Picture of Bernie at 3 years.
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Sunday night's Academy Awards was chock full of commentary about the lack of black nominees and the satirist shtick was given by a talented black comedian.
Another voice of protest came from Al Sharpton among others.
I do not know whether PC'ism will survive after this presidential election and the end of Obama. I hope its impact and influence will die because it has reached a point of having outlived its time.
I bring it up in conjunction with The Academy Awards because PC'ism, along with Affirmative Action, has lost its initial and possibly deserved unchallenged embrace, appeal and effectiveness. Yes, there was a time when minorities needed a leg up and there will always be a time when human interaction will create problems, slights, injustices etc. and resistance to them and their root causes must continue but, I would hope, in a more reasoned and rational manner rather than in a didactic, threatening and emotional one.
However, when the demands morph into reverse prejudice it is time to protest their use. The "Black Lives" movement is a misguided way to call attention to abuse, the fact that no black actors were nominated by the country's most liberal segment of our population (Hollywood and the mostly California/New York press and media folks,) it is hard to get exercised. I said previously "Concussion" was a superb movie and the acting was outstanding but Stalone did not win either and I doubt it was because he was an ethnic. As I understand it, the Awards are based on talent not color and the number of nominees are very limited.
Affirmative Action has always been reverse discrimination and maybe was justified because it provided leverage where/when none was available. The more we continue to use prejudice to fight prejudice the more prejudice and back lash we will create.
As for PC'ism, it has reached the stage where it is being trotted out to stifle free speech, to still expression because one might be deemed a racist. It is being used to crush our God given rights embodied in our Constitution. It has been used to bludgeon and it is about time it too be given its rightful burial.
If there ever was a two faced bigot, Al Sharpton would be my candidate. (See 1 below.)
Yesterday there was a "CNN gotcha" dust up about Trump not constantly repeating his previous disavowal of David Duke. When did Obama ever renounce Minister Wright or the Black Panthers who threatened voters engaged in the act of exercising their Constitutional rights?
Trump has proven to be a spoiled and infantile cry baby with some good ideas which he has yet to fully flesh out and he has touched a responsive chord of the angry and disgusted but he lacks what we need - an ability to lead, heal and repair the damage Obama has brought about with his desire to radically alter America caused by his divide and conquer approach.
Obama's leadership and personality has not captured the spirit of Americans and neither does Trump's nastiness. But when a people are frustrated they can turn to pied pipers, candidates, like movie sets, all up front and nothing in the rear and that seems to be where we are at this moment in history - fed up with our leaders and our direction. (See 1a below.)
I am tired of having everything laundered and sanitized through the PC washing machines, listening to the complaints of the perpetually aggrieved and campus fascists who act like goons as they prevent free speech and the expression of diverse opinions.
Call me a racist, one of my daughters already does.
Meanwhile, Avi Shavet concludes Trump is an embarrassment. (See 1b below.)
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And so it goes from the malignant among the Palestinians, whom Israel is supposed to appease and make concession to because all the world's problems can be attributed to coal and Israel. (See 2 below.)
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Good advice from Adam Corolla!!!
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An analysis of the Iranian election. (See 3 below.)
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Sent to me by a very dear friend, the bother I never had and fellow memo reader: Dick - You may have seen the article in the WSJ but in case you didn't, I thought this was something you would enjoy.
In the late 1780s, John Adams was in France and wrote a letter to his wife Abigail. In that letter, he said "I must study politics and war so that our sons may study mathematics and philosophy in order for their children to be able to study painting, poetry, music and architecture." B--
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Anti-Semitic logic. Kill Palestinian jobs and be proud of your hypocrisy. (See 4 below.)
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DickAnti-Semitic logic. Kill Palestinian jobs and be proud of your hypocrisy. (See 4 below.)
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=======================================================================11)Sharpton: This will be the last night of an all-white Oscars
In a strip mall parking lot just yards from the Dolby theatre where the Oscars ceremony was due to start a few hours later, civil rights leader Al Sharpton and his organisation, the National Action Network (NAN), held a rally denouncing the lack of diversity in the Academy Awards.
Protesters carried placards bearing the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, and others with the slogan, “Black lives matter.” When Sharpton took the stage, from a staircase balcony overlooking the parking lot, he led the crowd in a chant that has been a familar part of racial justice rallies across America in the last two years: “No justice – no peace.”
He said that in 2015, following the release of last year’s nominee list – in which, as with this year, no people of colour were nominated for awards in major categories – the Academy had promised him and his organisation that they would change.
But, he said, no such change had occurred.
