What do you think about Representative Omar being removed from the foreign affairs committee?

Tit for tat.

In my opinion, the Republicans ARE (being) racist, and willing to mendaciously abuse any pretext to remove good people from cabinet positions.

As usual, I quite agree with what Heather Cox Richardson had to say about the events.

She is a clear security risk IMO and the right decision was made. It’s not racism, sexism or any of that. Just because someone was fairly elected does not mean that they should automatically get security clearances. There are likely others that need the ouster both democrat and republican alike.

@Blackwater_Park Risk how? I don’t think she ever should have been put on that committee, but I wasn’t thinking in terms of security risk. I don’t think she is some sort of spy.

I’m personally tired of Democrats defending Omar, and I said that back with the “Benjamins” incident, and there has been more than that. Not that they (we) all defend her, but too many in my opinion.

I don’t care if the Republicans went after her because they are racist, I am fine with her not being on that committee. They probably really think in their heads they removed her because they believe she is antisemitic and have total amnesia about Marjorie Taylor Green talking about Jewish lasers.

I also agree with Navarro that it is outright hypocritical if the Republicans are saying they are removing Omar because she’s antisemitic. The thing is, I don’t think that means Omar should stay on that committee, my feelings is Majorie Taylor Green shouldn’t be on the homeland committee.

Right move 100%.

@Zaku From your article: Also today, former president Trump “retruthed” the words of a person who warned that he and “80,000,000” were willing to fight for Trump and were “Locked and LOADED.” In the House, some of the far-right group are wearing AR-15 pins, but when Emine Yücel of Talking Points Memo asked Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) why she was wearing one, her office answered that it was “about sponsoring a gun bill and has nothing to do with whatever blueanon conspiracy theories are being floated on Capitol Hill,” a reference to the idea that Democrats—rather than the Republicans like Greene who were QAnon adherents—are embracing conspiracy theories. The members wearing the pins have not, so far, introduced any gun bills.

How on earth can people be this horrible? The Republican politicians cater to the extremists in their party it’s just unbelievable. I’ve been stunned by it for 40 years. Since Reagan.

I find the whole thing hilarious. She has shown hatred of Israel, she has supported Muslim terrorists trying to downplay the 911 attacks, and many more. She is not someone I would want on a committee that is supposed to look honestly at foreign affairs. But I find it hilarious that the excuse she has is that the Republicans are racist. The head of the committee is a black man so why wasn’t he kicked off too? “The Squad” has been saying and doing whatever they want for a long, long time now. They are finally being held accountable and they don’t like it. They remind me of teenagers that get punished for breaking the house rules.

@seawulf575 What about the hypocrisy angle? Do you think Marjorie Taylor Greene should be held accountable?

@JLeslie “I’m personally tired of Democrats defending Omar, and I said that back with the “Benjamins” incident, and there has been more than that. Not that they (we) all defend her, but too many in my opinion.”

Omar is one of the very best congresspeople this country has. She’s not an antisemite, she’s a big supporter of Bernie Sanders who is Jewish (a fact that’s inconvenient for people cynically conflating criticisms of Israeli policy and antisemitism). She, like myself and other progressives have a major problem with the current Israeli policies towards illegal settlement expansion in Israel, the apartheid/ethnic cleansing, and the political forces in play in the US that support such actions including the lobbying groups like AIPAC that have funded primaries and Republican campaigns against progressive democrats.

As was explained to you during the “Benjamins” incident, ask anyone between the ages of 20 and 50 what “all about the Benjamins” refers to and they’ll explain that the $100 bill is a “Benjamin.” It’s a term that means “it’s all about the money.” The song is listed as #32 on VH1’s all time hip-hop chart and it’s inextricably ingrained into American pop-culture—So much so that there’s a crappy action-comedy movie that was made “All about the Benjamins” in 2002. I realize that your generation may not have missed the reference and that there’s a lot of news commentary in mainstream media that hasn’t exactly help clarify things for you guys, but I can assure you that Benjamin Netanyahu is the farthest thing from anyone’s mind when they refer to the phrase. Go walk up to people on the street that are between 20 and 50 years-old and ask them what they mean. Mention Netanyahu, and they’ll probably respond “Benjamin who?”

