Bran,Blake, Abby Coda and Dagny Dagny and Blake
and Dagny
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Brown University!
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Trump lists his potential Supreme Court candidates in an attempt to throw oil on the Repubs troubled waters.. (See 1 below.)
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Brown University's actions against its Jewish student body is reminiscent of Germany's Brown Shirts. The fact that Brown's Hillel cowered is also a perfidious act.
We have come to a very sad state when university administrators and campus life consists of denying free speech and discussion. Has The Ivy League's vines become poisonous?
Crush The American Way and kill the society. This is what all these so called "fallacious movements" are about and their encouragement comes from the top of our government.
This will be Obama's ultimate legacy. (See 2 below.)
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Trying to decipher Natahyahu's latest political actions. Israeli politics has always been factious and splintered. (See 3 below.)
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This was sent to me by one of my liberal friends and a great art collector. (See 4 below.)
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An apology for raising prices as a response to world wide deflation., (See 5 below.)
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Animals that formerly were self-sufficient are now showing signs of belonging to the Democrat Party.
They have apparently learned to just sit and wait for the government to step in and provide for their care and sustenance.
This photo is of a black bear in Alaska turned Democrat. He's nicknamed Bearack Obearma. It is believed that he has become a campground organizer.
If not fed immediately he growled he will vote for Bernie.
Dick
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1)
Trump Unveils His List Of Top Supreme Court Picks
By Peter Johns
As he promised in March, Donald Trump has released his list of proposed candidates for Supreme Court positions, the first of which would be to replace the late Justice Scalia.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, released Wednesday a list of 11 potential Supreme Court justices he plans to vet to fill the seat of late Justice Antonin Scalia if he’s elected to the White House.
The list of conservative federal and state judges includes Steven Colloton of Iowa, Allison Eid of Colorado and Raymond Gruender of Missouri.
Also on the list are: Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, Joan Larsen of Michigan, Thomas Lee of Utah, William Pryor of Alabama, David Stras of Minnesota, Diane Sykes of Wisconsin and Don Willett of Texas. Trump had previously named Pryor and Sykes as examples of kind of justices he would choose.
The news comes as Trump is working to bring together a fractured Republican Party and earn the trust of still-skeptical establishment Republicans who question his electability in the general election, as well as conservatives in his party still wary of his commitment to their cause.
In a statement, Trump said the list “is representative of the kind of constitutional principles I value” and said that, as president, he would use it “as a guide to nominate our next United States Supreme Court Justices.”
His campaign stressed the list was compiled “first and foremost, based on constitutional principles, with input from highly respected conservatives and Republican Party leadership.”
Larsen, who serves on the Michigan Supreme Court and is a former law clerk to Scalia, delivered one of the tributes to the late justice at his memorial service in March. She served in the Justice Department office that produced the legal justifications for the enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that critics have called torture.
Willett, a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, is perhaps best known for his heavy use of social media. His Twitter handle, @justicewillett, has more than 35,000 followers.
Pryor was initially given a recess appointment to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush. Senate Democrats had tried to block Pryor’s appointments over his strong criticism of the Roe v. Wade decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion.
Apart from Sykes, who is 58, the others all are younger than 55 and David Stras is just 41. The eight men and three women on the list are all white.
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2)Hillel’s moment of truth
5) "At Last, Someone Apologizes for Deflation
"
2)Hillel’s moment of truth
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
Those who support Israel are subjected to continuous harassment by their fellow students.
Two wars today are being waged against Jewish students on American university campuses. One is substantive, the other is institutional. The plight of the Jews at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island is emblematic of both.
The purpose of the substantive war is to deny Jews their freedom as Jews. As the guarantor of Jewish freedom, Israel is the subject of a systematic, multidimensional assault, carried out everywhere on campuses.
On a growing number of campuses in the United States, the only Jews who can safely express their views on Israel are those who champion Israel’s destruction.
Those who support Israel are subjected to continuous harassment by their fellow students.
The substantive battle is being led by Students for Justice in Palestine. SJP is a phantom organization with no national organization. As Jonathan Schanzer from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies testified before the US Congress last month, it is directed by former officials from non-profits including the Holy Foundation, KindHearts and the Islamic Association for Palestine that were forced to shut down after they were implicated in financing terrorist groups including Hamas and al-Qaida.
At Brown, SJP seeks to make it impossible for Jewish students to organize as Jews.
For instance, in late January, Brown Hillel hosted a discussion of Jewish identity featuring actor Michael Douglas and Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky.
