White House To Benjamin Netanyahu: Your Move – POLITICO

A dozen Jewish House Democrats laid it out for deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes during a meeting in the Longworth House Office Building last week: Enough. They’re just as upset about what Benjamin Netanyahu said ruling out a two-state solution, but President Barack Obama didn’t need to keep reminding them and everyone else.

Hillary Clinton Wants U.S.-Israel Relationship Back On 'Constructive Footing'

WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that relations between the United States and Israel, frayed in recent months over nuclear negotiations with Iran and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, ought to return to a “constructive footing.”

In a phone discussion with Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Clinton also reaffirmed her support for a two-state solution as a means of resolving the long-standing conflict in the Middle East.

“Secretary Clinton thinks we need to all work together to return the special U.S.-Israel relationship to constructive footing, to get back to basic shared concerns and interests, including a two-state solution pursued through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. We must ensure that Israel never becomes a partisan issue,” read a statement posted by San Diego Jewish World on Sunday evening.

Tensions between the two nations escalated in the wake of U.S. negotiations with Iran over the future of its nuclear program, a course of action opposed by Netanyahu and congressional Republicans alike. Commenting on the Israeli election, which saw Netanyahu’s Likud party retain control of the legislature, President Barack Obama expressed dismay with the prime minister’s last-minute election rhetoric against Arab voters and his statement in opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state.

“We take him at his word when he said that it wouldn’t happen during his prime ministership, and so that’s why we’ve got to evaluate what other options are available to make sure that we don’t see a chaotic situation in the region,” Obama said in an interview with The Huffington Post earlier this month.

For Clinton, who is expected to declare her bid for president sometime next month, the matter is a delicate one. Division among American Jews over recent U.S.-Israel spats would complicate her outreach and efforts to unify supporters in the Democratic Party and beyond, which perhaps explains her wish that Israel ought to never become “a partisan issue.”

Even with Netanyahu’s post-election insistence that he supports a two-state solution, there is already some evidence that the controversial comments have opened up further divide among American Jews.

How to Build Your Own Political Dynasty: An Instruction Manual

So, you want political power? You can picture your name on elementary schools and highways; you dream of a crowd chanting your name under raining red, white, and blue confetti. In America, this means you have to run a top-notch, cutthroat campaign while also remaining likable to voters. This requires hiring the best strategists, making calculated speeches, and pumping money into name recognition. And who runs the best campaigns? Pundits and columnists always have the words on the tip of their tongues: political dynasties. They’re called America’s version of royalty, allegedly given access to more resources than the average candidate could even imagine. So, you want to be powerful? Try founding a dynasty.

Political dynasties have existed in American politics for centuries. But what does the word dynasty really mean in this day and age? It seems antiquated in today’s rapidly changing political climate. Many people have their own definitions. Stephen Hess, senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution and a veteran staffer of multiple U.S. presidencies, explained what makes a dynasty in a 2009 Washington Post article. He stipulated that there must be at least three generations of officeholders to call a family a dynasty and that members are related by blood (so, for instance, the Kennedys can’t count Arnold Schwarzenegger).

However, Barbara Kellerman, a professor of public leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, has a different take: “In general, if you’re talking about a political dynasty, even one generation probably does it. I don’t think you have to go from grandfather from son to grandchild.” That being said, she also maintains that the word dynasty isn’t the right way to categorize current political trends.

“What is more interesting now is that as women have entered the public arena and gradually assumed leadership roles, [familial political power] is not necessarily a generational thing but more of what we [might] think of as nepotism – that is, simply being related to a family member if only because of name recognition,” said Kellerman. “A better way to think about this is in the second decade of the 21st century is the importance of kinship, not necessarily dynastic kinship.”

Regardless of how you define it, we can agree that these familial connections exist in today’s politics — a 2016 presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush is very possible. Political consultant and policy analyst Basil Smikle Jr. explains, “When you have political dynasties, no matter what relationship in the family the elected officials have, they will build into this network of support and that matters a lot.”

How do you start building your political dynasty? Unfortunately, someone has to do the hard work and pave the road to a political office. This could be you, or you can shift the burden to another family member. Russ Baker, investigative journalist and author of Family of Secrets, a history of the Bushes, outlines this scenario.

“There have been people [in America history] who don’t want to be in politics who are the power behind the throne,” explains Baker. “They engineer the election of a sibling or a child who likes the limelight and may be more charismatic. There are a few examples of that actually, where the quieter member of the family was sort of the master planner. “

For example, David Rockefeller, who was incredibly powerful, decided to remain focused on finance and work “behind the scenes” as his siblings ran for and assumed office.

