Help Wounded Warrior Project!! More Isolated? Voting Against Self Interest!

Book sales and orders for the soft cover are approaching 100.  Half the proceeds from the sale of my modestly priced book goes to The Wounded Warrior Project!

Dick Berkowitz, has written a booklet entitled:"A Conservative Capitalist Offers: Eleven Lessons and a Bonus Lesson for Raising America's Youth Born and Yet To Be Born."

By Dick Berkowitz - Non Expert

Dick wrote this booklet because he believes a strong country must rest on a solid family unit and that Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" has morphed into "A Confused, Dependent and Compromised Generation."

He  hopes this booklet will provide a guide to alter this trend.

You can now order a .pdf version from www.brokerberko.com/book that you can download and read on your computer, or print out if you want. Cost is $5.99

In several weeks the book will be available in soft cover format at a cost of $10.99. 

Booklet illustrations were by his oldest granddaughter, Emma Darvick, who lives and works in New York.

Testimonials:

Dick, I read your book this weekend.  I hardly know where to start.  You did an excellent job of putting into one short book a compendium of the virtues which only a relatively short time ago all Americans believed.  It’s a measure of how far we have fallen that many Americans, perhaps a majority of Americans, no longer believe in what we once considered truisms.  I think your father would have agreed with every word, but the party he supported no longer has such beliefs.

  

I would like to buy multiple copies of your booklet..

You did a great job.  I know your parents would have been proud and that your family today is proud.

Mike

You wrote a great book.  The brevity is one of its strong points and I know it was hard to include that in and still keep it brief.  Your father in haste once wrote an overly long letter to our client, then said in the last sentence, “I’m sorry I wrote such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

"Dick, I indeed marvel at how much wisdom you have been able to share with so few words.  Not too unlike the experience in reading the Bible. I feel that with each read of "A Conservative Capitalist Offers:…." one will gain additional knowledge and new insights…

Regards, Larry"

Dick , 
Your book is outstanding! Due to illness, I've been unable to read it in entirety until today .Your background is often very similar to mine (e.g. Halliburton's influence was very important in my life), and your thoughts reflect very closely the the teachings that I received from my parents and granddad. I will write a more detailed statement in the near future!
All the best,  Bob

Regarding your booklet, I have begun to read it and look forward to finishing it this weekend.  Congrats on getting it published and

on the great reviews.  I know how much this booklet means to you and how important getting this message out to the public is.

P------

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My counter terrorism friend of long standing and fellow memo reader comments about Biden's comment: "Iran more isolated? Where does Biden get his facts?

The non-aligned nations met in Teheran a few weeks ago. 120 of them! Is that isolation? It is more than the US can get to support anything it does. And the nuclear efforts have not diminished even by a fraction."

I responded: " Biden actually meant Iran was isolated from having to worry about an attack by our Pentagon as long as Obama is president."

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Why so few are working.  (See 1 below.)

Why our debt picture is perhaps worse than portrayed. (See 1a below.)

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After the Obama - Romney debacle Democrat spinmeisters kept repeating Romney lied, lied, lied.

When you shoot yourself in the foot,  I guess the only thing embarrassed Obama supporters could claim was "we was robbed."

It will be interesting to see how the press and media respond after the second debate on the 16th. Will they keep protecting their unclothed king?

I pointed out in a previous memo,  as recent presidents began to engage in bald faced lies, the consequence has become the use of the 'L' word is now thrown around with abandon.

Meanwhile, the most blatant contradictions, ie. lies, have been this administrations flip flops over the Libyan assassinations  over the last three weeks.  Biden is among the worst offenders of the truth in his denial he and the White House did not know what the State Department already knew and was saying.

If that is not a bald face lie then it  is an admission of incompetence in executive coordination .  I submit it is both.  (See 2 and 2a below.)

Piling on?  (See 2b below.)

"When all else fails lower your standards."

The sad part about this quip is after a while people accept the lower standards as the new standard and that is where America is now. 

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Beat Obamaites with their own words: http://www.westernjournalism.com/the-video-that-killed-obamas-re-election/

For those who are willing to swallow their words it is amazing  their stomachs do not turn!

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Glick on why a vote for Obama is inconsistent with Jewish values, common sense and frankly their own narrow  self interest.

