i- When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers -- SOCRATESAnd:******************************
**** Is he or isn't he? (See 1 below.)++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Salena Zito writes again. (See 2 below.)++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++I am within 25 pages of finishing Kim's new book. It is undeniable she has made a strong case for the resistance efforts by Trump Haters . It appears every facet of our government has decided they do not serve the public, only their own narrow biased interests.This is true from the various government agencies all the way to the federal Judiciary.We no longer have a republic. We have a cesspool of special interests who control the levers and will go to any length to retain power.The "resistance" are one of the most destructive forces. Their attacks on Trump know no end nor will abate even if he is re-elected. They are buried in the bowels of government.
What they are doing to the rule of law, to our justice system, to our economy, to the separation of powers is disheartening. (See 3 below.)++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Who was Dingell? (See 4 below.)
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Failed leadership? (See 5 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++DORIS++++++++++++++++++++++++++++1) President Trump Is Impeached. Or Is He?A party-line House vote leaves no principled argument against a party-line acquittal.
By Alan M. DershowitzSpeaker Nancy Pelosi on Capitol Hill, Dec. 19. Photo: Stefani Reynolds/Zuma PressSuddenly, impeachment can wait. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she’ll delay transmitting the two House-approved articles to the Senate, in an obvious ploy for partisan advantage. For anti-Trump legal scholars Noah Feldman and Laurence Tribe, that has created a Schrödinger’s Cat scenario. They disagree on whether President Trump has been impeached at all.Mr. Feldman says no: “If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president.” Mr. Tribe says an affirmative vote on an article of impeachment is sufficient to impeach—but he also claims it’s proper to leave it at that. By declining to transmit the articles of impeachment, he argued in an op-ed that Mrs. Pelosi evidently found persuasive, the Democrats would get a win-win. Mr. Trump would carry the stigma of impeachment and be denied the opportunity to erase it via acquittal.Messrs. Feldman and Tribe are both wrong. Mr. Tribe errs in asserting that the House can deny an impeached official a trial. Mr. Feldman errs in denying that the approval of articles of impeachment is sufficient to constitute an impeachment. The Senate need not wait for the articles to be “transmitted.” The Constitution grants the House the “sole power of impeachment,” and the Senate the “sole power to try all impeachments.” Now that the House’s job is done, it is up to the Senate to schedule a trial and make the rules for it.My view—which I suspect much of the public shares—is that Mr. Trump was impeached by a partisan vote and deserves to be acquitted by a partisan vote. The representatives who impeached him along party lines after devising partisan rules of inquiry have no principled argument against a party-line acquittal.Mr. Dershowitz is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of “Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo.”+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++2)The town that wouldn't be passed
by Salena Zito
Nestled in the narrows between the Raystown branch of the Juniata River and the Tussey mountain ridge of the Appalachian Mountains, Everett was originally called Bloody Run.Like many frontier towns with peculiar names derived from dubious tales, the townspeople, through a vote, changed the name to Everett to honor Edward Everett, the famed orator and former Massachusetts governor. History students will know Everett as the man who gave the rather long-winded speech ahead of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.The town of Everett prospered over the years. Not too big, not too small, its location was everything from the dawn of the stagecoach to the jalopy. It’s the midway point on the journey from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.The town toyed with Industrial Revolution fame in 1899 when Chester Karns, the son of the local carriage maker, built an automobile by hand — and then built another and then another and then another.Known as the Karns Runabout, Karns understood he needed capital for a factory to produce his automobile. As local legend goes, he petitioned the government for a loan around the same time a man from Detroit named Henry Ford did, and we all know the rest of that story.A lot of folks who look at Everett on a map might be tempted to quip that this town has been passed by one too many times to be relevant in today’s world of ascending technologies dominating every aspect of our lives.A lot of folks would be wrong. There is an incredible heart to Everett that captivates you the moment you turn left off of the bypass road that’s supposed to help you skip the Lincoln Highway, where the center of the town hums.You’ll get to Bedford, Pittsburgh, or Ohio faster if you take the bypass, but then you’d miss Pinky’s hair salon, delightful Christmas decorations on Main Street, The Igloo ice cream shop that is literally shaped as a chocolate-covered igloo, or the Bloody Run mural celebrating Everett’s storied history.Any other town would have died — many have — when a bypass was created to avoid the 25-mph speed zones (15 mph during school hours). But Everett didn’t. It stayed vibrant as well as generous in the 50 years since the federal highway system all but erased it from the traveling landscape.And if you bypass the town, then you will likely miss the very reason the anonymous donor decided to help families with their Christmas layaways. If you see the town, you see that folks here pay it forward every day of the year just as many Americans do, without fanfare and without attention for their good deeds.Need a coat during the brisk months in the narrows? No worries, just go to the library, where anyone who needs a warm winter coat can feel free to take their pick from a variety of very nice coats and jackets just inside the library doors.In December, Santa just happens to be volunteering there. You can get your photo taken with him in his sleigh.The town also sponsors a home decorating contest, a parking meter decorating contest, and a business decorating contest. The festivities here are serious.That is because it seems everyone here clings to the sense of community that keeps its citizenry connected, stable, and engaged.They understand, as do millions of other Americans, that the most important things have not passed their town by, even in the toughest of times. Faith, compassion, and community have persisted.It is likely that whoever donated the money for the layaways here in Everett grew up in the warm embrace of the town’s grace and character. It is also likely that this character is what inspired him or her to give back.Here’s what might surprise you the most: I think America is mostly this way. At least, America is more like Everett than it is like whatever you see on cable news. You just sometimes have to slow down to see it.