Once you’ve been elected and have served enough time in office, it’s time to encourage the next generation to come up to bat. This is when all the hard work starts paying off for your family.

Smikle believes there are certain steps you can take to follow a family member into office. He notes that if you start off with the family name, you start out strong, but you still have plenty of challenges ahead. “You have to promise to build off the strengths [of your predecessor], but promise you [have improved on] their weaknesses. You have to be able to explain to the voters why you won’t make the same mistakes, sometimes very specifically and openly, and sometimes just implying it.”

But how do you get someone else in your family to run? That’s obviously the most essential part of building a dynasty. Well, in some cases they may want to. Doug Wead, a presidential historian and New York Times bestselling author, believes it’s unsurprising that these kinds of political families form. “It’s natural that a child seeks to please their parents by mimicry and completion. Presidential families are no different; you see it very clearly in the presidents, but you see it all through history with people of power,” he explains. “Among presidential families you see it very clearly in George W. Bush. Andover Andover, Yale Yale, Airplanes Airplanes, baseball baseball.”

Smikle, on the other hand, contends that more important than parental pressure are the circumstances of the campaign. “You have to be slightly narcissistic to run for office, you have to go out in public and tell people that their lives are going to better because of you. I don’t know if there are particular families that are more inclined to run for office than others, but I know that you can pass [your] political ambition on to family members. However they can’t necessarily pass on the circumstances around a particular campaign,” he says.

Indeed, circumstances drive political campaigns. A candidate has to be running at the right time, with the right platform for the current issues. You’re going to have to wait patiently for your time to come. But what if the timing is right? A candidate running with a politically active family member is given a jump-start against their opponent. This is because they have easier access to the most important ingredient in a political campaign: money.

Campaign finance is one of the greatest edges that political dynasties have. According to Kellerman, “People detest giving to people they’ve never heard of. They’d much rather give money to people they have heard of because they think they’re more likely to be winners.”

Campaigns have a wide variety of expenses, but a massive part of their spending is on building name recognition. Smikle claims that if a family member comes with an established name, those resources can be spent on other efforts. “There is some allowance of inherited elitism and intellectual capital [in American politics],” he asserts.

Take for example George W. Bush. He had both the first and last name of a president, and so his vast financial resources could be spent on other priorities. When Baker was writing his book, he investigated George W. Bush’s first campaign, for the House of Representatives. Baker looked into Bush’s campaign finances, and found that Bush had a massive number of donors from all across the United States even though he was only running to represent a district in west Texas.

“What I saw was the Bush family had tapped into a network of some of the richest and most conservative people in America for many years and built up this network of people who just sort of understood that the Bush family would look after their interests,” said Baker. “I think the Bush dynasty was built on this idea that the Bushes were going to look after wealthy people, and [wealthy people] could trust them to carry that out.”

Recent developments in campaign finance law have allowed massive floods of money to enter the political arena, specifically the Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission. Baker believes the wealthy favor political dynasties and will use their newfound power on their behalf.

Stephen Hess, on the other hand, does not see as much inequality when it comes to political dynasties and finance. “When you reach the level of seeking the presidency, it doesn’t come [across] very clearly in the media, but the truth of the matter is that anybody who is a serious candidate can raise a sufficient amount of money,” he explains.

While finances are crucial to campaign success, so is choosing the right time to run. Perhaps the most advantageous environment for a member of a political dynasty is when a member of another dynasty is also running. Though this seems counterproductive by neutralizing the advantage you have over the average political opponent, it also neutralizes one of your biggest weaknesses – allegations of aristocracy and inequality.”We have an unusual situation as we have dynasties appearing in both parties simultaneously… that natural check and balance is gone. It’s frankly why Jeb Bush is running for president, in my opinion. If he ran the next cycle he’d be attacked, but if he runs this cycle what can Democrats say? Hillary Clinton is his opponent,” explains Wead.

One of the biggest questions is whether these dynasties are dangerous for American politics. Wead believes they’re damaging and “very dangerous” to democracy. “They lead to social inbreeding, where small groups of people make all the decisions. In the United States it’s in the thousands, but it’s still small.”

Not everyone sees this kind of danger.

“To this degree I don’t think that they reflect much, they are actually very small percent of people actually elected to office,” explains Hess. “Generally as you study these families over time they’ve been above average political figures. We haven’t had a great downside from having them, and they can always be defeated.”

