By Maayan Lubell
JERUSALEM, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu took his campaign against a nuclear deal with Iran to Jerusalem’s sacred Western Wall on Saturday, on the eve of his departure to Washington to address Congress on the issue.
His rare pilgrimage to one of Judaism’s holiest sites was highly symbolic — and political — an apparent attempt by Netanyahu, two weeks before a national election, to portray a U.S. visit, that has brought relations with Washington to a new low, as crucial to Israel’s survival.
Using the perimeter wall of the destroyed Biblical Jewish temple as a backdrop and wearing a black skullcap, he said: “The agreement being formed between Iran and the powers, can endanger our existence.
“In the face of such an agreement we must unite and explain the dangers it poses to Israel, to the region and to the entire world.”
Netanyahu has come under almost unprecedented criticism from the U.S. administration and in Israel for his planned speech to Congress on Tuesday, as international talks with Iran are under way to secure a deal on Teheran’s nuclear program.
Washington hopes a deal with Iran will ensure the Islamic Republic is unable to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran denies it has any nuclear arms program and often points out that Israel is apparently the only country in the region with such weapons.
On Wednesday U.S. officials questioned Netanyahu’s judgment and said his outspoken condemnation of efforts to reach an Iranian deal had injected destructive partisanship into U.S.-Israeli ties.
“I respect U.S. President Barack Obama,” Netanyahu said at the Western Wall where earlier he placed his palms on the stones in whose crevices faithful place written messages to God.
“I believe in the strength of Israel’s relations with the U.S. and through them we shall overcome these differences, as well as those to come,” he said.
Republicans who control Congress invited Netanyahu without consulting Obama or other leading Democrats. The president said he would not meet Netanyahu because of the visit’s proximity to the Israeli election. (Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Robin Pomeroy)
Recent events in the state of North Carolina pose a serious threat to academic freedom in our nation. America’s universities are, by any measure, the best in the world. What has made that possible is our deep commitment to academic freedom. The recent decision of the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina to close the University of North Carolina Law School’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity is a blatant and dangerous instance of political interference with academic freedom.
Although the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity has accomplished a great deal in recent years, its mission and its director, Gene Nichol, a distinguished scholar and academic administrator who has served as dean of the University of Colorado Law School and as president of College of William and Mary, have clearly alienated the Koch brother-backed legislators who now control both the state legislature and the University’s Board of Governors.
In the guise of trimming the university’s budget, the Board has decided to shutter three of the 240 boards, centers, and institutes that operate within the state university system. By coincidence, they decided to close the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity with the patently false explanation that the Center was unproductive. Anyone who has examined the work of the Center knows that this claim is bogus. The plain and simple fact is that both the Center and its director advocate positions that the Tea Party powers-that-be in North Carolina do not like.
This blatant intrusion of politics and political ideology into the operations of a university is hardly unprecedented in American history, but it is an evil that we as a nation have fought tirelessly to extinguish. It is a travesty to see it reemerge again today.
Although the struggle for academic freedom can be traced at least as far back as Socrates’ eloquent defense of himself against the charge that he corrupted the youth of Athens, the modern history of this struggle, as it has played out in the university context, begins in the nineteenth century.
The most important moral problem in America in the first half of the 19th century was, of course, slavery. By the 1830s, the mind of the South had closed on this issue. When it became known, for example, that a professor at the University of North Carolina was sympathetic to the 1856 Republican presidential candidate, he was discharged by the board of trustees.
The situation in the North was not much better. The president of Franklin College was dismissed because he was not an abolitionist, and Judge Edward Loring was dismissed from a lectureship at the Harvard Law School because, in his capacity as a federal judge, he had enforced the fugitive slave law.
Between 1870 and 1900, there was a genuine revolution in American higher education. Critical to this revolution was the impact of Darwinism. In the 1870s, determined efforts were made exclude proponents of Darwinism whenever possible. The disputes were often quite bitter. The great debate over Darwinism represented a profound clash between conflicting cultures, intellectual styles, and academic values.
A new approach to education and to intellectual discourse grew out of the Darwinian debate. To the evolutionists, all beliefs were tentative and verifiable only through a continuous process of inquiry. The evolutionists held that every claim to truth must submit to open verification; that the process of verification must follow certain rules; and that this process is best understood by those who qualify as experts.
