I guess Charynda has embraced my cynical expression as her ethical gyroscope: "When all else fails lower your standards."
I would think this young lady is not getting much out of her college education or, at the very least, is attending the wrong college.
Charynda's name would suggest she is possibly a black or Hispanic student (uh oh - racial profiling) so I guess she has decided it's ok to be dishonest as long as you are my crook. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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My recent LTE:
"We Americans are experiencing an interesting and frightening political phenomenon.
Though our president has big ears he appears deaf. Though he has a wide charming and engaging smile he has a seemingly disingenuous personality and questionably flawed character.
In his brief life he has quickly proven to be a disciple of the Peter Principle by his display of cool incompetency and having reached it at so early an age.
He has traveled the world decrying and apologizing for our nation's faults and domestically has picked food fights with members of the Supreme Court, loyal allies, bible thumping gun toting citizens all the way to Fox Television. He blames everything under the sun on his predecessor - George Bush.
While Obama swore an oath to defend our nation he has allowed our borders to leak like a sieve and has sued Arizona proclaiming his opposition to their racial profiling legislation when, in fact, he simply wants to curry favor with Hispanic voters. He campaigned as a healer but, to date, has been among the most racially divisive and partisan presidents in memory.
His policies are drowning our nation in debt and the dollar continues gasping for breath.
His own poll ratings have plummeted as if they were a lead 'fortune cookie' dropped from a high peak. The messiah can appear on as many inane daytime talk shows as he wishes. However, I doubt it will be of much help. In fact, it might further turn off what remaining and fast shrinking support he has among those with half a brain.
Where all of this ends is any one's guess. My own sense is that we are in for a protracted period of sustained unemployment, a deflated standard of living, much continued economic and social pain and suffering coincident with a decline in our effectiveness in matters foreign.
Quite a hefty price to pay for a lot of unnecessary change and misplaced audacity."
(See 2 below.)
This LTE writer ain't too happy either. (See 2a below.)
Obama resurrected that one word - racism! Turns out, in his desire to alter political alignments, Obama touched the third rail! Blow suggests Obama could start by being noble - fat chance of that. Obama is more likely to dig his heels in and make things worse. It is a DNA thing with him.
He professes to be a Christian but his Muslim angst continues to interfere with his thinking.(See 2b below.)
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Netanyahu responds to Hamas' unprovoked rocket attack and destroys a military training center in Gaza funded by Iran. Hard to believe $250 million now lies in rubble. (See 3 below.)
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Assad tells Saudi King he would like the Hariri investigation results to go away because it implicates Assad. (See 4 below.)
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Caroline Glick stones Oliver and places him with his brethren. (See 5 below.)
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Finally more populist economic double speak from our Peter Principle President.
The unemployed need relief so extend jobless benefits - suggesting the economy is weak.
Increase taxes on the wealthy and rid the nation of GW's tax cuts - suggesting the economy is strong enough to raise taxes
.
The theory behind all of this is driven by the fact that Obama has led a charmed life and is used to having it both ways.
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Dick
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1)Obama calls charges against Rangel 'troubling'
By LAURIE KELLMAN
President Barack Obama on Friday called ethics charges against Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel "very troubling" and said he hopes the longtime lawmaker can end his career with dignity. Several House Democrats went further, flat-out urging the New York congressman to resign.
"He's somebody who's at the end of his career," Obama said in an interview that aired Friday on "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric." "I'm sure that what he wants is to be able to end his career with dignity. And my hope is that it happens."
Obama, speaking on the issue for the first time, praised the 20-term Rangel for serving his constituents well but called the more than one-dozen tax and disclosure charges against him "very troubling."
It was hardly an endorsement for the veteran lawmaker, but fell well short of the calls for resignation Rangel received on the eve of the House's August recess. As House Democrats headed home, they wrestled with how to handle the matter in their districts ahead of the midterm elections.
Republicans, meanwhile, raced ahead with plans to make Rangel the face of corrupt Washington under the rule of Democrats who had vowed to clean up Congress.
