Mitt Romney will be President - taking orders from Bibi

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edward99

Guest
#1
First, The NY Times spin:

ONCE UPON A TIME IN A LAND FAR, FAR AWAY.......

A Friendship Dating to 1976 Resonates in 2012
By MICHAEL BARBARO

Published: April 7, 2012

The two young men had woefully little in common: one was a wealthy Mormon from Michigan, the other a middle-class Jew from Israel.

Mitt Romney speaking via satellite last month to a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Mr. Romney has criticized the Obama administration over its policies toward Israel.

But in 1976, the lives of Mitt Romney and Benjamin Netanyahu intersected, briefly but indelibly, in the 16th-floor offices of the Boston Consulting Group, where both had been recruited as corporate advisers. At the most formative time of their careers, they sized each other up during the firm’s weekly brainstorming sessions, absorbing the same profoundly analytical view of the world.

That shared experience decades ago led to a warm friendship, little known to outsiders, that is now rich with political intrigue. Mr. Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is making the case for military action against Iran as Mr. Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, is attacking the Obama administration for not supporting Mr. Netanyahu more robustly.

The relationship between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Romney — nurtured over meals in Boston, New York and Jerusalem, strengthened by a network of mutual friends and heightened by their conservative ideologies — has resulted in an unusually frank exchange of advice and insights on topics like politics, economics and the Middle East.

When Mr. Romney was the governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Netanyahu offered him firsthand pointers on how to shrink the size of government. When Mr. Netanyahu wanted to encourage pension funds to divest from businesses tied to Iran, Mr. Romney counseled him on which American officials to meet with. And when Mr. Romney first ran for president, Mr. Netanyahu presciently asked him whether he thought Newt Gingrich would ever jump into the race.

Only a few weeks ago, on Super Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu delivered a personal briefing by telephone to Mr. Romney about the situation in Iran.

“We can almost speak in shorthand,” Mr. Romney said in an interview. “We share common experiences and have a perspective and underpinning which is similar.”

Mr. Netanyahu attributed their “easy communication” to what he called “B.C.G.’s intellectually rigorous boot camp.”

“So despite our very different backgrounds,” he said through an aide, “my sense is that we employ similar methods in analyzing problems and coming up with solutions for them.”

The ties between Mr. Romney and Mr. Netanyahu stand out because there is little precedent for two politicians of their stature to have such a history together that predates their entry into government. And that history could well influence decision-making at a time when the United States may face crucial questions about whether to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities or support Israel in such an action.

Mr. Romney has suggested that he would not make any significant policy decisions about Israel without consulting Mr. Netanyahu — a level of deference that could raise eyebrows given Mr. Netanyahu’s polarizing reputation, even as it appeals to the neoconservatives and evangelical Christians who are fiercely protective of Israel.

In a telling exchange during a debate in December, Mr. Romney criticized Mr. Gingrich for making a disparaging remark about Palestinians, declaring: “Before I made a statement of that nature, I’d get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: ‘Would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do?’ “

Martin S. Indyk, a United States ambassador to Israel in the Clinton administration, said that whether intentional or not, Mr. Romney’s statement implied that he would “subcontract Middle East policy to Israel.”

“That, of course, would be inappropriate,” he added.

Mr. Netanyahu insists that he is neutral in the presidential election, but he has at best a fraught relationship with President Obama. For years, the prime minister has skillfully mobilized many Jewish groups and Congressional Republicans to pressure the Obama administration into taking a more confrontational approach against Iran.

“To the extent that their personal relationship would give Netanyahu entree to the Romney White House in a way that he doesn’t now have to the Obama White House,” Mr. Indyk said, “the prime minister would certainly consider that to be a significant advantage.”

It was a quirk of history that the two men met at all. In the 1970s, both chose to attend business school in Boston — Harvard for Mr. Romney, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Mr. Netanyahu. After graduating near the top of their classes, they had their pick of jobs at the nation’s biggest and most prestigious consulting firms.

The Boston Consulting Group did not yet qualify as either. Its founder, Bruce D. Henderson, was considered brilliant but idiosyncratic; his unorthodox theories — about measuring a company’s success by its market share, and dividing businesses into categories like “cash cows” and “dogs” — were then regarded as outside the mainstream of corporate consulting.

