Bibi and the Elephant Dance, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #391 | @MDWorld

March 9, 2015 Victor El-Khouri 5 Comments

Money doesn’t talk, it screams • Bob Dylan

You’ve got to give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu credit. American politicians campaign on talk shows, eat pizza with a knife and fork, and ride around in buses. Bibi addresses Congress.

He was invited by the Republican Party, who deliberately broke diplomatic protocol by doing so directly instead of through the State Department and/or the President. Much has been made about this; in fact, it is no big deal. It’s hardly the first time a joint session of Congress has offered its podium for a dog and pony show.

But the Republicans thought doing so would embarrass President Obama. Once again, they misread their tea leaves.

Overall, Netanyahu is regarded by a great many Americans as a dangerous threat to our national interests and to global peace, including many American Jews. Yes, Virginia, you easily can be anti-Netanyahu and pro-Israel. All you have to be is anti-madman warmonger. Americans tend to dislike it when foreign potentates come over here and tell us what we should be doing. This usually involves watering their own lawns with American blood.

So why did the Republicans do it? If you’ve made it this far into my column, you probably are not naïve enough to believe they actually care about Israel’s survival. Maybe you believe it has something to do with grabbing the Jewish vote from the Democrats.

Thus far the general American Jewish population remains committed to the Democrats and the Great Bibi Stunt didn’t mitigate that one bit. Are the Republicans that stupid?

Yeah, probably. On Tuesday, November 6, 2012, at 7 PM EST, prominent Republicans such as Dick Cheney and Karl Rove seriously thought Obama was going to be defeated. All the polling was wrong, all their money was right and on January 20 2013, Mitt Romney would be President of the United States.

As Sarah Palin likes to say, “Well, how did that work out for ya?”

No, I do not believe the Republicans behind the Bibi circus are that stupid. I could be wrong, but I’m just a sunny, optimistic “half-full” kind of guy. I believe the Republicans only cared about maybe two-dozen American Jews at best.

They want the continued financial support of such American Jews as casino owners Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, hedge-fund managers Paul Isaac and Paul Singer, philanthropist Ronald Krancer and Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus. These guys blew over a half-billion dollars on the 2012 elections and lost. Without their money, the Republicans certainly will lose again in 2016.

Mind you, even with those Jewish bucks the Republicans can still lose. I say this all the time, and history has proven it accurate: the candidate with the most money doesn’t always win – if the other candidate has enough money. And Hillary Clinton has her own rich Jews: folks with names like Fred Eychaner, Amy Goldman, and Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenburg.

Nobody raises money better than the Clinton family. And this tempest-in-a-teapot about Hillary’s emails doesn’t have legs: she turned over 55,000 pages of emails in 2014, she didn’t break any laws and even if she did, the Republicans will shoot themselves in their many feet by conflating this with Benghazi.

No. Last week Bibi and the Republicans used each other for their own ends. Better luck next time, folks.

It’s Money That I Love • Randy Newman

A historical note: In 1964 Bob Dylan wrote the line “Money doesn’t talk, it screams” in his song “It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).” Whereas Glenn Beck ripped it off – as I just have – it goes back to at least 1935, appearing in Esquire magazine, and the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1951. But Dylan said it best.

Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on iNetRadio, www.iNetRadio.com as part of “Hit Oldies” every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information. Gold also joins MDW’s Michael Davis and Martha Thomases as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color.