+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Yesterday my associate of 25 years drove back to Atlanta after driving back from their beach house and she stopped to have brunch in Savannah. Judy became family and remains as much to this day.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This was sent to me by a friend and fellow memo reader.
I am posting because it will probably drive my Jewish Progressive friends nuts.
Obviously the writer has a bias but also is factual. (See 1 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As the election approaches and prospects of Democrats taking over The House looms Republican Politicians are engaged in their usual arguments that this will be bad for the nation.
I agree but my argument would be based on posing to prospective voters they consider what the Democrats offer by way of a plan. In other words, what are they proposing by way of a change in our immigration laws? What is their economic program? What is their trade position and what are they willing to agree to regarding China? More technology theft? Are they going to continue to rebuild our military and would they be willing to rationalize welfare expenditures and make the necessary changes in SS and Medicare? In truth they have offered nothing concrete. (See 2 below.)
Trump, on the other hand, offers a continuance in what he has been doing so the comparisons are stark. I believe it is the responsibility of politicians to educate, to raise the level of discourse and avoid inflaming.
But then I am not engaged in politics nor running for office and have the luxury, accordingly. of sitting on the side line and being wordy.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
GW and Obama were correct. As long as more people want jobs and there are opportunities to work things can improve and hope that they will remains alive. (See 3 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)
Donald Trump, America’s First Jewish President
The American people should be proud of their president. In the wake of the tragic shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, President Trump spoke out in the most forceful condemnation of anti-Semitism ever uttered by an American president.
While former president Barack Obama nonsensically chose to the blame the lawfully possessed firearm used in the crime, as if the gun fired itself, Trump put the blame squarely where it belongs: on the evil ideology and man who pulled the trigger while shouting, “Kill all the Jews!”
In a speech in Murphysboro, Illinois, Trump declared, “We must stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters to defeat anti-Semitism, vanquish the forces of hate … Through the centuries, the Jews have endured terrible persecution…Those seeking [the Jewish people’s] destruction, we will seek their destruction.”
Trump's historic declaration in Murphysboro, Illinois
The president is doing much more than offering his “thoughts and prayers” to the families whose loved ones were murdered by this evil, anti-Semite, Robert Bowers. The president has vowed to go on the offensive to seek the destruction of those “forces of hate” who would persecute our Jewish friends, neighbors and fellow countrymen.
The president has vowed to use the full force and power of the U.S. Department of Justice to bring Bowers to justice. The very same day Bowers committed these horrible crimes, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions filed a 29-count complaint against him in federal court. Now that’s quick and decisive action.
The charges include hate crimes and 11 counts of Obstruction of Exercise of Religious Beliefs Resulting in Death. The president is doing exactly what he said he would do – seek the destruction of the man who destroyed the lives of 11, innocent Jewish Americans simply attempting to exercise their religious freedom. These charges carry the death penalty.
Pittsburgh City police have filed charges also. But they were filed in state court. And because Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf refuses to carry out the death penalty, Bowers, if he’s only convicted of state charges, will be spared paying what Trump refers to as the “ultimate price” so long as Tom Wolf remains our governor. This evil, anti-Semite should be put to death, not allowed to live the rest of his life at taxpayer expense.
Such punishment not only fits the crime it carries out the words of the Torah, “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” (Deuteronomy 19:21)
While the president has taken direct and aggressive action against the mass murderer, a group of self-proclaimed leaders of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, have condemned the president. The group, Bend the Arc Jewish Action, has declared Trump persona non grata in Pittsburgh until and unless he ceases his, “assault on immigrants and refugees.” Those are harsh and unfair words spoken at a time of mourning in America.
Let’s hope the members of Bend the Arc can put politics aside and practice what they preach – that every human being is made b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, even Trump. The president believes that to protect the American people from the followers of al-Qaida, the Islamic State or one of the many anti-Semitic terrorist groups who would come here to harm and kill Americans, particularly Jewish Americans, we need a thorough vetting process and a border wall; and we need to stand that wall.
The president is leading the rhetorical fight against anti-Semitism as well. And, some of the leaders of the Democratic Party would do well to follow his lead. It was painful to watch former president Bill Clinton recently share the stage, a handshake and a laugh with the virulent anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan – a man who has called Judaism a “gutter religion” and who declared just months before, “Satanic Jews have infected the whole world with poison and deceit. Clinton should have rebuked Farrakhan instead of warmly embracing him.
