The American Administration should release the Bin Laden photo(s). Not because the photos will prove he was killed. Photos on the internet prove nothing -- just ask Elvis. Not because of "spiking a football." But because those who celebrated Bin Laden's evasion of G-d's Justice and American determination should be reminded, in the thousand words that a picture provides, that there is no evading G-d's justice and that Bin Laden and his fellow shark food aspirants were writing America's epitaph way too prematurely. Bin Laden thought America was weak, soft, lazy, and certainly never could pursue a determined manhunt for a decade. Those who reveled with him in that belief, those who spiked their own footballs at America after every terrorist outrage, deserve to see photographic imagery revealing the stark reminder of reality: There is no evading justice. Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini all died young. Justice caught up with each.
America does not relent. Even the most incompetent and weak-kneed American Presidential Administration since that of Jimmy Carter -- and possibly the weakest and most incompetent in all American history (with apologies to Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan) -- saw this one through. They had no choice. The American People would not let Obama relent. We would not let him close Gitmo. We would not let him put terrorist leaders on civilian trial in Lower Manhattan. We accepted enhanced interrogation and rendition, refusing to let Holder lay a hand on any of those who protected our country during the Bush-Cheney years. Much as we forced Obama finally to go down to Louisiana and to clean up the mess in the Gulf of Mexico, after the President and his inexperienced and unqualified staff fumbled and bumbled by refusing repeated offers of boom and of assistance from oil-cleaning vessels, so we forced him to clean up after Al Qaeda -- like it or not.
As the final judgment took place, G-d saw Osama finished exactly as he merited, measure for measure. He had murdered 3,000 Americans who perfunctorily had left for work on the morning of 9-11 as they respectively had done every other morning -- a quick cup of coffee, a brief glimpse of a newspaper, perhaps forgetting to say "good-bye" or to hug or kiss a loved one on the hurried way out the door. None saw what lay in store that day, and thousands who survived them live a decade later with the pain that they never said "good-bye." Garth Brooks captured that feeling -- the feeling of never having said "good-bye" to a loved one before he died -- years before 9-11 in his incredible song "If Tomorrow Never Comes." I personally have lived 44 years with that pain, having been too young and immature to exchange "good-byes" with my Father as he lay in a hospital bed dying of leukemia. That pain has wracked me nearly half a century, and it never will end -- never having gotten to say "good-bye." But at least I have been able to visit my father's burial site, and I have said "good-bye" there.
For the families who lost 3,000 souls on 9-11 at Osama's inducement, there were few chances to say"good-bye." The survivors forever will live with that amplified pain, even as the victims never saw it coming. And, for so many of those victims, their final remains never were found by the subsequent crews. Many who died at the Twin Towers never will be found. They are part and parcel of Ground Zero. Their survivors cannot go to their gravesites. There is no coming to terms or ultimate closure.
And so it was fitting, in the ultimate measure for measure, that Bin Laden died a decade later in a sudden hail of frenzy, never having seen it coming. It was a day that had begun like all others with the three wives and the 23 kids. And then, from nowhere, with no advance warning, it all came to thud of a halt. A hail of fire, a blown-off piece of skull, and tomorrow never came. Only A flash of fire and a last image: that of Uncle Sam's SEALs discharging their weapons at his head. And, even as those who survived him never got to say "good-bye," they and their fellow mourners have nowhere to go to pay their respects. His body is gone, remains disappeared. There is no gravesite, no marker. As Moses the Zionist cheerfully sang in Exodus 15:3-5,10: "G-d is a master of war. . . . Pharaoh's chariots and warriors He threw in the sea, and the most select of his officers sank in the sea. Deep waters covered them; they descended in the depths like stone. . . [T]he sea enshrouded them; they sank like lead in water."
And so Osama, too, promptly sank in the ocean like lead, subsumed by the mighty waters and the deepest of depths. There is nowhere to go to say "good-bye, Bin Laden." By now, part of him still may lie on the ocean floor, part in some whale, part in some shark. Perhaps, by now, a bit even in some local aquarium's population.
Gone at once. Never saw it coming. Nowhere to be found. Measure for measure.
That, too, is G-d's justice, as realized by the armed forces of a nation determined not to relent, not to let its weak and inadequate national leadership back off. And that is the testimonial power of that photo -- for every terrorist and terrorist-wanna-be who ever spiked a football towards America. There is no evading justice, and this United States of America will not relent.
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Reagan and Obama: A Great President, An Empty Suit
I was searching something pertaining to Menachem Begin -- his wonderful first-ever TV interview (in Hebrew) after being elected Israeli Prime Minister – and I also came across these pearls, four or five jokes that Ronald Reagan told about the Soviet Union and Communism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN3z3eSVG7A&NR=1
They say on CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC that Obama is brilliant, the greatest speaker and communicator in the White House in our lifetimes. Just four or five minutes listening to Reagan tell these jokes is all it takes to remember back and realize what an empty suit we now have sitting in the chair that once was filled by a truly great leader.
Also, despite his greatness, Reagan also had a humility. You hear it in his voice, and you see it in his bearing. How different from the empty suit that arrogantly now walks down stairways refusing to hold the bannister or even to have his hand seen near the bannister, to signal to all the media that “Hey, I do not slip. I do not use bannisters. Bannisters are for wimps. Bannisters get in my way.”
As painful as it is to live in the Age of Obama, it is even more painful after hearing a few minutes of Reagan.
They say on CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC that Obama is brilliant, the greatest speaker and communicator in the White House in our lifetimes. Just four or five minutes listening to Reagan tell these jokes is all it takes to remember back and realize what an empty suit we now have sitting in the chair that once was filled by a truly great leader.
Also, despite his greatness, Reagan also had a humility. You hear it in his voice, and you see it in his bearing. How different from the empty suit that arrogantly now walks down stairways refusing to hold the bannister or even to have his hand seen near the bannister, to signal to all the media that “Hey, I do not slip. I do not use bannisters. Bannisters are for wimps. Bannisters get in my way.”
As painful as it is to live in the Age of Obama, it is even more painful after hearing a few minutes of Reagan.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Universal Health Care Issues -- and a Congress in Default
Some basic health care principles:
1. If there is a public government health-care option, assuring universal coverage, it will be cheaper than private insurance. Private companies exist to make profits so the owners can pay their food bills and rent. A government agency can exist on a permanent-losing-money basis because, no matter how much money the agency loses, the Government always picks up the tab either by taxing more or printing more money. Compare the Post Office and Fed Ex.
2. Because the Government plan will be cheaper than the private plans, private plans will be driven out of business. Private citizens will opt for the cheaper plan. Companies, knowing that a cheap public plan is available, will stop insuring their employees.
3. In short order, private insurers will be driven out of business. At that point, with a monopoly, Government insurance will become the health equivalent of the Post Office. Lines will get increasingly longer. Service will get increasingly shoddy. The best doctors will try avoiding patients on Government coverage, offering services on private bases.
4. As the demands for health care increase, resources will be strained, and the Government will need to cut back. Sit in a Post Office with six teller windows, and note that four are closed. Think back to the 4-cent stamp and contemplate the 44-cent stamp, even as the Post Office continues to lose a fortune. The reason that Britain and Canada have long lines and long delays in treatment is that the Governments lose control of costs and soon respond by cutting back in ways that make sense only to bureaucrats in Washington.
5. Now when you need an immunization, you go for immunization. Once the Government assumes full control of American health care, Government guidelines inevitably will be drawn to prioritize whether you may get an immunization before someone else. Expect guidelines that define "epidemic" to limit access to certain immunizations until a certain epidemiological number is reached. Thus, in the case of a Hepatitis A outbreak, gamma globulin immunization may be expected to be restricted until a minimum number of residents in a community have been stricken.
6. Universal care will take away from doctors an aspect of the motive to provide excellence. Private doctors vie for paying patients with reasonable health plans. By contrast, many gatekeepers on several of the HMOs take what they can get, compromise on fine points of quality care, live off capitation fees that pay them based on the number of heads they treat each day, and consequently drop all pretenses of bedside manner.
