Vocal Minority

How's That Religion of Peace Doing These Days?

From Eileen Toplansky at American Thinker.

Only a few days remain until 2011, and still there is no end to Islamic hatred in the world. ...

WikiLeaked: John Kerry calls for Israel to cede Golan Heights and East Jerusalem

Our friends the Democrats. By Josh Rogin at The Cable.

Liberal Anti-Semitism: Some "Cartoonist" 's Idea of Humor

Some friend of a Facebook friend posted this and thought it was funny - and true. So did many other people who commented on it. Too bad I couldn't comment (since it wasn't a direct friend.)

Oh, how do I know this cartoon (whose drawer's initials I admittedly can't make out) is from a left-winger?

Believe me. I know.

Rhetoric vs. Reality: Obama's Jakarta Dreamin'

Rhetoric:

“…while my stepfather, like most Indonesians, was raised a Muslim, he firmly believed that all religions were worthy of respect…in this way he reflected the spirit of religious tolerance that is enshrined in Indonesia’s Constitution, and that remains one of this country’s defining and inspiring characteristics.”

“…Across an archipelago that contains some of God’s most beautiful creations, islands rising above an ocean named for peace, people choose to worship God as they please. Islam flourishes, but so do other faiths.”

- Barack Obama, Jakarta, Indonesia, Nov. 9, 2010

Reality:

- There are currently an estimated twenty Jews living in Indonesia.
- Judaism is not one of the six recognized religions of the Indonesian government.
- Israelis are not allowed to enter the country.

The Mosque by Ground Zero and American Jews: Two Rabbis, Two Opinions

I meant to post this weeks ago. Some people might be wondering how the Jewish community in particular is responding to the mosque planning to be built by Ground Zero. Below are two statements delivered by two rabbis with completely different points of view.

The first one, in favor of the mosque, is by Union for Reform Judaism president Eric Yoffie. In the interest of full disclosure, I know Rabbi Yoffie personally, and I think he is aware by now that I am completely in disagreement with most of the Reform movement’s official political positions, this one included (which is why I left the movement not too long ago). Incidentally, if you have the time, I recommend linking to the original URJ site and reading the posted comments to this piece.

Silence is not an Option: Jews Ought to Support Construction of Muslim Community Center
September 14, 2010
By Rabbi Eric Yoffie

The plan to build a community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan has ignited a storm of controversy that has engulfed not only the religious world but all of America. As we gather here a few days after the 9th anniversary of 9/11, I would like to share with you a few thoughts about what this issue means to us as Reform Jews.

An interesting question for me from the very beginning of the crisis has been: Where are our people? Polls indicate that 70% of Americans oppose the building of the mosque at the current site. (I have no numbers on Canadians.) A poll of New Yorkers indicates that 40% of Jews in this city oppose the mosque.

On the one hand, many of our rabbis have spoken eloquently on this subject in their Rosh Hashanah sermons; others, I am certain, will address the issue on Yom Kippur. Overwhelmingly, these sermons have been supportive of the Cordoba House project. On the other hand, many of you in this room and other Reform leaders as well have told me that your fellow congregants are not necessarily in favor of building the mosque at the current site. It has been suggested to me that if a secret ballot were conducted in your synagogues, as many as half - if not more - of the members might oppose the mosque. You have confirmed that feelings run very deep on this issue, and you have suggested the Reform sentiment might be more divided than some suppose.

With these divisions in mind, let us see if we can move away from the heated emotions that have characterized the debate and let us analyze closely the various arguments being put forward.

When this issue exploded in the press, the Union convened two conference calls with the rabbis and presidents of our congregations in New York City and the surrounding area. We thought that we had fairly clear policy, but when local concerns are involved, it is always best to consult, if possible, with local leaders. A reasonably strong consensus emerged from those calls, expressing the view that this was an issue of religious freedom and it required our support. We issued a statement supporting the building of the community center/mosque at the current site, and noting that our commitment to religious freedom made such support essential.

It is natural that religious freedom should be our central concern. Jews have been denied religious freedom as we now understand it for most of our history. In the modern period, we have struggled to win that freedom in country after country. America was different because the free exercise of religion is guaranteed by the constitution, and barring a compelling state interest, it cannot be denied to Jews or to anyone else. Nonetheless, even here our rights have not come without struggle.

