Shocking! I’ve never gone to this. I might go to the PR Day Parade because their girls know how to dress for the occasion. But this is not for me. Also, it is on the very street that the Rebbe called home. Just think of the bittel Torah that this causes as yidden end up fleeing for the weekend!
Gothamist: A man and a woman were killed during the J’Ouvert celebrations in Brooklyn earlier this morning. At least four other people were injured as well, as thousands gathered for this pre-West Indian American Day Parade festivity.
Just before 4 a.m., at Empire Boulevard and Flatbush Avenue, three people were shot: a 17-year-old boy, Tyreke Borel, died from a gunshot wound to the chest while a 66-year-old was shot in the arm and a 72-year-old woman was injured as she tried to get away.
Then, around 4:15 a.m., Tiarah Poyau, 22, died after being shot in the face.
Near Ocean Avenue and Eastern Parkway, a 23-year-old woman was reportedly stabbed in the back at 4:20 a.m. And a man in his 20s was apparently shot in the leg at Clarkson and Rogers Avenues around 4 a.m.
Two people were killed during last year’s J’Ouvert, including an aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo. Last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio had promised a “massive NYPD presence” to ensure this would be “the safest J’Ouvert ever.” The NYPD’s 71st Precinct also distributed a flyer telling revelers, “Do not shoot anyone. Do not stab anyone.”
Posted inBlacks, New York|Comments Off on Two Killed, Several Others Injured During J’Ouvert Festivities In Crown Heights
But Duterte warned that he is a leader of a sovereign country and is answerable only to the Filipino people.
‘Who is he to confront me?’ he said, adding that the Philippines had not received an apology for misdeeds committed during its U.S. colonization.
I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody.
‘You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions. Putang ina I will swear at you in that forum,’ he said, using the Tagalog phrase for son of a bitch.
And then this.
‘Until the (last) drug manufacturer is killed we will continue,’ Duterte told reporters before leaving for a regional summit in Laos, where he is due to meet U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday.
The White House had no immediate reaction to Duterte’s comments. Obama has been attending a meeting of the Group of 20 nations in Hangzhou, China.
Duterte won elections in May and immediately promised a law-and-order crackdown on drugs.
‘These sons of w****s are destroying our children. I warn you, don’t go into that, even if you’re a policeman, because I will really kill you,’ the president told an audience during a speech in the country’s capital, Manila.
Duterte made it clear he would pardon police if they were charged with human rights violations for carrying out his merciless orders.
Nearly 60,000 Filipino drug addicts surrendered themselves last month to the government after President Duterte urged citizens to ‘go ahead and kill’ drug dealers and users.
This is fascinating.
Ignore the demeaning talk directed toward our President (as offensive as it is) and focus on the results. 60K drug addicts have surrendered to authorities.
Drug dealers are being terrorized instead of communities.
Is this the first real deal war on drugs that we’ve seen anywhere on this planet? Is this what happens when a nation decides to directly confront a problem and eradicate it?
There are lessons to be learned here. Duterte might be a mad man but he might be onto something.
Posted inDrugs, Philippines|Comments Off on The Philippines launches a “REAL” war on drugs
Jews support the left for many of the same reasons other racial and religious minority groups support the left — because it is the Coalition of the Fringe against the core. In a white America, Jews are more likely to stand out as different. In multicultural America, Jews blend in.
Jews support the left for reasons that have next to nothing to do with Judaism as the most religious Jews, the Orthodox, vote Republican.
Jews, like other Medditteranean peoples, identify as white when that is incentivized and as not-white when that is incentivized. Right now all the incentives are to identify as oppressed people of color.
Jews will always believe Black Lives matter because Jews do not think of themselves as “White People.” You have but to walk down a street in Tel Aviv to see the multiplicity of Jewish skin colors. You have but to live as a Jew in any time in history, in any country including the United States, to recognize we are not the White People – we were not the White People allowed into certain clubs, schools, neighborhoods for most of American history. We are not the people rallying for “white people’s rights.” As Ta-Nehisi Coates has written more eloquently that I ever will, “Our notion of what constitutes “white” and what constitutes “black” is a product of social context.”
