Israel Commentary

I   Mike Wallace Shuffles off …

II   PS   By Jerome S. Kaufman

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3355

By Jason Maoz

The Jewish Press, April 20, 2012

Mike Wallace died earlier this month at age 93, and while some may find it preferable to focus on the positive when speaking or writing about an individual on the occasion of his passing, the Monitor had little good to say about Wallace while he was living, so why start now?

Wallace, who achieved his greatest fame on CBS’s long-running newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” was a Jew by birth whose snarky attitude toward Judaism was perfectly illustrated in the response he gave when a Washington Post reporter wrote that Wallace had been spotted ordering a ham sandwich on Yom Kippur at a popular Capitol Hill restaurant. Asked about it, Wallace confirmed the story, adding, “I am a Reform Jew. The best thing I can do is serve my master.”

Wallace’s religious observance, or lack of it, was his personal affair. What bothered the Monitor was his dismaying habit of losing his vaunted hard edge in the presence of just about any Arab or Muslim dictator.

In 2006 he came out of retirement to interview Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and proceeded to spread the word that the man who denies the Holocaust and calls for destroying Israel is not really such a bad guy after all.

“He’s actually in a strange way…a rather attractive man,” gushed Wallace, suddenly transformed from cynical journalist to swooning schoolgirl, “very smart, savvy, self-assured, good looking in a strange way…. He couldn’t have been more accommodating.”

Of particular note was Wallace’s stupefying performance on Sean Hannity’s radio program. Asked by Hannity if he considered Ahmadinejad to be an anti-Semite, Wallace flatly responded, “No, I don’t.”

When Hannity quoted Ahmadinejad’s statements about wiping Israel off the map, a nearly incoherent Wallace replied, “Yes, he says wipe [Israel] off the map, and of course I asked him over and over about that. He says in effect, hey, it’s perfectly sensible to do…pardon me. It’s perfectly sensible for them, and I’m not quoting directly, obviously, because I don’t have the translation in front of me, to…for them to…it’s perfectly sensible, if there is a Holocaust, and let’s buy the fact that there was a Holocaust. Where did the Holocaust take place? Did it take place in an Arab neighborhood? Did it take place in Jerusalem? No. It took place in Germany. Then it seems to me, under those circumstances, take Israel, the Zionist entity, he called it, move it to Germany. Move it to Europe. That’s where it happened.”

Hannity asked Wallace if he thought that was a legitimate argument, to which Wallace shot back, “It’s an argument. I’m not a commentator. You are.”

Back in 2002 Wallace, appearing on “Larry King Live” to talk up an interview he’d recently conducted with Yasir Arafat, expressed a level of sympathy and understanding to the Palestinian terror chief that he rarely if ever extended to an American leader.

“You know something, Larry,” he said, “I came to – I came to admire Arafat beginning back in 1977. He has made mistakes along the way as all of us do….”

In 1975, during a notorious “60 Minutes” whitewashing of the late Syrian president Hafez Assad, Wallace characterized the thug who killed tens of thousands of his own people as “cool, strong, austere and independent.”

Wallace’s view of the Arab-Israeli conflict was already clear back in 1958, when he hosted Israeli ambassador Abba Eban on the TV show “Mike Wallace Interviews.”

Though Eban handled his end of the conversation with his trademark wit and intelligence, Wallace’s tone was prosecutorial throughout, as when he quoted, without indicating any disagreement, the historian Arnold Toynbee’s statement that  “The evil deeds committed by the Zionist Jews against the Arabs are comparable to crimes committed against the Jews by the Nazis.’ ”

Later in the interview Wallace alleged that  that, “’The problem of the refugees is allied with the problem of territorial expansion on the part of Israel.”

“Mr. Ambassador,” he asked Eban, “do you … foresee further territorial expansion by Israel?”

Remember, this was nearly a decade before the Six-Day War, when Israel first came into possession of the territories now so widely deemed to be the crux of the conflict. To portray Israel as expansionist in 1958 was to basically call into question Israel’s very legitimacy.

II PS  By Jerome S. Kaufman

On a personal note: I remember watching several despicable episodes of Wallace/Sixty Minutes. Obviously Wallace and his producers were well aware of the fact that Jew hating and anti-Israel themes sell very well. In one episode, virtually the entire program was devoted to attempting to remove the tax deductible status of legitimate Jewish charities thus dealing a mortal blow to their very existence.

Many times the star interrogator was a particular self-hating miserable anti-Semitic Jew that I despised even more than Wallace. I saw this guy interviewing Israelis in Israel, trying in every way possible to discredit them and their G-d given charge. The guy’s name was Bob Simon and the adjective “snarky” employed by Moaz, could not have a better example. If he is still around, may he join his buddy Mike Wallace in Gehenim. 

PPS: I sincerely apologize to Chris Wallace for this screed.  The son seems to be a very good man —  an accomplished professional broadcaster, honest, direct, smart and polite — in no way like his father and I love watching him on TV.

Jerome S. Kaufman

From a reader:

Based  upon a lecture by Ambassador Yoram Ettinger

By Jerome S. Kaufman

Once again,  the incomparable military analyst and astute political advisor, Yoram Ettinger, appears to be the only authority able and willing to see the forest from the trees.

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3338

We were privileged to hear the ambassador at our Palm Beach Synagogue, April 21, 2012. He was introduced by proud American, proud Jew and dedicated Zionist, Steven Stern.

The ambassador made the startling announcement that Israel was totally secondary in Iran’s master plan – almost kind of a red herring! Huh? The ambassador went on to advise us that the world and especially the American State Department with the current administration has never really understood the geopolitics and military ambitions within the Middle East and how Iran’s master plan fits into the current dynamic.

Please look at the map. It is a map of the Middle East showing the vital importance of the Persian Gulf. The Gulf is a large body of water that lies between Saudi Arabia, the powerbroker for Sunni Muslims and Iran the strongest power within the Shiite Moslem world.  Much to their disappointment, neither of the two has controlled the Persian Gulf, primarily because neither has ever had any realistic ambition to rival the United States as a naval power. Unfortunately, Iran has obtained a far easier, less cumbersome and less expensive road to this power.

The Persian Gulf happens to be one of the main avenues for commerce, especially for all-powerful oil, in the world. It constitutes the easiest access to the Arabian Sea which immediately borders Pakistan and India and constitutes a much shorter route to the Far East. At this moment, Iran is threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz (see on map) at the bottom of the Persian Gulf which gains entry to the Arabian Sea and thus wreck havoc with the world’s oil supply. Iran claims this war provoking action would take place if  the United States or Israel or both attempt to take out Iran’s nuclear facility.

Ambassador Ettinger asks what of this Iranian threat to close the Straits of Hormuz if it is attacked? So what, points out Ettinger. How does the relative minor skirmish that would ensue to quickly take back the Straits and defeat a conventionally armed Iran, compare to having to deal with one that had obtained even the rudiments of nuclear warfare and has furthermore gained the support of the surrounding nations? There is no comparison. There is nothing, in fact, to talk about except in the minds of the world’s talking heads who have thus far failed to see the forest from the trees.

A not incidental problem is that if Iran gains control of the Persian Gulf, it also obtains total domination of the small, virtually powerless Persian Gulf States – Qatar, United Arab Republics. Oman, and Yemen – all very important politically and vital in the production of oil.  As the ambassador reminds us, loyalties change at the bat of an eye in the Middle East – not far different from the rest of the world. These countries that have long been supposed allies of the United States, under the threat of merciless punishment from an immediately adjacent neighbor, nuclear armed, would quickly change sides. This change of loyalties is particularly likely given the shocking, senseless, counter productive abandonment of allies by a painfully unreliable Obama administration.

