Why Iowa IS Relevant

Are the Iowa caucuses “relevant?”

Yes. Perhaps now more than ever.

In the interminable weeks and marathon of debates leading up to tomorrow’s Iowa caucuses, pundits and media gurus have been raising the question as to whether the Iowa caucuses will be relevant “if they turn out wrong.” There is no doubt that Iowa Republicans are more likely to reflect agricultural interests and Evangelical Christian fervor than the rest of the nation; but over the last 30 years, the Republican Iowa caucuses have been an accurate snapshot of political temperament in America.

First, it has accurately reflected the mood of the national Republican Party.

In 1980, George H. W. Bush (32%) and Ronald Reagan (30%) virtually tied; libertarian-oriented Congressman Phil Crane took an additional 7% of the vote. The caucuses almost pre-ordained a Reagan-Bush ticket, and foreshadowed a growing conservative-libertarian bloc within the GOP.

In 1988 (Reagan was unopposed for his second term in 1984), the winner was Bob Dole(37%); televangelist Pat Robertson took second with 24%, and George H. W. Bush limped in at third place with 19%. Once again, Iowa taught an important lesson: while George H.W. Bush went on to win the nomination and the election against Democrat Mike Dukakis (in a record-low turnout year), Iowa signaled that Bush was headed for trouble, and would be limited to a one-term Presidency. At the same time, Robertson’s second place finish indicated the growing power of the religious right within the GOP.

In 1996, the winner was Bob Dole with 26%. He went on to win the Republican nomination that year.

In 2000, George W. Bush won with 41%. He went on to win the Republican nomination that year.

In 2008, Mike Huckabee won with 34% of the vote. This win reflected the continuing strength of social conservatives and the religious right in the GOP. The eventual winner of the nomination that year – John McCain – drew only 13% of the vote. His lackluster performance in Iowa found its fullest expression in the general election, when he was defeated by Barack Obama, losing formerly “safe” GOP states like North Carolina, Indiana, and Virginia. Interestingly, Mitt Romney took second place in Iowa that year (25%), foreshadowing his own strength this year.

Second, as a “swing state,’ it has been a bellwether in the national election.

Iowa has voted for the winning candidate in the general election in four out of five of the last Presidential elections, and 7 out of the last 10 Presidential elections. In other words, in recent years, it has become even more predictive of the national outcome. One can point to its racial makeup or economic base as 'unrepresentative,' but the objective facts are that Iowans laregly have their finger on the pulse of elections, rather than simply being a "red state" or a "blue state."

But lastly, the current ‘winnowing process’ that has resulted in a virtual three-way race between Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and a late-surging Rick Santorum, is an accurate reflection of the current makeup – and divisions – within the Republican Party.

On Jan 23, 2011 – just about a year ago – we published an analysis
of the tripartheid nature of the Republican Party as reflected in elections for leadership with the state of New Hampshire Republican Party. We wrote,

In the wake of yesterday's election of Jack Kimball over Juliana Bergeron as New Hampshire State Republican Chair, many news articles have attempted to present this as a battle between "two sides." And in America, we tend to simply battles into just two sides: Republicans vs. Democrats, Packers vs. Bears, Yankees vs. Red Sox, Toby Keith vs. The Dixie Chicks. But the reality behind the scenes is that the state GOP can be divided into at least three different factions, and the direction the party - and the State - will take is a function of how those coalitions come together - or fall apart - on individual issues.

In brief, the three main factions are The Establishment Yankees, The Theocrats, and the Libertarians.

Nowhere have three factions become as starkly clear as in Iowa in the last week.

Mitt Romney is the clear establishment favorite: The son of former Michigan Governor George W. Romney, he holds a joint Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard. He was the co-founder and head of Bain Capital, a highly profitable private equity investment firm. With the possible exception of Jon Huntsman, Romney represents the Republican Establishment Blue-Blood tradition.