Dennis Prager makes much of how the Left has often betrayed Jews. He is not wrong about that. But he is wrong in thinking that means Jews should stop supporting the causes of the Left. Consider the alternative: How have Jews fared under the right? Far worse. In Egypt, or under the Greeks and Romans, in Spain and Portugal under the Inquisition, in Europe during the Reformation, in France at the time of Dreyfus, or in Hitler’s Germany or his Reichlands. Consider the fate of Jewish lives under right wing governments in Hungary or Poland – are they better off than they were under Leftist regimes? One can even ask, as members of the Israeli Knesset have, whether more Israelis have died as a result of the policies of the current right-wing Likud government than in those years when Labor was in power (they have).
Leonard Bernstein was ridiculed for hosting a party for the Black Panthers. But Bernstein’s compassion and sense of Justice led him to lead the Palestine Symphony Orchestra in 1947 and as it became the Israel Philharmonic in Beersheba in November 1948 and almost every year of his life. His heart was large, his passion great and he was not wrong to support the cause of Black Pride and African American self-empowerment, even if its leaders had not so great a heart as his.
Jews will always agitate for and support causes of the Left, because we are commanded to be a beacon unto others and to see social activism and seeking Justice, Tikkun Olam and Tzedaka, as part of the Jewish DNA. We are chosen to do so. Our support is not a two-way street, or an all or nothing proffer. The Torah does not hold others, particularly those we support, to the same standard as it does Jews. If Prager can interpret the Torah to allow for an a la carte approach to keeping kosher then why can’t Jews support just causes, even if their leaders also espouse opinions or platforms we reject. We are not condoning Anti-Israel agitation or Anti-Semitism, we speak out against it.
Comments:
* As a white person I would much rather have complete clarity on this issue. So if jews essentially believe it is their job to be opposed to white interests, or if you will, be anti-white, say it loud say it proud. I will then, I assume, be free let let my anti-semetic flag fly proudly.
* Firstly Jews are NOT commanded at Pesah to feel as if they are slaves in Egypt that is taken out of context and is pure manipulation. We are commanded to remember that we were once slaves in Egypt and to thank G-D for freeing us. Pesah is celebrated for 8 days which was our exodus from Egypt and in remembrance of FREEDOM. Secondly Judaism is a conservative religion not liberal. (there is no middle ground) only in America have they reconstructed the religion into different sects that I had never heard of before coming to USA. Only in America can you pay any rabbi to marry you even if there is no conversion. Thirdly ONLY American Jews feel this way… Jews in the diaspora throughout the world look at American liberal Jews with Disdain. Frankly any Jew that is anti Trump in this election is anti America and anti Israel. No Jew who supports Israel and the Tanah and Torah supports the palestinian cause. Jews are either Ashkenazi or Sephardi depending on our origins… There are many black Jews and Yemenite jews and Moroccan Jews and Iraqi Jews and Ethiopian Jews (thats another whole topic) but we do not refer to Jews as black or white. We are the same. We are just Jews. The only Jews that are a disgrace are these liberal idiots… who are clueless when it comes to Judaism anyway. Tom Teicholz has zero idea what he’s talking about and a disgrace for the Jewish Journal to even publish that but I guess it caters to liberal America. I have just got home from a fantastic event in LA hearing a close friend of mines daughter sing…. probably about 120 Jews (all SA and American friends) ALL conservative !!! mostly supporting Trump. All anti BLM. The assimilation of Jews in this country is the worst in the world. Its a disgrace and most don’t even know the essence of Judaism yet for some bizarre reason are proud to say they’re Jewish. Every family I know has a traditional shabbat every friday night with family and its passed down thru generations… We all light shabbat candles on a Friday and most of us don’t allow shell fish, pork or bacon into our homes. Liberal Jews do not support Netanyahu who is right wing (likud) There is no difference btw these liberal Jewish idiots holding BLM signs supporting palestine and BDS and George Soros who was born a Jew and in charge of Hitlers Youth. Nothing !!! American Jews have lost their sense of Jewish identity so much so that American Jewish life is in danger of disappearing and assimilating out of existence. Jewish education is the key to Jewish survival. The American Jewish community is the largest diaspora community and the most assimilated in the world. American liberal Jews stand out as a horrible example of demographic failure. This article is so distorted and manipulated. I bet none of these so called liberal Jews know how to sing Hatikava nor do they even know what it even means… and very few probably went to private Jewish day schools or were given a Jewish education and they never saw the heritage passed down from generation to generation nor were they taught traditional Jewish values in their homes. An article like this is totally foreign to me…. to my way of life and to every single Jew I’m in contact with and nope none of us would ever stand for BLM coz BLM does not matter. We stand for Israel.
