Romney Continues Charm Offensive In Israel

JERUSALEM — Mitt Romney landed in Israel today on his private campaign jet, once again going on the offensive with his charms.

Mitt Romney arrives in Israel

“You guys sure are surrounded by a lot of enemies,” he told Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister. “You sure better be ready, I know personally they all want to kick your ass. During my secret briefing with MI6 yesterday…” He then cut himself short.

Romney then reflected thoughtfully for a moment and asked, “Why did you pick this place to put your country? You could have put it down in Mexico.” Realizing his gaffe, he added, “Where all you would have to worry about are a bunch of drug gangs.”

He then asked the prime minister, “Why are all of you people wearing those little hats? What good are they? They don’t block the Sun.”

And, capping off his first hour in Israel, during a photo-op at a local delicatessen, the presumptive presidential candidate ordered a ham and cheese sandwich. The room fell silent. He seemed to not understand why. As he was whisked away by handlers, he gave the deli owner a copy of the Book of Mormon and suggested he might enjoy it.

36 thoughts on “Romney Continues Charm Offensive In Israel”

  3. Integrity, or not. We all have our moments. Those with money can take bigger gambles. I could fudge on the amount of goat’s milk in soap (for example) and still call it goat’s milk soap and it would be accurate. The user would believe it is accurate because my product has always been quite good and my reputation is good. 99 percent of my soap is vegan, but there is this little tiny annoying group of people who insist that we carry goat’s milk soap, so we oblige by mixing a little into a few batches so we can put it on the label. Ok so I own up to being a tad illusive when pushed hard enough, but there is, after all, a little goat’s milk in the goat’s milk soap. Ha. You win Be.

  5. Well, shitfire, Billy Bob! You go away for an evening and when you come back, you discover you missed all the fun! I think that most of us would have laughed at a similar parody about Obama, as long as it stuck close to our experience of him without demonizing, much as did e’s parody about Romney.

    It seems to me that “belief” is truly at the base of most of our problems today, and although I disdain the character played by Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men,” his snarl that, “You can’t handle the truth!” is THE quote for this critical year. It would be good form for all of us to think hard and long about how much truth we actually CAN handle without having a psychic meltdown.

    While shrinks would tell us that humans gravitate toward what they want to hear, some of us INSIST on it. For instance, everyone knows what Obama really said about small business, the words before and after one awkward sentence revealing his intent. The Romney camp jumped on that sentence like a duck on a bug. It’s called “throwing meat to the base,” even if it was the antithesis of what the man actually meant (i.e., a lie.) Those who insist he was showing his hostility to business and embrace of socialism by this “gaffe” will not be swayed, nor their minds changed. This is just one more piece of misperception to add to their files.

    As well, everyone knows what Romney meant (sorta) in his clumsy comment about Olympic security. He was pointing out how fabulously he managed the Utah Olympics by suggesting the Brits weren’t running a tight ship. That leaders of a foreign country … one he was introducing himself to as possible POTUS … poked back at him with more than a hint of derision is meaningful in terms of who he is shaping up to be, internationally. (And let’s note that he’s called a press blackout for his Israel meet-ups, no doubt soliciting support and promising much in return, but in secret — welcome to Mitt’s Scorpio moon, citizen, in case you missed his tax return stonewall.)

    In all political campaigns, people are called upon to see through the smoke and mirrors of the candidates “best foot forward” to get a sense of a persons capacity. Gaffe’s and such give us a sense of their flavor, their character and life skills, but verbiage isn’t everything. The way a person handles himself in public counts as much. Case in point, Dubby got elected [sorta] despite a real case of foot-in-mouth disease that gave us people “putting food on their families” and gynecologists “showing their love,” and in the end, summing up his controversial presidency (as he eloquently put it in a rare and recent interview,) “Eight years was awesome, and I was famous and I was powerful.” (Ah yes, words to live by.) But, harkening to American tough-guy mythology, his swagger trumped common sense for eight white-knuckled years and he’ll go down in history as the Prez that changed America, for good or ill.

    During those eight years, I parodied, ranted and slammed the Little Prince on a daily basis because I found his policies dangerous and actions disastrous, and I would do it again. Nancy Pelosi recently said that George had a genuine sweet side that his party never allowed him to show, and I believe that; but I also watched him prance, posture and allow this country to be driven over a cliff. And now “ZeroKing” is being blamed for all of it (interesting, hadn’t heard that term before) which would be a real hoot if it wasn’t so frighteningly ignorant: since 1969 we’ve had 29 years of Republican leadership and a mere 16 years of [moderate] Democratic which has lead to a crumbling nation, broken system of government and unapologetic oligarchy … but it’s the black guys fault? PFFFFFT!

