Democrats and their radical mass media friends are trying to bring down Trump not on facts but by spinning headlines, emotions. Trump is often his own worst enemy by actions and words that play into their hands.
Pelosi is allowing Schiff for brains to conduct a Gulag investigation, which is basically un-American. The "at any cost" Democrats are known for this tactic. It is critical voters be made to see through this political ploy.
A Gulag type investigation is not the only method they employ. Character assassination, lies, manipulation and deceit are other ingredients being used to ice the impeachment cake.
Moody Analytics, which have proven accurate, project Trump will win by an even greater electoral college count if current circumstances prevail.
American's are basically fair minded and may reject,what they deem are over the board abuse and outlandish tactics skewed to prevent one of their just legal remedies, ie. a fair trial applying the rule of law and being allowed to employ various legitimate defenses ie. facing one's accuser(s), right to cross examine, etc. Exactly what Trump is being denied as I write.
Finally, when the expanded Durham report is released, I suspect it will expose actions undertaken by various Trump Haters whose actions were known, if not actually orchestrated, by the very top of the last administration.
The most egregious tragedy is what these shenanigans are doing to America.. There was a time when patriotism and a sense of fair play tolerated discussion between/among those with divergent views. Today, college campuses have become a cauldron of division and hatred of opposing views. The Halls of Congress toll with the sound of impeachment. Trump is prickly, unorthodox and has other traits unsuited for a tranquil presidency. He has, however, made immense progress on many fronts as he opens barrels of snakes that needed redressing.
The constitutional pre-requisites for impeachment, according to some of the finest and most objective legal minds, do not believe Democrats have met the dictates. Democrats are about rejecting votes of 62 plus million voters because they cannot acknowledge their defeat and are resorting to other extra legal methods to accomplish their nefarious goal. For shame! (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)
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LeBron proves again how to be a jerk. When it comes to Capitalism versus Communism, the latter wins in the NBA. (See 2 below.)
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Bernie has become American Jew's favorite Muslim. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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When Trump uses "lynching" the hypocrite's response is as expected. (See 4 below.)
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Four op eds that should be enlightening if you are interested in intelligent rebuttals to the anti-Trump's garbage:
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1)
Impeachers Searching for New Crimes by Alan M. Dershowitz |
Posted By RUTHFULLY YOURS
· Conflicts between the Legislative and Executive Branches are resolved by the Judicial Branch, not by the unilateral dictate of a handful of partisan legislators. It is neither a crime nor an impeachable offense for the president to demand that Congress seek court orders to enforce their demands. Claims of executive and other privileges should be resolved by the Judicial Branch, not by calls for impeachment.
The effort to find (or create) impeachable offense against President Donald Trump has now moved from the subjects of the Mueller investigation — collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice — to alleged recent political “sins”: “quid pro quo” with Ukraine and obstruction of Congress.
The goal of the impeach-at-any-cost cadre has always been the same: impeach and remove Trump, regardless of whether or not he did anything warranting removal. The means — the alleged impeachable offenses — have changed, as earlier ones have proved meritless. The search for the perfect impeachable offense against Trump is reminiscent of overzealous prosecutors who target the defendant first and then search for the crime with which to charge him. Or to paraphrase the former head of the Soviet secret police to Stalin: show me the man and I will find you the crime.
Although this is not Stalin’s Soviet Union, all civil libertarians should be concerned about an Alice in Wonderland process in which the search for an impeachable crime precedes the evidence that such a crime has actually been committed.
Before we get to the current search, a word about what constitutes an impeachable crime under the constitution, whose criteria are limited to treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. There is a debate among students of the constitution over the intended meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Some believe that these words encompass non-criminal behavior. Others, I among them, interpret these words more literally, requiring at the least criminal-like behavior, if not the actual violation of a criminal statute.
What is not debatable is that “maladministration” is an impermissible ground for impeachment. Why is that not debatable? Because it was already debated and explicitly rejected by the framers at the constitutional convention. James Madison, the father of our Constitution, opposed such open-ended criteria, lest they make the tenure of the president subject to the political will of Congress. Such criteria would turn our republic into a parliamentary democracy in which the leader — the prime minister — is subject to removal by a simple vote of no confidence by a majority of legislators. Instead, the framers demanded the more specific criminal-like criteria ultimately adopted by the convention and the states.
Congress does not have the constitutional authority to change these criteria without amending the Constitution. To paraphrase what many Democratic legislators are now saying: members of Congress are not above the law; they take an oath to apply the Constitution, not to ignore its specific criteria. Congresswoman Maxine Waters placed herself above the law when she said:
“Impeachment is about whatever the Congress says it is. There is no law that dictates impeachment. What the Constitution says is ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ and we define that.”
So, the question remains: did President Trump commit impeachable offenses when he spoke on the phone to the president of Ukraine and/or when he directed members of the Executive Branch to refuse to cooperate, absent a court order, with congressional Democrats who are seeking his impeachment?