Click here for the full story.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3) All These Soros Connections to Impeachment Figures Are Pretty Weird
“George Soros has penetrated the Trump White House. Soros has planted a mole, infiltrating the national security apparatus. A woman named Fiona Hill, who has a Harvard background, has been on the Soros payroll, the payroll of the Open Society Institute.” That quote was from Roger Stone in May of 2017. Fiona Hill had just been named Director of the National Security Council at the White House.Stone warned that with Hill in charge of the NSC, it would only be a matter of time before the Deep State began undermining President Trump’s objectives, until they could manage to mount an impeachment effort against him.No wonder they locked Roger Stone up!Oddly enough, Fiona Hill is only one of the witnesses in Adam Schiff’s boring impeachment show with longstanding ties to George Soros. What a weird coincidence! However, just be warned that if you notice all of these connections between George Soros and the impeachment “witnesses,” it means that you hate the Jews – at least, that’s according to the impeachment witnesses.The earliest connections discovered between Soros and the impeachment coup plotters dates back to September 2016, a couple of months before the election. After spending the entire 2016 summer working with the DNC, Fusion GPS and former British spy Christopher Steele, the alleged CIA whistleblower who must not be named held a meeting at the White House with Michael Jarvis. He’s the executive director of George Soros’ Transparency and Accountability Initiative (TAI).We don’t know exactly what the whistleblower and Soros’ right-hand man met about, because the meeting was actually not transparent. We do know that TAI is almost wholly funded by Soros, and anything that it was doing was at Soros’ bidding.The next Soros connection is through two individuals who work at the Atlantic Council. A guy by the name of Sean Misko worked as an “Atlantic Fellow” for a one-year stint. The other guy, Thomas Eager, is currently a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Congressional Fellowship. The Atlantic Council is almost entirely funded by George Soros.Those two individuals, Mr. Misko and Mr. Eager, are employed by an obscure Member of Congress. What was that person’s name?Oh, here it is: Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA).
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4)
The Hellish Legacy of the Dingell Family
If you’re going to drain the swamp, you’ve gotta call it out.By Daniel Greenfield
A decade ago, Time Magazine unveiled an in-depth article on the death of Detroit. One of the politicians whom the article blamed for Detroit’s woes was Rep. John Dingell.
The Dingell clan has held a congressional seat outside Detroit since 1932. Their 87-year tenure has not coincidentally coincided with the decline of a thriving industrial city into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.But it’s been good for the Dingells, three of whom have sat in their congressional seat since the days of Herbert Hoover, the rise of Hitler, and the radio age, and fattened their pockets on its sinecures.Dingell Sr. was the son of Polish immigrants who started out in politics as a union boss, jumped into a newly created seat, and kept it through eleven elections before passing it on to his son. Dingell Jr, outdid daddy by becoming the longest serving member of Congress in American history. Before he died, he passed on the seat to his second wife, whom he married when she was 28 and he was 55 years old.She was a GM lobbyist who married the Congressman from GM. What was good for GM was good for the Dingells.By 2014, Dingell Jr. was listed as the third richest member of Congress from Michigan with a net worth of $3.5 million. When Debbie took over for him next year, her net worth was up to $3.6 million. The salary for House members was $174,000. The median household income is $57,000 in the 12th.Not bad for a family whose business was and is the 12th district from western Detroit through Ann Arbor. Much of the Dingell money came through GM. And Rep. John Dingell had vocally fought for the GM bailout. The GM couple, which had millions in GM stock, had a lot riding on taxpayers bailing them out.Taxpayers spent billions and the Dingells got millions in an arrangement made in the depths of hell.Even though Rep. Debbie Dingell ran unopposed in the Democrat primary, and even though she was running for office in one of the most heavily Democrat districts in the country, she still raised over $1 million for that campaign, and another $1.2 million for 2018, and is already up to half a million now.Even though no one running in the 12th whose last name is Dingell could lose an election to Abe Lincoln.Where’s the money coming from? Unions, PACs, including the GM PAC, the Ford PAC, Walmart, and, insurance companies. GM, Ford, and Chrysler had also been paying her an undisclosed salary before she took over her husband’s congressional seat. It was a very neat arrangement.The Dingells take care of them and they take care of the Dingells. Everyone else can go to hell.Despite Rep. John Dingell’s motorcade pausing at the Capitol, and the gushing tributes to the “longest-serving” member of Congress, even his own party loathed him in life.In 1996, the New York Times called him a “bully”. Some years earlier, Bloomberg had accused him of the, “bullying of bureaucrats, executives, and colleagues.”