    So lets grow up about our society and our politics, shall we? I DARE a political candidate to tell the American people the truth and not get left at the gate or stoned by the citizenry, whichever comes first. We’re left to choose the political system that offends us the least and since both are offensive, we’re splitting hairs … albeit, important ones.

    Your Mormon point, eric, is more the one that worries me about Mitt’s chances, and reports are that campaign phones are being manned (by those “volunteered” to do so) across Utah, hitting the swing states hard. Mormon’s are, by and large, Very Nice People but they are also very QUIET about the specifics of what they believe, so as not to upset the natives; they’ve made an art of it. They can be infuriatingly vague (so as not to offend.) That same vagueness oozes out of Romney’s pores. And it works for him, since he actually has nothing new to run on; his policy proposals are George redux with a big dose of austerity as punishment for our trusting Bush at the helm with an international credit card.

    If more-of-the-same suits us, Mitt’s our man. If we would rather see an achingly slow erosion of the last thirty years of deregulation and an uphill push toward egalitarianism, vote for the incumbent. Neither are demons, but still — not all candidates are created equal and what we collectively CHOOSE to believe about America, about life, about politics will call this shot. Me, I’m counting on the 2012 energy to play more of a part than either political party.

    In a rather cleverly-run campaign, “belief” still hasn’t taken stark account of Mitt’s religion. If the Christocrats focused on what Mitt actually believes (which I grant you is no more or less fictional than an authentic Jesus, resurrection or virgin birth) along with his many years of leadership in his church and absolute dedication to it, they’d scatter like chickens. But here, in a country that chooses to delude itself rather than face fact, Obama is a quasi-Muslim and Mitt is a quasi-Christian (“Another Testament of Jesus Christ”) who might finally succeed in drowning big government in a bathtub and privatizing (profitizing) everything … because the actual God we serve is The Free (unscrutinized) Market and we — all of us — merely consumers at the Font of all Goodies.

    As to your exposé, boss, Light to that endeavor. Liberalism or conservatism does not come with a party ID card. It’s a matter of conscience. If we can’t clean up our own pigpen, what good are we? And, clearly, if we don’t have the heart for hearing the truth, we’d better grow one — it’s coming on like a bullet-train!

  6. I don’t see Borasisi as anything in particular, just using Cat’s cradle example of him being a sun. It was a made up name, so I guess that comes under pisces territory.

  7. Eric,

    That seem fair. . the power of belief. . much more neutral. Still, transiting Borasisi has been transiting Romney’s Mercury for some time now and his remarks have the dualistic effect of being “truth” to his followers, while many others are not persueded by them and believe they are “false”. I guess only time will tell in that particular case.

    Patty, thanks for your perspective of the example, including the duality of Virgo and Pisces interpretations. Not so sure Gemini could actually control Chaos in our present 3rd dimension, so much as he could give examples of it’s various possibilities, while Virgo could certainly sort them out by catagory. It would require of us humans to climb a bit further up the evolution ladder and that too will take time. Becoming aware (thank you Pholus) would be a big first step. I’m guessing you see Borasisi as center of the universe because he is a symbol of “the sun” in the way our Sun is the center of our solar system? If that be so and Borasisi is the “power of belief”, then you have starting to co-create our new universe, or at least our new planet Earth. You go girl!
    be

  8. I have been working with Borasisi for a while and I don’t think it’s about falsity. I recognize that you’re trying to make a “neutral” key word but that’s not the one. I would sum up Borasisi as being about the power of belief. We have to be careful when ascribing keywords to complex symbols. It’s about assessing lies versus truth, including when “lies” are less harmful than “truth” or what we perceive as such. The common denominator is the power of belief, a power we need to question constantly.

    As far as I know, Planet Waves is the only website that’s done an complex delineation of Borasisi. You can find that here, in an article from the subscriber series in the winter of 2011. Note that this predates Fukushima by one week and covers the nuclear themes that Vonnegut was asserting in Cat’s Cradle, which include special concern about General Electric (the designer of the Mark I nuke that failed horribly in that incident).

  9. Being a Pisces myself, I’m a little tired of everyone saying that all pisces are false and illusive. What I find in Pisces people is Joie de vivre, and free spirit.
    Therefore I see the square as being the Borassisi as the center of the universe-full of joyful life, opposite virgo who can either be the manipulator bully and ideas thief, or work with the full team to iron out mistakes and categorize the issues. Sagitarrius is idealist and will work well with Pisces to teach the world once he fully buys in (Pisces is his 4th house, its family – he has little choice but to make it work), and Chaos in Gemini seems quite compatible to me, because Gemini can work with multiple ideas and harness the chaos into a plan. Gemini can take Pisces ideas and turn them into the illusive spun gold. Gemini controls the Chaos.

