Luke Ford | No sacred cows.

NYT: Bush to “Woo Lindsey Graham”

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Luke Ford

* “Woo” Lindsey Graham. ¡Jeb! would just have to wink at him and speak a little Spanish-accented English to have him swooning, I’m sure.

* “Mr. Bush immediately sent him a message, and the two men spoke on the phone later that day, when Mr. Bush made his pitch…”

So in this relationship Jeb Bush is the pitcher. I always suspected…

* “Mr. Bush immediately sent him a fruit basket, and the two men spoke on the phone later that day, when Mr. Bush made his pitch…”

* Clearly this is too ridiculous, even for GOP “elites”. My theory is that Yeb is secretly an iSteve fan, and is simply trying to feed Mr. Sailer some layups before he (Señor Bush) officially drops out of the race and fades into cucky oblivion.

* Of all the damn people… Lindsey Graham.

A true cuckservative with a face just begging to hit with a frying pan. Apparently he’s considered an expert on foreign policy and national security. No really. The same guy who said Saddam Hussein was a destabilizing force in Iraq.

The same moron who said this:

“If I’m president of the United States and you’re thinking about joining al-Qaeda or ISIL, I’m not gonna call a judge,” Graham said. “I’m gonna call a drone and we will kill you”.

Lindsey Grahamnesty needs to stay out politics. Jebito continues to be an unattractive presidential candidate everyday.

* Go look at Trump’s Twitter avatar pic. He’s squinting and surveying like a captain on deck during wartime.

Don’t know what Jeb!’s Twitter pic is but I’m absolutely positive it communicates softness.

* Throughout the campaign, Mr. Bush had made a point of texting Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina weekly, just to check in.

So Jeb is an eager beta in that relationship too.

On the morning Mr. Graham dropped out of the race for president, Mr. Bush was ready with the hard sell.

Shut up, Beavis. Sell IS a four-letter word though.

Mr. Bush immediately sent him a message, and the two men spoke on the phone later that day, when Mr. Bush made his pitch.

You mean he’s pitcher, not a catcher?

Mr. Graham has publicly said he has no plans to endorse anyone right now. Many believe that privately, however, he is strongly leaning toward Mr. Bush.

I hate that kind of innuendo. Who was doing what to whom?

* Graham is the favorite of the “Forget the Euphrates, On to the Tigris” big money neocons and defense contractors. Yes, they are few in number but all have very deep pockets and lots of influence. Don’t think for a minute that these donors don’t know all about Graham’s skeletons, but they have decided to see them as a plus since it means that they have “Purdy Mouth” entirely under their control.

For now ¡Jeb! may want to be able to distance himself from Dubya’s disastrous foreign policy but he also knows that he will still need to have access to lots of neocon and defense industry donor cash to win the general election.

If Yeb can somehow reemerge as the Establishment Republicans’ favorite Cuck of choice, or at least last cuck standing, then being able to count on Lindsay to throw a couple of cocktail parties on his behalf is a huge advantage.

Lindsay Graham is a pimp/gatekeeper to Neocon/Defense Contractor universe just as David Geffen is to the Hollywood Lefty/ Gay Jewish Mafia set.

If the thought of having to “Woo” Prissy Graham makes you nauseous , think of what having to slip into a hot tub with David Geffen would do to you.

* The GOP establishment still don’t understand the rejection of Neoconservatism by the wide population, its like they have no idea and despise their voters which is probably true.

Is there any surprise why Trump is being successful? He sides with the American people and not with the Plutocracy.

* I have a feeling that if Jeb woos Lindsey!, both men might have a chance to come out on top.

* Bush + Graham:

A drowning man begging to be thrown an anvil.

* Yup, its not about Graham voters but his powerful Neocon connections that Jeb really wants.

I’ve heard educated people say that during the Bush II administration there was crypto-war between Bush and Neocons, the Neocons wanted Bush to invade Syria, Iran and start a confrontation with Russia all which Bush II refused, the Iraq mistake was enough for him.

Obama has been Neocon friendly, his Syria and Russia policy is made by them.

* I fully anticipated this move. When Real Clear Politics ran a piece back on December 21 re Lindsey Graham’s withdrawal from the Republican race, I posted as follows: “I am looking forward to watching the mad scramble to secure Graham’s “base” of between 0 and 1% of Republican voters. I think we are in “lipstick on a pig” territory.”

* Yeb! Please! No!. An endorsement from Miss Lindsey would be the Kiss of Death!

* I’m guessing the “consultants” are thinking that Graham can somehow deliver the voters that re-elected him to the Senate. However, with the emergence of a candidate (Trump) who is actually willing to say what the GOP primary voters are thinking, the electorate’s mood has shifted sharply since then (from ” *sigh* I suppose” to “Oh, hey-ull NO!”) . Graham would have about as much chance of being re-elected if the election were this year as he would of being able to deliver those voters to Bush.

To demonstrate these chances, I’ll use this flamethrower and this snowball….

