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Call her what she is. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Sex Matters
Are the differences between men and women biological or socially constructed? What do women want from a relationship? What do men want? Are they the same? Or are they much different? Sean McDowell, Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Biola University sorts it all out in this eye-opening video.
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If I were so inclined, I could write ten memos a day. Lamentably, a lot is happening but little of meaty substance yet, we are deluged with plenty of pathetic political nonsense.
The mass media turns everything into drama in order to earn money but real concerns and news are totally ignored and/or go un-reported.
Pelosi did tell us Trump is not worth impeaching. What a back hand rebuke. One has to assume her hatred of Trump is not worth pursuing even though many of her members are hell bent. If impeachment means turning voters against the prospects of whom ever is their nominee, Pelosi is unwilling to impeach.
So, Democrat House investigations might continue but toward what purpose?
Meanwhile, there is no evident Democrat candidate as yet and the young tigresses will continue to capture the headlines with their inane comments and demands for change. I believe this will inure to Trump's benefit unless he is incapable of letting the Democrats self-destruct.
Stop and think, why would someone change a clean diaper? The desire to change comes about when someone is unhappy with what they have or with the current condition. Consequently, to bring about a demand for change one has to be dissatisfied. Liberals are constantly unhappy, dissatisfied and are always seeking change. Even when they achieve change they are generally unhappy because the change is insufficient
How can this be? Simple.The measurement by which liberals (progressives) measure what satisfies them is absolutism. Absolutism is statistically impossible to achieve. For instance, though we are currently enjoying historically low unemployment, since not everyone is employed, capitalism is failing and so it goes.
Since there remains a degree of racism our constitution is not serving its intended purpose.
Since not everyone has health care the finest health care system is failing and must be changed.
The solutions sought by liberals (progressives) have proven empirically worse but political nymphomaniacs are incapable of being sated.
The Democrat leadership has lost control and the nymphomaniacs are in charge and nothing will satisfy them short of total and complete change.
2020 remains Trump's to lose. His policies have been, basically, productive. The direction he wants to move us in does not resemble what the scaremongers predicted. If voters are capable of separating his grating personality from his accomplishments he should be in a good position to be re-elected.
Stop and think, why would someone change a clean diaper? The desire to change comes about when someone is unhappy with what they have or with the current condition. Consequently, to bring about a demand for change one has to be dissatisfied. Liberals are constantly unhappy, dissatisfied and are always seeking change. Even when they achieve change they are generally unhappy because the change is insufficient
How can this be? Simple.The measurement by which liberals (progressives) measure what satisfies them is absolutism. Absolutism is statistically impossible to achieve. For instance, though we are currently enjoying historically low unemployment, since not everyone is employed, capitalism is failing and so it goes.
Since there remains a degree of racism our constitution is not serving its intended purpose.
Since not everyone has health care the finest health care system is failing and must be changed.
The solutions sought by liberals (progressives) have proven empirically worse but political nymphomaniacs are incapable of being sated.
The Democrat leadership has lost control and the nymphomaniacs are in charge and nothing will satisfy them short of total and complete change.
2020 remains Trump's to lose. His policies have been, basically, productive. The direction he wants to move us in does not resemble what the scaremongers predicted. If voters are capable of separating his grating personality from his accomplishments he should be in a good position to be re-elected.
We endured 8 years of a "Manchurian President," so to speak, and I believe that set the stage for 8 years of an "Accidental President." Historically, America has weathered many challenges. Time will tell whether our republic is capable of withstanding the onslaught of populism, socialism and anti-Semisitism and whether the good ship Trump can plow through the high seas of Democrat hatred slamming against the bow. Only time will tell.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0
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1) Blog Post for Today - Call Her What She Is: An anti-Semite
By Sherwin Pomerantz
The poet James Whitcomb Riley was the first to coin the “duck test.” He wrote, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”
The duck test can be easily applied to US Rep. Ilhan Omar and her remarks about Jews and Israel. If she postures like an anti-Semite, invokes anti-Semitic tropes, and speaks like an anti-Semite, then she probably is an anti-Semite. And it is time her colleagues stopped dancing around the fact and called her what she is without whitewashing the facts.
In looking at the facts, it is worth reviewing the working definition of anti-Semitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance some years ago:
Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities
Wilhelm Marr, the socialist founder of the League of Antisemites, popularized the term ‘anti-Semite’ itself. The inventor of anti-Semitism’s arguments used the same ones put forward by Marx, Fourier, H.G. Wells, Lenin and countless other socialists. The Jews were all about the ‘Benjamins’. They started wars. They were disloyal and manipulated society. They were a dangerous foreign element.
These same tropes were uttered by Rep. Ilhan Omar and defended by her socialist allies in the House Progressive Caucus and across the media.
For those like Omar who couch their anti-Semitism in what they want the rest of us to believe is just criticism of Israel and not of Jews, Natan Sharansky used an even clearer definition. He said comments about Jews and Israel have to be examined through the prism of the three D’s – Demonization, Deligitimization and treating Israel/Jews with a Double Standard. By any measure, Omar’s comments meet all those criteria.
However, she is not the only problem. While all of the attention over the last weeks has been directed at her, she is just one of three new members of congress whose views of Jews and Israel are in concert. Before she was defending Omar, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was cozying up to Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn who has been widely condemned for his anti-Semitic remarks and for backing anti-Semitic allies whose hatred has been even more open than Omar’s. And of course, there is US Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the third leg of this unholy trio fighting to change how Jews are perceived in the US.
