What's wrong with a dog's life who is loved? Western Immorality and U.S Hypocrisy! (See 1,
1a, 1b and 1c below.)
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This is what Soros and his fellow anarchists are betting on! (See 2 below.)
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This letter has been confirmed by Snopes.com. (See 3 below.)
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Israel has come into it own. (See 4 below.)
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Now for some non PC humor. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)
US rejects Netanyahu’s pledge to hold onto Golan forever
After Germany, Arab League speak out, State Department says Washington maintains Heights are not part of Israel; Cruz backs PM
The United States on Monday objected to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that the Golan Heights will forever remain under Israeli control, reiterating that it does not recognize the Jewish state’s claims to the strategic plateau.
US State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the Obama administration does not consider the Golan Heights to be part of Israel.
“The US position on the issue is unchanged,” Kirby said at a daily media briefing at the State Department in Washington. “This position was maintained by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Those territories are not part of Israel and the status of those territories should be determined through negotiations.”
Israel captured the Golan from Syria in the 1967 war and effectively annexed it in 1981. The move was unanimously rejected the same year by the UN Security Council.
US State Department Spokesman John Kirby. (AP/Susan Walsh)
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Monday backed Netanyahu, saying it would be “foolhardy and dangerous” for the world to press Israel to relinquish the territory amid the ongoing Syrian civil war.
“The government of Israel reiterated the reality that the Golan Heights are part of Israel’s sovereign territory. Given the presence of hostile terrorist organizations ranging from ISIS to Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border, it is foolhardy and dangerous for elements in the international community to try to pressure Israel to abandon the Golan to the chaos engulfing Syria. The path to peace cannot involve Israel’s abdication of its own security,” Cruz said in a statement.
In this April 5, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, waves during a primary night campaign event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
Earlier Monday, Germany said a unilateral decision by Israel to keep the Golan Heights would breach international law while the Arab League denounced Netanyahu’s comments as an “escalation.”
German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said “it’s a basic principle of international law and the UN charter that no state can claim the right to annex another state’s territory just like that.”
Schaefer said Germany isn’t currently demanding the immediate return of the territory due to the security situation in Syria.
On Sunday, Netanyahu held the first-ever cabinet meeting on the Golan, declaring that the area will always be part of Israel.
“Israel will never withdraw from the Golan Heights,” he declared, pointing to the historical Jewish connection to the ridge.
The comments came amid reports that Netanyahu had called US Secretary of State John Kerry to complain about text declaring the Golan as part of Syria to be included as part of a peace deal being drafted to end the Syrian civil war.
Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi, the secretary general of the pan-Arab bloc headquartered in Cairo, said Monday Netanyahu’s statement “was a new escalation that represents a brazen violation of international law.”
The international community never accepted Israel’s annexation, and Israeli leaders see in the turmoil in Syria a chance to convince the world to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan. In November, Netanyahu reportedly asked US President Barack Obama to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the area, given the civil war. Obama refused to even reply, according to Israeli media accounts.
Deputy Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad warned that his war-torn state would retake the plateau by any means necessary.
Mekdad declared that the “Arab Syrian Golan Heights” is still occupied territory according to international law and would eventually be taken back from the Israelis.
| ISRAEL HAYOM | ||||||
Ruthie Blum
| Shame on the US at the UN
At an open debate on the Middle East at the United Nations Security Council in New York on Monday -- as a bus was being blown up in Jerusalem -- Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon told his Palestinian counterpart, Riyad Mansour, that he ought to be ashamed for not denouncing terrorism and incitement.
Danon had brought Natan and Renana Meir to the session to personify the devastation that Palestinian Authority incitement to violence against Jews continues to wreak. Natan is the widower of Dafna Meir, a 38-year-old nurse who was murdered three months ago by a Palestinian teenager at the entrance to her home in Otniel, a settlement south of Hebron. Renana is Natan's 17-year-old daughter, who not only witnessed her mother being stabbed to death, but tried to help fend off the assailant.
The 15-year-old terrorist later told Israeli interrogators that he had been inspired to commit his heinous act from broadcasts on PA television and social media.
Mansour did not condemn any of it, of course. Instead, he berated Israel for imprisoning and killing Palestinian children. No surprise there, which is why Danon -- who should be lauded for standing alone in the hornets' nest of hypocrisy and deceit that the Security Council occupies -- was wasting his breath. As Natan Meir said later in a small press conference after the event, it hurt him to hear a diplomat referring to jailed Palestinian kids as victims, when one of those "kids" had slaughtered his wife in cold blood.
Danon already knows that the PA is a lost cause in every possible respect. So his finger-pointing at Mansour was a gesture aimed elsewhere -- but hopefully not at the United States, which is just as deserving of a tongue-lashing as the PA that it morally equates with Israel.
Indeed, "disgraceful" doesn't begin to describe the statement made by David Pressman, the U.S.'s "alternative representative to the U.N. for special political affairs," at the session in question. Condemning terrorism and settlements in the same sentence, Pressman talked about America's "steadfast" efforts to "advance dialogue and progress," which, he said, "will be borne from hard choices made by both leaders to advance the cause of peace over parochial politics."
Thus, he continued: "We remain very concerned by the wave of terrorism, violence and the utter lack of progress the parties have made toward a two-state solution. It is important that both sides demonstrate, with concrete policies and actions, a genuine commitment to achieving a two-state solution to reduce tensions and restore hope in the possibility of peace. What we have seen on the ground, and what families like the Meir family present here today have experienced first-hand, is absolutely unconscionable."