* My impression is the candidates other than Trump and Cruz have all but given up on the voters. The others are appealing directly to party leadership, in the hopes that Trump’s mouth or RNC machinations will sink him, at which point it’s a whole new ballgame, and whoever the elite finds most appealing will be handed the nomination on the floor of the convention, or something. It’s as if there are two races going on.

All I know is when I start reading up on the rules of the process, my eyes roll into the back of my head and my hatred of politics and political people surges. To imagine someone who takes pleasure, objective enjoyment, out of this shit! I would throw myself out a window if I had to spend time in a room full of these people.

Lindsey! may be the least appealing candidate to voters and other humans, but his policies make him the most appealing to the party establishment and donors. If not for his complete lack of rapport with voters, he’d be the RNC’s favorite. Bush wants his backers, for the Deep Campaign.

Posted in Immigration | Comments Off

English Vs Irish

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Admittedly the Brits where total shits to the Irish during their histories but what no one ever mentions is the overwhelming disparity in population size when the idea of Catholic and Protestant meant something. Back in 1600 eeny weeney teeney Britain was facing a bunch of continental Catholic behemoths. Looks like roughly 5 million Brits and Scots facing roughly 50 million continental Catholics with the Germans living in the chaos of the Hundred Years War. So the tiny Brits had the Irish, the jewel in the Vatican’s crown, at their back, a real live Fifth column.
Britain’s later success as a world empire makes them appear to be Goliath stomping on poor Paddy but the Brit’s first entry onto the world stage was as a Protestant pipsqueak and they compensated accordingly, not giving the Irish any breathing room.

British Isles:
England in 1600 had 4.2 million; by 1650, 5.5 million. As of 1700, it was down to 5.2 million (the really big growth didn’t start until after 1750).
Scotland, 1 million in 1600, 1 million in 1650, 1.2 million in 1700.
Ireland, 1 million in 1600, 1.5 million in 1650, 2 million in 1700.

France: 20 million in 1600, 20.5 million in 1650.

Spain: 8.10 million in 1600; 7.1 million in 1650.

Portugal: 1.1 million in 1600; 1.2 million in 1650.

Austria-Bohemia: 4.3 million in 1600; 4.1 million in 1650.

Poland: 3.4 million in 1600; 3 million in 1650.

Switzerland: .9 million in 1600; 1 million in 1650.

Italian peninsula altogether: 13.1 million in 1600; 11.3 million in 1650.

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Steve Sailer: Chernykh Sisters of San Bernardino Terrorism Penumbra Are Likely Subbotniks

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes: As Raymond Chandler’s detective novels pointed out, spectacular murders give outsiders an excuse to snoop around in corners of society that may not have anything directly to do with the murder, but don’t otherwise get much attention. Last month’s San Bernardino terrorist massacre has shone a light on what Southern California in the 21st Century is becoming more and more like. So, more on the two Chernykh sisters from Russia, both of whom appear to have used marriage fraud to game the immigration system. From the Daily Mail:

They came in search of the American dream but nine years after Tatiana Chernykh arrived, she and sister Mariya have instead found themselves at the heart of a nightmare. …
So how did a pair of Russian sisters with close ties to Israel end up at the heart of the worst terrorist atrocity in the US since 9/11?
Daily Mail Online can now disclose the full story of the Chernykh sisters and their journey from a tiny Jewish village in remote south-western Russia to their role in the California massacre earlier this month.
Family: The Chernykh sisters Mariya (second from left) and Tatiana (right) are caught up in the aftermath of the massacre. Tatiana is married to Syeed Raheel Farook, brother of the gunman. While Mariya is in what the FBI says is a sham marriage with Enrique Marquez, the gunman’s neighbor who is accused of supplying the guns. Mariya’s real partner is Oscar Romero, a petty criminal (left). The sisters’ parents Valentina (center) and Anatoly (second from right) are from a strongly-Jewish Russian village and have a home in Israel …
Real relationship: Mariya Chernykh has two children – both born on US soil – with Oscar Romero. His immigration or citizenship status is unknown. One was born before and the other after her marriage to Marquez
Born to Anatole, 53, and Valentina, 51, in the 950-strong village of Vysokiy, the two appear to have been model students with Tatiana, now 31, achieving a silver medal for her achievements at school.
It is unknown if the family is itself Jewish and friends and neighbors were reticent on the subject when approached by Daily Mail Online in Voronezh.

From a brief search online, I’m picking up a sense that the village of Vysokiy was home to a Subbotnik community of Judaizing Christian peasants. The Chernykhs of Vysokiy are an old Subbotnik name. From the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress:

Subbotnik Jews as a sub-ethnic group
18.02.2011, Communities of Eurasia
Velvl Chernin
… Surnames of Subbotnik Jews are Russian. However, strictly limited sets of surnames and their geographic specifity allow members of a given group to identify the name-bearers as “ours” or “not ours”. For instance, for Subbotnik Jews of Ilyinka, the Voronezh Oblast, “our” surnames are Kozhokin, Matveev and Karpov, while for Subbotnik Jews of the settlement of Vysoky, the Voronezh Oblast, “our” surnames are Gridnev, Chernykh, Puzankov, Voronin, Konchakov and Yuryev. [Emphasis mine]

From The Forward:

Described as a “Judaizing Sect,” the Subbotniks (“Saturday people” in Russian) were Christian Russian peasants who dissented from Russian Orthodoxy and began to recognize Mosaic Law late in the 18th century, observing the Sabbath, keeping kosher and practicing circumcision.