(See 3 below)

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Dick

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)Why Are So Few People Working?

By Morgan Housel 

After a report on Friday showed theunemployment rate dropped to 7.8%, James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute wrote, "If thelabor force participation rate was the same as when President Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 10.7%."

And he's right. But it's not a very relevant observation.

Explaining this requires some jargon, but it's important to understanding the unemployment rate.

The standard unemployment rate most cited in the media, called U3, is calculated by dividing:

• The number of Americans who are not working but who looked for work in the past four weeks (the unemployed).
• The number of working-age Americans who are either employed or unemployed (the labor force).

You can tell that these leave wiggle room to produce some fuzzy figures. If you're out of work but haven't been looking for a job in the past four weeks, you're not counted as unemployed -- or even part of the labor force. You're in no-man's land.

A more complete way to take the temperature of the job market is the labor force as a percentage of the population, called the labor force participation rate. It's the best way to keep track of previous workers who have dropped out of the labor force. And as Pethokoukis hints at, it's plunged:

Pethokoukis is right that if we had the same labor force participation rate today as we did in early 2009, the unemployment rate would be much higher than is currently reported. 

But before you shout conspiracy!, we have to ask why the labor force participation rate has dropped so much.

Yes, part of it is because many have given up looking for work, which I assume is the point Pethokoukis wants to make. But that doesn't explain all of the decline. Or even most of it. Three big explanations for the falling participation rate have nothing to do with the recession:

• The country is aging.
• Men have been leaving the labor force consistently for 60 years.
• More people aren't working because they're in school.

Let's go through each one.

The first baby boomer turned 65 last year. Many retired before then, and millions will leave the work force over the coming decade. And since the boomers are an abnormally large group, their retirement means a lower percentage of the population is of prime working age.

One of the best ways we know the falling participating rate is due to aging and not the recent recession is because most of the decline was predicted by sociologists several years before the recession began:

"An aging population will push down labor force participation whether the economy does well or poorly," writes the Heritage Foundation. Don't blame the president. Blame my parents.

Next, men have been fleeing the labor force consistently since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track in 1948:

There are all kinds of explanations for this, including a changing dynamic between male and female breadwinners, increased disability benefits, and fewer opportunities in industries like manufacturing that were once male-dominated. Whatever the reason, it's clearly not linked to the last recession, or even any recession. From 1995 to 2000, when the economy boomed like never before, the labor force participation rate for males fell. For decades this was balanced out (and then some) by a surge in the female participation rate. But now that female participation is topping out, the overall participation rate suffers a net decline.

Last, the overall participation rate is falling partly because more people are in school:

Source: White House.

The Heritage Foundation elaborates on rising education enrollment and how it changes labor participation:

One of the greatest costs of obtaining an education is the opportunity cost of going to school. Most students cannot work full-time jobs while studying full-time. They forgo the income they could have earned in order to study. In a recession, when job opportunities decrease, this opportunity cost falls. It becomes relatively less expensive to go to school: Students only lose money by not working if they could have found a job in the first place. A weak economy will cause many people to attend school that would not otherwise.

Someone recently asked me what I think is the truest measure of our weak jobs market. My answer: The number of Americans not in the labor force has increased by 9.5 million since late 2007. Of those, 2.1 million say they want a job but can't find one. That's probably the fairest estimate of today's job shortage compared with five years ago. 

1a)