During his speech, Sharpton held aloft an Oscar statue made of white, rather than the usual gold material, implying that this would be a more accurate coloration. “You are out of time,” he told the Academy. “We are not going to allow the Oscars to continue. This will be the last night of an all-white Oscars.”
After Sharpton spoke, he led protesters in a march, chanting, “Greenlight diversity” and “Diversify the Academy.” Hemmed in by police, who had closed most of the roads surrounding the Dolby theatre, the protesters instead marched in a circle around the parking lot.
“In this lot, where you see people have come out to walk in a unity circle, this is the colour of America,” Sharpton told reporters after the rally. “What they will see tonight is blacks on stage giving awards to whites that whites decided.”
“There’s nothing wrong with whites getting awards, but they should not be the only ones making decisions,” he continued. “We love Leonardo DiCaprio … but we also love Michael B Jordan. So why isn’t he in consideration?”
Colleen Williams, a supporter from Los Angeles, said that she was there “supporting for justice”. She called for more African Americans to be nominated for Academy awards. “[It’s] just fairness. We support the Oscars, but we just want fairness.”
Yolanda Christian, another supporter, said that she wanted “to make sure that everyone gets equal rights”.
The National Action Network planned a nationwide boycott of the televised ceremony night, calling it the “white Oscars tune-out”.
The idea, Sharpton told the Guardian in an interview on Thursday, was to put pressure on advertisers, especially event sponsor Kohl’s, to suspend ties with the organisation until it makes concrete changes to its diversity policies.
Copyright © 2016 theguardian.com. All rights reserved.
1a) Staring at the Conservative Gutter
In the late 1950s, Bill Buckley decreed that nobody whose name appeared on the masthead of the American Mercury magazine would be published in the pages of National Review. The once-illustrious Mercury of H.L. Mencken had become a gutter of far-right anti-Semites. Buckley would not allow his magazine to be tainted by them.
1a) Staring at the Conservative Gutter
Donald Trump gives credence to the left’s caricature of bigoted conservatives.
By Bret StephensIn the late 1950s, Bill Buckley decreed that nobody whose name appeared on the masthead of the American Mercury magazine would be published in the pages of National Review. The once-illustrious Mercury of H.L. Mencken had become a gutter of far-right anti-Semites. Buckley would not allow his magazine to be tainted by them.
The word for Buckley’s act is “lustration,” and for two generations it upheld the honor of the mainstream conservative movement. Liberals may have been fond of claiming that Republicans were all closet bigots and that tax cuts were a form of racial prejudice, but the accusation rang hollow because the evidence for it was so tendentious.
Not anymore. The candidacy of Donald Trump is the open sewer of American conservatism. This Super Tuesday, polls show a plurality of GOP voters intend to dive right into it, like the boy in the “Slumdog Millionaire” toilet scene. And they’re not even holding their noses.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has endorsed the Code Pink view of the Iraq War (Bush lied; people died). He has cited and embraced an aphorism of Benito Mussolini. (“It’s a very good quote,” Mr. Trump told NBC’s Chuck Todd.) He has refused to release his “very beautiful” tax returns. And he has taken his time disavowing the endorsement of onetime Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke—offering, by way of a transparently dishonest excuse, that “I know nothing about David Duke.” Mr. Trump left the Reform Party in 2000 after Mr. Duke joined it.
None of this seems to have made the slightest dent in Mr. Trump’s popularity. If anything it has enhanced it. In the species of political pornography in which Mr. Trump trafficks, the naughtier the better. The more respectable opinion is scandalized by whatever pops out of the Donald’s mouth, the more his supporters cheer him for sticking it to the snobs and the scolds. The more Mr. Trump traduces the old established lines of decency, the more he affirms his supporters’ most shameless ideological instincts.
Those instincts have moved beyond the usual fare of a wall with Mexico, a trade war with China, Mr. Trump’s proposed Muslim Exclusion Act, or his scurrilous insinuations about the constitutionality of Ted Cruz’s or Marco Rubio’s presidential bids.
What too many of Mr. Trump’s supporters want is an American strongman, a president who will make the proverbial trains run on time. This is a refrain I hear over and over again from Trump supporters, who want to bring a businessman’s efficiency to the federal government. If that means breaking with a few democratic niceties, so be it.
Mr. Trump is happy to indulge the taste. “I hear the Rickets [sic] family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $’s against me,” Mr. Trump tweeted Feb. 22 about the Ricketts family of T.D. Ameritrade fame. “They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!” What happens when Mr. Trump starts sending similar tweets as president? The question isn’t an idle one, since the candidate has also promised to “open up the libel laws” as president so he can more easily sue hostile journalists. Is trashing the First Amendment another plank in making America great again?
