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Bibi and Mittens: close friends since '76
Poor Barack Obama: he's not just running against the Tea Party and the muckety-mucks of the Supreme Court, but also against actual members of the world-wide one percent! A taste from a long article printed yesterday on the front page of the New York Times..
The two young men had woefully little in common: one was a wealthy Mormon from Michigan, the other a middle-class Jew from Israel.
Sure, if one looks only at nationality and family income. But both were very bright, hard working, goal-oriented, and comfortable being members of a minority in a majority world.
But in 1976, the lives of Mitt Romney
...whose real first name is actually, no kidding, Willard, was governor of Massachussetts and is currently the front-runner for president on the Publican ticket. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney's foot is in an ideological bucket because of Romneycare, a state-level experiment that should have been a warning against Obamacare if anyone had been paying attention. Romney's charisma is best defined as soporific, which is probably why he is leading the Publican field...
 and Benjamin Netanyahu intersected, briefly but indelibly, in the 16th-floor offices of the Boston Consulting Group, where both had been recruited as corporate advisers. At the most formative time of their careers, they sized each other up during the firm's weekly brainstorming sessions, absorbing the same profoundly analytical view of the world.

That shared experience decades ago led to a warm friendship, little known to outsiders, that is now rich with political intrigue.
Such emotionally loaded language! One gets the impression the New York Times journalist disapproves of such connections for some reason.
Mr. Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is making the case for military action against Iran as Mr. Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, is attacking the B.O. regime for not supporting Mr. Netanyahu more robustly.

The relationship between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Romney -- nurtured over meals in Boston, New York and Jerusalem, strengthened by a network of mutual friends and heightened by their conservative ideologies -- has resulted in an unusually frank exchange of advice and insights on topics like politics, economics and the Middle East.
Remembering always that conservative ideology is to be read as a curse when used by the highly trained journalists of the New York Times.

Posted by: trailing wife 2012-04-09
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=342408