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The DemAIPAClican Party

Posted by Thomas Nephew on May 15th, 2009

There’s obviously a lot else going on, but I’ll post this because it hardly requires further comment.  From Al Kamen’s “In the Loop” column in the Washington Post this morning:

…House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) sent out a “Dear Colleague” e-mail Tuesday asking for signatures “to the attached letter to President Obama regarding the Middle East peace process.”

The letter says the usual stuff, emphasizing that Washington “must be both a trusted mediator and a devoted friend to Israel” and noting: “Israel will be taking the greatest risks in any peace agreement.”

Curiously, when we opened the attachment, we noticed it was named “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”

Kamen’s title: “Now, that’s lobbying.”

You know, it’d be cheaper if we just set up a web site called, say, itsourcongress.com on an AIPAC server and populated it with 535 little avatars called “HoyerMD5,” “CantorVA7,” and so forth.  There’d be e-mail blasts, a “congressional record” blog, people could vote for their favorite avatar, the works.

=====
UPDATE, 5/15: Here’s the letter (posted over at itsourcongress.com); here’s what MJ Rosenberg and Yglesias have to say about it. Rosenberg: “not one word in the letter that calls on Israel to do anything, not one word about the settlements, the blockade of Gaza, the checkpoints that make it impossible for Palestinians to travel from one village to the next.”

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5 Responses to “The DemAIPAClican Party”

  1. Nell Says:
    May 15th, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    Snarking to keep from crying…

  2. ExposeTheIsraelLobby Says:
    May 15th, 2009 at 9:54 pm

    Journalist Philip Weiss on the Neoconservative agenda:

    “In terms of their politics, they were almost all Democrats and then as soon as the Democratic party suggested that it wasn’t going to have a strong military, Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, the grandfathers of this movement, they went Republican. Why? Because they said, back in the 70’s, a strong American military is needed to protect Israel.”

    Download an mp3 of Phil saying the above here (9:45 minutes in)
    Antiwar.com/Radio - 07/12/2008

    Check out Phil’s articles on Neocons, AIPAC and Zionism
    Ferment Over the Israel Lobby - The Nation
    Shiksa countries are for practice
    Blogging about Israel and Jewish identity

    philipweiss.org - blogging daily all things Neocon, Israel Lobby, Zionism

  3. Nell Says:
    May 18th, 2009 at 4:56 pm

    OT: Thomas, thought you might want a heads-up about this –

    National Day of Action for Troy Davis
    Tuesday, May 19

  4. Nell Says:
    May 18th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    Just went to the Al Kamen link — hilarious title and related story about Liz Cheney…

  5. Thomas Nephew Says:
    May 18th, 2009 at 7:19 pm

    Thanks, Nell. There’s also a May 28 protest on the date the ACLU/FOIA torture photos were to be released.

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