Smikle falls somewhere in the middle.

“I don’t think they’re dangerous for American democracy, anyone who wants to run for office should run for office. The problem that we face is that there is a lot less vetting of the candidates than you would normally see in a campaign, because those individuals are leaning hard on their family connections,” he explained, “I think it’s more incumbent upon voters and the media to do their due diligence.”

This raises another question: what is the media’s role in all of this? The media landscape is also rapidly changing. Print sales are plummeting, and news networks find themselves with 24 hours to fill so they repeat news over and over again in various permutations. Many people are critical of this new age of media and news’ role in promoting dynasties.

Baker complains that they media does not consider new candidates: “They don’t do much of a star search, asking who are the good people out there with great potential who could make a great elected official.” Therefore, the only candidates with a realistic chance are familiar names. “Frankly a Kardashian has a better chance than some relatively unknown person who’s really capable.”

Wead recalls a time when he was working in the White House and made some mistakes that he was sure were going to make waves across the press. However, the story never broke. When he asked a friend of his in the White House Press Corps why no one was reporting the mistake, the reporter told him that the story got spiked to keep access to the White House. This interdependency between the media and the government is troubling for Wead, and for him is an indication of how the media has become less of a check for those in power.

But what about the American public? Certainly they have some responsibility to keep their candidates and political systems in check, so why do they keep electing these political heirs to office? Baker believes it has something to do with America’s “envy complex regarding royalty.” Americans love Prince William and visiting Buckingham Palace. Perhaps Americans are so accepting of dynasties because they want to think of them as their own version of royalty, a level of status to strive for and respect.

So is there any way for these dynasties to be fixed? Some such as Baker and Smikle suggest amending campaign finance laws by, for example, repealing Citizens United or putting in place restrictions on how much money can enter the political system.

However, Wead disagrees: “In my humble opinion, [campaign finance reform] is kind of like putting a Band-Aid on a cancer.”

Perhaps it will take a major confrontation of political dynasties to get America’s attention. Buzzy election chatter is predicting a race between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in 2016. Barbara Kellerman believes this election might have the potential to wake people up.

“The idea of a Bush-Clinton run-off is somewhat nauseating. I think it’s inevitable, but if it becomes too in-your-face, such as the idea of the next president being between two families that have these clan connections, that would say things about American politics that I don’t think any of us want to own up to,” she predicts. “Some of it is part of the deal, but if it becomes exaggerated, I think many Americans will go, ‘what the hell is wrong with us?’ We’re not a banana republic. We need to fix this.”

This piece was originally published in The Politic, Yale University’s political magazine.

Iran Backs Away From Key Detail In Nuclear Deal

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — With a negotiating deadline just two days away, Iranian officials on Sunday backed away from a critical element of a proposed nuclear agreement, saying they are no longer willing to ship their atomic fuel out of the country.

It’s Chrome OS’ turn for the Google Now upgrade

chromeos-beta-1Google has been increasingly pushing its Google Now virtual assistant and its “cards” convention across its different services and apps. The last one to get card-y was YouTube, where the cards will replace the older popups that relay additional information about videos. Now Google is teasing the next product to get a Google Now makeover, one that is probably long … Continue reading

Apple Watch’s Availability In Retail Stores By Reservation Only

apple watchThinking about walking into an Apple store on the 24th of April and picking up the Apple Watch for yourself? Think again. According to recently leaked Apple documents, it seems that at the start of the Apple Watch’s launch, customers will not be able to walk into an Apple store and buy an Apple Watch just like that.

Instead customers will need to make a reservation ahead of time in order to secure themselves a unit. This was a similar situation with the iPhone during its launch where customers had to make reservation before they could go to the Apple store and buy the handset in person. So to secure yourself an Apple Watch, you will have to make a reservation via the online Product Reservation page, along with the specific model you were thinking about.

It seems that Apple is expecting that supply of the Apple Watch will be constrained at the start which is what we had heard earlier. The earlier report claims that Apple Watch retail stock is expected to be limited at launch and that customers who wish to purchase the device will either have to pre-order it, or like the document the folks at MacRumors obtained, will have to reserve it via the Product Reservation feature on Apple’s website.

Apple Watch’s Availability In Retail Stores By Reservation Only

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Vine For iOS Updated With 720p Support, Android Coming Soon

vine videosFor users looking to record short videos, Vine is a great solution, although we’re sure there are some users who weren’t too thrilled about the video’s 480p resolution. Given the short nature of Vine clips we suppose it didn’t really matter, but just in case you are one of those users who are looking for higher quality Vine videos, you’re in luck.