  10. Thanks for this interesting subject which has led me down a path of discovery, minor though it may be. In the name of sharing and for the love of astrology, I bring you my moment of truth. Spurred by the (new to me) word bororygmic (thx HorizonScanner) to learn that it means the sound of gas in the gut, and then that word brought to mind Borasisi (yeah, yeah, bore, bore). Checking Borasisi I found him conjunct Heracles who was opposite Burney and they crossed and intersected the path of Pholus opposite Chaos to make a grand cross of sorts. The path. . . .

    Heracles (strength) and Borasisi (falsity) in Pisces (illusion, end)
    Burney (naming, name-calling) in Virgo (precise, factual)
    Pholus (start small end big) in Sagittarius (teach, understand)
    Chaos (undiffrentiated, indistinguishable) in Gemini (details, multiples)

    I chose descriptive words for the symbols that were not too positive or negative in themselves, but could be either-or. You might find better ones to substitute, but my point is it represents an actual conflict of energies whose symbols are invisible to the naked eye. This small invisible grand cross is part of a hugely greater square (often enlarged to a full grand cross such as the full moon early this month) that is also invisible but which will dominate our lives for the next several years. Here we have a micro moment to help us understand how the great big picture is made up of many micro moments; inching us along the path. Hope it is as revealing to you as it was to me.
    be

  11. I think satire is a great tool and you can get away with lots by getting people to laugh at themselves. If I remember correctly there was a YouTube hit of Bruno in a mock up bedroom with Ron Paul I think. Piss funny.

    In the UK we have satirists on TV called Bremner, Bird and Fortune. They get away with so much truth dissemination through parody it is unreal. However…. these guys send up everybody equally, The Govt and the Opposition.

    So the principle of critique in this mode is well established and it IS effect if NOT seen to be partisan. If it IS seen to be partisan you lose half the viewers. Because satire will be read as political point scoring mockery in that mode.

    So yes, maybe sending Obama up regularly would balance perceptions of agenda. If your parody both sides every body sees you are mocking politicians rather than parties. More people universally, buy into that..

  12. Parody is an interesting thing in the current media environment, though my experience only goes back about 40 years (it was a childhood hobby). I am however left to wonder why this article about “Dick Cheney admitting to 9/11” has about as many hits as all my articles on 9/11 combined.

    What works better to inform people, cut through the deception, or make the point — this article (which got 20,000+ visits in one month, and was visited 444 times in May 2012 and 150 visits in June 2012) — Cheney Admits to 9/11 (satire)

    or this? (which is went unnoticed initially and got 66 hits in June 2012, 82 in May 2012) — Were It So (investigative piece)

    or this? (combination of investigative and astrology, which got 40 hits each, May and June 2012) — History, Turning on a Phrase

  13. Go for it, Eric. I commend you in your desire to broker truth about the corruption you have uncovered. It is interesting that politics, sex and religion are the three taboo subjects.. and you speak about them all!

    My only caveat, in my first, is the use of parody as a way of questioning any politician’s credibility. It can be like using the masters tools to dismantle the master’s house. I sort of wonder what percentage of your U.S. readership are Republican? The problem they all face is party loyalty with no credible candidates. I suppose they must choose the best of the beach donkeys, with a liberal helping of Obama-bashing to make them feel justified.

    What a sad state modern politics finds itself in. We need to rediscover community.. and quickly.

  14. I would not have ever called it that. What you hold deed to and pay taxes on, you own. When you file false claims and lie in court, that is fraud. “Property rights” is the tag put on the story, or the issue. This is not property rights in the first instances; this is about who knows they are lying, the effect of which is to deprive someone of the enjoyment of their home. Now I have a special assignment (from my own dharma), which is to get this into the media. We can debate the theory of how this should happen, though the idea (as I am defining it) is to get it to happen — outside the blogs and my small audience.

  15. Eric- May I rant? “Property rights” are a social fiction that came about a week or two after the development of agriculture. It is a thought-form that has caused a great deal of suffering through the development of class-based hegemony, human slavery, animal cruelty and other acts of bad karma.

    While some cultures, like our own, prize the acquisition of personal property with their attendant “rights,” other cultures in human history demonstrated an inverse moral stance towards stuff by giving the moral high-ground to those who gave away stuff to those with less. Ironically this moral stance was one of the teachings of Yeshua ben Yosef, ironic because his “followers” use his teachings to promote acquisition in the finest Ferengi fashion.

    /rant

  16. Well Alex this raises the issue of whether I should ever tip my hand politically — though apparently if someone thinks that Obama (the ZeroKing) is my hero, I am not doing that very well.

    If considered as editorial policy this would be a challenging discussion. My own politics are not as simple as some think, and I am more critical of “liberalism” than I let on — though as I scrutinize every sentence that comes out of the mouth of every MSNBC anchor, I return to it being a more honest analysis than “conservatism” — which as we know it is a lie from top to bottom.

    I am working on an investigative piece; this one has roots going back to 1997 and I have been developing a new angles in the story for about two years and I am ready to move forward.