How then does Israel fall within this dynamic? It does not. As much as Ahmadinejad despises Jews, he is far from stupid. He has simply been using the world’s all-consuming congenital hatred of Jews and Israel as a ploy to hood wink the world away from his master plan. Look at the map. Does it make sense for Iran to travel over 1000 miles,  in exactly the opposite direction, to attack Israel and risk immediate massive Israeli nuclear retaliation? Does he really want to cripple Iran’s much more productive and politically more sensible (to their minds) plan of domination of the Arab world and the world’s oil supply? Hardly.

Then, one might conclude that the US and the rest of the world’s talking heads had better stop talking about nonsensical, consistently failed “negotiations” see the forest not the trees and act immediately, if not sooner. They could quickly enlist the vital help of their only loyal ally in the area – Israel – and take out Iran before a much greater military and political disaster is there at our own doorstep – like it is right now.

Jerome S. Kaufman, Editor

www.israel-commentary.org

 Yoram Ettinger is a consultant on US-Israel relations as well as the Chairman of Special Projects at the Ariel Center for Policy Research. Formerly the Minister for Congressional Affairs to Israel’s Embassy in Washington, DC, Ettinger also served as Consul General of Israel to the Southwestern US. He is a former editor of Contemporary Mideast Backgrounder, and is the author of the Jerusalem Cloakroom series of reports which is featured on the ACPR website.

I  Unbelievable!  Spring Break vacation for 13 year old daughter and her friends trip to Mexico!

(I could not believe it. Who would dare such chutzpa but GOOGLE IT and Snopes.com and you will find the story is true!)

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3295

This has GOT TO BE the crown jewel in the Imperial Presidency of Barak and Michelle!  Do we need a better reason that this one to make this a one term affair?

II Media scrubs Malia Obama vacation story

By DYLAN BYERS | 3/20/12

The AFP, the Huffington Post and other websites have scrubbed a report about first daughter Malia Obama’s school trip.

On Monday, the AFP reported that Obama’s daughter was on a school trip along with a number of friends and 25 Secret Service agents. The story was picked up by Yahoo, the Huffington Post, and the International Business Times, as well as UK publications like the Daily Mail and the Telegraph and other overseas publications like The Australian.

But on Monday night, the story had been removed from those sites .The AFP page for the story now links to a story titled “Senegal music star Youssou Ndour hits campaign trail,” as does the Yahoo page. The Huffington Post page now links directly back to the Huffington Post homepage. The Daily Mail, Telegraph, and Australian stories now lead to 404 error pages, reading “page not found.” The International Business Times story also links to the IBT homepage, though a version of the original story still exists online.

A spokesperson at the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

UPDATE: Kristina Schake, Communications Director to the First Lady, emails to confirm this was a White House demand. ”From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest. We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls.”  (Oh, I guess this statement makes this little 2.5 million dollar kid’s caper OK)

III Maybe you remember Michelle’s taxpayer paid trip to Spain:

Michelle Obama Criticized as “Modern-day Marie Antoinette” over Spain Vacation

Andrea Tantaros has penned a scorching editorial for the New York Daily News deeming First Lady Michelle Obama a “modern-day Marie Antoinette” for her vacation in Spain with her daughter.

“The First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her ‘closest friends,’” Tantaros writes, pointing to a CNN report that Michelle Obama and her group are expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms. “Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times.”

(Is there anything else to say. Do we really want this imperial couple for another term leading us into national bankruptcy?)

From this week’s Haftorah reading, Shemini, the third parsha in the Third book of the Hebrew Bible, Vayikra (Leveticus)

(And … an incidental lesson in domestic tranquility) jsk

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Verse 16  When the Ark of God arrived at the City of King David, Sha’ul’s (former King Saul) daughter, Michal, was gazing out the window. She saw (her husband) King David leaping and dancing before God; she looked upon him with contempt (because she felt that it was not appropriate for the King to dance, and certainly not in front of the Ark).

17  They brought the Ark of God and set it in its place in the tent which David had pitched. Then David offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings before God.

18  When David finished bringing the burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, he blessed the people in the Name of the God of Hosts.

19  He distributed to all the people, to the whole crowd of Israel, men and women: a loaf of bread, a (generous) portion of good meat, and a bottle of wine, (after which) everyone went home.

20  David then returned to bless his household and Sha’ul’s daughter, Michal went out to meet him. “What an honorable day it was,” she said (cynically), “when the King of Israel exposed (some of his body while dancing) in the sight of his servants’ maids, just like a simpleton.”

21  ”(We were dancing) before God,” David said to Michal, “who chose me over your father and his entire house to appoint me as ruler over God’s people Israel. (Therefore) I will rejoice before God!

22  (If) I would have lowered myself even further, and become humble in my own eyes (to dispense with my honor), then I would be (even more) honored among the maids which you mentioned.”

23   (For the sin of insulting King David), Michal, Sha’ul’s daughter, had no child to the day of her death.

7:1  What happened was, as King David was sitting in his palace after God had given him peace from all his enemies surrounding him

2.  The King said to Nasan the prophet: “See now! I live in a cedar palace (fit for my honor), but God’s Ark is sitting in a (mere) tent!”

3  Nathan said to the king, “Go and do whatever you have in your heart, for God is with you.”

4  That night God’s word came to Nasan, saying,

5  Go and inform My servant David, This is what God says, ‘Are you not happy with all the good I have done for you that you (want to) build Me a house to live in?’

6  I have not resided in a house from the day I brought the Children of Israel out of Egypt to this day, and I have moved around in a Tent and a Tabernacle (and you want to change that)?

7  In all my travels among all the Jewish people, have I ever spoken to any of the judges of Israel whom I commanded to look after My people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built Me a house of cedar?

8  ”Now say this to My servant David, “This is what the God of Hosts says, “(Have I not done enough for you already?) I have taken you from the sheep pen, from following after the sheep, to be leader over My people Israel”

9  I was with you wherever you went and I eliminated all your enemies before you, I made your name great like the names of the greatest men on earth.

10  In your days I will make a place for my people Israel and I will plant them firmly. They will remain secure and will not be disturbed any more. Evil people will no longer oppress them, as they did initially,

11  Before the day I commanded the judges about My people Israel. I gave you peace from all your enemies and God told you that He would establish a (royal) house for you and your descendants-and you are still not satisfied!)

12  When your days are complete and you lie with your fathers, I will raise up your descendants that follow you, (one) who comes from your loins, and I will establish his kingdom. “

13  He will build a house for My Name, and I will establish his royal throne forever.

14  I will be a (like) father to him, and he will be a (like) son to Me, (in that) I will rebuke (him) with the rod of men and the plagues of mortals when he sins.

15  But my fondness will not depart from him as I withdrew it from Sha’ul, whom I removed before you (due to his sins).

16  Your house and your sovereignty will remain before you forever; your throne will be firmly established forever.

17  Nasan (The prophet) told all these words and all this vision to King David. 

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Regnery Publishing, Inc., (U.S. $27.95; CAN $30.50). 286 pages

Review by Elaine F. Miller

Geert Wilders, member of the Dutch parliament, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV)  has written a book. It is titled Marked For Death.It sounds more like the name of a segment of the television program Unsolved Crimes. But, if Mr. Wilders and his 24/7 security have anything to say about it, it is a story will never be broadcast on cable.