Rep. Omar would much rather tap into anti-Semitism and turn the conversation to Israel, than discuss her past sympathy for Islamic terrorists. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez would rather turn the conversation away from why she believed we should not have gone after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan with a defense of Omar. In addition, both Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are scheduled to appear at events sponsored by CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Tlaib on March 17th at their annual banquet and Omar later in the month at their Valley Banquet in Los Angeles. CAIR has a checkered history with many believing that they have ties to Hamas and other groups advocating for the destruction of Israel.
History tells us loud and clear that we dare not listen to the palliatives spouted by the congressional leadership in the US over the past week. According to the Speaker of the House, the House Majority Leader, the House Whip, the Senate Minority Leader, and at least three Democratic presidential candidates, Ilhan Omar is not an anti-Semite—and, in the view of some, people are saying so dishonestly for the purpose of shutting down debate on legitimate matters.
Speaker Pelosi said Omar’s words were not “intentionally anti-Semitic.” On a C-SPAN interview on Friday, Speaker Pelosi said the following:
I don’t think our colleague is anti-Semitic. I think she has a different experience in the use of words and doesn’t understand that some of them are fraught with meaning that she didn’t realize.
Seriously? Whom is the Speaker trying to convince? Herself? Perhaps, but she certainly did not convince this author who believes that Omar knew exactly what she was saying and why she said it. Remember, nobody forced Omar to tweet that “Jews were hypnotizing the world”, or that Jews were controlling American politics with their money (i.e. the Benjamins), or that Jews were engaged in a conspiracy to force her to apologize for her words. Choosing to speak like this not once, not twice, but regularly before she was elected and since is, frankly, as anti-Semitic as it gets and everyone needs to stop making excuses for her behavior.
Our collective voices must ring out loud and clear that this type of behavior has no place in the Congress of the US, no place in America, and no place in the world because we know exactly where this language leads.
Elie Wiesel said it best: “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” And protest we must…loudly and soon!!! Time is not on our side.
Sherwin Pomerantz is a 35-year resident of Israel, past National President of the Association of Americans & Canadians in Israel and president of Atid EDI Ltd., a Jerusalem-based business development consultancy.
1a)
The Omar Affair
The socialism of fools takes Washington
There are two parts to the Omar affair, and despite the furor and all the statements and counterstatements, and the tweets and countertweets, not enough has been said about either. I will deal with them in this order: first, Rep. Omar’s lies and, second, the fearfulness of her critics
1) I don’t think that Rep. Omar is a liar; she is just repeating other people’s lies. It’s possible that she believes them or, maybe, she thinks they are half-true and politically useful (and she has proven that they are politically useful). In any case, her claims are false. AIPAC, aka the Zionist lobby—actually the right-wing Zionist lobby; there are others on the left—does not control American policy in the Middle East. The organization can make a lot of noise; it has influence in Congress—though less than its leaders tell its donors—and the influence comes from the money it spends. I am sure that there are politicians in the House and Senate who never fail to answer AIPAC’s phone calls and who speak passionately about Israel when they are asked to do so. But that’s about all they do, for Congress has very little impact on what America does in the Middle East or anywhere else. Putting Omar on the House Foreign Affairs Committee is probably a good idea; she will learn how little the committee has to do with foreign affairs.
American foreign policy is made in the White House. That may be constitutionally wrong, but it’s been true for a long time. When the people elect a president who agrees with AIPAC, the organization looks very powerful. And when the people elect a president who disagrees with AIPAC, the organization is powerless. I don’t remember how AIPAC responded to Carter’s Middle East policy or to Clinton’s. In neither case was AIPAC influential, not when Israel withdrew from the Sinai and not when Rabin and Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn; its leaders were probably not consulted. But its lack of influence was most clear in the Obama years, when it disapproved of almost everything Obama did in the Middle East, from the Cairo speech to the treaty with Iran, and could do nothing to change his policies
There are indeed Zionist lobbies at work in Washington. They advocate different policies, and sometimes one or another of them gets its way, but not because of its power or its money. It finds people in office who share its ideological commitments, or it doesn’t. Omar’s claim about “the Benjamins” is simply false. Money counts in American politics, but not in the way she says it does. American support for Israel has moral, political, religious, and strategic reasons; it isn’t bought. That falsehood is more important than the anti-Semitism that probably motivates it—or, better, we shouldn’t care about Omar’s moral character but rather about what she says.
2) Jewish critics of Omar have complained more about her character or her anti-Semitism than about the lies she repeats. It is as if they think that what Omar is doing wrong is this: She is telling the world about Jewish power. “Sha; we don’t want the goyim to know.” The critics should be saying that we Jews don’t have that kind of power; we never have. We hope to influence American policy toward Israel, a perfectly legitimate hope, but we don’t agree about what the policy should be. Evangelical Christians have far more influence than we do—in part because of their greater numbers, in part because they don’t disagree so much among themselves.
A congressional resolution condemning all forms of bigotry is no doubt commendable, but it doesn’t serve our political purpose. What is necessary is a fierce and detailed expose of all the lies about the Jews. And it is important that the word be used: lies. Many of Omar’s critics prefer to be offended, hurt, and distressed by her repetition of anti-Semitic tropes rather than outraged by the dishonesty of the tropes. And they are, in turn, afraid to offend Omar’s supporters, who seem to think that the lies Omar repeats are simply her opinions; they are just like everyone else’s opinions. Indeed, Omar is entitled to her falsehoods; it is, as we say, a free country. But the falsehoods have to be given their proper name. If Jewish Democrats don’t get tough about this, they will soon find themselves unable to be tough about anything. They will be pushed out of the Democratic Party just as Jews are being pushed out of the Labour Party in the U.K.
Long ago, August Bebel gave a name to left-wing anti-Semitism: “the socialism of fools.” Now the fools are in Congress.
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