Former president Barack Obama, former Nation of Islam member and current Democratic National Committee Deputy Chair, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), have all shamefully accepted Farrakhan’s political and financial support. Recently a secret photo of a smiling Obama and Farrakhan, coming out of Congressional Black Caucus meeting in our US Capitol Building, taken when Obama was a newly elected senator, was released. These Democratic leaders should not be smiling and socializing with this heinous, anti-Semite.
And, then there’s Trump. He’s not only strongly condemning anti-Semitism but bringing the full power and prestige of the U.S. government to bear upon those would seek the destruction of the Jewish people. Trump is proving once again that, unlike his critics who pay lip service to religious tolerance while embracing deplorable anti-Semites like Louis Farrakhan, Trump is confronting and attempting to destroy this evil and perverse ideology. And for that the American people should laud and not condemn him.
Because of his unprecedented words and actions confronting the ancient scourge of anti-Semitism, perhaps Donald Trump will go down in history as America’s first Jewish President.
Marc A. Scaringi, Esq. Mr. Scaringi is an attorney in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a radio talk show host of The Marc Scaringi Show on WHP 580AM and I Heart Radio and a Donald J. Trump endorsed Delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2)
Democrats and their media allies seek to silence their critics.
By Robert Stacy McCain
Americans are no longer a free people, if debate on major public-policy issues is effectively criminalized, which is what the Democrats and their allies are attempting to do with regard to our immigration policy. We are now being told in effect that it is “hate speech” to express opposition to the open-borders agenda of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and such of their billionaire donors as George Soros. Democrats and their media allies have recently taken to declaring that it is a “dog whistle” of racism and anti-Semitism for any Republican even to mention the name of Soros in connection with the immigration issue. If you don’t think the United States should throw open its borders to welcome the caravan of Honduran migrants now headed north through Mexico, and if you call attention to how Democrats are cheering on this horde of would-be foreign invaders, well, you must be some kind of Nazi who wants to kill Jews. Or at least that’s the general drift of liberal rhetoric in the final week of the midterm election campaign.
CNN has spent the past few days insinuating that the gunman who murdered 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue was incited to this act by President Trump. Republicans are not allowed to object to CNN’s one-sided coverage, however, because Florida madman Cesar Sayoc also hated CNN, and therefore anyone who criticizes the network is deemed a potential threat to public safety. Between the Pittsburgh shooter and the Florida bomber, basically anything said in favor of Republicans (or against Democrats) is now considered “hate speech” in the eyes of liberals. This is especially the case when it comes to immigration. Ever since the migrant caravan set off from Honduras, announcing their intention to march all the way to the United States, Democrats have been accusing the GOP of “exploiting” the issue. What are Republicans supposed to do? Pretend they don’t notice the lawless intentions of these so-called “refugees”?
After Mexican officials tried to stop the migrants by blocking a bridge across the Suchiate River at the Mexico-Guatemala border, they crossed the river illegally on rafts. “No one will stop us, only God,” a migrant named Olivin Castellano told an Associated Press reporter. “We knocked down the door and we continue walking.” Perhaps God will not stop this invasion, but the U.S. Army has a duty to defend the country, and Trump has ordered so many troops to the border that the deployment for “Operation Faithful Patriot” will exceed the U.S. force serving in Syria. And while these troops prepare to defend our border, CNN continues an around-the-clock propaganda campaign that accuses the Commander-in-Chief of inciting criminal violence.
Phrases like “hateful rhetoric” and “white nationalist” are part of the CNN script, conveying to the network’s viewers the idea that President Trump is responsible for the acts of deranged kooks like Sayoc, the steroid-addled Florida mail-bomber, and Robert Bowers, the high-school dropout who committed the Pittsburgh massacre. Never mind that Bowers denounced Trump by name in one of his anti-Semitic online screeds, and never mind that Sayoc is a mentally ill former male stripper whose bombs never exploded — no, these two lunatics must have acted on coded signals from Trump, the CNN viewer is led to believe. And then there is the problem of Soros, who was among the intended recipients of one of Sayoc’s non-exploding bombs.
