Random Politics & Religion #00

/sigh

Did I say it was a problem? I asked a question.

People like Nausi are ok if someone like Netanyahu were to address congress but what if say the leader of Iran wanted to do the same? It would turn out to be some kind of assault on America and therefore proof that Obama is a muslim and his birth certificate was forged!

Flavin you have no idea what you're talking about (once again). I never questioned the right of ahkmed-whackajob to speak at whatever university he spoke at (8-ish?) years ago. I did speak to what he said when he was here though. Obama's attitudes towards the guy (Bibi) are pretty good indicators of his priorities. Only a fool would think otherwise.

ahkmed-whackajob? nice... lol... I'm not sure how, whoever you're speaking about, talking at a school equates to lobbying the US Congress.

So, to you, if the president disagrees with another foreign leader it is an indicator that he will have his administration funnel tax payer money to help fund his opposition in an election?

They say the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes. President Barack Obama wants to add one more: voting.

Obama floated the idea of mandatory voting in the U.S. while speaking to a civic group in Cleveland on Wednesday. Asked about the corrosive influence of money in U.S. elections, Obama digressed into the related topic of voting rights and said the U.S. should be making it easier — not harder— for people to vote.

Just ask Australia, where citizens have no choice but to vote, the president said.

"If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country," Obama said, calling it potentially transformative. Not only that, Obama said, but universal voting would "counteract money more than anything."

Disproportionately, Americans who skip the polls on Election Day are younger, lower-income and more likely to be immigrants or minorities, Obama said. "There's a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls," he said in a veiled reference to efforts in a number of Republican-led states to make it harder for people to vote.

Statistically speaking, Obama is correct. Less than 37 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the 2014 midterms, according to the United States Election Project. And a Pew Research Center study found that those avoiding the polls in 2014 tended to be younger, poorer, less educated and more racially diverse.

At least two dozen countries have some form of compulsory voting, including Belgium, Brazil and Argentina. In many systems, absconders must provide a valid excuse or face a fine, although a few countries have laws on the books that allow for potential imprisonment.

Benjamin Netanyahu's apparent reelection puts Israel on a course toward ever deeper confrontation with the world. To govern, his Likud Party would need to depend on ultranationalists — a recipe for neither stability nor bold moves toward Mideast peace.

A period of some horsetrading looms. With Likud as well as rightist and religious allies, Netanyahu still only commands 57 out of 120 parliament seats. He must woo Moshe Kahlon, a relative newcomer to the big leagues of Israeli politics. Breaking away from Netanyahu's nationalist Likud two years ago after a falling out with the premier, he adopted a vaguely centrist platform and flirted with Isaac Herzog's more moderate Zionist Union. If he is non-aligned as he claims, then he holds the balance of power between Israel's traditional right and left blocs, each with just under half of parliament.

It is widely thought that it would be too awkward for the former Likud figure to crown the opposition unless Herzog's party enjoyed a cushion of several seats over Likud. Polls had suggested that would happen, but the actual vote count on Wednesday showed the opposite: Likud was ahead by 30-24 seats.

If Kahlon does go with Netanyahu, it would give the hard-liner a fourth term that, if completed, would make him Israel's longest-serving leader, on par with the nation's founder David Ben Gurion.

That would not bode well for prospects of peace with the Palestinians or a rapprochement between Israel and the region, which seems tantalizingly close in an era in which many of the neighboring Arab nations fear jihadi extremism far more than they oppose Israel.

Under Netanyahu, Israel has deepened its hold on the West Bank, adding Jewish settlers to the point where the territory may soon become inseparable from Israel proper. Combined with the Jews in occupied and annexed east Jerusalem, there are some 600,000 Jews living on occupied land.

In recent days, Netanyahu has said that he would not allow the creation of a Palestinian state if elected. The Palestinians have already said they would take their case against Israel to war crimes tribunals and other international bodies. A campaign to boycott Israel seems poised to gain traction. Netanyahu's relations with the U.S. administration of President Barack Obama are frosty at best.

International isolation looms.

Netanyahu knows the complications of all this and may try to draw in Herzog, to give his government a more moderate character. But he has promised, in his final appeals to his base, not to do this — and Herzog would probably demand a rotation in the premier's post as his price.

Kahlon seems to dislike Netanyahu intensely, and he certainly has the power to crown Herzog, a mild-mannered lawyer and scion of a venerable family of Zionist founders. Kahlon's platform is moderate, as are top lieutenants in his party, and despite his Likud roots he has supported the idea of peace talks. It is not inconceivable that the left's desire to unseat Netanyahu extends to offering Kahlon a rotation as prime minister.

The issue has defined Israeli politics ever since the 1967 Middle East war, which cemented Israel as a regional power but saddled it with occupied territories including the Palestinian-populated West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but to many the territory, run by Hamas militants and blockaded on all side by Israel and Egypt, remains part of the equation.

Parties on the left would trade the land for peace and allow the creation of a Palestinian state. They also argue that the lands are a liability because with their millions of Palestinians their incorporation would destroy Israel as a Jewish-majority state.

The right emphasizes the lands' strategic value and biblical symbolism and pushes constantly for settling them with Jews. Its success in this endeavor has, paradoxically, put the country on a path toward being a place where Jews are no longer a strong majority.

The issue is Israel's existential dilemma, central to the world's interest and fundamental to determining the country's ultimate character. But after decades of failure and disappointment accompanied by periods of violence, Israelis have despaired of peace and politicians increasingly address the Palestinian matter with evasion, mendacity or doubletalk.

The Zionist Union is a rebranding of Israel's once venerable Labor Party, which led the country for three decades after its founding but last won an election in 1999. That brought to power its then-leader Ehud Barak, who became the first prime minister to offer the Palestinians a state, on most of the occupied territories. No deal was struck and a violent Palestinian uprising erupted, leaving Labor in shambles ever since.