Yes, said Pressman, "acts of terrorism have taken too many lives, including Americans. The victims have included soldiers and civilians, pregnant women and mothers, Israelis and Palestinians. ... Terrorism is terrorism. It is wrong. It is bloody. And it must stop. Anyone that aspires to achieve a viable and independent Palestinian state must understand that engaging in incitement to violence only serves to undermine this goal. Only a political outcome, not violence, will allow this goal to be realized."
And here came the clincher: "We remain deeply concerned about the shooting of a Palestinian assailant on March 24 in Hebron by a member of the Israeli security forces, and are following the legal proceedings against the accused perpetrator closely. We note that just today charges of manslaughter were brought against the soldier. ... In cases where anyone from any side acts outside the law, they must be held accountable."
In other words, while Israel always holds each and every soldier accountable for the slightest whiff of wrongdoing, and the PA encourages, glorifies and funds terrorists as a matter of course and principle, "both sides" share responsibility for the violence that is causing the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians alike.
But Pressman didn't stop there. No, he completed his comparison by reprimanding Israel for "settlement activity" that the U.S. "strongly opposes." Such actions as "land expropriations, settlement expansions, and legalizations of outposts," he said, "are wrong and fundamentally undermine the prospects for a two-state solution."
Shame on him and the entire Obama administration for not realizing that the only kind of construction the U.S. should be linking to the jihad that the Palestinians are waging against Israel is that of terror tunnels, rocket launchers and lies.
Ruthie Blum is the web editor of The Algemeiner (algemeiner.com).
1b)
Biden: 'Overwhelming frustration' with Israeli gov't
By JOSH LEDERMAN
Vice President Joe Biden speaks at an event in Las Vegas. Biden acknowledged "overwhelming frustration" with Israel's government on Monday, April 18, and said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's administration has led Israel in the wrong direction, in an unusually sharp rebuke of America's closest ally in the Middle East.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged "overwhelming frustration" with Israel's government on Monday and said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's administration has led Israel in the wrong direction, in an unusually sharp rebuke of America's closest ally in the Middle East.
Biden, in a speech to the pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy group J Street, offered a grim outlook for peace efforts, reflecting dim hopes for progress during the remainder of the Obama administration. Although he said Israelis and Palestinians shared blame for undermining trust and shirking responsibility, he was emphatic in his critique of Netanyahu's government, suggesting his approach raised "profound questions" about how Israel could remain both Jewish and democratic.
"I firmly believe that the actions that Israel's government has taken over the past several years — the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures — they're moving us and more importantly they're moving Israel in the wrong direction," Biden said.
He said those policies were moving Israel toward a "one-state reality" — meaning a single state for Palestinians and Israelis in which eventually, Israeli Jews will no longer be the majority.
"That reality is dangerous," Biden added.
Biden, who met in March with both Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said he came away from that trip discouraged about prospects for peace anytime soon. Still, he said it was the U.S. obligation to guarantee Israel's security and to "push them as hard as we can" toward a two-state solution despite "our sometimes overwhelming frustration with the Israeli government."
"There is at the moment no political will that I observed from either Israelis or Palestinians to go forward with serious negotiations," Biden said.
The vice president's remarks to J Street, a dovish Israel advocacy group that frequently criticizes Netanyahu, came at the height of a campaign season in which candidates have been scrutinized over their adherence to traditionally stalwart U.S. support for Israel. Ahead of Tuesday's primary in New York, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has sparked controversy for saying the U.S. should be even-handed and mustn't always say that Netanyahu is right.
Biden also singled out Palestinian leaders, including Abbas, for declining to condemn specific acts of terrorism carried out against Israelis, in a nod to the seven-month wave of Palestinian stabbings and other attacks. He said he didn't know whether Monday's bus explosion that wounded scores in Jerusalem was a terrorist attack, but added that the U.S. condemns "misguided cowards" who resort to violence.
"No matter what legitimate disagreements the Palestinian people have with Israel, there is never justification for terrorism," Biden said. "No leader should fail to condemn as terrorists those who commit such brutalities."
Biden's tough talk about a key U.S. partner reflected diminishing patience within the White House as President Barack Obama's term nears an end, compounded by deep disagreements over Iran and a strained relationship between the leaders of both countries. In recent weeks, the Obama administration has left open the possibility that it could support or at least not block a U.N. resolution laying out parameters for a future peace deal, a possibility that Israel has railed against.
In another dig at Netanyahu and his Likud party, Biden singled out for praise Stav Shaffir, a young member of Israel's parliament and Netanyahu critic from the left wing of Israeli politics.
"May your views begin to once again become the majority opinion in the Knesset," Biden said.
1c) Obama to Face Uneasy Allies at Gulf SummitRelations between U.S., Saudi Arabia are at a low point over such issues as Iran, 9/11 bill
President Barack Obama travels to Saudi Arabia this week with relations between the U.S. and a once tightly allied group of Gulf Arab nations at a low point and on track to worsen.
Differences over Iran, regional conflicts, a looming showdown over oil prices and congressional pressure over Riyadh’s alleged role in the Sept. 11 attacks have all clouded what was once a vital strategic partnership.
