Category Archives: U.S. Senate

History: On Voter Fraud, Mike Pence, and a Roman Horse Named Incitatus……

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US Vice President Mike Pence will spend about three hours today with a shadowy group of conspiracy-theory people appointed by Trump ‘to prove’ that he actually won the popular vote . They are assigned to investigate “Voter Fraud”.
FYI: Mike Pence, like a good poodle puppy, calls President Trump “a Great Leader” or a “Great President” almost every other day of the week.

Historians tell us that the insane Roman emperor Gaius Caligula appointed his favorite horse Incitatus to the Senate (Roman Senate not US Senate). Incitatus was not from Kentucky, and he was one senator who was NOT afraid of Caligula.
I thought you might want to know….

Imperial WWE: Emperor Caligula and his GOP Roman Senators and Their Wives……

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

New Trendy Bigotry: Rent a Jew, Rent a Muslim, Rent a Bigot (or Elect One)………

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“Do Jews get a discount when they buy a car? Do they own McDonald’s? Do Jews control the media and international banking? Do any of them live here anymore? These are among the questions German school children ask Jews who volunteer in a new outreach program with the provocative name, “Rent A Jew.” The Jews in question are not actually “rented” since they volunteer their time. But they do present themselves as living exhibits of something young Germans hear about constantly, thanks to their curricula on Germany and the Holocaust but rarely see: living, talking, walking Jews as they live their lives today. The program – launched in 2015 by the Munich-based Janusz Korczak Academy in collaboration with the Jewish Agency for Israel – is beginning to catch on. The Jewish Agency provides funding for the program, which mixes education with humor. “Rent a Jew,” the group’s tagline urges. “You will never forget your first.”

What next? Rent-a-Muslim for the Trump and Bannon and Gaffney kids to learn from?
Some say Muslims may be the “new” Jews in Europe and the United States. The next target for frustrated underemployed Christians and Evangelicals who can’t wait for “The Day” when all Jews are expected to convert to their peculiar old sect started by Jesus of Nazareth.

I don’t believe it, this thing about Rent-a-Muslim. It takes a long history, many centuries of suspicion, discrimination, abuse, and massacres to get to where the Jews are. And requires us to have a lot of talent that makes others realize their own shortcomings, which we don’t have yet. Besides, Muslims are nowhere near being group targets of life-and-death situations: there just are too many of us, and we are not one race or one nation. We come from all over.
Even the New Neo-Republican Party can’t build that kind of a wall. I believe that in this Congress and at the New White House they are realizing that and focusing on their real long-term enemy: a well-educated and healthy American people.

Besides, Muslims don’t make good scapegoats. We make better goats than scapegoats, given how our native countries are managed.

Maybe Rent-a-Bigot can become a viable business in some coastal states. A quaint conversation piece on one of the two coasts. Unless you elect a whole passel of them and let them loose on a country.


FYI: unlike the myth being encouraged in extreme right wing media, not many Muslims prefer slitting throats. Many prefer AK-15 (but that would be a Russian connection no?). One other thing is worrisome, tough: many of us like our food, especially our meat, Kosher (except we called it Halal after we copied it from the Jews about fifteen centuries ago).
More on this later, possibly, stay tuned…….

Cheers
M. Haider Ghuloum

American Economic and Political Dilemma: Robots Replace Workers, Idiots Replace Political Leaders……..

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“U.S. workers face higher risk of being replaced by robots. Millions of workers around the world are at risk of losing their jobs to robots — but Americans should be particularly worried. Thirty-eight percent of jobs in the U.S. are at high risk of being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence over the next 15 years, according to a new report by PwC. Meanwhile, only 30% of jobs in the U.K. are similarly endangered. The same level of risk applies to only 21% of positions in Japan. The U.S. and U.K. labor markets are both dominated by services jobs, and roughly the same share of workers are employed in key sectors including finance, transportation, education, manufacturing and food services……..”

No real surprise here, and not only robots. If you have not been living on a faraway planet in another galaxy, you’d notice something happening, a trend, for several years. It is not only an issue of robots replacing workers.

