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Rahm Emanuel and Lindsey Graham: D.C.'s odd couple (remove the tutu, Lindsey!)
Politico ^ | 3-1-10

Posted on 03/01/2010 1:16:15 PM PST by STARWISE

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To: STARWISE

My husband couldn’t sit like that....


21 posted on 03/01/2010 2:00:15 PM PST by Taffini ( Mr. Pippen and Mr. Waffles do not approve and neither do I)
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To: DManA

;)


22 posted on 03/01/2010 2:03:43 PM PST by STARWISE (They (LIBS-STILL) think of this WOT as Bush's war, not America's war- Richard Miniter)
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To: Mamzelle; onyx; SE Mom; Bahbah

Whenever Graham does something to tick you off, send a little donation to JD Hayworth.

~~~

Which reminds me: I won’t be surprised at the
filthy and curious attacks on JD coming from
‘interesting’ places. Rahm/-0/lamestreams are
probably plotting his crucifixion campaign now
with all their nasty lawyers and operatives.


23 posted on 03/01/2010 2:08:07 PM PST by STARWISE (They (LIBS-STILL) think of this WOT as Bush's war, not America's war- Richard Miniter)
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To: STARWISE

If we can catch them in the act, McCain is toast.


24 posted on 03/01/2010 2:23:48 PM PST by Mamzelle
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To: chickadee; alarm rider; Alex1977; at bay; Babsig; BILL_C; bnelson44; Clintonfatigued; DesScorp; ...
Hey Lindsey, you need to drop trou, turn around and let Rahm put his signature move on you. It'll happen sooner or later, might as well get it over with.

South Carolina needs to be encouraged to de-elect Graham.

I really, REALLY wish we could, but SC has no recall law. We have to wait until 2014 to toss his ass out on the sidewalk.

Uber RINO Lindsey Ping
"Republican by day, Democrat by night."


Want on or off this ping list?
Just FReepmail me.


25 posted on 03/01/2010 2:24:14 PM PST by upchuck (I'm glad I'm old. Thus I can remember when America was a decent, moral, God fearing country.)
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To: STARWISE

Gramnesty must have a convention going on in his closet....


26 posted on 03/01/2010 2:33:14 PM PST by Doogle (USAF.68-73..8th TFW Ubon Thailand..never store a threat you should have eliminated)
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To: STARWISE
Emanuel is an observant Jew

No, he is not. Visiting Israel does not make one "an observant Jew."

27 posted on 03/01/2010 2:35:57 PM PST by iowamark
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To: STARWISE

Yet another reason to dislike this RINO! Lindsey is a national discrace.....I hate that South Carolina sent such a person to DC


28 posted on 03/01/2010 2:40:17 PM PST by jakerobins
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To: STARWISE

Must be Butt Bros.


29 posted on 03/01/2010 2:46:56 PM PST by A_Former_Democrat
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To: Mamzelle; onyx; rodguy911; Liz; maggief; Fred Nerks; Red Steel; BP2; Danae; Diogenesis; El Gato; ...
I'm behind re Lindsey's WH buds and the JD crucifixion .. it HAS begun.

‘Birther’ Conspiracy Roils GOP Campaigns

*snip*

... the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee issued a memo to campaign managers suggesting a few ways to prevent their candidates from becoming the next Martha Coakley.

“Create sufficient pressure for your moderate opponents to be forced to weigh in on the positions of your far right opponents,” argued the memo writers.

The memo set up a hypothetical scenario in which a front-running candidate would have to respond to someone who questioned whether President Barack Obama was a natural-born citizen of the United States. The so-called “birther” question, they argued, could trip up Republicans just as well as questions about the gold standard or nullification of federal laws.

30 posted on 03/01/2010 2:55:23 PM PST by STARWISE (They (LIBS-STILL) think of this WOT as Bush's war, not America's war- Richard Miniter)
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To: STARWISE

I love it when Mark Levin calls Graham... “Goober Graham.” A perfect label.


31 posted on 03/01/2010 3:29:05 PM PST by Trajan88 (www.bullittclub.com)
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To: dead

