men who wore the linen ephod. 19 He also put to the sword Nob, the town of the priests, with its men and women, its children and infants, and its cattle, donkeys and sheep.

http://www.62fahrenheit.com/

AFTER 66 YEARS, ISRAEL'S FINALLY HIT BOTTOM

Bob Kincaid and Matt Osborne pointed me to this HuffPo Article:

Times Of Israel Publishes Op-Ed About 'When Genocide Is Permissible', Then Deletes It
The Huffington Post | By Catherine Taibi
Posted: 08/01/2014 2:47 pm EDT Updated: 08/01/2014 4:59 pm EDT

Yochanan Gordon's opinion piece, entitled "When Genocide is Permissible," wonders if the mass obliteration of a people would be justified if used as a means for Israeli military to "achieve its goal of sustaining quiet."

“Hamas has stated forthrightly that it idealizes death as much as Israel celebrates life,” Gordon wrote. “What other way then is there to deal with an enemy of this nature other than obliterate them completely?”

SOMETHING HANNITY WON'T TELL HIS AUDIENCE

Hannity routinely states that more oil drilling in the U.S. will make us the real "City of the Hill" or something so this chart from the WSJ was a bit of a surprise to me:

OH, OKAY - IT'S NOT REALLY A PROBLEM THEN

The NYT reports on Israel's response to the UN's estimate of the proportion of civilians killed by the IDF:

The United Nations maintains that 75 to 80 percent of the dead are civilians. Israel angrily rebuts that assertion. Its ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, said as recently as last week that his government had established that about half the dead were combatants.

The latest total of the dead is 1,361, so it's "only" 680 civilians according to Israel.

PRES. OBAMA HAS TO FIRE JOHN BRENNAN NOW

(h/t Atrios)

This is one more instance of an American spy official lying to Congress:

CIA admits it broke into Senate computers; senators call for spy chief’s ouster
By Jonathan S. Landay and Ali Watkins

McClatchy Washington Bureau
July 31, 2014 Updated 46 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — An internal CIA investigation confirmed allegations that agency personnel improperly intruded into a protected database used by Senate Intelligence Committee staff to compile a scathing report on the agency’s detention and interrogation program, prompting bipartisan outrage and at least two calls for spy chief John Brennan to resign.

The rare display of bipartisan fury followed a three-hour private briefing by Inspector General David Buckley. His investigation revealed that five CIA employees, two lawyers and three information technology specialists improperly accessed or “caused access” to a database that only committee staff were permitted to use.

The findings also contradicted Brennan’s denials of Feinstein’s allegations, prompting two panel members, Sens. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., to demand that the spy chief resign.

HILLARY CLINTON & THE MSM

On July 1st, Fats Limbaugh began pushing the idea that Hillary Clinton's new book was a great big FAIL:

RUSH: There was another apparent entry from Ed Klein today, who is the author of that Hillary book, Blood Clot, that's not in the book. Apparently the story is that Hillary is just despondent and depressed over the massive failure of her book. I mean, she's really down in the dumps, so much so that Bill Clinton has had to come off wherever he is. He's had to come home and he's trying to inspire Hillary.

I initially dismissed this as just the usual Limbaugh bullshit but apparently some people in the MSM couldn't resist running with it:

Hillary Clinton's book sales barely edging out Ben Carson's ...

www.cbsnews.com/.../hillary-clintons-book-sales-barely-edgin...

Hillary Clinton's book sales dropped even faster in week ...

www.washingtonpost.com/.../hillary-clintons-book-...

'Blood Feud' vs. 'Hard Choices' in Hillary Clinton Book Battle ...

www.nytimes.com/.../a-provocateurs-book-on-hilla...

There was also quite a fuss about Hillary's remark that when she & Bill left the WH, they were almost broke - a true statement considering the massive legal bills that had built up over the previous 6 years.  Her later comment that she & Bill weren't truly rich also received negative coverage despite the pundits' own wealth:

Multimillionaire TV stars asked if voters would support a person as wealthy as Clinton. In response to Clinton’s answers, some of the nation’s most famous pundits launched their famous “gaffe culture.”

The Washington Post even launched a front-page jihad concerning the size of Clinton’s speaking fees. In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd assailed Clinton for her “rapacious” behavior and her “wanton acquisitiveness,” which she was said to be passing along to her daughter.

This poor coverage is far from harmless, as Bob Somersby notes:

Starting in March 1999, Candidate Gore was treated to twenty months of “horrible coverage.” In the main, that coverage came from the mainstream press corps, not from the RNC.

To state the obvious, that horrible coverage sent Bush to the White House. Halperin says it could happen again.

billmon & A TWITTER COMMENTER COME CLOSE TO THE TRUTH

You can read the entire conversation about Israel, America & Gaza here and these 2 comments stood out:

billmon ‏@billmon1 9h

3. In effect, old "duel loyalty" charge is obsolete. There is only 1 loyalty now: to a consolidated Israeli-American national security state

Ali Husain ‏@Ali_Husain333 9h

@billmon1 @WHarkavy It is not even clear who is the patron and who is the client currently.

LOIS LERNER IS CORRECT

In emails, she "refers to some Republicans as “a—holes” and “crazies” in an exchange from 2012, according to emails released by House Republicans on Wednesday." (POLITICO) This has upset the Baggers because it's TRUE.  Just in time for this revelation, we have another one from an employee of the Cook Political Report:

As a House analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, I’ve personally interviewed over 300 congressional candidates over the course of seven years, both to get to know them and evaluate their chances of winning. I’ve been impressed by just as many Republicans as Democrats, and underwhelmed by equal numbers, too. Most are accustomed to tough questions.