For his part, Rangel met with perhaps his staunchest supporters, members of the New York state delegation, in the stately Capitol parlor named for the Ways and Means Committee that he headed until March.
"He indicated there was some sloppiness" in his official papers, Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., told reporters, "but, you know, there's no criminality here."
House rules and credibility — not criminality — were the reasons cited by more than a half dozen House Democrats known to have called for Rangel's resignation by late afternoon Friday.
A House panel on Thursday made public for the first time 13 charges of misusing his office and tax and disclosure violations against Rangel, 80, as it opened the trial phase of the ethics proceedings against him. If Rangel and the ethics committee do not settle the case, it goes to a public trial this fall, at the height of an election season in which every member of the House, 36 in the Senate and the Democratic majorities of both chambers are on the line.
Either conditionally or outright, Democrats calling for Rangel's resignation included Rep. Walter Minnick of Idaho, Betty Sutton of Ohio, John Yarmuth of Kentucky, Zack Space of Ohio, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona and Mary Jo Kilroy of Ohio.
"Too many politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, have fallen victim to the idea that they are 'different' than regular folks and nothing could be further from the truth," Kirkpatrick said in a statement.
"It is our job as members of Congress to hold each other accountable to a higher standard regardless of party," she added. "If the serious charges against (Rangel) are accurate, he needs to resign."
Rangel denies the charges and says the indictment released Thursday contains factual errors.
"We've heard Charlie in the Ways and Means Committee, and he's addressed these charges. He never denied they happened. He always has an explanation. You can excuse one or two, but not 13," Yarmuth told the Louisville Courier-Journal in an interview published Friday. "I don't see how he can stay if they're true. I believe they are."
Back home in Rangel's Harlem district, he remains revered and could well win reelection if his political career survives the ethics probe. One constituent said Friday she had mixed feelings after reading news accounts of the allegations against him.
"I don't think he is 100 percent honest, but he's no worse than other politicians," said Charynda Morez, a college student, who was buying groceries at a deli.
She said that she didn't know how he should be punished, but that Rangel should resign anyway. Rangel has four apartments "when there are people who don't have a home," she said, citing allegations that Rangel lived in four combined rent-stabilized apartments instead of one, in violation of New York City law.
Democratic leaders are urging their members to cast the election as one about a choice between their party, which under President Barack Obama has overhauled health care and Wall Street, and a GOP-tea party combination that wants to roll back Democratic accomplishments.
House Republicans relished using Rangel to change the subject — especially if he does not reach a settlement with the ethics committee. A public trial equates to a free media presentation of the misdeeds of one of the most senior Democrats in the House.
The House Republicans' campaign arm released a list of Democrats who have not returned campaign contributions they received from Rangel during their careers and said those lawmakers would face questions about the matter from constituents during the August break.
"It's very difficult for Democrats to make the case that this is a 'choice' election when the national headlines are focused around an ethics scandal that has clearly impacted the party in power," said Ken Spain, spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee.
Rangel retained many supporters Friday. The New York delegation and the Congressional Black Caucus, which was co-founded by Rangel, urged their colleagues not to rush to judgment. House leaders eager to avoid alienating black voters remained mum on what Rangel should do.
Some Democrats privately said they took a small measure of comfort in one revelation. Rep. Gene Green, the Texas Democrat who led the four-member bipartisan panel of investigators, told reporters that his committee recommended a relatively mild punishment for Rangel — reprimand, a statement of wrongdoing voted by the whole House that carries no other penalty.
But statements continued to trickle out that left no doubt that at some point, Democrats would have to look out for No. 1 - themselves.
"If at the trial's conclusion Mr. Rangel is found guilty by his peers, then he should incur the full punishment allowed by the House, including removal from office," said Rep. Bobby Bright, D-Ala.