The answers are plainly no and no. There is a constitutionally significant difference between a political “sin,” on the one hand, and a crime or impeachable offenses, on the other.
Even taking the worst-case scenario regarding Ukraine — a quid pro quo exchange of foreign aid for a political favor — that might be a political sin, but not a crime or impeachable offense.
Many presidents have used their foreign policy power for political or personal advantage. Most recently, President Barack Obama misused his power in order to take personal revenge against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the last days of his second term, Obama engineered a one-sided UN Security Council resolution declaring that Israel’s control over the Western Wall — Judaism’s holiest site — constitutes a “flagrant violation of international law.” Nearly every member of Congress and many in his own administration opposed this unilateral change in our policy, but Obama was determined to take revenge against Netanyahu, whom he despised. Obama committed a political sin by placing his personal pique over our national interest, but he did not commit an impeachable offense.
Nor did President George H. W. Bush commit an impeachable offense when he pardoned Caspar Weinberger and others on the eve of their trials in order to prevent them from pointing the finger at him.
This brings us to President Trump’s directive with regard to the impeachment investigation. Under our constitutional system of separation of powers, Congress may not compel the Executive Branch to cooperate with an impeachment investigation absent court orders. Conflicts between the Legislative and Executive Branches are resolved by the Judicial Branch, not by the unilateral dictate of a handful of partisan legislators. It is neither a crime nor an impeachable offense for the president to demand that Congress seek court orders to enforce their demands. Claims of executive and other privileges should be resolved by the Judicial Branch, not by calls for impeachment.
So, the search for the holy grail of a removable offense will continue, but it is unlikely to succeed. Our constitution provides a better way to decide who shall serve as president: it’s called an election.
Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of The Case Against the Democratic House Impeaching Trump, Skyhorse Publishing,
1a) If the testimony is so damning for Trump, why not make it public?
Bombshell. The walls are closing in. Donald Trump’s defense has collapsed. The quid pro quo has been proven, the case for impeachment is obvious, and the only question remaining is whether the lickspittle Republicans will finally do their duty and vote to oust this disgraceful President.
That’s more or less been the unanimous chorus in the impeachment press since Tuesday, when State Department envoy to Ukraine William Taylor testified to the House Intelligence Committee. The problem with this narrative is that all we have to rely on is Mr. Taylor’s opening statement and leaks from Democrats.
What we don’t know is how Mr. Taylor responded to questions, or what he knew first-hand versus what he concluded on his own, because like all impeachment witnesses he testified in secret. Chairman Adam Schiff, with the approval of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, refuses to release any witness transcripts.
Certainly Mr. Taylor’s statement doesn’t make Mr. Trump’s Ukraine interventions look good. The former ambassador, handpicked by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, says he accepted the job because he believes in maintaining Ukraine as an ally of the West and out of Vladimir Putin’s Greater Russia orbit.
Mr. Taylor says he slowly discovered what he calls an “irregular” diplomatic process toward Ukraine involving Rudy Giuliani. Over the summer he concluded that this unofficial operation was intended to get Ukraine’s new President Volodymyr Zelensky to pursue a probe into corruption that included the activities of Joe Biden and his son Hunter. He was told, he says, that there was a “quid pro quo” that U.S. aid would be withheld to Ukraine unless Mr. Zelensky made such a statement.
Yet House Republican Lee Zeldin, who was present at Mr. Taylor’s testimony, tweeted Tuesday that “Much of his leaked opening statement collapsed, but Schiff keeps the public in the dark on that!” Mr. Zeldin adds that “This transcript should be released ASAP along w ALL of the other transcripts.” The American public is left to wonder what in the name of democratic legitimacy to make of the competing claims.
Intriguingly, Mr. Taylor says in his statement that many people in the Administration opposed the Giuliani effort, including some in senior positions at the White House. This matters because it may turn out that while Mr. Trump wanted a quid-pro-quo policy ultimatum toward Ukraine, he was too inept to execute it. Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government, and most Presidents at some point or another in office.
By the way, former national security adviser John Bolton comes off as something of a hero in trying to keep Ukraine policy from being upset by Mr. Giuliani’s maneuvering. Mr. Taylor says Mr. Bolton even opposed a phone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky as a potential “disaster.” Mark this down as one more case in which Mr. Trump caused himself no end of grief by ignoring good advice. (Like his decision to keep James Comey as FBI director in January 2017.)
House Republicans staged a protest at the House Intelligence hearing room on Wednesday to demand an open process, and it was a PR stunt. But they are right about the disgrace of this closed-door impeachment. This isn’t routine oversight of a bad presidential decision or reckless judgment. The self-described goal of Mr. Schiff’s hearings is to impeach and remove from office a President elected by 63 million Americans.
