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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (633298)	10/26/2011 5:35:05 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1577867

What happened to Obama in Vegas ...................................................................................................................... By Jon Ralston Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011 lasvegassun.com I would love to know what went through President Barack Obama’s mind as he came to the door of Air Force One on Monday morning and looked down at the McCarran International Airport tarmac. Standing below him was not the usual receiving line of Democratic politicians but a solitary elected official — and one who had abandoned the Democratic Party. As if to add insult to absence, the lone woman’s husband had mercilessly excoriated the president for a couple of years, demanding an apology for remarks he had made about Las Vegas and snubbing him on previous trips. Somehow, Obama kept his smile as he walked down from the plane and greeted Mayor Carolyn Goodman, who along with her husband, former Mayor Oscar Goodman, had made a big show of switching from Democrat to independent when His Honor was making a big show about pretending to think about running for governor last year. Goodman II, clutching her cellphone in one hand, bent the president’s ear for several minutes — there was no one else for him to talk to — handing the commander in chief a “good luck” chip and asking him to say nice things about Las Vegas. How the mighty have fallen. This is what it has come to for the man who created a Nevada wave in 2008, winning the state by 12 percentage points, pulling Democrats up and down the ticket to victory and auguring Harry Reid’s stunning re-election two years later. Obama previously had been greeted by Democrats high and low at the airport, many of them only too eager to shake hands with the president and perhaps ride in the motorcade. Now, the most powerful man in the world is treated like he is arriving on a quarantined plane, a political leper shunned by those who once embraced him — nay, by those he gave political life to just a few years ago. Obama arrived in a devastated state to present a housing plan that probably won’t help many of those underwater on their homes in the worst economy in the country, only to be greeted by a mayor whose husband he surely despises and who hectored him (once again) about his much-overblown “don’t come to Vegas” remarks. Other than that, Mr. President, how was the trip? (Well, there was the money he raised at the Bellagio, the house that Steve Wynn built. You know, Mr. Wynn, don’t you, Mr. President? He’s the fellow all over Fox News and virally on the Internet saying you have been more destructive to business in America than that comet was to the dinosaurs way back when.) Obama’s Nevada problem is a microcosm of his national problem. Here’s a place that was full of hope for change in 2009 but now is mired in hopelessness, and not much has changed for a couple of years. The president who won here by 12 is now underwater almost as much as some of those mortgages he wants to fix — Public Opinion Strategies found his job approval at 45/52 a year ago and 42/55 a few weeks ago. Hence, the lack of smiles and handshakes on the tarmac. Oh, I’m sure Obama arrived at the Bellagio to be greeted by Democratic elected officials brimming with excuses. The traffic was a nightmare. The security folks told us we had to be at the Bellagio early. I didn’t know what time the plane landed. Of course, running away from the president — or not having a photo taken with him in the next year — is a fool’s, or perhaps coward’s, errand for these Democrats. They will still get Velcroed to Obama if his numbers remain low — whether they are literally with him or photoshopped. And the Republicans, here and nationally, will continue to remind people that the president once told people not to come to Vegas, thereby destroying the economy — even though that is a canard turned into hyperbole. In 2009, the president said companies that received federal bailouts “can’t go take that trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime.” Totally reasonable statement, but latched onto by then-Mayor Publicity-At-Any-Cost and others. And, the president turned tone-deaf a year later and essentially doubled down on the remarks by telling people not to “blow a bunch of cash” here. Once, Mr. President, despite what Jacqueline Susann said, is enough. By the way, even though Democrats were scarce Monday, the other Goodman actually was on hand to welcome the president, just not in the flesh. Oscar Goodman made an appearance in a National Republican Senatorial Committee video, a clip of him from a couple of years back demanding the president apologize for remarks. What’s said about Vegas is remembered in Vegas, even if it is, as another president might have put it, misremembered.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (633298)	10/26/2011 9:12:18 PM
From: joseffy	2 Recommendations Respond to of 1577867

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (633298)	10/27/2011 2:46:27 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577867