Mr. Obama’s fourth, and likely last, visit to Saudi Arabia since taking office comes as Riyadh, increasingly assertive, seeks assurances that the U.S. hasn’t ditched loyal Gulf allies in favor of Iran.
Such concerns within the Sunni kingdom have only intensified in the nine months since the U.S. and other world powers struck a landmark nuclear deal with Iran. Mr. Obama has attempted to soothe that anxiety by offering deeper security ties and improved defense capabilities for the Gulf states.
“It is now more apparent than ever that there is a disconnect between the way President Obama sees the turmoil in the Middle East—and perhaps the world—and the way it is viewed by the Saudi leadership,” said Fahad Nazer, a senior political analyst at JTG Inc. who previously worked at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
The U.S.-Saudi relationship, in particular, is growing more complicated. In a new irritant, U.S. lawmakers are lining up behind legislation that would allow courts to hold Saudi Arabia liable if the government or Saudi officials are found to have had any role in or connection to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks—as some critics have long alleged.
The Obama administration said Monday it is likely to veto the legislation. But its consideration has provoked a backlash from Riyadh, which vehemently denies involvement of any kind with the 9/11 plotters.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is working to determine whether to declassify 28 pages of a congressional report that could provide answers to outstanding questions about the possible Saudi role.
Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama, said that while the report remains classified, the Saudi Arabian government hadn’t paid enough attention in the years before 9/11 to those within the kingdom that were funding al Qaeda either directly or indirectly.
“It’s not that it was Saudi government policy to support al Qaeda, but there were a number of very wealthy individuals in Saudi Arabia who would contribute sometimes directly to extremist groups,” Mr. Rhodes said Monday in an interview on “The Axe Files” show.
Also aggravating the diplomatic climate are dropping oil prices, coming as the U.S. is reducing its dependence on foreign sources through increased domestic shale production. The changing dynamic was underscored this past weekend when oil producers failed to agree on a production freeze. Those talks in Qatar collapsed after Saudi Arabia demanded that Iran also agree to cap its oil production.
Mr. Obama, who is to arrive in Riyadh on Wednesday, hopes to prod Gulf allies to put more resources into the fight against Islamic State and to nudge Saudi Arabia toward a potential dialogue with Iran, White House officials said. He also is seeking diplomatic cooperation from Riyadh to help resolve the conflicts in Syria and Yemen, where Iran and Saudi Arabia are at odds.
The main purpose of the trip is a summit with the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. Expectations are low for significant announcements on new counterterrorism cooperation or defense measures.
The summit is a follow-up to one Mr. Obama hosted in May 2015 at Camp David in an attempt to gain tacit support for the Iran nuclear deal.
While the U.S. shares Saudi Arabia’s concerns over Iran’s role in the region, Mr. Obama disagrees with Riyadh’s preferred approach of isolating it, White House officials say.
Mr. Obama’s expressed desire for a dialogue between Iran and Saudi Arabia—longtime rivals—has fueled the perception among the Gulf states that the U.S. is turning away from them and trying to fundamentally shake up traditional alliances.
Mr. Obama has fueled those concerns by questioning Riyadh’s confrontational stance.
“The competition between the Saudis and the Iranians—which has helped to feed proxy wars and chaos in Syria and Iraq and Yemen—requires us to say to our friends as well as to the Iranians that they need to find an effective way to share the neighborhood and institute some sort of cold peace,” Mr. Obama said in a recently published interview with the Atlantic magazine.
Saudi Arabia fired back, with its powerful former intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, accusing Mr. Obama of turning his back on the kingdom’s decadeslong friendship with the U.S.
The damaged relationship between Washington and Riyadh could outlast the Obama administration.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton supports the Sept. 11 legislation that Mr. Obama has promised to veto.
“If Saudi Arabia were complicit in terrorism and people were killed because of it, of course there should be a right of the families of the victims to go to court,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said Monday during a joint appearance with Mrs. Clinton.
But Mr. Obama, in an interview that aired Monday on CBS, said the legislation would subject the U.S. to the same kinds of lawsuits the bill’s advocates hope to allow against Saudi Arabia and other countries.
“This is not just a bilateral U.S.-Saudi issue,” Mr. Obama said. “If we open up the possibility that individuals and the United States can routinely start suing other governments, then we are also opening up the United States to being continually sued by individuals in other countries.”
Riyadh has repeatedly rejected the accusations that it helped to fund the Sept. 11 attacks, and cited the findings of a separate commission that investigated the 2001 attacks. “The 9-11 Commission confirmed that there is no evidence that the government of Saudi Arabia supported or funded al Qaeda,” the Saudi Embassy in Washington said this month. It also noted U.S. judges have dismissed attempts to file lawsuits against Saudi Arabia.
Some Saudi officials play down strained ties. “There is no single issue that is more important than the relationship as a whole,” said Prince Abdullah bin Faisal bin Turki, Saudi Arabia’s recently appointed ambassador to the U.S. “Nothing will destroy that.”
White House press secretary Josh Earnest dismissed a report of Saudi threats to sell Treasury securities or other U.S. assets if the Sept. 11 legislation passes.
“The Saudi government recognizes that both our countries and our economies benefit from the smooth functioning of our global financial system,” he said Monday.
In a sign of continuing cooperation, the Saudis took in nine detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Saturday. The move helps Mr. Obama advance one of his last major policy initiatives—closing the U.S. detention facility there before he leaves office.