Back to the Daily Mail:

Although both Chernykh parents are now thought to live in Beit Shemesh, a mid-sized city of 94,000 people in Israel, their eldest daughter chose to come to the US in the third year of her studies at Voronezh Pedagogical University.
She told her parents that she was taking part in a student exchange program although that claim has been disputed by one of her professors. ‘We did have a student called Tatiana Chernykh,’ said Lyudmila Solodovchenko, deputy head of the English language department. She was expelled for academic failures. And she was definitely not sent to America by us as part of a student exchange program.’
Nevertheless, what is certain is that by 2006, Tatiana was in the US – leaving her parents and sister Mariya, now 25, behind in Russia. On arrival, she met and married 46-year-old Peter Gigliotti, briefly moving in with him at his Richmond, Virginia home before relocating to California.
Gigliotti, a drifter who has moved from dead end job to dead end job and worked in a pizza restaurant while in Richmond, now lives in Portland, Oregon.
His sister Maria, 50, lives in a ramshackle home in Beaverton and, when approached by Daily Mail Online last week, insisted her brother, who has been living nearby since September, was guilty only of an error.
He was unavailable for comment, and she would not address the question of whether the marriage was a sham or not. ‘It happened many years ago,’ she said of the relationship. ‘It was a huge mistake.’
Meanwhile Tatiana, by now divorced, had moved to Corona, California where she met and married Syed Raheel Farook. …
But neighbors have offered up a very different picture of the couple’s life together and say the police are regular visitors to the house. The most recent visit, said 47-year-old Shery Medina, came on the Saturday prior to the San Bernardino shooting. She also told Daily Mail Online that the visit was far from being an isolated occurrence and pointed to another two incidents earlier this year. ‘There have been at least three incidents since January with the cops,’ she said. ‘Domestic violence. They argue. I’m like, ‘oh God the cops are there again’. …
For all Tatiana’s domestic troubles, recent years have brought her an extra source of support in the shape of her sister Mariya who arrived in the US in 2009.
Initially just intending to visit, she soon got a job selling mobile phone cases and found herself a boyfriend in the shape of 5’7” Romero, with whom she has a daughter.
Hoping to cement her immigration status, in November 2014, she married 24-year-old Enrique Marquez in a sham wedding and, until recently, paid him $200-a-month for the privilege.
‘It’s easy to check that Enrique Marquez is not her real husband. Mariya’s social networks show that her husband is called Romero, and they have a daughter,’ a source told Russian channel NTV.
They added: ‘The black market price on bogus marriages meant that Mariya needed to pay several thousand dollars to arrange the deal.
‘How could she know that her kind relatives that helped her cover the costs would turn into religious fanatics?’ …
Marquez is also thought to have helped Farook formulate plans for an attack in 2012 which would have seen the pair target the SR-91 highway from Riverside to Long Beach with pipe bombs and automatic weapons. …
Romero, who has remained at the couple’s home, also declined to speak when approached by Daily Mail Online on Saturday and asked about Mariya’s $200-a-month sham marriage to Marquez. The 33-year-old, who became aggressive after being approached, possesses a criminal record featuring multiple counts of DUI, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
Although Romero’s immigration status is unclear, Mariyah faces having her visa revoked, although with a child who is an American citizen – so-called ‘anchor babies’ – she will be able to fight any attempt to remove her.
Despite her close connections to terror, friends in Russia remain unwilling to countenance the prospect that the woman they knew could have had anything to do with the shooting. ‘There is no way that she [Tatiana] could have converted to Islam,’ Lyudmila Gridneva who once taught the Chernykh sisters history at the village school, told NTV.
‘Her parents live in Israel, and as you know relations between Arabs and Jews are…’
Comments:
* Subbotnik is a blanket term which covers a variety of beliefs and practices. Some subbotniks did not circumcise their male children and still recognised Jesus Christ as the messiah, only holding their services on Saturday and rejecting the Trinity. Others, like those who gathered in Vysokii and Ilinka, went the whole hog (if that expression is appropriate) and tried to follow Judaism faithfully.
* Man, I have dark thoughts toward scammer immigrants like these. They are all over the place in mostly coastal SoCal towns, some more inland.
Amazing how so many small shops in surfer towns along the PCH are now run by nasty gold chains immigrants. Easy to see that these are people who have spirited/lifted funds out of one country in order to launder them overseas.
* Judaizers have always been a opponent of Orthodox Christianity:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaizers
The phenomenon of Gentiles following jewish practices is older than Christianity, there was the ‘God-fearers’:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God-fearer
Tacitus also mentions jews being wealthy thanks to gentiles who abandoned their practies and started following jews when he wrote about the Roman-Judean War:
http://www.livius.org/sources/content/tacitus/tacitus-on-the-jews/
* In the Daily Mail article halfway down the page there is a closeup clear photo of the sisters and parents standing at a cash register in a discount store.
