Unfortunately but perhaps predictably, the discussion of the politics of the Iran deal, and in particular Chuck Schumer’s opposition to it, has descended into idiocy about “the Jewish vote”. The reality is that Jewish voters are especially likely to support the deal, and Schumer et al. opposed it because AIPAC and a few wealthy donors oppose it. If Shelly Adelson backed the Iran deal, you can bet that Republican presidential candidates wouldn’t be tripping over each other to see who could “rip it up” first.
In other words, there’s nothing special about the politics of the Iran deal: it’s just another example — like immigration and Social Security and probably most of foreign policy — of the conflict between donors and rank-and-file voters. The power of PACs is so great now that Lindsey Graham thinks it’s sad and abnormal when Congress listens to its president rather than its PACs:
Aipac went to the Democrats and said, ‘We need your help as a friend.’ Obama said, ‘If you cross me you are going to make an enemy of my machine forever.’
In this context, it isn’t surprising that so many voters are skeptical of what they see as establishment presidential candidates. The story of this election so far, at least on the Republican side, is the conflict between what voters want and what the donor class wants (I’m not sure there’s that wide a gulf between what Democratic voters want and what Democratic donors want, though maybe there is on Social Security and minimum wage). Of course you won’t read much about that in establishment media since it is mostly owned by members of the donor class. I doubt Jeff Bezos would permit the Washington Post to frame things in these terms.
benw
He then pulled a lever in his secret volcano base, dropping his trembling henchman into a vat of molten lava and laughed. “BWA HA HA!”
Mike J
Yes, you’ll make an enemy of a guy who is leaving office in two years and never running for anything again.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
It does seem that part of Trump’s appeal is that he’ll do what he wants, because he won’t be beholden to rich assholes. Of course, Trump *is* a rich asshole, so what he wants to do is horrifying, but at least he would be doing assholish things on his own and not because he owes someone a favor.
Mike J
I love seeing headlines like, “How Obama Out-Muscled Aipac”.
Doug!
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
There is some logic to it. Cut out the middle man and let the rich guy rule directly.
schrodinger's cat
BTW what is Doug!
Is it:
Doug! = (Doug)(Doug-1)(Doug-2)……..1
Can we apply Stirling’s approximation?
Doug!
@schrodinger’s cat:
It’s my campaign name like Jeb!
Goblue72
@schrodinger’s cat: think Jeb!
Belafon
@schrodinger’s cat: I think the log(Doug!) is all we can handle.
Steppan
Not enough ¡.
¡Jeb!
¡Doug!
Also, I miss Colbert’s PAC.
Snarki, child of Loki
Citizens United: the gift that keeps on giving.
Much like toxic waste.
Cermet
@schrodinger’s cat: Missing exponents there …
Gin & Tonic
@Doug!: Worked in Italy.
Oh, wait…
Chyron HR
Yeah, you go right ahead and laugh at Obama’s machine. Queen did, and IT KILLED THEM.
Chris
I love the fact that AIPAC, of all things, is whining about political machines punishing their enemies forever.
xephyr
Why is it that every time I hear or see Lindsey Graham I want to scream and throw things. Is this what he wants?
beltane
@Gin & Tonic: There are many parallels between Trump and Berlusconi. It pretty much took threats by the European Central Bank to get rid of Berlusconi. What would it take to get ridof President Trump?
beltane
I was having a bad day, but AIPAC’s whining has made it all better. Thank you, AIPAC.
schrodinger's cat
@Cermet: What exponents? That is the standard definition of a factorial.
n!= n(n-1)(n-2)….1
For example:
5!= 5.4.3.2.1=120
@Doug!: That I knew, it was just my attempt at some lame math humor.
Cacti
I think of AIPAC more like Senator Geary in The Godfather II, trying to shake down Michael Corleone.
And President Obama, gave the same response:
“You can have my answer now if you like. My offer is this — Nothing.”
Brachiator
This is just not true. Some pundits are underplaying this, but there have been numerous stories in the mainstream media writing about Trump’s appeal, identifying the big donors to the major candidates,etc.
Oatler.
And ye shall not blaspheme against The Corporation, who have bestowed the Angel Chuck Todd to MSNBC full time, nor against GM, who hast committed murder most righteous upon ye peons!
pamelabrown53
That Obama beat AIPAC is important for both the success of the Iran deal and to trim their sales. Grover Norquist’s “Club for Growth” and the NRA are 2 examples of the dangers of unfettered PAC power.
benw
@schrodinger’s cat: @Belafon: Doug! should always be plotted on a log scale. The question is how big is the Doug – can we set an upper bound before we factorialize?
