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United States

Specialest Relationship

Mitt Romney won the Iowa caucuses, but all the presidential candidates are vying to show their love for Israel. How far will they go?

By Steve Brodner|January 4, 2012 7:00 AM|15comments
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Ron Paul

Continue reading: Newt Gingrich, kneydel

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Steve Brodner is an illustrator, journalist, and filmmaker living in New York. He blogs at Brodnersbicycle.com.
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  • M. Burgh

    Brilliant and true.

  • Jules
  • Therry Neilsen-Steinhardt

    Perceptive and trenchant, jsut what we would expect from Brodner!

  • Jules
  • AB1000

    Everytime I hear a candidate or politician say, “I love Israel” or “I support Israel,” my hackles instantly rise. What part of Israel do you love? The part that gives equal (or almost equal) rights to gay citizens, including the right to serve openly in the military (the most kick@%% military on the planet!), and/or the part where ultra-Orthodox spit on little girls because they are attending school? Or just that generic “I love and/or support Israel (cause I think that’s what ‘The Jewish Vote (TM) wants to hear)”

  • Jules

    Word, it’s beyond absurd.

  • http://www.marjorieingall.com marjorie

    This is brilliant. (And I wonder if Newt’s kneydl-head would go well with Karl Rove’s ham loaf head? Wait, that’s disgusting.)

  • David B.

    Jules,
    the troll. That is an excellent troll.
    I dig how you trawl US far left paranoia websites for “secret” news nobody keeps secret . “thousands” of US troops in Israel. I mean Thousands! every where.

  • David B.

    Jules,
    I just found a GI right here in Tel Aviv in my fucking ice cream cone.

  • Shalom Freedman

    Brodner’s cartoon is very good, and even funny. But in the Obama cartoon he makes one error. Tim Geithner is not and never was Jewish.

  • http://bernard.yablin Bernard Yablin

    Very appropriate and worth repeating as the field continues to narrow.—-Thanks

  • Rocky

    With the exception of the swing state of Florida, and possibly Ohio, Jewish voters just don’t matter that much in the upcoming presidential election. They actually make up a much smaller percentage of the electorate than they did in the 1930′s. So what makes almost all candidates fall all over themselves these days as they pledge their support for Israel, considering that in the 1930′s, Jewish refugees had a hard time even gaining admission to the US?

    Campaign contributions! Jews contribute heavily to candidates of both parties, with the notable exception of Ron Paul, who wants to cut off all foreign aid to the Middle East, including Israel.

    The reality is that these days a disproportionate percentage of the 1% ers are Jewish by birth if not by religious observance. As much as 1/3 of the Forbes 400 list was classified as Jewish by the JTA in 2009 but I think they went overboard by using the Nazi definition of who is a Jew. In 2010, a Jewish Daily Forward article noted that 30 of the top 100 on the list that year were Jewish.

    Ironically, Ron Paul seems to be the only candidate who takes the US deficit and growing national debt seriously. The others appear to take a Scarlett O’Hara approach, promising to think about them tomorrow. In the long run, that kind of approach will certainly not be good for the Jews and not for Israel.

    For all the millions Jewish leaders have spent on Holocaust museums and memorials, they don’t seemed to have learned much from the mistakes Germany made in the early part of the 20th century. It financed WWI and the early Weimar years largely with borrowed money rather than taxes and when its credit ran out, the German central bank resorted to printing money (which the Fed now calls quantitative easing). In 1923, Germany financed about 99% of its government budget by printing money and only 1% through taxes, according to Otmar Issing, a former economist with the European Central Bank.

  • Rocky

    (conclusion of prior posting)

    The collapse of the German mark in 1923 wiped out most Germans financially and in their misery they blamed the Weimar Republic for all that had happened. “Such times were heaven-sent for Adolph Hitler”. (from William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”.

  • D

    Brodner gets it!

  • martin

    Rocky, I saw your plan B comments in one of the other stories. Actually some people expect widespread dissent and lockups / imprisonments due to the vague wording in the National Defense Act of 2012, but who knows! Do some searching, and you will find it.

    I left the US years ago, so I don’t really care who wins the election. I DO agree with you on the US Debt -vs- Weimar debt, it’s a serious issue. But the Dollar is the main currency of the world, of all trading. The US blows up any country that ties to switch to anything else. If I’m not mistaken, the peg during the Weimar days was gold.

    SO.. if the dollar is devalued to next-to-zero, it would cause a devaluation in every currency around the world. That’s probably something most countries want to avoid, and will create any headline (or sell their currency to buy dollars) to keep their currency at a “fair” value with the dollar. At least that’s whats been going on in Europe for the last 2-3 years.

    There’s actually some US laws (proponent Senator Levin) they have passed in the past couple of years to gain more control over world banks and any foreign investor who holds US assets (FACTA). Very interesting stuff. But I don’t think the Weimar had anywhere close the amount of control the US has over world finance.

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Specialest Relationship

Mitt Romney won the Iowa caucuses, but all the presidential candidates are vying to show their love for Israel. How far will they go?