7. Under Government care, it will become profoundly difficult to see specialists, as money will be conserved by forcing patients initially to see lesser specialized "Gatekeepers" who will lose money by referring out, so will insist on personally treating symptoms that best would be treated by specialists. Instead of one visit to a dermatologist for a proper acne treatment regimen, then, a patient will need to first go through the time waste, inefficiency, and delay of being treated by a general Gatekeeper less experienced with specialized treatment.
8. Of the 47 million uninsured Americans, only 5 million actually need a fix in the current system. More than 10 million others are illegal aliens. Others can afford health care but opt, for their own reasons, to spend the insurance premiums instead on other items like cars, vacations, clothes, etc. For them it is a matter of choice, not desperation.
9. Any effort aimed at truly cutting health care costs would include, among its range of proposals, a proposal to reform Medical Malpractice Tort Litigation. Such litigation is often important, aimed at catching up with doctors who have malpracticed. However, such cases are few and far between. The vast majority are crap-shoot cases, in which an attorney takes case on contingency -- meaning that the client has nothing to lose in attorneys' fees -- and sometimes wins and sometimes loses. Often, malpractice insurers force weak cases to settle, even as their medical-doctor clients beg for a full defense at trial. These cases cost a fortune in litigation costs, even when plaintiffs lose, and doctors who are sued get penalized with huge increases in their malpractice premiums. Therefore, to avoid litigation at all costs -- literally, at all costs -- doctors tie up their patients and increase health costs exponentially by ordering ranges of unnecessary lab tests. The lab tests are costly, but they help the doctor establish for the disappointed patient that he was thorough. Moreover, costs are compounded by the tens of millions that doctors need to spend each year on malpractice premiums, costs that they shift to the consumer. There must be tort reform, and the failure to seek tort reform in the midst of a 1,017-page bill demonstrates that the Government is not seeking to save money.
10. It is a fallacy that increased funding for "prevention" will save money. Prevention is important, and it is necessary medicine. Doctors do it and should do it, but the reality to face is that prevention costs more money than it saves. Although prevention saves a rare patient from a costly illness and treatment regimen - a wonderful result that justifies prevention medicine -- the reality is that the cost entailed in applying the same prevention efforts for the many hundreds others who never would have contracted that disease anyway more-than-offsets savings. Yes, prevention still is important. It is costly but a worthwhile societal cost. However, no one should claim falsely that prevention saves money.
11. It is a falsehood that a doctor would rather evade prevention -- a low-income process for the doctor -- so that he ultimately can have the opportunity to make big money by amputating a diabetic's foot or removing a child's tonsils. We have doctors, and we know that such allegations simply are demagoguery. A doctor does not receive $30,000 for amputating a foot, but less than $750. Nor do doctors, sworn to uphold the values of Hippocrates, practice such vicious medicine.
12. There are two bona fide problems with the current health-care system. First, portability: a person who leaves a job loses his coverage. This quirky phenomenon forces people to work at jobs they hate because they risk losing their health coverage. Moreover, those who do lose their jobs, as has been so prevalent during this downturn, lose their coverage. If, G-d forbid, they contract a disease during the interregnum of non-coverage, then they cannot later get insurance privately as individuals because they are barred for "pre-existing conditions." Congress needs to resolve the portability and "pre-existing conditions" issues. On the one hand, insurers would be hurt financially by being forced to insure people with "pre-existing conditions." On the other hand, large corporations with many dozens of workers, typically provide health coverage for all employees without regard to pre-existing conditions. That is because their employee health pool is sufficiently large to offset anomalies. Congress should be able to craft a system or fix that pools enough private individuals in a way that somehow addresses these two issues.
13. At least two states have attempted Obama-style universal health care: Tennessee and Massachusetts. Both programs began with great promise -- they would provide universal care, keep costs down, and prove societal boons. Instead, both have emerged as unmitigated disasters, with costs skyrocketing and the states forced into heavier debt as a result. In both states, as the programs have fizzled, predictions of cost savings have fizzled, and care has been rationed.
14. Obama may not intentionally be planning to pull the plug on Granny, but his plan ultimately will do just that. As funds disappear, public health care skyrockets in cost, resources become more scarce, demand builds, there will be efforts to find cost savings. People needing surgeries that are adjudged non-essential -- say, a person with a painful knee who wishes a meniscus operation -- will be compelled to wait longer than conceivable, offered pain killers during the extended interregnum. And octogenarians needing hip replacements will be evaluated not as people but as expenses: "Is it a worthwhile expense to replace the hip of someone with a life expectancy of X years?" That is British and Canadian, but that is not the way that America values its citizens.
15. The most disheartening aspect of the public debate on universal health care is the revelation, most artfully stated by Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, that he parcels out to others the responsibility to read the legislation on which he will vote. It is disheartening that legislators would vote on a 1,017-page bill without reading the bill and understanding every provision. They did this with a stimulus bill that they passed on a short fuse, told falsely that they needed to pass it immediately because shovel-ready projects were awaiting cash infusions to begin. So they voted to spend $780 billion -- and only ten percent of the funds have been spent, lo these six months later. Similarly, the Democrats in Congress rushed through a terribly complex and ill-advised "Cap and Trade" bill that really is a "Home Heating Tax Raise for the Middle Class." State utility companies will be compelled to reduce emissions at such staggering rates that they necessarily will need to spend fortunes on infrastructure modifications -- all of which will be passed along to the end consumers. This project, an insane initiative at a time when the country cannot afford the luxury of turning the economy upside-down on a theory of Global Warming, will force enormous increases in our electric and gas bills . . . and in bills for all other commodities that use electric or gas: food, clothes, everything. It emerges as remarkable that the Democrats of the House voted for such a massive bill, so massive an infrastructure overhaul, without reading its provisions either. They were elected to do a job, and they have proceeded with malfeasance and recklessness, voting to approve the most extraordinary expansions of the American debt burden in our history -- without even reading the bills they approve.
1. If there is a public government health-care option, assuring universal coverage, it will be cheaper than private insurance. Private companies exist to make profits so the owners can pay their food bills and rent. A government agency can exist on a permanent-losing-money basis because, no matter how much money the agency loses, the Government always picks up the tab either by taxing more or printing more money. Compare the Post Office and Fed Ex.
2. Because the Government plan will be cheaper than the private plans, private plans will be driven out of business. Private citizens will opt for the cheaper plan. Companies, knowing that a cheap public plan is available, will stop insuring their employees.
3. In short order, private insurers will be driven out of business. At that point, with a monopoly, Government insurance will become the health equivalent of the Post Office. Lines will get increasingly longer. Service will get increasingly shoddy. The best doctors will try avoiding patients on Government coverage, offering services on private bases.
4. As the demands for health care increase, resources will be strained, and the Government will need to cut back. Sit in a Post Office with six teller windows, and note that four are closed. Think back to the 4-cent stamp and contemplate the 44-cent stamp, even as the Post Office continues to lose a fortune. The reason that Britain and Canada have long lines and long delays in treatment is that the Governments lose control of costs and soon respond by cutting back in ways that make sense only to bureaucrats in Washington.
5. Now when you need an immunization, you go for immunization. Once the Government assumes full control of American health care, Government guidelines inevitably will be drawn to prioritize whether you may get an immunization before someone else. Expect guidelines that define "epidemic" to limit access to certain immunizations until a certain epidemiological number is reached. Thus, in the case of a Hepatitis A outbreak, gamma globulin immunization may be expected to be restricted until a minimum number of residents in a community have been stricken.
6. Universal care will take away from doctors an aspect of the motive to provide excellence. Private doctors vie for paying patients with reasonable health plans. By contrast, many gatekeepers on several of the HMOs take what they can get, compromise on fine points of quality care, live off capitation fees that pay them based on the number of heads they treat each day, and consequently drop all pretenses of bedside manner.