Some of the most important jobs in the United States, the most important jobs, all the way to the top, have been taken over by idiots and fools, especially in Washington DC. Most of the political jobs and especially the jobs of their leaders in both the U.S. Congress and the White House have now been taken over, almost completely, by utter idiots. Or so it seems.

Thanks to its new generation of leaders and their backers and their owners, America may well be on its way to rejoin the Third World. In Congress, each side has been engaging in self-gratifying political ideological masturbation. Partner-less of course by definition. Class distinctions are already sharpening, ethnic and religious distinctions are being encouraged, and self-serving Think Tanks of Hate are rolling in dark money.

All this is probably a bit of an exaggeration: no country in the world, or in its history, has been or is as resilient as the United States of America. This shall pass. There is always hope, as long as there are free and “unfettered” elections coming. As long as the people remain educated. Politics is a series of experiments, an exercise in trial and error.

More on this later, stay tuned.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Donald Trump and the Pussycats: from Washington to Jerusalem……

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Everybody has been following the debates, arguments, and food fights between Donald Trump and “others”. From his Republican rivals to the Pope to the Bush family to the Clintons and former Mexican leaders/oligarchs. He certainly does not back down from a fight, he usually doubles down. In the process, he calls his detractors and rivals some choice words (some of them well-deserved).
Tsk, tsk: politics were supposed to be served discreetly, like a slow Borgia poison, not so bluntly as a broadsword or Roman gladius.

Can you imagine Senator Mitch McConnell, majority leader, saying of a President Trump what he has been saying of President Obama for seven years? Trump would almost certainly call him what he exactly thinks of him: a pussy from Kentucky at best.

Can you imagine Israel’s Benyamin Netanyahu coming to a joint session of the U.S. Congress in order to openly sabotage American foreign policy as he did last year? A right-wing foreign leader? A President Trump would openly call for his deportation, adding the “pussy” and “liar” epithets as well.

Can you imagine a President Trump bowing down to some tribal autocratic  kleptocratic prince? Or walking around holding his hand as Bush did in Crawford?

Can you imagine him politely, too politely, deferring to a foreign leader, be they Chinese or Russian or Middle Eastern?

This is not to endorse him or overlook the tools of bigotry he has been conveniently using against easy targets like Muslims, refugees, and desperate Latin workers that his own businesses probably hire. Cheap shots he takes, but that has become one tool of American politics these days.

As for the nonsense he utters about Obamacare and the Iran Nuclear Deal, it is just political posturing. The horse has already left the barn on these issues, as all Republican candidates know but pretend not to know.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Palmetto Hustler: How Lindsey Graham Bin Jingo Learned about Iranians………..

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“Senator Lindsey Graham, the first speaker Friday morning, appearing from Washington via video, spoke of losing his parents as a teenager, working in a pool hall and having to help raise his younger sister – and how it relates to his leadership style. “Everything I learned about Iranians I learned working in the pool room,” he said. “I met a lot of liars, and I know Iranians are liars.”………….”

Pool halls and liars. He worked in a pool room and discovered that Iranians are liars, unlike many senators and others who work in pool halls. This is where Senator Lindsey Graham Bin Jingo learned that Iranian are liars (apparently there are no exceptions). This senator Graham sounds like an unlikely Paul Newman in one of my favorite old films.
Unless some of his pro-democracy kleptocratic autocrats on the Persian Gulf told him so. We all know they never lie.

    

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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The Foreign Oligarchs’ Demand for Senator McCain………

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There have been some reports that president Poroshenko of Ukraine has appointed Sen John McCain as an adviser. I commented on Twitter that maybe now the Nusra Front , the Al Qaeda franchise that leads the Syrian opposition, is trying to recruit him for Syria.

But wait, there may be more: new rumors that the Saudis are vying with the escaped general Hadi, former Yemeni president, to get the senator. They were all impressed with his travel prowess………

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Iran, the West, and the Myths of the Crippling Blockade and a Political War……..

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It is now required by law. Every time any media outlet or expert in the United States mentions the Western blockade against Iran, they must add “crippling”. There are no more just “sanctions”, there are only “crippling sanctions“.
No doubt the blockade is hurting Iran, negatively affecting the living standards of the average Iranian. That is why they voted for a reformist during the last election. Too bad there are no effective sanctions against that other power, the only real nuclear power in the Middle East. Then maybe we’ll discover that they also have a reformist strain and vote their whining demagogue out of office. 