1a)Why Charlie Rangel Will Likely Survive
Doug Mataconis
While the political media breathlessly reports the details of the ethics charges against Congressman Charlie Rangel and speculate over his fate, Jazz Shaw points out at Pajamas Media that, absent expulsion, Rangel is likely to hold on to his seat:
Don’t count on any significant backlash from the voters. Rangel’s various ethical problems have been well known for a long time now, but he continues to win reelection with astronomical margins. Take a look at the map of New York’s 15th District some time. Unlike many vast, rural districts around the nation, the 15th is one of the most compact you will find. It runs along a roughly seven mile stretch of the Hudson River, taking in Fort George, Harlem, and Marcus Garvey, as well as grabbing a few plots of land out near LaGuardia Airport.
Most people could comfortably walk the length and breadth of this district in a single sunny afternoon, and Charlie has walked it many, many times over the last forty years. He knows residents and business owners on a first name basis. He has followed the tried and true New York political playbook, making sure that every resident is made aware of each bit of federal pork money he brings home. He gets his name plastered all over everything from buildings at City College to bus stops along Broadway. He ensures that the correct wheels — and palms — are greased and that the right people get free tickets to see the Knicks and the Giants. In short, he’s been playing this game a long time and he’s a master of it.
(…)
In short, none of this should be taken as an indication that the Republicans are about to pick off an extra House seat in NY-15.
Perhaps not a Republican seat but there might be a possibility that these charges could have an impact on Rangel in the upcoming September Democratic Primary:
(July 22) — Word that Democrat Charlie Rangel will face a trial in the House of Representatives on charges of ethics violations may spell trouble for the veteran New York congressman in his primary contest against New York State Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV.
Rangel, who defeated Powell’s famous father, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., in the 1970 Democratic primary, had been expected to win the Sept. 14 contest to become the party nominee. But a poll taken less than a week before today’s announcement by the House shows that support among Democrats may be shifting to Powell.
According to Public Policy Polling, 39 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for Rangel in the primary, while 21 percent said they’d vote for Powell. Perhaps more worrisome than the rather tepid showing for the incumbent, however, is the finding that 24 percent of voters remain undecided. A high-publicity trial in the House may not do much to sway those voters toward Rangel.
This is Charlie Rangel we’re talking about, though, and he knows what it takes to win in a district he’s represented since Richard Nixon was President and he’s running in a primary that seems designed to guarantee that he wins:
Right now, five candidates will appear on the primary ballot, and they are all decidedly B-list — at best. Start with Rangel’s chief challenger, Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV. On paper, he’s the perfect choice: His father, for whom a main artery running through the heart of Harlem is named, represented the district for years, before being ousted by Rangel in 1970. In fact, Powell tried to challenge Rangel once before, back in 1994, a race he lost by a two-to-one margin.
(…)
Besides Powell, there are three lesser-known candidates: Vincent Morgan, who once worked for Rangel; Joyce Johnson, who has waged losing campaigns for City Council and the state legislature; and Jonathan Tasini, who is best-known for his hopeless challenge to Hillary Clinton in a 2006 U.S. Senate primary. None of them have the resources to break through and win — but all of them, taken together, have the potential to gobble up anti-Rangel votes that would otherwise go to Powell. Their presence lowers the bar for Rangel: He can probably survive with 40 to 45 percent of the vote.
Since the poll referenced above already has him at 39 percent, I’d say Rangel is safe on September 14th.
Expulsion, then, would be the only way to get Rangel out of office but, as Ed Morrissey notes, that option seems to already be off the table:
WASHINGTON – A House investigator says the panel handling Rep. Charlie Rangel’s ethics case has recommended a reprimand by the full House — but that decision could be months away.
Rep. Gene Green, who’s on the subcommittee that investigated the New York Democrat, says that’s the recommended penalty for the 20-term New York Democrat. Rangel is facing 13 charges of wrongdoing.
A reprimand. The same penalty that Joe Wilson got for yelling “You Lie” during a Presidential speech last September. It’s barely even a slap on the wrist
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2)The Ruling Class Tosses Americans Overboard
By Geoffrey P. Hunt
The saga of Senator John Kerry's $7 million sailing yacht tied up on the Newport waterfront in the tax haven of Rhode Island proved again how adept Democrats are at spending other people's money. This time the $7 million was presumably spent from his wife's inherited fortune.