7. Under Government care, it will become profoundly difficult to see specialists, as money will be conserved by forcing patients initially to see lesser specialized "Gatekeepers" who will lose money by referring out, so will insist on personally treating symptoms that best would be treated by specialists. Instead of one visit to a dermatologist for a proper acne treatment regimen, then, a patient will need to first go through the time waste, inefficiency, and delay of being treated by a general Gatekeeper less experienced with specialized treatment.
8. Of the 47 million uninsured Americans, only 5 million actually need a fix in the current system. More than 10 million others are illegal aliens. Others can afford health care but opt, for their own reasons, to spend the insurance premiums instead on other items like cars, vacations, clothes, etc. For them it is a matter of choice, not desperation.
9. Any effort aimed at truly cutting health care costs would include, among its range of proposals, a proposal to reform Medical Malpractice Tort Litigation. Such litigation is often important, aimed at catching up with doctors who have malpracticed. However, such cases are few and far between. The vast majority are crap-shoot cases, in which an attorney takes case on contingency -- meaning that the client has nothing to lose in attorneys' fees -- and sometimes wins and sometimes loses. Often, malpractice insurers force weak cases to settle, even as their medical-doctor clients beg for a full defense at trial. These cases cost a fortune in litigation costs, even when plaintiffs lose, and doctors who are sued get penalized with huge increases in their malpractice premiums. Therefore, to avoid litigation at all costs -- literally, at all costs -- doctors tie up their patients and increase health costs exponentially by ordering ranges of unnecessary lab tests. The lab tests are costly, but they help the doctor establish for the disappointed patient that he was thorough. Moreover, costs are compounded by the tens of millions that doctors need to spend each year on malpractice premiums, costs that they shift to the consumer. There must be tort reform, and the failure to seek tort reform in the midst of a 1,017-page bill demonstrates that the Government is not seeking to save money.
10. It is a fallacy that increased funding for "prevention" will save money. Prevention is important, and it is necessary medicine. Doctors do it and should do it, but the reality to face is that prevention costs more money than it saves. Although prevention saves a rare patient from a costly illness and treatment regimen - a wonderful result that justifies prevention medicine -- the reality is that the cost entailed in applying the same prevention efforts for the many hundreds others who never would have contracted that disease anyway more-than-offsets savings. Yes, prevention still is important. It is costly but a worthwhile societal cost. However, no one should claim falsely that prevention saves money.
11. It is a falsehood that a doctor would rather evade prevention -- a low-income process for the doctor -- so that he ultimately can have the opportunity to make big money by amputating a diabetic's foot or removing a child's tonsils. We have doctors, and we know that such allegations simply are demagoguery. A doctor does not receive $30,000 for amputating a foot, but less than $750. Nor do doctors, sworn to uphold the values of Hippocrates, practice such vicious medicine.
12. There are two bona fide problems with the current health-care system. First, portability: a person who leaves a job loses his coverage. This quirky phenomenon forces people to work at jobs they hate because they risk losing their health coverage. Moreover, those who do lose their jobs, as has been so prevalent during this downturn, lose their coverage. If, G-d forbid, they contract a disease during the interregnum of non-coverage, then they cannot later get insurance privately as individuals because they are barred for "pre-existing conditions." Congress needs to resolve the portability and "pre-existing conditions" issues. On the one hand, insurers would be hurt financially by being forced to insure people with "pre-existing conditions." On the other hand, large corporations with many dozens of workers, typically provide health coverage for all employees without regard to pre-existing conditions. That is because their employee health pool is sufficiently large to offset anomalies. Congress should be able to craft a system or fix that pools enough private individuals in a way that somehow addresses these two issues.
13. At least two states have attempted Obama-style universal health care: Tennessee and Massachusetts. Both programs began with great promise -- they would provide universal care, keep costs down, and prove societal boons. Instead, both have emerged as unmitigated disasters, with costs skyrocketing and the states forced into heavier debt as a result. In both states, as the programs have fizzled, predictions of cost savings have fizzled, and care has been rationed.
14. Obama may not intentionally be planning to pull the plug on Granny, but his plan ultimately will do just that. As funds disappear, public health care skyrockets in cost, resources become more scarce, demand builds, there will be efforts to find cost savings. People needing surgeries that are adjudged non-essential -- say, a person with a painful knee who wishes a meniscus operation -- will be compelled to wait longer than conceivable, offered pain killers during the extended interregnum. And octogenarians needing hip replacements will be evaluated not as people but as expenses: "Is it a worthwhile expense to replace the hip of someone with a life expectancy of X years?" That is British and Canadian, but that is not the way that America values its citizens.
15. The most disheartening aspect of the public debate on universal health care is the revelation, most artfully stated by Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, that he parcels out to others the responsibility to read the legislation on which he will vote. It is disheartening that legislators would vote on a 1,017-page bill without reading the bill and understanding every provision. They did this with a stimulus bill that they passed on a short fuse, told falsely that they needed to pass it immediately because shovel-ready projects were awaiting cash infusions to begin. So they voted to spend $780 billion -- and only ten percent of the funds have been spent, lo these six months later. Similarly, the Democrats in Congress rushed through a terribly complex and ill-advised "Cap and Trade" bill that really is a "Home Heating Tax Raise for the Middle Class." State utility companies will be compelled to reduce emissions at such staggering rates that they necessarily will need to spend fortunes on infrastructure modifications -- all of which will be passed along to the end consumers. This project, an insane initiative at a time when the country cannot afford the luxury of turning the economy upside-down on a theory of Global Warming, will force enormous increases in our electric and gas bills . . . and in bills for all other commodities that use electric or gas: food, clothes, everything. It emerges as remarkable that the Democrats of the House voted for such a massive bill, so massive an infrastructure overhaul, without reading its provisions either. They were elected to do a job, and they have proceeded with malfeasance and recklessness, voting to approve the most extraordinary expansions of the American debt burden in our history -- without even reading the bills they approve.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
PRESIDENT OBAMA'S GREAT PYRAMID SCHEME: The Two-State Solution as Final Solution
The Obama Administration has endeavored to move American Mideast policy away from a traditional understanding of Israel's security concerns and historic rights, towards a view that renders undue currency towards Mideast political theories that have not served America well, aimed more at appeasing terrorism than at assuring justice.
My extensive commentary on the subject may be found at: http://rabbidov.com/twostate.htm
After you have read it, you may circulate it as you wish, even reprinting the text rather than merely forwarding the link, but you are limited only by these two caveats: (i) you may not edit the text; (ii) the link must appear with any forwarding you do.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
On Obama, Democrats, Republicans, Israel, and the Futility of Knowing Who Are Friends
I did not vote for Obama, instead choosing to vote as the exit polls told us that most Jews in Orthodox circles did. Still, I view Obama's election with fascination and a touch of wonder.
Clearly, Hashem has a plan that we do not yet see or understand regarding Obama. By the natural course of events, Obama should never have been elected or, frankly, even nominated. Historians will not understand it. Nevertheless, he now is the President-elect, and we will recite the same blessing in Shul for his welfare and that of his Government as we have recited for his predecessors.
As Geraldine Ferraro said -- and she got canned for telling the truth -- rather than being victim for not looking like all those guys on the dollar bills (whose skin presumably was green?), Obama actually was the beneficiary of being quasi-African-American. Any other guy who would have sought the Presidency with his skimpy public record, youthful inexperience, and circle of corrupt acquaintances and associations, never would have gotten past Iowa and New Hampshire.
A State Senator who voted "present" 130 times, or whatever? A guy with no known record of accomplishment but with a coterie of personal associations ranging from Tony Rezko and Bill Ayres to Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright and Father Phleger?
Gimme a break.
A law school professor, former president of the Harvard Law Review, who never published an article in a legal journal? Who among us in the legal field -- among those who practice, among those who focus in the halls of scholarship -- ever has heard of such a thing?
He has lived what-some-might-see as a charmed life. Hashem has a plan. This all is too aberrant to be natural life. There is a plan. G-d apparently has a plan in which Obama factors particularly.