But never have I met any candidate quite as frightening or fact-averse as Louisiana state Rep. Lenar Whitney, 55, who visited my office last Wednesday. It’s tough to decide which party’s worst nightmare she would be.

... when I pressed Whitney repeatedly for the source of her claim that the earth is getting colder, she froze and was unable to cite a single scientist, journal or news source to back up her beliefs.

To change the subject, I asked whether she believed Obama was born in the United States. When she replied that it was a matter of some controversy, her two campaign consultants quickly whisked her out of the room, accusing me of conducting a “Palin-style interview.”

THIS ISN'T AT ALL RIGHT

Nate Silver falsely claims that Democrats are "obsessed" with impeachment and NBC claims that all impeachment talk is merely cynical politics.  I know that Limbaugh, Levin, Palin and Allen West, among others, have all called for impeachment but Silver doesn't think these people are part of the GOP mainstream and that's a mistake.

I CAN SYMPATHIZE WITH THE SMALL GOVERNMENT CROWD

We've had problems at our nuclear missile bases, the VA, the NSA and now the FBI.

UPDATE: I forgot the botched Healthcare,gov rollout.

RADIO RATINGS MAY BE ILLUSORY

This is partly a failure of the Free Market Fairy and partly a criticism of the number of listeners attributed to Liimbaugh and other gasbags.

PPM’s Mysterious Ten Minutes
July 29, 2014
Harker Research

How long does a News-Talk person listen to a station? Ten minutes. How long does a Rock person listen? Ten minutes. How about an Adult Contemporary listener? Ten minutes. Country? Ten minutes Urban? Ten minutes.
See a pattern?
No matter the format, PPM panelists listen exactly ten minutes. Well, now and then maybe nine minutes, but you get the idea.
Identical listening durations across formats is perhaps the most enigmatic aspect of what is arguably the most enigmatic radio listening measurement ever devised.
How did Arbitron explain this phenomenon as PPM rolled-out? They didn’t.
There is no explanation. Yet study after study since has found the same thing. Everyone listens to the radio for the same length of time.
This is how the Daily Occasions meme developed. If everyone listens the same length of time, then there’s no point in trying to increase duration. Can’t be done.
So the only way to grow an audience is to increase occasions. Once the listener has used up her ten minutes, she’s gone. All we can do is to get her to come back later on.
But think about the reasonableness of an identical listening span for every format from News-Talk to Urban and everything in between.
Does that make sense?
Is it possible that maybe the meter has a hard time consistently decoding which station it is hearing for any length of time over ten minutes?
As we showed in our previous post, the meter fails to correctly identify the right station anywhere from 18% up to 77% of the time depending on how loud the radio is playing and the level of other sounds near by.
What if this is the source of the mystical ten minute duration?
And if that's true, it might explain why PPM showed lower listening levels compared to the diaries when Arbitron ran both simultaneously.
Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Posted by Richard Harker & Glenda Shrader Bos on July 29, 2014 at 09:14 AM | Permalink

IT'S NOT GENOCIDE BUT IT IS ELIMINATIONISM

(Concept from David Neiwert)

This is what Israel is doing to Gaza neighborhoods:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-GgH-bFm0uPQ1ZpNmVReFMzRm8/edit?usp=sharing

UPDATE: The original link stopped working so I uploaded the video to my Google Drive account and made it shareable.

IT WASN'T AN OVER-REACTION, IT'S PART OF THE PLAN

I've seen pictures of devastated neighborhoods in Gaza and now I know why: Israel is creating a buffer zone of about 3 km deep into Gaza:

WHY ISN'T THERE ANY PUSHBACK FROM SOME "CONSTITUTIONAL CONSERVATIVES"?

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and I presume many other gasbags have been openly taking the side of Israel/Netanyahu against Pres. Obama and I thought there would be a few "CCs" who would object to their positions but I haven't come across any.

BECK ADMITS GLENN BECK IS A FOOL

This headline from Beck's The Blaze unintentionally proves that Beck is a quack:

The Bubble Glenn Beck Predicted in 2008 That He Says Is Now on the Horizon
Jul. 28, 2014 3:43pm Erica Ritz
THE BLAZE

REMEMBER THE LIBOR SCANDAL?

If you rely on FOX News, you probably never heard about it in the first place because FOX does almost everything it can to defend the Free Market Fairy. Fortunately, we have other sources:

Lloyds Bank Settles With US, UK Over Market Fixing

LONDON — Jul 28, 2014, 3:04 PM ET
By DANICA KIRKA and MARCY GORDON Associated Press

Lloyds Banking Group is paying $369 million to U.S. and British authorities to settle allegations it manipulated a key global interest rate. The U.S. and British regulators said Lloyds attempted to manipulate, and in some cases succeeded, in manipulating the London interbank offered rate, known as LIBOR.

British banks Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, Switzerland's biggest bank, UBS, and Rabobank of the Netherlands have also been fined for LIBOR rigging. Nine individuals have been criminally charged by the Justice Department. The settlements with Lloyds bring the banks' total payments to date to nearly $4 billion.

I hope at least one of the 9 gets a prison term.

I DON'T THINK THIS GUY VOTES...

and that's a good thing.  I was talking with a guy who lives in my apartment building and he was strongly opposed to any raise in the minimum wage because it would greatly increase the cost of living.  His prime example was from 2008 when the price of gasoline broke $4/gallon but the increase in the Federal minimum wage occurred months after the increase in gasoline prices and in 2008 the increase in Arizona was only from 6.75 to 6.90.  The real cause of the 2008 increase was speculation.