Home, Great Family Cruise. Poem. Choices. Cliff May. Enough Already. Purposely Blind.

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We just arrived home, Friday 7/14. Everyone made their connections miraculously, 24 out of 30 family signed up and made the ship on time.. Lynn knocked the cover off the ball. Pictures to follow. Everyone got along, the cousins bonded, some met each other for the first time so when we all go to Henry's wedding in March everyone will know each other. Four of the grandchildren are here for the week and will be attending summer camp at The Landings etc.

Boat was perfect for the kids.  Entertainment superb, food OK, staff service good, Lynn rented a "go about" electric vehicle for me otherwise I could not have made it without it because it was a lot of walking just to the various restaurants, and shows etc.

Some of the family:

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For you tax payers:

Democrats Creed.

AN ILLEGAL POEM

by Illegal Immigrants

I cross river, poor and broke,

Take bus, see employment folk

Nice man treat me good in there,

Say I need go see Welfare.

Welfare say, 'You come no more,

We send cash right to your door.''

Welfare checks, they make you wealthy,

Medicaid it keep you healthy!

By and by, Got plenty money,

Thanks to you, TAXPAYER dummy

Write to friends in motherland,

Tell them 'come, fast as you can'

 

They come in buses and Ford trucks,

I buy big house with welfare bucks.

They come here, we live together,

More welfare checks, it gets better!

Fourteen families, they moving in,

But neighbor's patience wearing thin.

Finally, white guy moves away, I buy his house, and then I say, 'Find more aliens for house to rent.' In my yard I put a tent.

Send for family they just trash,

But they, too, draw welfare cash!

Everything is very good,

Soon we own whole neighborhood.

We have hobby it called breeding,

Welfare pay for baby feeding.

Kids need dentist?

Wife need pills?

We get free!

We got no bills!

 

TAXPAYER crazy! He pay all year,

To keep welfare running here.

 

We think America darn good place!

Too darn good for white man race.

If they no like us, they can go,

Got lots of room in Mexico!

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You can start the day with the first, the second or both.  Your choice:

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OR

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Iran’s shadow war 

Israelis are defending themselves against Tehran’s foreign legions 

By Clifford D. May

Israelis battled Palestinians in the northern West Bank last week. That’s what most media reported and it’s true as far as it goes. But here’s a more accurate description of reality: Israeli troops battled the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign legions in the northern West Bank last week.

 

Tehran is adept at using proxies to fight its wars: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shia militias in Iraq, Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Islamic Jihad, a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has mainly operated in Gaza, in association with Hamas, the designated terrorist entity that rules Gaza. Hamas also receives arms, money, and instruction from Iran, and now operates in Lebanon as well.

 

Recently, however, both Islamic Jihad and Hamas have been increasing their presence in the West Bank, a territory that, under the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority is responsible to govern. With Mahmoud Abbas, 87, as its chairman – he was elected to a single four-year term in 2005 – the Palestinian Authority has proven decreasingly willing or able to do its job.

 

Israel’s two-day incursion focused on Jenin, a city from which more than 50 shootings, along with rocket attacks, have been carried out against Israeli civilians in recent months.

The most intense fighting took place in Jenin’s “refugee camp.” Do you not find it odd that Palestinians living on Palestinian territory under the Palestinian Authority are called refugees?

And how many residents of this camp do you think personally fled to the (then-Jordanian conquered) West Bank due to the (defensive) war Israel fought against neighboring Arab countries in 1948-49? Where else in the world do the descendants of refugees inherit refugee status?

 

After Israel’s founding, nearly a million Jews were forced to flee from Arab countries where they had lived for centuries. Their descendants do not call themselves refugees and demand a “right of return.”

 

In Jenin, Israeli security forces found tons of bombs, ammunition, and guns – most supplied by Tehran as Islamic Jihad’s secretary-general has openly acknowledged. A dozen Palestinians were killed. All were identified as terrorists by the Israel Defense Forces.