So many of us -- half the country -- voted against Obama (not really for McCain, who was not the right choice of the moment) because we do not know what Obama stands for, do not trust him an iota, believe that he stands mostly for himself, has no record of meaningful achievement, shifted 180 degrees on Jerusalem in hours, surrounds himself with the same Clinton crowd that forced Oslo down Israel's throat and that made Arafat the most frequent foreign visitor to the White House.
All that said -- and one can go on -- I have to put my faith in Hashem and know that He has an ultimate plan, and His plan will go forth. Hubert Humphrey was a great friend of Israel, but it was Nixon-the-anti-Semite who acted rapidly and forcefully as Hashem's tool to assist Israel meaningfully during the 1973 War. Gerald Ford had a record of friendship for Israel through decades in the House, and he had Kissinger in Foggy Bottom, but they surprisingly combined to subject Israel to a searing "reassessment" of the traditional American friendship.
So many of us voted for Jimmy Carter the first time he ran. Many thought that Evangelicals --given the pro-Israel leadership models of Reverend Jerry Falwell, Reverend John Hagee, etc. -- are among Israel's biggest backers, inspired by the mandate of Genesis 12:3. Go figure -- it turned out that Carter was not evangelical on that verse, while his sister was missionizing to Jews and his brother was in bed with Kaddafi.
When Reagan came, so many of us expected George Shultz of Bechtel Corporation, which makes so much money from Arabs, to be a disastrous Secretary of State for Israel -- and, yet, Shultz probably was the best friend Israel ever had in the State Department. We thought the First Bush would follow Reagan's pro-Israel policies, and yet his Secretary of State seems to have been the worst anti-Semite in State since Cordell Hull and WWII. We figured the Second Bush would be as bad as the First, particularly after James Baker played so active a role in the legal fight over ballot-chads, and instead Bush II proved a great friend of Israel when Sharon invaded Jenin.
Thus, when Bush II was reelected, we thought we now have a proven friend in the White House and, with Sharon in Jerusalem, we now have some good strong leadership; in place. Instead, Bush turned his Mideast Policy on its head and made a point of his second term to press Sharon for a "Palestinian State" -- i.e., not really a "state" but a country called by that phony name -- and the Great Sharon unexpectedly went along with it, starting with Gush Katif and then the Gaza.
What stopped the momentum of Bush and Sharon, after the Gaza retreat, to move the retreat-pressure kadimah (forward, eastward to Judea and Samaria)? Only the combination of Sharon being felled by a stroke, then another, and Olmert thereafter being felled by a Hezbollah War and then a debilitating financial scandal and another, and Bush being felled by an incomprehensible economic collapse that started unfolding with mortgage problems just as Condoleezza was flying to the Middle East to start the pressure against Israel for new retreat.
Only that extraordinary confluence of incredible events stopped the Gush-Katification of Yehudah-Shomron.
So, I am long past predicting who among the princes of flesh-and-blood is good for Israel and who bad. I vote based on commonsense natural analyses, but I know I can be wrong because good politicians can fool you, and so can bad ones. I know that all we can do is vote based on what we reasonably expect. But, in the end, it is all in Hashem's hands. Politicians often surprise.
For the many of us who voted against Obama during this recent round, a man who entered the national stage as Tisha B'Av was ending in 2004, we could vote only based on what we thought is best. In the end, what do we know? We don't know. We absolutely do not know.
Our parents' generation bullet-voted for FDR, whom they regarded as the best American friend that Jews ever had in the White House. Turns out he and his State Department were not our best friends. Rather, they hated us and in some real measure were accessories to the mass murder of six million of us.
Democrats-Republicans. We don't know. Nixon rushed weapons to Israel in an full-blast urgent airlift. Bill Clinton gave us Oslo and Arafat.
Shalom Chaver.
Clearly, Hashem has a plan that we do not yet see or understand regarding Obama. By the natural course of events, Obama should never have been elected or, frankly, even nominated. Historians will not understand it. Nevertheless, he now is the President-elect, and we will recite the same blessing in Shul for his welfare and that of his Government as we have recited for his predecessors.
As Geraldine Ferraro said -- and she got canned for telling the truth -- rather than being victim for not looking like all those guys on the dollar bills (whose skin presumably was green?), Obama actually was the beneficiary of being quasi-African-American. Any other guy who would have sought the Presidency with his skimpy public record, youthful inexperience, and circle of corrupt acquaintances and associations, never would have gotten past Iowa and New Hampshire.
A State Senator who voted "present" 130 times, or whatever? A guy with no known record of accomplishment but with a coterie of personal associations ranging from Tony Rezko and Bill Ayres to Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright and Father Phleger?
Gimme a break.
A law school professor, former president of the Harvard Law Review, who never published an article in a legal journal? Who among us in the legal field -- among those who practice, among those who focus in the halls of scholarship -- ever has heard of such a thing?
He has lived what-some-might-see as a charmed life. Hashem has a plan. This all is too aberrant to be natural life. There is a plan. G-d apparently has a plan in which Obama factors particularly.
So many of us -- half the country -- voted against Obama (not really for McCain, who was not the right choice of the moment) because we do not know what Obama stands for, do not trust him an iota, believe that he stands mostly for himself, has no record of meaningful achievement, shifted 180 degrees on Jerusalem in hours, surrounds himself with the same Clinton crowd that forced Oslo down Israel's throat and that made Arafat the most frequent foreign visitor to the White House.
All that said -- and one can go on -- I have to put my faith in Hashem and know that He has an ultimate plan, and His plan will go forth. Hubert Humphrey was a great friend of Israel, but it was Nixon-the-anti-Semite who acted rapidly and forcefully as Hashem's tool to assist Israel meaningfully during the 1973 War. Gerald Ford had a record of friendship for Israel through decades in the House, and he had Kissinger in Foggy Bottom, but they surprisingly combined to subject Israel to a searing "reassessment" of the traditional American friendship.
So many of us voted for Jimmy Carter the first time he ran. Many thought that Evangelicals --given the pro-Israel leadership models of Reverend Jerry Falwell, Reverend John Hagee, etc. -- are among Israel's biggest backers, inspired by the mandate of Genesis 12:3. Go figure -- it turned out that Carter was not evangelical on that verse, while his sister was missionizing to Jews and his brother was in bed with Kaddafi.
When Reagan came, so many of us expected George Shultz of Bechtel Corporation, which makes so much money from Arabs, to be a disastrous Secretary of State for Israel -- and, yet, Shultz probably was the best friend Israel ever had in the State Department. We thought the First Bush would follow Reagan's pro-Israel policies, and yet his Secretary of State seems to have been the worst anti-Semite in State since Cordell Hull and WWII. We figured the Second Bush would be as bad as the First, particularly after James Baker played so active a role in the legal fight over ballot-chads, and instead Bush II proved a great friend of Israel when Sharon invaded Jenin.
Thus, when Bush II was reelected, we thought we now have a proven friend in the White House and, with Sharon in Jerusalem, we now have some good strong leadership; in place. Instead, Bush turned his Mideast Policy on its head and made a point of his second term to press Sharon for a "Palestinian State" -- i.e., not really a "state" but a country called by that phony name -- and the Great Sharon unexpectedly went along with it, starting with Gush Katif and then the Gaza.
What stopped the momentum of Bush and Sharon, after the Gaza retreat, to move the retreat-pressure kadimah (forward, eastward to Judea and Samaria)? Only the combination of Sharon being felled by a stroke, then another, and Olmert thereafter being felled by a Hezbollah War and then a debilitating financial scandal and another, and Bush being felled by an incomprehensible economic collapse that started unfolding with mortgage problems just as Condoleezza was flying to the Middle East to start the pressure against Israel for new retreat.
Only that extraordinary confluence of incredible events stopped the Gush-Katification of Yehudah-Shomron.
So, I am long past predicting who among the princes of flesh-and-blood is good for Israel and who bad. I vote based on commonsense natural analyses, but I know I can be wrong because good politicians can fool you, and so can bad ones. I know that all we can do is vote based on what we reasonably expect. But, in the end, it is all in Hashem's hands. Politicians often surprise.
