I recently bought hearing aids and found out ears are conduits for sound. You actually hear with your brain. Need I say more.
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What really makes me boil is when Republican politicians tell me about a problem and then use it to seek a campaign donation and do nothing. They love it when the opposition screws up because they believe they can milk the situation for a few bucks and sit their on their thumbs lamenting. No wonder they blow opportunities and have proven time an again they are worthless.
Even my favorite Sen. John Kennedy turns his money seeking effort into a humorous cry for a campaign contribution: (see attached that I edited.)
Folks,
I have hope for my Liberal friends…jellyfish have survived for more than 165 million years without a brain, so there is hope for a few of them.
I have hope for my Liberal friends…jellyfish have survived for more than 165 million years without a brain, so there is hope for a few of them.
Just going over the numbers so far and it's looking like it could be one of my worst months in recent memory. I’m not asking for much, but a few dollars would go a long way in gearing up for the 2022 Election cycle...
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Once upon a time, the sole motivation for joining the armed forces was patriotism. The fervor for the well-being of the nation was such that individuals were willing to make supreme sacrifices including laying down their lives.
Now for the General Mark Milley story that hit headlines a day ago, the following is an extract from Bob Woodward’s recent book, “Peril”:
Twice in the final months of the Trump administration, the country’s top military officer was so fearful that the president’s actions might spark a war with China that he moved urgently to avert armed conflict. In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike. . . . One call took place on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the election . . . and the other on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the Capitol siege . . .
Read more...
The UN is the pivot for the west’s loss of moral compass.
By Melanie Phillips Sept 17/21
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Protest against Durban review conference, 2009
Next week, the United Nations is set to reinforce infamy. In the wings of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, it is to hold a 20th anniversary summit of its so-called World Conference against Racism that took place in Durban, South Africa, four days before the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
The New York event is outrageous. For Durban was a terrifying circus of psychotic anti-Jewish hatred whose sole purpose was to demonise and delegitimise Israel under the Orwellian banner of “human rights”.
Read more...And:
Why Oslo Still Rules
By CAROLINE GLICK
In an interview shortly before his death in the summer of 2001, Faisal Husseini, who held the Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem portfolio, gave an interview where he exposed the fraud at the heart of the Oslo process. Speaking with Al Araby newspaper, Husseini said that Yassir Arafat, his deputies and henchmen never saw the “peace process” as a way of achieving peace with Israel. Oslo for them was a means to advance their goal of destroying Israel, “from the river to the sea.”
Husseini described the Oslo process as a “Trojan Horse.” Arafat and his people were the hostile army that infiltrated the city “in the belly of the wooden horse.” When Arafat rejected Palestinian statehood and peace at the Camp David summit in July 2000 and initiated the Palestinian terror war two months later, it was as if he and his men exited the horse and began the fight.
“This is the beginning of the real work,” Husseini explained.
The PLO used the seven years that preceded the Palestinian terror war to build up their power. Arafat held “peace” talks and Israel paid through the nose for the privilege of sitting across the table from him and his apparatchiks. Israel gave them the Gaza Strip. Israel gave them the Palestinian cities and villages in Judea and Samaria. Israel gave them weapons and ammunition. Israel gave them international legitimacy. Israel – and with Israel’s permission, the nations of the world — gave PLO terrorists billions of dollars every year. Israel permitted the EU and the CIA to arm and train Arafat’s terror legions.
Arafat promised that in exchange for all that, he would fight terror and build the institutions necessary to run a state. Instead, he and his minions transformed the cities Israel gave them into terror bases. They used the funds to finance terror armies. They used the international legitimacy Israel’s recognition conferred to escalate and expand their political war against Israel’s right to exist.
The Israeli public didn’t need Husseini’s interview to know that Oslo was gravest strategic error in Israel’s history. The first Palestinian suicide bomber blew up at a crowded bus stop seven months after Rabin and Arafat shook hands at the White House on September 13,1993. Between their handshake and the beginning of the Oslo war in September 2000 the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists was twice the total killed from 1967-1993.
Despite the public’s opposition, still today, 28 years after Oslo’s launch, we are still living the world Oslo unleashed. The strategic and political realities the Oslo process created still dominate the life of the country. The Palestinian Authority still exists. It still finances and incites terror and wages its political war against Israel. The Oslo-obsessed “international community” still demands that Israel “make painful concessions for peace,” and together with the Israeli left, insists that the “two-state solution” is the only possible way to resolve the Palestinians’ never-ending war for the annihilation of Israel.
For years, led by Shimon Peres, the Israeli left dismissed public opposition to their radical, failed policy with the jeering catcall, “What’s the alternative?” – as if Israel’s only option is surrender to Palestinian terrorists in the name of “peace.”
