That's yer opinion and I respect that..

But it doesn't change the *fact* that there are other options between Obama's giveaway and war...

Michale

Netanyahu just lost the secular, but ultra hard line Yisrael Beitenu as a coalition partner. Netanyahu is down to 61 seats, a slender thread even by Israeli standards. He's hostage to his ultra-orthodox religious constituency.

Obama has hinted that dropping the sanctions immediately is exactly what he intends to do..

Now, assuming that's factual, do ya'all stand by what ya'all said before??

Or are you supporting Obama still??

Michale

So you say... But the facts clearly show different..

They are working, but with respect to nuclear weapon research, sanctions were intended to make Iranian R and D slow and expensive.

So slow and so expensive that the Iranians would eventually give up..

That IS how the US destroyed the Soviet Union.. Remember??

The simple fact of the matter is that Iran would have eventually given up or been FORCED to give up it's nuclear program if the sanctions had been continued and increased..

But Obama needs a foreign policy "win" to cement his legacy...

Even if the "win" is very VERY bad for the region and this country...

But regardless of all that, it's a fact that the DEAL or WAR meme is complete and utter BS...

Which was my entire point...

Michale

"Sanctions WERE working..."

They are working, but with respect to nuclear weapon research, sanctions were intended to make Iranian R and D slow and expensive. Sanctions are not a blockade, but they make the value of obtaining nuclear weapons (in a more distant future) not worth the ramped up cost (experienced in the here and now). Theory being that by changing the Iranian calculus, you push them to the negotiation table. Which has happened. A limited objective, paired to negotiations, which may or may not succeed to our liking.

Nobody wants to address the ego/legacy because it's, how, you say, bull shite. Shop it around a right wing blog and you'll find takers.

Seriously, your constant morphing of the topic amounts to throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something, anything, sticks. Remember topic Bernie?

Thought for the day: Wikipedia is proof than an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of keyboards doesn't produce Hamlet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no_elVGGgW8

Once again, you are caught up in the total BS meme of DEAL or WAR....

Sanctions WERE working...

There was no reason for this deal, save Obama's ego/legacy....

That's the point that no one here wants to address..

Probably because there is NO response to it other than a concession...

Michale

You keep jumping onto, and slipping off of, one wobbly rhetorical rock after another.

Netanyahu won a surprising victory, but not a big one. It's a practical impossibility to win a big victory in Israeli politics. Likud won 29 out of 120 seats. Zionist Union was 2nd with 24. To keep things in perspective, the Joint Arab List was 3rd with 14. Netanyahu was able to cobble together a coalition government with 69 seats, which is large by Israeli standards, but it took him a long time to do it, and the coalition is fragile (another characteristic of Israeli governments, which tend to drop dead before their time).

"But ANYONE who wants to help Iran obtain nuclear weapons is NOT a friend of Israel.." Who is this ANYONE, outside of some elements in Iran (obviously) plus a few James Bond style renegade scientists and arms merchants looking to move up to a bigger "lair" with a better school system (likely). In terms of US and Israeli politics, I think your Anyone is just a straw man, and Walmart straw man, not the nicer ones at Pottery Barn. It's certainly not the negotiators trying to halt the Iranian bomb program. True, negotiation might fail, but then those favoring a military solution are arguably even more likely to fail, but with a rather high risk of a very immediate and disagreeable regional fallout (literal and figurative).

And, which way would that be, exactly??

Michale

What does entitlement have to do with anything? If Nader hadn't run, some of the people who voted for him (or didn't vote at all) would have voted for Gore. They were entitled to vote for Gore, if they had chosen to do so, as long as he met their state's criteria to be on the ballot.

while ignoring how many Democrats voted for Chimpy

If someone voted for Dubya, did they really count as a Democrat? The guy was as repulsive as John Edwards, albeit in a different way.

And yet, Israel just gave Netanyahu a huge victory...

That's like JFC saying that the vast majority of Americans don't want the GOP to govern...

It doesn't jibe with facts and reality.. :D

Say what you want about Netanyahu..

But ANYONE who wants to help Iran obtain nuclear weapons is NOT a friend of Israel..

Period..

Michale

"Apparently Sanders does NOT support Israel..."

Judging from the above knee jerk, your reflexes are still top notch...

but, hate to tell, you've still got Sanders completely wrong.

Here is a distilled summary, courtesy of Juan Cole to get you back on track:

"When you’ve Lost Bernie Sanders: How Netanyahu destroyed the Israel Lobby"

and

"By overreaching, Netanyahu may be shattering the hammer his partisans in the US have used to destroy critics of his policies in America. And Mideast policy in the US may never be quite the same."

