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Bibi taking care of business while Bambi runs out the clock

Dave Weinbaum

By Dave Weinbaum

Published August 15, 2014

Bibi taking care of business while Bambi runs out the clock
Friends of mine put forth the premise that leaders have no effect on winning or losing. I argued the other side, posing a quote from football's Bum Phillips about fellow coach Don Shula. "He can take his'n and beat your'n and take your'n and beat his'n."

Such is the case between President Barack Obama and Israeli Premier, Benjamin Netanyahu. There's obvious dislike between the two leaders, but I believe it was a surprise to Netanyahu. He was shocked by the pre-hatred bubbling over from the young American President.

It started in 2010 when Obama treated Netanyahu like a beggar, imprisoning him in the WH basement while he dined with his family. Before Barack abruptly left the meeting, he assigned Bibi a homework problem: How to cope with the death of the Jewish State under Obama's demand that Israel return to 1949 borders. This was to be a precondition to negotiating a two-state solution with the Palestinians. In a display of ugliness from Obama, no joint statement or photo op came from the two leaders upon the Israeli's departure.

This from a man who bows before Saudi Kings and hosts brutal African Dictators in gala style.

Why the animosity from the leaders of countries who represent one of the longest and productive alliances of the USA? One need only look at their back grounds to see the similarities and differences:


  • Netanyahu was born in Israel, the first Israeli-born premier. In 1991, Obama's publicists, Edward J. Acton and Jane Dystel, claimed Barack was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. Musta been a typo.

  • Bibi is Jewish. Obama was the son of a Muslim which—according to Islam—makes him a Muslim--forever . Barack went to Trinity Church for twenty years under Reverend Jeremiah Wright and has close ties to Nation of Islam head, Louis Farrakhan and Catholic Priest Father Pfleger.

  • In between schooling Netanyahu served in the IDF in three wars on Israel's front lines: The Seven Day War in 1967, the War of Attrition in '69-70 and the '73 Yom Kippur conflict. He was shot in the shoulder during a military incursion in 1972 and fought in various other battles between wars. Bibi was a team leader in an elite Israeli special forces team. Obama did not serve in the US military.

  • Bibi worked as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group from 1976-1978 where he was a colleague of Mitt Romney. Barack taught Constitutional law and became a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago.

  • Netanyahu entered politics in 1982, was Israel's Ambassador to the UN for four years.Amongst other offices, he was elected premier three times. He served from '96 til '99, 2009 'til 2013 and was again elected in 2013.

  • Obama ran for state senator in IL, then US Senator in 2004. Barack won the US Presidency in 2008 and 2012.

  • Barack forced the abandonment of Iraq without leaving residual troops. Netanyahu resigned from the Israeli government when Ariel Sharon removed all the Jews out of Gaza.

  • Obama's current approval ratings are 40%. Netanyahu is at over 90%. Similarities:

  • Obama was educated in two countries, Indonesia and the US. Bin was educated in Israel and the USA. Netanyahu went to grade school in Israel and high school in Philadelphia where he was on the debate team.

  • Both had extensive university educations. Obama has a Law Degree from Harvard and attended Occidental and Columbia Colleges. Netanyahu has degrees in Architecture from MIT, a Master's in management from MIT Sloan School of Management. While there, he attended Harvard—studying political science.

  • Binyamin lost his older brother, Yonatan to Palestinian terrorists during Israel's Raid on Entebbe. Over 100 hostages were saved in Uganda. Obama lost his mother to cancer and father to a drunk-driving crash in Kenya. Obama senior had abandoned JR. soon after he was born, coming back to visit for a short time when Barack was eight.

Netanyahu has first-hand knowledge of the challenges of terror and the resulting wars. Bibi is an expert in the field. Obama doesn't have a smidgeon of the knowledge the Israeli Premier has and spent much of his first year apologizing to Muslims for America, on their soil.

One can also conclude that Obama relegates Israel's Netanyahu to the despised colonialists of his father's Kenya. Barack returned a bust of Churchill to English diplomats. This was a gift to America, presented to President Bush intended to sit in the White House forever.

The English were not amused.

Obama is a new-age golfer. He got a holistic-in-one

Since Obama takes a lot of vacations, has a plethora of four to five hour golf outings and gives a record amount of fundraising speeches, by the power vested in me as a pundit with at least some common sense, I recommend that the eminently MORE qualified Binyamin Netanyahu sit in for the President. Thus, while Barack disengages from a world who even his own Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel claimed was "…blowing up all around us," at least we'll know the best interests of America will be served—that is—until President Obama returns.

Wonder what Bum Phillips would think.

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DaveWeinbaum.com. He is a businessman, writer and part-time stand-up comic and resides in a Midwest red state.

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