A year ago, we caught a glimpse of the alternative: the sovereignty plan, which was supported by America. That plan showed that there is an option for governing Judea and Samaria and securing the interests of both Israel and the Palestinians that doesn’t involve empowering a terrorist organization.
As for peace, the Abraham Accords showed that the key to peace with the Arab world isn’t kowtowing to Palestinian terrorists.
The key to peace is Israel’s military, economic and diplomatic and social power. The parties to the Abraham Accords made peace with Israel because we are powerful, because Israel stubbornly defends of its rights and interests.
Last year’s glimpse of the true alternative to surrender seems like a distant dream today. The Lapid-Gantz-Bennett government has embraced Oslo’s tired, insipid slogans and presents them as original ideas – as if we were all born yesterday.
“Security for prosperity,” Lapid’s plan for “stabilizing” Hamas-controlled Gaza, is an attempt to repackage Oslo’s requirement that Israel give the Palestinians everything they demand up front in exchange for vague promises of Palestinian moderation sometime down the line.
In Lapid’s plan, Israel will let Hamas rebuild its missile stores and terror infrastructures by transferring astronomical quantities of civilian aid. Hamas will respond by temporarily suspending its missile attacks on Israel.
“The international community,” will guarantee Hamas doesn’t use the humanitarian aid to do what it has been doing since seizing control over Gaza 15 years ago, even though “the international community,” has passively and actively supported Hamas for 15 years.
“Gaza residents,” will overthrow Hamas if it blocks prosperity by using “humanitarian aid” to build its their terror arsenals, even though the Palestinians of Gaza and Judea and Samaria support Hamas and want elections so that Hamas, which has been diverting humanitarian aid for 15 years, will oust Fatah and the PLO from power.
Although PA Chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas has no public support, he is Israel’s “legitimate partner” for peace. He’s our partner for fighting terror even though he incites and finances terror. The Lapid-Gantz-Bennett government is committed to expanding Abbas’s powers to empower “moderates.”
The IDF, Lapid says, can’t fight endless rounds of war with Hamas. But then again, the IDF is so powerful that he argues Israel can afford to let Hamas rebuild its arsenal and military infrastructures.
And if all this fails to convince, Lapid brought out the big guns, “international legitimacy.” Israel can’t live without “international legitimacy” and it won’t have any if it doesn’t give the Palestinians everything they demand. Anyway, it all makes sense because the only alternative is “the two-state solution.”
How is it possible after all we have been through and all we have learned and seen that we are still living in the Oslo reality?
The answer begins with name of the phony peace process: Oslo. It was a Norwegian production, not an Israeli one. In 1993, the anti-Israel Norwegian government asked two Israeli peace activists who worked at a think tank connected with then deputy foreign minister Yossi Beilin to come to Oslo to meet with senior PLO terrorists. They agreed despite the fact that Israeli law then banned all contact between Israeli citizens and PLO members.
Although they represented no one, Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak were happy to oblige and carried out negotiations as if they were Israel’s representatives. When the talks advanced to a certain point, they told Beilin about them. And he told Peres.
After Arafat, (with Israeli coaching) scuttled the official peace talks that Rabin’s representatives were holding in Washington, Peres told Rabin. Whether unwilling to get into an open battle with Peres that could potentially bring down his government, or hopeful that something positive might come from the anti-democratic exercise, Rabin agreed to make the Oslo deal official policy.
The public opposed Oslo from the beginning. To get the Oslo deals approved by Knesset, Rabin required the support of the anti-Zionist Arab parties. Once the ultra-Orthodox Shas party left his government, to survive Rabin needed to entice two lawmakers from the far right Tzomet party to bolt their party, and abandon their ideology. He bought them off with a ministry and a deputy ministry and got the second Oslo deal through Knesset with a one vote majority.
Rabin and Peres were able to push ahead with Oslo because the media and the legal fraternity supported their efforts to demonize its opponents. Zionists became “enemies of peace,” collaborators with Hamas and Fatah. Rabin coined the term “murderers of peace.” Opposition leaders who gave firmly documented heart-rending speeches against Oslo were accused of “incitement.” Victims of Palestinian terror were dubbed “victims of peace.”
When Ariel Sharon became prime minister at the height of the Palestinian terror war, he opted to end the media’s demonization of him by joining the Oslo mob. Arguing that things look different from the Prime Minister’s office, Sharon adopted the Left’s policy of mass expulsions of law-abiding Israeli citizens from their homes in Gaza. True, Sharon was reelected in a landslide in 2003 by running against the left’s expulsions platform. But a he didn’t care. He expelled ten thousand Israelis from their homes in 2005 and 18 months later, as he had previously warned would happen, Hamas seized control of Gaza. The media swooned.
