If Biden doesn’t immediately cut military aid to Israel as a result, he’ll pay a price with voters.
intercst
1 Like
The USian population is 2% Jewish, and 0.8% Muslim. Broadly, supporting Jews will pay better than supporting Muslims. Some have suggested that, given the concentrated Muslim population in metro Detroit, upset Muslims may tip the state the other way in November, by not voting at all. The Muslim community launched a campaign to vote red, but “uncommitted” in the primary. “Uncommitted” drew 13.2% of the vote.
Steve
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It’s not just the Muslim community. A lot of young people don’t want the US funding genocide in Gaza either. The US money Israel is spending building illegal settler housing on the West Bank should be going to house the homeless in this country.
If we’re now suddenly worried about the national debt, cutting back on the funding of genocidal military campaigns would seem to be low hanging fruit.
interest
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So when you are talking genocidal you are talking about Hamas attacking Israel for the express purpose of killing all Israeli’s?
Andy
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I don’t have a problem with the US paying for the Israeli “Iron Dome” system that’s knocking down virtually all of the Hamas missiles. Just think that the US needs to stop funding the mass baby killing in Gaza.
intercst
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I just have a problem with the Palestinians killing people, taking hostages, then trying to blame other people for trying to get them back. If they gave back the hostages I would have no problem agreeing with you.
Andy
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It’s a sad world (country?) where votes matter more than principles.
The Captain
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The conservatives and independents see this differently. Many progressives and liberals see this differently and support Israel.
Biden is going to end up with votes from all quarters. If he cuts and runs from Israel he won’t have support.
Israel is fighting for freedom of religion.
I woke up to how sad this Ramadan is. I think what about the years of Yemen, Syria, Somalia and Sudan? They do not count? There needs to be free elections and legal rights in those nations. Those nations do count in my book.
Give those nations equal time and importance. Face there is a governing problem. Or the violence never ends.
Is it America’s job to tell nations how they should govern themselves? If it is then its Islam’s job to make America adopt Sharia law.
As a non-American I find America’s arrogance irritating.
The Captain
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It is a reality that most people are not trustworthy. The British and then the Americans found a way to govern and in doing so manage conflict within their own borders.
That failure for a lot of other countries is crap. Selfish childish crap. Where people die. Where we are called to give our blood.
Talk about irritating. Talk about dictatorial leadership that is overgrown putzes.
If Israel was all Muslim this would just fall in with Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and Sudan as a big “that is our business do not get involved”. We are going to celebrate regardless. There needs to be radical change in the ME or things will remain extremely violent. That is not Israel’s fault at all.
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One should discount a portion of those results. Your state frequency votes uncommitted in the Dem primary.
Your state also voted 11% uncommitted to re-elect Obama. Considering the demographics and his popularity, I consider that more shocking than Biden’s 13+%.
You could even go back farther to when Hillary ran and uncommitted received an unprecedented 40% - largely in protest to Obama not being on the ballot.
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One thing I noticed on this go around, there was no “secret ballot” in the primary. In Michigan, people don’t register by party, and you can vote in whichever primary you want to. In past years, you verbally asked for one party’s ballot, or the other. Then, for a bit, they had both parties on one ballot, and everyone received the same ballot, so it really was secret. On this go around, in filling out the “application to vote” form, with name and address, I had to check a box for which party’s ballot I wanted. No more “secret ballot” in Michigan? Interesting.
Wonder if they will repeat that for the primary for everything else in August?
Steve
1 Like
We’ve discussed this before. Your vote is secret. What isn’t secret is what party primary you want to vote in. Michigan voters do not register with a political party, but in many states they do.
DB2
I think you’re missing a third thing. Interests. In addition to domestic politics, or moral principles, the U.S. has interests both in the region and in Israel having an extraordinarily strong military (proportional to its size).
We’re not cutting off military aid to Israel in part because we don’t want Iran or Syria to be free of the threat of a strong Israeli military. We’re not conditioning aid to Israel on a permanent cease-fire because we know they won’t implement a permanent cease-fire just because we demand it…and again, we don’t want to have to pay the cost that backing up that condition would entail.
We can lament that countries (like the U.S.) often put their interests above their principles, but I think Biden’s Israeli policy is being driven more by those geopolitical interests than by domestic politics. He’s not ignoring the latter, but the former is the bigger factor.
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Yes, many states require declaration of party to register, which establishes a prima facie case if someone decided that all members of a particular party were “enemies of the state”.
If how a person voted in the primary is known, that establishes a prima facie case for how they voted in the general election.
When Michigan had both parties on the same ballot, in the primary, the ballot was truly secret, short of someone trying to lift finger prints off the ballot forms.
What is the reasoning behind a “secret ballot”, other than to protect the voter from retribution?
Steve
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Politics is the art of governing. Government is driven by interest and principles.
Nothing is missing, interest can trump principles in the ballot box.
By a quirk of language some interests are called politics because they deal with political orientation
The Captain
Cutting to the chase
People voting for tax cuts are wasting our time. We have wasted 40 years with slow economic growth.
The average growth between 17, 18, and 19 was 2.5%. Sickeningly bad.
It’s annoying to a lot of Americans as well. America’s exporting of democracy hasn’t always panned out. Some would argue that it’s the primary cause of many current global crises. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem…
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The world is not a perfect place. America is second rate. Western Europe in some regards is better.
At the end of the day other countries will blame us and one little man at the top of each country will kill the innocent. Someone else must blamed.
The indoctrinations are easy to fabricate.
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Some would argue it is what saved the world.
Andy
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