The Two Faces of Donald Trump; Arab-Israeli Ed.

He's telling Bibi to "do what you need to" and telling Arab-Americans that he opposes the war.

If you vote for the SOFF because you oppose the wars in Gaza, Lebanon (and possibly Iran), then you have hummus for brains.

Bibi: Give It Up

Look, I get it. Hamas carried out the worst pogrom against Jews since the 1940s. There was going to be heavy payback for that. That's how things are done in that neck of the woods.

But it's clear that it's going to be impossible to wipe out Hamas. Israel's not going to be able to kill every member of Hamas. Killing over fifteen thousand civilians in response is not a proportionate response by any stretch of the imagination.

I can understand why Netanyahu's doing what he is doing. It's his only hope of political survival, given that it was his government whose policy was to enable Hamas and whose military had the battle plans of Hamas and did nothing to prevent the attack.

But walking over the dead bodies of civilians in order to stay in power is a despicable act. He will end up essentially being on house arrest within Israel, as leaving the country will expose him to war crime charges.

(Like some members of the Chimpy-Darth administration.)

Start the Countdown Clock on Bibi

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.
...
Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.

But a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The Times.

“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall.”

The article is "gifted", so feel free to click on the link and read it.

I don't know how the leadership survives when there is clear evidence that the plan was known, there was evidence that Hamas was rehearsing the plan and those in authority did absolutely nothing. I don't believe, at this juncture, that the Israeli failure to stop or prepare for the attack was deliberate, because of the old maxim "never ascribe to cupidity that which can be blamed on stupidity.

Unlike 9-11, this was not a "failure to connect the dots". The Israeli analysts had connected the dots; this was a failure of leadership to see the picture conecting the dots portrayed. Not only were over a thousand Israelis murdered by a well-planned terrorist attack, over ten thousand Palestinians were killed in the war that followed. It's not very probable that if Israel had disrupted or broken the intial attack, that would have been justification/provocation to turn Gaza City into a wasteland.

At the very minimum, those involved should never get a decent night's sleep.

Bye-Bye, Bibi

For now, that is.

Israel’s parliament on Sunday narrowly approved a new coalition government, ending the historic 12-year rule of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sending the polarizing leader into the opposition.

Naftali Bennett, a former ally of Netanyahu turned rival, became prime minister after the 60-59 vote. Promising to try to heal a divided nation, Bennett will preside over a diverse and fragile coalition comprised of eight parties with deep ideological differences.

Netanyahu left with all of the grace and civilized courtesy displayed by Cadet Bone Spurs.

Still, Bennett needs to watch his back in a very real sense.

For the Love of [_________], Mr. President, STFU!

The arrow on the left shows the Dow Jones Industrial Average when Trump's news conference began earlier today.



The arrow on the right is the DJIA when the news conference ended. Maybe Trump can sign this one and send it out to his supporters.

The market has spoken: It does not trust Trump. He needs to shut up, sit in his office and let the pros do the talking; the people who understand science and medicine.

And that goes for Mike "the Fluffer" Pence, too.

The Editorial Cartoon That Draws Itself

It would be Trump as Putin's hand-pupped and Netanyahu as Trump-s hand puppet.

With a push from President Donald Trump, Israel on Thursday barred two Muslim-American congresswomen from entering the country for a visit, an extraordinary step bringing the longtime U.S. ally into Trump’s domestic fight against political rivals at home.

Trump is using a foreign government to attack two of his domestic political opponents.

Every day, in every way, Trump sinks to a new low.

All shame on Bibi for being as venal and dishonest a troll as Trump. But hell, we already knew that he was. Both are grifters who are using their offices as a shield against being indicted.

No, Numb-Nuts, Netanyahu Is Not My Prime Minister

Trump thinks he is.

Speaking to the American Republican Jewish Coalition, Trump refers to Bibi Netanyahu as "your prime minister" pic.twitter.com/rAv4MrxyBt

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 6, 2019

Der Mar-a-Lagoführer was speaking to a bunch of *American* Jews. He thinks that the Prime Minister of Israel is, somehow, the leader of all Jews. I guess that's what his neo-Nazi cabal in his Administration has been telling him.

Saying that American Jews have an allegiance to the State of Israel is an insidious lie that has been told by both the far Left and the Alt-Right.

We know which group Trump is a member of.

And we know that the GOP Jews have no balls, just like the rest of the GOP. If they had any integrity, they'd have booed his ass.

What Trump Is Really Planning to Do

President* Donald Trump abruptly declared Thursday the U.S. will recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, a major shift in American policy that gives Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a political boost a month before what is expected to be a close election.

Altering national borders by conquest has been outlawed since 1948. It simply is not done, anymore.

But this has nothing to do with Israel, other than one national leader with autocratic delusions seeking to prop up another. What Trump is doing is setting the stage to meet one of Trump's master's goal: Recognition of the Russian seizure of the Crimean peninsula.

This is hugely destabilizing. Countries have been living with their existing borders for the last seventy years because they have known that trying to "adjust" their borders by military means would result in international condemnation. Trump wants to go back to the days when conquest was legal.

So then, what? India and Pakistan settle who controls Kashmir by a full-on nuclear war? The Middle Eastern nations decide to fix their Sykes-Picot borders?

This is sheer insanity. Trump is meddling with forces and consequences that he cannot comprehend. The GOP caucuses in the Senate and the House need to fucking grow some gonads and stop this lunatic.

Tab Clearing on Trump and His Party of Stupid

The Federal government borrowed nearly $500 billion in the first quarter of this year.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he’s unconcerned about the bond market’s ability to absorb rising government debt after his department said it borrowed a record amount for the first quarter.

“It’s a very large, robust market -- it’s the most liquid market in the world, and there is a lot of supply,” he said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Monday. “But I think the market can easily handle it.”

Riight. Do you remember all of the Republicans who were carping when the Obama Administration was borrowing a shitload of money to try and ameliorate the Great Recession? But now that the economy is doing well, the Republicans are engaging in deficit spending on an unheard-of scale.

The reason is plain to see: They care more about cutting taxes for the wealthy than anything else.
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There's lots of speculation in the air as to whether or not Trump is going to pull out of the Iran deal.

Of course he will. He said he would. Just like he pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris Accords. And just like his sea-to-shining-sea border wall, which he keeps pushing for, even though everyone else knows it's not going to happen.

What'll likely happen is that some cosmetic changes to the agreement will be made, so he can claim a win
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If you go around the news, you'll see that Netanyahu carping about Iran trying to secretly develop a nuclear weapon.

Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. I wouldn't trust Netanyahu to sell me a used hammer.

But beyond that, if there is a country on this planet who should not be complaining about another nation's secret nuclear weapons program, it is Israel.
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I wonder of the prospect of a peace deal for the two Koreas has Nikki Haley, John Bolton and Miss Lindsey drinking heavily. They have to be despondent over the prospect of combatus interruptus.

Because, you know, warmongers gotta warmonger.