Why has a European politician been forced to endure round-the-clock security for over eight years? Mr. Wilders answers the question. He criticized multiculturalism, jihad, the Dutch welfare system and its immigration laws. As a result, he has been forced to surrender his personal freedom while those opposing him walk free. He has received death threats, been labeled an Islamaphobe. He has watched one colleague massacred in the streets of Amsterdam (Theo Van Gogh) and another be forced to emigrate and go into hiding in the United Sates (Ayaan Hirsi Ali). He been tried. Both figuratively and literally. He has been banned.

In 2009, the then British Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, ordered that Mr. Wilder be stopped at Heathrow Airport and deported in order to prevent him from the speaking at the House Lords at the invitation of Lord Malcolm Pearson and Baroness Caroline Cox. Her act awakened an outcry. Later that year, Mr. Wilders returned to London and in March, 2010, he spoke at Westminster.

Further, the peer who first objected to Mr. Wilder’s invitation and warned that his presence would “lead to the incitement of religious and racial hatred, which constitutes a public order offense” (p. 194) is currently in the news (too late to be included in Marked For Death). Lord Nazir Ahmed, the first Moslem life peer is under investigation for offering ten million pounds bounty for the capture of President Barack Obama and former President, George W. Bush. 

Mr. Wilder’s political party, Party for Freedom (PVV) won 15.5 percent of the vote in the Dutch general election of June, 2010. It then joined in a coalition with two other parties. They have been instrumental in the creation and passage of laws that have changed the  Dutch immigration and social welfare system.

Despite the dour recent history of the West’s response to terrorist attacks on its hard-won values of representational democracy, Mr. Wilders is optimistic. He sees changes. He sees women in totalitarian Middle Eastern countries asserting their human rights and rejecting their second class citizen status. He cites the Saudi Arabian women who were arrested for attempting to drive. A small step, some might say. But then, there is the story of the boy with his finger in the dike. (Apparently an American myth, but one that is apropos.)

Marked For Death implies that the terrorism practiced against the West will abate, based, in part on increasing global awareness of jihad; that the Islamist’s mask of innocence has fallen and the presumption of innocence has been overcome. The honeymoon, so to speak, is over.

Mr. Wilders’ book is a moving personal story, a scholarly and thoroughly annotated political treatise. It is written with humor, frustration, passion, outrage, and a sense of injustice. Mr. Wilders’ efforts have come at a great personal toll. The attempts against his life, the efforts to silence him, have likewise chilled those that might support him.

In his Foreword to Marked for Death, Mark Steyn writes that at first, he hesitated to write an essay in support of Mr. Wilders and the book. After all, he asked, “Who needs it?” But then he took a walk in the woods.

So, What did he say?

By Jerome S. Kaufman

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3302

The Congressman was elegantly introduced by renown attorney and ardent political activist, Elaine  F. Miller. He spoke extemporaneously, without a tele-prompter, for over an hour and answered questions for another 45 minutes. The audience remained at rapt attention throughout.

The guy is amazing. How anyone can listen to this guy, see who he is, his confident, straight forward, sincere delivery, learn of his family background, his family’s three generations of military service, his pride in American exceptionalism, in the American way of life, in a free market economy, in individual responsibility, in government by the people  and for the people and not vote for him, is beyond understanding.

The Congressman presented a litany of facts that should be indelibly engraved upon the minds of this electorate. He included all the information that matters – no fluff, no bleeding heart arguments, no demagoguery, no hand wringing, no class warfare, no  redistribution of wealth, none of the socialism, communism, liberalism, universalism – whatever pipe dream one may want to employ. None of the lip-service support of Israel that one hears from so many other candidates – many Jewish – but by birth only.

He listed our immediate national and international concerns. To me, right at the top of the list, is the deliberate decimation of our armed forces.  Congressman West is a dedicated member of the Armed Services Committee and knows exactly what he is talking about. President Obama has been the driving force behind reducing our ability to defend ourselves. Our number of combat army brigades has been reduced from 45 to 32; our Marine Corps is down to post WWII levels at 183,000; The number of our naval fleet from 570 to 283 vessels in a world that is 70% water demanding constant  guarding from enemy intrusion.  Nine squadrons of fighter aircraft have been removed decimating our air force.

Who is going to protect this country – China, Russia, Iran, Islamic terrorism that is rapidly attacking virtually every corner of the globe? Norman Podhoretz was absolutely right, way back in September 2004, when he declared that we are in WWIV whether we like it or not. We are not in some nebulous, politically correct designated, War on Terrorism. We are in a war against Islamic fascism, aided and abetted by Russia, China and many of the countries of South America, North Korea, Iran, etc. The list is endless. They promote Islamic fascism that is directed against US interests. When it comes to their home fronts, that is another story. Furthermore, we have a president dedicated to placing us on the losing side of the confrontation.

What about the domestic scene? Mr. West advised us that this country is on the verge of economic collapse. Exactly what happened to Greece is happening to us – only on a larger scale. Under President Obama our national debt is increasing exponentially. We are now 15.6 trillion dollars in debt (Whatever a trillion is?) and by the end of the year will be over 16 trillion in debt. Using a simpler figure to understand – GDP (Gross Domestic Product) – our national ability to generate income from goods and services vs. our actual spending is now 102. That means we are now spending more annually than we are able to generate. Under Obama, by the end of the year that ratio will increase to 106.2. If one also factors in existing debt from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Social Security, Medicare, that ratio is closer to 200%!

How would that work out in your own household? Your only recourse would be to declare bankruptcy and I am not sure how that works if the whole country is bankrupt! Obviously, we have to trim our sails. All these perks, entitlements ( a word I never heard as a child or even as an adult. No one in our house was ever taught that they were “entitled” to anything except what they earned with their back or their brain), have to be drastically and painfully diminished.

As to the $64 question to Allen West? What about his referring to the 76 plus Democratic members of the House of Representatives as members of the Communist Party. Congressman West, explained he was referring to the 76 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the largest group within House Democrats. The Communist Party has publicly referred to the Progressive Caucus as its allies or in an older term, fellow travelers.

Congressman West stood by his original statement. He said, if you notice, even the media has not challenged the truth of this statement. They just don’t like the fact that he said it. Mr. West explained there is just a hairline of difference between communism, socialism, progressivism, Marxism, statism, as to their ambitions and planned results. When we speak of the spectrum of the political left, we see a never ending growth of big government, nationalizing production, creating and expanding a welfare state, theoretically creating social and economic equality (after the loot is divided between the Party heads, of course) and creating a secular state. The rights of the individual, religion of any kind, have no place within these systems.

Congressman West then spoke about Israel. He advised us that there was unequivocal evidence that President Obama leaked the information that Israel was developing air bases in Azerbaijan. This flagrant treachery against a loyal American ally will hinder any mission to eliminate Iran’s nuclear facilities a thousand fold. It remains to be seen how many additional Israeli, Muslim and American lives it will cost. With friends like Obama, who needs enemies.

How important it is that the US genuinely has Israel’s back for both our sakes. Israel will need the US desperately and vice versa in the weeks, months, years that follow the essential action of taking out, militarily, Iran’s nuclear capability. The action will set off a hornet’s nest of our enemies. But,  there is no other choice. Negotiations have not and will not work. Even our broaching the topic of negotiations is immediately considered weakness by Arab and Iranian cultures. Without question, the longer we procrastinate and delude ourselves with wishful thinking the more entrenched our enemies become and the more difficult the essential task.

Have we not learned anything from WW II? Will we again allow another Hitler to take the offensive and cause another 60 million people or far more with nuclear weaponry, to die. Probably we will. People and nations seem incapable of learning from their past mistakes.