SJP protested the event arguing that since both men supported Israel, the event stood in opposition to “social justice.”
As Ira Stoll reported in the New York Sun, during the event, protesters outside the hall calling for Israel’s destruction made it hard for the audience of several hundred people to hear what Sharansky and Douglas were saying.
Stoll added that rather than protect the audience’s freedom of assembly and the speakers’ freedom of speech, an assistant dean stood with the protesters and “offered to provide further support for students who had missed class to be involved in activism or who were upset by the evening’s events.”
In March, a consortium of student groups at Brown, including a Jewish group affiliated with Hillel, cosponsored a talk by Janet Mock, an African American transsexual activist.
In light of the Jewish group’s co-sponsorship, SJP launched a petition to boycott the speech. Not wanting the protest to eclipse the substance of her remarks, which, of course had nothing whatsoever to do with Israel, Mock canceled her lecture.
These events make clear that for SJP and its allies, it isn’t just Jewish life on campus that must be destroyed.
Jews as Jews must not be permitted to participate with non-Jews in organizing or hosting campus events related to issues of common concern.
In both of its substantive anti-Jewish actions, SJP tipped its hat to the institutional battle against Jewish freedom that its Jewish allies are leading.
In both cases, SJP used the fact that Hillel International – the national organization responsible for Hillel chapters throughout the US – has a policy of banning substantively anti-Jewish events from the premises of Hillel buildings, as one of its justifications for its anti-Jewish actions.
The goal of the institutional war SJP referred to is to destroy Jewish support for Israel by throwing Jewish organizations into disarray in order to destroy Jewish organizational support for Israel and through it, for Jewish civil rights.
This war is led by Jewish anti-Zionists and anti-Semites who not only reject Israel’s right to exist, but reject the right of their fellow Jews to support its right to exist.
The institutional war against Jewish freedom scored a great victory last week at Brown. At Brown, the war is being led by the Open Hillel group.
Open Hillel’s purpose is to deny Jews on campus the right to express their support for Israel free of molestation, on campus generally and at Hillel specifically.
As a general principle, Open Hillel demonstrated its opposition to freedom of Jewish speech in March when it condemned a StandWithUs member for attending an anti-Israel event on campus. The pro-Israel student attended the event with a robot. He did not disrupt the event. He merely stood at the back of the room with a robot and asked a question at the appropriate time.
Following the event, Open Hillel announced that it “opposes the attempts of groups like StandWithUs to monitor students and faculty.”
In other words, the group rejects the right of pro-Israel students to participate in anti-Israel events.
Open Hillel’s main target is Hillel. Its openly stated goal is to deny pro-Israel students the ability to promote Israel freely at Hillel.
Last week, on Remembrance Day, Open Hillel organized a film festival in which three short films produced by the anti-Israel NGO Zochrot were shown.
The films promoted the libelous claim that Israel’s birth and continued existence are a crime against humanity.
The event was deliberately scheduled to take place at Hillel. The provocation was clear. If Hillel hosted the event on Remembrance Day, then it would have abandoned its resolve to prevent the substantive war against the Jews from being waged within its walls.
Jews at Brown would have lost their final bastion of free expression.
When word of the event got out, Brown Students for Israel announced its opposition to the event.
Hillel International was deluged with protests from community members and supporters.
Brown’s Hillel announced that the event was canceled.
Brown Students for Israel publicly thanked their Hillel for canceling the event. Among other things, they stated, “Whereas there is an abundance of anti-Zionist spaces at Brown, ...Hillel provides a rare and small safe space for students who believe in the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. The campus atmosphere around Israel/Palestine is so repressive that most Zionist students do not feel able to... discuss Israel in public spaces. Those of us who do choose to defend the single Jewish State are subject to harassment, name-calling, derision from students and teachers’ assistants, and even direct threats to our personal safety. Only in Hillel are we able to speak freely....”
But as it turned out, Hillel betrayed them.
As both pro-Israel activist Alexandra Markus and Open Hillel itself revealed, the event did take place.
Contrary to the direct instructions of Hillel International, Brown Hillel’s executive director Marshall Einhorn was present at the event, which was closed to the public.
In its jubilant statement following the event, Open Hillel declared that its success in holding the event at Hillel is a sign that Brown’s Hillel is now a battlefield in the substantive war against Jewish freedom.
In its words, “This event was a success... because it challenged Brown RISD Hillel to reflect on its ability to facilitate and provide space for [anti-Zionists].