“In the arrogance of his power, he terrorized individuals and institutions that he wanted to humble,” Anthony Lewis wrote in the Times."There isn't an industry in the country not touched by our committee,” Rep. John Dingell had bragged.That includes finance which dragged him into the BCCI scandal through a $10,000 contribution and a mortgage on a home in McLean, Virginia.After ruling the Committee on Energy and Commerce for 28 years, his own party grew tired of him and unprecedentedly forced him out in 2008. The overthrow of the corrupt "old bull" was the work of none other than Speaker Nancy Pelosi.Despite eventually becoming the longest-serving member of the House, it was his fellow Democrats who conspired to take away the privileges of his seniority.All that has been forgotten. Dingell’s descriptions of Asians as “little yellow people”, his greed, shameless abuse of power, and arrogance were replaced with empty tributes to his greatness.President Trump hasn’t forgotten.And so, at a campaign rally in Michigan, Trump recalled a phone call from Rep. Debbie Dingell on her husband’s funeral. “‘He’s looking down, he’d be so thrilled,’” He recalled her saying. “I said, that’s okay, don’t worry about it. Maybe he’s looking up, I don’t know. I don't know. I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe. But let’s assume he’s looking down."The locals laughed.It was impossible to be from Michigan, to have had a front row seat to the antics of the Dingell clan which practically date back to the birth of mass automobile ownership, and imagine “Big John” in heaven. The image of the old crooked thug with wings and a harp is hopelessly laughable.It’s easy to imagine him looking up, but President Trump generously tried to assume otherwise.This isn’t the first time that Trump has gotten into trouble for bluntly poking fun at the niceties of a political industry where every crook is “honorable” and everyone pretends to believe it in public.Does Speaker Pelosi really believe that Rep. John Dingell was a saint? If she does, why did she conspire to take away his chairmanship, against precedent and the seniority rules of the road?Do the New York Times and Bloomberg want to apologize for calling him a bully?John Dingell was not a nice guy. Nobody seriously thinks he would have been traumatized by the suggestion that he might not be going to heaven. This was a man who admired a tombstone that read, “He’s done his damnedest.” There’s two ways to read that one. But Dingell never pretended to be a saint. His calling card was hauling pork back to his district and supporting local companies. Like GM.Nor did he restrain his rhetoric."I've read enough of that Steele dossier to know just how risky a ‘used Trump hotel mattress’ can truly be," he tweeted in 2018, referencing a smear by the Clinton campaign.But Trump reached out to Rep. Debbie Dingell. John got a nice funeral in Washington D.C. And Debbie responded by voting to impeach President Trump for the smears of her fellow Democrats.Nor is Debbie a nice person. At one point she inveighed against the, "the 13 white boys–sorry to say it that way–that are going to be doing this in the Senate". So much for civility and collegiality.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++5) America’s Failed Jewish Leadership Must ResignOn Tuesday, December 10, 2019, in a premeditated attack, two shooters opened fire inside a kosher deli in Jersey City, New Jersey and murdered four people. The killers included a former member of a notoriously antisemitic group and, reportedly, a follower of Louis Farrakhan.It’s becoming obvious to most Jews that we are living in a state of siege. Practically every Jewish institution in America now needs significant security. College campuses have become hostile territory for Jewish students. Jews are murdered in Pittsburgh, San Diego, and Jersey City, beaten on the streets of Brooklyn, bullied and harassed in the universities, defamed by The New York Times and CNN, and now maligned in the US Congress.There are many reasons for the current situation. Many are not within our control, but one thing truly ought to be: Jewish leadership.The abolitionist leader Fredrick Douglass understood the consequences of failed leadership. He wrote: “Find out what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact … measure of the injustice and wrong … which will be imposed upon them.”It’s hard to ignore the simple fact that Jewish leaders have failed to stop or even slow down the accelerating epidemic of Jew-hatred in America. Good intentions and doing their “best” is not good enough. It’s irrational to continue with the current policies and leaders and expect different results.