If you have other substantive complaints about Omar, I’m happy to hear them. I think we’re damn lucky to have congresspeople who don’t take donations from SuperPACs or major corporations.

“All about the Benjamin’s” means it is all about the money. At least that was the saying in my generation.

It was simple political revenge, over Goser and MTG. They knew McCarthy would approve because thats how he won their vote. Many Republicans didn’t care who it was, just a flex.

This is all just partisanship revenge for partisanship in the past.

This was her response. American is worse without her voice on the foreign affairs committee.

@JLeslie What did MTG say? What were the comments she made that were anti-semetic?

@seawulf575 Here’s the original Facebook post MTG posted.

@gorillapaws and that is anti-semetic how, exactly?

@seawulf575 “and that is anti-semetic how, exactly?”

This explains it.

@gorillapaws Ahhh….Now I get it. She starts talking about corruption in California and how it contributes to the wildfires and then states what witnesses reported about how the fires started which ties back to how a proposed new power generator (solar panels in space that are supposed to send the energy back to a receiving station) gets power back to Earth. And that is anti-semetic. I see. BTW, the idea of space solar generators is not new. Here is an article from the government about them. Are all people on the left so desperate to try making ties to things that they can use against Republicans?

@seawulf575 I think it was more about the Rothschild controlling a laser to deliberately ignite forrest fires to profit on stock purchases or to facilitate the high-speed rail. Honestly, MTG has the writing skills of a middle school dropout and the intellect of a lamp post with dim bulbs… it’s kind of hard to figure out what the fuck she was rambling about other than it involved wealthy jews profiting off of harm they were intentionally causing to people with space lasers.

@gorillapaws You do realize Jews are accused and stereotyped about being all about the money don’t you? Let alone that to my Jewish ears Benjamin just sounds like she’s talking about Jewish men, but I’ll let that slide. You know, we are the bankers foreclosing on innocent people’s homes, and the slum lords in the ghettos, and we own the media and Hollywood, and have a world order we are trying to achieve through money and power. We are all rich.~

Maybe she was just young and ignorant. Do you think it is ok to use that term now that you know how it sounds to some people? How it sounds to the minority group.

Do you think it’s ok to say “Jew is down” if the people aren’t antisemitic, but just always used that term?

I don’t agree with everything Israel does either, and I don’t know all of her positions on international affairs around the world. I guess I could look into that. Just keep in mind the Arab world is HUGE in the Middle East. There is a ton of land, and Israel is mini small and a Democracy with equality for men and women. Why don’t the other Arab countries help the Palestinians more? I want the Palestinians to be well and do well.

I think if Marjorie Taylor Greene had said “it’s all about the Benjamin’s” and you heard the Jewish reaction you wouldn’t be so quick to excuse it.

@seawulf575 The candidate, Marjorie Taylor Greene, suggested that Muslims do not belong in government; thinks black people “are held slaves to the Democratic Party”; called George Soros, a Jewish Democratic megadonor, a Nazi; and said she would feel “proud” to see a Confederate monument if she were black because it symbolizes progress made since the Civil War.

I fine with it. I have some other suggestions.

@gorillapaws She was going on about how corrupt California had been, catering to big business at the expense of the state and the people. She tied that directly to the wildfires. The ONLY tie to Rothschild is that they were part of the big business that was being catered to. To try taking the name Rothschild and say that is a Jewish name so therefore she must have been ranting about anti-Semitic things is really a stretch and basically racist by those claiming it. It isn’t the best writing I’ve ever seen, but it certainly isn’t hard to follow.

@KNOWITALL I’d have to see the citations for each of those claims to see how it was couched. Just like with what @gorillapaws just cited, there isn’t anything anti-Semitic in her statement but the left tried making it such. As for Soros being a Nazi, I’d have to say he does have some ideas Hitler would envy. I’d call him more of a Socialist or a globalist asshole, but that gets into semantics. And just because you don’t like someone that happens to be Jewish does not mean you are anti-Semitic. It means you don’t like someone that happens to be Jewish. And saying the black people are held slaves to the Democratic Party she isn’t wrong. The Democrats have kept them economically disadvantaged through social policies that encourage the breakdown of their families and keep them dependent on the Federal Government. And many black people are starting to wake up to just this viewpoint.

