The Republican Thread

[NorthSideSox72]

Here's the ≠ sign. Please keep it stored wherever you store that smiley.

I prefer , from my heavy coding days.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

The guy believes that it is his destiny to destroy Israel and bring forth the return of the prophet. What is there to understand?

Just to throw this wrench in the works... I am not sure he truly believes that. I think some of his speeches have some calculated overstatements to satisfy certain elements.

 

[Rex Kickass]

Its not about expanding their power. You guys are thinking way too much like Americans. This isn't about money, or power, or any of that other crap. It is about fulfilling religious destiny.

 

If it was about fulfilling religious destiny, this would have taken place a decade or more ago.

 

This is about power. It's always about power. The people who really run the show in foreign policy in Iran don't show their face at the UN, and the clown that does, doesn't get to have a finger on a shotgun trigger, let alone a single missile.

[kapkomet]

And what the heck is Obama doing addressing the UN? I thought he was too busy solving the health care crisis to do anything else?

He's got to keep pimping the cameras. It's all he knows how to do.

[KipWellsFan]

Its not about expanding their power. You guys are thinking way too much like Americans. This isn't about money, or power, or any of that other crap. It is about fulfilling religious destiny.

 

I mean I guess it is a possibility but doesn't make much sense to me. Makes more sense to me that the real people who run Iran are extremely smart and have been expanding their little empire for years now and are essentially positioned to lead the muslim world particularly in their opposition to Israel. As Bob Baer writes, the people who fight Israel know that it's the Shiites in Iran that are the real effective fighters not a bunch of goof off Sunnis. Of course I don't really know what their end goal is against Israel. But nuking Israel would end up destroying themselves. And Iran isn't just one big suicide bomber.

[lostfan]

For the record I couldn't do my job if I only ever thought like an American. I wouldn't be able to see trends and patterns, motivations, political roots, the enemy's thought processes, the difference between each type of enemy etc.

[southsider2k5]

If it was about fulfilling religious destiny, this would have taken place a decade or more ago.

 

This is about power. It's always about power. The people who really run the show in foreign policy in Iran don't show their face at the UN, and the clown that does, doesn't get to have a finger on a shotgun trigger, let alone a single missile.

 

No it wouldn't have. They have never had the ability to do it conventionally, because they know that America would send their military might over to stop it, if Iran could do it. A nuke would solve that problem.

[lostfan]

If what you were saying were true this would be documented and something that Iranians on the streets were aware of. It would also be a part of the Islamic Revolution values that they supported when they changed their government and not a secret policy objective.

 

Ahmadinejad is an obnoxious anti-Semitic piece of s*** but this doesn't mean the Iranian government is going to sacrifice Iran to destroy Israel, and Palestine along with it.

[StrangeSox]

Why is Obama promoting George Lopez's new show on TBS?

[southsider2k5]

If what you were saying were true this would be documented and something that Iranians on the streets were aware of. It would also be a part of the Islamic Revolution values that they supported when they changed their government and not a secret policy objective.

 

Ahmadinejad is an obnoxious anti-Semitic piece of s*** but this doesn't mean the Iranian government is going to sacrifice Iran to destroy Israel, and Palestine along with it.

 

The destruction of Israel is the centerpiece of their public policy.

[kapkomet]

It cracks me up that everyone thinks that Iran is so "innocent" here. They just want to be a power broker in the Middle East. Right.

 

[lostfan]

Who's saying Iran is innocent, I'm saying they are not insane and suicidal and trying to frame what they're doing in regular geopolitical terms. People just assume that because they're a Muslim country and they're state sponsors of terror that they're the same thing as al-Qaida.

[lostfan]

The destruction of Israel is the centerpiece of their public policy.

Them and basically all the Arab countries for the past 50-60 years. It doesn't count for much of anything. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was settled and they were still talking the same game then I'd be worried. Now, not so much.

[kapkomet]

Them and basically all the Arab countries for the past 50-60 years. It doesn't count for much of anything. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was settled and they were still talking the same game then I'd be worried. Now, not so much.