Ultimately, the process of planning this event forced our Hillel to recognize its own lack of openness and to begin reworking its guidelines on Israel/Palestine programming. These guidelines will not be in keeping with the guidelines published and enforced by Hillel International in their ‘Standards of Partnership,’ which have been used time and again to silence critical Jewish voices on Israel/Palestine.”
The ball is now in Hillel International’s court. Brown Hillel defrauded Hillel International. It lied to Hillel CEO Eric Fingerhut. It used Hillel’s facility to host a group that wishes to destroy Hillel as part of its institutional war against Jewish freedom in the US. This institutional war goes hand in hand with the substantive war against the Jews.
Hillel International and its CEO Eric Fingerhut have two choices. They can throw Brown Hillel out of the organization, deny it funding, eject it from the facility and take civil action against it in court for its commission of fraud.
Or they can surrender to Open Hillel and its SJP allies and throw Hillel International into disarray, denying Jews their last bastion of freedom on college campuses.
If it takes the latter approach, then the wider Jewish community must abandon Hillel International. Its sponsors must withhold their funding and start a new student organization that will do the job of defending Jewish freedom on US campuses.
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3)
What Israel’s New Coalition Means
What just happened in Israel? When the dust settled after Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s attempts to widen his coalition ended in apparent success, the result was a more right-wing government. That’s an accurate observation and will, no doubt, bring down more opprobrium
on the government from foreign critics, especially American liberals, that will see it as
unalterably opposed to peace. But the process that led to this result tells us something
different.
While in the end, Netanyahu chose to make a deal that would expand his coalition with a right
-wing party, the fact that the party he jilted at the last moment was the leading opposition
faction illustrates the fact that on the really big issue facing the Israeli people — how to deal
with the Palestinians and the peace process — there are no real differences between any of the mainstream parties. Though politics in Israel will remain fractious and nasty, no one should
imagine that what has just happened demonstrates the prime minister’s weakness or that his approach to war and peace issues is discredited. To the contrary, the competition to sit at the
Cabinet table with him shows that he not only remains in control of events but is also sitting
in the political center of the nation rather than on the right as his foreign detractors think.
Having survived more than a year since his third election win in a row with a razor thin 61-
member coalition in the 120-seat Knesset, Netanyahu was determined to expand his margin
for error, and he has apparently succeeded. After a very public flirtation and what apparently
were substantive negotiations with the Zionist Union — the nation’s largest opposition party
and the home of Labour, Israel’s traditional home for left-wingers and liberals — Netanyahu
switched horses in the last day and made a deal with the sole right-wing party that hadn’t
switched horses in the last day and made a deal with the sole right-wing party that hadn’t
joined his government last year.
The addition of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu’s six seats gets the prime minister to a 67
-member coalition ought to be enough to avoid the problems the prime minister had been
having due to the constant fear that the absence of an MK on any given day will topple the governmental apple cart. Since there are no real ideological differences between Lieberman
and Netanyahu, it removes a voice criticizing him from the right and gives him governmental responsibility.
It also helps solve a growing problem at the Cabinet since it gives him an excuse to replace
Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, who had been causing problems with comments that placed
will either take a lesser portfolio or leave the Cabinet. At any rate, with this demotion Yaalon
now joins the list of other potential successors to Netanyahu, who entertained the vain notion
that they could challenge him within the Likud.
But the biggest loser out of this affair is Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog. A year ago, Herzog seemed to revive the fortunes of Labor by forming an alliance with former foreign minister
Tzipi Livni and leading the faction they formed to a strong second-place finish in the March
2015 election. That should have put him in a position to harry Netanyahu and set his party up
for a better chance at victory the next time. But instead of revitalizing Israel’s left wing,
Herzog seems to have crashed it.
What followed was something that dismayed Israeli leftists and shocked American liberals
that are praying for Netanyahu’s demise. Herzog conceded that Netanyahu was basically right
on the big issue that divided Israeli voters for the past 50 years: the peace process. Instead of pretending as most other leftists have done all these years that Israel giving up the West Bank
and other territory would bring peace with the Palestinians, Herzog told the truth. In January,
he said that Israel had no real peace partner and that the two-state solution that most Israelis
longed for was an impossibility for the foreseeable future.
While Herzog had plenty of critical things to say about the prime minister, his ideas for
different ways of managing the conflict until a sea change in the Palestinian political culture
will allow peace were either unrealistic or no different from what Netanyahu was already
doing. What happened next seemed inevitable. Herzog entered into negotiations with
Netanyahu for a national unity government.
This set off some members of Labour, including the more liberal faction that he had displaced
in the leadership of the party, as well as its media cheering section at the ultra-left Haaretz newspaper. They condemned the negotiations and damned Herzog for a traitor to his party.