But compare that with Omar who was denied access to Israel when basically the rest of the Foreign Affairs committee was admitted due to her anti-Israel speech and efforts to stir up trouble for them in the form of boycotts. There isn’t any haze area there. She did say many things against Israel and many has been called out on many of them. Even her own party had to force her to apologize for some of them which she did, reluctantly and with deflections.

@seawulf575 You know I won’t defend any of them at this point. I just wish they were better examples for the next generation.

@KNOWITALL And you know I am all for equal justice for all. I want everyone held to the same standard which includes honest evaluation of their words and motives, not accusations presented as facts.

@JLeslie AIPAC is a terrible organization. Omar was being critical of a terrible organization because they fund the campaigns of horrible people including many MAGA Republicans that were trying to decertify the election results. AIPAC is all-in on supporting the extreme right wing policies and politicians in Israel and American politicians who do so. I have nothing but contempt for right wing Israeli politicians that support grotesque, illegal and inhuman policies towards the occupied territories. The fact that my tax dollars are being used to support such efforts makes me complicit in such activities, and it sickens me.

Understand, that position doesn’t make one antisemitic. There are left wing Israeli groups that I whole-heartedly support (as does every other progressive out there that I’m aware of). Supporting international law, and international human rights organizations like the United Nations, and Amnesty International is not antisemitic. Conflating the two in a cynical political maneuver to deflect from legitimate policy criticism is a weaponization of the term “antisemitic” itself that does real harm to the actual victims of antisemitism and Jewish people everywhere.

@JLeslie “Do you think it is ok to use that term now that you know how it sounds to some people? How it sounds to the minority group.”

Absolutely. The time to get upset about this was in 1997. If you want to culturally appropriate a phrase used by gangster rappers from the 90’s describing their rags-to-riches stories and lifestyles, and retcon it into being about antisemitic tropes, then you’re a couple of decades late to the party. It’s part of the American vernacular. It may be a newer term for you, but people have been saying that phrase for longer than some of the people on Fluther have been alive…

The context you may be failing to appreciate here is the money-in-politics angle. Every Republican takes money from Superpacs and big business. If there was a billionaire famous for smashing puppies for profit, they’d all take checks from him too. Most of the Democratic Party is also in this same boat. Between bundlers, lobbyists, SuperPACs, corporate interests, and spending their days on the phone begging multimillionaire donors for money, DC is swimming in legalized bribery.

There was an organization set up to combat this called Justice Democrats. One requirement to be a candidate with them is that your funding comes from small dollar donors. It’s “Just—US” as in “us,” the people and not the powerful elite. Despite all of the systems in place to oppose them and the fortunes spent to defeat them and all of the odds being stacked against them, some of them, like Omar and AOC made it to congress. Then I see Democrats trying to tear them down, while supporting candidates that would be thrilled to talk about how much they want to help the working class (and then quietly kill a bill that does so in committee while taking a fat check from an interested party). One example is Cory Booker. And it is “all about the Benjamins” for these politicians. Calling out the corrupting power of money in politics is fair game. Calling out the corrupting power of AIPAC on America’s foreign policy to Israel is also fair game. MTG is fine with taking checks from shitty people.

AIPAC and similar groups have worked hard to defeat candidate that I support and would have done great things for the American people (including Jewish Americans). Imagine if there were pro right-wing Russian PACs that were pulling that crap?

I’d encourage you not to allow yourself to be used by Republicans and listen to the wise words of Anna Kaufman’s piece The vote against Ilhan Omar does a disservice to Jews – and the fight against antisemitism.

“So when Republicans rise to the pulpit and pontificate on the ‘power of rhetoric’ using it as a cudgel to force Omar out of important government business, we can object. And if they want to find a group to use as a convenient excuse to justify their own brand of hate, we can tell them they better shop around.”

Progressives categorically aren’t anti-semitic.

It’s all about the Benjamins is a song meaning it’s about the money:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzCboWqtqYY

The comment of “all about the Benjamins, baby!” had to do with Jews bribing Republicans. Again, no proof so not really the thing to say about a foreign nation that is our ally. Not what you want in a person on the foreign affairs committee.