Some of these terrorists were young. That suggests that U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ recent praise of Islamic Jihad for not recruiting children was either wishful thinking or deceptive.

Islamic Jihad and Hamas have learned that making “martyrs” of young Palestinians has public relations benefits. For example, BBC anchor Anjana Gadgil, in an exchange last week with former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, declared: “Israeli forces are happy to kill children.”

 

Mr. Bennett responded by asking whether she would consider a 17-year-old “trying to murder your family” as a child rather than a terrorist. She snapped back: “We’re not talking about that!”

 

The New York Times described Jenin last week as “a bastion of armed struggle” with an “an ethos of defiance.” That Tehran backs the terrorist groups there is mentioned once, in the 16th paragraph, in a quote from an Israeli journalist.

 

Three U.N. “special rapporteurs” said Israel’s “attacks” had “no justification under international law.” Other countries are justified in using force for self-defense. Why a separate standard for Israel? (I suspect you know.)

The rapporteurs also called for Israelis to “end their illegal occupation” of the West Bank. Of course, Israelis do not actually “occupy” such cities as Jenin. They enter only in response to the murder of Israelis given the PA’s failure to govern.

If they refrained from such interventions, the West Bank would soon be fully taken over by Tehran’s proxies. That’s what happened in Gaza following Israel’s withdrawal from that territory.

 

More attacks on Israelis by better armed jihadis would lead to a longer and more lethal conflict – though perhaps not as long and lethal as in Syria where Bashar al-Assad, with help from Tehran, has killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs and displaced millions more.

 

Mr. Assad was recently welcomed back into the Arab League. Why is the “international community” harder on Israelis who defend themselves than it is on mass murderers? (Again, I suspect you know.)

Look, I’m not so naïve as to believe that Israeli lives matter to Mr. Guterres, U.N. rapporteurs, Ms. Gadgil, or many others who regard themselves as champions of “the Palestinian cause.” But shouldn’t they at least worry about the many Palestinians who would be killed in the wider “armed struggle” they’re encouraging and inciting?

Of course, once that conflict got underway, they would, as usual, denounce Israelis efforts to defend themselves as “disproportionate” and “illegal.”

Regarding the Jenin operation, Mr. Guterres on Thursday accused the Israelis of “violence against civilians” – providing no evidence that civilians were unintentionally harmed by the Israel Defense Forces while ignoring massive evidence that Islamic Jihad and Hamas intentionally kill Israeli civilians whenever they can.

Shouldn’t international civil servants and independent journalists be embarrassed to side with Iran’s rulers – even as those rulers sponsor terrorism abroad, run an illicit nuclear weapons program, and brutalize their own subjects, not least women?

 

While I obviously don’t think well of them, I’d like to believe they’d prefer Palestinian-Israeli peaceful coexistence over endless Palestinian “defiance.”

 

Imagine if they were to say to the Palestinians: “Look, we’re with you. We, too, wish the Israelis would just disappear. But Jews are not leaving the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. They’re not going to surrender or submit to living under Islamic Jihad, Hamas, or other pawns of Tehran.

 

“So, negotiate with them. We’ll help you get the best deal possible. We’ll put pressure on the Israelis. And, by the way, Israelis will put pressure on themselves – if they believe there’s a real possibility of ending this conflict.”

 

Does the scenario I’ve outlined seem sensible? I’m afraid that’s what makes it a fantasy.

 

Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times

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We have allowed far too many incompetent blacks to rise to important positions in areas considered insignificant because of public indifference (particularly one who heads education and far too many in Congress) and because we whites succumbed to /feared  being attacked as/called racists when it was the accusers who were and still are the true racists  etc.

Meanwhile, liberals can open their eyes however, if they did they would have shot themselves in their feet because they would have nothing left to complain about, spread false information and hatred. In fact their desire to retain power would be radically undermined by truth and truth is not something liberals have much regard for.