The company had recently announced that the iOS version of Vine has been updated and will support the ability to capture and record videos in 720p. The difference in quality can be seen in the image above in which the left is a video in 480p, while the image on the right is that of 720p which we suppose does look a tad sharper.

So what about Android users? Unfortunately the update has only been pushed out to iOS devices for now, but according to Vine they are working on the Android update which they expect will be rolled out soon. “For those with an Android device: rest assured, you’ll soon be able to create and upload posts with the same quality as well.”

That being said, the ability to watch 720p Vine videos will be watchable on both iOS and Android devices. The ability to upload in 720p is expected to be made available in the coming days for IOS users.

Vine For iOS Updated With 720p Support, Android Coming Soon

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

HTC One E9+ Makes An Appearance On HTC China’s Website

htc_one_e9pThe HTC One E9+ has been making its rounds as of late and is said to be an upcoming handset by the company. For those who are still skeptical about the authenticity of the handset and its leaks, you can rest assured that it is very real as HTC China has recently created a page dedicated to the upcoming handset along with photos of the device, pretty much confirming everything that we have seen so far.

HTC has scheduled an event for the 8th of April where the HTC One M9+ is expected to be announced, so there is a good chance we could hear more about the HTC One E9+ too, although if anything the launch of the website seems to have pretty much ruined the surprise for everyone, unless of course they weren’t planning on announcing the device at the event.

That being said, the specs on the website have also confirmed some of its rumored specs. For starters it has confirmed the 5.5-inch QHD display but oddly enough it lists it as 1080p as well. There is a chance that this could be referring to the smaller HTC One E9, while the E9+ is expected to pack a QHD display, kind of like how the HTC One M9 is featuring a 1080p resolution while the One M9+ is rumored to have a QHD resolution.

The specs also mention 2GB of RAM instead of 3GB, and a 13MP camera versus the 20MP camera that we have been hearing about, but like we said it could also be in reference to the HTC One E9, not the One E9+. In any case hopefully more details will surface at HTC’s 8th of April event so do check back with us then for more info!

HTC One E9+ Makes An Appearance On HTC China’s Website

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Before We Say Goodbye to Winter: Frozen Niagara Falls

Before we say goodbye to winter let’s remember the good times, the wonders that only weeks upon weeks of freezing temperatures can bring us. Let’s pay tribute to one of the most visited natural spectacles in North America, and the beauty of its frozen sculptural white:

This 3 Minute Postcard was filmed on two bright sunny days (February 16th and March 12th 2015) when the Falls were at their most picturesque, inundated with ice (and the temperatures were comfortably in the single digits).

The World’s Three Mega-Falls:

Iguazu Falls (the border between Brazil and Argentina) — Widest Discontinuous Falls in the World & Largest Ever Recorded Flow Rate

2015-03-29-1427672136-724673-Iguazu.jpg

Niagara Falls (the border between New York State and Ontario, Canada) — Largest Annual Volume of Water in the World for a Large Drop Waterfall

2015-03-29-1427672255-6384711-Niagara.jpg

Victoria Falls (the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe) — Largest Continuous Curtain of Water in the World & Considered the World’s Largest Waterfall

2015-03-29-1427672362-9284128-Victoria.jpg

Photographs taken by Kevin Richberg

Major 7.7 Quake Strikes Off Papua New Guinea, Tsunami Warning Issued

SYDNEY, March 30 (Reuters) – A major earthquake with a magnitude 7.7 struck off Papua New Guinea on Monday, official monitors said, and a tsunami warning was issued soon after.

The epicenter of the 33 km (22 mile) deep quake was near the town of Rabaul in the northeast of Papua New Guinea, The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii said “hazardous tsunami waves are possible for coasts located within 1,000 km (620 miles) of the earthquake epicenter along the coasts of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.”

Tsunami waves reaching 1-3 meters (3-9 feet) above the tide level are possible along some coasts of Papua New Guinea, said the center.

No destructive, Pacific-wide tsunami was expected, it said.

“Persons located in threatened coastal areas should stay alert for information and follow instructions from national and local authorities,” it added.

Rabaul, a town on East New Britain Island, lies in the shadow of Mount Tavurvur, an active volcano. Rabaul was destroyed in 1994 during a severe eruption.

(Reporting By Jane Wardell; Editing by Paul Tait and Michael Perry)