Hegel Confirmed

Chuck Hegel was confirmed today as Defense Secretary according to the Wall Street Journal.  The article cites Hegel's positions on Israel and Iran as obstacles to his nomination.  Iran is really a subset of the Israel issue, since Iran is much more of a military threat to Israel than to the US.  I have been upset that his nomination was being blocked by Jews who were more concerned about Israel than the US.  However, in the final vote, most of the Jews in the Senate are Democrats who vote for Hegel, while the good-old-boy,
Christian, conservative Republicans voted against him.  The one favor that some of them did was to vote against filibustering his nomination.  Many of these conservative, Christian Republicans were responding to urging by the Jewish lobby AIPAC, which represents the conservative wing of Israeli politics.

Jewish Vendetta

This Politico article reinforces the impression that there is a Jewish vendetta against Hegel for his comments about the Jewish lobby.  It says that right-wing Hegel opponents were seeking a video of a speech he made to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League because they thought it would contain anti-Israel or anti-Semetic comments.  So, the opposition to Hegel seems motivated by those who love Israel more than America and who consider themselves Jews rather than Americans.  But Politico says Hagel said nothing of note to the ADL.  Nevertheless there seems to be a lot of race hatred behind the opposition to Hegel

Gutless Federal Government

Stephen Colbert had great segments tonight on the failure of the US to prosecute anyone in the banks responsible for the meltdown that led to the great recession, although it is going after one rating agency, and Wells Fargo is going after one employee who put slugs in a coin laundry 40 years ago.  But Wells Fargo thinks it is fine to defraud customers of millions of dollars.  No punishment for that!

The S&P rating agency was basically a character reference for the banks, who were the actual crooks.  It was the banks who put together the fraudulent financial packages.  S&P was stupid enough to believe the banks, who lied through their teeth to the rating agencies and there customers.  Is there no penalty for the banks lying in exactly the same way the rating agency did?  The difference is that the banks own the American government, which has become increasingly corrupt.

Bloomberg in London

The N Y Times article about mayor Bloomberg's love for London and his big investment there goes against my hypothesis that Jews secretly love Israel more than America. The same may be true for Ralph Lauren, whose fashion inspiration often seems to come from Britain. I am happy about that, but I worry that there are many American Jews, represented by AIPAC, who do love Israel more than America. But fortunately it is not a universal phenomenon.