The arab world doesn't give a rats ass about the Palestinians. They're pawns to perpetuate the larger cause.

 

[southsider2k5]

Who's saying Iran is innocent, I'm saying they are not insane and suicidal and trying to frame what they're doing in regular geopolitical terms. People just assume that because they're a Muslim country and they're state sponsors of terror that they're the same thing as al-Qaida.

 

Not at all. I don't assume that about Jordan. They are just as Muslim as Iran. The difference is that I have yet to see the leader of Jordan on TV calling for the destruction of Israel, since about the 80's.

[lostfan]

The arab world doesn't give a rats ass about the Palestinians. They're pawns to perpetuate the larger cause.

The same thing applies in Iran too.

 

By the way if the "larger cause" you're referring to is the expansion of Islam then the overt destruction of Israel wouldn't really help. They wouldn't really need to, all they'd have to do is wait a couple of generations for the Palestinians to out-populate the Israelis.

[lostfan]

Not at all. I don't assume that about Jordan. They are just as Muslim as Iran. The difference is that I have yet to see the leader of Jordan on TV calling for the destruction of Israel, since about the 80's.

I didn't mean "you" as in southsider2k5. But Arab leaders are mostly pretty moderate and pretty pro-US, and this pisses off their populations a lot but they don't really have a choice since the leaders were "elected" with 100% of the vote. The actual population is much more anti-Israel and if they had elections (to use the term loosely) like Iran does then you'd see Arab versions of Ahmadinejad.

[kapkomet]

The same thing applies in Iran too.

 

By the way if the "larger cause" you're referring to is the expansion of Islam then the overt destruction of Israel wouldn't really help. They wouldn't really need to, all they'd have to do is wait a couple of generations for the Palestinians to out-populate the Israelis.

 

Cause that's worked well since the 1960's and 70's. It has nothing to do with population. The palestinians will not take over that land, ever. Now, with that said, if they get some help, they will - but no one really wants to help them. They want the instability so that they can keep perpetuating the "Isreal is SO oppressive" line. Look, I know that this is your business and all, but Iran as a nation-state used to matter, but as they've gotten more tied into the fanaticism of the religious side, you can throw some of the so-called predictibility out the window.

 

 

[kapkomet]

I didn't mean "you" as in southsider2k5. But Arab leaders are mostly pretty moderate and pretty pro-US, and this pisses off their populations a lot but they don't really have a choice since the leaders were "elected" with 100% of the vote. The actual population is much more anti-Israel and if they had elections (to use the term loosely) like Iran does then you'd see Arab versions of Ahmadinejad.

Of course, and isn't that kind of the point?

 

[lostfan]

Eh foreign policy study isn't really my business, that's more like a hobby.

 

I think I already said that they used the Israel-Palestine conflict to play the card. Either that or forcing the self-fulfilling prophecy with "see, the world is against Iran." They don't buy that in the cities and such but that's not Ahmadinejad's base of support.

[lostfan]

Of course, and isn't that kind of the point?

What do you mean? I was saying that both Sunni Arabs and Iranians are equally as anti-Israel. Most of the sentiment comes from media coverage of the conflict over the past few decades, not so much religion. Religion is just kind of a convenient shell for it that lets bin Laden types exploit it.

[southsider2k5]

Eh foreign policy study isn't really my business, that's more like a hobby.

 

I think I already said that they used the Israel-Palestine conflict to play the card. Either that or forcing the self-fulfilling prophecy with "see, the world is against Iran." They don't buy that in the cities and such but that's not Ahmadinejad's base of support.

 

The funny thing is that Achy was elected for his socialist stuff, such as redistrubution of oil money.

[lostfan]

The funny thing is that Achy was elected for his socialist stuff, such as redistrubution of oil money.

Yeah and their economy isn't doing so great either which is one of the reasons so many people were thinking he would lose.

 

I actually wonder what the real numbers looked like if they weren't so obvious in how they rigged them. He isn't as unpopular in the rest of Iran as it seems from here.