By the end of the nineteenth century, it was increasingly accepted that a commitment to academic freedom defined the true university. As William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago, observed in 1892: “When for any reason the administration of a university attempts to dislodge a professor because of his political . . . sentiments, at that moment the institution has ceased to be a university.”
This commitment to academic freedom was tested severely in the closing years of the 19th century, when businessmen who had accumulated vast industrial wealth began to support universities on an unprecedented scale. For at the same time that trusteeship in a prestigious university was increasingly becoming an important symbol of business prominence, a growing concern among scholars about the excesses of commerce and industry generated new forms of research, particularly in the social sciences, that were often sharply critical of the means by which these trustee-philanthropists had amassed their wealth.
The moguls and the scholars thus came into direct conflict. A professor was dismissed from Cornell, for example, for a pro-labor speech that annoyed a powerful benefactor, and a prominent scholar at Stanford was dismissed because he annoyed donors with his views on the silver and immigration issues.
This tension continued until the beginning of World War I, when it was dwarfed by an even larger conflict.
During the Great War, patriotic zealots persecuted and even prosecuted those who questioned the war or the draft. Universities faced the almost total collapse of the institutional safeguards that had evolved up to that point to protect academic freedom, for nothing in their prior experience had prepared them to deal with the issue of loyalty at a time of national emergency.
At the University of Nebraska, for example, three professors were discharged because they had “assumed an attitude calculated to encourage . . . a spirit of [indifference] towards [the] war.” At the University of Virginia, a professor was discharged because he had made a speech predicting that the war would not make the world safe for democracy. And at Columbia, the Board of Trustees launched a general campaign of investigation to determine whether doctrines that tended to encourage a spirit of disloyalty were being taught at the university.
Similar issues arose again, with a vengeance, during the age of McCarthy. In the late 1940s and 1950s, many if not most universities excluded those accused of Communist sympathies from participation in university life. The University of Washington fired three tenured professors, the University of California dismissed thirty-one professors who refused to sign an anti-Communist oath, and Yale president Charles Seymour boasted that “there will be no witch hunts at Yale, because there will be no witches. We will not hire Communists.”
What we are seeing now in North Carolina is an ugly resurgence of an attempt by political elements outside the university to censor, discipline, and punish those inside the university who take positions that annoy, offend, or disturb them. This is unconscionable. The Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina must reverse its decision now and it must acknowledge that its action, however tempting, betrayed the Board’s most fundamental responsibility to protect the core values of what used to be one of our nation’s greatest public universities.
Sharon Osbourne And Melissa Rivers Comment on Kelly Osbourne's Exit from ‘Fashion Police'
Posted in: Today's ChiliSharon Osbourne and Melissa Rivers have both commented on Kelly Osbourne‘s exit from E!’s “Fashion Police.”
Margot Robbie Slapped Leonardo DiCaprio During Her 'Wolf Of Wall Street' Audition
Posted in: Today's ChiliHow does one break into Hollywood? For buzzy star Margot Robbie, it’s by slapping one of the world’s most famous celebrities.
In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK, the star opened up about the untraditional audition that led to her career-launching role as the wife of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in “Wolf of Wall Street.”
Robbie recalls auditioning with a scene in which her character and DiCaprio’s character are in the midst of an argument.
In my head I was like, ‘You have literally 30 seconds left in this room and if you don’t do something impressive nothing will ever come of it. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance, just take it.’ … So I walk up really close to his face and then I’m like, ‘Maybe I should kiss him. When else am I ever going to get a chance to kiss Leo DiCaprio, ever?’ But another part of my brain clicks and I just go, Whack! I hit him in the face. And then I scream, ‘Fuck you!’ And that’s not in the script at all. The room just went dead silent and I froze.
As it turns out, director Martin Scorsese and DiCaprio loved it, and now Robbie is Hollywood royalty.