After World War II, when Jews moved out of urban areas, suburb after suburb attempted to prevent Jews from building synagogues within their borders. Appeals were made to zoning laws and land use laws as a means of keeping Jews out. But invoking constitutional guarantees, we fought these restrictions, and virtually everywhere, we won.

So of course we care deeply about religious freedom and the right of religious groups to build congregations in the places of their choosing. We know what religious freedom is about, and we do not deny others the rights that we have demanded for ourselves.

At this point, virtually everyone - even most of the opponents of the mosque - has conceded the constitutional argument. Yes, they acknowledge, the sponsors of the mosque have a legal right to build. The argument they make instead is that the sponsors of the community center/mosque have the right to build, but should not exercise that right.

Two primary reasons are given for this claim. The first is the need to be sensitive to the concerns of the victims’ families. The problem, of course, is that most of the families support the building of the mosque. Mayor Bloomberg of New York suggests they are virtually unanimous in that support.

But absent precise data, let us assume that some do not support it. We do not want to challenge these family members. We do not want to debate them. We do not want to do anything to intensify their pain. The ADL says they are entitled to their prejudices, and perhaps they are.

Nonetheless, while their personal pain needs to be understood and respected, they are not entitled to determine public policy. Public policy needs to be determined by what is legal and what is right, and by that alone. We need to say to the families: We can sympathize with your anger and understand your pain, but this is not a decision that you should make.

The second reason given for not building on the current site, even if the right to do so exists, is that Ground Zero is hallowed ground.

This is true, it seems to me. Ground Zero is a mass grave, the site of an atrocity - there is a sense in which it is a sacred place, for Americans and for others. One can reasonably argue that anything that detracts from the memory and the message of the site is out of place there, and that a place of worship - any place of worship - might do that.

With this in mind, the analogy that we have heard most frequently is the Auschwitz analogy. A convent of Carmelite nuns was planned for Auschwitz - in that area of the camp where most of those exterminated were not Jews. Nonetheless, Pope John Paul understood that the presence of a convent anywhere in Auschwitz would be offensive to Jews, and he instructed the nuns to move to a site outside the grounds. From this, many have concluded that the Cordoba House should be moved as well.

Yet in fact the lesson is exactly the opposite. The convent was initially to be on the grounds of Auschwitz, while the Cordoba House was never to be located at Ground Zero. The convent was moved off the grounds, but nearby; the mosque is near Ground Zero but not on the site. Just as there is nothing inappropriate about the convent being located close to Auschwitz, so there is nothing inappropriate about the community center/mosque being located close to Ground Zero. Some experts have suggested that the convent is now closer to Auschwitz than the Cordoba House will be to Ground Zero, but I have been unable to verify exact distances. Nonetheless, let me say this very bluntly: The Auschwitz example is being misused to appeal to the deep emotions that Jews appropriately have about the Holocaust in order to lead them to a mistaken conclusion about the mosque.

And the other problem with the hallowed ground argument is this: It is being made by those who don’t understand the Twin Towers area and don’t understand New York. We are talking about one of the busiest and most congested urban areas in the country - one in which this particular building would not normally attract any interest at all. It is two and a half blocks from Ground Zero and might as well be 100 miles from Ground Zero. As others have pointed out, retail stores, strip joints, office buildings, and other places of worship are to be found there, all part of the general frenzy that is downtown New York. That is why as this center has been discussed for the last year all parties - right, left, and center - were supportive and found no reason to oppose it.

In short, I find nothing compelling about those who argue that the right to build this mosque should not be exercised by those who are planning it. And in my view, none of these arguments makes any sense unless you hold that all Muslims are somehow to be held responsible for the actions of a few. That is really the claim here, acknowledged or not.

And by the way, I am not one who says that the perpetrators of the 9/11 atrocity were men who happened to be Muslims. This is too simple. They were adherents of a radical Muslim group; their ideas were shaped and their actions motivated by their understanding of Islam. We oppose their ideas, just as we oppose religious extremism in all forms, and we are committed to combating them.

But the point is that we do not tar all Muslims with the brush of extremism because extremist strands of Islam exist in their midst. To do so is to engage in the kind of stereotyping that has plagued us as Jews throughout our history, and that we reject, categorically and unequivocally.

There are several other points that need to be clarified.