No wonder Mr. Trump earns such lavish praise not only from Mr. Duke or Vladimir Putin, but also from French ur-fascist Jean Marie Le Pen, who once described Nazi Germany’s gas chambers as “a detail of history” and now says that if he were American he’d vote for Mr. Trump, “may God protect him.” With the instinct of house flies, they recognize the familiar smell, and they want more of it.
Mr. Trump exemplifies a new political wave sweeping the globe—leaders coming to power through democratic means while avowing illiberal ends. Hungary’s Viktor Orban is another case in point, as is Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A Trump presidency—neutral between dictatorships and democracies, opposed to free trade, skeptical of traditional U.S. defense alliances, hostile to immigration—would mark the collapse of the entire architecture of the U.S.-led post-World War II global order. We’d be back to the 1930s, this time with an America Firster firmly in charge.
That’s the future Mr. Trump offers whether his supporters realize it or not. Bill Buckley and the other great shapers of modern conservatism—Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, Robert Bartley and Irving Kristol—articulated a conservatism that married economic dynamism to a prudent respect for tradition, patriotism and openness to the wider world. Trumpism is the opposite of this creed: moral gauchery plus economic nationalism plus Know Nothingism. It is the return of the American Mercury, minus for now (but only for now) the all-but inevitable anti-Semitism.
It would be terrible to think that the left was right about the right all these years. Nativist bigotries must not be allowed to become the animating spirit of the Republican Party. If Donald Trump becomes the candidate, he will not win the presidency, but he will help vindicate the left’s ugly indictment. It will be left to decent conservatives to pick up the pieces—and what’s left of the party.
1b) Ari Shavit in today's Haaretz
Even if he doesn’t become president, Donald Trump has already made history. The success of the billionaire from Palm Beach against all the odds and all the forecasts has changed the face of the United States. More precisely, it has demonstrated that the face of the United States has changed.
After the astounding victories of the vulgar populist in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, it is clear to all that America is no longer the country we have known. It is no longer a nation with a prudent economic establishment, a contented middle class and a stable political system. It is no longer a nation confident in itself, its identity and its future. It is a frightened, angry America. An America that has lost its way.
To an Israeli who spends considerable time in debates about Israel between Boston and San Francisco, Trump is a relief. Suddenly Israeli politics seem a little less embarrassing. How can one be shocked by Uri Ariel, Miri Regev and Yariv Levin, when the big talent is electrifying millions of Americans by inciting against Muslims? How can one express disgust at the goings on in Jerusalem, when the man marching toward Washington is breaking every basic rule of American democracy?
But to an Israeli who loves America and believes it has no substitute, Trump is a cause of deep worry. Why is it that what’s going on in this election campaign hasn’t happened in any election campaign in the last century? What enables a brilliant, dangerous, repulsive, rude clown to take one step after another toward the White House?
The first reason for Trump’s success is fear for the nation’s identity. American demography is changing fast. White Christian America is becoming a minority. In the two election campaigns won by Barack Obama, American politics celebrated the change. Now comes the reaction. Something dark and horrible is rising from parts of the conservative white population, which feels it’s losing its hegemony over the land it has built.
The second reason for Trump’s success is economic fear. In the last 30 years American capitalism has become rapacious as it hasn’t been since the end of the 19th century. Massive concentration of capital, huge social gaps and an eroding middle class are breaking the American dream to bits. In the absence of real mobility and the lack of confidence in a better future, American stability and optimism have been undermined.
The third reason for Trump’s success is fear of decline. All those who will be voting in the November election are children of the American century. They grew up in a world dominated in one way or another by the United States. But in the last 15 years these voters have seen America lose its place of leadership in the world. China’s rise, Russia’s provocation and the Middle East’s despair prove that Washington is no longer in command of the world as it was in the past. Thus was created the yearning for a new commander, an unrestrained one.
These three deep fears coalesced in recent years to become a quiet dread. While on the surface the economy seemed to be more or less recovering, the world more or less peaceful, and life more or less reasonable – down below this dread gripped the heart of the American masses. In the lack of job security, communal security and security in the future, the dread intensified.
Until Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders came along and brought it to the surface, to the light. So even if the real estate tycoon is ultimately defeated – he has already made his mark. This man who offers himself as a grotesquerie of Ronald Reagan has not only brought American politics to an unprecedented low, he endangers all that America has been and all that America is supposed to be
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2)
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PA TV Antisemitism:
"If a fish in the sea fights another fish
the Jews are behind it"
Jews are reason for all bad in the world:
"Humanity will never live in comfort as long as the Jews
are causing devastating corruption throughout the land.