Why the Debt Situation is Worse Than You Even Imagined  By Porter Stansberry There are few things about which history is unanimous. Land wars in Asia, for example… always a bad idea. Paper money falls into this category. Paper money always fails and wipes out the people who depend on it. Or as our friend Rick Rule likes to say, paper money's track record is unblemished by success. The return of paper money to its intrinsic value (nothing) is guaranteed. All we need is time (though politics certainly help move things along). We would not argue that organizing a system of sound money based on paper receipts is impossible. We would merely point out that keeping such systems sound and reliable has proven elusive to this point in human history. Paper money is like many other types of idealized virtue humans cannot attain. It's simply beyond human nature to avoid perdition. Sin, as they say, is part of man. Every government that has used paper money has succumbed to a fatal level of borrowing. Rather than a restructuring of these debts, paper money systems allow for the rapid expansion of the monetary base to facilitate paying off debts in devalued money. This is no different than stealing. And yet… that is what happens every time, resulting in a massive crisis and a breakdown of social norms. It normally happens faster in democracies, where no strong interest group votes for living within the country's means and repaying its creditors in sound money. No, people vote for more spending and more debt. And they always expect someone else to pay. Case in point… Greece. Researching problems in the Greek economy is like reading a financial comic book. All the players are clowns. For example, the national railroad has annual revenues of €100 million… against a wage bill of €400 million and another €300 million in expenses. The Ministry of Agriculture hired 270 people to digitize photographs of Greek public lands… with one digital camera. In 2001, the Greek government borrowed $1 billion from Goldman Sachs to help balance the budget. The deal relinquished future receipts from the national lottery, national highway tolls, airport landing fees, and even funds promised to Greece in the future from the European Union. The government was burning the family furniture to pay current expenses. And now, it's out of furniture. It's all been burnt. In total, the Greek government owes €1.2 trillion. That's €250,000 for every adult. Obviously, Greece cannot repay this money in sound currency. The only way out is for the Greeks to inflate the debt away – effectively stealing from their creditors with a printing press. That they haven't done so yet is only because they no longer have their own currency, the drachma. Instead, they are part of Europe's common currency, the euro. And Europe is making every effort to maintain the mirage of a united economy. Unfortunately, no such thing exists. It's merely a matter of time before the Greeks default. The exact same thing is true about the United States – except the numbers are even worse. Regards, Porter Stansberry   Editor's note: Porter has been warning about an impending currency crisis for six years. In that time, the debt has skyrocketed… the euro is in shambles… the U.S. dollar is extremely devalued… and many people are still unaware of the gravity of this situation. Something has gone terribly wrong with America. In his Investment Advisory, Porter offers a way to protect yourself. To learn more about the steps he recommends taking, click here.

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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)Debate Renews Focus on Libya

By SARA MURRAY And JAY SOLOMON

The White House's shifting explanations about the fatal attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya spilled overnight from the vice-presidential debate to the presidential race Friday, renewing criticism of President Barack Obama's handling of the crisis by GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

During the debate, Mr. Biden said the White House was unaware that U.S. officials in Libya had asked for more security ahead of the attack last month, which killed four Americans including the U.S. Ambassador, Christopher Stevens. Mr. Biden appeared to contradict former State Department officials, based in Libya and Washington, who testified Wednesday to Congress about the personnel request.

The combative debate Thursday night energized a jittery Democratic base with Vice President Joe Biden's tough, commanding tone, but it also left an opening for Mr. Romney to escalate his criticism of Mr. Obama.

"We weren't told they wanted more security there," Mr. Biden said. "We did not know they wanted more security again."

The Romney campaign used the comments during the nationally televised debate to press its argument that the administration was misleading Americans.

"There were more questions that came out of last night," Mr. Romney said in Richmond, Va. "The vice president directly contradicted the sworn testimony of State Department officials. He's doubling down on denial."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Friday that Mr. Biden was aware of the testimony about requests for additional security, but the vice president was speaking "about himself and the president and the White House. He was not referring to the administration." The security request from Libya was fielded by the State Department, he said.

Mr. Carney said Republicans were trying to suggest the president and the White House were responsible for assessing security at a diplomatic facility in Benghazi: "As is, of course, appropriate, these kinds of issues are handled in the State Department by security professionals."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in news conferences Friday defended the administration's role in the Libya crisis, saying the White House made its assessments of the attack based on the information at hand.

"We can only tell you what we know based on our most current understanding of the attack and what led up to it," Mrs. Clinton said. "Obviously, we know more as time goes by, and we will know even more than we did hours and days after the attack.

An independent committee at the State Department has been established to investigate the attack. The Senate announced its own inquiry Friday.

Friday's back and forth over the Libyan attack threatened to overshadow the often pugnacious debate that went a long way to settling nerves among Democrats after the president's lackluster performance last week against Mr. Romney. Each side declared victory in the debate and the campaigns tried to capitalize by sending out fundraising appeals, retooling stump speeches and releasing new ads and videos. Instant polls offered little clarity on how voters assessed who won the debate.