It has been suggested in many circles that the battle over the mosque is simply another round in the culture wars between liberals and conservatives - and in these wars Reform Jews should be reluctant to reflexively side with one camp or the other. It is obviously true that more liberals than conservatives support Cordoba House, but that is far from the whole story. Mayor Bloomberg supports the mosque and he is an independent. Governor Christie of New Jersey supports the mosque and he is a conservative Republican. Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian, said the following: “The justification to ban the mosque is no more rational than banning a soccer field in the same place because all the suicide bombers loved to play soccer.” Josh Barro, writing in the on-line edition of the conservative magazine National Review, argues the conservative case for the mosque. Conservatives, he said, believe that private property should be used as the owners see fit; they also believe that using arcane land use laws to oppose construction for private purposes is a misuse of government prerogatives. According to Barro, for conservatives “the proper question is not ‘Why here?’ but ‘Why not here’?”

And what of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf?

While I do not know him personally, he has worked with our Commission on Interreligious Affairs and with the RAC. He has addressed groups of Reform rabbis. He is a Sufi and a moderate by any definition. What is happening now is that many are searching through his 30-year activist history to find things he has said that could discredit him. And let me say clearly: he has said things that I oppose and find offensive. But if he is not a fitting partner for dialogue then there are no such partners. And I am distressed by those in the Jewish community who continue to believe that we should only talk to and approve for dialogue those who agree with us on every point and who have never made a problematic statement about Judaism or Israel. We don’t need dialogue with those people. We need it with people like Imam Rauf, who are reasonable, sensible, and courageous - even though, to be sure, we often don’t agree.

Finally, many of you have asked me about the role of ADL in this controversy.

ADL is an important organization that is vital to our future - an organization that we need to fight for Jewish rights and to oppose discrimination in all forms, against us and against others. Abe Foxman is an extraordinary and dedicated Jewish public servant, who has served our community with great distinction and to whom we are appropriately grateful. To suggest that ADL is somehow anti-Islam in its outlook is absurd.

But ADL made a very serious error here. At precisely the moment when the American people were teetering, torn between the clamoring voices of bigotry and the sensible voices of calm and reason, ADL entered the argument, urging understanding for those with prejudice in their hearts. It was surely not intentional, but the effect of their statement was to open the floodgates and lend weight and legitimacy to those whose primary concern was not Ground Zero or the victims’ families but, instead, inciting hatred against American Muslims. With all of its experience in the politics and the dynamics of bigotry, ADL should have seen this coming.

This phenomenon, in fact, is the most troubling aspect of the crisis: Most of what we’ve witnessed in recent weeks has nothing whatever to do with location-specific issues related to the World Trade Center site. Most of what we’ve witnessed is an orgy of hatred against Muslims and a concerted effort to exclude a group of our fellow citizens from our neighborhoods and to limit their ability to worship as they choose in America. Don’t misunderstand me: I am not suggesting in any way that everyone who is uncomfortable about the mosque is a bigot; that is surely not the case, and that is why I have responded to the arguments, one by one. But when we listen to the public debate, it is too often true that the voices of bigotry are setting the tone.

As Reform Jews, we need to oppose this bigotry with all of our might. We need to affirm that we will not tolerate efforts to keep Muslims out of our neighborhoods - because we know better than anyone that everywhere is somebody’s neighborhood. If we were silent here, a century of work for interfaith relations would be for naught. If we were silent here, we would be casting aside those fundamental values of tolerance, compassion, understanding, and religious freedom that we have affirmed again and again from our earliest days as Reform Jews.

I am proud to say, however, that we in the Reform Movement have not been silent, and our rabbis and congregations have not been silent. I am proud as well that most of the Jewish community has not been silent either. As Jews, we sympathize with the victims of terror, and we fight religious fanaticism wherever it is found, but we remember, now and always, both the lessons of our own history and what this great country is all about.

The second piece, against the mosque, is a sermon delivered by a rabbi in Atlanta. It has been making the email rounds; at least two people, on both sides of the political aisle, have emailed it to me. I do not know Rabbi Shalom Lewis, but I am with him 100%.

EHR KUMT
First Day of Rosh Hashanah 2010

Many years ago a Chasid used to travel from shtetl to shtetl selling holy books. On one occasion he came to a wealthy land owner and asked if he would like to purchase a book of Torah teachings. The banker agreed and not only purchased the book, but paid for it with a hundred ruble note. He then began to chat with the Chassid and offered him a cigar, taking one also for himself. The Chassid noticed that the banker proceeded to rip a page from the holy book he had just bought and holding it to the open flame on the stove, used the page to light his cigar. The Chassid said not a word but simply drew out from his pocket the 100 ruble note he had just received from the banker, held it over the stove as well and used it to light his cigar.