As Mr. Romney recalled, the faculty and students at Harvard Business School routinely mocked the firm’s recruitment posters. “Boston Consulting was at the time a firm that seemed somewhat under siege,” he said.

But the company’s status as a pioneering upstart, nipping on the heels of bigger blue-chip firms like McKinsey and Booz Allen, fostered a deep camaraderie among its young employees, who traveled around the country advising clients like General Foods and the Mead Corporation.

Even in a firm of 100 M.B.A.’s, Mr. Romney and Mr. Netanyahu managed to stand apart, as much for their biography as for their brainpower. Mr. Romney’s father, a former governor of Michigan, had sought the Republican presidential nomination a few years earlier. Mr. Netanyahu had his own exotic résumé: he had just completed a tour of duty in an elite special forces unit of the Israeli military.

“Both clearly had an aura around them,” said Alan Weyl, who worked at the firm from 1975 to 1989.

Although they never worked closely on a project together, Mr. Romney and Mr. Netanyahu, competitive by nature, left deep impressions on each other, which appear to have only grown.

Mr. Romney, never known for his lack of self-confidence, still recalls the sense of envy he felt watching Mr. Netanyahu effortlessly hold court during the firm’s Monday morning meetings, when consultants presented their work and fielded questions from their colleagues. The sessions were renowned for their sometimes grueling interrogations.

“He was a strong personality with a distinct point of view,” Mr. Romney said. “I aspired to the same kind of perspective.”

Over dinner years later, aides said, Mr. Netanyahu would reveal the depth of his own scorekeeping, when he quipped, with mostly playful chagrin, that Mr. Romney had been “Henderson’s favorite.”

“His star,” the prime minister said of Mr. Romney’s time at Boston Consulting, “had already risen.”

Mr. Romney worked at the company from 1975 to 1977; Mr. Netanyahu was involved from 1976 to 1978. But a month after Mr. Netanyahu arrived, he returned to Israel to start an antiterrorism foundation in memory of his brother, an officer killed while leading the hostage rescue force at Entebbe, Uganda. An aide said he sporadically returned to the company over the rest of that two-year period.

Mr. Romney later decamped to Bain & Company, a rival of Boston Consulting. They did, however, maintain a significant link: at Bain, Mr. Romney worked closely with Fleur Cates, Mr. Netanyahu’s second wife. (Ms. Cates and Mr. Netanyahu divorced in the mid-1980s, but she remains in touch with Mr. Romney.)

The men reconnected shortly after 2003 when Mr. Romney became the governor of Massachusetts. Mr. Netanyahu paid him a visit, eager to swap tales of government life.

Mr. Netanyahu, who had recently stepped down as Israel’s finance minister, regaled Mr. Romney with stories of how, in the tradition of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, he had challenged unionized workers over control of their pensions, reduced taxes and privatized formerly government-run industries, reducing the role of government in private enterprise.

He encouraged Mr. Romney to look for ways to do the same. As Mr. Romney recalled, Mr. Netanyahu told him of a favorite memory from basic training about a soldier trying to race his comrades with a fat man atop his shoulders. Naturally, he loses.

“Government,” Mr. Romney recalled him saying, “is the guy on your shoulders.”

As governor, Mr. Romney said, he frequently repeated the story to the heads of various agencies, reminding them that their job as regulators was to “catch the bad guys, but also to encourage the good guys and to make business more successful in our state.”

A few years later, Mr. Romney had dinner with Mr. Netanyahu at a private home in the Jewish quarter of the Old City, in central Jerusalem, where the two spent hours discussing the American and Israeli economies. When Mr. Netanyahu informed Mr. Romney of a personal campaign to persuade American pension funds to divest from businesses tied to Iran, Mr. Romney offered up his Rolodex.

Before he left Israel, Mr. Romney set up several meetings with government officials in the United States for his old colleague. “I immediately saw the wisdom of his thinking,” Mr. Romney said.

Back in Massachusetts, Mr. Romney sent out letters to legislators requesting that the public pension funds they controlled sell off investments from corporations doing business with Iran.

Even as Mr. Netanyahu, a keen and eager student of American politics, has tried to avoid any hint of favoritism in the presidential election, friends say he has paid especially close attention to Mr. Romney’s political fortunes in this campaign season.