And may please G-d save us from  this recurring idiocy.

Jerome S. Kaufman

Editor, Israel Commentary

Free Lunch Egalitarianism

By: CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3279

Here we go again.

At the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama argued that the country’s spiraling debt was largely the result of exploding health-care costs. That was true. He then said the cure for these exploding costs would be his health-care reform. That was not true.

It was obvious at the time that it could never be true. If government gives health insurance to 33 million uninsured, that costs. Costs a lot. There’s no free lunch.

Now we know. The Congressional Budget Office’s latest estimate is that Obamacare will add $1.76 trillion in federal expenditures through 2022. And, as one of the Medicare trustees has just made clear, if you don’t double count the $575 billion set aside for the Medicare trust fund, Obamacare adds to the already crushing national debt.

Three years later, we are back to smoke and mirrors. This time it’s not health care but the Buffett Rule, which would impose a minimum 30 percent effective tax rate on millionaires. Here is how Obama introduced it last September:

“Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a [higher] tax rate than Warren Buffett. … And that basic principle of fairness, if applied to our tax code, could raise enough money” to “stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade. … This is not politics; this is math.”

OK. Let’s do the math. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates this new tax would yield between $4 billion and $5 billion a year. If we collect the Buffett tax for the next 250 years — a span longer than the life of this republic — it would not cover the Obama deficit for 2011 alone .

As an approach to our mountain of debt, the Buffett Rule is a farce. And yet Obama repeated the ridiculous claim again last week. “It will help us close our deficit.” Does he really think we’re that stupid?

Hence the fallback: The Buffett Rule is a first step in tax reform. On the contrary. It’s a substitute for tax reform, an evasion of tax reform. In three years, Obama hasn’t touched tax (or, for that matter, entitlement) reform, and clearly has no intention to. The Buffett Rule is nothing but a form of redistributionism that has vanishingly little to do with debt reduction and everything to do with re-election.

As such, it’s clever. It deftly channels the sentiment underlying Occupy Wall Street (original version, before its slovenly, whiny, aggressive weirdness made it politically toxic). It perfectly pits the 99 percent against the 1 percent. Indeed, it is OWS translated into legislation, something the actual occupiers never had the wit to come up with.

Clever politics, but in terms of economics, it’s worse than useless. It’s counterproductive. The reason Buffett and Mitt Romney pay roughly 15 percent in taxes is that their income is principally capital gains. The Buffett Rule is, in fact, a disguised tax hike on capital gains. But Obama prefers to present it as just an alternative minimum tax because 50 years of economic history show that raising the capital gains tax backfires: It reduces federal revenues, while lowering the tax raises revenues.

No matter. Obama had famously said in 2008 that even if that’s the case, he’d still raise the capital gains tax — for the sake of fairness.

For Obama, fairness is the supreme social value. And fairness is what he is running on — although he is not prepared to come clean on its price. Or even acknowledge that there is a price. Instead, Obama throws in a free economic lunch for all. “This is not just about fairness,” he insisted on Wednesday. “This is also about growth.”

Growth? The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. Now, in the middle of a historically weak recovery, Obama wants to raise our capital gains tax to the fourth highest. No better way to discourage investment — and the jobs and growth that come with it.

Three years ago, Obama promised universal health care that saves money. Today, he offers a capital gains tax hike that spurs economic growth. This is free-lunch egalitarianism.

The Buffett Rule redistributes deck chairs on the Titanic, ostensibly to make more available for those in steerage. Nice idea, but the iceberg cometh. The enterprise is an exercise in misdirection — a distraction not just from Obama’s dismal record on growth and unemployment but, more importantly, from his dereliction of duty in failing to this day to address the utterly predictable and devastating debt crisis ahead.

Contact Charles Krauthammer © Washington Post Writers Group

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Supreme Court ruling strikes a blow in ongoing battle

 By Robert Knight

The Washington Times, April 2, 2012

Slowly, inexorably, the monster is being driven back to its lair. Its days of terrorizing villagers may soon be over. I wish I were talking about the federal government, but it’s the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), better known as the Environmental Protection-or-else Agency.

At one time, it was a harmless little back-alley operation that stumbled upon a secret growth formula, downed the whole vat and began wreaking havoc. You won’t find this account on the EPA’s official website, but you will find ample evidence of the monster’s ambitions to control the world, such as its quest for “environmental justice.”

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court slapped the monster right across the chops in Sackett v. EPA. An Idaho couple, Chantell and Mike Sackett, were building a home but fell victim to an EPA compliance order in 2005. Their building permit was revoked after the EPA charged that they had violated the Clean Water Act by filling in their lot with rocks and dirt.

“The Sacketts were denied any hearing to contest the Compliance Order by the EPA,” American Civil Rights Union general counsel Peter Ferrara wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief in the case. “[T]he Sacketts can ignore the EPA’s Compliance Order … That course entails incurring EPA fines of as much as $750,000 per month, $9,000,000 for a year.”

The court’s unanimous decision, which overturns – yet again – a wacky 9th Circuit ruling, will allow the Sacketts to appeal the order in court instead of going through a lengthy, expensive wetlands-permit process. They might still lose, but at least they won’t be bankrupted fighting a tyrannical bureaucracy.

Created on Dec. 2, 1970, the EPA began with an executive order from President Nixon that combined several clean-water and other anti-pollution agencies into one basket. The full Congress never officially approved the monster’s creation, although the plan was vetted by Senate and House committees.

The newborn EPA had a budget of just more than $1 billion and 4,084 employees. Not bad for a startup.

This past week, EPA Administrator Janet P. Jackson told two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees that the EPA’s 2013 budget request is $8.3 billion, a 1.2 percent decrease from 2012. The agency has 17,000 employees.

(Thus, a typical dysfunctional government agency – Now 8X the original budget and 4X number of original employees – as the government takes over your lives and makes them worse. And, you a’int seen nuttin’ yet. Wait ’til the Obama Health Care program or even any stunted model takes off after a diluted, Obama opposed Supreme Ct. decision. The whole federal budget will go right down the tube and guess who else with it?)  jsk

This (the EPA budget) is pocket change and a volleyball team compared to other federal agencies. But over the years, despite its relatively small size, the EPA has acquired vast powers.

Just after Earth Day came into being, Congress enacted a slew of environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act (1972), Coastal Zone Management Act (1972), Marine Protection Research and Sanctuaries Act (1972) and Endangered Species Act (1973). “The Rules and Regulations issued under these laws numbered into many thousands,” an official EPA history states. “In its early years EPA alone placed about 1,500 rulemaking notices in the Federal Register annually.”

Some of them did a lot of good. Smokestack industries could no longer pour tons of pollutants into the air and water. The Hudson River, which was declared an open sewer in the 1960s, bounced back smartly.

Emboldened, the EPA kept growing. A big breakthrough came in 2007, when the Supreme Court, whose justices moonlight as scientists, found that carbon dioxide, which we breathe out, was a “greenhouse gas” the EPA could regulate.

In 2009, President Obama’s EPA announced a massive campaign to thwart “climate change.” (whatever that is?) I’m told that deep within the bowels of the EPA complex in Washington’s Federal Triangle is a diabolical plan to fit us all with muzzles, but this probably is just a rumor.

The good news is that the EPA’s greenhouse gas limits are being weighed this month by the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District.

Meanwhile, nine state attorneys general – Tom Horne of Arizona, Pam Bondi of Florida, Sam Olens of Georgia, Bill Schuette of Michigan, Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma, Marty J. Jackley of South Dakota, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, Greg Abbott of Texas and Kenneth T. Cuccinelli of Virginia – have announced a major push-back against unconstitutional overreaches by the Obama administration, including the EPA.