Ron Paul, a twelve-term Congressman from Texas, is perhaps the single most recognizable voice in the libertarian wing of the GOP. Consistently voicing libertarian positions, Paul often votes against his Republican colleagues on issues involving civil liberties, militarism, and spending. In 1988, he ran for President on the Libertarian Party ticket; He was one of only 66 Congressmen (out of 435) to oppose the original Patriot Act, and one of 26 Republicans to oppose its extension this past year. A veteran, he alone among the Republicans has opposed sanctions on Iran and has called for significant slashing of America’s international military budget.

Rick Santorum represents the clearest and most extreme personification of theocracy in the United States. A strident evangelical Christian, Santorum is actively seeking to galvanize Iowa’s Pat Roberston voters as he openly campaigns on behalf of a “Christian America,” vowing this past week to invalidate all same-sex marriage that have already taken place, and winning endorsements from Bob Vander Plaats, Chief Executive of the Family Leader, and Chuck Hurley, President of the Iowa Family Policy Centre. In an overture to the Second-Coming crowd, he vowed a direct military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In the last week, the media have used the words “irrelevant,” “overhyped,” and “unrepresentative” in describing Iowa and it’s voters. They have used all sorts of facts and figures about race and religion to try and prove their point. They also question what an unexpected (or “undesirable”) outcome could mean.

But in spite of their nay-saying, the three front-runners - Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum – are an entirely accurate representation of the elements of the current schizoid Republican Party, and the results of the Iowa caucuses for the last thirty years have been highly predictive of the American political mood.

Iowa *is* relevant.


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Obama, GOP set stage for 2012 war in Iran

(Map of US Bases surrounding Iran)

[NEW: See Short Video reviewing the last 60 years of History between Iran and the USA at the end of this post]

From his home in Hawaii, President Barack Obama signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act into law today, imposing the strongest economic sanctions to date on Iran, and increasing the probabilities of oil disruptions, rising gasoline prices, and military conflict.

The current sanctions are in response to Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear program, which Iran claims is for energy production, but which is suspected of developing weapons. Sanctions on Iran by the United States, however, go back long before the nuclear program. Sanctions started in 1980, when US Embassy workers were taken hostage for 444 days in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution that toppled the US-backed Shah. These sanctions prohibited almost all trade with Iran, except for activity "intended to benefit the Iranian people", including the export of medical and agricultural equipment to Iran, humanitarian assistance, and "informational" materials such as films and publications. Under the bill signed today, entities doing business with Iran’s central bank (Bank Markazi) will be prohibited from access to the US banking system, thus potentially crippling Iran’s ability to receive revenue from its oil exports.

According to BBC, “The bill specifically targets anyone doing business with Iran's central bank [and is] an attempt to force other countries to choose between buying oil from Iran or being blocked from any dealings with the U.S. economy.” The sanctions apply to foreign governments as well as to private companies.

Speaking anonymously, some U.S. officials believe that Tehran will view the bill signing itself as an act of war. The move could push Iran to take drastic measures, including an attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz, the world's busiest shipping lane for crude oil, with its ample supply of marine mines. 20% of the worlds crude oil passes through the Straight of Hormuz; a blockade of the Straight would send oil prices skyrocketing. Even if Iran chooses not to take this action, fear on world markets of the mere possibility of oil disruptions will likely lead to speculation at the New York Mercantile Exchange, where traders will be placing purchase and sale orders for millions of gallons of future deliveries of crude oil, creating lucrative profits for commodity traders and oil companies.

Iranian officials view the sanctions as an intolerable assault on the country's economy and have vowed to retaliate. Israel’s Ha’aretz News Service quoted Iran's Revolutionary Guard Deputy Chief Hossein Salami as saying, "If they impose sanctions on Iran's oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz." Pentagon officials said they would meet the closing of the Hormuz straight with force.

Meanwhile, in a game of one-upsmanship, Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, speaking in a campaign appearance in Iowa today, renewed his call for a proactive overthrow of the Iranian regime by the US through covert operations. All of the GOP candidates (with the stark and notable exception of Ron Paul) have called for tougher provisions against Iran.

For Iran’s part, it notes that the United States currently occupies 43 different military bases in the immediate vicinity of Iran; Pakistan, Russia, the US, and, it is widely suspected, Israel, all have nuclear weapon capability in the area.