* Jews are Caucasians racially. They are not Mongoloid or Negroid and no, you don’t have to be lily white to be a Caucasian. Just look at the people of Israel, Italy, Greece, Spain, Brazil, etc to see that. There has always been slavery in Africa and it was black Africans who captured members of enemy tribes and sold them to white slave buyers. No black in America has been a slave in 160 years so it is past time to get over it and move on.
* Jews will always be left? That’s so absurd. Leftist Jews aren’t having children, being outbred by the Orthodox 3-1. The Orthodox are largely Republican. Your kind is a dying breed because it ends up nowhere. What it is is you have a conflicted and confused identity, so you express yourself thru stupid causes. We marched for the blacks and what did they give us? Ruined cities, riots, beatings, robberies, muggings, “Eyyoooo, get Goldberg!” They are not our friends and never will be. We’ve thrived under right-wing European governments.
Now you scum want to import millions of brown Nazis because “it’s in your DNA”. Who cares that it will increase anti-Semitism on both ends. The goat lovers don’t like us and the Europeans blame us for bringing the terrorists here. As a rabbi once said, “Trotsky causes the trouble and Bronstein pays the price”
Posted inJews|Comments Off on JJ: Jews are not white people, or why Jews support the Left (a response to Dennis Prager)
LINK: Great comment from Dana Posey Zimbleman, in response to this NR article:
It is people like Vance who end up being the so-called representatives of the white working poor because they grew up among them and presume they understand them. I encounter these folks in academia all the time. They fled their rural, working class roots for better opportunities and an education, which is commendable, but they became embittered and contemptuous of home. For all their complaints about whites’ lacking empathy, they never seem to demonstrate any compassion or empathy for those they grew up with. They sneer at those people, their religion, their traditions, and tell their new friends they are glad they made it the hell out. I grew up working class and did a lot of sneering myself after graduate school in my twenties and thirties. However, something changed in me when I got older and took a look around academia and saw some of the most unhappy, miserable people I had ever encountered. Then when I’d go home and encounter my relatives who went to church, gardened, produced beautiful quilts, made homemade jams and jellies, and enjoyed playing with their kids, I realized the folks back home possessed a humility and a knowledge about life that my colleagues with all their advanced degrees had missed.
Vance and others delude themselves into believing that Trump supporters are desperate, drug-addled, miserable people. In truth, those who support Trump are the ones who get up and go to work every single day and are sick of seeing their communities rot because the welfare state has, in an odd way, made welfare dependancy a way to gentrify young women and n’er-do-well men who have one child after another. This behavior is condoned–even glorified– as “single motherhood.” Then the progressive, non-judgmental judgmentalists will tell those who object to such dissipation that they are the ones who need to check their “privilege.”
The “young man from West Virginia” doesn’t have to read Breitbart to know that elites hate him. If he enrolls in his local community college and tries to better himself, he’ll likely encounter a slew of essays about white privilege in his English Composition 101 reader. He’ll either agree with that assessment and join the ranks of the self-loathing white-collar classes that have forgotten where they came from or laugh at the utter nonsense of it, move beyond the stereotyping, and make something of himself.
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on Why America’s Race Relations Are So Bad
Lena Dunham faced a backlash on Twitter after a ‘racist’ tweet she posted five years ago resurfaced this week.
The 30-year-old Girls star was blasted on Friday by Twitter users for the tweet that has been branded as ‘gross’ that she had posted back in July 2011.
‘An uncool thought to have: “is that guy walking in the dark behind me a rapist? Never mind, he’s Asian,”‘ Dunham’s tweet read.
While it is not clear what caused the tweet to circulate on Friday or the context behind it, many were left angered by her thoughts.
‘Wow Lena, way to deny Asian men’s agency,’ one user responded.
‘From an Asian woman: Dear @lenadunham the turds from your a**hole brain are getting boring,’ another wrote.’
One user called her out saying she could not be so lost in her ‘white privilege’ that she thought the remark was funny, adding the hashtags ‘racist, problematic and you know better.’
‘You carry yourself as a shining beacon of feminist smarts, many follow you, then you tweet this,’ another user wrote.
Comment: *Gasp* She acknowledged that an Asian is less likely to rape her than a man of, well, what race exactly?