“In Florida, a state with one of the most aggressive and innovative water-quality-protection programs in the country, the EPA chose to impose its own costly, unprecedented and unscientific numeric nutrient criteria,” the attorneys general’s statement says. “The estimated impact the EPA’s rules would impose was dramatic, including billions of dollars in compliance costs, significant spikes in utility bills and the loss of thousands of jobs. The Florida Attorney General’s Office sued the EPA and two weeks ago prevailed when a federal judge in Tallahassee threw out the costliest of the EPA’s rules, the one governing Florida’s streams and rivers. In doing so, the judge found the EPA’s rules were not based on sound science.

“In Oklahoma, the EPA illegally usurped Oklahoma’s authority in the Clean Air Act to determine the state’s own plan for addressing sources of emissions by imposing a federal implementation plan. The federal plan goes beyond the authority granted to the EPA in the Clean Air Act and will result in a $2 billion cost to install technology needed to complete the EPA plan and a permanent increase of 15-20 percent in the cost of electricity. The Obama Administration is fighting Oklahoma’s appeal, which was filed in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.”

Texas has filed a lawsuit challenging the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. The attorneys general note that the EPA’s order was “particularly dubious because the state was included in the regulation at the last minute and without an opportunity to respond to the proposed regulation” and “was based on a dubious claim that air pollution from Texas affected a single air-quality monitor in Granite City, Illinois, more than 500 miles and three states away from Texas.”

As Congress sharpens its budget knife, the EPA monster, which started out as a well-meaning bloke but grew into a bullying monster, may find that overstepping its power is hazardous to its own health.

Robert Knight is a senior fellow for the American Civil Rights Union and a columnist for The Washington Times.

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3266

This editorial plus an entire issue of Whistleblower magazine, April 2012,  with John Stossel, Art Moore, Thomas Sowell, Dennis Prager, Bob Unruh, David Horowitz, Eli Lehrer, Ben Shapiro, David Kupelian, Phyllis Schlafly, Walt Williams, Alyssa Farah, Patrice Lewis – each writing a complete article to help you answer this life directing question.  A must read from World Net Daily, wnd.com

Joseph Farah calls for the free market to be unleashed in ‘higher education’

By Joseph Farah

Publisher, Whistleblower magazine

You hear the complaints all the time:

• gas prices are too high;
• electricity costs are too high;
• ATM fees are exorbitant;
• Starbucks charges too much for a cup of coffee;
• and, of course, taxes are too high.

For sure the complaints have validity.

But I hear fewer people griping about what colleges and universities are charging us to miseducate and even indoctrinate our kids.

I was even more shocked than Rush Limbaugh by the testimony of Sandra Fluke about the high costs of contraceptives and demanding that the government do something about it. Here’s a woman attending Georgetown Law School.

Does anyone know what it costs to go to Georgetown? All told, with living expenses, etc., you’re looking at $150,000. By comparison, even a sexually promiscuous woman (and I’m not saying Ms. Fluke is) can get all the protection one needs for $10 a month. How, with a straight face, can someone faced with a choice to pay $150,000 for a law school degree complain about $10 a month that can be completely avoided by simply abstaining from sex?

I don’t get it.

But that kind of logic is actually being defended by most of the mainstream media.

So why aren’t people complaining more about the high costs of a college education?

Here’s my guess. Those costs are only being paid by the small percentage of people who can actually pay them. The rest are getting a free ride through taxpayer subsidies of one kind of another – or at least very generous government-backed loans that can be paid off over time.

In other words, we’re all paying for college whether or not you choose to send your kids to these institutions.

This is a bad deal all around for the following reasons:

• Colleges and universities are not accountable to consumers for what they are teaching! With very few exceptions, the curriculum is determined by activists who have no appreciation for the dollar, hate America, hate God and worship the gods of multiculturalism, feminism and socialism.
• By insulating consumers from the inflated costs of college of what we euphemistically call “higher education,” we actually drive the costs up even higher for those with financial means. It’s like a vicious cycle of inflation.
• Without a free market at work, which responds to the laws of supply and demand, colleges and universities are even less responsive to consumers – and so it goes.

As a result, the places that were we formerly referred to as bastions of “academic freedom” have become gulags of political correctness run amok.

And that’s how Sandra Fluke came to the attention of the world.

Meanwhile, parents and young people are constantly told that you won’t go anywhere in this world without a college education.

That’s also a crock.

Some of the most gifted and talented and entrepreneurial people in the world today did not graduate from college. Many of them never even attended.

The situation is dire, though, for those who seek technical training in fields like medicine, science, mathematics or engineering. Those poor souls, who must pursue advanced degrees, also must face years of undergraduate and graduate school indoctrination in addition to the course work they actually need.

So what am I saying?

I’m saying there are better ways to spend upwards of $150,000 than to throw it away.

There are better ways to spend your time than sitting in classrooms being lectured by people with extremist political and social agendas.

If you’ve got kids or grandchildren considering this option, think again – especially if they are thinking about the 99 percent of colleges and universities participating in this scam.

Yes, there are some good schools out there – but precious few. Be discerning. Exercise good judgment before throwing good money after bad and sacrificing the mind and morals of the young people you love.

Guess what will happen if people heed this call? The prices will come down, and the teaching will get better.

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. He is the author or co-author of 13 books, including his latest, “The Tea Party Manifesto,” and his classic, “Taking America Back,” now in its third edition and 14th printing. Farah is the former editor of the legendary Sacramento Union and other major-market dailies.

Obama Energy Policy

By Jonah Goldberg, Syndicated columnist

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3244

Palm Beach Post, April 10, 2012

In his speech before the Newspapers Association of America/American Society of News Editors Wednesday, likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney accused the president of changing positions to get re-elected. For instance, Romney charged that, “As president,” Obama “delayed the development of our oil and coal and natural gas. Now, as candidate Obama, he says he favors an energy policy that adopts an all-of-the-above approach.”

That’s not exactly right. Yes, Obama still says he’s in favor of an all-of-the-above energy policy, but that hasn’t slowed him down in his pursuit of his very-few-of-the-above policy.

Back in 2008, then-Sen. Obama explained that under his energy plan, electricity prices would “necessarily skyrocket.” The explosion in costs wouldn’t be a bug of his plan either, but a feature.

The idea under so-called cap-and-trade is that if you tax fossil fuels, you will, over time, reduce the use of fossil fuels. It’s really basic economics. One wishes the president saw the logic of this proposition when it came to taxing business and investment as well. But, that’s a topic for a different column.

The president’s defenders have long complained that it’s unfair to dredge up this old sound bite, particularly in a climate of gas-price outrage, because Republicans — and a lot of Democrats — successfully prevented cap-and-trade from ever becoming law. Absent cap-and-trade, they claim, he is pursuing an all-of-the-above strategy. Coal! Oil! Natural gas! Solar! Wind! And, of course, algae, algae, algae! We’re doing it all, Obama says.

Just the other day, Vice President Joe Biden insisted that  “our energy policy’s the best it’s ever been.” Why? Because, he said, we’re doing “everything,” i.e.,  all of the above, to make energy affordable.

Except that’s simply not true. It’s not remotely true. A new rule from the Obama administration’s EPA will, according to an Associated Press analysis, force 32 mostly coal-fired power plants to shut down and threatens to close 36 others.

Moreover, the new “blackout” rule will effectively prevent the creation of any new coal-fired plants in America unless they adopt new technologies that will make it unprofitable to burn coal at all. So there’s that.

