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Tobin presents his view why a war of attrition by Hamas will fail.
Perhaps he is right but what he did not discuss is whether Israel will allow itself or be allowed to escalate its response in the event of persistent attacks.
Until suffering by Gazans reaches an untenable level, Hamas will be free to sacrifice its own citizens and Israel will continue to be attacked. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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2) Andy Stern saw the writing on the wall vis a vis the decline in trade union membership so he began to unionize government workers and others in fields of endeavor where unionization had not penetrated.
He has been successful up to a point and now union members are applying the same tactics in state and city governments etc.. They not only contribute heavily to Democrats, who then pass laws raising their salaries so they have more to contribute but they now contribute bodies to campaign for Democrats etc. (See 2 below.)
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Meanwhile, Harry Reid attacks the Koch Brothers for their political activities. Look above and think about the cartoon by Voltaire!
Thus, what has and is happening in Ferguson brings up the matter of the decline in the press and media to inform.
I have always been a believer the Fourth Estate plays a critical roll in both informing and educating thus, has a critical roll in protecting continuance of our Republic and all the benefits that accrue.
In my opinion, the press and media folk no longer serve the nation in the same objective and professional manner as many once did because of:
a) corporate ownership and the focus on stockholder profit
b) the demand for instant reporting due to technology and thus, knee jerk reporting does not allow time for thoughtful reflection and factual reporting, ie.competition from twitter etc.
c) by-line front page reporting allows subjectivity to sneak into reporting and cameras invite mob assembly creating an even bigger story.
d) sensationalism can enhance the career and visibility of reporters and media folks and thus the incentive to become part of the story reported and/or shown, ex.. Al Sharpton and his contract with MSNBC.
e) journalist attend universities whose faculty are predominantly liberal and the education obtained has a significant bias tilt.
It is a known fact most in academia are liberal and conservatives need not apply, are socially ostracized by faculty associates and tenure is more difficult to obtain because faculty members vote.
I have not listed all the reasons why I believe the press and media no longer serve the nation as they should and must but I do believe the decline in objectivity, quality of training poses a serious threat and creates more distrust.
Specific to Ferguson, the police have been maligned, the young man, who was killed, apparently was not the angel his family portrayed him to be and was engaged in a theft prior to his confrontation with the policeman. Many, biased remarks, calling for aggressive prosecution so the victim's family receives justice, including the President, the Attorney General, the Governor, hustlers and rabble rousers, have gone virtually unchallenged. Thus, no hard evidence is driving events.
What has been allowed,if not purposely perpetrated, is a rush to judgement rather than an opportunity to inform and educate.
Another missed opportunity to display the virtue of how a free society presents itself to the world and responds to tragedy.
ISIS may behead in a more gory manner but the circumstances surrounding the press and media's portrayal of events in Ferguson are pretty scary.
Where are the Sevareid's and Cronkite's, not that they too had their own bias, but their professionalism and sense of purpose drove their reporting.
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I thought about opening infi-delis in The Middle East and my prospective investors told me I would lose not only my money but also my head! I was going to name them Meshugana-Donalds!
Ethnic eating what it's all about: https://player.vimeo.com/
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Dick
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1) A War of Attrition Hamas Won’t Win
Hamas terrorists scored one of their few “victories” in their war with Israel today when a mortar fired from Gaza struck a car across the border in Israelkilling a four-year-old child. But while this may encourage the Islamists to believe they can win a long-running battle of attrition and force the Jewish state and/or Egypt to make concessions that will enable Hamas to hold onto Gaza as well as to rearm, the leaders of the terrorist movement are making a big mistake.
Palestinians will celebrate the death of the four-year-old as an act of revenge for all those who were killed in Gaza this summer as part of the war launched by Hamas. But while the foreign press that has either been intimidated by Hamas or willingly touts their point of view will try to place this event in a context in which many Palestinian children have died, the fact remains that Israel is shooting at terrorists who hide among civilians. Hamas aims its weapons specifically at civilians. Though almost all of its rockets aimed at Israeli citizens have been shot down or fell helpless in open areas, the Iron Dome missile defense system can’t stop mortar fire shot directly over the border and occasionally one hits its target.
