By Martin Sherman, JPOST

It is difficult to conceive of anything more imbecilic than the debate raging over whether Mahmoud Abbas’s recent declarations are sincere.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties [and] nations. It is the rule.

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844- 1900)

These excerpts convey much of the dysfunctional and directionless condition into which Israel’s political system has descended. This was vividly underscored by the maelstrom of mindless chatter from a gamut of politicians and pundits across the spectrum of political opinion in Israel, which last Friday’s Channel 2 interview with the nominal head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Mazen), unleashed.
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By BENNY AVNI, Special to the Sun

“We hope that there will be a positive way of looking at this effort by the US administration,” the Palestinian Arab observer at the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told me, expressing a wish that America will favor a new Arab proposal for a General Assembly resolution extending recognition to a Palestinian Arab state.

He may be disappointed. Washington is widely expected to maintain its opposition to the move and to vote against the proposed resolution that the Arab group at the U.N. circulated today among the 193 Assembly members. Nevertheless, the Assembly is likely to adopt the proposal at the end of this month.
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[I think the 6.2 million figure is in error. Mark Levin says its about 2 million. I got the 6.2 figure from Here.]

Firelight made this comment

Romney lost because he simply couldn’t turn out the vote. McCain/Palin turned out 6.2 Million more voters than Romney/Ryan did and that is all it would have taken to beat Obama this time around if you look at the numbers. Perhaps Romney should put some thought into what is was that McCain had that helped produce an extra 6.2 million votes, that helped create the tidal wave of the 2010 mid-term victories… here’s a hint… she wears lipstick.

Romney decided to shun Palin and the Tea Party. He was hoping to capture her base on the theory that they would vote for him based on Anybody But Obama mentality.

Therefore, she was a bigger issue than the horrible record of Obama.

Probably a Palin/Rubio ticket this time around would have clobberred the ONE

The GOP establishment essentially blackballed her to prevent her from running.

The Breitbart News Network and Judicial Watch partnered with Public Opinion Strategies to conduct an election night survey:

Voters’ responses suggest that the American public agrees with conservative policies–but does not trust the Republican Party to implement them.

By Nidra Poller. AMERICAN THINKER

The gap is enormous; it’s an abyss, and its name is Benghazi. They the people have re-elected Barack Hussein Obama, and we have been talking to ourselves. If the disastrous consequences could be clearly perceived, they might lead to a national awakening, but I fear they will be as muddled and confused as the public mind, and the public mind will adjust as it goes along, for the same reasons why it chose to intoxicate itself with the Obama illusion. The hope may well be a crucible of empty promises, but the change is implacable. The United States has slipped out on its history.

It seems that the economic factor was, as expected, decisive for the vast majority of voters. And that’s why they chose Obama over Romney? When European voters dissatisfied with the state of their economies systematically reject incumbents, Americans, of all people, reward economic failure?
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Fresno Zionism

Somewhere between 68 and 70% of American Jewish voters went for Obama, depending on whose exit poll you believe. Israelis that I talk to are mystified. “Are they crazy? What were they thinking?” they ask.

It’s not really mystifying. Here are some general facts about non-Orthodox and secular (the large majority) American Jews:

Although they will say that they support Israel, they do not know the history of the Middle East and the 100-year old conflict over Jewish sovereignty. They are well-educated, which means that they went to universities where, if they studied the conflict, they are likely to have been assigned books and articles by the revisionist (read: anti-Zionist) historians. They will certainly have been exposed to numerous lectures and films presented by Palestinian advocates and student groups. If they are left-of-center and engaged in antiwar or other ‘progressive’ causes, they will certainly be bombarded with extreme anti-Israel propaganda as well.
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Fill your sandbags

David Weinberg, ISRAEL HAYOM

I’d like to believe that President Barack Obama’s re-election means nothing significant for U.S.-Israel relations, since “all Democratic and Republican presidents over the past four decades have been solidly pro-Israel” — as Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom argued on Israel Radio this morning. But Shalom is putting a pretty face on a forboding situation.

Obama’s re-election means that Ehud Olmert is going to run against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming Jan. 2013 Israeli election. It means that Obama is going to intervene aggressively in our election to boost Olmert. It means that a push for immediate Palestinian statehood is back on the international agenda. Most worrisome of all, it means that an American “grand bargain” with the Iranians, possibly at our expense, is on the table.
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By Shoshana Bryen, AMERICAN THINKER

A reminder to the administration, no matter who is running it: the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. The friend of my friend is not necessarily my friend. And the friend of my enemy is not necessarily my enemy, but he may be not by my friend, either.

Bashar Assad, for example, is Iran’s puppet, Hezb’allah’s patron, Israel’s nemesis, Hamas’s erstwhile landlord, and his people’s tyrant. He is the enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood — our (former?) enemy. And he has a mixed relationship with al-Qaeda, permitting it to infiltrate Iraq to kill Americans, Shiites, and non-compliant Sunnis, but now finding it joining the jihadis against him.
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I have added a POLL in the right column.

VOTE

In future I will be presenting different polls and would like you to vote in them.

By David P. Goldman, PJ MEDIA

America is in incipient decline, and this week’s presidential election might be the last chance to reverse it. We are becoming a different sort of country, with a different people and different beliefs. Another four years of Barack Obama well might take us past the point of no return, although no-one, to be sure, knows quite where that lies. There is still time to change course. There might not be time by 2016.

Nearly a third of Americans now depend on food stamps, welfare, disability payments, or some other form of government support, compared with one out of five when George W Bush left office. This enormous shift has occurred before the detonation of a demographic time bomb that will explode towards the end of the present decade, and which will push America towards even greater dependency. This time bomb has four facets:

CONTINUE

Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman. His book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) was published by Regnery Press in September 2011. A volume of his essays on culture, religion and economics, It’s Not the End of the World – It’s Just the End of You, also appeared last fall, from Van Praag Press.