The contest attracted fewer television viewers than the corresponding event four years ago. An average of 51.4 million people watched on 12 cable and broadcast networks, compared with 70 million in 2008, when Mr. Biden squared off with Sarah Palin, according to Nielsen. That event aired on 11 networks.

Democrats said GOP vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan took positions on foreign policy and social issues that were bound to alienate undecided voters, citing as examples Mr. Ryan's statements about abortion and ending the war in Afghanistan.

Mr. Ryan said the GOP ticket supports the White House plan to withdraw troops by 2014. But he wasn't as emphatic as Mr. Biden about the deadline, saying, "We want to see the 2014 transition be successful. And that means we want to make sure our commanders have what they need to make sure that it is successful so that this does not once again become a launching pad for terrorists."

Democrats also hope to use Mr. Ryan's opposition to abortion as leverage to win over more women voters. Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Mr. Biden was "an excellent role model" for Mr. Obama, who again faces Mr. Romney in a debate Tuesday in Hempstead, N.Y. "He did exactly what he had to do. He put Ryan in his place."

Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee's communications director, said women viewers may have been put off by Mr. Biden's demeanor.

"They might have succeeded in getting their base back in the game," Mr. Spicer said, "but they got nothing out of this in terms of momentum."

Instead, Republicans said, the debate put both the Obama campaign and the White House on the defensive over the vice president's answers on Libya.

Mr. Biden on Thursday defended the White House's initial assessment of the attack—that it sprang from a protest against a U.S.-made video posted online that mocked the Islamic faith's Prophet Muhammad.

"The intelligence community told us that," Mr. Biden said. "As they learned more facts about exactly what happened, they changed their assessment." Later, the administration called it a terror attack linked to groups affiliated with or sympathetic to al Qaeda.

On Tuesday night, one senior State Department official summarized Mr. Stevens's final day in Benghazi, offering little evidence of the alleged protests.

When asked by a reporter what had led the official to believe the attack had been fueled by the video, the official said: "That is a question that you would have to ask others. That was not our conclusion."

—Carol E. Lee and Peter Nicholas contributed to this article.

2a)Biden's Intelligence

Nuclear Iran? Resurgent al Qaeda? 'Let's all calm down.'

Joe Biden's unbounded id is the talk of the nation after Thursday's debate. But the Veep is also the elder Democratic statesman on international affairs, and in between his snickers, guffaws and "malarkey," he shed newsworthy light on Obama Administration foreign policy. Let's roll the tape.

On Iran, Mr. Biden broke new ground, though most of the media missed it. To a question about the Administration's willingness to stop the Tehran regime from going nuclear, he said what matters isn't Iran's ability to enrich uranium to weapons grade. It's whether it can build and deliver a bomb.

"They are a good way away," he said. "When my friend [Paul Ryan] talks about fissile material, they have to take this highly enriched uranium, get it from 20% up. Then they have to be able to have something to put it in. There is no weapon that the Iranians have at this point."

"Let's all calm down a little bit here," Mr. Biden said a few minutes later.

In other words, Iran may have made progress toward enriching enough uranium to sufficient strength to build a bomb in the past four years, but that's immaterial. Based on the Vice President's intelligence, Iran isn't close to getting the trigger mechanism, missiles and all the other things needed to deploy a weapon. So don't worry.

Hmmm. For a decade, the U.S. and Europe have focused on coaxing and coercing the Iranians to stop enrichment above all else. That's because this is the hardest thing about building a bomb. Iran has in any case worked to develop missiles and triggers with help from Russians, North Koreans and others. In a clearer moment this summer, Mitt Romney said he would insist that Iran not enrich any uranium, even ostensibly for peaceful purposes. He failed to repeat this demand in his foreign-policy speech this week..

To hear Mr. Biden tell it, the Obama Administration now has a new red line on Iran. The mullahs can enrich as much uranium as they wish as long as they "don't have something to put it in." This isn't the red line Israel's Bibi Netanyahu had in mind during his recent speech before the United Nations. Nor are Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others looking for proof of an Iranian ICBM before they decide to go nuclear themselves. Iran becomes a regional nuclear power when it demonstrates its ability to get the bomb at almost a moment's notice, which is when it has developed enough fuel for it.