The mother has totally gentile euro facial features. Like a Soviet poster girl for raising the morale of the workers. Likely very hot when younger maybe a beauty queen. No non-white admixture.
The father is Asiatic or Semitic in appearance. Turkic?
This photo shows both daughters sporting the facial features of the father. The mother’s genes seem suppressed in their faces.
* For what purpose would the Mossad run mall kiosks in the Inland Empire?
I heard a more likely story recently from a guy who installs credit card processing systems in malls. He said there are entrepreneurs who like to hire young Israeli girls just out of their IDF stints to sell stuff in malls (presumably, these girls are doing this off the books, on tourist visas). I guess they are more confident than other girls their age and so take to retail sales better.
* Don’t understand all the hate and/or fascination with these two girls. They are not that pretty, especially the older sister who seems to have a hideously pronounced chin in one of her less staged photos. And the worst either seem to have done is commit immigration fraud- boo boo, when the President himself on behalf of all Americans wishes to apologize to you if you even CONSIDERED stooping to this sort of chicanery and your name ends with a ‘z’ (‘We have a long way to go still…’ Jeb: ‘Hispanic immigrants hardly ever commit this sort of crime. Told you it was an act of love!’)
Yeah, they’re vulgar and grubby by our standards in the first generation, but produce fully-assimilated if not spectacularly successful children in the next- seen a lot of dental technician Russian girls in my area- it’s a decent and productive living. Plus the gold chain-wearing, spade-nosed men might actually provide assistance in case you are ever polar bear’d – unlike the spindly but tasteful Portlandia hipster who’ll swear you must have said something racially derogatory to have so incited those yoofs.
‘There is no way that she [Tatiana] could have converted to Islam,’ Lyudmila Gridneva who once taught the Chernykh sisters history at the village school, told NTV.
And at least these people have the sense to be appalled at even the suggestion of Islamic conversion. Has anyone, even her own Mayflower-stock family, broached the topic of it perhaps being time to drop the chador to Mrs. Tamerlan Tsarnaev? Or will we soon see a follow-up human interest story on how she’s admirably raising Tamerlan’s baby to be true to its father’s heritage, regardless of the awful Trump-inspired backlash gripping the country (“the Boston Marathon bombing is the story of the bravery of love…)?
* This is brilliant reporting — a lone blogger scooping the NYT and WaPo due to the timidity of their staff in sensitive areas of the news. A very interesting perspective and good insights on contemporary America and its massive blind spots about immigration. Will the LA Times, at least, start to copy Sailer’s, maybe with a short interval to hide the fact? The NY Times is hopelessly lost in fantasy land on immigration-related issues.
* Mothers genes prevail in their pale almost sunburned body as shown in the beach-bikini photo with the Muslim husband.
Me saying that the mother prevailed in that these pale girls were highly desirable in today’s America and unfortunately to brown skin 3rd world adventurers….they had high “market value” and could have done much better but pregnancy intervened.
Seriously, these Russkie girls are paler and softer than most Hollywood babes …… so close yet so far away/ Hollywood talent agents need to do more combing through the local mall kiosks. They might even find a beautiful Circassian babe.
* Enrique should’ve married a Chinese national. I hear they pay more upwards of $50,000 for the process not including baggage that’s not yours aka stepkids. Then again the guy never seemed to bright.
Assume it take’s 3-4 years to complete until removal of conditions (roc) where the invader gets a 10 year green card. 6-12 months for adjustment of status. 2.5 years for the roc backed up by evidence such as joint returns, leases, utility bills etc. The simp was only going to make $7200-9600. Even a cheap East Asian was going to pay him $15k upfront.
* We can argue till the cows come home about whether “Messianic Jews ” are “really” Jewish. As best I can tell the ones who don’t want them to be accepted as “real Jews” are ALREADY on a payroll as a Pro Jew (e.g., rabbi), and don’t want too many other pigs’ noses rooting around in the feed barrel.
The rabbis in Israel have better stationary, being actual government apparatchiks – but the Euro/Anglo -spheres are where the serious money is.
About a dozen LARGE Messianic Congregations in Israel. They also aren’t at the center of (in this case, Christian) power in Israel. The Greeks & the Maronites are. Nice articles in the Hebrew press these past few weeks about Jewish Israelis visiting Aramaic villages, buying “christmas paraphenalia” as novelty gifts. We may someday see as many Hanukah Bushes in Jewish Israeli homes as we now see teenage players of American-football. Pub talk has it that the football leagues are a good way to network your way into the more elite infantry units. And the benefits of being in those circles are real, throughout your entire working career. Don’t forget that Golani Brigade only has room to accept 1 out of three of guys who pass the physicals.
Am I the only one who knows that Beit Shemesh is mostly a (slightly upscale) Anglo ghetto? And yes – their kids do register for the US Selective Service.
Anglos are a vanishingly small percentage of the Security Organs. And the Security
Organs are the only center of power in Israel. Anything else is window-dressing for the tourists from out-of-town.
Since about 2500 BC, Jerusalemites have made good money off of pilgrims. Pretty much like the Bahraini economy is mostly about renting alcohol & pussy to Saudi guys.
We all have our rice bowls, you know?