“The region itself has gone through the most tumultuous period probably in decades,” said Rob Malley, the president’s coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. As a result, the views of the U.S. and some of its regional partners “haven't always been perfectly aligned” as new challenges were confronted.
The Middle East has changed so much during Mr. Obama’s time in office—from the rise of Islamic State, the drop in oil prices and the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, to the Arab Spring and the U.S. approach to Iran—that the next U.S. president will face different challenges anyway.
“It’s not about personal tiffs between leaders,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington-based think tank.
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America’s checks and balances have always protected us from our worst impulses. Now they’re eroding.
By Victor Davis Hanson
The constitution of the Roman republic was designed as a corrective to democracy—specifically the excesses of Athenian-style direct democracy. About twice a month the citizens of Athens would vote into law almost anything they wished. Six thousand to seven thousand citizens would squeeze into a hillside amphitheater known as the Pnyx to be swayed by demagogues (“people leaders”) into voting for or against the cause du jour. Our term democracy comes from the Greek dêmoskratos, literally “people power.”
In furor at a rebellion, for example, Athenians once voted to kill all the adult male subjects of the island of Lesbos—only to repent the next day and vote again to execute just some, hoping that their second messenger ship rowed fast enough across the Aegean to overtake the first bearing the original death sentence. In a fit of pique, the popular court voted to execute the philosopher Socrates, to fine the statesman Pericles, and to ostracize the general Aristides. Being successful, popular, rich, or controversial always proved a career liability in a democracy like Athens.
SAFETY VALVES
The Romans knew enough about mercurial ancient Athens to appreciate that they did not want a radical democracy. Instead, they sought to take away absolute power from the people and redistribute it within a “mixed” government. In Rome, power was divided constitutionally between executives (two consuls), legislators (the senate and assemblies), and judges (Roman magistrates).
The half-millennium success of the stable Roman republican system inspired later French and British Enlightenment thinkers. Their abstract tripartite system of constitutional government stirred the founding fathers to concrete action. Americans originally were terrified of what 51 percent of the people in an unchecked democracy might do on any given day—and knew that ancient democracies had always become more radical, not less, and thus more unstable.
For all the squabbles among Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison, they agreed that a republic, not a direct democracy, was a far safer and more stable choice of governance. The result was a potpourri of ways to curb the predictable excesses and fits of the people. An Electoral College reserved commensurate power to rural states rather than passing off the presidential vote into the hands of the huge urban majorities. States could decide their own rules of voter participation—with the original understanding that owning a modicum of property might make a citizen more rooted and engaged. Senators were appointed by state legislatures to balance the popular election of House members.
Many of these checks on popular expression were later overturned by plebiscites or the courts, but they reflected the original eighteenth-century worries over a supposedly unchecked mob. We often think that a Bill of Rights was designed to protect Americans from monarchs and dictators. It certainly was. But the founders were just as terrified of what the majority of elected representatives might legally do at any time to an individual citizen.
Madison’s constitutional guarantees seem to have anticipated what today’s politically correct campus administrators wish to do to the rights of students accused of race/class/gender thought crimes. Such transitory manias are common in democratic society. In 1942, a furious public wanted Japanese- American citizens placed in detention camps; last year, climate-change advocates begged the federal government to silence global warming “deniers” by charging them with racketeering.
DEMAGOGUES AND SHORT MEMORIES
Our election primaries showcase how popular impulses can erupt into a herd mentality. In 2012, slick advertising, bombastic televised debating, and the Internet variously created and then destroyed various leading Republican candidates such as Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum. A good one-liner or a cool infomercial made each of those candidates the fad or the cad of the month. In this election cycle, Jeb Bush was supposed to be a shoo-in.
Then Donald Trump blew in on a media-generated storm, his “Make America Great Again” resonating in the same key as Barack Obama’s banal “Hope and Change” slogan. A year from now, we will no more remember the current fad of Black Lives Matter than we do Occupy Wall Street, as the public lurches from one spasm to the next. The democratic crowd fixates on political whims in the way shoppers used to rush out to buy pet rocks and lava lamps.
In 2008 and 2012, when he was running for president, Obama soberly announced that as a devout Christian, he could not quite countenance the idea of gay marriage. But once free of re-election worries in 2014, his administration suddenly flipped and went after citizens who felt that their religious beliefs did not allow them to sanction gay marriage in their business transactions.
All consensual governments are prone to scary wild swings of mob like emotion—and to demagogues who can almost rein in or goad the dêmos. But the founders sought to make American government immune to Athenian-style craziness through a system of checks and balances that vented popular frenzies without a great deal of damage. If an idea proved illogical or illegal, then legislators, judges, and executives could dissipate, delay, or nullify it before it swept away years of sober custom and time-honored practices—at least as long as the Constitution and its subsidiary laws were not dismantled as impediments to “fairness” and “equality.”
A FAREWELL TO SOBER CITIZENS
In the twenty-first century, novel developments have increasingly turned us from sober Roman republicans into mercurial Athenian democrats. The transition is especially clear in this election year.