George Soros has been a major funder of much of the institutional infrastructure the Left has built during the past 20 years. David Horowitz’s site Discover the Networks says that “a strong case can be made for the claim that Soros today affects American politics and culture more profoundly that any other living person.” Such organizations as Media Matters for America are beneficiaries of Soros’s vast wealth. While the total of his political expenditures over the years is perhaps beyond calculation, it is known that between 2003 and 2011, for example, Soros spent more than $48 million to fund media properties. Given his enormous influence on the Left, it is understandable that conservatives suspect that Soros is behind every allegedly “grassroots” left-wing activist group. It’s not a paranoid conspiracy, but a documented fact that, for example, the Black Lives Movement received more than $30 million from Soros’s tax-exempt organizations. Likewise, it has been documented that so-called “Antifa” groups, implicated in riots in Berkeley and elsewhere, got money from Soros-funded foundations. And it should surprise no one that Soros has spent many millions in support of an open-borders immigration agenda.
“Soros’s agenda is fundamentally about the destruction of national borders,” researchers David Galland and Stephen McBride wrote in a 2016 article titled “How George Soros Singlehandedly Created The European Refugee Crisis — And Why.” Galland and McBride documented the involvement of Soros’s Open Society Foundation in the crisis that flooded Europe with millions of Muslim migrants. When Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban took action to halt the influx of “refugees” into his country and named Soros as the sponsor of this invasion, Soros responded: “[Orban’s] plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.”
This was a startling admission, and it is clear that Soros also views America’s borders as an “obstacle” to his plans. In their book The Shadow Party, Horowitz and his co-author Richard Poe explained that a massive 2006 pro-amnesty rally in Los Angeles involved no fewer than eight groups funded by Soros, including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the National Council of La Raza. As for the current migrant caravan from Honduras, it is being supported by the so-called “CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project,” a coalition of four organizations, three of which receive funding from — you guessed, didn’t you? — George Soros.
To identity Soros as the sponsor of this open-borders agenda, however, is to be guilty of hate, as explained last week in a Washington Post headline: “Conspiracy theories about Soros aren’t just false. They’re anti-Semitic.” You will not be surprised to learn that the author of that article, Talia Levin, works for Media Matters, which is funded by Soros. Levin previously worked at the New Yorker, but was fired in June after falsely accusing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent of having a Nazi tattoo (the agent, it turned out, is a Marine Corps combat veteran who lost both legs in Afghanistan). So here we have a Soros-funded writer declaring in the pages of the Washington Post that it is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to say that Soros is doing what he’s actually doing.
In other words, telling the truth is now “hate speech.”
You could get banned from social media for mentioning Soros’s role in promoting left-wing causes, thanks to a new effort to pressure tech companies to “reduce hateful activities on their platforms.” Guess who’s funding that effort? Yes — George Soros.
It is not yet illegal to tell the truth, however, and Republicans trying to prevent a Democrat takeover of Congress are telling the truth while it’s still legal. An ad targeting a Minnesota Democrat begins: “Prima donna athletes protesting our anthem. Left-wing mobs paid to riot in the streets. Billionaire George Soros bankrolls the resistance — and Dan Feehan.” That ad was denounced by liberals as anti-Semitic, of course, but Feehan’s not Jewish and the ad says nothing about Soros being Jewish either. The Left keeps hearing dog whistles of hate that are inaudible to the rest of us, which makes you wonder who the dogs really are.
Last night on CNN, Chris Cuomo denounced Republicans as proponents of “xenophobia” and every other species of hate, while simultaneously accusing the GOP of “demonizing” its opponents. Who is demonizing whom? Cuomo and his media comrades have spent the past two years accusing Trump of being Hitler, thus implying that the nearly 63 million Americans who voted for Trump are Nazis. If that’s not demonization, what is? Is it wrong for Americans to expect that their President should protect them from an invasion of hostile foreigners? Do citizens have no right to complain about the billionaire who’s funding the horde from Honduras? Is it impermissible to debate our immigration policy?
Here’s some news from yesterday: “Mexican authorities arrested two Hondurans who allegedly shot at federal police officers escorting the migrant caravan across the southern state of Chiapas. The attack follows shortly after government warnings about Molotov cocktail attacks around a second caravan near the border with Guatemala.” CNN didn’t report that story, for some reason.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3) New Polls Show Most Gazans Want Jobs, Not Mobs
by David Pollock for the washingtonInstitute.org,
Behind the headlines of violent border protests by Hamas against Israel, the reality on the ground among ordinary Palestinians in Gaza looks very different. Two new, reliable Palestinian opinion polls taken inside Gaza this month demonstrate that the majority of its people actually oppose those protests—and at least half would even support a formal cease-fire with Israel.
More surprising still, most Gazans say they want direct dialogue with Israelis, and would like Israeli companies to provide jobs for them inside that Hamas-ruled territory. Most also blame Hamas, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, or the UN, not Israel, for their severe economic woes. Moreover, remarkably, a plurality of Palestinians in Gaza say they want Hamas to change its rejectionist position and agree to make peace with Israel.