Cervantes
@Cermet:
?
Paul in KY
@Mike J: Buwahahahahaha!!!! I will savage you in my memoir!!!
NonyNony
It almost makes me want to go read some transcripts of Lindsey Graham stump speeches and see how often he rails against “special interests”.
Well, not really. Nothing short of a gun to my head could get me to read Lindsey Graham stump speeches.
schrodinger's cat
@pamelabrown53: He also took on the Cuban immigrant lobby in Florida. Lame duck, not so lame actually!
Elizabelle
@xephyr: He wants us all to drink more, if he becomes president. Said that in the kiddy pool debate Weds., seemed to be speaking of alcohol. Cuz Reagan and Tip O’Neill did it, while they met and talked. It was actually a good comment.
I think drinking during a Graham presidency will be a given.
Paul in KY
@Doug!: I would think you would need a couple more exclamation points, to differentiate your campaign self from Sleepy McBush.
schrodinger's cat
@benw: If we are all DougJ, then it is a big number. On the other hand if DougJ is just one person then, Doug J! = 1
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle: If Lindsay Graham becomes President I think a lot of us will drink more.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
That would also be true if DougJ were not a person.
(Or zero persons, if you prefer.)
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: True.
benw
@schrodinger’s cat: Well, DougJ and RtR are the same person, so Doug! ≥ 2.
Cacti
I don’t think it can be overstated what a big Biden deal Obama going against AIPAC has been.
AIPAC threatened to squeeze him and did everything it could to undermine him. Obama called their bluff, and the world didn’t end.
The interests of Likud aren’t reflexively the interests of the United States. It’s okay to disagree with our “friends” in Tel Aviv on foreign policy.
And if a friend can’t handle disagreement, it wasn’t much of a friendship in the first place.
Cermet
@schrodinger’s cat: You said Stirling’s approximation which uses exponents for n! … . AS for factorials, yes, there you are, of course, correct ….
Joel
@Gin & Tonic: even better in Thailand.
pamelabrown53
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes He (Obama) Did! take on the Cuban immigrant lobby. He was astute enough to realize their bark was bigger….even in the Cuban community. Too much entrenched old guy thinking. I’m forever grateful that we have a president that understands the waxing and waning of power. Notice he spends little time tilting at windmills.
Cermet
@Cervantes: See my entry on this topic
JCJ
@schrodinger’s cat:
As a lame person I appreciated your lame math humor
Jeffro
@Cacti: isn’t that what Obama offered Boehner, a while back?
schrodinger's cat
@benw: RtR is too pedestrian and lacks the artistic touches of a typical DougJ troll comment, so I am not sure.
Mike J
Remember when the big attack against Kerry was that he would let other countries veto US policy?
schrodinger's cat
@Cermet: Yes you are right of course about that. The Stirling’s approximation that I am most familiar with is N ln (N) – N.
We should write a partition function for all DougJs and then study the thermodynamics.
benw
@schrodinger’s cat: Agreed, but I’m trying to roll with the math jokes, here!
Doug!
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m not RtR.
I’ve thought about doing a new troll character who talks about how great Freddie deBoer is but I haven’t done it yet.
Mike J
@Doug!: While Freddie deBoer himself exists, wouldn’t that be redundant?
RareSanity
I do believe that is the first 50 Cent lyric to appear in a post title.
Nice!
schrodinger's cat
@Doug!: I thought so. RtR is his second avatar, the first I think was Unlimited Corporate Cash or something similar in the 2012 cycle.
Joel
@RareSanity: Nope, DougJ has used this exact post title before. I can’t remember when, though.
schrodinger's cat
@Doug!: Boring Freddie reads like a self parody. Besides he is rather small fry. How about a Bobo fan.
Joel
@Doug!: Doesn’t that troll already exist? I believe it goes by the nym, “Freddie DeBoer”.
Doug!
@Joel:
Twice in fact.
Cermet
@schrodinger’s cat: I am no expert and really was just having fun and was not trying to challenge your math. Yes, your approximation (ln) is correct and validates your expression. Not trying to troll here …save that for others who like to be bossy or holier than the writers … .
schrodinger's cat
@Cermet: Stirling’s approximation can also be expressed in an exponential form so we are both right!
gelfling545
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): my daughter posted on Facebook last night a link to a Google app that will automatically change Donald Trump to “some rich a$$h0le” in your browser. I thought it was a nice touch.