It’s hard to determine who’s the Bottom in that relationship. They’re both such flaming queens.


32 posted on 03/01/2010 3:42:18 PM PST by upstanding
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To: STARWISE

I have been blocked from posting at that site. I tried posting as a guest.

Wonder who informed them to look for me...

Ah, but I’m just a conspiracy nut, seeing stuff where there’s really nothing.

(sigh)

If somebody could post my Red Flags link there I’d be glad. I wonder if it’s the IP address they’re blocking... Maybe I’ll check on my daughter’s computer later.

Anyway, the link is http://butterdezillion.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/red-flags-in-hawaii-2/


33 posted on 03/01/2010 4:03:46 PM PST by butterdezillion
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To: butterdezillion

posted the link...


34 posted on 03/01/2010 4:50:21 PM PST by Fred Nerks (fair dinkum!)
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To: STARWISE

Some very evil people inhabit our nations capital these days, this nation needs a house call from Orkin.


35 posted on 03/01/2010 5:00:18 PM PST by exnavy (May the Lord grant our troops protection and endurance.)
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To: STARWISE

Now is the picture that gives the American people their hope!


36 posted on 03/01/2010 5:48:25 PM PST by Theodore R. (...)
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To: jakerobins

All SC people know about Lindsey is that Strom endorsed him.


37 posted on 03/01/2010 5:49:50 PM PST by Theodore R. (...)
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To: Fred Nerks

Thank you.

Now I’m going to see what all variables make a difference as to whether I can post comments there...


38 posted on 03/01/2010 7:13:05 PM PST by butterdezillion
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To: Fred Nerks

Now they let me post. I wonder what that means.


39 posted on 03/01/2010 7:20:16 PM PST by butterdezillion
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To: All
Rahm Emanuel is an observant Jew.........

Barack Obama has said Rahm Emanuel tells him all he needs to know about Israel. Emanuel's closenesss to the Jewish community was seen as "a tiny factor, if at all" in his hiring as Obama's chief of staff.

November 9, 2008, By Ron Kampeas, JTA
Rahm Emanuel: attack dog, policy wonk, committed Jew

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Political insight, killer in a fight, Yiddishkeit – it’s an inseparable package when it comes to Rahm Emanuel, say those who know President-elect Barack Obama’s pick for White House chief of staff.

Since his days as a fund-raiser and then a "political adviser" – read: enforcer – for President Clinton, Emanuel has earned notoriety as a no-holds-barred politico. Accept the good with the bad because it’s of a piece, said Steve Rabinowitz, who worked with Emanuel in the Clinton White House. "He can be a ‘mamzer,’ but he’s our mamzer," said Rabinowitz, using the Yiddish term for "bastard," speaking both as a Democrat and a Jew. "Sometimes that’s what you need."

The apocrypha is legendary, if somewhat hard to pin down: Jabbing a knife into a table screaming "Dead!" as colleagues shout out the names of political enemies, sending a dead fish to a rival, screaming at friends and enemies alike for no good reason.

Even his allies acknowledge that Emanuel, 48, can be on edge at times. "He’s not running for Miss Congeniality, ever," said US Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill), who has known Emanuel since they worked at Illinois Public Action, a public interest group, in the early 1980s. "He is relentless, he doesn’t give up, but in a strategic way. He’s good at figuring out other people’s self interest and negotiating in a way that comes out in his favor."

Emanuel, an Illinois congressman who boasts strong ties to his local Jewish community and the Jewish state, also can be seen as embodying Obama’s stated commitment to Israeli security and diplomacy: During the first Iraq war, Emanuel flew to Israel as a volunteer to help maintain military vehicles. Two years later he was an aide to Clinton, helping to push along the newly launched Oslo process. Within four months of joining the US House of Representatives in 2003, Emanuel had an impressive command of the issues, said Michael Kotzin, the director of the Chicago Jewish Community Relations Council.

