These individuals need to be commended, and the resolution should be relished for its symbolic value. This credit is due not only for the support of a stalwart if stubborn ally such as Israel's security, but for these principled individuals who have found a more realistic tack: almost completely minimize their focus social-conservatism (absolutely essential if they want to swing I's and Jacksonian Democrats into their corner), and retaining their fiscal-conservative stance (can't get much more contemporaneously popular than that in this climate) while eschewing the Pat Buchanan-esque isolationists and not putting too much emphasis on contentious neoconservative tenets (like democracy-building) while in tandem embracing American Exceptionalism.

Talk about an endearing and politically-beneficial platform. They clearly realize that while social issues such as abortion are off-limits (and off-putting to many), the advocacy of standard conservative principles like limited government/federalism/a reduction in deficit spending (big winners across the politically spectrum ... well, a preponderance of the PS) and maybe even wrangle in some Jewish voters--who are deeply concerned with the state of US-Israeli relations over to the darkside--and allay the concerns of conservative gentiles who are even more supportive of Israel than the majority of U.S. Jews themselves.

Good show. Instead of continuing to make yourself look like a militia movement, you've erected a platform that is palatable to a very large swatch of the American constituency.

Well firstly, sorry for the incomplete sentences, but my point is clear. To close, I just wanted to be clear that while I do not advocate a literal attack on hardened Iranian nuclear installations, I truly believe that the only thing that the Iranians are receptive to is power, respect, and even fear of their regimes annihilation. This is no clarion call for a massive preemptive strike, yet.

As the charades have unfolded in the 7-party talks (5+1 and Iran), it has become abundantly clear that the Iranians are convinced that time is on its side and that nobody has the cajones to stop them. Only if the mullahs are shaking in their boots at the prospect of an earth-shattering but precise US and/or Israeli air strike will they even ponder the thought of abandoning their weapons.

I know, I know. The notion that "the military option never left the table" is still being parroted, but it is thus far shown to be such a hollow promise that the regime in Tehran hasn't even changed its strategy. We've all seen it: Refuse talks while concomitantly enriching uranium to 20% and beyond UNTIL the fourth round of sanctions enter into force (and especially the recent unilateral EU sanctions) and then give the IAEA a call to say, "Hey Amano, it's me again. I know we haven't stopped our march to weaponization and don't intend to, but we're more than willing to consider appropriating a small portion of our stockpile to a 3rd party. Oh yeah, we reserve the right to withdrawal from the agreement at any time. Cool with you?"

I mean it's just plain bananas what the world has put up with from these millenarian, human rights-abusing, belligerent oligarchs? So I pose this question:

* Can anyone, with a straight face, argue that the Iranians would have had the temerity to thumb their nose at the West to the degree that they have, while in tandem doing literally whatever the hell it wants (abuse citizens, weaponize uranium, whatever), had the "international community" actually shown that it collectively, sincerely, and categorically reject the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran? I think my answer is quite clear.

This just confirms that these people are the lunatic core - not fringe - of the militaristic, jingoistic right wingers who think the only solution to the world's problems is to throw our military weight around.

A war with Iran, whether begun by direct US action or by our Israeli proxy, would be the beginning of the end of any hopes for peace in the world. Anyone who seriously believes the Iranian dissidents, or 'greens', would not support their government in the face of such an attack is delusional. Iraq was easy compared to what Iran would be - Iran has three times the population of Iraq, they have a hard core revolutionary guard cadre that would love to have a chance to kill Americans or Israelis, and they have the ability to shot down Hormuz and cut off 20% of the world oil supply. They also have the ability to initiate actions by anti-US agencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Gaza.

Madness!