H/T Celebuzz
Fatherhood is bringing out yet another adorable side of Ryan Gosling. On Friday, the handsome actor ran errands in LA looking like his typical scruffy self, with the exception of one detail: part of his daughter Esmeralda’s name was written on his left hand
Daredevil Maria Kochetkova and the passionate Joseph Walsh in Jerome Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering (Photo: Erik Tomasson)
At 6:32 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on Thursday night, Ballet to the People paused on her way to the War Memorial Opera House to gaze skyward. In the company of other San Franciscans, she watched a “visible passing” of the International Space Station. Good sightings of the ISS are infrequent, and depend on the earth’s rotation and the clarity of the sky. For three minutes we stood, motionless, following the arc of its journey eastward in the dusky sky. The sight never fails to thrill: like an exceptionally bright star, the Space Station zooms across the sky at nearly five miles per second, manned by American, Russian, European and Japanese astronauts who spend their days conducting scientific research and testing the effects of zero gravity on their bodies.
At 8:58 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, ten San Francisco Ballet dancers stood motionless on stage, at the close of Jerome Robbins’ heroic Dances at a Gathering, gazing skyward in their own ritual Space Station sighting, as the wistful chords of a Chopin “night piece” rained lightly down. The previous hour had been spent negotiating the earth’s gravity with an insouciance that belied these dancers’ formidable technique.
This plotless masterpiece, affectionately known as DAAG, opens as the Man in Brown – Joseph Walsh, whose thrilling dancing unites lyricism and bravura – relives a bittersweet memory. Watching him from the pit, magician Roy Bogas spins this memory into Chopin’s poignant Mazurka Op. 63 No. 3.
Part of the genius of this work is that the dance does not arise, like most dances, in response to the music; rather, it seems to inspire the musician to create the music on the spot – a feigned improvisation, for which Chopin’s mercurial moods prove perfect. On the bare stage, balletic movements punctuated by hints of Eastern European folk dance (Robbins claimed to be inspired by his Russian Jewish heritage), are interpreted with a simplicity and a deliberate avoidance of style and stylishness that make us question the boundary between dance and ordinary human movement.
The people in Walsh’s memory (identified in the program only by the colour of their summery garb) drift on and offstage. They tease, seduce, fall in and out of love, spur, pester, protect and commiserate with each other, revealing poetry in their mundane lives. Weather happens: a couple, caught in a storm, spin delightedly. A hint of tragedy emerges as two women stretch out, rigid and still, in the arms of two men.
The poetic Vanessa Zahorian falls for Carlo Di Lanno in Dances at a Gathering (Photo: Erik Tomasson)
Vanessa Zahorian (Mauve) shows perhaps the greatest range of feeling, delicate in the expressive yearning of her upper body, at other times a gale-force wind. Her early duet with Carlo Di Lanno (Green) to a lilting waltz is innocent and playful; a later duet, to a heartbreaking mazurka, is stately and deliberate, leaving many things between them unsaid. Maria Kochetkova (Pink) never seems truly happy unless she’s doing something dangerous, in which she is aided and abetted by Davit Karapetyan, later by Joseph Walsh. Karapetyan dances a solo like butter, his double air turns melting into a deep knee bend. Later, he and Walsh betray a cordial rivalry in an anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better duet. Mathilde Froustey is a zephyr in yellow; at the end of a sunny, jazz-inflected duet with the irresistible Vitor Luiz (Brick), she dives enthusiastically into his waiting arms, partway into the wings.
The mood turns pensive, though not for long. Sensing change is in the air, Doris André (Blue), Kochetkova and Zahorian huddle together, stretching their legs outward warily, like antennas.
San Francisco Ballet dancers in flight in Dances at a Gathering (Photo: Erik Tomasson)
In a feisty dance of independence, Lorena Feijoo (Green) mocks those women-of-a-certain-age who fear loneliness. Yet later she becomes a powerful force of nature. In a sextet, Di Lanno, Karapetyan and Steven Morse (Blue) toss André, Froustey and Zahorian playfully into the air. Even when airborne, the main quality of this cast is a wonderful groundedness, a weightiness missing from DAAG as performed by some companies.
San Francisco Ballet in Liam Scarlett’s Hummingbird (Photo: Erik Tomasson)
An inspired programming coup pairs DAAG with Liam Scarlett’s Hummingbird, another plotless ballet, new last season. Wunderkind of the Royal Ballet, Scarlett wrests unexpected emotions from Philip Glass’ relentless Piano Concerto No. 1. Co-conspirators John Macfarlane (set and costumes) and David Finn (lighting) have designed an post-apocalyptic world, the stage overhung by an enormous, curved, shimmering sail that rolls up and down to reveal more or less of a metallic quarter pipe running the full width of the stage, down which the dancers slide or roll to make their appearance. With the exception of Yuan Yuan Tan and Luke Ingham, dressed in white, the ensemble is outfitted in shades of industrial grey and indigo. The effect is both oppressive and uplifting.