Posted in Israel, Russia | Comments Off

The Intellectual Costs of Diversity

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Luke Ford

Robert Weisberg writes:

The quest for campus diversity seems to be everywhere–the website thedemands.org currently lists 75 schools where students are clamoring for diversity. Barbara Wilson, the interim Chancellor of the University of Illinois even called diversity central to the university’s mission and such embarrassing nonsense is typical. People familiar with today’s academy know full well why otherwise sensible folk have, after centuries of neglect suddenly discovered the lofty benefits of diversity—the threat of campus mayhem (see here regarding its alleged benefits). It is inconceivable that Ms. Wilson honestly believes that spending millions to hire black faculty enhances the university’s reputation for scholarship and teaching or that recruiting more academically challenged black undergraduates will improve classroom discussions. Such groveling clearly resembles big-city firms paying off the Mafia to keep the peace; in a word, extortion.

This is a costly enterprise: newly established faculty positions that can only be filled by blacks, more bloated bureaucracies whose only purpose is supervising affirmative programs, and more legal staff to obscure the university’s illegal racial preferences.

Unfortunately, such budgetary items are the least costly items in this crusade. Far worse, and almost invisible to non-academics is the intellectual price of diversification and these costs far exceed constructing diversity’s Potemkin Village. Put bluntly, interim Chancellor Wilson and her ilk willingly engage in a horrible trade-off of undermining intellectual excellence to placate those racial egalitarians who equate skin color with knowledge. A frank translation of her celebration of diversity is that skin color and genitalia outranks scholarly accomplishment.

Let me catalogue a few hidden intellectual costs. Most obvious are the thousands of smart undergraduate white males who grasp that setting aside faculty slots for the disadvantaged (including women) means that the already small number of academic job openings, particularly in the no-growth social sciences and humanities, will be even smaller. So, why waste a decade and thousands of dollars on graduate school to pursue a non-existent tenure track position or having to settle for a low-paying, no benefit adjunct post? Better to find employment in the private sector, think tanks or government or, if the life of the mind is an irresistible lure, specialize in diversity-proof fields, e.g., teach statistics. Think of these never-to-be-hired high IQ white males as collateral damage in the war to achieve “fairness.” Just as harmful is the narrowing of permissible scholarship and teaching. Rule Number One in today’s academy is never offend grievance groups and truth is no defense. A savvy careerist in the social sciences and humanities must relentlessly self-censor and just to be sure, avoid teaching potentially troublesome subjects (e.g., urban politics). This also includes scrutinizing in advance all assigned reading to insure that they do not even cite anything “controversial” such as The Bell Curve. A wise professor will become an expert liar, for example, with a straight face enthusiastically insist that crime is caused by poverty, racism, inequality etc. etc. regardless of the plain-to-see contrary evidence.

Then there’s risking being socially ostracized if one fails to accept the party line on diversity and inclusion. Trust nobody, not even would-be friends and forget about making jokes that could possibly offend some thin-skinned member of a protected grievance group. Further assume that nothing is eternally beyond the reach of the Thought Police—don’t even admit your opposition to affirmative action in German in an obscure German blog since this could be traced back to you and you’ll be forced to publicly humiliate yourself (and forget about your colleagues defending you). If you yearn for camaraderie and a decent social life, seek these pleasures outside the academy.

But of all the intellectual casualties in this diversification, the greatest loss is the honest give-and-take of intellectual life. These interchanges are among the great pleasures of the academy and diversity can kill this joy.

These are discussions that once occurred in faculty colloquiums, job interviews, graduate student dissertation presentations, informal “brown bag” lunches and anywhere professors assembled. Like playground pick-up basketball games, these exchanges can be bruising and participants typically show-off by conspicuously flaunting arcane knowledge or launching sarcastic killer asides. But, and this is critical, intellectual bravado ceases when the discussion ends and the unspoken norm is no enduring hard feelings. After all, today’s sharp-witted loudmouth is scheduled for next week’s weekly faculty seminar so he better not alienate colleagues. Moreover, as in the pick-up game, participants often socialize afterwards and all is immediately forgiven lest intellectual life deteriorates into vindictive cliques.

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Madison Jewish congregation supports settling Syrian refugees

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Luke Ford

I hope they settle the refugees in their neighborhood so that they can experience the joys of Islam first-hand.

Surprisingly, this Jewish congregation says nothing about the moral imperative to settle Syrian refugees in Israel.

This statement was approved by the board of Congregation Shaarei Shamayim, which holds services at the First Unitarian Society, 900 University Bay Drive in Madison:

Congregation Shaarei Shamayim, Madison’s Jewish Reconstructionist and Renewal community, voice our support for settling Syrian refugees in Wisconsin, and are prepared to offer our homes and sponsorship to people seeking refuge from violence, terrorism, and tyranny. Our rabbi, Laurie Zimmerman, has joined over 1000 rabbis in support of Syrian refugees. She has also been joined in our local community by clergy from other faiths supporting helping these desperate people.

