Tom Friedman -- the New York Times' accountability-free billionaire opinion columnist who eagerly used his powerful media platform to help push the Unites States into the catastrophic war with Iraq that Dick Cheney wanted -- thinks accountability-free billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson is being reckless and dangerous as he eagerly uses his powerful financial and media resources to push the United States into a catastrophic war with Iran that the GOP and Bibi Netanyahu want.
When money in politics gets this big, when it can make elected officials bow and scrape in two different countries at the same time, it is troubling. I’m sure Adelson cares deeply about Israel, but he lacks any sense of limits in how he exercises his extraordinary financial power — power he is using to simultaneously push Israel and America toward eliminating any two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians, toward defunding the Palestinian Authority and toward a confrontation with Iran, not a diplomatic solution. People need to know this.
First, exactly what "people" need to know this? Liberals? Fuck you, we know already and have already spent years futilely trying to sounding the alarm. Conservatives? The ones who think Shelly Adelson's ass tastes like fine Belgian chocolate? Yeah, they know already. The 50% of the electorate who could not be persuaded to take an interest in what's happening to their country or why of you offered them free blowjobs and Cheese Doodles with every civics lesson? Are you shitting me? These heroes either straight up Do Not Care, or have been so well conditioned by our Beltway Media to dismiss every Republican crime against democracy with Majyk Both Sider Conjure Words that they might as well not care.
And second, I notice that David Brooks -- the New York Times' accountability-free millionaire who likewise eagerly used his powerful media platform to help push the Unites States into George Bush's Iraqi Debacle and whose son works for Bibi Netanyahu -- has been too busy lecturing the poors on the terrible vice of nonjudgementalism to send his son's boss more than one mash note since January.
So why bring him up?
To underscore the cosmic hilarity to be found in the fact that, under our current system, rich, incompetent, unaccountable, unelected clowns like these exercise more real influence over the fates of hundreds of millions of people that you and I and the entire Liberal electorate will have in a dozen lifetimes.
And finally, in the Year of Our Lord 2015, the fact that Tom "Suck On This" Friedman can write something like this and not be blown to atoms by a bolt of lightening (emphasis added) --
The most important bonds between Israel and America always emerged from the bottom up — a mutual respect between two democracy-loving peoples. Money can’t buy those bonds, but it can threaten them by going to excess — by taking Israel’s true good will in America and using it to help one party “stick it” to the president, one big donor drive his extreme agenda, one party appear more pro-Israel than the other for electoral reasons or one Israeli politician win re-election. People who go “all the way” like this will one day go over a cliff. They will regret it. So will the rest of us.
-- can only mean that God Herself is laughing so hard it screwed up her aim.
I can just imagine the Tote Baggers peeing in their Depends in agreement.
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