It would appear that US soldiers are leaving Iraq just in time to return to Iran.

The bill also includes a highly controversial (and Unconstitutional) provision permitting terrorism suspects – including American citizens - to be held in detention indefinitely without a trial. While President Obama downplayed this clause by promising that his administration "will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens," he was contradicted by a senior administration official who explained that the President "is not saying that a U.S. citizen can never be held in military custody."




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Progressive-Libertarian Coalition: Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich & Noam Chomsky

Will the American People throw off the false Left-Right Paradigm and the Republican-Democratic Duopoly?

(Let's hope so...)

Year in Review: The Top 10 News Stories of 2011

From this Blogger's perspective, here are the top 10 news stories of 2011. Each was chosen based on their potential on-going long-term effects on humanity. In no particular order, they are:

1) The Arab Spring: Erupting in Tunisia and spreading across the Arab world, the entire year was characterized by protests and political changes in Northern Africa and the Middle East. Regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, as well as on-going protests in a dozen nations (currently (most serious in Syria and Yemen) represent serious winds of change throughout the geo-political sphere. A timeline of protests throughout the Arab world can be found at The Guardian

2) Weather Extremes and Global Warming: Once a matter of debate, the vast majority of the world’s climatologists agree that global warming is happening at an even faster rate than expected, with significant changes in the ocean temperatures and subsequent weather patterns. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there were an all-time record of twelve weather disasters costing more than $1 billion each in 2011 (for a total of 45 billion dollars in damage). The previous record was nine such disasters in 2008. Weather events included a blizzard across much of North America on February 2, record wilfires in the US west, a tornado outbreak that levelled Joplin, Missouri, Hurricane Irene (which uncharacteristically inundated and devastated inland communities in Vermont and Upstate New York), and a foot-and-half snowfall at Halloween in the northeast US. Elsewhere, record high temperatures were recorded in Iraq and Kuwait, an all-time record low volume of Arctic sea was recorded, record floods inundated Australia and Asia, and the worst droughts in three decades affected Africa.

3) Osama bin Laden Killed: A decade after he masterminded the 9/11 attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center, Osama bin Laden was killed in a surgical strike on his hideout in Pakistan. This represented the most visible and significant victory in the global fight against terrorism and the al Qaeda organization.

4) New York State Enacts Marriage Equality: Four days after its scheduled adjournment for the season, the New York State Senate gave its approval to Marriage Equality by a larger-than expected margin of 33-29 when four Republicans broke rank and joined the majority of Democrats, making New York the seventh and largest jurisdiction in the US to permit same-sex marriage. Full story at Tully's Page

5) Occupy Wall Street and Police Brutality: Beginning on September 17 in New York City, the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in many ways inaugurated an American version of the Arab Spring. Spreading to other cities across the nation, thousands of Americans from all walks of life took to the streets to protest persistent unemployment, indebtedness, foreclosures and economic injustice in raw juxtaposition to the trillions of bailouts received by Wall Street financial houses and executives. The movement elicited a brutal response by police forces, and the use of pepper spray against peaceful protesters, young women, and veterans became a national outrage. The movement propelled Time magazine to name “The Protester” as it’s Person of the Year.

6) Federal Reserve Bailouts Revealed: For almost 100 years, the Federal Reserve System, which serves as the nations Central Bank, operated without an audit or significant political oversight. In the aftermath of the bank bailouts commencing in 2008, Congress began looking into the Fed’s activities using taxpayer dollars. In all, it was revealed that over 16 trillion in secret unpaid loans were made to both American and foreign banks. Sen. Bernie Sanders

7) Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown in Japan: On March 11, an 8.9 Magnitude earthquake rocked Japan, the worst earthquake in modern history. Over 16,000 people died from the quake and the tsunami that followed. When the Fukushima Daiichi power plant site in Fukushima was inundated by a 49-foot high tsunami wave, the nuclear reactors could not be cooled, began to overheat, and meltdowns began at three of the reactors. What followed was a release of radioactive cesium, evacuation of the surrounding area, and subsequent government and industry cover-ups of the extent of radiation. Fukushima Radiation