Israelis know that if most of Hamas’s rockets were as successful as their one mortar shell today, perhaps the world would regard their plight with more sympathy. But in the absence of scores or hundreds of dead Jews, one child’s murder along with the terrorization of huge portions of their country isn’t likely to generate empathy for them.
Yet neither grief over today’s atrocity or a sense of isolation as the world treats the ongoing war on the Jewish state as an excuse for a surge in anti-Semitism will give Hamas the advantage it thinks it can win by refusing to halt the hostilities.
Hamas’s strategy in the cease-fire talks is clear. It knows that Israel’s government is not interested in paying the high price in casualties and international criticism that will result from another Gaza ground offensive whose object would be the elimination of the Islamist hold on the strip. But it knows that in order to justify its decision to go to war against Israel this summer to ordinary Palestinians it must produce some kind of concessions from the Jewish state. Their objective remains the loosening or the removal of the blockade of Gaza that has been enforced since the terrorist group seized the strip in a 2007 coup.
By continuing to make Israel bleed over the course of the coming days, weeks, or months without bringing down upon themselves the anger of the world, Hamas believes it can weaken the resolve of the Israelis and perhaps even generate some pressure on Egypt’s government as well. This belief is rooted in a common misperception about the Israelis that is often voiced throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. While they are forced to acknowledge Israel’s military, technological, and economic superiority over its enemies, they believe the Jews have a weak point that can be ruthlessly exploited.
Unlike Hamas, which cold-heartedly and deliberately puts Palestinian civilians in harm’s way in order to protect its fighters and arsenal, Israel prioritizes the protection of its population. Moreover, it goes to great lengths to redeem hostages, even paying for the remains of dead Israelis with live terrorist prisoners. That leads the Islamists to believe that no Israeli government can go on watching as its citizens are picked off and forced to run for shelter even when the Iron Dome is knocking down Hamas’s rockets. Thus, they think that if they can only hold on while they keep shooting, sooner or later the Israelis will buckle and grant them the victory they truly crave.
Hamas knows that any loosening of the blockade won’t do much for Palestinian civilians, but it will allow them to replenish their supply of rockets and other arms as well as to acquire the materials to start digging more tunnels aimed at facilitating terror attacks on Israeli civilians. Moreover, Hamas also knows that the talk about putting the Palestinian Authority in charge of border crossings in order to prevent the flow of arms is a joke. The PA is both weak and corrupt and its forces haven’t a prayer if forced to line up against Hamas cadres even if they were willing to take them on, which they almost certainly have no intention of doing.
The belief in the utility of a war of attrition against Israel is widely accepted by both the Jewish state’s enemies and many of its friends who think the status quo, whether in the West Bank or along the border with Gaza, is unsustainable. But they are wrong. The assumption that Israel can’t hold on in the face of this terrible threat with a clear end to it in sight is unfounded.
From the first day of its existence, Israel has always been faced with confrontations and dilemmas that seemed to be unsustainable. And yet they have been sustained while Israel not only survived but also thrived. The Arabs have always believed that in a long-term conflict the Jews would tire of having to defend their country against a siege aimed at their destruction. But after 66-plus years, it’s time for them to admit they were wrong.
As unpleasant as the standoff in the West Bank may be and as bloody as the border with Gaza has become, the overwhelming majority of Israelis know they have no alternative but to keep fighting and refusing to die. The fact that there is no “solution” in sight for the conflict, whether of the two-state kind or any other variety, is disheartening. But it hasn’t weakened the resolve of the Israeli people to carry on with their lives. Moreover, the experiences of the post-Oslo era have convinced most that any further concessions, such as the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 that created the Hamasistan that continues to shoot at Israeli cities, are a mistake that should not be repeated.
Hard as it may be for some to understand, the Middle East conflict really is as simple as this: the Jews have returned to their land, never to be separated from it again. And not all the mortars and rockets fired from Hamas will change that fact. If anyone appears tired, it is Hamas, which is rapidly running out of options and reduced to mass executions outside of Gaza mosques in order to maintain their rule. Those expecting Israel to lose this battle of attrition are backing the wrong horse.
1a) 20 ROCKETS THIS MORN -IDF STRIKES 17 GAZA TERROR TARGETS OVERNIGHT
By Reuters
Rocket fire from the Gaza Strip resumed targeting southern Israel on Sunday morning following several hours of relative quiet in the South. On the northern front, projectile attacks emanated from Lebanon and Syria late Saturday and early Sunday morning.