The world is now facing the largest refugee crisis since the second World War. Yet many elected officials, asserting the interest of safety and security, have declared unwillingness to accept Syrian refugees or allow state support for their re-settlement. These declarations are based on erroneous or false premises, politicize a humanitarian crisis, and foster the xenophobia and racism against which our community has historically struggled.

T’ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, which represents 1,800 rabbis from all streams of Judaism, released a statement opposing efforts to bar Syrian refugees.

Religious leaders nationwide have similarly called for welcoming the Syrian refugees. Statements were released last week by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the Anti-Defamation League, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and by HIAS – the global refugee protection agency of the American Jewish Community. Catholic and Christian leaders have, as well, voiced this position, through statements from the United Church of Christ, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Unitarian Universalist Association, the Alliance of Baptists, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, and others.

We share in the disgust and horror at the acts of terrorism perpetrated in Beirut and Paris last week. The U.S. and people worldwide continue to be victimized by domestic and foreign terrorists. We must hold responsible those who commit such acts, and protect ourselves against them. At the same time – grounded in Torah and our Jewish historical experience as a minority often in need of protection, and guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – we respect the human rights of all people. We have a moral obligation to uphold the dignity and the safety of those in desperate circumstances.

These refugees, whether they be Muslim, Christian, Yazidi or other, have fled the so-called Islamic State’s terror and reject its extremism. They have suffered violence and hatred at the hands of ISIS. Turning away refugees provides ISIS a propaganda tool and plays to their goal of removing any safe harbor for those fleeing. We must do better as Americans, as Jews and as human beings.

Our elected officials, and all of us, are right to be concerned about security. Here, however, political rhetoric outstrips reality. The truth is that U.S. screening for admission of refugees is the most stringent way anyone can enter our country, and Syrian refugees undergo additional scrutiny. The refugee program needs to be supported and expanded, while security might well be enhanced for other methods of entry that may pose greater relative risk, such as the tourist visa program.

We are a nation of refugees and immigrants. We reject fear and xenophobia. And we call on our elected officials to demonstrate our strength in the face of terrorism by welcoming those who flee from extremism and violence.

***

T’ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, which represents 1,800 rabbis from all streams of Judaism, released a statement opposing efforts to bar Syrian refugees. It reads in part:

Our historical experience as Jews in the United States teaches us the consequences of letting our fears dictate our policies towards those seeking refuge. 75 years ago, as Jewish refugees from the Nazis in Europe desperately sought a safe haven, elected officials in the United States spoke about the threat of Nazi infiltrators arriving on refugee boats, and spoke out against letting in so many Jews. Similar rhetoric about Muslim refugees is being used today, and similar fears are being used as excuses for refusing refuge to Syrians …. Americans made the mistake less than a century ago of turning away refugee Jewish children and their parents, many of whom went to their deaths. Today, we see in the Syrian refugees the same need that we saw two generations ago among European Jewish refugees.

Posted in Immigration, Syria | Comments Off

Salon: No, Trump isn’t the next Hitler: But his real historical comparison is still scary

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Luke Ford

The elites are nervous. America has not had a populist and a nationalist this close to the presidency in at least a century.

Arthur Chu writes:

If I were still in a mood to make jokes about the Trump campaign I’d say the makers of “Allegiance” and “The Man in the High Castle” both owe Donald Trump money for free publicity.

The Philadelphia Daily News hailed Trump’s plan to ban all Muslim immigration–which would bring us back to the era of the openly racist Chinese Exclusion Act–with the barely-even-a-pun headline “The New Furor.” The New York Daily News, not to be outdone, showed Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty.

Prominent Republicans have been coming out of the woodwork to bash Trump for escalating Republican discourse about immigration from veiled bigotry to open bigotry. The First Amendment-defying concept of applying a religious test to immigration is apparently a bridge too far even for the Dick Cheneys and Lindsey Grahams of the world.

Twitter, of course, has been a-twittering nonstop. Jeff Bezos threatened to shoot him into space. J.K. Rowling weighed in, calling him a worse villain than Lord Voldemort. (A stretch, considering Donald Trump has not yet assassinated anyone nor created an army of mind-controlled slaves nor fused his soul to that of a giant man-eating serpent, though I guess we’ll see in 2016.)

All of this naturally leads to the question: If everyone hates him so much, why are we so worried about him? Ross Douthat points out we haven’t even held our first primaries yet; Trump has yet to win a single actual election. Nate Silver, our nation’s election oracle, recently implored the media to “stop freaking out” about Trump’s position in opinion polls as the “Republican frontrunner.” Trump gets a lot of attention, but not that much support–his overwhelmingly “high unfavorables” basically mean the nation is split between a minority that backs Trump and a majority that hates him but hasn’t decided whom they’d prefer as president instead.

As Silver says, “Nobody remotely like Trump has won a major-party nomination in the modern era”; for Trump to succeed, he’d have to beat the entire Republican Party apparatus lined up against him and thus prove that the party itself is ineffectual against a determined enough wealthy individual. People who’d like to think that the two parties are obsolete lick their chops at Trump’s headline-grabbing status for this reason, but for better or for worse that’s probably wishful thinking.