8) John Wheeler Murdered: On New Year’s Eve, after the death of 100,000 fish and 5,000 blackbirds in Arkansas, John P. Wheeler, a decades-long government expert in toxic chemicals, was found murdered in a dump as he was en route to Washington DC. The kills and murder came in the wake of the US Government’s Pine Bluffs Arsenal "disposal” of mustard and nerve gas in the area, as well as active “fracking” by energy companies. The incidences awakened a national concern for the environmental effects of these activities, and was the single most visited and cited webpage on this site: John Wheeler

9) Milton Hershey Rejects HIV Positive Student: In an almost incomprehensible burst of ignorance, prejudice, and chutzpah, the highly-vaunted Milton Hershey School (a private, tuition-free boarding school), issued a statement coinciding with World AIDs Day explaining their refusal to admit a student due to his HIV positive status, in direct violation of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Outrage was swift, and brought additional publicity to continuing ignorance about HIV transmission. Milton Hershey

10) European Debt Crisis: Beginning in Greece, the ability of some Eurozone member nations to repay their government debts created continental – and global – concern. Ireland, once seen as the “Celtic Tiger” for its explosive, high-tech-driven growth found itself enacting austerity measures and slashing government spending; Italy, Portugal, and Spain found themselves in a similar condition. The downgrading of these nations bonds began a record weakening of the Euro against the US Dollar that continued throughout the year. A weakened Euro makes it more difficult for the Eurozone members to purchase American goods, endangering the US recovery.

Christmas Thoughts....

Uzzah was a really good guy, but God blasted him. At least that’s how the story goes in the sixth chapter of 2 Samuel.

According to the story, the Israelites were transporting the Ark of the Covenant, the divinely-ordained chest that contained the tablets of the 10 Commandments (a replica of which was the central feature in the original Indiana Jones movie). By command, no mere human was allowed to touch the Ark. But in the sectarian wars that characterized (and continue to characterize) the Middle East, the Ark was captured by The Philistines, and then recaptured by David and the Israelites. Uzzah and his brother had the Ark placed on a cart driven by oxen to transport it back home.

This past summer I took the kids apple-picking at a large local orchard. We rode in the back of a cart pulled by horses out to the fruit trees. It was not smooth. Each hole and bump and uneven patch of ground was magnified by the cart as we bounced around up top. I have no doubt that an oxen-drawn cart through the Palestinian wilderness saw its share of bumps. And in fact, one such bump so jolted the cart that Uzzah, walking and watching behind, reached out his hand to steady the Ark from falling or being damaged.

And instantly, we are told, God struck him dead.

The books of the Torah give us ample examples of the mind of ancient peoples concerning the chasm-like division between God and Humankind, between Clean and Unclean, between Holy and Profane. The Levitical purity laws carefully divide much of life: Sheep, Deer, Locusts, and Fish are clean; rabbits, dogs, oysters and ostriches are not. All dead animals and all diseased people, and everything they touch, are unclean. Women are unclean during their period and after childbirth; men and everything they touch is unclean for any day in which they emit semen.

The extension of the these purity laws is two-fold:

First, anytime something “unclean” touched someone or something “clean,” that which was clean became defiled and unclean.

Second, God was so pure that when the impure came into contact with His purity – they were destroyed (as in Uzzah’s case).

It is for these reasons that, unlike many Christians, I see Christmas – not Easter – as the theological touchstone of faith.

At the Incarnation, as the Nicene Creed states, “He [Jesus] was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary…”

Uzzah touched the Holiness of God and was killed for it; Mary came into direct contact with the Spirit of God, and henceforth, “all generations will call me Blessed!”

The Gospels tell the story of Jesus’ earthly ministry, in which he touched leprous body parts, prostitutes, half-breed Samaritans, women with “issues of blood,” dead children, the epileptic, the deranged, and unclean men and women of all varieties.

At no point does the touch of God strike any of these people down.

At no point does Jesus send anyone away as “unclean,” nor does he fear becoming unclean by their presence or touch.