Back to Iran. The sanctions are truly hurting Iran. They are not ‘crippling’, not by any measure. That is a myth used in the West and parroted by the media. A crippled country does not grow more powerful and does not extend its regional sphere of influence, and does not allow its people to travel and does not multiply its centrifuges several fold. Not after 35 years of “crippling” sanctions. A ‘crippled’ country does not defy the world powers and withstand serious sustained economic warfare from some of its neighbors.

So forget the ‘crippling sanctions’. Now it has to be either an agreement or a policy of simple containment (forget about this political war that is allegedly still on the table)……….

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Tale of Three Dysfunctional Cities: Sanaa, Aden, and Washington…….

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They say Yemen is threatened with division again. They say there are now two capitals in that blighted country at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Sanaa in the North, and Aden in the South. They say that former president Hadi (bin Zombie) is claiming he is back in power from Aden, that he and his local southern allies and the GCC countries run whatever they can run from Aden. That the Houthis and their allies now rule from Sanaa. Two capitals and two rival claimants to power, each claiming the other is not legitimate (they are probably both right). While the AQAP-hunting drones rule the skies. That is Yemen for now.

Now we have two regimes and two foreign policies in the United States as well.  Both rule from the same city, geographically speaking. One is Likudnik, largely Republican, but also bi-partisan to some extent, and it takes its signals from Tel Aviv (okay, West Jerusalem) via AIPAC and Las Vegas and other campaign money centers. It follows the cult of Netanyahu, a demagogue that reminds me of a softer gentler version of (dare I say it?) another ruthless demagogue (or two, my alibi). The other regime is Democrat and also claims Washington. They diverge in many ways, but now especially in foreign policy. Each is pinning its hopes on 2016 to sweep into absolute power. Neither looks set to realize that hope, not in that year.

Let’s see which of the three cities can stop being dysfunctional, can manage to become functioning, first………

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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U.S. Senate Goes Completely Banana Republic: Knesset Deals Directly with Iran……

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“Republican senators warned Iran on Monday that any nuclear deal made with U.S. President Barack Obama could last only as long as he remains in office, in an unusual intervention into U.S. foreign policy-making. The letter, signed by 46 U.S. senators, says Congress plays a role in ratifying international agreements and points out that Obama will leave office in January 2017, while many in Congress will remain in Washington long after that. “We will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei,” …………..”

This is unheard of. In no world power, even a third rate power, would the legislature try to sabotage the foreign policy of the executive branch. Nowhere else, not so openly. Except in the United States, which now has a Senate/Congress that would do justice to a banana republic. They have done it twice within this month, and it is early in March. First by secretly inviting a foreign leader, Netanyahu, to come to Washington and attack the American foreign policy and try to sabotage it. Now they are addressing, warning, Iranians directly that any deal with the president will expire in 2017.

Except that is not the point. They are assuming that Washington can have its way, even with a political class running amok, pushing the world toward another unnecessary war. The fools will drive the other P5 away. Germany, France, Britain (maybe), Russia, and China are not beholden to the powerful Israeli lobby. Their politicians are not dependent on, nay owned by, right-wing special interest money in the USA or in Israel. Mostly they do represent the people who vote for them.


Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Iranians Worry about Pro-Likud U.S. Senate, Seek a More Active Europe……….

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“The European Union (EU) can play more active role in the negotiations between Iran and the world powers over Iran’s nuclear issue, Press TV reported on Tuesday quoting Iran’s foreign minister as saying. In a meeting with his Portugese counterpart Rui Machete in Tehran on Monday, Mohammad-Javad Zarif hailed what he termed as “positive” the European countries’ current approach to oppose the imposition of any new sanctions against Tehran and trying out diplomacy………….”

The Iranians are apparently just trying to get some help from Europe. They can see that the U.S. Knesset Congress/Senate is trying to create the conditions for failed negotiations. They see that the legislators are setting the U.S. up for being dragged into an Israeli war against another Muslim country. They know that the Europeans, like almost everybody else outside the USA,  are skeptic about Netanyahu and the Israeli stance. They are trying to get the Europeans to be a bit more forceful on this issue.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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