But the larger story here isn't about tax havens. And it isn't about hypocrisy. And it's far less about trophy wives with trust funds. It's not even about being a lifelong leech working in government jobs sucking the blood out of beleaguered taxpayers. It's about the increasing distance and disconnects between the governing class and everybody else. It's about abandoning American workers and deliberately staying out of touch with and out of reach from everyday people.
$7 million is a lot of dough. Easily more than twice what the vast majority of Americans will earn over their entire lifetimes. And those modest earning prospects are slipping away as two out of ten Americans of working age are now either unemployed or underemployed.
Pay no attention to Sen Kerry's hollow support of US job creation. I wonder why in May he co-sponsored the vacuous Senate bill "Honoring the Entrepreneurial Spirit of Small Business": . Maybe he was feeling guilty for having completely dismissed American boatyards and instead taken delivery three months earlier of the 72 foot Isabel, built in New Zealand.
I also wonder how his aiding and abetting outsourcing, shamelessly steering clear of American labor, is going down with his pals at the AFL-CIO who endorsed him for president in 2004. No doubt at least half of Isabel's $7 million price tag was labor requiring some 70,000 hours of mostly highly skilled work.. That translates into 35 to 50 boatbuilders, carpenters, mechanics, machinists, sailmakers, technicians, varnishers and riggers. Couldn't this work have been done at a premier custom boat builder in Maine, say Hinckley's in Southwest Harbor or Brooklin Boatyard?
Or if he was stuck on something more upscale, why not Hodgdon's Yachts in East Boothbay? Five generations of Hodgdons have built the finest luxury sailing yachts in the world as the cold molded 124 foot Antonisa and 98 foot Windcrest can attest. Hodgdon's has at least 35 of the finest boatbuilders to be found anywhere on the globe. But not good enough for John Kerry.
How about Goetz Boats in Bristol, Rhode Island, a mere 20 minute Cadillac Escalade SUV ride from Newport? Goetz has built nine Americas Cup boats. Goetz's most recent construction is the 83 foot Highland Fling a carbon fiber luxury racing jewel. Not good enough for John Kerry.
All too pedestrian for John Kerry. Anyone can get a boat built in Maine or Rhode Island. But none of that would have the glitter and cachet of built-in-New Zealand.
Look, John Kerry and his wife can spend their tax-free municipal bond income anywhere they please. But the prospect of a US Senator splurging on a $7 million personal pleasure craft built halfway around the globe while Americans suffer through the worst economic catastrophe since the 1930s is not just unseemly -- it's nauseating. Displays of this kind of elitist condescension and disdain for the everyday people were once upon a time reserved for the likes of the French aristocracy before 1789.
Equally obscene is the reported millions being spent on the Chelsea Clinton wedding. At least the Clintons had the good sense to have Chelsea tie the knot in the US. And caterers, wedding planners, dress makers, florists, chefs, wait staff and dishwashers, landscape workers and porta-potty contractors all along the NY State Hudson River estates will enjoy good fortune at least for a couple of days. Unlike the hopelessly out-of-work boat builders further Downeast who are now resorting to raking blueberries and taking short term stints as deckhands on clean-up barges in the Gulf of Mexico.
Of course it is entirely possible that Kerry had nothing to do with the yacht Isabel, except measuring chocks on the foredeck to store his windsurfing board.
And while the governing class arrogance and alienation from everyday Americans is worsening, the bastions of big government keep ever expanding. The Capitol district in Washington DC is a concrete berm and steel barrier enclave with few hotel vacancies and virtually full employment. Unsupervised staffers and unbridled regulators daily impose thousands of pages of rules on us. Even presumably free market stalwarts inside American companies are convinced that Washington is the center of the universe.
The American electorate has always been wary of decision makers beyond their existential line of sight. So were the founders declaring in the last amendment in the Bill of Rights, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
If the courts today won't reaffirm the Tenth Amendment, the voters will. And sooner or later, the John Kerrys of the governing class will be the ones cast adrift.
