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The restorative power of never giving up
By Salena Zito
Years ago, I wrote that baseball, before it waded too much into politics, always stood for a belief that because success is not easy — the act of achieving success makes it something to be treasured all the more.
Although limited by its three outs and nine innings, baseball is a game without a clock — it lasts until the final out. And no matter what the score is, hope always remains part of the game; it is always the tenth man in the outfield.
There was a restorative power in that moment with Maggi called hope. It is something we as a nation need more of in our daily lives.
On Sunday, Maggi was headed back to the Minors , but not before he notched his first Major League hit and RBI. On Saturday night, he lined a pinch-hit single in the seventh inning of the Pirates’s doubleheader sweep over the Nationals.
Baseball, like life, gives and takes. Maggi's story is evidence that you should never give up.
Click for the full story
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Thank you president Biden:
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Israel's Multi-front War
Dear Richard,
Israel is getting ready to face a multifront war.
On Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian toured Lebanon’s southern border with Israel and said “The Zionist collapse is near.”
Within the last two months, tectonic shifts have taken place underneath the soil of the Middle East, and Israel is feeling increasingly more and more isolated.
The euphoric feeling I had, while sitting on the White Huse Lawn on September 15, 2020, when the Abraham Accords were signed, has by now, totally eviscerated, and has been replaced with an almost palpable fear.
This fear is unfortunately well-grounded. With over 60 kilograms of highly enriched uranium at the 60 percent level and particles found by the IAEA at the 90 percent level, Iran has been galloping toward a nuclear bomb.
This, while the United States has invested nearly two years in negotiating with the Islamic Republic of Iran—totally ignoring the humanitarian cries of the dissidents on the streets who would like to overthrow their suffocating theocracy.
Many Americans are unaware that 20,000 Iranian dissidents have been arrested, 500 killed on the streets and at least 4 hung from cranes in the town’s square. The cries of these courageous freedom fighters have been summarily ignored.
And we have been negotiating without a credible “plan B”.
As Neville Chamberlain taught us in the last century, diplomacy without the credible threat of military force when dealing with authoritarian regimes, is nothing short of meaningless.
Many in the Middle East have witnessed our feckless withdrawal from Afghanistan, our serious reduction of troops in Syria, and our lack of response to the Iranian-backed attacks on ships in international waters and on the Saudi oil fields, and have been left doubting American commitment and loyalty to its allies.
As the United States has turned its attention away from the Middle East, Beijing has rushed in to fill the diplomatic vacuum and has brokered an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. And now former rivals, such as Riyadh are running to Tehran; Sunni Arab nations who had cut off relations with Damascus because of their brutality in their 12 years of civil war, are rushing to embrace it, once again.
Our Sunni Arab friends are also fearing for their very lives against an emerging Iranian nuclear bomb and have felt a need to “diversity their portfolios.” Unfortunately, they are now respecting the brute force of Iran, and its alliances with Beijing and Moscow
Iran has surrounded Israel with a pincer-like grasp on all of its borders. Esmail Qaani, the head of the Al Quds of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was recently in Beirut meeting with Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and Hezbollah leader, Hasan Nasrallah, saying “Now is precisely the time to attack Israel.”
Right now, there are 150,000 Hezbollah missiles staring down at Israel from its northern borders with Syrian and Lebanon—some of which have been converted into precision-guided missiles, which can attack Israel’s nuclear reactor in the south, its major army bases, its hospitals, its water system, and its entire civilian infrastructure.
On April 8th, in the midst of Passover, Hezbollah attempted to assault Israel with 34 rockets from Lebanon and one Iranian drone out of Syria. People in the north of Israel were rushing into their shelters and their sealed rooms.
Last week, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said any attack on Iran, “will destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa.” Israel should not have to feel abandoned and alone in its struggle to survive and thrive.
That is why EMET exists.
I am grateful that I was in Israel during the war in May of 2021 when over 4,000 missiles rained down onto Israel from Hamas-controlled Gaza. I am grateful that I got to experience what it is like to have 60 seconds to run into a sealed room, together with my children and grandchildren.
I am grateful that I get to tell this story or stories like it, almost every single day on Capitol Hill—to be able to move the needle a little bit toward empathy of what the people of Israel must go through, in order to survive.
From what we are hearing on Capitol Hill lately if EMET did not exist, there would be no one to tell Israel’s proud story.
EMET needs your support. We are asking that you please support EMET to the greatest extent possible.
Israel is getting ready to face a multifront war. And they should not feel abandoned by the community of nations.
Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Sarah Stern
Founder and President
EMET
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Israel must remain above the fray in the US - editorial
Israel must remain above the fray in the US and our leaders must do whatever they can to prevent Israel support from turning into a hot potato issue.
One of the main pillars of the extraordinary relationship between Israel and the United States over the last 75 years has always been its bipartisan nature.
Regardless of the leaders at the helm of the respective countries, and despite periods of tension and disagreement, the questions of whether the US is led by a Democratic or Republican administration and the makeup of Israel’s coalition have always been secondary to the fundamental bond and values shared by Israel and the United States.
For decades, polls taken in the US showed overwhelming support for Israel across party lines. Times are different today, however. Polls taken over the last two years have shown a widening gap between Americans who identify as Republicans and those who align themselves with the Democrats.