For the many of us who voted against Obama during this recent round, a man who entered the national stage as Tisha B'Av was ending in 2004, we could vote only based on what we thought is best. In the end, what do we know? We don't know. We absolutely do not know.
Our parents' generation bullet-voted for FDR, whom they regarded as the best American friend that Jews ever had in the White House. Turns out he and his State Department were not our best friends. Rather, they hated us and in some real measure were accessories to the mass murder of six million of us.
Democrats-Republicans. We don't know. Nixon rushed weapons to Israel in an full-blast urgent airlift. Bill Clinton gave us Oslo and Arafat.
Shalom Chaver.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Disinviting Gov. Palin: A Sad and Disgraceful Day for American Jews
I live in California and could not have attended the anti-Ahmadinejad Rally at the United Nations in New York anyway. But Californian Jews, too, may recoil at the New York political circus that became a national disgrace for American Jewry as the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (the “Presidents’ Conference”) disinvited Sarah Palin from speaking at the event. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, I attended rallies-upon-rallies-upon-rallies sponsored by the GNYCSJ (Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry), the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, the National Conference for Soviet Jewry, and the Presidents’ Conference. Malcolm Hoenlein, now executive director of the Presidents’ Conference, was executive director of GNYCSJ in its time. They always, always had prominent political personalities and candidates speaking. No one ever had a tax-status issue.
In reading the press release that Gov. Palin has been disinvited from speaking at the rally, what were we really being told? That there never were campaigning politicians at New York’s annual Solidarity Day for Soviet Jewry? At the annual Israel Day Parade down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue?
C’mon. Gimme a break.
If they had invited only Palin but no Democrats, then the Presidents’ Conference conceivably would have invited a series of questions about partisanship. But Hillary was coming. And they had invited other Dems. It was balanced, as these events always are balanced and non-partisan or, more accurately, bi-partisan.
Sen. Barack Obama speaks at churches. Do they lose their tax status? That overheated priest in Chicago, who mocked Hillary from the Sunday pulpit at Jeremiah Wright’s church. Did that church lose its tax status? Bill Clinton campaigned at churches, speaking at Sunday morning prayers. Gore. Even our own Orthodox Jewish VP candidate some time back spoke at plenty of religious houses of worship. There is absolutely no risk of losing tax-exempt status if a balanced array of politicians speaks out on a public stage against a matter of public concern, like Ahmadinejad being warmly greeted at the General Assembly. And Malcolm Hoenlein knows those rules very, very well because he has been at the vortex of American Jewish political activity for at least 35 years.
No organization endangers its tax status by providing a platform for political leaders to speak publicly, with bipartisan concern, over Ahmadinejad coming to NY.
What happened here is that Hillary already was coming. Then Gov. Palin was invited, and Hillary backed out for narrow political reasons — no point in giving Palin a public stage to demonstrate her awareness of an international foreign policy concern, while she simultaneously builds bridges to American Jewry. Hillary took a non-partisan issue regarding a public protest against one of the most dangerous Jew-haters in the world, and she turned it into a circus.
I have been a political activist and street-protest kind of person for 35 years. OK, I stopped after leaving New York in the mid-1980s because we have no good places to protest here. (Where are we going to protest Ahmadinejad – At a beach? At the “Hollywood” sign? In Malibu?) I have never seen anything like this. It is a disgrace, an absolute disgrace, that the organized Jewish community got pushed around like this on so critical an issue and gave in so meekly.
Outside New York, in states throughout the nation, the protest against Ahmadinejad lost all its bite, all its meaning. Words were spoken on a stage, and the syllables floated and dissipated into thin air. The news was the disinvitation to Palin. Here she was, readily accepting a Jewish invitation to add her voice to others across the spectrum on the Ahmadinejad invitation. In a few months, it is conceivable that she could be a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the United States. She graciously accepted our invitation, as Hillary graciously had done earlier – and then we publicly humiliate and disinvite Gov. Palin? It is a disgrace.
And it is not a very nice thing to do, either.
I put my faith in Hashem. For me, in the end of the day, Israel’s survival stems from His grace. In that regard, the United Nations does not matter, nor does Ahmadinejad. Among others whose efforts to destroy Israel have failed, Israel has survived Gamal Nasser, Saddam Hussein, Sheikh Yassin, and Yasser Arafat. In that sense, none of this matters. But, as our Patriarch Jacob prepared for his encounter with the dangerous twin-brother Esau with gifts and with prayer and with a readiness to fight, so we are bidden to pursue the natural course of defense side-by-side with the religious values of repentance, prayer, and charity.
This disinvitation was a shameful decision. As such, it also reflects and recalls the kinds of Jewish organizational infighting that sabotaged rescue efforts during the years of the Shoah. The American Jewish Congress and American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League jockeyed against each other. Rabbi Stephen Wise induced President Franklin Roosevelt to ignore the March of the Rabbis when more than 400 Orthodox Rabbis from throughout America marched to the White House in 1943, seeking an audience to discuss rescue. In their volume “A Race Against Death,” Professors David Wyman and Rafael Medoff tell the sordid details of American Jewish organizational efforts to detour the Bergson Group in its efforts to press Washington to save Jewish lives in Holocaust Europe.
Always the infighting, the smallness and pettiness, even at life-and-death times of Pikuach Nefesh. So sad.
From: "Conference of Presidents" <info@conferenceofpresidents.org>
Date: September 19, 2008 3:21:34 PM EDT
To: "Conference of Presidents" <info@conferenceofpresidents.org>
Subject: Rally Update
September 19, 2008
We know that organizations are receiving many inquires and protests about the decision not to have any political personalities at the rally. This was not a decision of the Conference of Presidents. We will have the opportunity to explain the full process once the event is behind us. Our partner agencies did not feel that they could continue to participate given legal opinions regarding their tax-exempt status and other factors. The choice was either to cancel or remove all the political speakers. Among the speakers on Monday will be Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, Natan Sharansky, former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler and many top national figures.
We hope that the focus of the rally can now be back on Iran and that everyone who worked to have the maximum turn-out to urge their constituencies to come to protest Ahmadinjad’s threats to “wipe Israel off the map.”
Harold Tanner, Acting Chairman
Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
633 Third Avenue, 21st Floor,
New York, NY 10017Tel. 212-318-6111 /
Fax 212-644-4135
Email: info@conferenceofpresidents.org
http://www.conferenceofpresidents.org/
In reading the press release that Gov. Palin has been disinvited from speaking at the rally, what were we really being told? That there never were campaigning politicians at New York’s annual Solidarity Day for Soviet Jewry? At the annual Israel Day Parade down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue?
C’mon. Gimme a break.
If they had invited only Palin but no Democrats, then the Presidents’ Conference conceivably would have invited a series of questions about partisanship. But Hillary was coming. And they had invited other Dems. It was balanced, as these events always are balanced and non-partisan or, more accurately, bi-partisan.
Sen. Barack Obama speaks at churches. Do they lose their tax status? That overheated priest in Chicago, who mocked Hillary from the Sunday pulpit at Jeremiah Wright’s church. Did that church lose its tax status? Bill Clinton campaigned at churches, speaking at Sunday morning prayers. Gore. Even our own Orthodox Jewish VP candidate some time back spoke at plenty of religious houses of worship. There is absolutely no risk of losing tax-exempt status if a balanced array of politicians speaks out on a public stage against a matter of public concern, like Ahmadinejad being warmly greeted at the General Assembly. And Malcolm Hoenlein knows those rules very, very well because he has been at the vortex of American Jewish political activity for at least 35 years.
No organization endangers its tax status by providing a platform for political leaders to speak publicly, with bipartisan concern, over Ahmadinejad coming to NY.
What happened here is that Hillary already was coming. Then Gov. Palin was invited, and Hillary backed out for narrow political reasons — no point in giving Palin a public stage to demonstrate her awareness of an international foreign policy concern, while she simultaneously builds bridges to American Jewry. Hillary took a non-partisan issue regarding a public protest against one of the most dangerous Jew-haters in the world, and she turned it into a circus.