Like DAAG, Hummingbird hints at complicated, even tragic, backstories, but if we come away undecided as to what was really going on in this world, it is not with a sense of frustration, but exhilaration at the possibilities.
Yuan Yuan Tan and Luke Ingham in Hummingbird (Photo: Erik Tomasson)
Tan and Ingham appear to be trapped in a bad relationship. She may have found out something terrible about him – perhaps he is a Russian spy, or a bigamist. Frances Chung, who opens up the piece with Gennadi Nedvigin, may be the steely spymaster. The thrill-seeking Maria Kochetkova joins forces with Joan Boada to break free from the tyrannical intelligence apparatus. In the end she is propelled triumphantly through the air by the gentleman of the ensemble, perhaps signaling the heroic destruction of the surveillance state.
Scarlett elicits magnificent performances from all, including the very fine Isabella DeVivo, Emma Rubinowitz, James Sofranko and Hansuke Yamamoto in demi-soloist parts, as well as the eight-person Greek chorus. Martin West captained the orchestra steadfastly through the score which, like an ocean roiled by passing storms, turns ominous, tempestuous, then momentarily serene. Pianist Brenda Tom attacked the Glass with vigor, in sharp contrast to Roy Bogas’ heavenly, limpid renderings of Chopin.
Gennadi Nedvigin and Frances Chung in Hummingbird (Photo: Erik Tomasson)
In the future, when space stations whizzing overhead are no longer objects of fascination, and space travel becomes as common as riding the BART, when we encounter alien life forms in far flung galaxies who inevitably challenge us to display the superiority of humankind, let’s just throw San Francisco Ballet’s sensational Program 4 at them and be done with it.
– San Francisco Ballet’s Program 4 continues through March 8, 2015, alternating with Program 3, featuring the world première of Myles Thatcher’s Manifesto. –
Kelly Gissendaner is scheduled to be killed on Monday, and there is not much that can be done to stop it.
I interacted with Kelly only once, and only briefly. These were the words I said to her: “This is the body of Christ, which is broken for you; the blood of Christ, shed for you.” I served her communion, a Christian feast of fellowship and thanksgiving, when I worked as a prison chaplain intern at Lee Arrendale State Prison two years ago. I offered her the words of grace that, for a Christian, speak to the fundamental situation of humanity: redemption. These words are as true for Kelly as they are for me.
Kelly is a person profoundly transformed, with a powerful voice speaking good into the world. Convicted for her part in the 1997 murder of her husband, she enrolled in and graduated from the Certificate in Theological Studies program at Arrendale State Prison for Women. Through this program, she grew into a new person with purpose and hope. She experienced forgiveness and gained confidence through grace and redemption. She became pen-pals with the famous German theologian Jürgen Moltmann, who came to speak at her graduation. Twelve people testified on her behalf at her clemency hearing last Tuesday, including her prison chaplains, former theology professor, a former inmate, and others. The testimonies of her children, who were literally pleading for the life of their mother, were passionate and gripping, as is the testimony of a woman I know, Nikki Roberts. Nikki was a student in the theology class I taught at Arrendale and, before that, one of the inmates I worked with as a prison chaplain. Nikki speaks about how Kelly was a lifeline to her in a time of desperation and hopelessness: “She told me, ‘Don’t give up your power. Don’t give up your voice.'” Nikki was on suicide watch at Metro State Prison and Kelly was in a cell next to her. Through an air vent, for three weeks Kelly kept Nikki encouraged and “alive by words.”
She told me, ‘You’ll live. You’ll not die.’ She was my encourager – when I had no real sense of purpose, when nothing else was making me feel alive, she told me about the theology program…and after that, everything literally changed, literally.