[Controlled Chaos]

Glenn Beck Explained

Cal Thomas

Thursday, September 24, 2009

"They would not listen, they're not listening still,

 

"Perhaps they never will." -- Don McLean, "Vincent"

 

Radio and TV commentator Glenn Beck was mentioned three times in separate opinion columns on the same day and in an article the next day in The New York Times, possibly a record for someone who does not hold elective office.

 

Oh, and then there's this week's Time magazine cover. He's everywhere. Beck is also the Left's latest explanation for what is wrong with America. Many on the Left believe that if conservatives would just get out of the way, shut up and allow liberals to re-create America in their image, we would all be better off. But those loud-mouthed cable TV and radio talk show hosts keep uneducated, God-worshipping, flag-waving, NASCAR-loving, country music-fueled trailer trash riled up and prevent their brave new world from being born.

 

 

The articles, essays and columns about Beck, and so many others on the Right, drip with the condescension conservatives have come to expect from liberal elites who think because they went to the "right" schools they are better than everyone else.

 

I had not met Glenn Beck, so last week I visited him in his high-rise Manhattan office. His walls are decorated with black-and-white photographs of people he clearly admires. There are entertainers like Red Skelton and a young filmmaker named Walt Disney. You could watch Skelton on TV and view Disney movies along with your wife and kids, knowing you'd never hear a bad word, including a bad word about America.

 

Beck has an old Admiral black-and-white TV an aide says they are trying to "make work." When it did work, it carried programs worth watching, including news broadcasts by real journalists like Edward R. Murrow, whose photo hangs on a wall close to Beck's office.

 

Is it Beck who is stirring the pot or has the pot been stirring for some time and it is he, and a few others, giving the masses a voice? Maybe it's the leadership vacuum in the country that has thrust Beck and Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin (1 million of his latest book sold) and others to the forefront. If Republicans were behaving like Republicans, perhaps there would be less perceived need for them.

 

If the Left bothered to hang out where conservatives do and take seriously their concerns about a country to which they pay taxes and for which many of them, or their parents, or children have fought, maybe they would understand what has so many upset.

 

Pollster Frank Luntz understands. In a recent column for The New York Daily News, Luntz reports on his interview survey of 6,400 people, the results of which appear in his new book "What Americans Really Want ... Really." Luntz discovered that people are angry with the government because of the lack of accountability by our leaders and a lack of progress on anything meaningful in Washington.

 

The "absence of accountability," he writes, "ranks No. 1 in the hearts and guts of the average American. Washington spends billions to bail out big business and then can't explain where the money went. Washington spends $800 billion on a stimulus package filled with earmarks and pork projects. And now Washington is trying to create a trillion-dollar health-care experiment when over 85 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care just as it is."

 

As Professor Harold Hill put it: "Make your blood boil? Well, I should say."

 

Luntz continues: "This could be forgiven, perhaps, if those elected officials from Washington exhibited even an ounce of respect for the voters who pay their salaries. But the combination of a political class that ignores those with whom they disagree and a business class that ignores the very real suffering of the working class (if they are, in fact, working) while pocketing million-dollar bonuses has convinced the public that no one cares."

 

Glenn Beck seems to care and that's why his ratings are now challenging the godfather of cable, Bill O'Reilly.

 

I ask if he fears being transformed into another "Lonesome Rhodes," the politically corrupted main character in Budd Schulberg's classic film, "A Face in the Crowd"? Beck tells me I am not the first to warn of such a possibility. He says he isn't worried about yielding to that temptation. Beck believes in God and doesn't think government is Him. And he's going to his son's ball game the next day.

 

That explains Glenn Beck. Any questions?

 

 

 

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

 

[kapkomet]

Yeah and their economy isn't doing so great either which is one of the reasons so many people were thinking he would lose.

 

I actually wonder what the real numbers looked like if they weren't so obvious in how they rigged them. He isn't as unpopular in the rest of Iran as it seems from here.

Which should tell you something.