2a)
2b)Obama’s ‘Race’ War
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Mature commentary on the subject has descended into tribal tirades, hypersensitive defenses and rapid-fire finger-pointing. The very definition of the word seems under assault, being bent and twisted back on itself and stretched and pulled beyond recognition.
Many on the left have taken an absolutist stance, that the anti-Obama sentiment reeks of racism and denial only served to confirm guilt. Many on the right feel as though they have been convicted without proof — that tossing “racism” their way is itself racist.
The “racists crying racism” meme is being pushed hard, on multiple fronts, all centered around the president.
After the N.A.A.C.P. asked the Tea Party “to condemn extremist elements” within its ranks, the right went on a witch hunt for black racists in the N.A.A.C.P. Not finding any, it created one. Andrew Breitbart presents: “The Sherrod Charade.”
Journalism is being tarred with the sins of some on JournoList, a now defunct listserv through which a handful of people wrote heretical things like the possibility of calling conservatives racist to divert attention from Obama’s connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.
This was hardly a vast left-wing conspiracy, but it fed the right’s defensive narrative that the word “racism” has become a weapon — not the shot of a rifle carefully aimed at a clear target, but a shotgun blast sprayed wide and loose at all things anti-Obama.
There’s also the charge that the president is protecting the New Black Panthers from voter intimidation charges. This nonstory has been knocked down more times than a blind boxer, but the right keeps pushing it.
And then there’s Glenn Beck. He’s on a crusade to convince the lemmings of Foxland that President Obama is governing under the principles of Black Liberation Theology, a “grave perversion” of Christianity in which “minorities are saved in the sense that white people constantly confess and repent of being racist and meet the economic demands of minorities via the redistribution of wealth as a consequence of, in some form or another, reparations.” What? Oh, Glenn.
I have to say, I don’t know how these Fox viewers do it. Listening to a Beck argument is like living in an M.C. Escher drawing — fantastical illusions that defy logic and strain the brain.
Blacks, stunned by this new topsy-turvy world of racial politics, continue to rally around Obama. In opinion polls, they consistently rate Obama’s performance and policies highly, I suspect as much out of solidarity as conviction.
Whether the president likes it or not, he’s the nexus of this debate. I, for one, think that he should stand up and redirect it from the negative to the noble. There will be some grumbling to be sure, but there already is.
It’s your choice, Mr. President. I say stand up — for America, for common humanity, for civil discourse. To paraphrase the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., they can’t ride your back unless it’s bent.
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3)Hamas orders compulsory call-up for new army parallel to Hizballah
Israeli bombers struck Palestinian targets in Gaza city, Deir el Balach in the east and Rafah in the south Friday night, July 30 - in the wake of attacks by a Palestinian Iranian-made Grad missile which damaged a high-rise apartment building in Ashkelon, leaving 17 people in shock, and missile-mortar fire on the Eshkol farm district.
One Hamas officer was killed, 8 were injured in the Israeli air bombardment of the "Nasser Compound" command center at Tel Al-Hawa, the training school for a new class of Hamas officers.
Military sources report that this was the first Israeli attack on a Hamas military target since the January 2009 Cast Lead operation. It took place after Hamas announced the compulsory call-up of all men aged 18 to 25 for a new Palestinian Popular Army for stepping up its confrontation with Israel's armed forces, with the help of the new officers' training facility.
Hamas launched the military-standard Grad missile (as distinct from the homemade Qassams) Friday to show off its new strength and inform Israel that henceforth it faces an enhanced Palestinian challenge from Gaza.
According to intelligence sources, the new Hamas militia is structured on the same lines as the Lebanese Hizballah. Both are armed and sponsored by Iran and regularly manipulated in pursuit of Tehran's regional objectives.
For the officers training center Israel demolished Friday, Iran shelled out $250 million.
Creating a well-armed Palestinian militia in the Gaza Strip was Tehran's first move to counter the impact of the visit Saudi King Abdullah and Syrian President Bashar Assad paid to Beirut Friday. More undoubtedly lie ahead.
