Last rant

We went to a cocktail party last night. New friends. A few people there also that I hadn't met before. Somehow talk got around to Obama and the Iran thing. One lady was talking about the virtues of the agreement. I mentioned that I wasn't so sure myself.

"Oh, so you want war?"

I basically kept my mouth shut and gritted my teeth. How do you answer something like that? Who the fuck wants war? I've been under rocket attack, feared for my life, three or five times already in my life. Who in the hell enjoys that?

But is the temporary absence of war synonymous with peace? What if the other guy is merely using the interim time to re-arm? What if he routinely threatens your annihilation? What if his past behavior positively shows that he is not to be trusted. Do you treat with him anyway?

On Monday, Philip Hammond, British Foreign Secretary, was in Tehran to re-open the British embassy there, and he suggested that the current Iranian government under President Hassan Rouhani has shown a more nuanced approach towards Israel than the leadership of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“What we’re looking for is behavior from Iran, not only towards Israel but towards other players in the region, that slowly rebuilds their sense that Iran is not a threat to them,” Hammond said.

On Tuesday he got his answer. A senior Iranian official on Tuesday called for Israel’s annihilation and rejected the claim by Hammond that Iran’s government has shown more nuance towards the Jewish state.

“Our positions against the usurper Zionist regime have not changed at all; Israel should be annihilated and this is our ultimate slogan,” Hussein Sheikholeslam, a foreign affairs adviser to Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani, told reporters on Tuesday, the Fars News Agency reported.

Now John Kerry thinks this is just crazy talk, surely the Persians don't mean it. Stupid talk, Obama calls it.

“They have a fundamental ideological confrontation with Israel at this particular moment (but) that doesn’t necessarily mean that translates into active steps."
John Kerry

Amin al Husseini, the Mufti meets Adolf Hitler

Now you can call members of the tribe touchy about such matters but the last guy who threatened extermination was way better at it than anyone ever thought he could be. So pardon us if we get a little punchy when people start talking like this, active steps or not. Shoot, I forgot, Natalie Portman says we can't bring up the holocaust anymore.

I think the deal stinks.

I think Obama caved.

I am pessimistic about the future of this deal and worried about the repercussions in the region.

If I am wrong, I will be happily wrong. We shall see what happens when the breakout period ends, that is if I am still around. People are in the habit of calling for Israel to forego its nuclear arsenal. Just how long do you think they would survive mid caliphate without it?

I think Obama was totally full of shit when he said not to worry about the Iranians not fulfilling their obligation to divulge their nuclear history because they won't be truthful anyway and we know that already and we know what they were doing anyway and we shouldn't expect anything more from them, it's unreasonable.

So out of the box your new negotiating partner is lying, obfuscating and playing games and we are supposed to feel good about our brave new world? Have faith that the wackjobs next door don't actually do what they say they are going to do?

But now the deal is pretty much done and Obama is trying to make nice with the mishpucha again and dangle a bunch of new hardware in front of the Israelis in hopes of shutting them up and not totally screwing things up for the next democrat running for office. But I have watched the guy quite carefully and he has been utterly contemptible with the Israelis since he has been office, not that they are angels mind you.

A few weeks ago he declassified a bunch of Israeli nuclear data that had been out of circulation since the Nixon era. That will show the bastards. State Department said it was a mere coincidence that the 1100 page report was released. Sure. This comes after several incidents in the last five years where the CIA released classified information on Israeli military operations to put a little heat on their friends.

And the Obama administration and the State Department were totally mum on Islamic Jihad firing missiles into Israel from Quneitra near the Golan Heights on Friday. Reports are that they were directed by our new pals in Iran.

An Israeli military source yesterday accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guard of being responsible for the orders to launch four rocket missiles from Syrian territories onto northern Israel.
The senior commander in the Israeli army said in a statement: “Saeed Izadi, the head of the Palestinian Division of the Iranian Al-Quds Force planned the rocket fire from the Syrian territories towards Upper Galilee and Golan Heights.”
He also added that “Izadi is the man in charge of smuggling weapons to Lebanon and Syria. He also instructed the Islamic Jihad fighters to execute the rocket fire operation.”
“The rocket fire is part of the Iranian policy aiming to escalate the security situation on the border and to turn the Israeli-Syrian borders into a battlefield,” added the military source.

