Forbes echoes the report that Sheldon Adelson has now given $10 million to a Romney superpac:
A well-placed source in the Adelson camp with direct knowledge of the casino billionaire’s thinking says that further donations will be “limitless.”
Adelson, who has built Las Vegas Sands into an global casino empire, will do “whatever it takes” to defeat Obama, this source says. And given that Adelson is worth $24.9 billion–and told Forbes in a recent rare interview about his political giving that he had been willing to donate as much as $100 million to his initial presidential preference, Newt Gingrich–that “limitless” description telegraphs potential nine-digit support of Romney.
Adelson, this source continues, believes that “no price is too high” to protect the U.S. from what he sees as Obama’s “socialization” of America, as well as securing the safety of Israel. He added that Adelson, 78, considers this to be the most important election of his lifetime.
Why won’t the Democratic Party turn Adelson into the Koch Brothers? Why won’t it politicize Adelson’s foreign policy extremism? Because the Democratic Party doesn’t actually oppose Adelson on his issue, Israeli expansion. And remember what Adelson said, he would prefer that his children serve in the Israeli army to the American one, and he regrets his own service in American uniform. All we care about is being good citizens of Israel.
Update: McCain says that Adelson’s money is “foreign” money, from the casinos in China.
Here’s more. Jonathan Chait. A self-described ‘liberal hawk'(basically a neocon warmongerer and hater liberal principles abroad and a gushy, pro-Keynesian, pro-social justice liberal at home, haven’t we seen that hypocrisy before?)
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/06/sheldon-adelson-crazy-also-crazy-rich.html
Notice that even if his quote does contain a snippet about Israel he completely ignores that lead and goes striaght into a fraudulent ‘it’s all about socialism’.
If you remember, Newt Gingrich didn’t hesitate to go far to the left on Bain and/or ‘vulture capitalism’. If Sheldon Adelson was motivated primarily by socialism, he would never have supported Gingrich. But that wasn’t the issue.
But Chait knows this and he ignores this. Why? Because he is a shomer Yisrael too. Just like Chuck Schumer. And he isn’t alone in this.
So you’re right. The media will mention Israel, simply because not doing so(like NYT did in it’s frontpage, without even mentioning the word once) will simply look silly. Instead they will downplay it. And the question you ask is so brutal but true.. Adelson definitely deserves to be the new Koch. He has worked overtime to destroy Obama on Israel. But you can’t have progressive views on Israel inside the Democratic party mainstream because then you get smeared as an anti-Semite. Paul Krugman understood that when he praised Beinart.
The same dynamic is at play when Rachel Maddow is doing a Q&A for her new book and asked why all these Middle-Eastern wars have suddenly started to occur. Flabbergasted, she stumbles and answers that ‘they just do’. As if out of thin air.
As if the ‘dual containment’ had nothing to do with it, despite the fact that the foreign policy establishment was wildly against it because they understood the messages it would send and it would inflame the region(and it inspired bin Laden), as well as massively increase the risk of war. And of course the internationalist mandarins understood it just right; all their warnings came true.
Now tell me, who was behind ‘dual containment’ and why did he push for it? Which lobby helped him in Washington?
All these questions isn’t something Maddow wants to answer, because she has a D.C. career to tend to. As do all these people who won’t nail Chait on his downplaying on the Israel lobby(or his lashing out against all those who raise the issue) or all the people who won’t make Adelson the nemesis that the Koch brothers became, despite the fact that he in many ways fits the bill even better.
All roads lead to AIPAC.
and spent whatever it took to “negotiate” with Chinese gov’t authorities to get those Macao gambling contracts
Oh, by the way, check this out:
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/mccain-says-adelson-contributions-are-foreign-money/2012/06/15/
Although, from what I’ve understood the article gets it slightly wrong. McCain knows he is treading on water and referenced China(Sheldon owns a lot of Casinos there) as an example of where he gets his money from and therefore his talk of ‘foreign money’.
But I think everyone still gets what he actually means. Didn’t think it would be a Republican who openly defied the lobby like this, much less one which is a fellow Republican and one of the lobby’s top players.
Interesting. But let’s all count-down until organized American Jewish machers start calling him an anti-Semite in 5..4..
There was a certain amount of naivety in the US political system, left over from a bygone era. Adelson and his fellow fascists have manipulated it ruthlessly to totally corrupt the political system to the extent that it is impossible for any form of democratic debate or representation to exist. McCarthy didn’t have a clue, it wasn’t the communists who were the fifth columnists and seditionaries. All the candidates are now bought, sold and owned by billionaires, AIPAC and other corporate interests, who also stuff boards, lobby groups and think tanks with their placemen. A president who wanted reform, or even some mildly progressive policies, wouldn’t stand a chance against the blitzkreig of ruthless manipulative demagogues who hide behind lobby groups, think tanks and ‘sponsors’. They have screwed the system, and now, in the midst of the worst recession since the thirties, a myriad of economic and social problems, they want more trillion dollar wars, more loss of life and more chaos, at the expense of a country who are not in the remotest danger from a bogeyman solely created from Israel’s paranoid and aggressive hysteria.
Krauss, brilliant and concise analysis!