The Veep made a spirited case as well for doing nothing in Syria—no "no fly" zones, direct arms supplies to the rebels, or any U.S. political lead in an intervention. "If, in fact, it blows up and the wrong people gain control, it's going to have impact on the entire region, causing potentially regional wars," he said of Syria. News stories suggest this is happening already without any U.S. involvement, as the Syrian war pulls in Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey.

Mr. Biden appeared to preview another Obama policy shift on Afghanistan. With a 2014 deadline to transition the security lead to the Kabul government, the discussion will shift to how large the American military footprint will be afterward—with up to 30,000 U.S. troops left behind to ensure the Taliban don't overrun Kabul again.

But Mr. Biden said something different: "We are leaving in 2014, period, and in the process we're going to be saving over the next 10 years another $800 billion." He added that Afghan forces are ready to defend the country themselves and lead the fight in the difficult east, another piece of intelligence that's news to us.

On the attacks in Benghazi, Mr. Biden turned uncharacteristically terse. A day before the debate, a House hearing revealed that the U.S. Embassy in Libya had been concerned about a rising al Qaeda-linked Islamist threat and had requested, but was denied, security reinforcements.

"Well, we weren't told they wanted more security again," said Mr. Biden, contradicting the testimony of State Department officials. He also blamed "the intelligence community" for the Administration's initial and false assertions that Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American colleagues were killed in a "spontaneous" protest against an anti-Islam video on YouTube. This is the same "intelligence community" he is sure can tell us with certainty when Iran has a bomb and the Taliban is defeated.

Asked Friday about Mr. Biden's claims, White House spokesman Jay Carney said: "He was speaking directly for himself and for the President. He meant the White House. . . . No one who testified about this matter suggested that requests for additional security were made to the President or the White House. These are issues appropriately that are handled by security professionals at the State Department. And that's what he was talking about." So blame State and the intelligence community.

Don't worry, be happy may be a good campaign theme for Mr. Biden. Don't worry about a resurgent al Qaeda in North Africa. Or the escalating war in Syria. Or Iran's mullahs with weapons grade uranium, or Vladimir Putin's increasingly anti-American policy, or China's muscular antics in the Pacific. Overseas, said Mr. Biden, this Administration has "repaired our alliances so the rest of the world follows up again." He clearly knows something the world doesn't.

2b)The bishops speak: Joe, you lied

Joe Biden got away with a number of whoppers last night, one of them on the enormities committed against religious institutions by Obamacare. Today the Catholic Bishops have issued a statement putting the lie to Biden’s whopper:

Last night, the following statement was made during the Vice Presidential debate regarding the decision of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to force virtually all employers to include sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause abortion, in the health insurance coverage they provide their employees:
“With regard to the assault on the Catholic Church, let me make it absolutely clear. No religious institution—Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic social services, Georgetown hospital, Mercy hospital, any hospital—none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact. That is a fact.”
This is not a fact. The HHS mandate contains a narrow, four-part exemption for certain “religious employers.” That exemption was made final in February and does not extend to “Catholic social services, Georgetown hospital, Mercy hospital, any hospital,” or any other religious charity that offers its services to all, regardless of the faith of those served.

HHS has proposed an additional “accommodation” for religious organizations like these, which HHS itself describes as “non-exempt.” That proposal does not even potentially relieve these organizations from the obligation “to pay for contraception” and “to be a vehicle to get contraception.” They will have to serve as a vehicle, because they will still be forced to provide their employees with health coverage, and that coverage will still have to include sterilization, contraception, and abortifacients. They will have to pay for these things, because the premiums that the organizations (and their employees) are required to pay will still be applied, along with other funds, to cover the cost of these drugs and surgeries.

USCCB continues to urge HHS, in the strongest possible terms, actually to eliminate the various infringements on religious freedom imposed by the mandate.

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3)

Decades ago, the sociographer Milton Himmelfarb coined the aphorism that "American Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans." And his words ring as true today as ever. Surveys show that roughly 70 percent of American Jews intend to cast their ballots for President Barack Obama's reelection next month.

Himmelfarb's quip indicated that American Jews abjure their economic interests in favor of their liberal values. Certainly it is true that for American Jews to vote for Obama next month they must act against their economic interests.