To put it bluntly, Trump isn’t Hitler, not because Trump’s views aren’t as personally odious as Hitler’s were but because Trump doesn’t live in Hitler’s Germany and, to be blunt about it, he doesn’t have Hitler’s balls. The Adolf Hitler who took power in 1933 was a man who’d previously taken politics seriously enough to lead an armed revolution against the state and be imprisoned for it. His party already had a paramilitary wing (the SA) of organized, uniformed thugs who seriously thought of themselves as a rival to the existing military. He rose to power in a country that saw itself as a desperate underdog, having lost a major war and been forced to make massive reparation payments that crippled the economy.

None of this describes Donald Trump. It’s impossible to imagine the effete reality-show billionaire at the head of a Beer Hall Putsch or going to prison as a martyr for his cause. His supporters are violent, frightening, boorish mobs but they’re nothing at all like an army, not even the ersatz army the SA were. And despite how ugly things have gotten in the United States during the War on Terror we are still comfortably the world’s wealthiest superpower; Weimar Germany would be lucky to have our problems.

No, as disgusted as I am that a leading candidate for president can mouth fascist slogans and trumpet fascist ideals in 2015, I don’t seriously believe the America is Germany in 1933 or Trump is Adolf Hitler.

That doesn’t mean I’m not scared.

Because there is an example of a country a lot like America in 2015 that had a candidate in mind much like Trump–an ultra-rich dilettante who seemed to treat politics like a show and shoot his mouth off without any concern for actually winning, who did indeed “freak out” the chattering classes by skyrocketing in popularity against all common sense.

That country is America in 1924, and that would-be candidate was Henry Ford.

Like Trump, Ford vacillated about which party he even belonged to but seemed none the worse for wear for his shifting allegiances–his personal brand outshining the brand of whatever party he belonged to. Like Trump, Ford’s popularity was blamed on mass media–in 1924 that was the “movie mind” overstimulated by Hollywood features; in 2015 it’s apparently the fault of the “social media mind” of self-sustaining Internet outrage.

Like Trump, Ford surged to national attention in 1924 because of the country’s deep disenchantment with the “serious” candidates, a sense that party politics was just a corrupt elite trading favors with each other–Trump, like Ford, somehow managed to be an “outsider” and to represent the “common man” despite being incredibly wealthy.

And, like Trump, Ford was beloved by his fans because he was perceived as a straight-talker, a truth-teller, someone insulated enough by his wealth he didn’t have to recite polite fictions. Among serious pundits of the chattering classes, an eccentric billionaire who goes on rants about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or Barack Obama’s forged birth certificate has disqualified himself from being taken seriously for office. Among voters who hate and resent the serious pundits of the chattering classes, those “fringe” views only underscore the billionaire’s “outsider” credentials.

It may well be the case that Ford, had he not bowed out of running for the Republican nomination in 1924, would never have won a general election once enough people blasted the contents of his raving anti-Semitic newspaper the Dearborn Independent to a national stage–indeed, the Anti-Defamation League successfully shut down that newspaper with a boycott in 1927. It may be that historians are correct that Ford would never have made it that far into the election because, like most people who storm into presidential elections with no past political experience, he simply didn’t have the taste for politics.

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Anomalisa

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Luke Ford

This new movie is about a bored old married white guy who gets drunk late at night in a hotel in Cincinnati and supposedly finds meaning and purpose and joy in a one-night fling with a fan.

Vox: “Their romance is lovely. Even as you may continue to wonder about Michael’s wife and kid back in Los Angeles, it’s hard not to fall for Leigh’s Lisa as deeply and as quickly as Michael does. Lisa and Michael stumble around each other, eager and willing to please.”

I found the glorification of adultery disgusting. It subverts decency.