Republicans are significantly more supportive than Democrats
The specific findings vary, but the conclusion is the same: Republicans are significantly more supportive than Democrats of Israel, while Democrats are now more sympathetic to Palestinians than they are to Israel.
In addition to that worrisome split, in the polarized political environment that has developed in the US and was exacerbated by the divisive election of Donald Trump to the presidency, bipartisanship has become a dirty word. The simple act of a standing prime minister hosting a prominent US elected representative presents a potential diplomatic land mine.
It places Israel, and particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a sensitive position. This is the season when high-profile delegations from the US are visiting Israel. Last week, Florida governor and presumptive 2024 Republican candidate for the presidency Ron DeSantis was in Jerusalem for an appearance at the Post’s Celebrate the Faces of Israel conference with the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem.
Also last week, 12 congressional Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, were on an official visit and marked both Remembrance Day and Independence Day, and this week Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is in Israel as head of a 19-member bipartisan congressional delegation. Later today, McCarthy is to become only the second House speaker to address the Knesset, after a 1998 address by Newt Gingrich.
To walk the tightrope of hosting supporters of Israel whose constituents despise each other and their respective leaders is a daunting task.
That could be why, when he met last week with DeSantis, Netanyahu’s office played it down. There were no joint statements or photographs issued by the Prime Minister’s Office. Other media reported that Netanyahu’s office didn’t publicize the meeting over concern about antagonizing both President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump, DeSantis’s primary Republican rival leading up to the 2024 nomination.
Netanyahu is still waiting for an invitation to meet Biden in the White House, and he can’t risk being seen as promoting one of Trump’s potential opponents for the Republican nomination.
These sticky issues shouldn’t prevent a meeting with DeSantis, a polarizing figure on the US political landscape. DeSantis is an influential newsmaker and there is a chance his influence will grow by leaps and bounds next year.
To his detractors, however, the simple act of hosting him – in an office or at a conference as the Post did – is akin to “sleeping with the enemy.” The notion that providing DeSantis with a platform or greeting him at the Prime Minister’s Office is grounds for accusations of playing favorites demonstrates how strained and divisive the political discourse in the US has become.
It’s a hopeful sign that Netanyahu has internalized the principle that an Israeli leader can’t be perceived as siding with a particular party – an impression that many Democrats had during the Trump years, when the personalities of the two leaders became closely intertwined, and during the years of the Obama administration, when Israel and the US were often at odds, as exemplified by Netanyahu’s appearance before Congress in 2015.
Israel must remain above the fray in the US and our leaders must do whatever they can to prevent support for the Jewish state from turning into a hot potato issue, one that will force Americans to choose sides based on their party affiliation.
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It would appear that every major person in the Biden White House lies when it comes to Congreesss starting with the president..
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Sen. Ron Johnson says Antony Blinken ‘lied boldface’ to Congress about Hunter Biden
By Ronny Reyes
GOP Senator Ron Johnson accused Secretary of State Antony Blinken of telling “boldface” lies when he testified under oath to Congress in 2020 that he never emailed Hunter Biden.
Johnson made the comments after emails between the president’s son and Blinken revealed that the two were in communication in 2015 while Blinken worked for then-President Barack Obama and Hunter was on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
“We know that he lied boldface to Congress about never emailing Hunter Biden,” Johnson said on Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures. “My guess is he told a bunch of other lies.”
The emails from the summer of 2015 show that Hunter was trying to meet with Blinken, then Barack Obama’s deputy secretary of state, to get the official’s “advice” on things.
The revelation has spurred Johnson to allege that Blinken could have broken the law when speaking to Congress during an interview in December 2020 when he was nominated to become secretary of state under the Biden administration.
“You cannot trust Joe Biden,” Johnson said. “You cannot trust Hunter Biden. You can’t trust the Biden family. You can’t trust so many of the people that they have surrounded themselves with.”
Johnson called on his fellow lawmakers to issue a subpoena to get Blinken and his wife, Evan Ryan, to testify before Congress again and preserve their records.
“If he wants to proclaim his innocence, I doubt he’ll do that, but he must, and she must, preserve their records, their personal emails,” Johnson said. “When you get to the bottom of this, we need to show how corrupt these individuals are.”
Blinken conducted his 2015 correspondences with the Biden scion entirely from his private AOL email account rather than an official State Department address.
Records also indicate that Hunter also emailed Ryan in 2010, asking her if he can get Blinken’s private email. The trio also made plans to get coffee together afterward.
The decade-plus-long relationship between Blinken and Hunter made headlines last week after the House Judiciary Committee revealed that former CIA acting director Michael Morell testified in private that Blinken — then a Biden 2020 campaign adviser — “triggered” a letter from 51 ex-intelligence officials that sought to discredit The Post’s reporting on bombshell emails from the first son’s abandoned laptop.
Biden cited the letter at the second and final presidential debate against Donald Trump, alleging falsely that the information disclosed by The Post — and later broadly corroborated — was the result of a “Russian plant.”
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The Biden Administration has decided what the Constitution guarantees, equality, is not preferable to equity. Why? Because of sensitivity issues. Thus, the next time you go to a doctor do not expect their training and medical knowledge to be tops. But at least your doctor will have a sense of false esteem.
The same would be true of an attorney. They might lose your case but at least they will feel good about themselves.
No homework for children or desire to be tops because they need time to reflect upon whether the world is treating them fairly. These are the type of American children who will compete against those in Asia where competing remains the driving force.
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