Obama's economic policies have taken a huge toll on the economic fortunes of American Jews who invest disproportionately in the stock market. His nationalization of the college loan business has given universities impetus to raise tuition rates still further, thus dooming more young American Jews to start their adult lives under a mountain of debt. And it isn't at all clear how they will be able to pay off this debt since under Obama half of recent college graduates cannot find jobs.

Obama's gutting of Medicare to pay for Obamacare has harmed the medical choices for older Jewish Americans.

His war on tax deductions for charitable contributions has placed synagogues, Jewish schools and nursing homes in financial jeopardy.

So with economics ruled out as a reason to support Obama we are left with American-Jewish values.

But is Obama really advancing those values? What are those values anyway? Well, there's civil liberties.

American Jews like those. But Obama doesn't.

Take freedom of speech. Obama is the most hostile president to freedom of speech in recent memory. He has advocated implementing the so-called "fairness doctrine" for radio to stifle the free speech of his political opponents on talk radio.

He has sought to undermine the freedom of the Internet through federal regulations and intimidation of Internet companies such as Google.

He has made repeated and outspoken attempts to intimidate individuals, groups and businesses including Google to bar freedom of speech as relates to criticism of Islam. He has purged the lexicon of the federal government of all terms necessary to describe jihad, Islamic radicalism and terrorism, and so made it impossible for federal employees to examine, investigate, discuss or understand the nature of the greatest national security threat facing the US.

Then there are women's rights. American Jews like those.

True, Obama has distinguished himself as the greatest ally of abortion-on-demand ever. He even supported infanticide of babies who survived abortions when he served in the Illinois legislature.

But, we women are a bit more than reproductive machines.

We also work and raise families. And Obama's economic programs hurt women as much if not more than they hurt men.

Aside from that, there are females who live outside of the US.

American Jews have long been outspoken champions of women's rights around the world. But here Obama's record is arguably worse than any president in US history.

Obama has abandoned the women most at risk of gender-based discrimination, rape and murder - the women and girls of the Muslim world. Whereas the Bush administration liberated the women and girls of Afghanistan from the maniacally misogynist Taliban regime, the Obama administration is negotiating with the Taliban and setting the conditions for its return to power. If the signature image of the Bush administration's war in Afghanistan was that of women voting, the signature image of Obama's war in Afghanistan is the photo of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai. This week Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan for her defense of the right of girls to go to school.

Then there is the cause of good governance. American Jews like that.

But here, too, Obama fails to live up to liberal values of clean politics. Every day seems to bring with it another scandal related to the Obama administration.

This week we learned that the Obama campaign is illegally soliciting funds from foreigners.

According to a report published by the Government Accountability Institute, some 20% of visitors to the Obama campaign's fund-raising site "my.barackobama.com" are foreigners, barred by US law from contributing to political campaigns. So, too, the Obama.com website was registered by Robert Roche, a US businessman living in Shanghai with ties to Chinese state-owned companies. Roche is an Obama campaign bundler. Sixty-eight percent of the traffic on the site comes from foreign users. Obama.com is currently managed by a Palestinian rights activist in Maine.

Finally, there is the cause of Israel and US-Israel relations that American Jews are assumed to care about.

After the fiasco at the Democratic National Convention when the widespread antipathy for Israel raging in the Democratic Party was broadcast on primetime television, the Obama administration has stopped even trying to hide its contempt for the Jewish state and its American Jewish supporters.

Whereas the US refused to walk out of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's obscene address to the UN General Assembly last month, US Ambassador Susan Rice chose to absent herself entirely from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's address before the body.

Adding insult to injury, last week Obama appointed Salam al-Marayati to represent the US at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's annual 10-day human rights conference. Marayati is the founder and executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee. As Robert Spencer recalled this week, on September 11, 2001, Marayati gave an interview to a Los Angeles radio station accusing Israel of being responsible for the jihadist attacks on the US.

He is an outspoken supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah.

And Obama appointed him to represent America at a major human rights conference.

So what is it that drives over two-thirds of American Jews to support Obama? The only issues that come easily to mind are social issues - particularly the two flagship causes of American Jews these days - abortion and homosexual marriage.