First, the rise of social media destroyed most hierarchies of popular expression. Anyone can put up a YouTube video and either delight or enrage millions of Americans within seconds—
Second, we are an increasingly urban people who have lost the sense of self-reliance and autonomy so needed for survival in the countryside. Thomas Jefferson, more than two centuries ago, warned us that he did not think democracy would work when “we get piled upon one another in large cities.” Fad and frenzy are the wages of centrally controlled, dense populations that look to an omnipotent “you didn’t build that” government for their sustenance, safety, and guidance, losing contact with nature and confidence in themselves that accrues from self-reliant achievement.
Third, globalization has expanded America’s supposed responsibility for equality and fairness to all the peoples of the world. Suddenly, it is not enough for the government to provide jobs and opportunities to Americans alone; we must now extend those privileges to illegal immigrants. The Internet and cable TV show us hordes of people scrambling to enter the West—as if we had within our means the instant fixes for maladies that are the fault of distant others. The plight of gays in the Congo, Christians in Syria, the trans-gendered in Russia, and the poor in Sudan have become referenda on our morality—and our government must expand and grow, the argument goes, to serve the global disadvantaged.
Finally, the law is seen as an impediment to such sweeping notions of social justice. It is certainly deemed counterrevolutionary and an impediment to the Obama administration’s idea of an equality of result. As a result, the president at one time or another has ignored enforcement of federal laws, from not prosecuting the rogue behavior of federal bureaucrats at the IRS or the EPA to suspending elements of his own Affordable Care Act. More than three hundred cities—in antebellum, neo-Confederate fashion—have declared themselves immune from the jurisdiction of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Often illegal aliens are freed by our modern bureaucratic versions of Jefferson Davis nullificationists. Yet not all laws are ignored in the same blanket fashion.
If San Francisco claims that it does not have to turn over an illegal alien caught in violation of federal immigration law, can Salt Lake City arbitrarily decide that a particular protected newt or fish is no longer sacrosanct under the federal Endangered Species Act? Will Fresno be allowed to cancel federal laws that forbid instant purchases of handguns?
Actionable criminal behavior in the scandals at the IRS, the EPA, ICE, and a host of other alphabet agencies is not treated as per se violation of the law. Rather, such acts are judged according to whether the offender and his crime were deemed progressive and well-intended—or reactionary and thus prosecutable. CEOs who cannot cap a leaky oil well or who sell noxious peanut products go to jail; EPA functionaries who turn whitewater rivers into toxic yellow mush melt back into the coils of the bureaucracy. Ancient Athens was a wild place—as frenetic, brilliant, and dangerous as it proved ultimately unsustainable. We are becoming more like the Athenian mob than the Roman senate.
American law has become negotiable and subject to revolutionary justice, while technology has developed the power to inflame 300 million individuals in a nanosecond. Without strict adherence to republican government and the protections of the Constitution, the mob will rule—and any American will become subject to its sudden wrath.
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3)
5) A good looking man walked into an agent's office in Hollywood and said, "I want to be a movie star."
Tall, handsome, and with experience on Broadway, he had the right credentials. The agent asked, "What's your name?"
The guy said, "My name is Penis van Lesbian."
The agent said, "Sir, I hate to tell you, but in order to get into Hollywood, you are going to have to change your name."
"I will NOT change my name! The van Lesbian name is centuries old, I will not disrespect my
Grandfather by changing my name. Not ever."
The agent said, "Sir, I have worked in Hollywood for years...you will NEVER go far in Hollywood with a name like Penis van Lesbian! I'm telling you, you will HAVE TO change your name or I will not be able to represent you."
"So be it! I guess we will not do business together," the guy said and he left the agent's office.
FIVE YEARS LATER......The agent opens an envelope sent to his office. Inside the envelope is a letter and a check for $50,000. The agent is awe-struck, who would possibly send him $50,000? He reads the letter enclosed...
Dear Sir,
Five years ago, I came into your office wanting to become an actor in Hollywood, you told me I needed to change my name. Determined to make it with my God-given birth name, I refused.
You told me I would never make it in Hollywood with a name like Penis van Lesbian. After I left your office, I thought about what you said. I decided you were right. I had to change my name. I had toomuch pride to return to your office, so I signed with another agent. I would never have made it without changing my name, so the enclosed check is a token of my appreciation.
3)
golden egg.
Senator Maria Cantwell
Washington, DC , 20510Dear Senators:I have tried to live by the rules my entire life. My father was a Command
Sergeant Major, U.S. Army, who died of combat related stresses shortly
after his retirement. It was he who instilled in me those virtues he felt
important - honesty, duty, patriotism and obeying the laws of God and of our
various governments. I have served my country, paid my taxes, worked hard,
volunteered and donated my fair share of money, time and artifacts.Today, as I approach my 79th birthday, I am heart-broken when I look at my
country and my government. I shall only point out a very few things
abysmally wrong which you can multiply by a thousand fold. I have calculated
that all the money I have paid in income taxes my entire life cannot even keep
the Senate barbershop open for one year! Only Heaven and a few
tight-lipped actuarial types know what the Senate dining room costs the taxpayers.