And the prime minister keeps open lines of communication to the candidate. When it was Mr. Gingrich’s turn to leap to the top of the polls, Mr. Netanyahu was startled in January by an article exploring why Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino executive and outspoken supporter of Israel, was devoting millions of dollars to back Mr. Gingrich. It described Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Adelson as close friends.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office quickly relayed a message to a senior Romney adviser, Dan Senor: the prime minister had played no role in Mr. Adelson’s decision to bankroll a Romney rival.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/u...yahu-are-old-friends.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

THE END.
What a nice fairytale!



Mr. Romney has suggested that he would not make any significant policy decisions about Israel without consulting Mr. Netanyahu — a level of deference that could raise eyebrows given Mr. Netanyahu’s polarizing reputation, even as it appeals to the neoconservatives and evangelical Christians who are fiercely protective of Israel.

In a telling exchange during a debate in December, Mr. Romney criticized Mr. Gingrich for making a disparaging remark about Palestinians*, declaring: “Before I made a statement of that nature, I’d get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: ‘Would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do?’ “



* US Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has drawn outrage for calling the Palestinians an "invented" people who want to destroy Israel.

"We've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community," he said in the interview.

"And they had a chance to go many places. And for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and I think it's tragic."

Mr Gingrich also declared his world view was "pretty close" to that of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and vowed to take "a much more tougher minded and much more honest approach to the Middle East" if elected.
 

Spartacus1122

Banned [Reason: insulting CC admin in previous pos
Jun 9, 2012
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#2
America has been Israel's nanny since that theocratic state was established.
Whenever Israel says 'jump', America asks 'well how high?'
Meantime, the very enemies of Israel (and much of the Western world) are also some of the US's prized customers in business to business relationships.

Seriously, you thought this was relevant or shocking news?

*Yawn*
 
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edward99

Guest
#3
Seriously, you thought this was relevant or shocking news?

*Yawn*
Shocking? Nah.
Relevant? Yeah.
If you know why it's relevant, contribute - fill in some details.

What do Mitt, Bibi and Ron Paul all have in common?


If it's boring for you, there's always the Catholic threads. Get the blood pumping, then come back here.
 

Spartacus1122

Banned [Reason: insulting CC admin in previous pos
Jun 9, 2012
276
1
0
#4
Shocking? Nah.

If it's boring for you, there's always the Catholic threads. Get the blood pumping, then come back here.
HAHAHAHAHA!

Touchè.

Put it this way:
Obama's performance in foreign policy is nil (unless you consider the apology tour a success).

The Bushes and most neocons have been in bed with Israel for years.
The Clintons also played footsy with the theocratic state, considering many of their supporters and donors were jews.

Business-to-Government relationships have been in existence since ancient Rome, Athens, and Egypt.
Backdoor deals are a way of life in both environments.

Israel is comparable to an octopus: tentacles everywhere...

So in the end, what does a typical article from the New York Swines tell us?
Nothing.

And what credentials does Obama have for justifying his reelection?
None.

Hence the obsessive focus on Bain Capital, because Obama has nothing else to run on.
Not one promised has been kept.
We're still in the Mid-East, Guantanamo is still open, the economy is getting worse (as recent forecasts indicate), the real unemployment numbers are worse, government spending is through the roof, deficit nearly surpasses GDP, socialized healthcare would cost trillions in the long-run......

Yup.
I'll take the Mormon economist over the godless manchurian candidate. ;)
 
Jan 15, 2011
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#5
God will bless those who bless her and curse those who curse her. I think that's clear enough for Christians :)
Not saying Romney is the best candidate either. Too much like Obama in his historical policies and opinions, but we shall see in the end what happens.
 
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systemdown101

Guest
#6
Well, I'm gonna vote for Obama. Frankly, the unemployment rate is too low, it's only at 8.2%. I am confident that with another term Barry can get it to 15, maybe even 20! Take THAT, you Zionist pigs!
 

Nautilus

Senior Member
Jun 29, 2012
6,488
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#7
Im voting for Obama because the thought of conservatives in charge makes me sick to my stomach.
 
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RachelBibleStudent

Guest
#8
you mean we might have a president who isn't hostile towards one of our middle eastern allies? what a terrifying thought!

we might have a president who consults with israel instead of just making a decision and imposing it on israel? what a shame that would be!
 
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systemdown101

Guest
#9
First, The NY Times spin:
Wait a sec, I just realized - This story is from the New York Times!