Humanity will never live in peace or fortune or tranquility
as long as they are corrupting the land"
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
The Palestinian Authority teaches that Jews are "evil" and the source of all bad in the world. An official PA TV host and preacher of Islam explained in his weekly education program about Islam, that as long as Jews are spreading their corruption "humanity will never live in comfort." He illustrated this with an example: "An old man told me: If a fish in the sea fights with another fish, I am sure the Jews are behind it":
"Humanity will never live in comfort as long as the Jews are causing devastating corruption throughout the land. Humanity will never live in peace or fortune or tranquility as long as they are corrupting the land. An old man told me: If a fish in the sea fights with another fish, I am sure the Jews are behind it. As Allah says: ''Every time they kindled the fire of war [against you], Allah extinguished it. They strive throughout the land [causing] corruption, and Allah does not like corrupters'' (Sura 5:64)."
[Official PA TV, Feb. 27, 2016]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Antisemitism is a fundamental principle of PA ideology. Antisemitic hate speech was recently voiced by PA Chairman Abbas' advisor, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who said that throughout history Jews have represented "evil," "falsehood," "the devils" and "the satans," and accordingly Israel is "Satan's project." Islam and the Palestinians on the other hand constitute "the good" and "Allah's project":
PA Supreme Shari'ah Judge and Mahmoud Abbas' advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash:
"The conflict here in Palestine between us and the criminal occupation and its criminal leaders, is a further manifestation of our trials, a further manifestation of the historic conflict between truth and falsehood, between good and evil. Throughout history, there has been a conflict between good and evil. The good is represented by the prophets and their supporters. The evil is represented by the devils and their supporters, by the satans and their supporters. We are not inventing anything new here. This is a conflict between two entities, good and evil, between two projects: Allah's project vs. Satan's project, a project connected to Allah, which is his will - true and good - and a project connected to oppression and Satanism, to Satanism and animosity, occupation and barbarism."
[Official PA TV, Oct. 23, 2015]
PA TV also recently rebroadcast a "documentary" which explains that Europe created Israel to "get rid of" the corrupt, scheming Jews.
PA TV is not the only place where Antisemitism is being taught to Palestinians. PMW documented that Antisemitic ideologies were an integral part of Islamic lessons at the Al-Aqsa Mosque last year taught by Sheikh Mughrabi. This continued weekly until PMW's exposure led to Mughrabi's arrest and indictment for inciting hatred. In one of his teachings, Mughrabi taught his students that Jews "prepare their matzah... with the blood of children." In another lesson, he explained that Jews "worship the Devil."
Significantly, PA TV has chosen the middle of the terror campaign to rebroadcast this hate speech by Hamato, which PMW reported on when it was originally broadcast in February last year.
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3)
Because the Iranian elections were engineered prior to the day when they actually took place, the choice for voters was extremely limited, an expert on the subject told The Algemeiner on Sunday.
Pooya Dayanim, the California-based president of the Iranian Jewish Public Affairs Committee (IJPAC), was responding to the results of Friday’s elections for the Majlis (parliament) and Assembly of Experts, which are being touted in Western media outlets as a “victory for the reformists.”
Dayanim, an Iranian Jew who has lived in the United States for the past 31 years, explained to The Algemeiner that the two elections have to be broken down and analyzed separately.
“Those for the parliament can be construed as a victory for more pragmatic-minded candidates. However, even they have carefully not characterized themselves as reformists. Instead, they call themselves pragmatists or independents,” he said. “Furthermore, you have to realize that of the 3,000 candidates who applied to run for the 290-seat parliament, only 30 were approved by the Council of Guardians; the rest were disqualified for not possessing the necessary revolutionary credentials.”
In other words, Dayanim said, “The Council of Guardians eliminated 99 percent of the reformist candidates — those openly identifying with Mohammad Khatami, the last reformist president, who was in office from 1997 to 2005. The people in the [President Hassan] Rouhani and [Khatami predecessor Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani camp, who refer to themselves as independents, pragmatists and deal-makers, are the candidates the media are referring to mistakenly as reformists.”
But, yes, he added, “It is true that they had a huge success in the parliamentary elections, managing to take all the seats in the Tehran province, the most liberal metropolitan province in Iran.”