    Yesterday sitting with some of my most politically radical friends, after spending about four hours on analyzing legal details of a fraud case, I realized that the story had little chance of flying in the “liberal” media because its target is a group of environmental organizations that have been engaged in criminal activity. This is a right-side issue — property rights. It’s sad to think that most liberals would eschew the issue due to who is doing the dirty work, in the name of allegedly conserving the environment.

    Meanwhile, I cracked open the Wiki pages of the National Review, the Weekly Standard and other stalwart conservative publications, knowing that if I want to reach an audience with this issue, they are the places where this is most likely. I don’t agree with the rest of what they say though they would love this story.

    Then there is the added paradox: the place to do the most damage is in the liberal establishment, because that’s where their money comes from, and liberals who donate to these groups don’t know they are funding something worthy of prosecution under RICO.

    =====

    All of this said, can we take up the issue of Romney as the official Mormon — not Republican, not Conservative, but Mormon — candidate? We are not supposed to say that, as it disrespects his “religion” — though it has occurred to me that this is a critical issue. Mormons do not hesitate to impose their religious dictates on EVERYONE through government, and I believe this is the elephant in the room with Mitt. It’s why his politics makes so little sense. He is not a political leader; he is a religious leader moving into the top position of what will be a theocracy. Bush was faking it in this role. Romney would not be.

  17. Man, if I have to tie my hands to a bedpost for the night to keep myself “wholesome”, I think I deserve more than a quarter in an empty mayonnaise jar as a positive re-enforcer.

  18. While I think HorizonScanner would benefit from developing a sense of humour, it seems there is a serious point to consider about contemporary nation state politics (not just in the USA). It is largely a parody of any kind of honest democratic process. The more we parody, the more we polarise into two party impasse. Politics, to be credible to most folk, requires participation at the local level. Otherwise it becomes a spectator sport; ripe for fruitless polemics.

    Very funny though sending Romney up is, it could risk alienating political Conservatives, who might otherwise engage the core issues in the spirit of Planet Waves’ investigative open-minded querying.

  20. Trouble is, it’s all too sickeningly familiar. Keep remembering not long before GWB got elected, there were pages and pages of his gaffes, his ignorant remarks circulating on the web. And I thought, that schmuck will never get in. But then I remembered Reagan… Meanwhile, back in Italy Berlusconi is rearing his ugly head again, and with the present government of technocrats from wealthy, privileged backgrounds who are raising taxes, cutting public services right, left and centre, hitting the poor where it hurts, the populist B is beginning to look attractive to many again. Ugh.

  22. I wrote this as a joke but I just reread it and cracked the “romney case”

    the joke is correct: the Mormons would be taking over the federal government.

  23. i’m confused: how is satire anything like failing to fact-check?

    ah well — at least i’ve learned a new word tonight…

  25. What contemptible immature nearly libelous nonsense, Eric. You should be ashamed of yourself. You indulge your Radical Liberal prejudices at the expense of your astrological expertise. How different is what you indulge from Brian Ross’s hatchet job at ABC which labeled an innocent Mr. Holmes, a Tea Party patriot, to be the Aurora murderer, knowing that proper double checking had not been enacted? Your attack is borborygmic, unfunny, and vacuous simultaneously. The reason why you didn’t use astrology to back up your ridiculous japes is that, as in the case of your hero, the ZeroKing, the astrology reverses the fortune you wish to conjure.

  26. Yep! Agenda…pushing Fear! And to you’re comment Carrie this is what so many in our society are buying. Must feel less threatening that reaching for change, or majority just too lazy as a nation…holding the unknown requires real patience and faith.

  28. The real issue here is that so many unthinking Americans will see this as “He’s like us, not like that elitist, smarty-pants President we have now.” Too many people really feel intimidated by smart people so they prefer a president they can identify with and so many Americans are just that stupid.

    Our media has elevated stupid to an art and people are lapping it up. This is why Mitt is a serious threat; because so many people are that stupid, remain that stupid, don’t want to change, and don’t want to feel bad about remaining that stupid.

    This isn’t a sign that Romney will fail in November. The more fun people poke at him the more Americans will feel like “he’s one of us” and in defense will vote for him.

  31. Worst. Rethuglican. Candidate. Ever.

    He makes me miss his dad: a man of actual integrity and intelligence. Mitt must have been dropped on his head a few too many times.

  32. At least we’re good on the American Jewish vote, via Gallup: “According to the Gallup survey, 68% of Jewish Americans back President Barack Obama, while 25% support the presumptive Republican.”

  34. Yes; funny but not so funny, eh?
    Thx, Eric for this – charming – kickstarter to my weekend.

  35. Exactly, Fe, while soliciting foreign investors in his North American coup. The notion that he has ANY chance of pulling this off … and he has, of course … makes my head spin!

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