Now, I don’t have much affection for coal. I think mountaintop-removal mining should be phased out. But, you can’t really say you’re pursuing an all-of-the-above energy policy, or deny that you want energy prices to go up, and declare war on coal at the same time.

The inanity of all this is that the real impulse behind the war on coal is the belief that we need to stamp it out to reduce global warming. But, even if you believe the full suite of global-warning-crisis complaints, the policy is nuts because the net result will be to lower the price of coal and increase the amount we sell to places like China. Is it better if we burn the coal here, with cleaner emissions and more jobs for Americans, or there, with dirtier emissions?

But, forget coal. What about oil? The president killed the Keystone XL pipeline.

After the BP oil spill, his administration overruled its own panel of experts to implement a moratorium on offshore drilling (while suggesting it was the experts’ idea).

Obama wants to revoke “subsidies” for oil companies, which are in fact the same tax write-offs that any business gets. He takes credit for the increase in oil drilling on U.S. soil but leaves out that drilling on federal and American Indian lands has gone down under his administration.

He also forgets to mention that he opposes drilling off the mid-Atlantic coast, the Florida coast, the full Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or in the Rockies.

When those resources aren’t exploited, oil rigs don’t sit and rust, they go to other countries (often ones with fewer environmental safeguards) to find oil elsewhere — oil we will then buy.

Romney is right to suggest that Obama is saying things he doesn’t believe to get re-elected.  But, at least on energy, he’s not taking a new position. When you’re the incumbent president, you can say that your position is whatever you want. But, the truth of the matter isn’t determined by what you say, but by what you do. And judged against what he is doing, Obama’s all-of-the-above strategy isn’t a policy change, it’s just a lie.

Jonathan Goldberg’s e-mail address – JonahsColumn@aol.com

A Palestinian university lecturer taught during a recent Palestinian Authority TV program on religion that Moses, a Muslim, brought “the Muslims of the Children of Israel out of Egypt.” He refers to the subsequent Israeli conquest of the Land of Israel as the “first Palestinian liberation… of Palestine.” This conquest, he taught, was led not by Joshua, as the Bible tells, but by Saul (Talut) who is also said to have slayed Goliath.

While some of this is retelling of Islamic tradition, some of it is a distortion of even the Quran for political purposes. The Quran refers to the “Children of Israel” in their land in many chapters (e.g., Sura 5), but it never refers to them or anyone else as “Palestinians.” Likewise the Quran never refers to Israel’s conquest as a “Palestinian” conquest. The lecturer on PA TV, however, deviates from Islamic tradition, and calls the nation of Israel’s conquest of the Land of Israel “the first Palestinian liberation through armed struggle to liberate Palestine.”

This is another example, among many documented by Palestinian Media Watch, of PA historical revision for political purposes, in this case, rewriting even their own Islamic traditions.

The following is the interview with Dr. Omar Ja’ara, lecturer at Al-Najah University in Nablus and specialist in Israeli affairs, on PA TV religion program:

Just say, No

By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3233

“Israel Hayom” – Israel’s most read daily paper

April 6, 2012

Israeli leaders are able to repel President Obama’s relentless pressure to refrain from pre-empting Iran, Hizballah and Hamas; to freeze Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria; to retreat to the 1949 cease fire lines, including the repartitioning of Jerusalem; and to placate Mahmoud Abbas, while ignoring the PA hate-education, non-compliance and terrorism.

In contrast to the ironclad US public and Congressional support of Israel, negative presidential pressure has always been part of US-Israel relations.

Therefore, contemporary Israeli leaders should emulate Israeli Prime Ministers who served from 1948 (Ben Gurion) to 1992 (Shamir).  While they rejected – in most cases – presidential prescriptions for Israel’s national security, bilateral strategic cooperation surged unprecedentedly in spite off, and probably due to, their steadfastness.

The 1948-1992 Israeli leaders realized that presidential pressure came with the job; that saying, “No” was critical to Israel’s posture of deterrence; that rebuffing pressure would upgrade bilateral relations. In most cases, they did defy pressure.  They were not concerned with popularity and convenience, but with respect and conviction-driven vision. They did not alter strategy to elude pressure.

For example, in 1948, the US imposed a regional military embargo, while the British supplied arms to the Arabs, to force PM Ben Gurion to accept a UN Trusteeship instead of declaring independence. The US demanded to end “occupation” in the Negev, to internationalize Jerusalem and to absorb and compensate Palestinian refugees.

According to the first US Ambassador to Israel, James MacDonald (My Mission in Israel, Simon and Schuster, 1951, p. 49), “[Ben Gurion] warned President Truman and the Department of State that they would be gravely mistaken if they assumed that the threat would force Israel to yield on issues considered vital to its independence and security….”  Ben Gurion’s defiance forced the US to reassess its policy toward the Jewish State and recognize its strategic viability.

On May 26, 1967, President Johnson warned Prime Minister Eshkol against preempting Egypt and Syria: “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone.” Eshkol defied Johnson and Israel’s military devastated Egypt, which aimed to topple the pro-US regimes in the Persian Gulf. The US concluded that – irrespective of differences over the Arab-Israeli conflict – Israel was capable of pulling chestnuts out of the Middle East fire, for the US, without a single American boot on the ground.

On December 20, 1981, Prime Minister Begin summoned the US Ambassador to Israel and reproached him: “On June 7, we destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor near Baghdad…. You announced that you were punishing us [by imposing a military embargo and canceling military procurement in Israel]….  Not long afterwards – after a slaughter was committed against our people….we bombed the PLO headquarters in Beirut…. You suspended delivery of F-15 planes.  A week ago, the Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law.  Once again, you declared that you are punishing Israel…. Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic?

You have announced that you are suspending consultations on the implementation of the memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation….The people of Israel has lived 3,700 years without a memorandum of understanding with America, and it will continue to live for another 3,700 years….” (Lord Willing)

In 1982, Begin rejected the Reagan Plan for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.  However, an expanded memorandum of strategic cooperation was concluded in 1983. In 1991, then Secretary of Defense, Cheney, thanked Israel for bombing Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, which spared the US a nuclear confrontation with Iraq in 1991.

Prime Minister Shamir had his share of clashes with Presidents Reagan and (especially) G.H. Bush. However, a 1988 agreement significantly upgraded strategic cooperation, and a series of 1991-2 Congressional initiatives further enhanced bilateral relations, in spite of the White House.

On a rainy day, the US prefers a defiant ally over a “punching bag!”

US-Israel relations have not evolved around the Arab-Israeli conflict, but around shared-values and mutual regional and global threats and interests.  While rebuking Israel over the Arab-Israeli conflict, the US has recognized Israel’s unique contribution to countering-terrorism, missile defense, intelligence gathering, battle tactics, the upgrading of US defense and commercial industries (expanding employment and exports), deterring anti-US rogue Arab regimes and supporting weak pro-US Arab regimes.

Submission to Presidential pressure while ignoring the unique support of the Jewish State by the American people (71% according to a February, 2012 Gallup poll) and by the co-equal, co-determining Congress (about 75% and 80% in the House and Senate respectively), would amount to a slap in the face of US democracy, undermining Israel’s most vital interests.

In face of the clear and present Iranian threat, will Prime Minister Netanyahu learn from history by following in the footsteps of the 1948-1992 defiant statesmen, or will he subordinate Israel’s survival to White House pressure?