So please, enjoy your haircuts and meals on us.Last year, the president spent an estimated $1.4 billion on himself and
his family. The vice president spends $ millions on hotels. They have had 8
vacations so far this year! And our House of Representatives and Senate
have become America's answer to the Saudi royal family. You have become the
"perfumed princes and princesses" of our country.In the middle of the night, you voted in the Affordable Health Care Act,
a.k.a. "Obamacare," a bill which no more than a handful of senators or
representatives read more than several paragraphs, crammed it down our throats,
and then promptly exempted yourselves from it substituting your own
taxpayer-subsidized golden health care insurance.You live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the "one percenters,"
consistently vote yourselves perks and pay raises while making 3.5 times
the average U.S. individual income, and give up nothing while you (as well
as the president and veep) ask us to sacrifice due to sequestration (for
which, of course, you plan to blame the Republicans, anyway).You understand very well the only two rules you need to know - (1) How to
get elected, and (2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with the aid of
an eagerly willing and partisan press, speeches permeated with a certain
economy of truth, and by buying the votes of the greedy, the ill-informed
and under-educated citizens (and non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote )
who are looking for a handout rather than a job. Your so-called "safety net"
has become a hammock for the lazy. And, what is it now, about 49 or 50
million on food stamps - pretty much all Democrat voters - and the program is
absolutely rife with fraud and absolutely no congressional oversight?I would offer that you are not entirely to blame. What changed you is the
seductive environment of power in which you have immersed yourselves. It
is the nature of both houses of Congress which requires you to subordinate
your virtue in order to get anything done until you have achieved a
leadership role. To paraphrase President Reagan, it appears that the second
oldest profession (politics), bears a remarkably strong resemblance to the oldest.As the hirsute first Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834 -
1902), English historian and moralist, so aptly and accurately stated, "Power
tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are
almost always bad men." I'm only guessing that this applies to the female sex
as well. Tell me, is there a more corrupt entity in this country than Congress?While we middle class people continue to struggle, our government becomes
less and less transparent, more and more bureaucratic, and ever so much
more dictatorial, using Czars and Secretaries to tell us (just to mention a
very few) what kind of light bulbs we must purchase, how much soda or
hamburgers we can eat, what cars we can drive, gasoline to use, and what
health care we must buy. Countless thousands of pages of regulations strangle
our businesses costing the consumer more and more every day.As I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my
government tell me "You'll just have to take a pill," while you, Senator, your
colleagues, the president, and other exulted government officials and their
families will get the best possible health care on our tax dollars until you
are called home by your Creator while also enjoying a retirement beyond my
wildest dreams, which of course, you voted for yourselves and we pay for.The chances of you reading this letter are practically zero as your staff
will not pass it on, but with a little luck, a form letter response might
be generated by them with an auto signature applied, hoping we will believe
that you, our senator or representative, has heard us and actually cares.
This letter will, however, go on line where many others will have the
chance to read one person's opinion, rightly or wrongly, about this government,
its administration and its senators and representatives.I only hope that occasionally you might quietly thank the taxpayer for all
the generous entitlements which you have voted yourselves, for which, by
law, we must pay, unless, of course, it just goes on the $19 trillion
national debt for which your children and ours, and your grandchildren and ours,
ad infinitum, must eventually try to pick up the tab.My final thoughts are that it must take a person who has either lost his
or her soul, or conscience, or both, to seek re-election and continue to
destroy the country that I deeply love. You have put it so far in debt that we will
never pay it off while your lot improves by the minute, because of your power.For you, Senator, will never stand up to the rascals in your House who
constantly deceive the American people. And that, my dear Senator, is how
power has corrupted you and the entire Congress. The only answer to clean
up this cesspool is term limits. This, of course, will kill the goose that lays your
3096 Angela Lane
Oak Harbor, WA
4)
U.S. Investment in – not Foreign Aid to – Israel
In 2016, Israel is a major contributor to – and a global co-leader with – the U.S. in the areas of research, development, manufacturing and launching of micro (100 kg), mini (300 kg) and medium (1,000 kg) sized satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as well as joint space missions, space communications, and space exploration, sounding rocket and scientific balloon flights. According to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, “Israel is known for its innovation. The October 15, 2015 joint agreement gives us the opportunity to cooperate with Israel on the journey to Mars, [highlighting Israel's extremely lightweight technologies, which conserve energy]….”
Israel is no longer a supplicant – as it was in its early years of independence – transformed from a net-national security and economic consumer to a net-national security and economic producer, generating substantial military and commercial dividends to the U.S., which exceed the highly appreciated $3.1 billion annual investment in Israel by the U.S.
The annual U.S. investment in Israel – erroneously defined as “foreign aid” (Foreign Military Financing) – has yielded one of the highest rates of return on U.S. investments overseas. But, Israel is neither “foreign” nor does it receive “aid.”
A Partnership
From a one-way street relationship, the U.S.-Israel connection has evolved into an exceptionally productive two- way mutually beneficial alliance. The U.S. is the senior partner, and Israel the junior partner, in a win-win, geo-strategic partnership, which transcends the 68-year-old tension between all American presidents (from Truman through Obama) and Israeli prime ministers (from Ben Gurion through Netanyahu) over the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue.
According to the former Supreme Commander of NATO forces and Secretary of State, the late General Alexander Haig: “Israel constitutes the largest U.S. aircraft carrier, which does not require a single U.S. boot on board, cannot be sunk, deployed in a most critical region to the U.S. economy and national security. And, if there were no Israel in the eastern flank of the Mediterranean, the U.S. would have to deploy to the region a few more real aircraft carriers and tens of thousands of troops, which would have cost the U.S. taxpayer some $15 billion annually. All of which is spared by the existence of Israel.”