While it is true that Obama shares their positions on these issues, it is hard to believe that these two issues have become the cri du coeur of more than two-thirds of American Jews.

It isn't that it is wrong for people to support abortions on demand and homosexual marriage. And it isn't wrong for people to oppose them. There are reasonable, Jewish arguments to be made for a woman's right to abort her unborn children. But there are also reasonable Jewish arguments for constraining that right. There are Jewish arguments in favor of permitting homosexuals to wed. And there are Jewish arguments opposing such unions.

Then there is the relative urgency of the issues. With the US economy in a rut and American national security increasingly imperiled, are abortion rights and gay marriage really the American Jewish community's top priorities?

True, there are some American Jewish fanatics who are propelled to near violence when faced with opponents of their beliefs. And they are capable of intimidating a large proportion of their fellow Jews into toeing their extremist lines. Their intolerance has been on display in all of its ugliness at synagogues around the US since the start of the election campaign. In one recent, outrageous incident, one gay marriage partisan managed to intimidate his congregation on Erev Yom Kippur.

On the most sacred evening on the Jewish calendar, at Anshe Emet synagogue in Chicago, congregant Gary Sircus led other congregants in walking out of services when, in keeping with synagogue protocol (and common courtesy), Rabbi Michael Siegel acknowledged the presence of US Rep. Michele Bachmann in the audience.

After staging the walkout, Sircus went home and began an online assault on Bachmann and on his synagogue for extending the outspoken and stalwart supporter of Israel the courtesy of acknowledging her presence at services.

Sircus wrote a letter of support to Jim Graves, Bachmann's deep-pocketed Democratic opponent in her reelection campaign. In it, he referred to Bachmann as "this evil woman."

Rabbi Siegel did not decry Sircus for his shocking behavior. Speaking to the Chicago Tribune Siegel said, "I am aware of the fact that our congregation's policy in regards to [welcoming public officials to the community and honoring their presence] clearly caused pain to some members of our community on the most precious day of reconciliation on the Jewish calendar. That we regret deeply."

In a letter of explanation to synagogue board members, Siegel spoke of the need to welcome visitors even if they don't share the community's "values."

But when did the members of Anshe Emet take a vote to determine that support for gay marriage is their shared value?

Undoubtedly, Sircus's success in embarrassing his entire community owed in part to his willingness to intimidate his fellow congregants with his moralistic sanctimony on Erev Yom Kippur.

But it isn't only gay marriage champions who use intimidation tactics to silence their communities into conforming with their views. American Jewish Democratic partisans have taken a leading role in blocking dissenting voices from their midst.

For instance, this past May B'nai Emet Congregation in Boca Raton, Florida, invited Amb. Susan Rice to address the congregation. Synagogue officials not only rejected offers to have Rice debate opponents of Obama's treatment of Israel. They barred community members known for their opposition to Obama from attending the speech. For these synagogue officials, the idea that their partisan prejudice might be challenged was simply unacceptable.

To be fair, there are some American Jews who have been willing to approach politics with an open mind. For instance, Susan Crown, of the Chicago-based Henry Crown business empire, has transferred her support from Obama to Mitt Romney.

In an interview with Chicago Magazine Crown explained that she switched candidates last May when Obama gave his speech calling on Israel to withdraw from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and contract to within the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. Crown said that her switch was due as well to economic and foreign policy considerations.

Crown's arguments for transferring her support from Obama to Romney are all rational. On the other hand, the positions taken by the likes of Sircus and the management of B'nai Emet are emotional and unthinking.

Unfortunately, the polls indicate that more than two-thirds of American Jews are with the synagogue bullies at B'nai Emet and with Sircus, not with Crown.

For 70% of American Jews, party loyalty trumps all of their conceivable rational interests. For them, partisan loyalty is more important than facts. They do not want to use independent judgment. They just want to be Democrats.

The most disturbing aspect of the surveys of American Jewish voters is not that they are willing to vote for the most hostile US president Israel has ever experienced in order to remain true to their party. The most disturbing aspect of the American Jewish community's devotion to Obama and the Democrats is that it indicates that the vast majority of American Jews have abandoned their faculties for independent thought and judgment in favor of conformism and slavish partisanship. They have rendered themselves unreachable.