The findings of these unexpectedly moderate views are based on two face-to-face, standard probability polls among representative samples of approximately 500 randomly selected respondents during the period of October 3-15. One poll was supervised by the highly experienced, Bethlehem-based Palestine Center for Public Opinion. The other, a condensed version with selected key questions, was run by a different but equally qualified Ramallah-based organization. To optimize access and validity, both organizations used local Gazan interviewers and field supervisors exclusively.
Adding to the credibility of this quite contrarian picture, the data sets from these two polls are broadly similar (though with some differences noted below). Also, to ensure maximum reliability, I traveled to the region during the fieldwork to consult in person with the pollsters and interviewers, help edit and translate the questionnaires into Arabic, confirm their technical proficiency and quality controls, and iron out any practical problems—of which there were mercifully few.
More specifically, regarding the weekly Hamas-led border protests, just 36 percent of Gazans support this tactic, while 62 percent say they oppose it. Conversely, a formal cease-fire with Israel garners more support than opposition: 73 to 25 percent in one poll; 51 to 45 percent in the other.
On the harder question of full peace with Israel, notably, both polls likewise show more popular support than opposition. The wording of the question is crystal clear: should Hamas “stop calling for Israel’s destruction, and instead accept a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders?” One poll shows Gazans say yes by a margin of 53 to 45 percent; the other poll yields a slightly narrower margin, 48 to 44 percent.
Regarding contacts with Israel, even without a peace agreement, the evidence is even clearer. Despite the official anti-normalization policies and demonization propaganda of Hamas politicians, both polls show that two-thirds of Gazans want “direct personal contacts and dialogue with Israelis.” An even higher proportion, three-quarters, also say they “would like to see Israeli companies offer more jobs inside the West Bank and Gaza.”
Even more striking is how few Gazans primarily blame Israel for their current dire economic straits. Asked who is most responsible for the slow pace of reconstruction in their area, the majority pick either Hamas (32 percent) or the Palestinian Authority (22 percent)—compared with just 27 percent who single out Israel. The UN and “no opinion” each get 8 percent of the vote for most at fault. Surprisingly, Egypt is last on this list of perceived villains, with a mere 3 percent.
To be sure, none of this means that most Gazans like, trust, or simply accept the lasting reality of Israel. In both polls, for instance, only about half say that negotiations with Israel have had even “somewhat positive” results to date. Similarly, only about half say that a two-state solution should “end the conflict.” And slightly more than half, 55 percent, still anticipate that “eventually, the Palestinians will control almost all of Palestine”—either because “God is on their side,” or because “they will outnumber the Jews some day.”
Such findings argue convincingly that the tactical moderation expressed on short-term questions is not simply a pretense or an artifact of “courtesy bias.” Indeed, it is precisely these mixed-to-negative views about long-term trends that offer greater credence to the relatively pragmatic voices on more immediate issues.
Furthermore, on some final status issues Gazans are also unexpectedly realistic. In response to the refugee problem, to cite but one highly emotive example, 68 percent favor accepting a “right of return” only to the West Bank and Gaza but not to Israel, “if that is the very last step required to end the occupation and achieve a real independent Palestinian state.” Among West Bankers, the comparable figure is a full 20 points lower. And the official position of both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas remains steadfastly opposed to such a compromise.
Finally, turning toward views of U.S. policy, Gazans exhibit a comparatively moderate mix of attitudes on this issue as well. Asked to select from a list “the one thing you’d most like the U.S. to do about the Palestinian issue these days,” the winner is “put pressure on Israel to make concessions,” with 38 percent. But a close second place goes to “increase economic aid to the Palestinians,” at 23 percent, followed by “put pressure on the PA and Hamas to be more democratic and less corrupt,” at 14 percent. Only 16 percent say the U.S. should “stay out of Palestinian and Middle East affairs altogether.” On the West Bank, however, that option actually earns top billing, with a stunning 49 percent.
Altogether, then, popular attitudes in Gaza are arguably more attuned to reality than either the militant image propagated by Hamas or the desperate anger at Israel often portrayed in outside media. The counterintuitive findings from these new polls offer a compelling corrective to those stereotypes. And the pundits and policymakers on all sides would be well advised to pay much more attention to how the people of Gaza themselves see their admittedly very difficult situation, and the realistic shorter and longer term options they prefer for some improvements in their plight.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment