I did not write or say this but do agree: "He was one of America’s most popular presidents. He believed in a strong military, lowered taxes, opposed abortion, and hated racial quotas. He was not a Republican. No, John F. Kennedy was a Democrat – when the Democratic Party held liberal (not leftist) views. In this week’s video, author and talk show host Larry Elder runs through the reasons why JFK would not recognize what the Democratic Party has become."
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While Democrats continue their witch hunt I believe it will backfire and I also believe the Ossoff defeat is just the beginning.
Yes, the extended Trump family has extensive financial dealings and borrowings. Their investments are world wide and this allows renegade Democrats opportunities to attack them . I daresay those who attack the Trump's, ie. Schumer, Pelosi, Waters, Sanders etc. are more corrupt and were one to investigate their various dealings they would find plenty of stench because they have resided at the bottom of the Swamp having been in the Potomac Water for long periods.
Their day will come if voters get serious and tire of the mass media and Democrat partisanship and lop sided bias. Our nation has a history of rectifying wrongs, albeit very late and overdue, because most Americans still believe in fairness. When the broom begins, it sweeps all aisles..
It took decades to bring the Clinton Foundation down several notches but that has happened and, I daresay, more will occur.(See 1 and 1a below.)
There is an old story I tell about the teacher who asked her class to read about Hopalong Cassidy and tell what they learned.
One little girl said Mr. Cassidy wore a white hat and was virtuous. Another student said Hopalong was very gentlemanly. A little Jewish kid said what he learned is "Don't screw with Hoppy!"
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Has a trend reversal begun for Trump beginning with the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the immigration ban and what about the three CNN reporters who were forced to resign?
Just as with markets that go down incessantly eventually they reverse and perhaps the same is true in politics. Attacks based on false claims, prejudice eventually are cleansed by truth and disgust over biased bashings.
As I noted above, Americans are often late to the party but are a fair minded lot. Civil Right's Legislation proved that. Stay tuned! (See 2 below.)
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Dick
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1) Fascinating story of Jared Kushner family in Belarus during the war! Grandmother Tramp's son-in-law Jared Kushner dug a tunnel and saved 350 Jews. The son-in-law of Donald Trump comes from the family of Belarusian partisans, and fellow countrymen are very proud of this
The son-in-law of US President Donald Trump Jared Kushner is very popular in Belarus. True, not so much because of the rich father of his wife, but because of his heroic grandmother. In the town of Novogrudok in the Grodno region, the Kushner family is a real legend. The website of the Jewish Telegraph Agency decided to publish a detailed history of the family that survived the Holocaust.Kushner told himself that he was a descendant of Belarusian partisans a year ago in an interview with the New York Observer. Jared "s grandmother and grandfather on the paternal line Joseph Berkovich and Raisa (Ray) Kushner met in the detachment of the Belsky partisans near Grodno during the Second World War.In Novogrudok there is a small museum dedicated to the Jewish resistance, and in it the history of the Kushner family is given a special place. "It was a well-to-do family, before the war they owned several shops in the city center," says the director of the museum, Marina Yarashchuk.Almost immediately after the outbreak of the war, in early July 1941, the fascists seized Novogrudok, and less than six months later turned it into a Jewish ghetto. To the district center, which at that time had a population of about 6,000 Jews were added another 24,000 Jews from surrounding towns and villages.Raisa Kushner experienced five "selections". The first of them occurred literally on the day of the capture of the town. Then the Nazis took 100 Jews to the street and shot every second one. During one of these selections, her mother was shot and during another sister, Esther, was killed.Raisa did not wait for another selection. Together with her brother, Khoni, she led a daring escape from the ghetto. For several weeks the participants of the escape dug a tunnel under the ground. The excavated land was hidden between the double walls and in the slopes of the roofs. Thanks to this 200-meter-long tunnel, about 350 Jews were able to flee the ghetto, most of them joined the partisans.As the organizer of the escape, Rais and Khoni could get through the tunnel first, but Kushner refused, since she preferred to be with the 54-year-old father and 15-year-old sister. The father was too weak from malnutrition, and the girls had to drag him literally."This is an outstanding act, their escape plan seemed to be doomed, but nevertheless they were saved and many more Jews were saved," says Yarashchuk. "It's an amazing story, and I'm glad that now many people will know about it, even if from interest in Jared Kushner. " In total, from December 1941 to autumn 1943, 10,000 Jews were killed in Novogrudok. Raisa's brother also escape d from ghettobut the family could not find him, her father and sister survived. For some time they were hiding in a nearby town where local residents hid and fed them, and then Raisa got acquainted with the Belsk partisans and went into the woods to join them in the detachment. There she met Joseph Berkovich, who had escaped from the concentration camp.In May 1945, after the liberation of Belarus, Raisa took her family and moved to Czechoslovakia, to a camp for displaced persons, then to Hungary and then to Italy.Raisa and Joseph were married in Budapest, and he took the wife's surname because he himself came from a rather poor family. In 1949 they emigrated to the United States, turning into Ray and Joe Kushner. Joe started working on construction sites, and by 1985 they already owned a successful business in the real estate industry.Their son, Charles, who became a billionaire, regularly visits places where his parents miraculously survived death during the Holocaust, and brings his grandsons there.