Meanwhile, the political system has fragmented in ways that align with Israel's internal divisions. So there are parties for Russian immigrants, Sephardic Jews, different types of religious Jews, secular and progressive citizens, the European-oriented middle class, and a new union of Israeli Arab parties that individually are nationalist, Islamic or socialist.

Only one thing seems certain: Pressure to overhaul the electoral system that has yielded such chaos will grow.

Glenn Beck says he is no longer a member of the Republican Party.

“I’ve made my decision — I’m out," Beck said on his radio show Wednesday, according to Mediaite.com. "I’m out of the Republican Party. I am not a Republican; I will not give a dime to the Republican Party. I’m out.”

The former Fox News host and founder of the Blaze supported the GOP during the last election cycle but has become disillusioned with the party in recent years over what he believes was its failure to stand up to the Obama administration — specifically, the Affordable Care Act and immigration reform.

“Four years ago I was with them," Beck said. "Four years ago I said, ‘Work from the inside, let’s change it, let’s get new guys in there.’"

But those efforts have proved futile, he said.

“They’re torpedoing the Constitution, and they’re doing it knowingly,” Beck said. “They’re taking on people like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and they are torpedoing them. Knowingly. And these guys are standing for the Constitution.”

He added: "It's too late."

The GOP isn't the only group Beck is fed up with. Last week, Beck threatened to quit the National Rifle Association if it doesn't cut ties with Grover Norquist after one of his guests, Frank Gaffney, accused Norquist of being connected with the Muslim Brotherhood.

"If this man is elected, or re-elected, and confirmed on the board of the NRA, I may drop my membership in the NRA," Beck told listeners and viewers of his show. "I am that concerned that he is a very bad influence and a very bad man that, if this is who the NRA decides to put on their board of directors, I don't think I can be associated with them."

You kidding me Springer is still fresh and exciting !

Will Smith is he still on Fresh Prince of Bel Air I love that show !

salon.com

Come on Chaos, you are starting to act like Chanti...

Can someone tell me exactly what a "presidential exploratory committee" does?

-Ok, we found out it's a four year job located in DC, and you gotta really be on top of your ***to get it.

Mandatory voting? Obama says it would be 'transformative'

Can someone tell me exactly what a "presidential exploratory committee" does?

-Ok, we found out it's a four year job located in DC, and you gotta really be on top of your ***to get it.

Having looked into Brazil's voting process when you previously mentioned it, they have said mandatory voting. Despite my snark regarding them as a non-extradition country, their current voting system is interesting, and their machines involve biometric measures of identification that would help further minimize whatever minimal fraude may be going on.

Rick Scott may have found a way of making climate denial state policy, but the Florida governor is going to have a hard time ignoring this. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) just updated its guidelines for state disaster preparedness plans, and under the new policy, plans will only be approved — and federal funds appropriated — if they address the threats of climate change.

“The challenges posed by climate change, such as more intense storms, frequent heavy precipitation, heat waves, drought, extreme flooding, and higher sea levels, could significantly alter the types and magnitudes of hazards impacting states in the future,” the guidelines explain. They direct states to”*** vulnerability, identify a strategy to guide decisions and investments, and implement actions that will reduce risk, including impacts from a changing climate.”

InsideClimateNews argues that the FEMA, intentionally are a not, has delivered a trump card for climate advocates frustrated with politicians’ refusal to acknowledge the reality of climate change. FEMA allocates an average of $1 billion per year to disaster preparedness programs, reporter Katherine Bagley explains — funds that states won’t be privy to if they refuse to comply with the guidelines.

“If a state has a climate denier governor that doesn’t want to accept a plan, that would risk mitigation work not getting done because of politics,” Becky Hammer, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s water program, told Bagley. “The governor would be increasing the risk to citizens in that state” — thus raising the stakes of denying the science considerably.

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon poised to seek the Republican presidential nomination, appeared not to realize Wednesday that the Baltic states are members of the NATO alliance. He also claimed that the rage being expressed by radical Islamist groups dates back to Old Testament days.

Those were among several odd answers from the first-time candidate as he defended his lack of foreign policy chops during a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, the conservative commentator who will moderate a GOP presidential debate later this year.

Like several other Republican presidential prospects, including a few of the governors in the field, Carson showed the limits of his knowledge about the world, even as national security has come to dominate a larger share of the debate.

Hewitt asked if NATO should be willing to go to war if Russian leader Vladimir Putin attempts to do in the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania) what he’s already done in Ukraine.

“I think they would be willing to go to war if they knew that they were backed up by us,” Carson said. “We need to convince them to get involved in NATO and strengthen NATO.”

“Well, the Baltics, they are in NATO,” Hewitt responded. [In fact, they’ve been member states since 2004.]

After a commercial break, Carson explained that he was confused. “Well, when you were saying Baltic state, I thought you were continuing our conversation about the former components of the Soviet Union,” he said.
Dr. Ben Carson addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Feb. 26, 2015 at Gaylord National Harbor in National Harbor, MD. (M. Scott Mahaskey/Politico)

Much of the interview focused on the current turmoil in the Middle East. Carson said he’s been reading a lot about Al Qaeda and “the radical Islamic movement in general.”

The 63-year-old argued that “the origin of their rage” dates all the way back to the book of Genesis in the Old Testament and that the groups are mainly focused on claiming land.

“First of all, you have to recognize they go back thousands and thousands of years, really back to the battle between Jacob and Esau,” Carson said.

Hewitt interjected that Islam’s Prophet Muhammad was not born until nearly 600 years after the death of Jesus, and that Islam is really only a 1,400-year-old religion: “How do you go back to Jacob and Esau, which are B.C?”