This requires more transparency and public scrutiny than Mr. Schiff’s unprecedented process of secret testimony, followed by selective leaks to the friendly media to put everything in the most anti-Trump light, in order to sway public opinion. If the evidence against Mr. Trump is so damning, then why not make it all public now so the American people can judge for themselves?
1b)
Pelosi’s Impeachment Blunder
The Speaker knows the interests of her anti-Trump compulsives and the Democratic Party are not aligned.
By Daniel Henninger
Nancy Pelosi had the Democrats’ impeachment strategy right the first time: Don’t do it. But apparently even a lifetime in the mud-filled trenches of politics wasn’t enough to toughen the House speaker against the Democratic left’s compulsion to impeach Donald Trump.
Anyone of any political stripe knows that the most psychologically distressed Democrats have wanted to impeach this guy, somehow just get rid of him, from day one.
Before Democrats regained control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections, the Trump take down was supposed to result from the Russian-collusion narrative, which got up to speed in January 2017 and then steamrolled across the country for two years of media leaks and the Mueller investigation, ultimately and fantastically going nowhere.
Within a day of the Mueller report’s release, dismissing the Russian-collusion story lines, the opposition pivoted to the obstruction-of-justice narrative. Somehow, the pivoters must have assumed that the American people, after enduring the Mueller odyssey, would not notice that this extraordinarily disruptive investigation had come to nothing. And that people would saddle up to join the next get-Trump posse. That didn’t work.
We’ll pause in our own narrative to posit a de minimis level of legitimacy to what they’ve done. If the opposition party and, in our unique times, the opposition press want to spend what capital and credibility they have in a round-the-clock effort to take down a sitting president, that’s their prerogative. Nothing in the Constitution says elected officials are obliged to do anything productive.
But translating the public’s votes into a permanent presidential takedown had better work, because if they don’t pull off impeachment and drive Donald Trump out of public life next year, the losses for the Democrats and the media will be devastating. It’s the familiar do-or-die stakes of trying to take out the king.
Because Donald Trump loves living dangerously, he and the increasingly mysterious Rudy Giuliani handed his opponents the unexpected excitement of the Ukraine-Biden narrative—and at last an opening for impeachment. The New York Times, delirious at the prospect, has even created an ominous little logo for its coverage, typically several pages a day—“The 45th President: Impeachment.”
Maybe it really will be the third time’s the charm for the Trump-elimination forces, but the impeachment project looks like it’s starting to go wobbly.
For starters, it’s still just sort-of an impeachment. There’s been no vote in the House and no sign the Judiciary Committee is drawing up articles of impeachment, as in the past. Instead, Adam Schiff’s intelligence committee is interviewing Ukraine-related State Department officials—in secret hearings. It resembles a show trial, with the “public” parts emerging as selective leaks to the impeachment press.
But the most telling impeachment development this week wasn’t any paraphrased testimony from Mr. Schiff’s private hearings. It was the news that Speaker Pelosi’s impeachment timetable has been delayed “to sharpen their case” for doing it.
It is now evident that a vote to impeach President Trump isn’t likely to occur before Thanksgiving, as many assumed, but will slip to December. Then, of course, the trial phase will pass to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Mr. McConnell reportedly wanted it all over by the end of the year, but what’s the rush? The Trump trial could run through January—31 priceless campaign days before the Democratic Party’s intensely competitive primaries. The Iowa caucus vote is Feb. 3, then comes New Hampshire’s primary on Feb. 11; Nevada’s caucuses are Feb. 22; and the crucially important South Carolina primary arrives Feb. 29.
Instead of competing for their party’s nomination, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Michael Bennet will spend invaluable campaign time planted on Capitol Hill during the days that the Pelosi-Schiff Trump trial drones on. Sens. Sanders and Harris can’t call Mr. Trump the “most corrupt president” in the history of the country and then skip out on the trial of public enemy No. 1 to campaign in a downstate Iowa diner.
Joe Biden, Mayor Pete, and Hillary’s new friend Rep. Tulsi Gabbard get to romp daily through the primary states, but who’s going to notice with the Trump impeachment trial siphoning away the nation’s media’s attention?
Surely Nancy Pelosi knew when she stood firm against opening the impeachment dam that the interests of her party’s anti-Trump compulsives—nearly all from safe seats—and her party’s broader election interests were not aligned.
The left has always believed that some deus ex machina, such as Robert Mueller or a nonstop storm of negative press stories, would magically make the Trump presidency just go away—rather than the more plausible likelihood that the relentlessly combustible Mr. Trump would eventually discredit himself in the eyes of most voters.
The American left throughout its existence has had a deep mistrust of the U.S. system, so rather than wait until November 2020 for voters to sort all this out, we get this crypto-impeachment. Like the sure-thing election of 2016, it too could backfire.
