Obama site includes ad for "Israel Lobby" ... The ad was withdrawn. Its placement was “unintentional.”

December 3, 2007 Issue | Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative | The Lobby Strikes Back | A new book riles the AIPAC crowd, but makes it to the bestseller list anyway. |
by Scott McConnell

One prism through which to gauge the impact of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy is a September incident involving Barack Obama. His campaign had placed small ads in various spots around the Internet, designed to drive readers to its website. One turned up on Amazon’s page for the Walt and Mearsheimer book. A vigilant watchdog at the New York Sun spotted it and contacted the campaign: Did Obama support Walt and Mearsheimer?

The answer came within hours. The ad was withdrawn. Its placement was “unintentional.” The senator, his campaign made clear, understood that key arguments of the book were “wrong,” but had definitely not read the work himself. In short, Walt and Mearsheimer had reached a pinnacle of notoriety.

Though The Israel Lobby was on the way to best-sellerdom and has become perhaps the most discussed policy book of the year, the presidential candidate touted as the most fresh-thinking and intellectually curious in the race hastened to make clear he had not been corrupted by the toxic text.
...
In their book’s introduction, Walt and Mearsheimer summarize the consequences of this power. In an election year, American politicians will differ radically on domestic issues, social issues, immigration, China, Darfur, and virtually any other topic. But all will “go to considerable lengths to express their deep personal commitment to one foreign country—Israel—as well as their determination to maintain unyielding support for the Jewish state.” The authors find this remarkable and deserving of analysis, which they provided first in a paper, posted last year on Harvard’s Kennedy School website and published in the London Review of Books, and now expanded into a book.
...
It is obvious that The Israel Lobby, both the article and the book, would be extremely unwelcome to those pleased with the status quo. Under the current arrangement, the United States gives Israel $3-4 billion in aid and grants a year—about $500 per Israeli and several orders of magnitude more than aid to citizens of any other country. Israel is the only American aid recipient not required to account for how the money is spent. Washington uses its Security Council veto to shield Israel from critical UN resolutions and periodically issues bland statements lamenting the continued expansion of Israeli settlements on the Palestinian land the Jewish state has occupied since 1967. When Israel violates U.S. law, as it did in Lebanon by using American-made cluster bombs against civilian targets, a low-level official may issue a mild complaint. These fundamentals of the relationship go unchallenged by 95 percent of American politicians holding or running for national office. ....
...
This last area is easily the most disputed point between Walt and Mearsheimer and those reviewers who sought to answer their book rather than smear it. The Israel lobby, the two assert, helped drive the United States into Baghdad. It couldn’t have done it by itself—that required 9/11 and Bush and Cheney. But, argue Mearsheimer and Walt, “absent the lobby’s influence, there almost certainly would not have been a war. The lobby was a necessary but not sufficient condition for a war that is a strategic disaster for the United States.” ...
... But such facts, intriguing as they are, don’t entirely speak for themselves. And whatever enhanced political clout Christian Zionism brought to the lobby, it did not include access and influence to inner decision-making sanctums of the Pentagon and White House or the ability to start a war.

That required the neoconservatives. ...
...
Neoconservatism is something far more than advocacy of the interests of a foreign country. It is a full-blown ideological system, which shapes the way people interpret events and view their own society and its relation to the world. Yes, its foreign-policy views are strongly pro-Israel. The main shapers of neoconservatism would readily argue that their foreign-policy positions were good for Israel, while those they opposed imperiled the Jewish state. No one who has spent time with major neocons would doubt the centrality of Israel to their worldview or their attachment to the no-compromise-with-Arabs parts of the Israeli political spectrum. ...
...
At least there has been the blogosphere. One wouldn’t know it from the major American newspapers or magazine reviews, but a fresh breeze is beginning to blow. The Israel Lobby did receive more attention on the serious blogs than any other book this year. M.J. Rosenberg, the director of policy analysis for Israel Policy Forum and a prominent “two-state solution” advocate, describes the influence of the book as enormous: “Capitol Hill staffers are talking about the book, everybody is arguing about it, people are intrigued. … it has opened up discussion.” ...

corporate media is deciding the 2008 presidential election: questions guided back to candidates of choice, more time to speak ... see "Talk Clock"

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 | Corporate Media Has Decided The 2008 Election For Us

No need to think for yourself, the MSM will continue to narrow the candidacy field until we're left with the next president.