Israel has been the most cost-effective, battle-tested laboratory of U.S. defense industries; the most reliable and practical beachhead/outpost of the U.S. defense forces; sharing with the U.S. unique intelligence, battle experience, and battle tactics. Thus, Israel extends the U.S. strategic hand at a time when the Pentagon is experiencing draconian cuts in its defense budget, curtailing the size of its military force and the global deployment of troops, while facing tough international industrial-defense competition and dramatically intensified threats of Islamic terrorism overseas and on the U.S. mainland.
Hardware, Software and Intelligence
For example, in 2016, Israel's Air Force, which flies American-made aircraft, shares with the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. manufacturers of the F-16, F-15 and additional aircraft systems, real-time online, daily operational maintenance and repair lessons, derived from Israel's daily battle experience. This upgrades U.S. national and homeland security, as well as enhancing research and development, global competitiveness, exports and the employment base of U.S. defense industries (e.g., Lockheed-Martin, McDonnell Douglas, Bell Helicopter, Boeing Defense, Northrop Grumman, etc.).
The plant manager of Fort Worth-based General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the F-16, asserted that Israeli lessons have spared the manufacturer 10-20 years of research and development, leading to over 700 modifications in the current generation of the F-16, “valued at a mega-billion dollar bonanza to the manufacturer.” One may conclude that St. Louis-based McDonnell Douglas, manufacturer of the F-15, benefits in the same manner. Similar lessons have been shared with the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps and the U.S. manufacturers of tanks, armored personnel carriers, missile launchers, missiles, night navigation systems, and hundreds of additional military and homeland security systems, manufactured by the U.S. and utilized by Israel. For instance, the Northrup Grumman plant in Chattanooga, TN, that manufactures explosive-neutralizing robots, has increased its exports since Israel's decision to employ its product, benefitting from weekly telephone conference calls with Israeli experts, who have shared their operational lessons. Israel is to the U.S. defense industry what a triple-A tenant is to a shopping mall – enhancing value and drawing clients.
According to Gen. George Keegan, a former U.S. Air Force Intelligence Chief, the value of intelligence shared by Israel with the U.S. – exposing the air capabilities of adversaries, their new military systems, electronics, and jamming devices – “could not be procured with five CIAs…. The ability of the U.S. Air Force in particular, and the Army in general, to defend whatever position it has in NATO, owes more to Israeli intelligence input than it does to any other single source of intelligence, be it satellite reconnaissance, be it technology intercept, or what have you.” The late Senator Daniel Inouye, who was Chairman of the Intelligence and the Appropriations Committees, made a similar assessment: “Israel provides the U.S. with more intelligence than all NATO countries combined.” In July 2003, Brig. Gen. Michael Vane, Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command stated that Israel's counter-terrorism experience shaped the U.S. war on terrorism.
Indeed, U.S. Special Operations units on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan are trained by Israeli experts in tackling suicide bombers, car bombs and the deadly Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Upon arrival at the front, unmanned aerial vehicles Israel co-developed with the U.S. assist them. Moreover, an Israeli armor plating technology, installed on U.S. military vehicles minimizes American fatalities, and the innovative “Israeli bandage” is employed to stop severe bleeding of injured soldiers. U.S. bomb squads leverage Israel's unique counter-terrorism experience, improving their explosives neutralizing capabilities abroad and on the U.S. mainland.
Israel has shared battle tactics and urban warfare experience, gained during wars against conventional Arab armies and Islamic/Palestinian terrorists. In 2014, General (ret.) Chuck Krulak, former Commandant, USMC, stated: “The U.S. battle tactics formulation, at Fort Leavenworth, KS – the intellectual Mecca of the U.S. Army – is based on the Israeli book.” In 1991, during the First Gulf War, General Krulak fought Russian tanks operated by Saddam Hussein, by applying the 1973 Israeli battle tactics against Soviet tanks employed by Egypt.
Historical Precedents
In November, 1952, following Israel's 1948-49 War of Independence, General Omar Bradley, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, proposed to expand strategic cooperation with Israel, only to be rebuffed by the Department of State, which opposed the establishment of the Jewish State.
However, Israel has evolved into the most effective U.S. strategic beachhead/outpost in the Middle East and beyond, as demonstrated during the 1967 Six-Day-War, when Israel obliterated the Egyptian military, aborting the pro-Soviet Egyptian attempt to topple the pro-U.S. Arab oil-producing regimes, which would have devastated U.S. economic and military interests at a time of high dependency on Persian Gulf oil. In 1969, Israel shared with the U.S. its own flare system, which diverted anti-aircraft heat-seeking missiles away from their targets, saving the lives of many gunship pilots during the Vietnam War.
In 1970, Israel's power projection forced a rollback of the Soviet-backed Syrian invasion of pro-Western Jordan that aimed at toppling the Hashemite regime and then surging into Saudi Arabia, which would have triggered an anti-American geo-strategic avalanche.
Following Israel's October 1973 War against the Soviet-armed Egypt and Syria, some 50 U.S. military experts, headed by General Donn Starry, spent six months studying Israel's battle experience and tactics and the captured Soviet military systems, producing eight thick volumes, which tilted the global balance of power in favor of the U.S., upgraded the U.S. defense of Europe during the Cold War, enhanced the U.S. air and land battle doctrine during the 1991 Gulf War, and improved the global competitiveness of the U.S. defense industries.