Israel knew about the buildup in the Gaza Strip but Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak chose to keep it dark so as not to interfere with the prospects of direct peace talks with the Palestinians.
This restraint proved unproductive.
Thursday, July 29, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas discussed the new Hamas army with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and intelligence minister Gen. Omar Suleiman in Cairo, shortly before the Arab League Monitoring Committee convened to determine the future of peace talks with Israel.
The outcome was an equivocal committee decision to leave the option of direct talks to Abbas, so long as they led to a final accord within a specified time frame.
By this decision, the Arab League left Abbas free to continue to stonewall the US and Israel on peace talks as he has done for the last eighteen months. The result is that the prospect of direct talks is as remote as ever, whereas the expectation of escalating violence from the Gaza Strip has risen.
In establishing the new Hamas militia, Tehran had a second motive: the need to re-establish itself as the foremost champion of Palestinian extremists after being outshined by its ally, Turkey. Prime Minister Tayyep Erdogan won kudos as the only Muslim ruler espousing Hamas when he sent the "aid" flotilla for breaking the blockade on the Gaza Strip, which Israel intercepted on May 29.
Early Saturday, July 31, the Israeli defense minister met UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York to discuss the rising threat from Gaza. Ban responded by calling on Israel to remove all further restrictions on the Hamas-ruled territory.
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4)'Assad wants Hariri tribunal closed'
Syria tells Saudi king UN tribunal threatens stability.
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad told Saudi King Abdullah during their meeting in Damascus Friday that the UN tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri must be closed to protect Lebanon's stability, AFP cited from a report in Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar on Saturday.
Assad made clear to Abdullah - a key supporter of the faction of Sa'ad Hariri, son of the former premier and current prime minister - that Syria would find any attempt to hold Hizbullah accountable for the elder Hariri's death as unacceptable.
The UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon is reportedly set to announce that Mustafa Badr al-Din, a senior Hizbullah operative and close relative of the former Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh, is the main suspect in the Hariri assassination.
According to an Israel TV report on Thursday night, Hariri’s son, the current Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, asked the tribunal to postpone releasing Din’s name, because of the potentially incendiary implications for Lebanon of such an announcement.
Din, the cousin and brother- in-law of Mughniyeh, who was killed in a car bomb in Damascus in February 2008, was also reportedly responsible for planning the attempted assassination of the ruler of Kuwait in 1985, among other operations.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah, said last week that members of his group would be among those indicted by the tribunal, which he dismissed as an “Israeli plot.”
Many in Lebanon have worried that if the tribunal implicates Hizbullah, it could lead to another round of clashes between Lebanon’s Shi’ite and Sunni communities, like the bloody conflict that convulsed Beirut in 2008.
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5)See no evil
By Caroline B. Glick
I am sorry I wrote this column. Because an audience that demands an explanation of why evil is evil is an audience that has already sided with evil
It's springtime for Jew haters.
This week Oscar winning conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone joined Helen Thomas and Mel Gibson in the swelling ranks of out-of-the-closet celebrity Jew haters. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Stone said that Adolf Hitler had been given a bum rap and that through "Jewish domination of the media," the Jews have inflated the importance of the Holocaust and wrecked US foreign policy.
In the wake of criticism in Jewish circles, on Wednesday Stone's publicist issued a mealy-mouthed clarification.
Stone failed to retract or amend his statement that "There's a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f---ed up United States foreign policy for years."
He also did not retract his view that Jews use the Holocaust to control American foreign policy.
Stone simply referred to his claim that Jews make too much of the Holocaust because the Germans killed more Russians than Jews as "clumsy."
He then broadened his initial allegation that Jews make too much of the Holocaust by allowing that we are joined in our efforts by non-Jews. And since non-Jews are involved also, he was wrong to criticize us.