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2) NBA Star LeBron James Upsets Fans By Yelling During the National Anthem
At the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday night, basketball star LeBron James stepped forward from the line of his fellow players who were saluting the national anthem and shouted “Let’s Go!” before the performer was finished with the song. Basketball fans felt LeBron was extremely disrespectful and let him know on social media.
Some sports fans pointed out LeBron would show more respect during the Chinese national anthem.
Last week, LeBron made headlines when he sided with the Chinese government calling Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey “misinformed or not really educated on the situation,” after Morey posted a meme on Twitter supporting the people of Hong Kong. Morey’s meme read “Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”
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3)
The Democrats’ disconnect from Israeli reality
The party’s turnout for the J Street conference and their presidential candidates’ threats of cutting off Israel aid illustrate how little they understand the Middle East.
Israelis are still trying to sort out the fallout from their second unsuccessful attempt to elect a government this year with little sign of a break in the impasse between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz. But no matter who emerges from the latest maneuvering—or from a third election that might be held early next year—Israel’s next leader needs to be concerned about the way a Democratic president might transform relations between the United States and Israel.
Much of the rhetoric about the shift within the Democratic Party with respect to the Jewish state ignores the fact that most congressional Democrats, in addition to mainstream voters and donors, support Israel. It’s unfortunate that the delegation of 41 members led by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer who went to Israel to express solidarity with the Jewish state didn’t get as much publicity as did the banning of BDS supporters and Israel-haters Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) from entering the country.
Even if the growing influence of open opponents of Israel in the Democratic Party were downplayed, the trend can’t be ignored. There is no doubt that the party’s left-wing activist base seems to have bought into some of the BDS movement’s lies about Israel and the intersectional myths about the Palestinian war against Israel’s existence being akin to the struggle for civil rights in the United States.
Some of the leading Democratic presidential candidates—mindful of the disproportionate influence that radicals have in party primaries—have been making noises intended to signal their disenchantment with Israel. Over the past weekend, both current front runner Sen. Elizabeth Warren and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is currently in fourth place in the average of polls, stated they were open to cutting or conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel as a way of forcing the Jewish state to bend to their will on the conflict with the Palestinians. It is a position Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, currently in third place in the polls, has already embraced.
And that’s music to the ears of radical anti-Zionists like the members of IfNotNow, who have been dogging the candidates on the campaign trail in the hope of enticing the contenders into making exactly those kinds of declarations.
It also seems part and parcel of the J Street lobby, which is hosting its annual conference this coming weekend.
J Street has always made a great show of claiming that it shouldn’t be confused with anti-Zionist groups like IfNotNow or Jewish Voices for Peace, whose activism has in some instances demonstrated the close connection between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. J Street claims to be “pro-Israel” and “pro-peace,” and to the extent that it merely echoes the positions of left-wing Zionist Israeli political parties like Meretz, they deserve to be taken at their word. Yet on many college campuses, J Street chapters are nowhere to be found in the battle against BDS; more than that, they have been connected with openly anti-Semitic groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, making common cause with them in opposing pro-Israel college organizations.
But the most important point about the group is that it is completely out of touch with the political reality of Israel. Few Israelis support the positions it advocates: retreat from the West Bank and establish a Palestinian state there. Indeed, even the parties of the left have largely abandoned the sort of faith in the Oslo peace process that is still an article of faith for J Street.
That disconnect with even the centrist opposition to Netanyahu in Israel—since Gantz and the Blue and White advocate holding onto much of the West Bank and oppose the uprooting of Jewish settlements—is no barrier to Democrats treating J Street with the kind of deference it hasn’t earned.
Not only will five Democratic presidential candidates attend the J Street Conference this weekend, including Sanders, Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Benet and Julian Castro, the party’s titular leaders—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—are also scheduled to speak.
The fact that Jewish Democrats were not speaking up denouncing Warren and Buttigieg for boasting that they would be even tougher on Israel than former president Barack Obama speaks volumes about the current mood in the party. As the Democrats shift to the left on a host of issues and also denounce President Donald Trump for his pro-Israel tilt, the inflated prominence of J Street speaks to the idea that even those who disagree with Omar and Tlaib seem to have no clue as to why Israeli voters have continuously rejected the left-wing lobby’s stands on key issues.
While bashing Netanyahu was fashionable on the left long before he became identified in the public eye as an ally of Trump, the stands taken by Warren, Buttigieg and Sanders on aid to Israel, which is in accord with J Street’s position favoring U.S. pressure on the Jewish state, don’t take into account that the Palestinians have continuously rejected peace and continue to support terror. This has destroyed support among Israelis for a two-state solution except in a theoretical future.
Even if Gantz becomes prime minister, he will almost certainly pursue the same diplomatic and security strategies as Netanyahu has done. That’s why the threats of Warren, Buttigieg and Sanders are not aimed so much at Netanyahu as they are at a position that reflects the consensus of the overwhelming majority of Israelis.