"He gave a thorough and insightful analysis of issues on our agenda," said Kotzin, adding that Emanuel was responsive to his Jewish constituents. Obama chose Emanuel to escort him to a closed-door meeting with leaders of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC in June, a day after the final Democratic primaries. One thing Emanuel is not, all agree, is the president-elect’s conciliatory signal to the Jewish community after a campaign fraught with worries that Obama would tip toward even-handedness in dealing with the Middle East.

Emanuel was chosen strictly for his political skills and his closeness to Obama, said Rabinowitz, whose public relations firms does work with both Jewish groups and the Democratic Party and its affiliates. His closeness to the Jewish community "would be a tiny factor, if at all" in the hiring, Rabinowitz said. The Arab and pro-Arab media have made much of the fact that Emanuel’s father is Israeli, and Benjamin Emanuel didn’t improve matters in an interview with Ma’ariv.

"Obviously," the senior Emanuel told the Israeli daily, "he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House." By the time JTA reached the elder Emanuel, a physician, it was clear his son had asked him to keep away from reporters. Picking up the phone, he said, "This is Benjamin Emanuel, the plumber," and asked a reporter to call back in a week, after he’d spoken in person to Rahm – "if I’m still alive then."

In truth, some observers say, Obama’s Jewish supporters and Emanuel’s Arab critics are oversimplifying by painting the new chief of staff as a guardian of Israeli interests. Emanuel will be a strong voice for Israeli security – but also one with the standing to cast a skeptical eye on some Israeli claims.

"Rahm, precisely because he’s a lover of Israel, will not have much patience with Israeli excuse-making,” Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for The Atlantic, suggested on his blog. “So when the next prime minister tells President Obama that as much as he’d love to, he can’t dismantle the Neve Manyak settlement outpost, or whichever outpost needs dismantling, because of a) domestic politics; b) security concerns; or c) the Bible, Rahm will call out such nonsense, and it will be very hard for right-wing Israelis to come back and accuse him of being a self-hating Jew.”

Tom Dine, a past president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and a senior policy adviser to the Israeli Policy Forum, concurred and said that Emanuel’s knowledge of the issue will mean i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed. "God help the national security staffer who incorrectly spells an Israel town name," Dine said. "Having said that, he has to be very careful, he can’t step on the toes of the secretary of state, the national security advisers, of Joe Biden," the vice president-elect whose emphasis will be foreign policy.

The significance of Emanuel’s Jewishness is more how unremarkable it is that an unapologetic Jew should rise so far, said Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "He has never hesitated to wear it proudly on his sleeve," Foxman said.

During Emanuel’s freshman run for Congress in 2002, a backer of his Democratic primary opponent in the largely Polish district noted his service in Israel during the first Iraq war. Emanuel shrugged off the accusation as true – and won by a wide margin.

Rahm's brother, Hollywood super agent and liberal activist Ari Emanuel, also has been unapologetic about his support for Jewish causes. He sparked headlines when he called on people in the movie industry to blackball Mel Gibson over “The Passion of the Christ.” Both brothers have inspired a television character: Rahm is said to be the model for Josh Lyman on “The West Wing,” and Ari more famously is immortalized as the agent/predator Ari Gold on the HBO series "Entourage.”

A year ago, honoring his Hollywood agent brother for supporting children with learning disabilities, Rahm Emanuel recalled returning from Israel in 1967. More than his brothers, Emanuel remembered, he tended to darken in the Israeli sun. He was scooting around on his bike when a bigger kid grabbed it, saying black kids weren’t welcome in the neighborhood. Ari, Rahm recalled, "beat the crap out of him"—not because of the bike, not to protect his brother, "but because of what he said about black kids." Rahm defended his brother in terms he might have applied to himself: "Where others see fierceness, I see loyalty. Where others see intensity, I see passion."

