COVERITLIVE.COM

8:54	Hey JJPers

8:54	So I'm here at AIPAC, otherwise known as the American Israel Political Action Committee

8:56	The event is at the DC convention center, there's got to be a couple thousand people here. AIPAC has a huge student activist membership.

8:57	John Kerry and Joe Biden will be speaking soon, but for now we're in the middle of the fancy promo videos explaining "the importance of AIPAC"

8:59

I feel like AIPAC gets a lot of grief on the Left, some merited, some not. The best way I can think to explain AIPAC is that, imagine if there were a political action committee made up of people who absolutely believed that at some point in the near future, black people could be reinslaved, except instead of slavery, people are worried about another Holocaust. That's about as close as I can get to explaining what the stakes are for some of the people here.

9:01	Item on on AIPAC's agenda is pushing for tougher sanctions against Iran, which would focus on hurting their energy sector. You can read about them here:http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22086.html

9:01	So I guess the official count is 6500? There are 6500 people here. That's a lot of people.

9:05	You get a sense of how influential AIPAC is from the decorations in the hall---there are pictures of every American president since Truman meeting with their Israeli counterpart.

9:06	The Secret Service is in force here too, for obvious reasons, since Codename: Celtic is in the house. (For an explanation on that, click here.)

9:14

Alcee Hastings of Florida is here showing his support...in case you don't remember Mr. Hastings, he represents Florida's 23rd Congressional District and is a member of the CBC.

He also said this:

"If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention. Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through."

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