Benjamin Netanyahu preferred to ignore Oslo in the hopes that it would wither on the vine and disappear in the face of the success of the diplomatic alternative he built on the basis of Israel’s strength. Despite the wild success of his efforts, Oslo survived the sovereignty plan and the Abraham accords, and of course, Netanyahu’s tenure in office. And now it is roaring back.
In pre-Yom Kippur interviews, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett echoed Sharon when he said he left his ideology and political positions behind when he entered the Prime Minister’s office. Tuesday night, Bennett’s sidekick, Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked warned of growing “incitement and extremism.”
The Lapid-Gantz-Bennett government is sort of a Rabin-Peres government on steroids. Rabin bought his right-wing turncoats with one ministry and one deputy ministry. Bennett was able to extort a two-year premiership and Gideon Sa’ar got to be Justice Minister. The Rabin-Peres government needed the anti-Zionist Arab parties to pass the Oslo deals. The Lapid-Gantz-Bennett government needs the anti-Zionist Arab parties for everything. And like the Rabin-Peres government, the current government owes its survival to the wall to wall support it receives from the media and the legal fraternity.
This is the heart of the matter. Oslo has survived despite the fact that it has been a catastrophe for Israel on every level for 28 years because Israel’s permanent ruling class supports it.
In the early years of Oslo, I was a witness to the process that brought Israel’s diplomatic and military leaders, along with the senior civil service to put reality aside, and embrace Oslo’s illusion of peace. During Oslo’s heyday, from 1994-1996, as an IDF captain in the Defense Ministry, I served as a core member of Israel’s negotiating team. I sat in the negotiating sessions in Cairo, Taba and Eilat.
The fraud was obvious even then. Every two weeks, I wrote and circulated detailed reports setting out how the Palestinian officials left the negotiating halls each week and ordered their people to breach every promise and pledge they had just made in the halls. I documented the fraud, the Oslo lie. And I saw how one by one, commanders and senior officials who understood the danger and knew the truth embraced “the new narrative” while ignoring the facts in most cases.
We won’t be able to bury Oslo at the ballot box –although winning elections is a precondition for burying it. Oslo will only be finally laid to rest when we compel Israel’s permanent ruling class to abandon it in favor of Zionism – and the truth.
Originally published in Israel Hayom.
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Sent to me by a dear friend and fellow memo reader. I have not checked it for veracity.
I have always maintained the government should have set up several index stock funds and allowed you to invest in them. You would have invested in America, the returns would have provided a fabulous monthly stipend and the government would have had more to tax. Instead they politicians gave you a chit for what they stole so they could spend beyond any budget. If they were not shielded they would all be in jail.
How many people you know, paid into Social Security and died before collecting a penny? It's in the hundreds, if not thousands
Let this sink in.....VERY IMPORTANT
Social Security
A woman dies at age 65 before collecting one benefit check. She and her employer paid into the system for almost 50 years and she collected NOTHING.
Keep in mind all the working people that die every year who were paying into the system and got nothing.
And these governmental morons mismanaged the money and stole from the system, so that it's now going broke.
And they have the audacity to call today's seniors "vultures" in an attempt to cover their ineptitude.
THIS IS DISGRACEFUL!
The real reason for renaming our Social Security payments is so the government can claim that all those social security recipients are receiving entitlements, thus putting them in the same category as welfare, and food stamp recipients.
THIS IS WORTH THE FEW MINUTES IT TAKES TO READ AND DIGEST!
F.Y.I.
By changing the name of SS contributions, it gives them a means to refute this program in the future. It's free money for the government to spend under this guise. The Social Security check is now (or soon will be) referred to as a Federal Benefit Payment?
The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a "Federal Benefit Payment."
This is NOT a benefit.
It is OUR money, paid out of our earned income ad then taxed upon receipt.
Not only did we all contribute to Social Security, but our employers did too! It totaled 15% of our income before taxes. (This should be enough for you to forward this message, if not read on.)
If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.
If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both you and your employers’ contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved
This is your personal investment. Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.
That's almost three times more than today's average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration. (Google it – it's a fact).
And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65)!
I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.
Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did (or Lyndon Johnson).
They took our money and used it elsewhere. They "forgot"(oh yes, they knew) that it was OUR money they were taking.
They did not have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them...and they didn't pay interest on the debt they assumed.
And recently they have told us that the money won't support us for very much longer. (Isn't it funny that they NEVER say this about welfare payments?)
But is it our fault they misused our investments? And now, to add insult to injury, they are calling it a benefit, as if we never worked to earn every penny of it.
This is stealing!
Just because they borrowed the money, does not mean that our investments were for charity!
We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government.
Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going for the sake of the 92% of our population who need it.
Then call it what it is:
Our Earned Retirement Income.
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