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We’re All Human Beings

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Luke Ford

Cleveland Jewish News: When Donald J. Trump announced a proposal for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until the country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” criticism poured in.
The condemnation came swiftly from his fellow candidates, from national organizations – and from local rabbis.
One example was Rabbi Richard A. Block, senior rabbi at The Temple-Tifereth Israel in Beachwood and Cleveland, who took to Facebook with strong feelings about the New York business magnate’s proposal.
“In a political season when a leading presidential candidate advocates the exclusion of Muslims from our country, we understand anew the importance of the Torah’s commandments to ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ and to ‘love the stranger,’ and of Hillel’s teaching that ‘what is hateful to you, do not do to another. That is the whole Torah. All the rest is commentary. Go and learn,’” Block wrote. “How many radicals will (Trump) inspire to commit mass murder? If we remain silent in the face of Trump’s despicable proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., we become complicit in it.”
For Rabbi Rosette Barron Haim, also of The Temple-Tifereth Israel, Trump’s proposal hit home – as in her family’s ancestral home in Turkey, where her family had many Muslim friends.
“I’m just very much aware that not all Muslims feel the same way about any given issue really,” Haim said. “It’s never good to lump all people, all minorities into any one category. I think that’s as true for Muslims as it is for people of Jewish background. That’s what they did in the countries where they wanted to persecute the Jews was that they made a generalization from an experience with perhaps just a few people and made policy that way.”
…Block said Jews might be extra sensitive to Trump’s proposal, recalling how Jews attempting to flee Nazism were kept out of the United States, including the famed case of the MS St. Louis, a ship with nearly 1,000 refugees forced to turn back toward Europe.
“I believe that the Jewish people’s experience with bigotry, persecution and rejection should stimulate special sensitivity to discrimination against other minorities,” Block wrote in an email. “We still recall with bitterness that the doors of the world were shut in the face of Jews attempting to flee Nazism. The vast majority of American Jews are the descendants of immigrants. The Torah reminds us more than 30 times that we were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
It’s hard to find a parallel for Trump’s proposal in American history – a time when an entire race or religious group was denied entry into the United States.
Certainly, Jewish refugees from Europe during World War II were denied entry due to a “nativist movement tinged with hysteria about hidden spies,” according to Jay Geller, Samuel Rosenthal Professor of Judaic Studies at Case Western Reserve University. Geller noted “active anti-Semitism” in the State Department and that officials had “carte blanche” to refuse German Jews. In that case, however, there were already quotas in place from the Immigration Act of 1924, which aided American efforts to prevent immigration of undesirables.
“America at that point simply needed to admit far more German Jews than the law stipulated they could and there was no widespread movement among non-Jewish-Americans to revise the quota or make an exception,” Geller said.
The idea of keeping out a seemingly dangerous minority then is not new. Still, his proposal is fairly unique in American history.
As a result, it’s also difficult to imagine how it would work. How would American authorities be able to figure out if someone was Muslim?
“The very first thing I thought was how would border control in this country even know who’s Muslim,” Geller said.
Geller said that the Germans solved that problem by putting a big red “J” on the passport of Jewish citizens, allowing other European countries like Switzerland to easily deny them. Most countries, however, including the United States, don’t put religion on one’s passport.
“I think the important thing is to remember that they’re all human beings,” Haim said. “We’re all human beings.”

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W.Va. rabbi says Trump is speaking to “small group of people” with Muslim ban proposal

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Luke Ford

REPORT:

“It speaks of the broader problem that our country always has to fight against and that is ignorance, hatred and xenophobia,” said Rabbi Victor Urecki, longtime rabbi and spiritual leader with the B’nai Jacob Synagogue in Charleston.

“He is speaking to a group of people — and it’s a small group of people, but they’re very vocal — that find the stranger is a person to be hated. That’s not the America that I grew up in.”

Urecki was a guest on Tuesday’s MetroNews “Talkline” a day after attending a community meeting involving Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders at the Islamic Center of West Virginia, located in Kanawha County, that was organized to dispel myths about Islam.

Hundreds of people attended the Monday night event.

“The Muslim community has been speaking out. Unfortunately, they do not have a lot of traction in the media because it’s a softer voice, but they do speak out,” Urecki said of efforts to push back against anti-Muslim rhetoric that has intensified in the wake of the San Bernardino, California terrorist attack that left 14 people dead and more than 20 injured.

On Monday, FBI investigators confirmed Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the two shooters who opened fire last Wednesday at San Bernardino’s Inland Regional Center, had been radicalized “for quite some time” and were possibly ISIS sympathizers.

Urecki said he understands very well that the U.S. has its enemies.

“There are people that are an enemy, not just to the American way of life, but immigrants which include Muslims who want to be part of the American experience,” he said.

However, “The overwhelming number of Muslims are not here to damage this country.”

As a Jew, Urecki said he’s bothered by the statements now being made about Muslims. “The same statements that are being said about Muslims were being said about Jews in America in the 1930s,” he said.

Urecki was born in Argentina and moved to the U.S. in 1965.

His father grew up in Argentina, one of the few sanctuary countries for Jewish people fleeing from Poland in 1938. At that time, the United States was not an option. Urecki sees parallels to what Syrian refugees seeking refuge are now facing.

Trump has called for the ban on Muslims entering the U.S. until, “our country’s representatives can figure out what’s going on,” according to a campaign statement. He’d previously proposed surveillance at mosques and the creation of a database of Muslims living in the U.S.

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How Donald Trump Stole Hanukkah

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Luke Ford

Rabbi Aaron Panken writes for HuffPo: “With Donald Trump’s suggestion of banning all Muslims from entering the United States, people of good conscience must raise the alarm. This was not some insignificant hate-monger speaking to a limited band of fanatics — as presidential candidates speak, they define the essential boundaries of what is reasonable discourse in America. The dangerous and irresponsible speech we now hear coming from Mr. Trump has the potential to foster hatred, ignite violence and cause irreparable harm to individuals and our nation at large. When a candidate’s speech veers into such unconstitutional, un-American territory as proposing a religious litmus test for entering our country, the core values of America are in jeopardy.”

I don’t recall many of America’s founding fathers talking about the importance of having lots of Muslims in the country.

The rabbi is scared that Donald Trump is expanding the Overton Window and making it possible for Americans to discuss publicly things the rabbi wants forbidden, such as noticing that different groups tend on average to behave in different ways.

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