This means she is ‘ignorant’ apparently. Though what she is ignorant of is never explained. That Asian men are less dangerous? This racist macro-aggression shall not stand!
Posted inAsians|Comments Off on ‘Is that guy walking in the dark behind me a rapist? Never mind, he’s Asian’: Lena Dunham faces a backlash on Twitter after ‘racist’ tweet from five years ago resurfaces
From the blog Jewish Marksmanship: Today’s post introduces you to Jewish Marksman Joshua Seidel. As loyal readers know, we’re here primarily to promote Jews in the firearms, shooting sports and Second Amendment communities. That includes Olympic champions, famous gun-rights attorneys, and even gun-friendly Jewish celebrities. But we also like to profile hobbyists, and in some ways enjoy profiling the average American Jewish firearms enthusiast more than any of the “famous” folks! Let’s get to it!
Joshua grew up in the small town of Oxford, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati. Though he went to law school, he’s now the Director of a Recruiting Firm, working with clients in many industries.
Unlike most American Jews who tend to discover guns later in life, Joshua was introduced to firearms by a family friend when he was just 10 years old. Later he flirted with shooting sports with help from a retired military veteran who Josh describes as “a bit of a gun guru.” Josh’s Jewish family members and friends have been quite supportive. Like most Jews who take up shooting as a hobby, he was was initially surprised at how tolerant and supportive they’ve been. Josh has also introduced Jewish friends to guns, helping to keep the ball rolling! Why does Josh shoot? He says:
“I like the feeling of power you have when you learn how to properly use a firearm. I’d like to become more proficient, and network with other Jewish (and non-Jewish) shooters. Feel free to contact me! I’m looking to network with Jews who understand why we need to be armed.”
Posted inAlt Right|Comments Off on Joshua Seidel – Jewish Marksman and Gun Rights Supporter
However, Trump’s immigration speech last Wednesday might mark the turning point of the general election. In two televised events—a visit with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and a speech in Phoenix later in the day—Trump managed to break through the Great Wall of media bias and speak to the American voter. Trump’s immigration speech was a strong recovery for his campaign and will likely signal his victory in November.
Writers such as Mike Cernovich and Scott Adams have emphasized that a large part of Trump’s success comes from his ability to persuade and influence others. While numerous conservative presidential candidates have tried to win the public over with facts and figures, Trump has sold his nationalist platform through his charisma and charm, using the same strategies that he’s utilized in his business career.
In the case of his immigration speech, Trump set the stage perfectly by meeting Peña Nieto earlier in the day. His willingness to speak one-on-one with Mexico’s president—the country on whose border he wants to build a wall—defuses the left’s narrative of him being a crazy, irrational bigot. In particular, the optics of Trump shaking hands with Peña Nieto, who is both smaller than Trump and was unable to make eye contact with him, made him look presidential. Contrast this with Hillary’s increasing unwillingness to make public appearances and her continued refusal to give a press conference.
The speech itself was noteworthy for Trump’s use of rhetorical techniques to drive home the threat illegal immigration poses to Americans. The centerpiece was the Donald introducing the “Angel Moms,” mothers whose children have been murdered by illegal aliens. While many people might have a hard time processing statistics about the ruin that illegal aliens bring to America, the image of mothers grieving their dead children is one that hits almost everyone in the gut:
Leftists were unusually triggered by Trump’s speech, singling out the Angel Moms for particular derision:
This was Trump's most hateful speech. As a US Jew, I'm shaking not just from anger for the state of our nation, but from legitimate fear.
For the first time in recent memory, large numbers of Americans
are openly questioning their country’s grand strategy. An April
2016 Pew poll found that 57 percent of Americans agree that
the United States should “deal with its own problems and let others
deal with theirs the best they can.” On the campaign trail, both the
Democrat Bernie Sanders and the Republican Donald Trump found
receptive audiences whenever they questioned the United States’
penchant for promoting democracy, subsidizing allies’ defense, and
intervening militarily—leaving only the likely Democratic nominee
Hillary Clinton to defend the status quo.
Americans’ distaste for the prevailing grand strategy should come
as no surprise, given its abysmal record over the past quarter century.
In Asia, India, Pakistan, and North Korea are expanding their nuclear
arsenals, and China is challenging the status quo in regional waters.