Still, said Dayanim, “While there are elections in Iran, there is no freedom. Nor were any pro-democracy candidates even allowed to run.” Not only that, he added, but the massive crackdown on anyone opposing the regime has been severe during Rouhani’s tenure. “In fact, twice as many people were executed under Rouhani than under his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
Where the Assembly of Experts – the 86-88-strong body that appoints the regime’s supreme leader — is concerned, Dayanim said, “Again, while you can’t say that the reformists won, you can say that people aligned with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the most hardline elements of the regime, with the strictest interpretation of Shiite Islam, lost.”
This becomes much more important, he said, “in light of the fact that the West has completely stopped supporting democracy and opposition groups in Iran, and has increasingly invested in the Iranian economy with the signing of the nuclear deal.”
This, he explained, “is one of the things that folks inside Iran discussed: that if they didn’t participate in the election, they might not have any influence at all. So, faced with the choice of bad and worse, they opted for the bad.”
The final thing Dayanim asserted was that most people outside of Iran, other than those actually studying it and who are aware of its internal workings, “do not grasp that only one third of the Iranian regime is run by elected officials – and even those are pre-screened by the revolutionary Council of Guardians – and the rest is run by shadowy figures.”
“The supreme leader still pulls the strings,” he concluded. “And when he dies, in spite of the outcome of these elections, the Assembly of Experts is going to pick someone just like him.”
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SodaStream: A Case Study in Middle East Insanity
By Sherwin Pomerantz
Even after living in this country for over 32 years, I am still amazed about the lack of logic that causes serious financial harm to both Israelis and Palestinians. SodaStream is a classic example.
If you are not familiar with the company, they are an Israeli-based firm that produces soda-making machines for the home. They have been eminently successful worldwide in redefining the flavored soft drink industry and providing a tasty but less costly alternative to buying similar commercially bottled products.
Their Israeli plant operated in the Mishor Adumim area of what the press calls the West Bank (and what many of us call by its more biblical names of Yehuda and Shomron), 10 minutes from Jerusalem but easily accessible to large swaths of Palestinian workers. The company employed close to 600 such workers who were paid wages significantly higher than their brethren working in Palestinian owned business when such jobs were available, and who had better physical working conditions as well. There has been some discussion about whether the Palestinian workers were being paid less than their Israeli counterparts but, even if that were true, they were definitely being paid much more than what they could have earned in their local communities and seemed quite satisfied with the opportunity to provide a better life for their families.
But in late 2014 and early 2015 the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement began digging their rotting teeth into SodaStream. The movement cared little about what might happen to all the people working in the plant. Their greater goal of hurting Israel over its policies towards the Palestinians was important enough to make the employees become financial martyrs to their cause.
SodaStream, rightly concerned about their long term profitability and not wanting to spend every waking hour fighting the BDS pressure, decided to close its plant in the West Bank and relocate to an area in the south of Israel, in the northern Negev desert. That decision meant that 500 Palestinian workers lost their jobs while approximately 75 others were given permits to work in the new location, at least until the end of February of this year. Chalk one victory up for BDS but a big financial defeat for 500 families whose lives were negatively altered for the cause, whatever that might be.
Now Israel comes along and for security reasons, or so we are told, refuses to renew the entry permits of the 75 Palestinians who were willing to travel 2-1/2 hours each way every day in order to work in the new SodaStream plant. Company management had threatened to close the plant and put everyone else out of work as well if Israel did not authorize the extension, but later decided against that move. So, as of today, March 1st, 75 more Palestinians are out of work. Another great victory (sic) for the BDS cause, or so they say.
But for some anti-Israel activists even this is not enough. Having put almost 600 Palestinians out of work Ramah Kudaimi of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (http://www.endtheoccupation.
And, amazingly, nobody on either side of the line is yelling or screaming about this. The Palestinian leadership has remained silent even though 600 formerly gainfully employed people are now looking for work. The organizations here that one would think should be defending the right of an Israeli company to operate unhindered and without insane outside pressure have also seemingly remained silent.
The only heroine in all of this has been Scarlett Johansson who had been a spokesperson for SodaStream as well as a global ambassador for Oxfam, the international organization committed to reducing poverty. When the BDS activity started Oxfam gave Johansson a choice, either end her relationship with SodaStream or with Oxfam, and she chose to resign from Oxfam. The world needs more people of principle like her.
I run a company here in Jerusalem that employs Jews and Arabs. One of our Arab researchers left the company at the end of last month for a better paying job with more responsibility in a government agency. At a going away lunch last week in her honor we asked her what she learned working with and for us over the last five years? Her answer? That she realized that people of different backgrounds and different national interests really can work together if they shelve their differences and work for a common goal. She made our day.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if our political leaders on both signs would be capable of internalizing that lesson as well? What an incredibly better place this country could be if that could happen.
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