Well, don't worry about it, Edward, it's all made up anyway. I don't mean the story is exaggerated, I mean the whole story is completely fabricated. It's the NYT, they LITERALLY make up stories all the time.
 
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SantoSubito

Guest
#10
For a minute there I thought this was going to be a thread about how Romney will be taking orders from the Mormon prophet. That being said this still kind of sounds like "The president will be taking orders from the pope" talk that was around when JFK ran for office.
 

Nautilus

Senior Member
Jun 29, 2012
6,488
53
48
#11
you mean we might have a president who isn't hostile towards one of our middle eastern allies? what a terrifying thought!

we might have a president who consults with israel instead of just making a decision and imposing it on israel? what a shame that would be!
hmm the amount i care about Israel is roughly zero compared to, you know things that actually matter in our own country. Maybe its time everyone stopped coddling Israel and let them get by on their own accord.
 
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systemdown101

Guest
#12
hmm the amount i care about Israel is roughly zero compared to, you know things that actually matter in our own country. Maybe its time everyone stopped coddling Israel and let them get by on their own accord.
This is why I love Bible prophecy! From Zechariah 12: 3-9

And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it. In that day,” says the Lord, “I will strike every horse with confusion, and its rider with madness; I will open My eyes on the house of Judah, and will strike every horse of the peoples with blindness. And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, ‘The inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength in the Lord of hosts, their God.’ In that day I will make the governors of Judah like a firepan in the woodpile, and like a fiery torch in the sheaves; they shall devour all the surrounding peoples on the right hand and on the left, but Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place—Jerusalem. “The Lord will save the tents of Judah first, so that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall not become greater than that of Judah. In that day the Lord will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; the one who is feeble among them in that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the Angel of the Lord before them. It shall be in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
Doesn't this represent what the Lord has said? Yes! Israel will be alone, and only the Lord will defend her - and will! God's made His choice, I'd hate to be on the other side!
 

Nautilus

Senior Member
Jun 29, 2012
6,488
53
48
#13
we could be on no side...neutrality is a thing
 

Nautilus

Senior Member
Jun 29, 2012
6,488
53
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#15
Yeah well Im with Jesus. So there we go.

Also if we look at it this way

Gen 12: 1-3 "Now the Lord had said to Abram: Get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

Gal 3:29 And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God's promise to Abraham belongs to you.

This is Old Testament stuff moving into the New. If we, Christians, are the heirs of Abraham and God's promise now belongs to us, well then like I said we can quit babysitting Israel.
 

Nautilus

Senior Member
Jun 29, 2012
6,488
53
48
#19
well it seems with the NT being newer it would be more relevant. I mean if it wasnt for the NT we would all just be Jewish
 
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systemdown101

Guest
#20
I think I've about had it up to here (places hand six inches above head) with all the talk here about the Jews. how they no longer matter, how Christians are the new Jews and the old remnant are no longer necessary, how Israel does not fulfill any kind of Bible prophecy, yadda yadda yadda, and then these same people wonder why others call them anti-Semetic.

You know, I can't think of a single culture or group that has survived the loss of it's country for more than a hundred years. Not one. You never hear of an Ottoman running about, or a Bengalian. Or an Edomite. And yet somehow, somehow, the Jews managed to survive as a culture and as a people without a country for two-thousandish years. And this was DESPITE centuries of both Catholics and Protestants doing almost everything they could to wipe them out. A legacy some on this very board are proud of, to be sure.

And yet the Jews survived. Of ALL the dispossessed people that have ever existed on this planet, and there have been scores, somehow only the Jews managed to do it. Even though so many people on this very board say God is done with them, ignoring or changing Scripture in the process to do so - and yet the Jew still exists. I'll rephrase: If God were done with the Jews, they would have ceased to exist around AD 200, and yet here they are. And no matter how much any Amillenialist type tries to wish them away by coming up with some silly theory about how they aren't part of Bible prophecy, how they aren't even real Jews at all but instead holograms or Martians or something, they still exist.

Anyone who's even read a small part of the Bible should know that the reason they exist is because God WANTS them to exist. It should be obvious, therefore, that the people who think the Jews are superfluous, who are not needed, who are not necessary, who don't think Israel is at all necessary to God's plans - these people also don't want the Jews to exist. And I think there's a name for that kind of belief.

I also think that puts those same people in direct opposition to God. But hey, that's just me.