Shabbat Shalom, Happy Passover and Easter,

“Second Thought: US-Israel Initiative”

www.TheEttingerReport.com

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3219

Zionist Organization of America

New York City, NY

April 4, 2012

BY E-MAIL TO:

Dr. Richard L. McCormick

Office of the President

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

83 Somerset Street

New Brunswick, NJ  08901

Dear President McCormick:

We have written to you several times in the recent past to urge you to address the anti-Semitic harassment and intimidation that Aaron Marcus and other Jewish students at Rutgers University has been subjected to on campus.  Today, Mr. Marcus was targeted and victimized again.  We urge you, once again, to finally take action.

Today, a Rutgers student paper, The Daily Medium, published a disgustingly offensive opinion piece entitled “What About the Good Things Hitler Did?”  (See http://issuu.com/rutgersmedium/docs/dailymedium2012print?mode=window&pageNumber=8.)

The Medium falsely represented that the piece was authored by Aaron Marcus.  The Medium went so far as to publish Mr. Marcus’ name and photo next to the piece.  To further encourage readers to believe that this was Mr. Marcus’ opinion piece, the Medium also deliberately used the same by-line – “Marcus My Words” – that Mr. Marcus uses when his regular columns are published in the Rutgers student paper, The Daily Targum.

Here is a sample of what the Medium falsely and offensively attributed to Mr. Marcus.  The article begins as follows:

“I will be the first to admit that I am a proud Jew who supports the founding of Israel, the safety and protection of its people, and the rights of Jews everywhere to a comfortable state of living without fear of bigotry and persecution.”

The Medium then goes on to falsely attribute to Mr. Marcus the outrageous notion that “history has given the Third Reich and its leaders a bad rap,” and that there are many “good things” that Hitler has supposedly done, including overseeing the creation of the Volkswagen and helping to create the Autobahn.

The Medium further published that according to Mr. Marcus, the “more important” accomplishment of Hitler’s atrocities against the Jewish people is the establishment of the State of Israel:

The surviving members of the Jewish faith were inspired by these ‘atrocities’ to move to Palestine and establish the homeland of the Jewish People, an event which I think would not have happened without the help of ol’ Adolf.

. . . So the next time you are driving in a car, watching the movie ‘Armageddon’ or walking past Hillel, be sure to give Hitler a little thanks. I know I will.”

The Medium’s actions in publishing this piece and attributing it to Aaron Marcus, even going so far as to use his photo, is appalling, defamatory, and anti-Semitic.  The students involved in the Medium deliberately and specifically targeted a student who is known on campus to be Jewish and a supporter of Israel.

We recognize that the Medium is supposed to be a satirical paper.  But there are still boundaries that should not be crossed, particularly when a student is singled out, named, pictured, and publicly mocked.  The students at the Medium used Mr. Marcus in an abusive and insulting way to make light of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed against the Jewish people by a genocidal maniac.  These students surely knew that they would hurt Mr. Marcus, as well as other members of the Rutgers community.

As you are well-aware, this is not the first time that Mr. Marcus has been targeted and made the victim of anti-Semitic attacks at Rutgers.  Mr. Marcus’ life was threatened by students on Facebook.  Rutgers barely responded, conducting little if any investigation into the incident, failing to communicate with Mr. Marcus after he reported the incident, and giving the student who threatened to silence Mr. Marcus with a crowbar a slap on the wrist – simply a warning, when Rutgers’ own policies consider physical threats to be so serious that they justify suspension or even expulsion.  Apparently, a physical threat against a Jewish student is subject to a different and lesser standard at Rutgers.

Mr. Marcus was also physically threatened, bullied and subjected to anti-Semitic name-calling on Facebook by a university official – Shehnaz Abdeljaber, the Outreach Coordinator for the Rutgers Middle East Studies Center.  Ms. Abdeljaber even tried to incite others against Mr. Marcus, encouraging them to visit a hate page about him.  Rutgers never investigated these attacks that she perpetrated.  Shockingly, Ms. Abdeljaber is still, according to the university Web site, the Outreach Coordinator for the Middle East Studies Center – a place that most Jewish students reportedly and understandably do not feel welcome.

We strongly believe that Rutgers’ failure to respond appropriately to all these prior incidents against Mr. Marcus is what led to the attack against him today.  The university’s inaction when Mr. Marcus — and other Jewish students – have been targeted and discriminated against has sent a dangerous and unacceptable message to the Rutgers community:  That Jewish students like Aaron Marcus are fair game at Rutgers. They can be targeted, threatened, maligned and discriminated against, and Rutgers will not only tolerate the behavior but justify it as protected speech.

We hold Rutgers responsible for what Mr. Marcus suffered today and demand that you finally take action.  It is your moral duty as the leader of the university to stand up for the safety and well-being of Mr. Marcus and other Jewish students who have been unacceptably victimized on the campus.

Is Rutgers waiting for the day when these verbal threats and attacks escalate into actual physical attacks on Jewish students?  Please be advised that if any physical harm comes to Mr. Marcus or any other Jewish student, we will hold Rutgers responsible.

You must call for a full investigation into the Medium’s actions and hold the students involved in the publication responsible for harassing a Jewish student and creating a hostile environment for him, in violation of the Code of Conduct.

You must issue a forceful and public written condemnation of what the Medium did to Mr. Marcus, and demand that the Medium immediately issue a written apology to Mr. Marcus, which must be published in a prominent place in the next edition of the paper.  Your statement should also note that the university is undertaking a full investigation into the Medium’s actions and that violators of the Code will be disciplined.

We believe that an apology to Mr. Marcus is also due from the university administration.  Rutgers’ tolerance of the harassment and intimidation that Mr. Marcus has already suffered – not only from other students but also from a university employee – helped lead to this latest anti-Semitic attack against him.

As you know, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is currently investigating whether Rutgers violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by failing to respond appropriately to the anti-Semitic harassment and intimidation of Mr. Marcus, and to the discrimination that Jewish students were subjected to at an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel event on January 29, 2011. We are copying this letter to the investigators at the Office for Civil Rights.  They should be aware that Jewish students are still suffering the consequences of Rutgers’ inaction in the face of campus anti-Semitism.

We are also copying this letter to state and federal officials and leaders in New Jersey.  They would certainly want to know that at New Jersey’s state university supported by taxpayer money, Jewish students continue to be viciously targeted and attacked, and that to date, university leaders have not effectively responded.

We await your immediate response as to how you will be handling this appalling incident.

Very truly yours,

Morton A. Klein, President, Zionist Organization of America

Susan B. Tuchman, Esq., Director, Center for Law and Justice

The Twilight of the Volt

The Weekly Standard, MAR 19, 2012

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3180

BY THE SCRAPBOOK     

In July 2010, President Obama paid a visit to a General Motors plant in Hamtramck, Michigan, and gave a speech making the case for a revitalized American auto industry. To paraphrase the former governor of Alaska, how’d that hopey-changey stuff work out for Hamtramck?

That December, the New York Times reported that city leaders were pushing for Hamtramck to file for Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy. Aside from the failing economy, 60 percent of the city’s general operating budget went to pay for the salaries and pensions of just the cops and firefighters. The city tried to renegotiate employee contracts, but the union reps were intransigent. “They kind of have the Cadillac plan,” Hamtramck’s city manager told the Times, “and we’d kind of like the Chevy.”

Speaking of Chevrolet, shortly before the Times was reporting on the city’s desire to file for bankruptcy, the first federally subsidized, electric-powered Chevy Volts started rolling off the assembly line at a GM plant in, you guessed it, Hamtramck. Chevy has actually produced an ad called “Morning in Hamtramck” that scans the worn scenery of the town to a plaintive guitar soundtrack. The narrator solemnly intones: “For our town. For our country. For our future. This isn’t just the car we wanted to build; it’s the car America had to build.”