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The position of the American people was made clear – yet again – last week when US President Donald Trump’s senior envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt met with Palestinian Authority chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and repeated Trump’s demand that the PA cut off the payments.
Not only did Abbas reject their demand, he reportedly accused the presidential envoys of working as Israeli agents.
Abbas’s treatment of Kushner and Greenblatt was in line with his refusal to even meet with US Ambassador David Friedman, reportedly because he doesn’t like Friedman’s views.
The most amazing aspect of Abbas’s contemptuous treatment of the Trump administration is that he abuses Trump and his senior advisers while demanding that Trump continue funding him in excess of half a billion dollars a year, and do so in contravention of the will of the Republican-controlled Congress.
Abbas’s meeting last week took place as the Taylor Force Act makes its way through Congress.
Named for Taylor Force, the West Point graduate and US army veteran who was murdered in March 2016 in Tel Aviv by a Palestinian terrorist, the Taylor Force Act will end US funding of the PA until it ends its payments to terrorists and their families – including the family of Force’s murderer Bashar Masalha.
The Taylor Force Act enjoys bipartisan majority support in both the House and the Senate. It is also supported by the Israeli government.
Given the stakes, what could possibly have possessed Abbas to believe he can get away with mistreating Trump and his envoys? Who does he think will save him from Congress and the White House? Enter Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS), stage left.
CIS is a consortium of 260 left-wing retired security brass. It formed just before the 2015 elections. CIS refuses to reveal its funding sources. Several of its most visible members worked with the Obama administration through the George Soros-funded Center for a New American Security.
Since its inception, CIS has effectively served as a PLO lobby. It supports Israeli land giveaways and insists that Israel can do without a defensible eastern border.
Last Wednesday CIS released a common-sense defying statement opposing the Taylor Force Act.
The generals mind-numbingly insisted the US must continue paying the terrorism-financing PA because Israel needs the help of the terrorism-incentivizing PA to fight the terrorists the PA incentivizes. If the US cuts off funding to the PA because it incentivizes terrorism, then the PA will refuse to cooperate with Israel in fighting the terrorism it incentivizes.
If you fail to follow this logic, well, you don’t have what it takes to be an Israeli general.
Moreover, if you fail to follow this logic, and you defy the position of Israel’s retired generals, then you may well endanger Israel.
After all, they know what’s best even better than the Israeli government because they are retired Israeli generals.
The CIS group would be bad enough for Israel on its own. But unfortunately, the radical politics of its members – and their anonymous funders – are all too resonant inside of the IDF itself.
And just as CIS members use the ranks they received in the past to undermine the powers of the government today, so the current crop of serving generals use their positions to advance policies that are contrary to the expressed position of the government.
This is nowhere more evident than in the behavior of the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria.
Until Israel formed the PLO-controlled PA in 1994, the Civil Administration was responsible for governing Judea and Samaria as the governing arm of the military government that Israel set up in the area after the Six Day War.
In 1996, Israel transferred all Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria to the PA. Since then, the Civil Administration has been responsible only for Area C where all Israeli communities are located and where between 100,000 and 200,000 Palestinians also live.
The question of what the ultimate disposition of Area C will be is the top issue on the national agenda today. The majority of government ministers and the majority of the public support applying Israeli law to all or parts of the area.
Yet while the government debates the issue and formulates policies to advance whatever policies it adopts on this issue, the Civil Administration has for the past several years been acting independently to undermine and constrain the government’s ability to make strategic decisions relating to Area C.
Among other things, the Civil Administration has been independently initiating Palestinian settlement projects in Area C that undermine Israel’s ability to govern the areas. By the same token, the Civil Administration has used its powers to scupper, delay and prevent Israeli construction projects in the area.