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Liberals Can’t Comprehend Black Economic Progress

It undermines the argument that society is stacked against racial and ethnic minorities.

By Jason L. Riley

The black American worker has had a pretty good run in recent years, though you might not know it because the political left and its allies in the press prefer to accentuate black struggle. Racial inequality shouldn’t be ignored but neither should black progress.

Between 1963 and 2012, unemployment averaged 5.1% for whites and 11.1% for blacks. The 2008 financial crisis hit black workers especially hard, with unemployment reaching 16.8% in March 2010. Under President Obama, black unemployment declined but didn’t fall below double-digits until the seventh year of his presidency. When he left office in January 2017, the black jobless rate was 7.5%. Under President Trump it dipped to 5.3% in August 2019, then fell to a record-low 4.7% in April of this year.

Positive black economic trends undermine the liberal argument that we live in a society stacked against certain racial and ethnic minority groups, so these trends tend to get played down or spun to advance a left-wing agenda. Last week’s jobs report put black unemployment in June at 6%. Bloomberg, Reuters and other news outlets were quick to note that this was the second consecutive month that black unemployment had increased. That’s true—the rate was 5.6% in May—and perhaps a trend is developing. Still, one month of 6% unemployment is hardly cause for panic, and other data on black workers suggest that the labor market remains strong.

For starters, the black employment rate of 58.9% is only 1.5 percentage-points lower than the white rate of 60.4%, which is a historically narrow racial gap. Second, labor-force participation rates for black workers, which have tended to trail those of white workers, now surpass them slightly. The trend started before the pandemic and has been noticeable for most of the past year. In June 2020, 62.2% of working-age blacks were employed or looking for a job, versus 61.9% of whites. Last month the rate was 62.6% for blacks and 62.3% for whites.

Liberals want to help low-income blacks by increasing the size of the welfare state or with racial favoritism, but the best antidote to poverty is a job. Tight labor markets have produced more employment opportunities, the result of which has been less racial inequality in hiring and wages.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has taken licks from many on the left for raising interest rates so aggressively over the past 15 months to combat inflation. Some predicted that higher rates would cool consumer demand and hiring, and that blacks would be harmed disproportionately because less-educated workers have tended to be the first ones let go when the economy slows down.

So far that hasn’t happened, but neither has inflation fallen to the Fed’s 2% target, so Mr. Powell may decide to hold off for now on a pause. What we do know—and should learn from—is that erring on the side of keeping rates too low for too long did tremendous harm to millions of low-income Americans. Low interest rates played a major role in the credit boom and subsequent financial crisis. Progressives tell us that low interest rates are more socially just, but allowing people to borrow money for down payments on mortgages they couldn’t afford did the recipients no favors.

An ill-conceived effort to help low-income minorities become homeowners left them with mountains of debt and bad credit scores. By reducing the cost of a mortgage, the Fed increased the cost of real estate, which meant that some people were priced out of buying their first houses and others were stuck with subprime loans they couldn’t repay. Meanwhile, existing homeowners saw the value of their properties balloon. Loose monetary policy wound up widening social inequality.

“I would go back to the labor market that we had in 2018, ’19, ’20,” Mr. Powell said in December. “What that looked like was, wage increases for people at the lowest end of the spectrum were the largest. The gaps between racial groups and gender groups were their smallest in history.”

Mr. Powell’s assessment of what was happening before the pandemic on President Trump’s watch is correct. Black and Hispanic poverty rates dipped to record lows, and black wages rose at a faster rate than white wages. The story got little attention in the mainstream media apart from these pages because journalists were more focused on taking down the president.

What’s more likely to improve black outcomes in the workforce are better black outcomes in the classroom, not a return to irresponsibly low interest rates. Addressing the racial achievement gap, which worsened under Covid, ought to be a priority. Which makes the nation’s teachers unions and their opposition to school choice a far bigger problem than Mr. Powell’s Fed.

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She can't talk about these matters:

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