In Europe, Russia has annexed Crimea, and U.S. relations with Moscow
have sunk to new lows since the Cold War. U.S. forces are still fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, with no victory in sight. Despite losing most of its original leaders, al Qaeda has metastasized across the region.
The Arab world has fallen into turmoil—in good part due to the
United States’ decisions to effect regime change in Iraq and Libya and
its modest efforts to do the same in Syria—and the Islamic State, or
isis, has emerged out of the chaos. Repeated U.S. attempts to broker
Israeli-Palestinian peace have failed, leaving a two-state solution further away than ever. Meanwhile, democracy has been in retreat worldwide, and the United States’ use of torture, targeted killings, and other morally dubious practices has tarnished its image as a defender of human rights and international law.
The United States does not bear sole responsibility for all these costly debacles, but it has had a hand in most of them. The setbacks are the natural consequence of the misguided grand strategy of liberal hegemony that Democrats and Republicans have pursued for years. This approach holds that the United States must use its power not only to solve global problems but also to promote a world order based on international institutions, representative governments, open markets, and respect for human rights. As “the indispensable nation,” the logic goes, the United States has the right, responsibility, and wisdom to manage local politics almost everywhere. At its core, liberal hegemony is a revisionist grand strategy: instead of calling on the United States to merely uphold the balance of power in key regions, it commits American might to promoting democracy everywhere and defending human rights whenever they are threatened. Read on.
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on The Case For Offshore Balancing
* Michelle was in Maxim’s 100 Sexiest Women as well as People’s Most Beautiful People list, probably others as well. Even North Korean media can’t be more shamelessly in the bag for the ruling party than that.
* They call Serena Williams “beautiful” and “sexy,” so why not Michelle Obama?
* Sample question from the Federal Ministry of Truth Qualifying Exam for the Humor/Satire Endorsement to the Basic Journalism/Public Speaking License:
Which of the following is unacceptable as the basis for a satirical remark?
(a) Bush I: “Read my lips…”
(b) Clinton: “I did not have sex…”
(c) Bush II: “America is a nation with a mission…”
(d) Obama: “If you like your plan…”
(e) Both (b) and (d).
Answer: (d). Practice note: (b) forms the basis for mocking right-wing obsessions with invading personal privacy to prosecute normal healthy sexual practices, even to launching comically-unjustified impeachment proceedings.
* Reporting from the parochial backwater of the UK I can say that I have never seen Obama ridiculed, satirised or used as the butt of a single joke by any British comedian or comedy vehicle whether as prez or before.
By which I mean anywhere in the MSM. Not online or in some niche publication. I’ve never seen a stand-up mock him any way either.
* The SNL house brand for 40 years has been silliness for the sake of silliness. Lorne Michaels has explained many times that his goal is to hook adolescents who are just old enough to stay up late with their friends for the first time.
So, aiming the show at what 14 year olds think is funny, which isn’t hugely different from what 10 year olds think is funny, is the goal. Thus, Dana Carvey’s impression of the elder Bush was very funny in a silly way and thus is the most famous SNL presidential impression, along with Chevy Chase falling down.
* If Obama is such a funny fellow, one would think that within his two memoirs there would be any number of well known jokes or witticisms.
Yet I can’t recall a single one.
Why might that be?
* The single funniest thing I ever heard a president say was when W was sternly reading off a list of terrorists during a big speech and he stumbled on the name Ramzi Yousef and then said, “Sorry about that, Ramzi.”
* Obama is a self absorbed narcissist. His interpersonal life is centered around engorging himself with narcissistic supply, and just as importantly, protecting himself from narcissistic injury. I.e., his genuine mediocrity becomes exposed.
Obama gets his supply from his countless cheap grace political stunts like fronting for men in dresses to use women’s facilities so his sycophantic lackeys in the MSM mindlessly applaud his “courage”.
Obama’s “humor” such as it is, is almost entirely a deprecating form of crude narcissistic self-defense. I.e., he glibly attacks those who are not sufficiently deferential to the “smartest person in the room”. So his “humorous” comments equating Vladimir Putin to a bored schoolboy. Putin does not suck up to Obama, so Obama the narcissist hates him for it.