Thinking Netanyahu is a blustering, bumbling idiot is not the same as being anti-Israel. I'd venture about half of Israel feels that way about Senator Netanyahu.

A Weigantian quoting Sarah Palin!! :D

Kudos, T41.... :D

Michale

N.B. The former half-term governor seldom makes sense, but she was spot on with 'Lame Steam Media'.

Sorry. I'm not buying it. The Democratic Party was not entitled to the votes that Nader got.

There are millions of eligible voters who just don't bother to register to vote because they are so repulsed by the Republican and Democratic Parties and their stranglehold on us. Are the Dems entitled to their votes too?

Also unmentioned in your list is the fact that Gore wasn't a very good candidate. He was your basic next-in-line wealthy white guy who inherited name recognition and rode it all the way to VP. He was stiff as Rmoney.

"If you want one and only one reason"

I don't. I just wanted to point out the phoniest one. Democrats like to accuse Nader of taking votes away from them while ignoring how many Democrats voted for Chimpy. I will concede that Gore had a "Nader problem" only in the sense that he also had a much larger "Bush problem".

There are many factors, any of which could have made the tiny difference between the candidate more Americans voted for, and more qualified Floridians tried to vote for, and the president-unelect that we got. Nader's candidacy was one of them.

The criteria for what counts as a valid ballot in Florida were a matter of Florida law. ("Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof shall direct ....") Florida law was not clear on what to do about a complete FUBAR that results in a tie. There are reasonable interpretations that would have resulted in a Bush win, and others that would have resulted in a Gore win. If the Supreme miscreants had let the process go ahead, Bush probably would have won the count.

If you want one and only one reason, I'll pick the butterfly ballot. The punch-card ballot failed to record enough attempted Gore votes to make the difference, given that the butterfly ballot was there. But the butterfly ballot had a friggin' line from Gore's name to the spot to vote for Pat Buchanan.

But there are plenty of other factors, such as the disenfranchisement of thousands of people, legally entitled to vote, whom the Republicans had identified as likely to vote Democratic and therefore had misidentified as felons and purged from the voter registration.

Sanders supports Obama's efforts to get a nuclear deal with Iran.

Ahhhh...

So Sanders wants to see the country that has repeatedly threatened to wipe Israel off the map acquire nuclear weapons..

Apparently Sanders does NOT support Israel...

My bust...

Michale

You might want to read up a bit more on Senator Sanders' background. He'll be pro Israel, but no soul mate of the Netanyahu crowd, either in Congress or the Knesset. Sanders supports Obama's efforts to get a nuclear deal with Iran. Not preemptively ratcheting up sanctions, not bombing the nuclear facilities.

Sanders worked on a kibbutz as a young man. Sanders still self identifies as a "democratic socialist," so I guess he found the collective farming experience to his liking. Once the right wing cable shows pick up on this, I expect you'll be considerably less enthusiastic about Bernie.

Teacher41

I predict we'll find out how main stream Jews are when a hot mike picks up it's first "New York Jew" (or similar angrified slur)from a pair of hard right Republican lips at a Republican event.

In YOUR opinion...

The fact of the matter is Democrats had recount after recount after recount.. They wanted to recount until they got the result they wanted, the country be damned...

THIS is the reality..

Michale

I hate to have to point this out again, but here goes . . .

Al Gore did not lose because Democrats voted for Ralph Nader. AG lost because Democrats voted for King George W, the GOP rioted, The Supremes decided that their nine votes were the only ones that mattered, and the Democratic Party played along like good little corporate robots.

We Nader voters were not going to vote for AG anyway.

Ooohh, nice catch...

Sanders would definitely be a Pro-Israel POTUS...

Credit where credit is due... That's a point in his favor...

Michale

There is a reason for that contempt..

Yes, those policies are actually very popular with the American people.

IN THEORY.....

That's the problem with practically ALL of those policies. They sound good on paper and in sound bites...

But when the rubber hits the road??

When it comes time time to IMPLEMENT the policies???

Crash and burn....

A perfect example is TrainWreckCare...

The individual aspects of TWC sounded great...

But look at the debacle that occurred once TrainWreckCare was implemented... It was a disaster...

Give Sanders the credit for knowing what buttons to push.. But he is living in la-la land if he thinks that any of his ideas are actually workable and doable..

There's a reason why Sanders has been relegated to clown car status..

Because the only people who will vote for him are the ones who are in the same la-la land as he is..

Michale