Uh, who cares that much about the jewish vote?

Uh, apparently politicians do, since they spend so much time and money courting it.

I know in terms of media representatives its seems like the jewish vote would be really important but, in fact, jews only make up 1.7% of the population. they aren't even numerous enough to make the margin of error.

First: it's irrelevant what percentage a group is of the population - what matters is their percentage of the voting population.

Second: presidential votes aren't determined by nationwide totals; they're determined by electoral colleges, and large numbers of Jewish voters are concentrated in important, close swing states, including Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Third: This is what Hillary Clinton's chief fund-raiser told The New York Sun:

A Democratic political consultant who worked on President Clinton 's re-election campaign, Hank Sheinkopf, noted that the Aipac dinner always draws a parade of politicians.

"New York is the ATM for American politicians. Large amounts of money come from the Jewish community," he said. "If you're running for president and you want dollars from that group, you need to show that you're interested in the issue that matters most to them."

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2007/02/enforced-orthodoxies-and-iran.html

Now do you see why it has a much bigger impact than its numbers would suggest?

Kudos to Obama

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to praise Obama these days. But this is one area where he has moved the US government in the correct direction. And that direction is characterized by thinking first about what is good for his nation and its interests.

Concur completely - on all counts.

As its a political term, its pretty elastic and includes those who may inadvertantly undermine their own country for the purposes of helping a foreign power.

It's even milder than that. Dual loyalty is pretty self-explanation -- it means loyalty to two different entities or countries. As Wikipedia says: "Dual loyalty is a term used in political discussions to describe, a situation where a person has loyalty to two separate interests which potentially conflict with each other."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_loyalty

Maybe someone can explain to the "P.hD" what "potentially" means. As Traub wrote: "No country, whether Israel or Cuba, has identical interests to those of the United States." Only someone with no understanding of basic English would confuse that term with "treason".

When one says: "you should vote for an American President not because he'll be better for the U.S., but because he'll be good for a foreign country to which you're loyal," that is precisely what neocon critics argue neocons do, which in turn prompts neocons to screech that they're being accused of "dual loyalty."

I'm not Jewish but I support Israel and its right to exist.

Are you under the impression that this is what's being discussed here?

He GG, what's with this new "green underlined" advertising thing . . .

kind of irritating.

What is this?

I think he's saying if you don't protect Israel first

as a religious principle, you are not a good Jew.

Isn't that the definition of "dual loyalty"?

The Eugene Robinson statement about the comment being "un-American" seems to be taken out of context. Mr. Robinson immediately notes that while England's parliamentary rules of decorum may be different, this is not how our Congress (the American part of the "un-American" remark) is supposed to behave. In other words, we don't behave as if a joint session is a town hall here in America. I guess, we didn't, until now.

Let's not pretend that the phrase "un-American" means nothing more innocuous than: "practices that typically happen in other places but not commonly in the U.S."

That's a phrase that has a long, pernicious history and packs a big punch. It's meant to convey that the act which bears that label is some sort of ugly and even severe betrayal of core American values, something unpatriotic even.

Eugene Robinson is a smart and careful writer. He knew exactly what he was doing when he chose that term. If one wants to defend it -- as a few people here have -- that's fine; I don't agree, but that's reasonable. But to pretend that he meant nothing more than "this is what the British do" is, I think, quite disingenuous.

Such organized incivility denotes collusion to disrupt one of the most important facets or American Democracy, that being an address by the President to a joint session of Congress.

Please. They didn't prevent Obama from addressing Congress. He was heard. It was a two-second outburst that prevented nothing.

I really wonder what would have happened if a liberal member of Congress had yelled "you lie" during a Bush speech on Iraq. Would you be here decrying that as a grave threat to our Republic?

Thanks, Glenn, and great linking to that HTML Mencken post

I originally posted the wrong link to it -- it's this one:

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/002710.html

The president is not the king and we are not disloyal to question or even insult the person, but the office deserves respect

I don't disagree. I'm not saying he should have done what he did. I also agree that -- and said -- that much of the right-wing hostility towards Obama is quite ugly (though I'm not convinced it's different in type than what was directed at Clinton -- remember Jesse Helms warning that he shouldn't step on a military base if he wanted to stay alive).

My point is that it's just hard for me to get worked up over it in the context of all the other transgressions, and the fact that this gets to much attention, while those get none, is what's revealing in my view.