BTW, narcissistic avoidance is why Obama consciously ignores the hard issues like the imploding Obamacare. No supply and plenty of potential injury…
President Obama’s attributes have been inexhaustibly detailed by both his admirers and detractors. Not much, however, is much said about his sense of humor. The reason is painfully obvious: there is little humor in the man to detect. In this regard he bears resemblance to Jimmy Carter, the grim, parson-scold who lectured the nation about malaise in the 1970s. The humor that does emanate from the President is usually in the form of ridicule laced with sarcasm, humor at its meanest and nastiest. One is hard pressed to find anything funny or witty in his autobiography, Dreams of My Father. The reader takes away from these pages a picture of an angry, alienated young man immersed in self-pity and resentment.
This absence of such a fundamental human quality one might suppose derives from at least three of Barack Obama’s qualities of personality and character.
First, one cannot help be struck by the extreme vanity of this President and an almost pathological need for self-worship. With such astronomical levels of vanity and conceit come thin skin and hypersensitivity and little room for a large and wonderful source of humor — self-deprecation. Devoid of modesty, he believes himself to be a person of unparalleled wisdom and rectitude – “the One, as he self-proclaimed – a fact that is evidenced by his relentless quest to impose himself, his wisdom, his superiority, pontifically…
Ironically, from the countless speeches he has given over the years with the constant, predictable self-referencing and self-righteous posturing, almost nothing insightful, witty or poignant can be extracted. Nothing he has said is particularly memorable, quotable, enduring, or funny. His teleprompter deliveries with their unintended Bobble Head doll effect in some way or other almost always tend to be about his favorite subject, himself, and how much better we will all be because of him. The one public forum for which he appears to have an aversion is the press conference. In his few forays into this venue it seems that aspects of his wisdom on occasion are questioned by members of the normally docile White House press corps, an impertinence that clearly annoys him.
Second, the absence of humor is a conspicuous mark of a jealous ideologue. An ideologue can neither be contradicted nor questioned, and Obama, as we have come to know, cannot bear to have his wisdom disputed or challenged. But humor, above all, contradicts – humor turns the strong into the weak, the serious into the silly and makes the somber appear ridiculous. Ideologues when stripped of their pretentious facades are fragile and sensitive often wrapped in multiple sheaths of vanity and conceit. Humor is the enemy of the pretentious, and ideologues are a pretentious, arrogant lot given to the constant exaggeration of their moral and cognitive superiority and their unquestioned indispensability to make the lives of the unwashed better. Thus, we observe the personality profile of our Ideologue-President who was given during his first campaign to the promise of such undertakings as “healing the planet,” “changing America and the world” and “slowing the rise of the oceans.” In these grandiose sallies he was generously assisted by the smitten members of the Fourth Estate who proclaimed his divinity — “a sort of god standing above us” and other similar declarations of apotheosis. (Evan Thomas, Newsweek)
Third, humor, particularly in a political context, is a coded way of speaking the truth. Humor exposes the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the powerful, and Obama, sad to say, is a profoundly dishonest man. His 2008 campaign of Hope and Change was a brilliant but deeply cynical ploy calculated to convince the a-political middle road American electorate that the former street organizer, tutored by an America-loathing pastor, was a sincere, wholesome wunderkind who would end the polarized politics of the Bush era. But the post-racial, bi-partisan, transparency campaign pledges were completely feigned. They had never been nor would ever be any part of his governing philosophy. The real Obama emerged after his election with such bi-partisan olive branches as, “if they bring a knife, we’ll bring a gun,” and, as he told an audience in a Univision interview in 2010: “were gonna punish out enemies and reward our friends.” Here, succinctly stated is a distillation of Obama’s social instincts and the essence of his political style, very much Latin America-Caudillo, a toxic mix of garish personality cult, punish-the-rich demagoguery and union cronyism. Obama’s politics can be summed up as the “rule of the three Cs” – Coercion, Corruption, Collusion. His 2012 campaign was nothing like the first. Hope and Change succumbed to defamation and demolition.
Comments: * “[Joe] Biden is definitely the greatest VP for saying — in public, in apparently prepared remarks — that Jews control the media and are to be credited with leftist advances in this country such as abortion and, especially, homosexual marriage. He, a liberal, meant it as praise, but you know what Jews say: a philosemite is an antisemite who likes Jews. Thanks for speaking the truth, Mr. Veep! No Republican had the guts to do that.”
Jennifer Epstein reported for Politico May 21, 2013:
Vice President Joe Biden spoke at length Tuesday night about the influence of Judaism on the United States, dating back to the country’s founding and to the present day as Jews helped shape views on gay rights.