In 1989, 1969, and 1966, Israel snatched a Soviet Mig-23, a most advanced P-12 Soviet early warning radar and ELINT (electronic signals intelligence) system, and a Soviet Mig-21 from Syria, Egypt and Iraq, respectively. All were transferred to the U.S., evaluated and integrated into the U.S. battle tactics, counter-measures and the defense industrial competitive edge, tilting the global balance of power again.
On July 4, 1976, Israel's Entebbe hostage-rescue operation was a turning point in the battle against anti-American, pro-Soviet Islamic terrorism. In 1981, in defiance of the U.S. Administration, Israel devastated Iraq's nuclear reactor, sparing the U.S. a nuclear confrontation against Iraq in 1991, and snatching the pro-U.S. Saudis from the jaws of pro-Soviet Iraq. In 1982, Israel destroyed twenty advanced Soviet surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries, deployed in Lebanon/Syria and throughout the world, downing 89 Soviet Mig-21s, Mig-23s and Su-20s in the process. Israel proved that the most advanced mobile Soviet SAMs could be jammed, penetrated, and destroyed, promptly sharing the battle tactics and electronic warfare innovations with the U.S. Air Force and defense industrial base, providing the U.S. with a significant geo-strategic and industrial game-changing edge over Moscow.
In Our Own Time
In 2007, Israel destroyed a Syrian-North Korean-Iranian nuclear plant, dealing a blow to global terrorism, sparing humanity the trauma of a nuclear-armed Asad in 2016.
In March, 2007, General John Craddock, the Supreme Commander of NATO, told the House Armed Services: “In the Middle East, Israel is the closest ally of the U.S., consistently supporting our interests through security cooperation.” Even CNN – which is generally critical of Israel – agreed that Israel's war against Hamas terrorists advanced homeland security in pro-American Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States.
A June 2015 strategic agreement intensified cooperation between the air forces of both countries, establishing twelve teams of officers and codifying a widening range of joint annual agendas: operations, battle tactics, training, maintenance, repairs, airborne medicine, flight safety, etc., in the face of mutual threats, joint interests and constrained budgets. American combat pilots benefit uniquely during joint drills with their Israeli colleagues, who always fly in a “do-or-die” state of mind – a result of Israel's narrow geographic waistline – that stretches the capabilities of the aircraft to new dimensions and generates more daring and innovative maneuvers. Recently, Israel's Air Force developed a groundbreaking method of identifying, repairing, and preempting cracks in old combat planes, such as the F-16, using ultrasound machines and promptly shared that information with the U.S. Air Force and manufacturer. Instead of grounding planes for six months and preoccupying hundreds of mechanics, the Israeli-developed system requires two weeks and only a few mechanics, yielding significant economic and national security benefits.
In 2016, against the backdrop of mounting conventional and terrorist threats, the proliferation of Islamic terrorist cells in the U.S., the collapse of Europe's military power projection, the Islamization of Turkey's national security policy, the erosion of the Western posture of deterrence, and the growing instability, fragmentation, unpredictability and doubtful reliability of pro-U.S. Arab regimes, Israel is the only stable, reliable, predictable, capable, democratic, and unconditional ally of the U.S. Israel constitutes a critical obstacle to the megalomaniacal, Islamic imperialism, enhancing the national and homeland security of the U.S. and its Arab allies. Unlike Europe, Israel is able and willing to flex its muscles.
An Israel-like ally in the Persian Gulf might have dramatically reduced the U.S. military involvement in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
The raging, anti-American Arab Street, the melting, UN-minded European Street, the commercially and militarily innovative pro-American Israeli Street, and the intensifying threats to global sanity and the U.S. national and homeland security, all highlight Israel's role as a special strategic partner to America – and not a member of the “foreign aid” club of supplicants – increasingly contributing to mutually-beneficial geo-strategic U.S.-Israel joint ventures.
Yoram Ettinger served as Minister for Congressional Affairs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and is a consultant to members of Israel's Cabinet and Knesset.
Tall, handsome, and with experience on Broadway, he had the right credentials. The agent asked, "What's your name?"
The guy said, "My name is Penis van Lesbian."
The agent said, "Sir, I hate to tell you, but in order to get into Hollywood, you are going to have to change your name."
"I will NOT change my name! The van Lesbian name is centuries old, I will not disrespect my
Grandfather by changing my name. Not ever."
The agent said, "Sir, I have worked in Hollywood for years...you will NEVER go far in Hollywood with a name like Penis van Lesbian! I'm telling you, you will HAVE TO change your name or I will not be able to represent you."
"So be it! I guess we will not do business together," the guy said and he left the agent's office.
FIVE YEARS LATER......The agent opens an envelope sent to his office. Inside the envelope is a letter and a check for $50,000. The agent is awe-struck, who would possibly send him $50,000? He reads the letter enclosed...
Dear Sir,
Five years ago, I came into your office wanting to become an actor in Hollywood, you told me I needed to change my name. Determined to make it with my God-given birth name, I refused.
You told me I would never make it in Hollywood with a name like Penis van Lesbian. After I left your office, I thought about what you said. I decided you were right. I had to change my name. I had toomuch pride to return to your office, so I signed with another agent. I would never have made it without changing my name, so the enclosed check is a token of my appreciation.
Thank you for your advice.
Sincerely,
Dick van Dyke
Dick van Dyke
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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