This simple, little tale reflects a profound divergence of values. Our sympathy clearly and instinctively is not with the banker but with the pious Chassid. None of us would come to the defense of the banker. None of us would claim moral supremacy for the banker. None of us would justify his boorish deed. As the sages of the Talmud would say – “Pshita – It is so obvious.” Sadly though our planet is immersed in perversity where morality is not so manifest – where the book burner is a hero and the pious one, a villain.

I thought long and I thought hard on whether to deliver the sermon I am about to share. We all wish to bounce happily out of shul on the High Holidays, filled with warm fuzzies, ready to gobble up our brisket, our honey cakes and our kugel. We want to be shaken and stirred – but not too much. We want to be guilt-schlepped – but not too much. We want to be provoked but not too much. We want to be transformed but not too much.

I get it, but as a rabbi I have a compelling obligation, a responsibility to articulate what is in my heart and what I passionately believe must be said and must be heard. And so, I am guided not by what is easy to say but by what is painful to express. I am guided not by the frivolous but by the serious. I am guided not by delicacy but by urgency.

We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants. We didn’t see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors. We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people. We did not apologize for Dresden, nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein, nor for D-Day.

Evil – ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake. It was not just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna, not just Casablanca. It was the entire planet. Read history and be shocked at how frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every continent.

Not all Germans were Nazis – most were decent, most were revolted by the Third Reich, most were good citizens hoisting a beer, earning a living and tucking in their children at night. But, too many looked away, too many cried out in lame defense – I didn’t know.” Too many were silent. Guilt absolutely falls upon those who committed the atrocities, but responsibility and guilt falls upon those who did nothing as well. Fault was not just with the goose steppers but with those who pulled the curtains shut, said and did nothing.

In WWII we won because we got it. We understood who the enemy was and we knew that the end had to be unconditional and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the Nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe. We built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win….. to rid the world of malevolence.

We are at war… yet too many stubbornly and foolishly don’t put the pieces together and refuse to identify the evil doers. We are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct.

Let me mince no words in saying that from Fort Hood to Bali, from Times Square to London, from Madrid to Mumbai, from 9/11 to Gaza, the murderers, the barbarians are radical Islamists.

To camouflage their identity is sedition. To excuse their deeds is contemptible. To mask their intentions is unconscionable.

A few years ago I visited Lithuania on a Jewish genealogical tour. It was a stunning journey and a very personal, spiritual pilgrimage. When we visited Kovno we davened Maariv at the only remaining shul in the city. Before the war there were thirty-seven shuls for 38,000 Jews. Now only one, a shrinking, gray congregation. We made minyon for the handful of aged worshippers in the Choral Synagogue, a once majestic, jewel in Kovno.

After my return home I visited Cherry Hill for Shabbos. At the oneg an elderly family friend, Joe Magun, came over to me.

“Shalom,” he said. “Your abba told me you just came back from Lithuania.” “Yes,” I replied. “It was quite a powerful experience.” “Did you visit the Choral Synagogue in Kovno? The one with the big arch in the courtyard?” “Yes, I did. In fact, we helped them make minyon.” His eyes opened wide in joy at our shared memory. For a moment he gazed into the distance and then, he returned. “Shalom, I grew up only a few feet away from the arch. The Choral Synagogue was where I davened as a child.”

He paused for a moment and once again was lost in the past. His smile faded. Pain filled his wrinkled face. “I remember one Shabbos in 1938 when Vladimir Jabotinsky came to the shul” (Jabotinsky was Menachim Begin’s mentor – he was a fiery orator, an unflinching Zionist radical, whose politics were to the far right.) Joe continued “When Jabotinsky came, he delivered the drash on Shabbos morning and I can still hear his words burning in my ears. He climbed up to the shtender, stared at us from the bima, glared at us with eyes full of fire and cried out. ‘EHR KUMT. YIDN FARLAWST AYER SHTETL – He’s coming. Jews abandon your city.’ ”

We thought we were safe in Lithuania from the Nazis, from Hitler. We had lived there, thrived for a thousand years but Jabotinsky was right -- his warning prophetic. We got out but most did not.”