As Stone put it, "The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity." (Emphasis added.) Stone still believes that the rounding up and exterminating of three-quarters of Europe's Jews is really not as notable or morally troubling as high Russian wartime casualties, but it's not solely Jews' fault that people don't share Stone's views.
Arguably even more despicable that Stone's display of Jew hatred was manner in which it was received. On the one hand, there was the thunderous silence of the media. And on the other hand there were the insistent, repeated attempts to justify his statements.
Readers' talkbacks to write-ups of his remarks were rife with assertions that Stone's statements were not bigoted. Many agreed that Jews dominate the media and since they believe this is true, they argued that saying so is not a bigoted act. Others claimed that while Stone's statements were inaccurate, there is no evidence that he hates Jews and therefore, they weren't bigoted. At any rate, Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times and many others have argued, it would be wrong for Stone be discredited for his attacks against Jews.
It is difficult to imagine that if someone trafficked in ethnic stereotypes about groups like blacks, and claimed that they wreck US foreign policy to serve their own nefarious aims, Goldstein and the talk backers would defend him.
But then anti-Jewish bigotry has different rules than other hatreds.
Stone and his defenders are not alone either in their attitude towards Jews or their denial of their attitude towards Jews. Indeed, they are part of a worldwide trend.
Take the situation in Malmo, Sweden. Last Friday Jew haters set off firecrackers outside a synagogue in Malmo. The blasts came a day after Jew haters posted a bomb threat on the wall of the synagogue for the second time in two weeks. Malmo is a hotbed of anti-Jewish violence and the Jews of the city are fleeing in droves.
Yet in the face of all this, Malmo's non-Jews cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that there is a problem with anti-Semitism in their city. Even those who are supposed to be responsible for combating anti-Semitism refuse to acknowledge that Jews in Malmo are being attacked because they are Jews.
Bjorn Lagerback is the man in Malmo who is supposed to care about anti-Semitic violence. Lagerback serves as the coordinator of the local forum in the city charged with combating hate crimes. In an interview with Malmo's The Local cited by the World Jewish Congress, Lagerback tried to impress on the world that the bombing was serious. Not because it was violence aimed at Jews, of course.
No, according to Lagerback, this bombing is serious because it might hurt non-Jews. He said "We condemn this completely. Such an event is not just directed against the synagogue, but also at other targets that could be described as ethnic or religious."
Forget about the fact that only Malmo's synagogues, and not its churches and mosques require around the clock security. If no other ethnic or religious groups were targeted would bombing synagogues no longer warrant condemnation?
The acceptance of anti-Semitism has reached epidemic proportions.
In Amsterdam, anti-Semites are making the mundane act of walking around outside in broad daylight a dangerous prospect for Jews. Jews are regularly attacked verbally and physically by anti-Semites as they walk on the streets of the Dutch capital.
In an attempt to catch and punish anti-Semitic thugs, the Amsterdam police force has dispatched policemen dressed as Jews to pound the pavement. The hope is that these decoys will be able to draw out the offenders and arrest them.
Apparently, some Dutch have a problem with punishing anti-Semitic attackers. As Paul Belien reported in the Brussels Journal, "Evelien van Roemburg, an Amsterdam counselor of the Green Left Party, says that using a decoy by the police amounts to [entrapment], which is itself a criminal offence under Dutch law."
In other words, Van Roemburg thinks that people who walk around while appearing to be Jewish are asking for it.
Van Roemburg no doubt also believes that women in mini-skirts deserve to be raped.
All of this brings us to a discussion of the most endemic form of contemporary anti-Semitism: Anti-Zionism. There is no reason for anyone to be surprised that anti-Semites deny that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. After all, they deny that every other form of anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism. Why should anti-Zionism receive special treatment?
It is self-evident that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. To say that Jews — uniquely among all the nations — have no right to freedom and self determination is obviously anti-Semitic.
Anti-Semites give a variety of excuses to justify their rejection of the Jewish people's right to freedom and sovereignty in our homeland. Sometimes they say they have no problem with Jewish nationalism per se. They are simply anti-nationalist generally. But remarkably, these anti-nationalist anti-Zionists invariably just happen to be outspoken supporters of Palestinian nationalism.