The Iranians would never use their nukes, but having them would confer a lot of power and influence. Mainly, once Iran has WMD, it can do whatever it wants inside its own borders and there will be nothing any nation can do about it. Israel and, to a lesser degree, us, really dont want to deal with a nuclear Iran, not because it would nuke us, but because we would have drastically less leverage over it. Im not going to comment on the morality of this, other than to say the only reason I dont want a nuclear Iran is that the regime could get a lot more oppressive, however, MAD in the MidEast might finally force the people in the region to act like adults, the way it caused a massive increase in the maturity and professionalism of great powers who acquired WMD in the Cold War. Any argument that the Iranians might actually use nukes irrationally or give nukes to terrorists is utter BS, there is effectively zero chance of that.

Let's make it abundantly clear that nobody -- and I mean nobody, not even the most ardent neoconservative or Religious Zionist -- is proposing a state-building mission in Iran.

If Obama gets that 3AM call from Bibi that the Iranians have not only weaponized warheads but placed them on alert as well, we're not talking about an open-season, Operation Iraqi Freedom-type mission. Were talkin' BOMBS AWAY.

The operational objectives will be clear:
* Marathon-style air strikes (we're not invading with ground troops; only if things get really bad, and whose saying they won't, bc I'm not) BLU and (with US help) GBU bunker-busting bombs to eviscerate Iranian sites in Qom, Natanz, Bushehr, its hard-water reactor in Arak, and a list of twenty or so clandestine targets that are not public knowledge but widely accepted to exist.

What would take the IAF two full months of continuous bombing and air-refueling over dangerous airspace (attested in a panel at a D.C. think tank by scholar Ariel Cohen) would take the United States an exponentially shorter period of time (obviously, but I'm not gonna pretend like I can quantify the time a theoretical air attack would take, like a senior fellow might) and have a much higher degree and probability of success through freer airspace access and absolute military dominance in general.

Due to the regime's and the IRGC's authoritarian, centralized, top-down structure, a few craters will not halt the functioning of Iran's 70 million citizens. If democracy prevails, the more the merrier. But the point is, this wouldn't be your typical neocon excursion based on faulty evidence in an ill-fated attempt to prop up a democracy. Iran has an innovative and intelligent young population and enough "quietists" to repair the country and stabilize the region.

If ever a maxim had applicability, its now, and it's one of my favorites: "Shouldn't have been talkin' shit!"

Another poster was right: every political party in the United States (all two of them) are overwhelmingly nationalist, which isn't to say they are xenophobic, which some of the tea partiers are and is what I think you meant.

As for the Jewish references, your just not making any sense whatsoever pal. I mean literally, none. There was a quota on Jewish immigration in the early twentieth century and unfortunately, through the 30s and 40s, leaving them as figurative and literal lambs for the slaughter by an ambivalent US government. Also, America, with its strong tradition of Church and State separation, is founded on Judeo-Christian values and is easily the most Christian nation in the developed world. (Full disclosure: I'm a Jew)

Moreover, the "Tea Party" didn't exist until the 9/12 march either last year or the year before (boy, has this group of crazies hit their stride quickly!), and therefore cannot logically have any impact on Jews or anyone for that matter, let alone the treatment of Jews over the course of European history.

Simply but, your post is rambling non-sense, but I appreciate your concern for the welfare of the Jewish people.

best known for his use of evolutionary psychology to inform his study of Judaism as being a "group evolutionary strategy." MacDonald's most controversial claim is that a suite of traits that he attributes to Jews, including higher-than-average verbal intelligence and ethnocentricism, have eugenically evolved to enhance the ability of Jews to conspire to out-compete non-Jews for resources while undermining the power and self-confidence of the white majorities in Europe and America whom he insists Jews seek to disposess.[1][2][3]

He believes that blacks and Latinos are by and large genetically intellectually inferior to whites and Asians and points to the phenomenon of popular scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, Leon Kamin, Steven Rose, and Jared Diamond.