“The truth is that Jewish heritage, Jewish culture, Jewish values are such an essential part of who we are that it’s fair to say that Jewish heritage is American heritage,” he said. “The Jewish people have contributed greatly to America. No group has had such an outsized influence per capita as all of you standing before you, and all of those who went before me and all of those who went before you.”
“You make up 11 percent of the seats in the United States Congress. You make up one-third of all Nobel laureates,” he said. “So many notions that are embraced by this nation that particularly emanate from over 5,000 years of Jewish history, tradition and culture: independence, individualism, fairness, decency, justice, charity. These are all as you say, as I learned early on as a Catholic being educated by my friends, this tzedakah.”
“The embrace of immigration” is part of that, as is the involvement of Jews in social justice movements.
“You can’t talk about the civil rights movement in this country without talking about Jewish freedom riders and Jack Greenberg,” he said, telling a story about seeing a group of Jewish activists at a segregated movie theater in Delaware. “You can’t talk about the women’s movement without talking about Betty Friedan” or American advances in science and technology without mentioning Einstein and Carl Sagan, or music and Gershwin, Bob Dylan and “so, so, so many other people.”
“I believe what affects the movements in America, what affects our attitudes in America are as much the culture and the arts as anything else,” he said. That’s why he spoke out on gay marriage “apparently a little ahead of time.”
“It wasn’t anything we legislatively did. It was ‘Will and Grace,’ it was the social media. Literally. That’s what changed peoples’ attitudes. That’s why I was so certain that the vast majority of people would embrace and rapidly embrace” gay marriage,” Biden said.
“Think behind of all that, I bet you 85 percent of those changes, whether it’s in Hollywood or social media are a consequence of Jewish leaders in the industry. The influence is immense, the influence is immense. And, I might add, it is all to the good,” he said.
Jews have also been key to the evolution of American jurisprudence, he continued, namedropping Brandeis, Fortas, Frankfurter, Cardozo, Ginsberg, Breyer, Kagan. “You literally can’t. You can’t talk about the recognition of … rights in the Constitution without looking at these incredible jurists that we’ve had.”
“Jewish heritage has shaped who we are – all of us, us, me – as much or more than any other factor in the last 223 years. And that’s a fact,” he said.
“We talk about it in terms of the incredible accomplishments and contributions” of Jews in America,” Biden added, “but it’s deeper “because the values, the values are so deep and so engrained in American culture, in our Constitution.”
“So I think you, as usual, underestimate the impact of Jewish heritage. I really mean that. I think you vastly underestimate the impact you’ve had on the development of this nation. We owe you, we owe generations who came before you,” he said.
Thirteen Jewish groups, among them organizations representing the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative streams, were among the 25 joining the amicus brief the ADL filed in Obergefell v. Hodges.
The preeminence of Jewish groups among those backing the litigants was not a surprise. In recent decades, much of the Jewish establishment has embraced gay marriage as a right equivalent to the others it has advocated, including racial equality, religious freedoms and rights for women.
Multiple groups, in their statements, cited the passage in Genesis that states humans were created “in the image of God,” which has for decades been used by Jewish civil rights groups to explain their activism.
“Jewish tradition reminds us that we were all created equally, b’tzelem Elohim, in the ‘image of God’ (Genesis 1:27), and also shows us that marriage is a sacred responsibility, not only between the partners, but also between the couple and the larger community,” the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly said in a statement.
Groups also were looking to next steps in advancing LGBT rights, including in the workplace.
“You can now legally marry in all 50 states and put your wedding on your desk and be fired and have no recourse in the federal courts,” Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who directs the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center, told JTA in an interview.
“We hope this will energize and inspire a bipartisan effort to end discrimination in the work place,” he said, specifying the “T” in LGBT – the transgendered. “People should not be discriminated in the workplace because of expression of gender.”
If same-sex marriage is such a Jewish value, how come it was unknown in Jewish life prior to the 1990s? How come the Jewish state of Israel does not celebrate gay marriage? If being transgendered is cool, how come the Torah prohibits a man from wearing a woman’s clothing?
If elites can convince much of the Western world to celebrate same-sex marriage, then is there nothing they can’t do in subverting traditional moral values.
* My favorite factoid about VP Johnson: “After his wife’s death, Johnson began an intimate relationship with another family slave. When she left him for another man, Johnson had her picked up and sold at auction.” (Courtesy of Wikipedia.)
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"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