Obama recently declared he wanted to buy a Volt when he left office, but at this rate, it’s going to be a used one. GM announced on March 1 that they’re suspending production of the Volt in Hamtramck — for the third time — leaving 1,300 people temporarily out of work. Despite selling only 7,671 Volts last year, GM had planned to expand production to 60,000 this year. Something tells us that won’t happen. Forget “Morning in Hamtramck.” Truth About Cars editor Edward Niedermeyer has declared recent events to be the “Twilight of the Volt,” and produced a handy graph last week showing that production of the Volt thus far has been nearly twice its sales.

And so, Hamtramck, Michigan, has become a nearly perfect metaphor for Obama’s America. The city’s bankruptcy claim has been denied by the state, so they’re stuck overpaying unionized city employees with money they don’t have. And the taxpayers don’t have any money because the auto plant in town is laying people off en masse. It was manufacturing “the car America had to build” regardless of whether Americans wanted to buy it.

Shockingly, few besides the president have wanted a $40,000 electric car that sometimes catches on fire, in spite of the fact that each new Volt comes with a $7,500 tax credit. (Who benefits from the credit? Rich liberals, mainly. The average annual income of America’s Volt owners is $170,000.) Of course, Chevy doubled down on the Volt because the eco-crazy, energy-prices-must-skyrocket Obama administration all but dictated that GM continue to build an electric car in exchange for receiving taxpayer money in the auto bailout, the same bailout that ended up being little more than a temporary payoff to the unions whose contracts helped bankrupt GM in the first place.

Naturally, as Volt workers were being laid off, the president announced that he wants to raise the electric car tax credit to $10,000, earmark $1 billion for cities to build infrastructure for electric cars, and spend another $650 million for electric car research. Nothing like throwing good money after bad, especially when it’s everybody else’s money.

If only some crack engineer could just develop a car that runs on government failure and union arrogance, maybe things in Hamtramck — and the rest of the country — would finally start to look up.

Passover – An Inalienable American Value

By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3171

Published in “Israel Hayom” (Most read daily newspaper in Israel)

March 30, 2012

Passover, and especially the legacy of Moses and the Exodus, has been part of the American story since the seventeenth century, inspiring the American pursuit of liberty, justice and morality.

The special role played by Passover – and the Bible – in shaping the American state of mind constitutes the foundation of the unique relations between the American People and the Jewish State. As important as are the current mutual threats and interests between the US and Israel, the bedrock of the unbreakable US-Israel alliance are permanent values, principles and legacies, such as Passover.

In 1620 and 1630, William Bradford and John Winthrop delivered sermons on the “Mayflower” and “Arbella,” referring to the deliverance from “modern day Egypt and Pharaoh,” to “the crossing of the modern day Red Sea” and to New Zion/Canaan as the destination of the Pilgrims on board.

In 1776, Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense (which cemented public support for the revolution), referred to King George as the “hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh.”  Upon declaration of independence, Benjamin Franklin, the most secular Founding Father, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second third American Presidents, proposed a Passover theme for the official US seal: the Pillar of Fire leading Moses and the Israelites through the Red Sea, while Pharaoh’s chariots drown in the Sea. The inscription on the seal was supposed to be: “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God,” framing the rebellion against the British monarchy as principle-driven. The lessons of the Jewish deliverance from Egyptian bondage reverberated thunderously among the Rebels, who considered the thirteen colonies to be “the modern day Twelve Tribes.”

The 19^th century Abolitionists, and the Civil Rights movement from the 1940s to the 1970s, were inspired by the ethos of the Exodus and by the Bible’s opposition to slavery. In the 1830s, the Liberty Bell, an icon of American independence, was adopted by the Abolitionists, due to its Exodus-inspired inscription: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10).  Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), and her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe (“The Little Rabbi”) were scholars of the Bible and the Exodus.  Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery in 1849 and freed Black slaves on the Underground Railroad, earned the name “Moses.” The 1879/80 Black slaves who ran away to Kansas were called “the Exodusters.”  The most famous spiritual, “Go Down, Moses” was considered the National Anthem of Black slaves.

In 1865, following the murder of President Lincoln, most eulogies compared him to Moses.  Just like Moses, Lincoln liberated slaves, but was stopped short of the Promised Land. France paid tribute to the martyred Lincoln by erecting the Statue of Liberty, featuring rays of sun and a tablet, just like the glaring Moses descending from Mount Sinai with the Two Tablets of the Ten Commandments.

In 1954, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. compared the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision to desegregate public schools to the parting of the Red Sea.  In 1964, upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King proclaimed: “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself. The Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh’s court centuries ago and cried, ‘Let my people go.’”

President Reagan mentioned (Reagan at Westminster, 2010) Exodus as the first incident in a long line of Western resistance to tyranny: “Since the exodus from Egypt, historians have written of those who sacrificed and struggled for freedom – the stand at Thermopylae, the revolt of Spartacus, the storming of the Bastille, the Warsaw uprising in World War II.”

In July, 2003, President Bush stated, in Senegal, “In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt, and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom.”

In March, 2007, President Obama said in Selma, Alabama that the civil rights pioneers were the “Moses generation” and he was part of the “Joshua generation” that would “find our way across the river.”

(What Chutzpa! More confirmation of Obama’s classic narcissism and grandiose posturing) jsk

In 2012, the statue of Moses stares at the Speaker of the House, another statue of Moses towers above the seats of the Supreme Court Justices, a Ten Commandment monument sits on the ground of the Texas State Capitol and a similar monument will be shortly erected on the ground of the Oklahoma State Capitol.

In 2012, the leader of the Free World and its sole soul ally in the Mid-East, Israel, are facing the most lethal threat to liberty since 1945 – conventional and non-conventional Islamic terrorism. Adherence to the legacy of Passover, marshaling the conviction-driven leadership of Moses, and demonstrating the Joshua and Caleb courage and defiance of odds, will once again facilitate the victory of liberty over tyranny.
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: US-Israel Initiative”

Luv it! Start comment at bottom.

On Apr 1, 2012, at 12:12 PM, cody flecker wrote:

Actually Uriah P Levy was the first Commodore in the US Navy serving in the war of 1812. His nephew was Jefferson Monroe Levy, and it was he who bought the run down home and estate of Thomas Jefferson (Monticello) at an auction. Jefferson Monroe Levy while not a religious Jew was at best an observant Jew. He was one of the founders of the American Jewish Congress, after the pogroms started in Russia in the latter part of the 19th century. The Admiral that you are referring to was Admiral Rickover who was the father of the modern nuclear fleet.

Regards,

Cody Flecker

Thanks. How about Benjamin Cardoza, Supreme Court Justice (Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (May 24, 1870 – July 9, 1938) was a well-known American lawyer and associate Supreme Court Justice) actually the first Hispanic  on the Court well ahead of the present Left Wing B.  that erroneously assumed that honor) and of course,

Haym Solomon was the guy that financed George Washington through the American Revolution. I am sure there are tens, if not hundreds more of Jews in positions of American history and patriotism.

There was a navy admiral during WWII. I don’t think it was Nimitz but someone that well known. I think he was the promoter and developer of the American Submarine fleet.

Jerry

On Apr 1, 2012, at 10:22 AM, cody flecker wrote:

Your article failed to mention that Judah P Benjamin was the highest elected Jew in the Confederacy 100 years before those honors were again bestowed upon a Jew (Henry Kissinger)