I have been a political activist and street-protest kind of person for 35 years. OK, I stopped after leaving New York in the mid-1980s because we have no good places to protest here. (Where are we going to protest Ahmadinejad – At a beach? At the “Hollywood” sign? In Malibu?) I have never seen anything like this. It is a disgrace, an absolute disgrace, that the organized Jewish community got pushed around like this on so critical an issue and gave in so meekly.
Outside New York, in states throughout the nation, the protest against Ahmadinejad lost all its bite, all its meaning. Words were spoken on a stage, and the syllables floated and dissipated into thin air. The news was the disinvitation to Palin. Here she was, readily accepting a Jewish invitation to add her voice to others across the spectrum on the Ahmadinejad invitation. In a few months, it is conceivable that she could be a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the United States. She graciously accepted our invitation, as Hillary graciously had done earlier – and then we publicly humiliate and disinvite Gov. Palin? It is a disgrace.
And it is not a very nice thing to do, either.
I put my faith in Hashem. For me, in the end of the day, Israel’s survival stems from His grace. In that regard, the United Nations does not matter, nor does Ahmadinejad. Among others whose efforts to destroy Israel have failed, Israel has survived Gamal Nasser, Saddam Hussein, Sheikh Yassin, and Yasser Arafat. In that sense, none of this matters. But, as our Patriarch Jacob prepared for his encounter with the dangerous twin-brother Esau with gifts and with prayer and with a readiness to fight, so we are bidden to pursue the natural course of defense side-by-side with the religious values of repentance, prayer, and charity.
This disinvitation was a shameful decision. As such, it also reflects and recalls the kinds of Jewish organizational infighting that sabotaged rescue efforts during the years of the Shoah. The American Jewish Congress and American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League jockeyed against each other. Rabbi Stephen Wise induced President Franklin Roosevelt to ignore the March of the Rabbis when more than 400 Orthodox Rabbis from throughout America marched to the White House in 1943, seeking an audience to discuss rescue. In their volume “A Race Against Death,” Professors David Wyman and Rafael Medoff tell the sordid details of American Jewish organizational efforts to detour the Bergson Group in its efforts to press Washington to save Jewish lives in Holocaust Europe.
Always the infighting, the smallness and pettiness, even at life-and-death times of Pikuach Nefesh. So sad.
From: "Conference of Presidents" <info@conferenceofpresidents.org>
Date: September 19, 2008 3:21:34 PM EDT
To: "Conference of Presidents" <info@conferenceofpresidents.org>
Subject: Rally Update
September 19, 2008
We know that organizations are receiving many inquires and protests about the decision not to have any political personalities at the rally. This was not a decision of the Conference of Presidents. We will have the opportunity to explain the full process once the event is behind us. Our partner agencies did not feel that they could continue to participate given legal opinions regarding their tax-exempt status and other factors. The choice was either to cancel or remove all the political speakers. Among the speakers on Monday will be Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, Natan Sharansky, former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler and many top national figures.
We hope that the focus of the rally can now be back on Iran and that everyone who worked to have the maximum turn-out to urge their constituencies to come to protest Ahmadinjad’s threats to “wipe Israel off the map.”
Harold Tanner, Acting Chairman
Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
633 Third Avenue, 21st Floor,
New York, NY 10017Tel. 212-318-6111 /
Fax 212-644-4135
Email: info@conferenceofpresidents.org
http://www.conferenceofpresidents.org/
Monday, June 2, 2008
A Way to Moderate That Chicago Church of Hate
It occurs to me, with Barack Obama now quitting the Chicago Church of Hate -- Trinity United -- after the latest controversy, that the Church's hate agenda can be modified. All we have to do is to encourage each of the church's members to run for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. That brings a public spotlight on why such a person would belong to a Church of hate. In turn, that spotlight forces a person who wants to be thought of as a decent human being to quit the church. If we can encourage several hundred of those church members to seek high office, in time enough of them will be embarrassed into resigning, as Obama finally has done. And that will gently moderate the tone of hate.
Obama's "Wonderful Young Pastor" Conducting a Sabbath Service
Maybe Not an Obama Nation -- But an Abomination: Obama's "Wonderful Young Pastor"
As you know, one of the Presidential candidates is a member of Trinity United Church in Chicago. After the Reverend Jeremiah Wright recently retired from the pulpit and into his multi-million-dollar mansion, paid for by the parishioners whom he exhorted to reject middle-class values, a new minister was named. Barack Obama has praised The Rev. Otis Moss, the new spiritual leader of the church where Obama is a member, as “a wonderful young pastor.”
I have never attended a church service. I just know what goes on in shuls. But this Youtube video of what the Reverend Otis Moss brought into his church on a recent Sunday is absolutely shocking to those of us who associate prayer services and worship with something very different. The video runs three minutes, and it is instructive beyond words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H11x6bMu4Y
As you know, one of the Presidential candidates is a member of Trinity United Church in Chicago. After the Reverend Jeremiah Wright recently retired from the pulpit and into his multi-million-dollar mansion, paid for by the parishioners whom he exhorted to reject middle-class values, a new minister was named. Barack Obama has praised The Rev. Otis Moss, the new spiritual leader of the church where Obama is a member, as “a wonderful young pastor.”
I have never attended a church service. I just know what goes on in shuls. But this Youtube video of what the Reverend Otis Moss brought into his church on a recent Sunday is absolutely shocking to those of us who associate prayer services and worship with something very different. The video runs three minutes, and it is instructive beyond words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H11x6bMu4Y
Pastor John Hagee: Thank You from a Rabbi
A media firestorm erupted last week against Pastor John Hagee of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas.
In the aftermath of revelations regarding Barack Obama’s controversial intimate relationship of twenty years with The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the media have raised questions about John McCain’s endorsement by Pastor Hagee. The media critically have reported that Pastor Hagee calls the Catholic Church a “whore” and that Pastor Hagee has justified Hitler’s Holocaust as G-d’s plan for returning the Jews to Israel. Seeking to avoid further controversy, Sen. McCain has separated himself from Pastor Hagee, and the pastor has withdrawn his endorsement to quiet the media frenzy.
In a similar vein, the media are reporting that Pastor Rod Parsley, a televangelist based in Columbus, Ohio, who also had endorsed McCain, has spoken against the Moslem religion. To avoid the media firestorm generated by an endorsement from a Protestant theologian who rejects Islam, Sen. McCain has stepped away from Pastor Parsley’s endorsement.
I have considered what Pastor Hagee has written and said. He theologically disagrees with the Catholic Church. Well, of course he does. He holds different set of beliefs. But he has never used the terminology ascribed to him by the media in the way that the media suggest. And I am buttressed in my certainty that the media have it wrong because I know Pastor Hagee's support for Israel and for the Jewish People -- and they have it so wrong on that one, too.
I have written Pastor Hagee today a brief e-mailed communication. I share with you my brief note, which appears below my signature block. I also share with you Pastor Hagee’s statement (both in his words and in his voice) – and his Church’s response – to Pastor Hagee’s public statement in response to the media frenzy. You can read and hear it at: http://www.jhm.org/ME2/Sites/dirmod.asp?sid=&type=gen&mod=Core+Pages&gid=47BEB58F9EF24337835DB74C0E0760D9&SiteID=4AC79C9B25B24DF3AF21C42311BE3921
Pastor Hagee’s message runs maybe four minutes, and I am struck particularly by the Church congregation’s impromptu response to one particular statement towards the end of his message. These are Christians in San Antonio, Texas.
Rabbi Dov Fischer
Rav, Young Israel of Orange County
Irvine, CA 92612
http://www.ravfischer.com/
ravfischer@sbcglobal.net
In the aftermath of revelations regarding Barack Obama’s controversial intimate relationship of twenty years with The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the media have raised questions about John McCain’s endorsement by Pastor Hagee. The media critically have reported that Pastor Hagee calls the Catholic Church a “whore” and that Pastor Hagee has justified Hitler’s Holocaust as G-d’s plan for returning the Jews to Israel. Seeking to avoid further controversy, Sen. McCain has separated himself from Pastor Hagee, and the pastor has withdrawn his endorsement to quiet the media frenzy.