We are not in Lithuania. It is not the 1930s. There is no Luftwaffe overhead. No U-boats off the coast of long Island. No Panzer divisions on our borders. But make no mistake; we are under attack – our values, our tolerance, our freedom, our virtue, our land.

Now before some folks roll their eyes and glance at their watches let me state emphatically, unmistakably – I have no pathology of hate, nor am I a manic Paul Revere, galloping through the countryside. I am not a pessimist, nor prone to panic attacks. I am a lover of humanity, all humanity. Whether they worship in a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a temple or don’t worship at all. I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated.

Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said sadly and reluctantly that there are unwitting, co-conspirators who strengthen the hands of the evil doers. Let me state that the overwhelming number of Muslims are good Muslims, fine human beings who want nothing more than a Jeep Cherokee in their driveway, a flat screen TV on their wall and a good education for their children, but these good Muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part they have avoided. The Kulturkampf is not only external but internal as well. The good Muslims must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in the UN Plaza, on the Champs Elysee, in Mecca condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent. Thus far, they have not. The good Muslims must place ads in the NY Times. They must buy time on network TV, on cable stations, in the Jerusalem Post, in Le Monde, in Al Watan, on Al Jazeena condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent – thus far, they have not. Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it.

Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil.

I recall a conversation with my father shortly before he died that helped me understand how perilous and how broken is our world; that we are living on the narrow seam of civilization and moral oblivion. Knowing he had little time left he shared the following – “Shal. I am ready to leave this earth. Sure I’d like to live a little longer, see a few more sunrises, but truthfully, I’ve had it. I’m done. Finished. I hope the Good Lord takes me soon because I am unable to live in this world knowing what it has become.”

This startling admission of moral exhaustion from a man who witnessed and lived through the Depression, the Holocaust, WWII, Communist Triumphalism, McCarthyism, Strontium 90 and polio. – Yet his twilight observation was – “The worst is yet to come.” And he wanted out.

I share my father’s angst and fear that too many do not see the authentic, existential threat we face nor confront the source of our peril. We must wake up and smell the hookah.

“Lighten up, Lewis. Take a chill pill, some of you are quietly thinking. You’re sounding like Glen Beck. It’s not that bad. It’s not that real.” But I am here to tell you – “It is.” Ask the member of our shul whose sister was vaporized in the Twin Towers and identified finally by her charred teeth, if this is real or not. Ask the members of our shul who fled a bus in downtown Paris, fearing for their safety from a gang of Muslim thugs, if this is an exaggeration. Ask the member of our shul whose son tracks Arab terrorist infiltrators who target – pizza parlors, nursery schools, Pesach seders, city buses and play grounds, if this is dramatic, paranoid hyperbole.

Ask them, ask all of them – ask the American GI’s we sit next to on planes who are here for a brief respite while we fly off on our Delta vacation package. Ask them if it’s bad. Ask them if it’s real.

Did anyone imagine in the 1920’s what Europe would look like in the 1940’s. Did anyone presume to know in the coffee houses of Berlin or in the opera halls of Vienna that genocide would soon become the celebrated culture? Did anyone think that a goofy-looking painter named Shickelgruber would go from the beer halls of Munich and jail, to the Reichstag as Feuhrer in less than a decade? Did Jews pack their bags and leave Warsaw, Vilna, Athens, Paris, Bialystok, Minsk, knowing that soon their new address would be Treblinka, Sobibor, Dachau and Auschwitz?

The sages teach – “Aizehu chacham – haroeh et hanolad – Who is a wise person – he who sees into the future.” We dare not wallow in complacency, in a misguided tolerance and naïve sense of security.

We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth at the waters of Babylon weeping. We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul. We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders. Radical Islam is the scourge and this must be cried out from every mountain top. From sea to shining sea, we must stand tall, prideful of our stunning decency and moral resilience. Immediately after 9/11 how many mosques were destroyed in America? None. After 9/11, how many Muslims were killed in America? None. After 9/11, how many anti-Muslim rallies were held in America? None. And yet, we apologize. We grovel. We beg forgiveness.

The mystifying litany of our foolishness continues. Should there be a shul in Hebron on the site where Baruch Goldstein gunned down twenty-seven Arabs at noonday prayers? Should there be a museum praising the U.S. Calvary on the site of Wounded Knee? Should there be a German cultural center in Auschwitz? Should a church be built in the Syrian town of Ma’arra where Crusaders slaughtered over 100,000 Muslims? Should there be a thirteen story mosque and Islamic Center only a few steps from Ground Zero?