Iran is already trying to turn up the heat. I don't know who Obama thinks this deal is actually helping? I guess the arms sellers will be happy, everybody is going to want to re-up with new arms. China, Russia and Iran will be happy. Who else? None of the neighbors are real happy. Obama's protestations of life long love for Israel notwithstanding, I don't believe a word he says and I don't trust him an inch. Isis is using gas on the kurds now and he does nothing, about what he did when the Syrians crossed his famous chlorine gas red line. The clumsiest, most inept negotiations imaginable.

A lot of this shit is of course, Bush's fault. If only we had a strongman like Saddam Hussein around to keep the order and restore the shia/sunni balance. Now we have shiites run amok and rather than talking about peace and diplomacy they are back to that goofy annihilation business.

So what are the arguments for a deal?

The sanctions couldn't hold much longer, we are only one of six nations and the international players had had enough.

This deal, vigorously monitored and enforced, will give the Iranian people, many of them quite young, the time to moderate and subordinate their beliefs to a more superior and civilized culture, our own.

Opponents have failed to present an alternative with a chance to be implemented.

The neocons and jews are warmongers who want Uncle Sam to do their dirty work for them and we are war weary in this country and it's not our battle.

What would Truman have done in such a time and situation? Lincoln? Washington? Teddy Roosevelt? Gary Cooper? You back your friends even if you are the last man standing. You don't base all your calculus on what is expedient, easiest and merely pragmatic and achievable, you also think about what is fair. What is right. What your previous commitments were. You do the right thing and you watch your friends back and certainly don't stab them when they aren't looking.

Excuse me for not drinking the kool aid on all the love that is in the air. Diplomacy is fine and dandy, if you don't sell out anyway and allow yourself to get punked. Maybe you are down with Iran taking its own soil samples at Parchin?

Once this whole thing got started Barack Obama was not going to be dissuaded and the gears were set in motion and our prior relationship with Israel, now long suffering, was toast. I am very worried about the long term effects of a deal in the the middle east when experts note that rather than transforming the Iranian regime, we are now funding it and cementing the position of the nefarious people currently in power. I know it's not hip, but I usually bet on the iron fist.

And the division amongst liberals and progressive  and jewish democrats is wider and more fractured than anyone can imagine and will be a very long time healing, if at all. I didn't leave the democratic party, they left me.

Obama's big money jewish friend from Chicago, Alan Solow, was belittling deal opponents for not being able to take a few body shots. I'd be happy to give you a body shot, Solow. Any time. In fact I think you are a mumzer. Because in New York we would kill you for one of those Chicago body shots, you fat prick.

It’s time for our community to mature. I have no quarrel whatsoever with Jewish individuals and organizations speaking out against the Iran deal if that is their position. If they do speak out against the deal, however, they should not hide behind manufactured accusations based on a false sense of victimhood. If you enter the ring, prepare to be hit and don’t complain that a blow to the body is below the belt. Solow the Magnificent

You've just shit on the only stalwart friends we have in the middle east Obama. Well, there's the Kurds and we did shit on them too. Israel gets a lot from the United States. No question. Zionists are pissing a lot of people off here.

Probably isn't worth it to the Israelis the way supposed friends behave these days but hey, got to be careful with that money spigot. Unless you can go it alone. And you may have to before this Obama thing is over.

Because the only thing Obama had a hard on worse for than an Iran deal is a Palestinian deal. So prepare to get fucked before the next election. Man's got a legacy to polish.

You'll make peace with the Palestinians if it kills you.

And it might.

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The lady said that Bernie Sanders wasn't liberal enough for her. I think that Bernie is a swell guy and all but I shudder at the thought of him as president. We have not had a bipartisan coalition maker in office since Bill Clinton. That is what our country needs, someone that can get the participants in this horrible toxic marriage we call a republic talking again.

Bernie Sanders has dreams of creating a new Norway, declaring war on Wall St. and the banks and viva la revolucion. I don't think we are ready just yet for a civil war.

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My host last night, who is M.O.T. but pretty agnostic on the whole matter told me that they should have just bought baja for the jews. Less trouble.

I don't care what Norman Lear, Noam Chomsky,  George Soros, Move On or Alan Solow or J Street thinks. Or even Al franken. My father was born in Israel. My grandfather is buried in Israel. I care what I think. I know what I know. We are about to make things much more difficult for Israel.

So the email came asking me not to support pro Israel traitors and diplomacy haters like Schumer. Like some Maoist's purge in the cultural revolution seeking ideologic purity. J-street only, the rest of you are officially off the bus. See you.