Where are the anti-Semites of Occupy Wall Street? By Richard Cohen, Published: October 24 Reckless Jew that I am, I muscled my way into the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Lower Manhattan despite multiple reports of virulent and conceivably lethal anti-Semitism. Projecting an unvarnished Semitism, I circled the place, encountering nothing and no one to suggest bigotry — not a sign, not a book and not even the guy who some weeks ago held up a placard with the instruction to Google the phrase “Zionists control Wall St.” Google “nut case” instead. This was my second visit to the Occupy Wall Street site and the second time my keen reporter’s eye has failed to detect even a hint of the anti-Semitism that had been trumpeted by certain right-wing Web sites and bloggers, most prominently Bill Kristol. He is a founder of the Emergency Committee for Israel, which has been running cable TV ads alleging a virtual hate rally at the Occupy Wall Street site and calling on President Obama and other important Democrats to denounce what is — as it happens — not happening there. The commercial ran on Fox News the very day I was at the site. Kristol’s cri de wolf (a French term of my own invention) was taken up by Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post’s conservative blogger, who noted the Kristol group’s “eye-popping ad.” Citing an article from Israel Today that linked a single statement by someone named Patricia McAllister in Los Angeles with some vitriol on the American Nazi Party’s Web site and a reference to the editor of Adbusters, she fashioned a veritable pogrom out of pretty close to thin air and demanded, “Where is the outrage?” I have a better question: Where are the anti-Semites? The Anti-Defamation League has managed to find a paltry few. But even this watchdog Jewish organization, while noting the odd Jew-hater on the periphery of the anti-Wall Street group, found that “anti-Semitism has not gained traction .?.?. nor is it representative of the larger movement at this time.” Possibly more representative is the fact that Jewish religious services were held at the protest site for the holidays of Yom Kippur and Simchat Torah. If these were disrupted by roving bands of contemporary Cossacks, the local media have failed to mention it — yet another cause for outrage, no doubt. This right-wing attempt to discredit both the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Democratic Party’s hesitant embrace of it is reprehensible. It’s made possible, however, because no one this side of the moon knows precisely what the Occupy Wall Street movement is trying to do. On a daily basis it marches off to some location to highlight what we all know — that Wall Street guys are rich — and their slogans suggest a tired socialism that is as repugnant to me as the felonious capitalism that produced the mortgage bubble and the impoverishment of millions of Americans. Given our fastidiousness regarding vigilante justice, not much can be done. Occupy Wall Street has become an event for its own sake, a destination for the aimless. It is something that occurs on countless iPhone cameras, a tourist attraction with the usual vendors, the usual zaftig young women doing the usual arrhythmic dance, somehow missing the beat of many drums. The nostalgic scent of pot wafts occasionally through the air, and I feel so much younger. This, I’m sure, will bring an end to the Vietnam War. On a given day, I decide that Occupy Wall Street is about nothing and then I decide it is the Herman Cain campaign in aggregate, just a media event that has captured the flea-thoughts of many Americans. Then I decide it is an incoherent articulation of anger at the institutions that have failed us, including — by way of both self-pity and self-flagellation — the media. It seems, above all, a conspiracy to have left-leaning writers make jackasses of themselves by imparting grave and grand meaning to what is little more than a vast sleepover. The imputation of anti-Semitism, however, adds gravitas to this lighthearted event. The smear is in deadly earnest, a reminder that the devious tactics of the Old Left have been adopted by the New Right. (No accident, maybe, that the practitioners are the descendants of lefties.) It produced alarm on the Internet, Jewish smoke signals alerting the ethnically twitchy to the presence of enemies and the demand that Obama, already suspected of harboring furious anti-Israel sentiments, do something. But there is nothing to be done — except to condemn anyone who uses anti-Semitism to advance a political agenda. To quote some of them: Where’s the outrage?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (633298)	10/27/2011 8:05:20 AM
From: Alighieri	1 Recommendation Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 1577867

Street violence is the result of immorality and disorder, not wage disparity. Strange how "disorder" seems to coincide with periods of severe economic strain eh Ten? The youth are *taught* to hate others and blame the "rich white man" for their problems. By whom? It sure is a lot easier than having to work their way out of poverty. Right ten...they are all freeloaders who want to take YOUR money... You are looking at the Reagan revolution here...literally. Al