Academic criticism
MacDonald has been accused in one article of employing scapegoating techniques that resemble classical Nazism.[12] In a letter to Slate magazine, Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker maintained that MacDonald's theses were unable to pass the threshold of attention-worthiness or peer-approval, and contained a "consistently invidious portrayal of Jews, couched in value-laden, disparaging language." Although Pinker also acknowledges that "I have not plowed through MacDonald's trilogy and therefore run the complementary risks of being unfair to his arguments, and of not refuting them resoundingly enough to distance them from my own views on evolutionary psychology."[13]
Reviewing MacDonald’s A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy in The Jewish Quarterly Review, Sander Gilman, professor of the Liberal Arts and Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago describes MacDonald's argument about a Jewish group evolutionary strategy as a "bizarre" one which "recasts all of the hoary old myths about Jewish psychological difference and its presumed link to Jewish superior intelligence in contemporary sociobiological garb."[14]
Reviewing MacDonald's A People That Shall Dwell Alone in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Eugen Schoenfeld, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Georgia State University, said the book contained "sloppy scholarship" and says that MacDonald's comparison of Jewish collectivism during the biblical period with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English individualism "indicates a total ignorance of the impact of industrialization on Western societies."[15]

More than that: The Tea Party Movement did nothing here at all. A group of congresscritters calling themselves the Tea Party Caucus did. (Note that the rep that is arguably the most Tea Party in the House did not participate.) Don't be silly enough to think that a handful of House Representatives fully embody the originating rank-and-file membership ideals of the Tea Party Movement (which is very specifically about promoting smaller government and lower taxes). Political representatives and leaders demonstrating their deep out-of-touchness with their purported constituency is nothing new in this country...

I suspect that many true Tea Party Movement advocates (not the nuts who're just riding on Tea Party popularity) might actually be dismayed at this resolution, as its declarations of support for Israel hint at the potential of more US overseas military action, and thus more big government spending, which cuts against the core Tea Party Movement ideals.

IAC, read the HR1553 resolution for yourself -- it's only six pages long, and available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_documents/100726_HRes1553.pdf -- and decide for yourself what it actually says (rather than what is being spread about it). And tell the difference between who wrote it and who didn't.

Again, thanks.

Absolutely right.

These are politicians hijacking a populist movement to get attention, and perhaps remain elected come November, by claiming to 'represent' positions that no one in the actual tea party movement has ever endorsed.

Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are also just opportunists pretending to represent (or trying to inject themselves in) the current populist movement. The problem is that there is no one with enough stature to oust them, or to declare them charlatans. At the Tea Party conference in las vegas earlier this year, there emerged a lot of problematic stuff where brand-name politicians and pundits were trying to inject idiotic ideas like Obama-Birtherism, Religious-Right politics, Militant Nationalism, fear of FEMA concentration camps, and the like into the Tea Party themes... and the few actual grassroots organizers were largely aghast. People have taken the "tea party" meme, and used it as a platform for their own right-wing BS. Most people I've met who were involved with the Tea Parties at the outset shared only a very few common goals:

- restore some sort of fiscal sanity,
- oust our current crop of congressional idiots who got us into this mess: both GOP and Dem
- get government out of the business of running the auto industry, insurance companies, mortgages, and healthcare.

Some people in the tea party were also Anti War; others not so much. Both agreed we spend too much on unneeded military programs, and need to reform the military and make sure when we do fight wars, they dont become political weapons the parties use against each other. I suppose you could call the common ground, "Sane National Defense".

What I didnt hear from people was cultural conservatism, or rabid international interventionism. These people in congress are pandering to the christian right wing, who think supporting Israel is a top priority. Most in the tea party probably dont care, or if they do, it is not a priority.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/missouri-tea-partiers-rip-michele-bachmann-for-backing-roy-blunt.php?ref=fpa

Missouri Tea Partiers Rip Michele Bachmann for Endorsing Roy Blunt

"""The Tea Party is not the Republicans to claim. This is the citizen's movement and we will not stand for any politicians to try to use us for their own political gain," wrote MID MO 9/12 Patriots in a statement ""

www.liberty3030.org