Moreover, it is curious that universalist anti-nationalists only have a special term to describe their opposition to Jewish nationalism. No one ever mentions being anti-Irishist, for instance. When someone says they oppose Irish nationalism, the obvious conclusion is that they don't like Irish people. Just so, people who are anti-French tend not to like French people. And yet, the anti-Zionists would have us believe that their opposition to the Jewish state has nothing to do with their feelings about Jews.
Beyond their nonsensical attempts to deny the fact that anti-Zionism is a specific rejection of a specific — that is Jewish — type of nationalism, there is the fact that anti-Zionists tend inevitably to drink from other anti-Jewish sewers as well. Take former British parliamentarian Clare Short for example.
During her just ended career in the British parliament, Short became known as an outspoken anti-Zionist. Short rejected Israel's right to exist and castigated it for its "bloody, brutal and systematic annexation of land, destruction of homes and the deliberate creation of an apartheid system."
But Short's Israel kick didn't end with her frequent condemnations of imaginary but lurid Israeli crimes. As time went by, Short began channeling centuries of British Jew hatred. Like her forefathers who blamed Jews for rain, drought, plague and fire, Shore blamed Israel for global warming.
As she put it in a speech at the European Parliament three years ago, Israel "undermines the international community's reaction to global warming." As Shore saw it, European leaders are properly obsessed with attacking the Jewish state. But because Israel insists on existing and so requires Europeans to condemn it, Israel prevents the Europeans from attending to the threat of carbon which, if left unregulated will "end the human race."
So if the world boils over, the cauldron will be made in Israel.
One of the most prominent anti-Zionists today is Prof. Juan Cole from University of Michigan. Part of being a successful anti-Zionist involves claiming that Jews have no right to the land of Israel. So to be a good anti-Zionist, one needs to deny Jewish history.
To this end, in March Cole published a piece of historical fiction at Salon online magazine. Titled "Ten reasons why East Jerusalem does not belong to Israel," Cole mixed half truths with flagrant lies to justify his denial of Jewish history and belittlement of the Jewish rights.
Cole wrote, "Jerusalem not only was not being built by the likely then non-existent 'Jewish people' in 1000 BCE, but Jerusalem probably was not even inhabited at that point in history. Jerusalem appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the traditional dates for the united kingdom under David and Solomon."
This assertion is so mendacious that it takes your breath away. As anyone who has actually been in Jerusalem can attest, it is all but impossible to be physically present in the oldest areas of the city and not bump into relics dating from between 1000-900 BCE.
Cole's allegation is the academic equivalent of Louis Farakhan's claim that white people are devils planted on earth by aliens. As an anti-Zionist anti-Semite, it was just a matter of time until Cole travelled into the fetid swamp of denying the historical record to facilitate his false claim that Jews are not a people and therefore bereft of rights as a nation to our national homeland.
And why shouldn't he cover himself in anti-Semitic muck? So far, the stench has brought him great success. The very fact that I felt compelled to write an essay explaining why anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism and why anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is depressing proof that anti -Semites have been wildly successful whitewashing their bigotry.
What makes contemporary anti-Semitism unique is its purveyors' great efforts to hide its very existence. Their motivation is clear. Outside the openly genocidal anti-Semitic Muslim world, most anti-Semites are self-described liberals who claim to oppose bigotry. For these people, pretending away their prejudice is the key to their continued claim to enlightenment.
And so the likes of Oliver Stone publish clarifications. And Cole invents history. And the Europeans blame Jews and Israel and Zionism when Jews inside and outside Israel are assaulted and killed.
And I am sorry I wrote this column. Because an audience that demands an explanation of why evil is evil is an audience that has already sided with evil.
Correction: In Tuesday's column I wrote that the US's upgrade in the PLO's Washington diplomatic mission gave added privileges to PLO representatives in the US. In fact, the upgrade is a symbolic gesture of support for the Palestinians. The representatives do not enjoy diplomatic immunity.
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