Robin G.
Y’know, I have to say, there’s a certain appeal to PACs. Look at what happened here, what’s happening to Jeb, hell, the entire 2012 election. There appears to just be a saturation point with what big money buys you in terms of votes, and after that it’s ever-diminishing returns. PACs seem to be the new way for conservatives to burn their cash to no purpose.
EZSmirkzz
I think we all need to start from an accurate starting point when dealing with this issue, or TPP and other similar matters, which is, that the interests of the United States take precedent over the interest of the American people. The American people like to pretend they live in a republic, while the reality is America is an empire, and that empire has interests, such as containing Russia and China for control of the Eurasian heartland in a battle of trade and power. AIPAC probably understands this, Natanyahu should, unless he likes to feign ignorance, or wishes to appear stupid like his Republican fellow travelers in America. Iran is therefore an intrinsic piece in that Eurasian power puzzle.
Israel is, and will continue to be, the only existential military threat in the Middle East, and not the other way around. The American empire will continue to feast on the carcass of the American republic, maintaining the charade much as Rome did with theirs until such time as we elect an Octavius who no longer wishes to maintain the pretense of democracy or republic.
schrodinger's cat
@benw: 2 may be the right answer. See comment 59.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
@Doug!:
That was always the point of classical tyrannies.
Trump could also easily be Miles Gloriosus from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”
“I am dazzled by your presence.”
“Everyone is.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN-ttCBHyx8
Another Holocene Human
@Mike J: Ah, but we’re talking about other countries’ right wings. That’s a-ok.
The GOP in my life time has always slavered over really cruel and murderous right wing regimes. Chile, for example. Thatcher (not sooo murderous but the cruel rhetoric was dialed to eleven). Putin today.
It’s okay for a country’s extreme right to be bedding down with our right wing. That’s just good and proper, whether it’s the British establishment right (“special relationship”) or the Israeli right (“special relationship”). Fuck they loved it when Taiwan was run by right-wing autocrats that only gave lip service to democracy. They love right-wing presidentes of Mexico. Even if they think the country is fleabag, dirtbag, and/or shifty, if a cruel autocratic right winger is in charge, they’re in love.
Another Holocene Human
@Doug!: Given that Freddie autotrolls, it would be the perfect crime.
Patrick
@Cacti:
Of course it is. I recall in 2003 how our friends in Paris were badmouthed by Bush/Cheney and the entire Republican party. “Freedom fries” and all that childish crap. Yet France has handled that crap well.
Mike in DC
I, for one, am glad that it’s DougJ! and not Dougi!
Figuring out whether he netted out negative or positive would be. ..distracting.
boatboy_srq
schrodinger's cat
@Mike in DC: Factorials are not defined for negative integers.
So Doug >= 0
Brachiator
@Another Holocene Human:
Too simplistic. Nations, including the US, tend to favor stable, friendly regimes.
Especially during the Cold War years, the US favored Pakistan over India. Didn’t matter whether the president was a Democrat or a Republican. India was officially non-aligned, and sometimes seemed too friendly toward the Russians. Didn’t matter that India was a democracy or that it had conflicts with communist China. They didn’t promise to be our best bosom buddies forever.
Benw
@schrodinger’s cat: 59 is definitely Doug pretending to be F DeB. Since he’s an admitted troll the lower bound has to be 2 (as opposed to 1). I like your upper limit. “We are all Doug.”
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
But if Doug is an irrational person then Doug! should actually be replaced by Γ(Doug + 1).
ETA: Technically, that should apply if Doug is a rational, irrational, or complex person.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: US friendship has turned out to be such a boon for Pakistan!
/end snark
rikyrah
a note to bristol palin
By Liberal Librarian
I can’t believe I’m going to interrupt my Friday morning to waste bits and bytes on the half-term governor’s daughter, but since she can’t keep her mouth shut, neither can I.
……………………..
This is the kind of stuff Obama needs to STAY out of. This encourages more racial strife that is already going on with the “Black Lives Matter” crowd and encourages victimhood.
The police made a mistake, clearly.
But why put more people against them? Why egg it on? Childish games like this from our president have divided our country… even more today than when he was elected.
How dare that Obama reach out to a CHILD who was unjustly suspended and arrested for making a clock while Muslim? (And, yes, unjustly arrested, as the Irving police chief admits they knew the clock wasn’t a bomb.) He’s stoking the fires of racial resentment because his father was a secret Mau Mau warrior and it’s his life’s mission to bring down the White Man! If people would stop talking about racism it would just go away! Dubya was a uniter; Obama’s a divider!