In a similar vein, the media are reporting that Pastor Rod Parsley, a televangelist based in Columbus, Ohio, who also had endorsed McCain, has spoken against the Moslem religion. To avoid the media firestorm generated by an endorsement from a Protestant theologian who rejects Islam, Sen. McCain has stepped away from Pastor Parsley’s endorsement.
I have considered what Pastor Hagee has written and said. He theologically disagrees with the Catholic Church. Well, of course he does. He holds different set of beliefs. But he has never used the terminology ascribed to him by the media in the way that the media suggest. And I am buttressed in my certainty that the media have it wrong because I know Pastor Hagee's support for Israel and for the Jewish People -- and they have it so wrong on that one, too.
I have written Pastor Hagee today a brief e-mailed communication. I share with you my brief note, which appears below my signature block. I also share with you Pastor Hagee’s statement (both in his words and in his voice) – and his Church’s response – to Pastor Hagee’s public statement in response to the media frenzy. You can read and hear it at: http://www.jhm.org/ME2/Sites/dirmod.asp?sid=&type=gen&mod=Core+Pages&gid=47BEB58F9EF24337835DB74C0E0760D9&SiteID=4AC79C9B25B24DF3AF21C42311BE3921
Pastor Hagee’s message runs maybe four minutes, and I am struck particularly by the Church congregation’s impromptu response to one particular statement towards the end of his message. These are Christians in San Antonio, Texas.
Rabbi Dov Fischer
Rav, Young Israel of Orange County
Irvine, CA 92612
http://www.ravfischer.com/
ravfischer@sbcglobal.net
Dear Christians United for Israel:
I am a Jew. I am not only a Jew but a
Rabbi. I am not only a Rabbi but an Orthodox Rabbi. My rabbinical credentials
are solid, and I am established within my professional bodies, including the
Rabbinical Council of America, the Rabbinical Council of California, and the
Board of Rabbis of Orange County, California. Of course, because those bodies
include rabbis of widely divergent views on virtually all issues, I write only
for myself.
I write to express my strongest support for Pastor Hagee
during this time of pain for him, as he is criticized by a Left-inspired
communications media desperately struggling to sanitize the Obama-Wright
relationship. I understand what Pastor Hagee has said about the Holocaust and
the return of Jews to the Holy Land. I have quite different a theological "take"
on the matter, but Pastor Hagee's view actually is compatible with certain
Jewish rabbinical scholars and Torah authorities, including the author of Em
Ha-Banim S'meichah.
I understand Pastor Hagee's words. I understand
the sentiment and motivation behind his words. And I will have him in my prayers
this weekend as he endures the travails and suffering that come with an
hypocritical Left-induced media that cannot individuate between Pastor Hagee, a
loving man of G-d who speaks the truth of scriptures as he believes them, and
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a vicious and angry hate-monger whose message of
hate against America, against Israel, and against the Jewish People is offset
only by the kind words he speaks for Louis Farrakhan and those who would damn
the land that I love.
Rabbi Dov Fischer
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Leftist I.Q. Snobbery: They're Not Stupid, Stupid
They’re Not Stupid, Stupid: The Left’s I.Q. attack.
From National Review Online (May 31, 2002)
In his latest ad hominem-based syndicated article, the resident radical-Left opinion writer at the Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer, mocked the intelligence of Attorney General John Ashcroft. In a vertical screed, Scheer wrote the following: Ashcroft is "not the sharpest [tool] in the shed." He "managed to lose a Senate race to a dead man." He "was not picked for his smarts." He is a "Keystone Kop in charge of law enforcement." And, in the most telling comment, "Perhaps it is just too difficult for a stern, God-fearing fundamentalist like the attorney general to fully anticipate the dark side of religion's wrath."
Scheer's writing reflects the polemic arrogance monopolized by a Left that is convinced its ranks are just too smart for conservatives to fathom and that conservatives are just too troglodytic to be liberal. Thus, as Paul Bacon has written, Gerald R. Ford was consistently mocked during his presidency as a bumbling and stumbling fool. (In fact, Ford played on two championship football teams at the University of Michigan, and his athletic dexterity was rewarded when he was named a college all-star. He simultaneously was named a Phi Beta Kappa at that top-ten college and went on to earn a Juris Doctor degree at Yale Law School, commonly regarded as one of the nation's two finest law schools.)
Liberal critics regularly mocked Ronald Reagan as a dumb actor who could not conceive an original thought but relied on cue cards. (This, despite Reagan having been elected president of a prominent union of exceptionally opinionated and discerning members, the Screen Actors Guild, and having served two terms as elected governor of America's most populous state.) The first President George Bush was the butt of the slogan: "It's the economy, stupid." And the current president, who earned his bachelor's degree at Yale and his M.B.A. at Harvard, is mocked for flubbing words and is depicted as lacking the intelligence a liberal would expect of a Democrat counterpart like, say, erstwhile journalism professor Al Gore. As for the only conservative president in the past half century who manifestly was smart, the liberals dismissed Richard Nixon's intelligence as "tricky."
By contrast, we were told that Jimmy Carter was not merely a peanut farmer but really a particularly brilliant man, studious and capable of grasping every detail of his office, and we were reminded constantly that Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar out of Yale. (Only two Democrats have held the presidency in the past 34 years, a sign of someone's intelligence.)
It is not clear why the Left is so smug about its supposed brilliance. Under Jimmy Carter, interest rates nearly hit 20 percent. Was the Left convinced that Gerald Ford, Carter's predecessor, maintained inflation in the four-percent range because he could not match Carter's ability to multiply mortgage rates by percentages five times higher? Moreover, under Carter, an antediluvian Islamic cleric held our entire nation hostage for so long that the Ayatollah's drama literally created a steady viewership over fourteen months for a new network television show, Nightline. The Carter years also saw the United States give up the Panama Canal, the Soviets invade Afghanistan and extend their hegemony into Africa, even prompting new Marxist rumblings in South America. In response, Carter pulled our Olympic athletes out of world competition to make a moral statement that he understood better than did a less sophisticated Leonid Brezhnev.
With Reagan the Actor, inflation plunged, the bond market revived, the economy boomed, the 52 hostages were freed bloodlessly from Iran, Libya's Col. Qaddafi was disabused of continuing his role on the cutting edge of state terrorism , the Sandinistas were stopped in Nicaragua, Communism was eradicated from Granada, and the evil Soviet Empire began to crumble from Africa to Eastern Europe to Asia. His successor, the first President Bush, finished the job of assuring Communism's demise, built an international coalition that freed Kuwait, nabbed Panamanian strongman Manual Noriega and closed down his national drug store.
For two years, from 1992-1994, the Clintons of Yale came to town. Perspicacious in their uniquely liberal way, they turned the armed forces into a social laboratory, failed miserably in an attempt to socialize healthcare, and brilliantly managed to achieve something that half a century of dummies could not even conceptualize: They inspired the American electorate to entrust both Houses of Congress to the Republicans. In time, the man whose haircut had stopped traffic at LAX airport was dismantling welfare as we knew it, cutting the deficit, preaching fiscal prudence, backing away from Joycelyn Elders after 15 months and Lani Guinier after what seemed like 15 days, and behaving himself — at least in public. Even so, in the one area that most dramatically remains the ultimate province of the Presidency — the role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States — this most brilliant of our recent presidents allowed Osama bin Laden to build an al Qaeda terror infrastructure.
It is difficult, then, to fathom why radicals on the Left think they are so much smarter than conservatives. Consider, for example, Scheer and Ashcroft. Ashcroft earned his undergraduate degree at Yale and then graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, one of the top-ranked and exclusive academic institutions in the country. Just to get admitted requires profoundly and consistently high college grades and a stellar score on the law-school admissions test. His father was a university president. Ashcroft coauthored two college textbooks. He managed to get elected to statewide office several times, including two terms as state attorney general, two terms as governor (prevented by term limits from seeking reelection again), and a term as United States senator.