These critics got the last laugh because Netanyahu may never seriously intended to bring him
into the Cabinet. He was just using Herzog for leverage in his talks with Lieberman. Instead of
an unwieldy broad coalition, he’ll stick with a narrow right-wing government but one that is
large enough to be more stable. This means that Netanyahu will not only outlast Barack
Obama but will also have a better-than-average chance of remaining in office until at least the
end of the decade, if not beyond it, and surpass Israeli founding father David Ben Gurion as
the longest serving prime minister.
It will also weaken the Zionist Union. Herzog being played for a sap by Netanyahu may mean
the end of his time as leader of Labour. If the party swings further to the left that will hurt its
chances in future elections where, if the current polls are accurate, it will be replaced as the
leading opposition party by Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid.
Where does this leave Israel?
Herzog’s leftist critics in his own party are happy about his likely demise and Netanyahu
emerges again as this generation’s unrivaled champion of maneuvering. But there’s more to be gleaned from Netanyahu’s latest proof of his political skill than those conclusions.
The mere fact that a Likud-Labor coalition was not only possible but seemed the most likely
scenario for some time should awaken the country’s critics to a basic fact about Israeli politics.
While the competition for cabinet seats in Israel is fierce, the great dispute that foreigners
imagine divides citizens of the Jewish state isn’t the locus of political debate. The world may
think Israelis are still — as they were in the 1980s and 1990s — evenly split on the question of whether to trade land for peace with the Palestinians. But the election results as well as the
coalition negotiations tell a different story.
Most Israelis, including many that voted for some of the right wing parties, would be willing to
make such a swap and give up territory if it meant a real peace. But outside of the far left
virtually no one thinks such an arrangement is possible because of the reality of Palestinian intransigence. Neither Herzog nor Lapid — the two potential replacements for Netanyahu as
head of the country — really disagree with him about whether a two-state solution is desirable
or if it can be implemented. All three agree it’s a good idea. All three also agree that it isn’t
going to happen because the Palestinians are still unwilling to make peace and addicted to
violence.
Israeli political strife is still intense but it is about economic issues and personalities since
Netanyahu remains personally unpopular even though he has won three consecutive elections
and would probably be favored for a fourth if it were held anytime soon. That means
Americans who think the prime minister is wrong about peace should take into consideration
the fact that most Israelis share his views. Though he is blasted regularly in the international
and media as a right-wing extremist, he is on the left of his current coalition and smack dab in
the center of Israel’s political spectrum at the moment. Netanyahu's government may not be
loved but it does represent the country's consensus about peace. That may be astonishing to Americans, but it should also cause them to start thinking about whether it is time for them to
give up illusions about the Palestinians and peace that the majority of voters in the Jewish
state have long since abandoned.
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4) #9 Death is the number 1 killer in the world.
#8 Life is sexually transmitted.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++#7 Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.#6 Men have 2 motivations: hunger and hanky panky, and they can't tell them apart. If you see a gleam in his eyes, make him a sandwich.#5 Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks, months, maybe years.#4 Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospital, dying of nothing.#3 All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.#2 In the 1960's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird, and people take Prozac to make it normal.#1 Life is like a jar of jalapeno peppers. What you do today may be a burning issue tomorrow.
5) "At Last, Someone Apologizes for Deflation
"John Mauldin
Much of the world is in the grip of deflation and negative interest rates, with all kinds of negative consequences. Yet no one takes responsibility. Who do we blame? How do we get them to change their ways?
I’m happy to report that someone is finally stepping up. The New York Times reported this morning that Akagi Nyugyo, a Japanese ice cream company, is airing a televised apology for raising its prices. Grim-faced executives and workers face the camera as a subtly humorous folk song plays and then bow deeply in contrition.
This probably seems very, very strange to American and European viewers. It’s also amusing, at least to me, but there’s a serious point here. Most of us grew up in a world where inflation is normal. We expect prices for most goods and services to go up a little bit each year. That perception is starting to change, but it is still the default setting for most people, even economists.
The Japanese have a very different perception after 25 years of deflation. They expect prices to fall, not rise, or at least to remain steady. Akagi Nyugyo hadn’t raised the price of its signature ice cream bars in decades. Higher lumber expenses (for the sticks) finally forced their hand. The company feels terrible and decided to it should apologize.
Will we see American companies doing this in a few years? Well, don’t hold your breath, but if we do it won’t be the weirdest economic development of the century. The strange new beat goes on.
...
"
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