This, dear friends, is what happens in a country degenerating into banana republic status. Nonentities like Bristol and her mama and Donnie Trump are accorded the gravitas and respect once reserved to the likes of Roosevelts and Kennedys. Any half-brain-dead moron who looks good on the teevee box can parlay 15 minutes of fame into an interminable career. And the great American public laps it up, as a distraction from a world which, thanks to information overload and a lack of anyone to make sense of that information, becomes scarier and scarier. The blatherings of Miss Palin should attract no notice in a civilized, strong republic. But we’re in a state of increasing decadence, where the stupid and inane are getting a stranglehold on our discourse, aided and abetted by a media which no longer serves the function of gatekeeper, instead throwing whatever spaghetti it can on the wall and seeing what sticks long enough to entertain its patrons.
Dear Bristol: you’re an idiot. What Pres. Obama did is precisely what he should have done. Ever since Jan. 20, 2009, as the country has exploded in an animus heretofore unseen, he has been the Consoler-in-Chief. He has been to more funerals for the victims of your precious NRA than all the presidents before him combined. And if this one time he can uplift a young boy who was the victim of the evil your mother unleashed on this country, that’s what he’s going to do. That’s why we elected him.
http://theobamadiary.com/2015/09/18/a-note-to-bristol-palin/
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: Nitpick: you can define factorial values for non-integers by mapping it onto a Gamma function.
schrodinger's cat
@dmsilev: Roger Moore got there first. My excuse is that I am no DougJ (mathematician), just someone who uses math.
boatboy_srq
@rikyrah: Brilliant.
benw
@Roger Moore:
The question of whether Doug is a rational, irrational, or complex person is left as an exercise for the reader.
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: Me too, but I have enough residual memory of college math courses to have been able to dredge that factoid up. Probably not the most useful thing to use those neurons for, but at least they’re not devoted to random trivia about 80’s TV shows.
schrodinger's cat
@dmsilev: That’s what the CRC is for, to remind me of all the properties of special functions. My brainspace is reserved for important things like lolspeak.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: I’m telling ya, Andy Warhol was a genius.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Oh, I think it has often been mutually poisonous. US aid perhaps allowed Pakistan to plow more resources into its military and intelligence services over infrastructure and domestic investment, maybe even allowed Pakistan additional wiggle room in which to develop nuclear weapons.
Perhaps, this also contributed to the inability of Pakistan and India to resolve their pointless animosity towards each other.
People forget, or don’t know, that the US sided with Pakistan over Bangladesh during the war of independence.
Idiots in the US State Department and other agencies during the Bush administration foolishly believed that Pakistan would be a docile and supportive client state as the US tried to deal with Afghanistan and Iraq
US and Pakistan relations deserves all the snark that anyone wants to hurl at it.
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator: “friendly” meaning autocratic right wingers in charge
The problem with democracies is that you have peaceful transitions to opposition party control and suddenly your cozy little things you have going on could get upended.
Morzer
Rather to my surprise Lindsey Graham has called for Trump to apologize for his response to the “Obama is a Muslim” questioner at the townhall:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/lindsey-graham-trump-apologize-obama-muslim
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator:
You say pointless, animosity towards India is Pakistan’s reason for existence. FWIW, India too has bee stupid about this, see the stupid Siachen Glacier conflict, for example.
Morzer
Also: Margaret and Helen are as good as ever:
http://margaretandhelen.com/2015/09/17/the-republicans-are-as-likely-to-find-bigfoot-as-they-are-to-find-that-fetus-carly-referenced/
Harold Samson
@schrodinger’s cat:
Geez you guys, Doug is obviously more of a Dirac Delta function.
Mike E
Since I can spot the trolls now, I’m not it! Yay!
Morzer
@Harold Samson:
Is this mathgeek talk for “wears Birkenstocks and drives a Prius”?
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think that Pakistan’s desire for independence is as valid as that desire in any other nation. See the US for example. Every now and then when reading some historical work by a Brit, you get some befuddlement that any nation would ever want to separate from England or the UK.
But, yeah, Pakistan developed a chip on its national shoulders vis a vis India. Very sad, very pointless. Very self-defeating.