But what of Scheer? He graduated City College of New York, a good school that my uncle attended, and then did graduate work at Syracuse University, where my very intelligent wife studied. And then he did more graduate work, in economics at the Center for Chinese Studies at Berkeley. Ah-ha! That's what makes him smart enough to write a regular screed for the Los Angeles Times. But he never was elected a United States senator or a governor. He never engaged in or directed law enforcement.
And, judging from his mocking Attorney-General Ashcroft's "God-fearing fundamentalis[m]," Scheer presumably is too smart to fear G-d. It is hard to see why Ashcroft's love of Bible study should detract rather than augment his role in law enforcement. The Bible teaches respect for life and adherence to the social order. If anything, it is quirky that, under Ashcroft, the Justice Department has toed an annoyingly politically correct line against ethnic profiling at airports. With 15 Saudi Arabian males among the 19 terrorists of September 11 — and with all of them Arab Muslim men between ages 20 and 45 — the Justice Department absurdly endorses stopping elderly ladies for airport scrutiny, while others who would be stopped by El Al security officers merrily walk by, unchecked.
If political correctness at the airport is ludicrous, we still may take solace that our security lies in the hands of those not smart enough for Scheer, a commentator who equates Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Slobodan Milosevic. Writing in December 1990 from his Left lair at the redoubtable Los Angeles Times, Scheer described the secretary general of the Soviet Communist party: "Mikhail Gorbachev arguably has changed the world more dramatically and with less bloodshed than any leader since Christ." Less than a year later, Gorby, if not Scheer, had been recycled by forces for freedom. Still, it was refreshing seeing a breath of religion emanating from Mr. Scheer's pen.
From National Review Online (May 31, 2002)
In his latest ad hominem-based syndicated article, the resident radical-Left opinion writer at the Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer, mocked the intelligence of Attorney General John Ashcroft. In a vertical screed, Scheer wrote the following: Ashcroft is "not the sharpest [tool] in the shed." He "managed to lose a Senate race to a dead man." He "was not picked for his smarts." He is a "Keystone Kop in charge of law enforcement." And, in the most telling comment, "Perhaps it is just too difficult for a stern, God-fearing fundamentalist like the attorney general to fully anticipate the dark side of religion's wrath."
Scheer's writing reflects the polemic arrogance monopolized by a Left that is convinced its ranks are just too smart for conservatives to fathom and that conservatives are just too troglodytic to be liberal. Thus, as Paul Bacon has written, Gerald R. Ford was consistently mocked during his presidency as a bumbling and stumbling fool. (In fact, Ford played on two championship football teams at the University of Michigan, and his athletic dexterity was rewarded when he was named a college all-star. He simultaneously was named a Phi Beta Kappa at that top-ten college and went on to earn a Juris Doctor degree at Yale Law School, commonly regarded as one of the nation's two finest law schools.)
Liberal critics regularly mocked Ronald Reagan as a dumb actor who could not conceive an original thought but relied on cue cards. (This, despite Reagan having been elected president of a prominent union of exceptionally opinionated and discerning members, the Screen Actors Guild, and having served two terms as elected governor of America's most populous state.) The first President George Bush was the butt of the slogan: "It's the economy, stupid." And the current president, who earned his bachelor's degree at Yale and his M.B.A. at Harvard, is mocked for flubbing words and is depicted as lacking the intelligence a liberal would expect of a Democrat counterpart like, say, erstwhile journalism professor Al Gore. As for the only conservative president in the past half century who manifestly was smart, the liberals dismissed Richard Nixon's intelligence as "tricky."
By contrast, we were told that Jimmy Carter was not merely a peanut farmer but really a particularly brilliant man, studious and capable of grasping every detail of his office, and we were reminded constantly that Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar out of Yale. (Only two Democrats have held the presidency in the past 34 years, a sign of someone's intelligence.)
It is not clear why the Left is so smug about its supposed brilliance. Under Jimmy Carter, interest rates nearly hit 20 percent. Was the Left convinced that Gerald Ford, Carter's predecessor, maintained inflation in the four-percent range because he could not match Carter's ability to multiply mortgage rates by percentages five times higher? Moreover, under Carter, an antediluvian Islamic cleric held our entire nation hostage for so long that the Ayatollah's drama literally created a steady viewership over fourteen months for a new network television show, Nightline. The Carter years also saw the United States give up the Panama Canal, the Soviets invade Afghanistan and extend their hegemony into Africa, even prompting new Marxist rumblings in South America. In response, Carter pulled our Olympic athletes out of world competition to make a moral statement that he understood better than did a less sophisticated Leonid Brezhnev.
With Reagan the Actor, inflation plunged, the bond market revived, the economy boomed, the 52 hostages were freed bloodlessly from Iran, Libya's Col. Qaddafi was disabused of continuing his role on the cutting edge of state terrorism , the Sandinistas were stopped in Nicaragua, Communism was eradicated from Granada, and the evil Soviet Empire began to crumble from Africa to Eastern Europe to Asia. His successor, the first President Bush, finished the job of assuring Communism's demise, built an international coalition that freed Kuwait, nabbed Panamanian strongman Manual Noriega and closed down his national drug store.
For two years, from 1992-1994, the Clintons of Yale came to town. Perspicacious in their uniquely liberal way, they turned the armed forces into a social laboratory, failed miserably in an attempt to socialize healthcare, and brilliantly managed to achieve something that half a century of dummies could not even conceptualize: They inspired the American electorate to entrust both Houses of Congress to the Republicans. In time, the man whose haircut had stopped traffic at LAX airport was dismantling welfare as we knew it, cutting the deficit, preaching fiscal prudence, backing away from Joycelyn Elders after 15 months and Lani Guinier after what seemed like 15 days, and behaving himself — at least in public. Even so, in the one area that most dramatically remains the ultimate province of the Presidency — the role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States — this most brilliant of our recent presidents allowed Osama bin Laden to build an al Qaeda terror infrastructure.
It is difficult, then, to fathom why radicals on the Left think they are so much smarter than conservatives. Consider, for example, Scheer and Ashcroft. Ashcroft earned his undergraduate degree at Yale and then graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, one of the top-ranked and exclusive academic institutions in the country. Just to get admitted requires profoundly and consistently high college grades and a stellar score on the law-school admissions test. His father was a university president. Ashcroft coauthored two college textbooks. He managed to get elected to statewide office several times, including two terms as state attorney general, two terms as governor (prevented by term limits from seeking reelection again), and a term as United States senator.
But what of Scheer? He graduated City College of New York, a good school that my uncle attended, and then did graduate work at Syracuse University, where my very intelligent wife studied. And then he did more graduate work, in economics at the Center for Chinese Studies at Berkeley. Ah-ha! That's what makes him smart enough to write a regular screed for the Los Angeles Times. But he never was elected a United States senator or a governor. He never engaged in or directed law enforcement.
And, judging from his mocking Attorney-General Ashcroft's "God-fearing fundamentalis[m]," Scheer presumably is too smart to fear G-d. It is hard to see why Ashcroft's love of Bible study should detract rather than augment his role in law enforcement. The Bible teaches respect for life and adherence to the social order. If anything, it is quirky that, under Ashcroft, the Justice Department has toed an annoyingly politically correct line against ethnic profiling at airports. With 15 Saudi Arabian males among the 19 terrorists of September 11 — and with all of them Arab Muslim men between ages 20 and 45 — the Justice Department absurdly endorses stopping elderly ladies for airport scrutiny, while others who would be stopped by El Al security officers merrily walk by, unchecked.
If political correctness at the airport is ludicrous, we still may take solace that our security lies in the hands of those not smart enough for Scheer, a commentator who equates Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Slobodan Milosevic. Writing in December 1990 from his Left lair at the redoubtable Los Angeles Times, Scheer described the secretary general of the Soviet Communist party: "Mikhail Gorbachev arguably has changed the world more dramatically and with less bloodshed than any leader since Christ." Less than a year later, Gorby, if not Scheer, had been recycled by forces for freedom. Still, it was refreshing seeing a breath of religion emanating from Mr. Scheer's pen.
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