All of these and more are compelling reasons for commuting Kelly’s sentence to life in prison; yet, that has not happened. In spite of such powerful testimony, Kelly was denied clemency and is condemned to die. Someone who has lived the reformation that incarceration ostensibly aims to achieve–rehabilitated, completely transformed–is being put to death. Thus, not only do we see a miscarriage of justice in Kelly’s case; we also see the brokenness of the system: its incoherence, wantonness, and absurdity.
In a recent interview, human rights lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative Bryan Stevenson has addressed the irrationality of the death penalty, stating,
There is no natural way to systematically engage in killing another human being who is not a threat to you, who doesn’t have to be killed, but is killed to express what kind of people we are and what our society wants.
Citing his experience as a lawyer of a death row client, Stevenson explains that the execution was not only surreal for him, his client, and the client’s family, but was also surreal for the corrections guards and officers–for those who were charged with carrying out the actual killing. The liturgy, if you will, of death was recognized by those carrying it out as grotesque, a horrifying parody of justice. In spite of–and perhaps through–being a highly controlled process, the execution of justice reveals its own fatal flaws.
Stevenson describes this process as dehumanizing for all involved. Significantly, this “all” is not only those who physically carry out the execution. The voyeurism surrounding state execution belies the presumed disinterestedness of the public. Though rituals of hiddenness seek to distance the public from the actual killing, the contaminant of dehumanization in execution does not just affect those few who administer the drugs, who strap the person down to be killed, who–if necessary–forcibly separate family members clinging to their loved one as they go to die. It spreads out further, to the citizens comprising the state in whose name the person is executed, and to those who participate in the execution as spectacle through the media. The media coverage of Kelly’s last meal is pornographic and obscene, and those who take part as avid spectators not only dehumanize Kelly, but dehumanize themselves. We who consume this as entertainment enact a different kind of communion, a perverse and horrifying one devoid of grace. It is not life-giving, but death-dealing. In this communion, the body politic that is supposedly constituted by this act falls apart, and disintegrates. Dehumanization manifests socially, as well as individually.
In the face of such a system, and in light of the hours dwindling until Monday evening, it is easy to lose hope. It is difficult to see beyond the void that is the reality of injustice, to trust that good will conquer evil. Yet, see and trust we must, assured by things hoped for and convicted by things unseen, knowing and believing that transformation, hope, possibility, and redemption are alive, even in the face of death.
Kelly’s own words, spoken to the Certificate in Theological Studies graduating class of 2011, convey this more faithfully than I ever could.
TO THE CLASS OF 2011: I challenge you to step up the next level of your character, growth, and development. In your pit, or prison, receive the word and revelation and act on it; your life will never be the same. I implore you not to allow prison to rob you of your dream or vision, nor of your dignity or self-worth.
In all of us, there are untapped abilities. I encourage you to write that book, start that ministry, teach, study, pursue your dream.
Know that suffering can be redeemed. There is only one who can bring a clean thing out of something unclean, or turn a tragedy into a triumph, and a loser into a winner. When this miracle occurs, and only through Divine grace, our life is not wasted. When blind eyes are opened, then we all will see the greater purpose.
Let us put off hatred and envy and put on love and compassion. Every day.
— Kelly Gissendaner, October 28, 2011
Leonardo DiCaprio could play 24 different personalities in the upcoming film “The Crowded Room.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way and New Regency are coming together to produce it.
The movie will reportedly be adapted from the Daniel Keyes’ nonfiction book “The Minds of Billy Milligan.” Keyes tells the story of Milligan, a man who went on trial in the ’70s for three rapes. He was the first person to successfully use multiple personality disorder as a defense.
DiCaprio and New Regency also teamed up recently on the film “The Revenant,” which is due out next Christmas. That project includes “Birdman” director Alejandro González Iñárritu and actor Tom Hardy.
For more, head to THR.
Someone at OSHA probably has a terrifying stat about the number of workplace injuries caused by teapots. But if everyone rushes out and buys this gorgeous glass hot beverage receptacle, we can do something about this critical national issue.
It’s all happening because I am completely ignoring every urge towards common sense and good judgment I’ve ever had–George Costanza, “Seinfeld”.
President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the growing power of the military-industrial complex, but even the former 5-star general Supreme Allied Commander in World War II couldn’t do it. The quagmire of Vietnam couldn’t do it. The quicksand of Iraq couldn’t do it. The killing fields of Cambodia couldn’t do it. The Bush/Cheney failure on 9/11 couldn’t do it. Allowing bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora, and then failing to find and capture him, couldn’t do it. Allowing Pakistan to develop the “Islamic bomb” couldn’t do it.