The J Street De mocrats may think they are still “pro-Israel.” However, the stands they will soon be applauding at their conference remain at odds with the will of the Israeli people. If one of their numbers winds up in the White House in January 2021, that individual will pose a dire challenge to Israel’s government, even if the Likud and Netanyahu have already been defeated.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
3a)
How Bernie Sanders became a favorite among Muslim Americans
By JOSEFIN DOLSTEN
Bernie Sanders was one of only two Democratic presidential candidates to address the Islamic Society of North America Convention in August, the largest annual gathering of Muslim Americans in the country.
Organizers invited the 10 highest-polling contenders at the time to the Houston event, but the Vermont senator and Julian Castro were the only ones to accept. Sanders received loud applause and a standing ovation for a speech that repeatedly invoked his refugee father’s flight from poverty and anti-Semitism in Poland.
Among a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls, the Jewish candidate is one of the few who have made repeated efforts to reach out to Muslim Americans, community leaders told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Sanders has taken an active role in elevating Muslim communities and Muslim spokespersons in the national presidential debate,” said Robert McCaw, director of the government affairs department at the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “He’s not shy in going into Muslim spaces publicly and endorsing our issues and making them a part of the campaign.”
Sanders was the first presidential candidate to visit a mosque following the March shooting at two mosques in New Zealand. With his appointment of Faiz Shakir as campaign manager, he became the first major presidential candidate to appoint a Muslim in that role. He has picked high profile Muslims as surrogates — including Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour and comedian Amer Zahr, both Palestinian Americans.
Prominent Muslim politicians, in turn, have endorsed Sanders. They include Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who came out for Sanders last week. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is set to join Sanders at a rally in Detroit this weekend and reportedly is going to endorse him as well. Omar and Tlaib, the first Muslim women elected to Congress, have been the repeated target of attacks by President Donald Trump.
It’s hardly a given that Muslim Americans would support a left-leaning Democrat.
The Muslim-American community is estimated at 3.45 million and it’s diverse, including immigrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, as well as a sizable number of African-Americans born in the United States. The community is close to split evenly between self-described liberals and conservatives.
The 2000 election is often seen as a turning point. That year, a political action committee made up of Muslim groups endorsed Republican George W. Bush, who had made efforts to reach out to the Muslim community, over Democrat Al Gore. Polls are inconsistent on how Muslims actually voted in that election. CAIR said 70 percent of Muslim-American voters backed the GOP candidate, while a study by the pollster Zogby International said the number was just 42 percent.
But the Iraq War and the Patriot Act were unpopular among Muslim Americans, and by the next election both Zogby and CAIR were showing overwhelming Muslim support for John Kerry, the Democrat running against Bush.
The situation has scarcely changed. In 2016, CAIR found that only 13 percent of Muslims voted for Trump. A Zogby poll ahead of the election found that only 12 percent of Muslims said they would vote for Trump.
“The Democratic Party has more appealing factors right now than the Islamophobic sentiment that is seen exuding from the Republican Party,” McCaw said.
Still, a 78-year-old Jewish socialist from Brooklyn isn’t an obvious favorite among Muslim Americans, whose relations with U.S. Jews have often been complicated by differences over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But a number of factors have drawn the communities closer in recent years, according to Suhail Khan, a conservative activist who served as legal counsel and transportation adviser in the George W. Bush administration. These include similar views on domestic issues, better social ties and a shared sense of vulnerability in the face of mounting hate crimes.
“The conversation and the relationship between the American Muslim community and the American Jewish community has done a 180-degree change, and that’s reflected in the support for Bernie,” said Khan, who doesn’t support Sanders but understands his appeal to fellow Muslims.
Sarsour, the Sanders surrogate and former Women’s March organizer, did not respond to requests for comment, but she told the Los Angeles Times last month that Sanders “crushes the stereotype that Muslims and Jews are natural enemies.” Sarsour also cited Sanders’ defense of Tlaib and Omar in the face of Trump’s attacks and his being “outspoken on Palestinian rights” as reasons for Muslim support.
Sanders has stood out among Democratic contenders for his willingness to criticize Israel. He was the first serious candidate to suggest that aid to Israel could be contingent on its compliance with U.S. policy, although Sen. Elizabeth Warren has now embraced that view. He has also said that he supports Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and called himself “100 percent pro-Israel,” but repeatedly has come down hard on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including calling it “racist.”
“There is a sense that this is a guy who would do with us and respect us in a way that other candidates wouldn’t,” said James Zogby, a former Democratic National Committee member and director of the Arab-American Institute who has endorsed Sanders.
For some Muslim voters, Sanders’ Jewish identity makes them even more likely to support him.
“I think in terms of being a socialist Jewish guy from Brooklyn, it appealed to me because I know a couple of socialist Jews from Brooklyn and my parents grew up around lefty Jewish people,” said Hamzah Raza, a 23-year-old graduate student in Islamic studies at the Harvard Divinity School.
