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MNSBC's Morning Joe reported this morning that President Bill Clinton hosted an Israeli prime minister, Shimon Peres, in his election against Benjamin Netanyahu. President Obama is refusing to meet with Netanyahu next week because, he says, it's too close to Israel's election day. "It's not unprecedented," the MSNBC host said of an American president hosting an Israel prime minister during his reelection campaign. "In 1996, the Clinton administration hosted Shimon Peres for a U.S. visit while he was in the midst of an election against Benjamin Netanyahu." "Democratic presidents have always loathed Benjamin Netanyahu," said the other MSNBC host, Joe...

No Senate Democrats block measure backing Bibi’s speechThe Senate on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution welcoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to America and endorsing his speech before a joint session of Congress. Critics of the Obama administration view the unanimous approval as a rebuke to the White House and Democrats, who have vowed to boycott Netanyahu’s address and work to counter his warnings about the dangers of a nuclear Iran. No Senate Democrats sponsored the measure, which attracted 50 Republican cosponsors. However, none attempted to block its passage, signaling that support for Israel and Netanyahu’s message has outweighed a pressure...

Black Ministers Welcome PM Netanyahu to Congress. There are written words for an excerpt only their own voices. Video at link.

Pull up a chair and a grab a notepad while our president lies on a couch and speaks of his father, his youth in Indonesia, and the evils of western colonialism.  Yes, we are all now to be Obama’s national therapists.  The news cycle must never upset the delicate balance of his mind, lest he lose that placid demeanor and become angry or sullen. American media dutifully fulfills this purpose daily, serving up only the stuff that sustains Obama’s fragile psyche. I wrote that the Chapel Hill killings story would evaporate by today because it couldn’t be presented as a hate crime. ...

EU member states have been readying themselves to enforce sanctions on Israel for Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria, diplomats revealed Tuesday—and will strike hours after the March 17 elections. Israeli officials in recent weeks met with Europe’s most important foreign ministries at the EU headquarters in Brussels, an Israeli official told Walla! News on condition of anonymity, and said that the planned measures in Europe will be focused on “the illegality of the settlements under international law”—without any distinction between “settlement blocs” generally agreed upon to remain in Israel and isolated communities. “The guiding principle is their deepening and emphasizing the...

Posted one hour ago. Granted its only a Facebook post but a good one I'm sure we all applaud!!

The Friday Filibuster: The one-stop-shop for everything you need to know about this week in politics.Closing Numbers 15% of Iowans said Scott Walker would be their first choice for president, putting Walker in an early lead among potential GOP candidates. 21.2% of likely Republican voters in New Hampshire said theyÂ’d vote for Walker, another lead for the Wisconsin governor. 5.6% - The unemployment rate the administration is touting, but which Gallup points out is one big lie. 68% of Florida Republicans think Sen. Marco Rubio should run for re-election to the Senate. 77% of millennials canÂ’t name one of their...

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said there is no decision yet as to whether Vice President Joe Biden will attend a joint session of Congress next month where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will give an address... The question immediately following the Netanyahu discussion pertained to President Obama's meeting with Muslim leaders Wednesday afternoon, which Earnest said that "the president is looking forward" to it.

Kudos to Congress for inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak at a joint session on the issue of imposing tough sanctions on Iran and to Netanyahu for accepting. President Obama has continually snubbed Israel and Netanyahu -- whom he refuses to meet with in March, allegedly because he doesn't want to interfere with the upcoming elections in Israel. Obama has been alarmingly lax in his dealings with Iran in its ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Some Obama defenders are chastising Congress for breaching protocol in inviting Netanyahu, saying, "There appear to be no rules anymore."...

President Obama has changed his scheduled departure on his trip to India so as to personally meet the new Saudi King Salman (according to CNN).  The POTUS is literally running to be among the first world leaders to genuflect to the new Saudi leader, only days after he was appointed. Vice President Joe Biden was originally set to have led a delegation to Saudi Arabia on Obama's behalf. However, the schedule for the President's departure from India has been adjusted to allow Obama to stop in Riyadh himself on his way home, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. King Abdullah passed away Friday, at 90...