It's already become clear that the corporate media is deciding the 2008 presidential election; here's how they're doing it:

* "Popular" candidates are placed toward the center of the stage. The few true liberals and true conservatives are positioned on the outskirts.

The majority of questions, though distributed somewhat evenly, are always guided back to the candidates of choice.

The "popular" candidates are given far more time to speak than all other candidates.

The proof is in the minutes, folks. And Senator Dodd's "Talk Clock" says it all:

NIE concluding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program ... sinks CNN 2-hour special: "We Were Warned -- Iran Goes Nuclear"

Posted: Wed., Dec. 5, 2007, 8:00pm PT | Intel report sinks CNN Iran special | Two-hour 'Nuclear' was slated for Dec. 12 | By BRIAN LOWRY

HOLLYWOOD -- The latest National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program four years ago has claimed one casualty: CNN has postponed speculative documentary "We Were Warned -- Iran Goes Nuclear."

The two-hour spec, which was slated for Dec. 12 under the "CNN Presents" banner, was "set partially in the future," featuring a what-if scenario as former government officials -- playing fictional cabinet members -- debate how to deal with the Iranian threat. ...

What's Really Wrong With the MSM [Main Stream Media]?

the liberal media | posted December 6, 2007 (December 24, 2007 issue) | What's Really Wrong With the MSM [Main Stream Media]? | Eric Alterman

Of course, far more is wrong with the mainstream media than can be described, or even enumerated, in one column. But let's give it a shot, using only items that have come up since my last column, all of which speak to the issue of why its members have forfeited our collective trust.

1. Its members consistently defer to conservative Republican Presidents with a history of deliberate deception, allowing them to define their terms. "One of the reasons for not [calling chaos in Iraq a civil war] was ...

2. Its members invite Republican Congressmen, known to be not merely unreliable but delusional, to lie about Democratic Congressmen. When challenged, they reply that they cannot be bothered to discern the truth: Time's Joe Klein, a pundit who terms the Democratic Party "a party with absolutely no redeeming social value," ...

3. Its members invite conservative Republican individuals known to be insane, unbalanced and unconcerned with the truth to lie about Democratic presidential candidates on the front page of their newspapers and when confronted respond that it is not their job to determine the truth. The Washington Post's Perry Bacon published a recent front-page article giving voice to right-wing paranoids, racists and assorted hatemongers who insist that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim ...

4. Its corporations fire, and then buy the silence of, their own reporters in order to hide the truth, when it involves the draft records of certain conservative Republican Presidents. ... After the book's publication, CBS paid Mapes an undisclosed sum to settle her lawsuit against the company and required her to sign a confidentiality agreement covering the deal. ...

5. Its members are so in thrall to the powerful conservative Republican figures they cover that they make up excuses for their self-serving behavior. ... the reason Senate minority leader Trent Lott was resigning: "I think that this is a true 'wants to spend more time with his family' case." Halperin was apparently unaware that Lott--whose politically connected brother-in-law was recently indicted on bribery charges--himself failed to offer this lamest of excuses and also that his resignation came just in time to avoid the enactment of a tough new ethics law ...

6. Its members ignore the substance of politics and instead focus obsessively on atmospherics, leaving voters clueless about the politicians for whom they are expected to vote. ... "We should examine a candidate's public record and full life as opposed to his or her campaign performance," ... [then] published two pieces on the Time website that focused exclusively on the various campaigns, with nary a substance-related syllable ...