Raza, who grew up in Maryland and New Jersey, organized a group of young Muslims to pray for Sanders following news earlier this month that he had suffered a heart attack. Some 40 young Muslims from around the world ended up taking part in a complete recitation of the Quran on behalf of Sanders on the messaging platform WhatsApp, as first reported by the Religion News Service.
“They were really eager,” Raza told JTA. “People really wanted to be a part of it.”
Raza said the candidate’s outreach to the community and his progressive stances on a number of issues appeal to him, including health care, foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“I wouldn’t say Muslim Americans are a monolith,” he said. “I don’t think we’re behind any particular candidate. But I would say Bernie Sanders is by far the most popular.”
Among a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls, the Jewish candidate is one of the few who have made repeated efforts to reach out to Muslim Americans, community leaders told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Sanders has taken an active role in elevating Muslim communities and Muslim spokespersons in the national presidential debate,” said Robert McCaw, director of the government affairs department at the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “He’s not shy in going into Muslim spaces publicly and endorsing our issues and making them a part of the campaign.”
Sanders was the first presidential candidate to visit a mosque following the March shooting at two mosques in New Zealand. With his appointment of Faiz Shakir as campaign manager, he became the first major presidential candidate to appoint a Muslim in that role. He has picked high profile Muslims as surrogates — including Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour and comedian Amer Zahr, both Palestinian Americans.
Prominent Muslim politicians, in turn, have endorsed Sanders. They include Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who came out for Sanders last week. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is set to join Sanders at a rally in Detroit this weekend and reportedly is going to endorse him as well. Omar and Tlaib, the first Muslim women elected to Congress, have been the repeated target of attacks by President Donald Trump.
It’s hardly a given that Muslim Americans would support a left-leaning Democrat.
The Muslim-American community is estimated at 3.45 million and it’s diverse, including immigrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, as well as a sizable number of African-Americans born in the United States. The community is close to split evenly between self-described liberals and conservatives.
The 2000 election is often seen as a turning point. That year, a political action committee made up of Muslim groups endorsed Republican George W. Bush, who had made efforts to reach out to the Muslim community, over Democrat Al Gore. Polls are inconsistent on how Muslims actually voted in that election. CAIR said 70 percent of Muslim-American voters backed the GOP candidate, while a study by the pollster Zogby International said the number was just 42 percent.
But the Iraq War and the Patriot Act were unpopular among Muslim Americans, and by the next election both Zogby and CAIR were showing overwhelming Muslim support for John Kerry, the Democrat running against Bush.
The situation has scarcely changed. In 2016, CAIR found that only 13 percent of Muslims voted for Trump. A Zogby poll ahead of the election found that only 12 percent of Muslims said they would vote for Trump.
“The Democratic Party has more appealing factors right now than the Islamophobic sentiment that is seen exuding from the Republican Party,” McCaw said.
Still, a 78-year-old Jewish socialist from Brooklyn isn’t an obvious favorite among Muslim Americans, whose relations with U.S. Jews have often been complicated by differences over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But a number of factors have drawn the communities closer in recent years, according to Suhail Khan, a conservative activist who served as legal counsel and transportation adviser in the George W. Bush administration. These include similar views on domestic issues, better social ties and a shared sense of vulnerability in the face of mounting hate crimes.
“The conversation and the relationship between the American Muslim community and the American Jewish community has done a 180-degree change, and that’s reflected in the support for Bernie,” said Khan, who doesn’t support Sanders but understands his appeal to fellow Muslims.
Sarsour, the Sanders surrogate and former Women’s March organizer, did not respond to requests for comment, but she told the Los Angeles Times last month that Sanders “crushes the stereotype that Muslims and Jews are natural enemies.” Sarsour also cited Sanders’ defense of Tlaib and Omar in the face of Trump’s attacks and his being “outspoken on Palestinian rights” as reasons for Muslim support.
Sanders has stood out among Democratic contenders for his willingness to criticize Israel. He was the first serious candidate to suggest that aid to Israel could be contingent on its compliance with U.S. policy, although Sen. Elizabeth Warren has now embraced that view. He has also said that he supports Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and called himself “100 percent pro-Israel,” but repeatedly has come down hard on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including calling it “racist.”
“There is a sense that this is a guy who would do with us and respect us in a way that other candidates wouldn’t,” said James Zogby, a former Democratic National Committee member and director of the Arab-American Institute who has endorsed Sanders.
For some Muslim voters, Sanders’ Jewish identity makes them even more likely to support him.
“I think in terms of being a socialist Jewish guy from Brooklyn, it appealed to me because I know a couple of socialist Jews from Brooklyn and my parents grew up around lefty Jewish people,” said Hamzah Raza, a 23-year-old graduate student in Islamic studies at the Harvard Divinity School.