Last night, Barack Obama threatened to veto any new sanctions on Iran that the newly-Republican majority might pass as a way to pressure Tehran to stop its nuclear program. Obama lectured Congress on his successes in “halt[ing] the progress of its nuclear program and reduc[ing] its stockpile of nuclear material,” and warned that Congressional action would isolate the US from its allies: There are no guarantees that negotiations will succeed, and I keep all options on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran. But new sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but guarantee that...

Interior Minister Gilad Erdan and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein won the top slots behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the Likud’s Knesset candidates list in Wednesday’s party primary, the Likud’s spokeswoman announced after 18 hours of counting votes by hand that ended on Thursday night.

Fareed speaks with Naftali Bennett, the economic minister in Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet, about Iran's nuclear program. Watch the full interview on GPS this Sunday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN. Iran - you have said that you thought a bad deal would lead to war, but a good deal could lead to peace. So the question is, do you regard the deal that is under discussion as a good deal or a bad deal? From what we can tell, the area where they seem to be at right now is that Iran would go from about 19,000...

Public opinion polls just conducted in Israel indicate a steep drop in the popularity of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It may be a temporary process, it may be a transient phase, but as of this very moment the numbers do not lie and reflect a clear trend. Support for Netanyahu is in steep decline. The results of two surveys publicized in Israel, one for the “HaMate” program on Israeli TV Channel 10 and the other for the Knesset TV Channel (“Panels”), point to an amazing fact: more than 60% of the Israeli public does not want Netanyahu to serve another...

Speeaking at the 19th annual Rabin memorial rally Saturday night, former president Shimon Peres issued scathing criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the peace process with the Palestinians and of his government’s approach to the conflict. “There are those who have turned the word ‘peace’ into a derogatory term, and there are those who consider ‘peace supporters’ as delusional people,” declared Peres. “I say clearly today: Those who have given up on peace are the delusional ones. Those who gave up and stopped looking for peace. they’re the naive ones, the ones who are not patriots,” Peres added...

President Obama Talks to Thomas L. Friedman About Iraq, Putin and Israel ... Asked whether he should be more vigorous in pressing Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, to reach a land-for-peace deal, the president said, it has to start with them. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “poll numbers are a lot higher than mine” and “were greatly boosted by the war in Gaza,” Obama said. “And so if he doesn’t feel some internal pressure, then it’s hard to see him being able to make some very difficult compromises, including taking...

"Here's the difference between us," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained on "Fox News Sunday." "We're using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles." It's a classic talking point. It's also objectively true, and that truth is very frustrating for Israel's critics. All one needs to do is delve into the muck of Twitter and read the timelines for such hashtags as #GazaUnderAttack and #GenocideInGaza: "They're killing the women and children to ensure there won't be a new generation of Palestine." "One Holocaust can NEVER justify another." And let's not even...

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem --- Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Israel President-elect Reuven Rivlin ‘agreed to agree’ on Wednesday, embracing with a hug and a smile for the cameras. Formal congratulations from the Prime Minister to the President-elect were in order despite the fact that Netanyahu worked very hard to find a different Likud candidate for the office – and Rivlin knew it. They’ve been at odds for years in fact; but they’re both professional enough and smart enough to know they must now set aside those differences. Given the many political differences between Netanyahu and Rivlin, the...

" Sorry, Candy. Whoa." That was the sound of Candy Crowley about to be vigorously schooled by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on CNN's State of the Union. As if he were a teacher attempting to straighten out an errant student with the facts, Netayahu added, " No, Candy. No, no. I'm sorry. I heard that. I hear people write that up, but, in fact, it's the very opposite." Chastened student Crowley finally corrected corrected herself. If only more guests on her show were as strenuous in correcting Crowley. You can see Crowley, starting at the 3:40 mark in the...

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signaled on Saturday that he remains committed to troubled U.S.-backed peace talks, saying that any unity government agreed with the militant group Hamas would recognize Israel. Abbas’s comments appeared aimed at soothing U.S. concerns about the unity deal he reached on Wednesday with Hamas, an Islamist faction sworn to Israel’s destruction and designated by the West as a terrorist organization. […] Hamas’s opposition to Israel does not necessarily contradict Abbas’s position, as both sides have agreed that the unity government will not include Hamas members but be comprised of technocrats. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...