I wouldn't be surprised if AIPAC and the Israeli right come to regret their part in goading the GOP to such ridiculous rhetoric. It's completely understandable why they've taken such a path; it's been incredibly helpful in handicapping Obama's ability to spur concession from Israel in the peace talks. The best example of this is Netanyahu's farcical rant on the 1967 peace lines; ignoring the fact that every US president in the last quarter century has supported a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines with land swaps, Bibi *himself* took the position not that long ago. So the 'manufactured outrage' as a commenter below mentioned, was actually a creation of the right and of Netanyahu; the right wanted to smear Obama as betraying Israel, and Netanyahu wanted to preempt any pressure from Obama to make a peace deal Bibi's parliamentary coalition wouldn't like. The fact that Obama was simply repeating what has been US policy for decades didn't prevent this smear from being dismayingly effective.

Netanyahu, thus preempting an push from the US towards peace, has repeated this tactic when necessary, showing the Obama administration for the patsy it has become. Israel, like most countries (mine included), is often prone to near-sighted thinking. As the West Bank's population grows and Israeli settlements become more mired into it, the ability of Israel to reach a two state consensus becomes less and less realistic. That leaves it with two options: A) give citizenship to the millions of Arab-Palestinians living within Israel's new borders and effectively lose it's identity as a Jewish state, or B) Permanently enclose the West Bank within Israel's spiderweb of settlements, wall it off, and run the worlds newest, most explosive apartheid state.

Everyone who talks of how 'Palestinians doesn't want peace' and 'The Arabs will accept peace when Israel is run into the sea" are missing the point: even if 95% percent of Palestinians would rather Israel cease existing, it won't change the fact that Israel must still make peace, lose it's democracy, or lose it's identity. Or purge all the Palestinians. However that last option sounds a bit too much like a 'final solution' for it to go over well with the rest of the world.

If you don't believe me, then go read Goldblog or Megan McArdle; both of whom are far smarter than I and considerably less liberal. Israel is in the terrible situation of being surrounded by enemies, and unless it plans on fighting till judgement day, it must start making some hard decisions.

I would wager these decisions will become harder in the near future as a result of picking sides in American politics. It's one thing to lobby its main Ally to continue supporting it, it's quite another to seemingly court the favor of the most unbalanced set of presidential candidates in recent history at the risk of alienating a generation of young Americans, Jews among them. How do you think it makes Israel look in the eyes of it's expats and Jewish diaspora when reactionaries like Gingrich and Perry vie to be the first to sacrifice American interests in the Middle-East for Israel?

Pakistani nanny government

So what I assume is a translation or English version of the Pakistani SMS censorship list is going around. You'd like to send a text? You won't be able to get these words through.

No "backdoor man"? Aww, that's like my favorite Howlin' Wolf song ever.

Also; 'Bazongas'. Wow, these guys are more hip than most censors. But "GOT JESUS'? 'HOSTAGE'? I don't understand those. Also they apparently don't want to admit the existence of famous serial killers?

One of the more interesting terms is "YELLOW MAN" or "YELLOMAN" (at the very bottom). I had no idea what this way, but according to Urban Dictionary, it has an Asian-aimed racist connotation. Why would the Pakistani government/military agency responsible for this list censor an anti-Asian racial slur? Important or developing allies?

The is all a lot of vague hand waving and gesturing on my part, but it doesn't seem an excessively detailed list, so the number of people submitting words for censorship probably wasn't that massive. A significant portion of the terms are sexual or defamatory words that aren't racial. I haven't read the whole thing, so please point out if there is additional Politically Incorrect material.

Another Drunken Political Comment on BoingBoing

Thread I'm responding to here. Sometimes you just need to let go.

The gist of the post is that Obama has the same set of policies as Bush jr.

"

It's so cute when BoingBoing commenters (or posters for that matter) think they understand politics at all! It's like they've never sat down and read a single book about the powers of the POTUS, or put a single news article in context in the last forever!

Serious people, grow up. No Obama isn't a gorram panacea. Yes he's light-years better than Bush. Honestly McCain would have been light-years better than Bush, but who's counting. It really boils down to this; people like

heavystarch

can bitch all they want; their critiques are in most ways entirely justified. But the change that they would require before supporting a given president would require a Jesus+ Mohammed^Moses level of miraculous paradigm change, pure and simple. I'll just use one example because it's the most egregrious: the deficit. Due to demographics (people becoming old) and rising medical costs (free market + the best medicine money can buy = $$$$$$$) we are going to be hugely in debt. We wouldn't have had this problem for another decade if SOMEONE HADN"T STARTED TWO UNNECESSARY WARS. No Libya doesn't count; it was under half a percent of either war so stfu. Libya, in fact, is a beautiful example of how you /can/ run foreign intervention well; in the most obvious of circumstances with lots of allies + international support + limited engagement + clear victory path. I didn't support it at first, but hey so far the damn thing is going well, although you wouldn't know it from the tin-foil-wearing libertarian parrots around here.

ANYWAY I'm rambling. The deficit is massive, and there's no possible way to fix it without A) large cuts in entitlements (medicare, ss, etc) which are incredibly political unpopular and therefor cannot be done without broad bipartisan agreement since anyone doing so unilaterally will be crucified by the resulting attack ads B) cut almost ALL discretionary spending which would very literally cause a much worse depression C) Raise taxes which last time I checked the vast majority of the house (read: the psychotic f#*%ing republicans) has vowed on pain of death not to raise or D) some combination of the above developed by massive political compromise that has to happen in CONGRESS and not, has, the PRESIDENCY which last time I checked was the post Obama has, instead of a super-majority in congress which would be necessary to fix this bs.

TL;DR Obama has been a very successful president from any of the following view points; conservative, liberal, pragmatic, sensible, responsible, reasonable, not-wanting-things-to-fucking-explode-ist. Feel free to tell me how I'm wrong and I will show you the same courtesy.

"