Raza, who grew up in Maryland and New Jersey, organized a group of young Muslims to pray for Sanders following news earlier this month that he had suffered a heart attack. Some 40 young Muslims from around the world ended up taking part in a complete recitation of the Quran on behalf of Sanders on the messaging platform WhatsApp, as first reported by the Religion News Service.
“They were really eager,” Raza told JTA. “People really wanted to be a part of it.”
Raza said the candidate’s outreach to the community and his progressive stances on a number of issues appeal to him, including health care, foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“I wouldn’t say Muslim Americans are a monolith,” he said. “I don’t think we’re behind any particular candidate. But I would say Bernie Sanders is by far the most popular.”
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4) At least ten politicians, including Joe Biden, Jerry Nadler, and Justin Fairfax, used the term "lynching" to describe political attacks, like the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
THIS IS THE EPITOME OF HYPOCRISY . WHERE ARE THE GONADS OF THE REPUBLICANS
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5) Reaching out to Netanyahu, ultra-Orthodox, Gantz bids to defy Knesset arithmetic
Immense skepticism attended the run-up to Wednesday night’s ceremony, when Blue and White leader was charged with building a government. He did his best to puncture it
In an unexpectedly passionate and largely gracious speech on Wednesday night, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz accepted the “privilege” of being tasked with forming Israel’s next government and sought to dispel the notion that he has no greater chance of success than the incumbent, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Speaking alongside Reuven Rivlin — at the podium at the President’s Residence where for the past decade only Netanyahu has stood and accepted the task of building a coalition — Gantz signaled an immediate concession to the serving prime minister. Whereas Blue and White has hitherto made plain that it would not sit in a coalition with Netanyahu so long as the Likud leader is facing serious corruption allegations, Gantz appealed directly to “Likud… and its chairman Netanyahu” to join the “liberal unity government” he intends to build.
Promising a government “of national reconciliation” that would “unify Israel and the entire Jewish people,” Gantz also reached out to the ultra-Orthodox, a community whose political leadership, Blue and White had made clear until Wednesday, were most unlikely bedfellows in a Gantz-led coalition. Now he spoke to the ultra-Orthodox as “brothers,” listing them along with Israel’s Arab community, its modern-Orthodox Zionists, its young army graduates and its LGBT community, on his demographic register of those he seeks to represent.
Appealing to the Knesset members he must somehow persuade to give him a parliamentary majority, he warned them that Israel’s citizens — who have had no fully functioning government since the Knesset dispersed last December ahead of April’s inconclusive elections, which were then followed by a repeat vote on September 17 — “will not forgive those who put personal interests ahead of the national interest… Those who try to drag Israel to another election will be thrown out of Israel politics,” he declared, “to become extinct.”
Gantz said he would meet right away with the leaders of all elected parties, and work to form a multi-party coalition on the basis of an agreed platform that he believed would be acceptable to “most” of them. Only racists and those who utilize violence would be ineligible, he said.
Unlike many of his rivals, he noted, he was not raised in a political cradle but rather grew up in the IDF, where nobody cares who you voted for because the imperative to safeguard Israel takes precedence over all else. And that, he said, was the vision he was now intent on bringing to the national political leadership.
This was stirring stuff, from a relative political neophyte who looked more at ease than in any previous address since the Blue and White alliance was established eight months ago.
For a little short of 20 minutes, Gantz worked to puncture the skepticism that had surrounded the ceremony — to push aside the widely held assumption that he is now embarking on a Sisyphean task because the necessary votes for a majority government just are not there.
And Sisyphean it may well prove. Twenty-eight days from now, or maybe fewer, the former IDF chief may recognize no alternative but to return “the mandate” that Rivlin bestowed upon him.
But Gantz signaled Wednesday that he will do his utmost to defy the Knesset arithmetic. Netanyahu, in the same place a month ago, exuded near-despondency — “I accept the task you gave me, with the knowledge that I don’t have a better chance at forming a government, but rather, let’s say my inability to do so is a little smaller than that of MK Gantz,” he told Rivlin in brief remarks on September 25. Gantz, by contrast, seemed to be refusing to countenance the idea that he might fail.
His repeated promise to build that “liberal” unity coalition was his confirmation that he is pinning his hopes first and foremost on the fiercely secular Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman, whose refusal to sit in a Likud-led government with the ultra-Orthodox parties has now twice denied Netanyahu a majority. His direct invitation to Netanyahu and the Likud was the move of a leader who, now that he is in the political driving seat, can afford to act magnanimously to an intended junior partner. His warm words for Israel’s other sectors were designed to create a climate in which, even if their representatives don’t sit in his government, some of them might be less inclined to vote against it.
“This is our moment to look to the future, to put all other issues aside and do what’s right for Israel,” Gantz declared. “This is the moment to put Israel first.”