In general, Emanuel is fiercely loyal to his family, and they were a consideration in his hesitation to take work he’s always dreamed of having – he waited two days to say yes. Obama, in his statement announcing the pick, recognized the pain it would cause Emanuel’s wife, Amy, and “their children, Zach, Ilana and Leah."

Emanuel was born to an Israeli doctor (who was a member of the Irgun terrorist group) who married a local woman after he moved to Chicago in the mid-1950s. Rahm speaks Hebrew and fondly recalls summering each year in Israel as a child – including just after the 1967 Six-Day War. Rahm's wife converted to Judaism.

He and his wife attend Anshe Sholom, a Modern Orthodox synagogoue in Chicago, and send their children to Jewish day school. His rabbi, Asher Lopatin, recalls Emanuel approaching him just before Rosh Hashanah this year, telling him that an effort to put together a bailout package for the hard-hit stock market before the holiday had failed and asking whether it was permissible to take conference calls on the holiday in order to salvage the bill. "I asked, ‘Is it as serious as people say it is?’ " the rabbi recalled. "He said, ‘Without this bill there could be a meltdown of the financial system.’ "

Lopatin considered the effect such a failure would have on children and the poor. "I felt it was a case of ‘pikuach nefesh,’ " the commandment that places the saving of life above all other commandments, Lopatin said, and gave Emanuel the OK. The somberness of the request couldn’t quell Emanuel’s acerbic wit. Lopatin recalled Emanuel’s teasing, wondering whether the status of the rabbi’s 401(k) investments wasn’t also behind the hechsher. "He kibitzed with me about that," the rabbi said.

Emanuel repeated the story, to raucous laughter, in caucus meetings on the Hill – an example of how he will skid in the same sentence from Judaism to a liberal commitment to social reforms to hard-nosed politics, Schakowsky said. "There’s barely a caucus meeting where he doesn’t make some reference to being Jewish, often in a humorous way," she said.

But his Jewishness does more than inform his sense of humor, Emanuel’s rabbi said. “He has a very deep commitment and feel for Yiddishkeit," Lopatin said, "and it’s a Yiddishkeit that’s about ‘tikkun olam,’ having a positive effect on the world."

SOURCE http://jta.org/news/article/2008/11/09/1000859/rahm-emanuel-attack-dog-policy-wonk-committed-jew

=========================================

January 6, 2010, israelnationalnews.com
Israel Defense Forces Army Radio reported that Rahm Emanuel met with Israel's Consul in Los Angeles, Yaki Dayan, 2 1/2 weeks ago. Et voila.......in no time flat, the US was streaming two ships into the Persian Gulf armed with anti-missile missiles. How's that for quick service?

Yaki Dayan reported to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem that Emanuel said: “ If there is no progress in the diplomatic process, we will reduce our involvement and effort in the conflict, because we have other matters to deal with”.........ROTFL........that Rahm is such a kidder (/snix).

SOME AMERICANS MIGHT ASK Does it seem like Emanuel is over-reaching? Having secret meetings and discussions with foreign diplomats? ANSWER Keep in mind, the Israelis are Rahm's bosom buddies. Rahm doesn't have to ask anybody's "permission" to meet with his friends.

One of Emanuel's proudest moments during his tenure in the Clinton administration was when he directed the details of the "Mideast Peace ceremony" (the 127th "Mideast Peace ceremony" to date). Rahm choreographed the famous handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat, in the 1993 Rose Garden signing ceremony. This event touched Emanuel's political sensibilities due to his lifelong personal and family ties to Israel. No one knows how Emanuel felt when, predictably, war broke out between the "peace partners" shortly thereafter.

40 posted on 03/01/2010 11:51:12 PM PST by Liz (A person who smiles in the face of adversity probably has a scapegoat nearby.)
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