India has been stupid as well, very stupid, but I think on balance India has been able to do more to develop itself relative to Pakistan. This is not to minimize problems. And also, India, as a regional super power, supported Nepal and Bangladesh, but still has spent less on its military relative to total GDP than Pakistan.
Harold Samson
@Morzer:
More of a “you thought he was here but he wasn’t really…maybe…”
Morzer
@Harold Samson:
Ah, just like Rick Perry!
Brachiator
@Another Holocene Human:
Democracies are rare in the world. And the US, whether the administration is Democratic or Republican, has had its share of toppling democratic regimes.
Again, your reference to right-wing governments is not always historically accurate. Big governments run roughshod over smaller nations in asserting their national will. It doesn’t always matter whether the smaller government is democratic or authoritarian.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
Your narrative is playing out again in Burkina Faso as we speak.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
Another gift from Henry Kissinger.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: The two-nation theory that lead the formation of Pakistan is bogus. Religion in and of itself is not enough, as the basis for a nation. Otherwise there would have been no Bangladesh in 1971. The Sindhi, Punjabis, Balochis etc in the present day Pakistan don’t get along, also Urdu is not the first language for most of them. Urdu was the language of the Muslim elite in India.
Pakistan was ostensibly formed to protect the rights of Muslim minorities in British India. However, Pakistan only included those parts where Muslims were already in a majority. One third of British India’s Muslims were left in India.
Ironically India benefited far more from the formation Pakistan, than Pakistan itself. India gave itself a progressive constitution with a strong Central (Federal) government. This would not have been possible with a loose federation between India and Pakistan, which was the alternative under discussion, to partition.
Brachiator
@Cervantes:
I looked at some of the news stories yesterday. Very sad stuff.
South Sudan is another trouble spot. I had almost hoped that after the separation from the north, there would be some possibility of a peaceful emergence of a democratic country. Instead things are falling apart.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ironic that just recently Pakistan declared Urdu to be the national language. Somebody must have consulted with Donald Trump on what language should be spoken in a country. Of course here, Urdu is actually a minority language.
I don’t know that there is any hard rule for what is needed for a sense of self-determination to be valid. Czechoslovakia could have been happy as a unified country, but the desire of the people in what is now Slovakia for a separate country was too strong. And as I noted, the people in the colonies were happy to be Englishmen for the longest time. Exactly when and why they began to consider themselves to be something else, while Canadians were still happy to be part of England, is a bit mysterious, and really cannot be found in the rebellion against the Stamp Tax.
But in Pakistan it was certainly more than a theory of two nations at play. As the possibility of Indian independence became more real, Jinnah and others saw an opportunity, asked a question, “why not us as well?”
That Bangladesh might seek independence from Pakistan seems almost natural. The idea of a single country separated by a huge other country between them is absurd. And there was the issue of language and culture. And note that Bangladesh did not seek to re-unify with India.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: Two nation theory: Theory that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations. This was the justification for Pakistan.
Right now there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan, West Pakistan, at the time of partition
Phil Perspective
@Cacti: Except we still send them billions in military hardware. So did Netanyahoo really lose? Also, Israel illegally continues confiscating land in the West Bank.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
Despite India helping East Pakistan in that war against West Pakistan, the history of hostility ran too deep for any sort of re-unification to be viable. If we go back to look at the violence that preceded and accompanied Partition: some of the worst of it took place in the East.
Cervantes
@Phil Perspective:
Demagogues are expert at making lemonade out of lemons.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
The French and the Burkinabé are responsible for much of the misery but we have blood on our hands as well.
In the early ’80s Thomas Sankara tried to institute progressive economic reforms but this was too much for Reagan and his thugs, so they assigned CIA chiefs Casey and Webster to murder Sankara. The puppet they installed in his place was his close friend — who then destroyed every good part of his legacy and is still there making things worse for the people.
And because I was forced to help pay for all this cruelty and destruction, I find it a bit worse than “sad.”
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat: I think the two nation theory is an insufficient explanation. Neither country is homogeneous. Jinnah and others had or cultivated a sense of themselves as wanting a separate peace, independent of India. But here’s a question. How passionately did others press Jinnah to remain part of India?
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Jeffro:
CHAINEDCPIARGLEBARGLE!
/cornerstone
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: Jinnah’s demands for staying with India were unacceptable to the Congress leadership. He wanted a weak center and he wanted the Muslim League to control 50% of all resources and separate electorates for Muslims.
JimGod
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): Is this a reference we’re supposed to understand?
Full metal Wingnut
@pamelabrown53: you mean the Chub for Growth