Even the election of the Iraq invasion’s opponent as president couldn’t do it.
But, John Boehner (R-OH) has done it.
He cannot do much else, but he has achieved what no other politician could do for half a century: expose the entire Republican national security “brand” as a fraud.
Remember the pious platitudes about the first function of government to be protecting the American people? Remember the decades of demagoguery skewering Democrats as being lax on security issues, the disgusting draft-dodging Saxby Chambliss leveling that accusation on war hero and triple amputee Max Cleland (D-GA) in the waning days of a senate campaign? Recall the Bush/Cheney 2004 ads showing snarling wolves that would be unleashed against the American people if John Kerry were elected?
Now, thanks to Speaker Boehner, the Republicans have no credibility or standing on national security. None, zero, zorch, nada. The next time you hear a Republican bleating about national security, you can have a good laugh.
They were willing to leave us vulnerable, and took their threats to the brink.
A minimally competent Democratic party should be and would be screaming bloody murder. After all, Republicans are playing political games with our lives and our families’ security. Democrats would be filling the airwaves and the (now-neutral!) net non-stop, spreading the alarm to “every town, middlesex, village and farm” that Republicans will sacrifice our nation’s safety, and raise legitimate issues about their love of country.
[Not hearing that? Well, do not ignore the qualifier “minimally competent”.]
Not to be outdone, however, Bibi’s blunder is even worse for the neoconistas. At least since the Yom Kippur war in 1973, and perhaps earlier as well, it has been virtually impossible for US foreign policy to diverge in meaningful ways (i.e., those that might actually lead to peace) from Israel’s as defined by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Any president, member of Congress, or candidate who criticized Israeli policy, who even spoke about pressuring Israel was immediately pounced upon by AIPAC, carrying with it the threat of political oblivion.
Until Bibi’s blunder, support for Israel was considered to be 100% support for whatever the government of Israel du jour decided to do.
The political price to be paid for deviating from that support was always more of the myth than reality. American Jews, although backing Israel, nevertheless vote more on economic and social issues than they do on competing claims of which candidates are helping Israel more.
Now, that myth is exposed. President Obama and many Democrats are shunning Bibi, but not wavering in their support of Israel. They refuse to be pawns in his political games to win the Israeli election. They refuse to scuttle prematurely the opportunity of avoiding another major armed conflict. They refuse to compromise the moral authority the US will have achieved by going the last mile with Iran if the negotiations fail.
From this day forth, presidents and members of Congress can oppose new settlements on the West Bank as impediments to peace without waiting until their retirements. They can let the Israelis know that our support is strong, but that we have expectations of them, too, that need to be honored.
Thanks to John Boehner (R-OH), Republicans have relinquished their (specious) claim to caring more and fighting harder to perform government’s primary mission, safety and security. Fearmongering 101 is not only no longer available to them, it will be fodder for mockery.
And, thanks to Bibi, liberated from the need to express support for everything any Israeli government does as a measure of how much they support Israel, the US will now become a more effective partner to bring peace and security to Israel and dignity to Palestinians.
Bibi has neglected to realize that Americans, like other people, do not appreciate a foreign leader who deliberately tries to embarrass the President, just like foreign countries tend not to enjoy being invaded and occupied.
There has always been a segment of the population who cannot abide a black man in the White House, especially exercising the powers of his office. The visual images rankle. [Obama is not just the first person of color to be president, he is the first black man ever to rule a white majority nation]. Some of that same segment, however, may find themselves for the first time siding emotionally with him as President when an Israeli (yes, Jewish) leader tries to embarrass him.
By asserting American priorities and not being cowed by Bibi’s influence in the US, the President will gain support among the American people, not just from his own base, but from die-hard opponents as well, exactly the opposite of what Bibi wanted.
Achieving the precise opposite of one’s intended outcome is one definition of incompetence. The US adventures in Vietnam and Iraq spring immediately to mind.
Boehner’s and Bibi’s blunders have liberated US foreign policy from the iron grip of the neoconistas.
Viva la incompétence!
Who's in charge here?
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