Part of the reason for their failure is that many mainstream Jewish leaders, with a few exceptions, most significantly Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), have failed to fully understand the new threats we face. Like failed generals fighting the last war, they focused on Nazis and the political right — and ignored the changed battlefield for as long as they could. They deliberately, out of political consideration, minimized the assaults coming from “progressives” and Islamists.Recently, there has been some grudging acknowledgement of the not-so-new dangers, but there is little reason to hope that our leaders will significantly shift their focus and reallocate resources to deal with these politically inconvenient threats.Many mainstream Jewish leaders seem ideologically incapable of internalizing the Left’s betrayal of the Jews. They refuse to acknowledge the political and social consequences of the mass influx of Muslim immigrants — who have grown up steeped in anti-democratic and antisemitic beliefs — into Western societies. They do so even when they know that this influx threatens to force the Jews out of Europe. They fail to understand how promoting tolerance of the intolerant may be lethal.Mainstream Jewish leaders have also tended to ignore the ugly ideological assaults on Jews and Israel by prominent African-American leaders — with the exception of Louis Farrakhan, who is too obviously and publicly toxic to disregard — assaults which have led to predictable escalating physical attacks on Jews by young blacks. Only now, when it is no longer possible to ignore these repeated brutal attacks on New York Jews, have groups like the Anti-Defamation League begun to stir.The deteriorating Jewish condition in America must be addressed immediately as an existential threat and the single most important priority for our community. We are under siege; we are in a state of emergency.To be clear: we are referring to establishment national Jewish organizations, not to the many brave and dedicated smaller Jewish groups who fight BDS on campus, and anti-Israel bias in the media, K-12 curricula, and liberal churches. Indeed, most of these start-up groups were formed as a direct result of the decades-long failure of the ADL, the Federations, and the JCRCs to fight what is now recognized as “the new antisemitism.”The Jewish community cannot prevail against these multiple and mounting assaults without strong national leadership.There is a need for an honest self-assessment by Jewish leaders. They need to understand and recognize their responsibility for the failures noted below:- Failing to mobilize and prioritize communal resources to protect the community both from physical and ideological assaults;
- Ignoring the fast-growing Jew-hatred promoted by “progressives” in our schools, our media, and politics;
- Remaining silent in the face of the genocidal teachings of Islamists in mosques and Islamic community centers;
- Refusing to deal forthrightly with the explosion of Jew-hatred by certain groups within the African American community, especially those in leadership positions in Congress and academia;
- Ignoring the failure of Jewish education that has resulted in the formation of antisemitic and anti-Israel Jewish organizations, cult-like groups preying on naïve, vulnerable, and ill-informed Jewish youth, by offering them secular identities and virtue signaling platforms as “Social Justice Warriors”;
- Failing abysmally to condemn Jews who are clearly trying to undermine Israel;
- Failing to effectively address Jew-hatred from “liberal” mainline Protestant churches;
- Mostly ignoring the hostile environment for Jews on college campuses, and the growing hostility in K-12 education funded with billions of dollars by the antisemitic regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar;
- Suppressing, marginalizing, and even attacking dissenting voices within our own community;
- Abandoning their fiduciary responsibilities by compromising the needs of our
- Sadly, the failure of establishment Jewish leadership is not a new story: during
EVERETT, Pennsylvania — For the past two years, items on layaway for over 200 families at the Walmart here have been paid for by some generous soul who won’t reveal his or her identity. This modern St. Nicholas paid off $46,000 last year in items placed on layaway by local residents. This year’s total was $40,000.- World War II, many American Jewish leaders were cowards — more concerned with a potential backlash of antisemitism in America than with the fate of their fellow Jews in Europe. Today, still cowering, they fear exclusion from the progressive community. Then, they abandoned the Jews of Europe; now the Jews of Brooklyn, America, and Israel.
The biggest Jewish defense agency, the ADL, is the biggest failure. Their mission has been universalized: it changed from fighting antisemitism to fighting “all forms of hate with the same vigor and passion,” as if the Jewish community has the resources to do that, as if the community is secure and protected.
In too many instances, the ADL has failed to protect Jews. They seem more dedicated to protecting politically correct progressive causes and leaders. They are conflicted when Jew-hatred comes from progressive ideologues like themselves or certain “protected” minorities. The ADL has become a fraud.
The Jewish community deserves better. We need strong, proud and courageous Jewish leaders who are not ideologically conflicted or morally confused, and who are unafraid to fight courageously. ADL’s leadership must be replaced.
Today, we are calling on establishment Jewish leaders, including Federation and JCRC leaders as well as rabbis to examine their failure to effectively respond to the hostility towards Jews in America. Then, consistent with the highest Jewish values, they should seek forgiveness and resign.
Only with proud, brave, and competent leadership, can we hope for a secure Jewish future.
Charles Jacobs, is co-founder and President of Americans for Peace and Tolerance and The American Anti-Slavery Group. He is also co-founder of the David Project.
Avi Goldwasser is the co-founder of Americans for Peace and Tolerance and The David Project. He is the executive producers of several documentaries including Hate Spaces, The J Street Challenge, and The Forgotten Refugees.
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