If anything, the unclean are made clean. The fear that those who are “different” will infect and affect the “pure” is reversed: now, the different and the ‘unclean’ are brought into wholeness and community with the rest of society.

For me, the message of Christmas is not found in the familiar, heart-warming oohs and aahhs of a poor little newborn baby… but in the world-shaking change in attitude towards divisions in society, especially attitudes towards those who are ‘different.’

Many who claim to follow Christ – both politicians and harsh religious leaders – continue to operate in a world of clean vs. unclean, and under the fear that what is ‘different’ will infect everyone else. From telling the poor to “take a bath and get a job,” to dismissing immigrants as illegal law-breakers, to denying the poor who are seeking society’s crumbs to have food on the table and oil in their heater, to the irrational fear that some people’s love will ‘destroy traditional marriage and the foundations of society,’ to the fear-based refusal to permit an HIV-positive student to attend school, to blaming those who have lost their homes for their own foolishness, to refusing an interracial couple the right to marry….there is a blindness to the true Christmas message.

The Old Testament prophets that ‘set the stage’ for this theological change were strident in their condemnation of a divided society:

Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.' – Zechariah 7:10

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?"
- Isaiah 58:6-7

Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds! At morning's light they carry it out because it is in their power to do it. They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them. They defraud a man of his home, a fellowman of his inheritance. – Micah 2:1-2

Christmas and the Gospels show us that the artificial division between ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ is to come to an end: that holiness and godliness extends to all of humanity. And so, on this Christmas, my hope and prayer is that our tendency to see ‘an enemy, ‘ or ‘a danger,’ or ‘an evil’ in others based on any of the innumerable differences we have, will be swallowed by an intentional effort to recognize our common humanity instead.

Merry Christmas! I'm now going to enjoy some good, unclean shrimp...


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Newt Gingrich: wrong on Palestine, Pandering for Fundamentalist votes

Growing up in a political family on the south shore of Long Island, I became aware of New York’s ethnic voting patterns at a very early age. Like all of the New York City metro area, Long Island was carved into small “election districts,” (the equivalent of a city “ward”) in order to be able to handle the large number of voters on election day. And like many New York neighborhoods, these districts had distinct ethnic ‘flavors.’

Our district was “the Fifteenth,” a neighborhood of working class, blue-collar Germans, Irish, and more recent Italians. I could stand on our street corner and see six houses where the fathers volunteered in the local fire department. Most of the houses were small, many of them one-story “bungalows.” And the “Fifteenth” was famous for bringing in the largest Republican margin of any district in town – often over 80%.

We were balanced by the “Seventeenth,” a district of relatively new split ranches and colonials, where Jewish professional families dominated. As a rule, the 17th could be counted on to turn out a Democratic margin as large as the Fifteenth’s Republican margin. In fact, one could easily determine the predominant ethnic makeup of Long Island neighborhoods simply by looking at election returns. Jewish and black districts consistently returned lopsided Democratic margins; older blue-collar, german-irish 'clamdigger' neighborhoods were staunch Republican.

But in the last few decades, an interesting phenomenon has occurred: as the Republican Party has been captured by the fringe Religious-Right, it has seen an opportunity to mobilize and capture parts of the “Jewish” vote, especially among the more conservative Orthodox Jewish communities.

One of the theological hallmarks of fundamentalist, “Literal-Bible” Protestantism is the belief that the Second Coming of Christ will be heralded by the re-establishment of the State of Israel, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, and Christ’s last-ditch effort to convince Jews to accept him. This belief is precisely what launched the series of end-time Prophecy books and campaigns launched by Hal Lindsay, who profited nicely from his book (and subsequent movie), “The Late Great Planet Earth” in 1970. Initially popular in Pentecostal circles, the idea that “true” Bible-believing Christians had to provide unwavering support of Israel became a common premise throughout conservative Christianity. As this demographic votes heavily in Republican primary elections and caucuses, the opportunity for an alliance between Fundamentalist Protestantism and Orthodox Jews - based on support for Israel and social conservatism - became more evident.