The story of the Civil Administration’s rogue policymaking was catapulted to the headlines last week when Channel 2 reported that it was advancing a plan to massively expand the Palestinian city of Kalkilya into Area C. Among other things, the plan endangers Israeli communities whose territory abuts the expanded boundaries of Kalkilya advanced by the plan.
Channel 2 reported that the Netanyahu government’s security cabinet had given the Civil Administration a green light to begin construction.
The story caused a political outcry not only from Likud voters but from the security cabinet members themselves. Led by Minister Ze’ev Elkin, the Likud ministers insisted that they had been misled by the Civil Administration which deliberately hid the nature of the plan from them when it brought it to the cabinet for approval.
The ministers’ protests ring true because the Civil Administration has a history of acting in this manner.
In 2008 for instance, the Civil Administration initiated a building scheme in the Jordan Valley that would have taken land from Moshav Tomer to build Palestinian settlements.
The head of the local council complained to the government only to discover that the ministers had no idea what he was talking about. The Civil Administration had undertaken the plan, which undermined Israel’s control over a strategically vital area, without government knowledge or approval.
In contrast, and again against the wishes of the government, the Civil Administration has repeatedly acted to block Israeli construction in Area C. For instance, the IDF insists that no land deal between Israel and Palestinians is final until the IDF approves it. The policy harms Israeli construction in two ways.
First, it gives the Civil Administration the power – which it uses – to delay Israeli construction indefinitely.
Second, by forcing parties to land deals to come forward publicly, the Civil Administration intimidates Palestinian land sellers. They know that if their land deals with Israelis become public they will face execution by the PA.
Returning to Abbas for a moment, the PLO chief may have overplayed his hand by insulting Trump and his senior envoys. All the politicized retired and currently serving Israeli generals together cannot convince Trump to send US tax dollars to a terrorism supporting leader who trashes him and his senior officials. Consequently, there is every reason to believe that the Taylor Force Act will soon be signed into law and the US will end its financing of Palestinian terrorism.
But even if Washington cuts off funding to the PA, Israel is still left to deal with its radicalized generals who exploit their rank to undermine the government.
The best way to end this situation is for the government to shut down the Civil Administration and get the IDF out of the governing business in Judea and Samaria. So long as the government continues to empower unaccountable generals to administer civilian areas instead of its accountable, civilian bureaucracy, we will continue to be confronted with the surreal spectacle of Israeli generals lobbying for Palestinian terrorists.
If the government applies Israeli law to Area C, it can still negotiate with the PLO, just as it has negotiated about the Golan Heights and Jerusalem. But in the meantime, it will remove one of the most corrupting and corrosive forces preying on our generals and our democracy for the benefit of the Israeli and Palestinian residents of Area C alike and indeed for Israel as a whole.
2) A Unanimous Rebuke to Judges on the Travel Ban
The Supreme Court lets nearly all of Trump’s policy be enforced as it hears his appeal.
The Supreme Court on Monday began the process of rebuking lower courts for usurping the political branches on national security. The entire Court, even the four liberals, agreed to hear the Trump Administration’s appeal of appellate-court rulings blocking its immigration travel ban, and the Justices allowed nearly all of the 90-day ban to proceed in the meantime.
This is a victory for the White House, though it is more important for the Constitution’s separation of powers. President Trump’s ban is neither wise nor necessary, but that is not an invitation for judges to become back-seat Commanders in Chief. Yet that is precisely what liberal majorities on both the Fourth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeal did in blocking the travel bans, and the Supreme Court is saying those rulings will not be the last judicial word. The Court’s unsigned per curiam opinion set the case for an early hearing on the legal merits in the next term that begins in October.
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, wrote a concurrence arguing that the Court should have lifted the lower-court injunctions in toto. He also added a cheeky aside that “I agree with the Court’s implicit conclusion that the Government has made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits—that is, that the judgments below will be reversed.”
Some Justices might not agree with that, but it’s notable that Chief Justice John Roberts managed to corral a unanimous Court for lifting nearly all of the injunctions. That means even the liberals understand that injunctions need to be issued with care, especially on national security where judges lack the knowledge and electoral accountability of the executive and Congress.
The High Court’s precedents are clear, especially Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972) that said courts should defer to the executive if there is a “facially legitimate and bona fide” justification on national security. Judges can’t run roughshod over the Constitution merely because an unpopular President issued the travel order.
Democrats and the media will now begin a ferocious lobbying campaign to turn five Justices against these precedents, in particular the Chief Justice and Justice Anthony Kennedy. We doubt this will succeed because this isn’t a close legal call, and it concerns the Presidency more than this particular President.
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