In the end, even the masterful Netanyahu could not make the Knesset arithmetic work for him. Vastly experienced, a man who has proved capable of keeping Israel safe and thriving economically for longer than any other prime minister, but also a deeply divisive figure and one now facing possible indictment, Netanyahu simply could not attract the support of more than 55 of the 120 Knesset members elected last month.
On paper, Gantz has even less of a chance, which is precisely why Rivlin turned to him only after Netanyahu had failed. He had only 54 MKs endorse him, and 10 of them, from the mainly Arab Joint List, say they wouldn’t join his government even if he asked them to.
But a third election inside 12 months is a dismal and sobering prospect. As Rivlin said in brief remarks before Gantz’s speech, “a government can be built… There’s no justification for imposing another round of elections.”
If Gantz fails, Israeli law provides another 21-day period in which any Knesset member who can muster a majority could yet become prime minister. It might be only then that the 120 MKs manage to agree on a national leader. Or it might be that even then, the rivalries prove too bitter, the contradictory agendas too incompatible, and Israel will be forced to vote yet again.
But Gantz on Wednesday sought to avoid those eventualities — to preach reconciliation to a watching nation, in the hope that this appeal would have its impact, in turn, on Israel’s elected representatives. A faint hope, perhaps. But then Gantz, as he said on Tuesday, is “always optimistic; it’s a way of life.”
5a) IDF chief warns ‘precarious’ security situation in north could lead to conflict
Aviv Kohavi unveils plan to overhaul Israeli military to counter ‘central strategic threats’ from Iran, Hezbollah
With a stark warning of potential conflict, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi unveils a multi-year plan to make the Israeli military deadlier, faster, better trained and more capable of defending the Jewish state against the threats facing it today.
“In the northern and southern arenas the situation is tense and precarious and poised to deteriorate into a conflict despite the fact that our enemies are not interested in war. In light of this, the IDF has been in an accelerated process of preparation,” Kohavi says in a briefing to reporters.
The plan — dubbed Amplitude, or Tenufa in Hebrew — will see huge amounts of investment in developing the Israel Defense Forces’ arsenals, including increasing its collection of mid-sized drones, obtaining large numbers of precision-guided missiles from the United States and purchasing additional air defense batteries.
Despite the weighty price tag of the Amplitude Multi-Year Plan, the IDF refuses to comment on how it planned to pay for these new weapons and defensive systems.
Kohavi’s plan will formally go into effect on January 1, 2020, but the IDF plans to put into place some of the proposals before then.
The IDF chief says the primary threat facing Israel come from Iran along Israel’s northern borders.
“The central strategic threat of the State of Israel lies in the northern arena: with the entrenchment of Iranian and other forces in Syria and with [the Hezbollah terror group’s] precision missile project,” Kohavi says, referring to an effort by the Iran-backed Lebanese militia to develop highly accurate long-range projectiles.
“Both of these cases are efforts led by Iran, using the territory of countries with severely limited governance,” he says.
Kohavi specifically refers to the case of Lebanon, where Iran’s ally Hezbollah is widely seen as being in control of the government despite technically having a small parliamentary presence.
“For years Hezbollah has taken the state of Lebanon ‘hostage.’ It built an army of its own and it is the one that dictates the security policy,” the army chief says.
— Judah Ari Gross
5b)
Mystery surrounds flight from Israel to Saudi Arabia
By TZVI JOFFRE
A privately owned, unidentified Challenger 604 jet departed from Ben-Gurion International Airport and landed in the Jordanian capital, Amman, and then the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, on Tuesday evening, causing many to question which Israeli decided to pay the Saudis a visit.
The plane in question departed from Israel and flew to an airport in Amman, where it remained on the ground for about 2 minutes before taking off again and landing in the Saudi capital. After a little less than an hour, the plane, privately owned and registered in the United States, took off and returned to Ben-Gurion Airport.
The plane has also made trips in recent months between Tel Aviv and Cairo.
US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was also in Riyadh at around the same time, pointed out Haaretz reporter Avi Scharf in a tweet.
The plane in question departed from Israel and flew to an airport in Amman, where it remained on the ground for about 2 minutes before taking off again and landing in the Saudi capital. After a little less than an hour, the plane, privately owned and registered in the United States, took off and returned to Ben-Gurion Airport.
The plane has also made trips in recent months between Tel Aviv and Cairo.
US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was also in Riyadh at around the same time, pointed out Haaretz reporter Avi Scharf in a tweet.
Maariv reporter Yossi Melman posited in a tweet that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Mossad chief Yossi Cohen may have been on the flight.
In September, Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon told The Jerusalem Post that Israel and various Arab states, including those with whom Israel does not have formal ties, were working together at the UN and elsewhere against Iran.
While the “Europeans were running around trying to get a meeting between [US President Donald] Trump and [Iranian President Hassan] Rouhani, Israel and various Arab states were coordinating efforts to reveal the true face of the Iranians,” Danon said.
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