In spite of the fact that New York City is 5:1 Democratic, Borough Park Brooklyn – a largely Hassidic Jewish community – votes Republican. Kiryas Joel, NY - the only community in America where Yiddish is the primary language – has often supported Republicans because of an alliance with the GOP over local school control. This pattern has emerged all over New York’s Hassidic communities, prompting national GOP conservative operatives like Eric Cantor to make personal visits to these communities encouraging their support for GOP candidates.

The Christian Right's embrace of unquestioned support for Israel (on theological grounds) and hatred of Muslim peoples (on racist grounds) is now complete. And in Iowa, the first caucus of the Presidential marathon, the Christian right is powerful: In 1988, goofy Televangelist Pat Robertson came in second place, defeating George H W Bush, and in 2008, Evangelical darling Mike Huckabee took first place.

So it is no accident, and should come as no surprise, that GOP Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich recently dismissed Palestinians as “an invented people.”

Let me say before going any further, that I am a supporter of Israel. Having been raised in a heavily Jewish community, and hearing my friends and classmates relate the stories of the holocaust they learned from their own grandparents and parents – I find it hard not to share in the human necessity that is the land of Israel. Having said that, that does not imply blind support of its government. One can be a patriotic American without blindly supporting everything America does; similarly, one can be a supporter of Israel without blindly supporting everything her government does.

Unless, of course, you’re a Theocrat who believes that God is directing the Israeli Government's actions. Or a Pandering Politician seeking to establish as extreme a position as possible in order to win the fundamentalist voting block.

And so, in an interview with The Jewish Channel, Gingrich said:

"Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places."

For someone claiming to be the highest-paid “Historian” in history while working for Freddie Mac, Newt has a very poor grasp of history. His statements above are simply nonsense, for the following reasons:

1) One doesn’t need to have a legal ‘country’ with boundaries in order to be a ‘nation’ or a ‘people.’ The Kurds are scattered throughout Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, and never had a country of their own; they are still a recognized ‘people.’ The Lakota have not had a land of their own since they were contained on reservations in the Great Plains in the 1880s, but they are still a recognizable people. And the Romani (“Gypsies”) never had a land of their own, but they are certainly a recognized people group.

2) Calling Palestinians “Arabs” is like calling all white caucasians “Europeans.” Yes, in a very broad human-family sense, we may say that Italians, Swedes, and Bosnians are “Europeans,” but their sense of nationhood are vastly different. Palestinians may share Arab genetics, but if Gingrich wishes to be a world leader, he better understand that Egyptians, Syrians, Saudis, Lebanese, and yes, Palestinians, all see themselves primarily as members of their specific ethnic, national group...not of some pan-continental “Arab” nation. The use of the term "Palestinians" to refer to the areas people is mentioned in Egyptian texts in 5 BC, in 250 Biblical references, among ancient Greeks, and in writings from the Byzantine empire. It is not 'an invention.'

3) Suggesting that Palestinians should “go elsewhere” is a cruel and brutal comment that borders on ethnic cleansing (and reminiscent of comments uttered in the 1800s about Native American nations). With unemployment exceeding 30%, 50% of Palestinians living in the West Bank live below the poverty level. The hardships resulting from living under refugee-lifestyles, military checkpoints, blockades on Gaza and “The Wall” on the West Point have exacerbated tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and increased the wealth disparity between the peoples.

At the 2007 Annapolis Conference, the Fatah government of the Palestinian West Bank, the Israelis and the Americans agreed on a two-state solution (Israel and Palestine) to the conflict. More than two-thirds of the nations in the world – including most in the western hemisphere – have already acknowledged Palestine as an existing independent state with uncertain borders (not a unique situation, since the borders between India and China, and between Saudi Arabia and Oman, remain undefined).

It is hard to believe that Gingrich’s comments are based on ignorance. If the Israelis have accepted the eventual reality of a Palestinian State, why can't Newt?

Because his disdainful and dismissive comments about Palestine have everything to do with pandering for knee-jerk Theocratic votes in the Iowa caucus, at the expense of a true Stateman's role: that of peace-making and supporting the yearnings of humanity.


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