On a fifth day of continued fighting since terrorists in Gaza violated a temporary cease-fire last Tuesday, five rockets landed in open areas in the Sdot Negev Regional Council. Rockets pounded the Eshkol area, causing damage to a structure within a community.
A man was lightly injured and treated on the spot when a rocket exploded inside a parking lot in an Eshkol community. A second projectile hit a hothouse, causing damage.
Multiple Code Red rocket alert sirens sounded Sunday morning in Israeli communities on the Gaza periphery, as over 20 rockets flew across the border. Gaza militants aimed further north just after 9:00 a.m.
as Ashdod and Ashkelon came under rocket attack.
In response to the rocket fire, the IDF struck 17 terror targets in Gaza overnight. The military also confirmed that it targeted three Palestinian terror operatives early Sunday.
Terrorists in Gaza continued to fire rockets into Israel late Saturday evening. Two rockets fired from Gaza landed in a residential area in Beersheba, with one lightly injuring two people and destroying a car.
Overnight between Saturday and Sunday, five rockets from Syria landed across the border with Israel in the Golan Heights.
The rockets landed in open areas and no injuries were initially reported. Multiple alert sirens sounded in the Golan Regional Council warning of the attack
The projectile strike from Syria came hours after a separate incident on Saturday night in which a rocket fired from Lebanon hit a building in an open area in the Upper Galilee.
Two children were lightly injured by shrapnel and four people were suffering from shock as a result of the attack.
The Lebanese news agency NNA, citing its correspondent in Tyre, said the rockets were fired towards Israel and that the Lebanese army had encircled the suspected launch area.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Last month, two Katyusha rockets launched from Lebanon landed in open territory outside of Nahariya. IDF artillery responded by targeting the launch site in Lebanon.
Ben Hartman, Yaakov Lappin and Reuters contributed to this report.
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| IF YOU LIKE YOUR TAX DOLLARS PAYING TO UNION WORKERS, VOTE FOR DEMOCRAT MICHELLE NUNN FOR OUR SENATE...IF NOT VOTE FOR REPUBLICAN DAVID PERDUE TO WORK TO CORRECT THIS WASTE OF OUR TAX PAYER DOLLARS!!! |
Federal Employees Working Full-Time for Their Unions
Hundreds of federal employees are working full-time for their unions rather than the agencies that pay their salaries.
At the IRS, 286 full-time staffers worked exclusively for the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) while collecting federal paychecks in 2012, the latest year for which statistics are available.
The IRS provides not only salaries but also office space and equipment to NTEU agents representing 92,000 IRS workers, the Washington Times reported.
The IRS deputy commissioner calculates that these union workers spent 573,319 hours on NTEU business that year, the equivalent of 286 full-time employees performing only union labor.
Taxpayers also shelled out $687,400 in travel expenses for the union operatives.
"The union naturally wants greater benefits, bigger salaries and more handsome bonuses, so Congress pays the union to do it," the Times reported.
More than 90 percent of NTEU campaign contributions go to Democrats, according to Kenric Ward, a reporter for Watchdog.org.
And the union's president is Colleen Kelley, an Obama appointee to the Federal Salary Council, which consults with the government on how much to pay federal workers.
"They're not working for taxpayers. Instead, they're working against the agency by bringing grievances and trying to increase the cost to taxpayers through collective bargaining agreements," Nathan Mehrens, president of Americans for Limited Government, told Watchdog.org, a project of the nonprofit Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity.
The IRS is not the only federal agency where employees work full time on union business.
At the Department of Veterans Affairs, more than 250 employees are working full time for one of four unions, according to Mehrens' organization.
At the Department of Transportation, 35 employees work exclusively for a union, some receiving annual salaries of more than $170,000.
The Environmental Protection Agency pays more than $1.6 million a year to employees who work full time for their union.
Altogether, "taxpayers spent around $156 million on federal employees who did no federal work at all" in 2012, Mehrens said.
Amy Kremer, former chair of the national Tea Party Express, told Watchdog: "I've always said that no taxpayer money should go to fund any union activity whatsoever, especially partisan politics."
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