Despite all the rhetoric, the essence of the matter can be distilled quite easily. The Muslim community has the absolute, constitutional right to build their building wherever they wish. I don’t buy the argument – “When we can build a church or a synagogue in Mecca they can build a mosque here.” America is greater than Saudi Arabia. And New York is greater than Mecca. Democracy and freedom must prevail.

Can they build? Certainly. May they build? Certainly. But should they build at that site? No -- but that decision must come from them, not from us. Sensitivity, compassion cannot be measured in feet or yards or in blocks. One either feels the pain of others and cares, or does not.

If those behind this project are good, peace-loving, sincere, tolerant Muslims, as they claim, then they should know better, rip up the zoning permits and build elsewhere.

Believe it or not, I am a dues-paying, card carrying member of the ACLU, yet from start of finish, I find this sorry episode disturbing to say the least.

William Burroughs, the novelist and poet, in a wry moment wrote – “After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space would say – “I want to see the manager.”

Let us understand that the radical Islamist assaults all over the globe are but skirmishes, fire fights, and vicious decoys. Christ and the anti-Christ. Gog U’Magog. The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness; the bloody collision between civilization and depravity is on the border between Lebanon and Israel. It is on the Gaza Coast and in the Judean Hills of the West Bank. It is on the sandy beaches of Tel Aviv and on the cobblestoned mall of Ben Yehuda Street. It is in the underground schools of Sderot and on the bullet-proofed inner-city buses. It is in every school yard, hospital, nursery, classroom, park, theater – in every place of innocence and purity.

Israel is the laboratory – the test market. Every death, every explosion, every grisly encounter is not a random, bloody orgy. It is a calculated, strategic probe into the heart, guts and soul of the West.

In the Six Day War, Israel was the proxy of Western values and strategy while the Arab alliance was the proxy of Eastern, Soviet values and strategy. Today too, it is a confrontation of proxies, but the stakes are greater than East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel in her struggle represents the civilized world, while Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, Iran, Islamic Jihad, represent the world of psychopathic, loathesome evil.

As Israel, imperfect as she is, resists the onslaught, many in the Western World have lost their way displaying not admiration, not sympathy, not understanding, for Israel’s galling plight, but downright hostility and contempt. Without moral clarity, we are doomed because Israel’s galling plight ultimately will be ours. Hanna Arendt in her classic Origins of Totalitarianism accurately portrays the first target of tyranny as the Jew. We are the trial balloon. The canary in the coal mine. If the Jew/Israel is permitted to bleed with nary a protest from “good guys” then tyranny snickers and pushes forward with its agenda.

Moral confusion is a deadly weakness and it has reached epic proportions in the West; from the Oval Office to the UN, from the BBC to Reuters to MSNBC, from the New York Times to Le Monde, from university campuses to British teachers unions, from the International Red Cross to Amnesty International, from Goldstone to Elvis Costello, from the Presbyterian Church to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

There is a message sent and consequences when our president visits Turkey and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and not Israel.

There is a message sent and consequences when free speech on campus is only for those championing Palestinian rights.

There is a message sent and consequences when the media deliberately doctors and edits film clips to demonize Israel.

There is a message sent and consequences when the UN blasts Israel relentlessly, effectively ignoring Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, North Korea, China and other noxious states.

There is a message sent and consequences when liberal churches are motivated by Liberation Theology, not historical accuracy.

There is a message sent and consequences when murderers and terrorists are defended by the obscenely transparent “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

John Milton warned, “Hypocrisy is the only evil that walks invisible.”

A few days after the Gaza blockade incident in the spring, a congregant happened past my office, glanced in and asked in a friendly tone –

“Rabbi. How’re y’ doing?”

I looked up, sort of smiled and replied – “I’ve had better days.”

“What’s the matter? Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?” he inquired.

“Thank you for the offer but I’m just bummed out today and I showed him a newspaper article I was reading.

“Madrid gay pride parade bans Israeli group over Gaza Ship Raid.” I explained to my visitor – “The Israeli gay pride contingent from Tel Aviv was not allowed to participate in the Spanish gay pride parade because the mayor of Tel Aviv did not apologize for the raid by the Israeli military.”

The only country in the entire Middle East where gay rights exist, is Israel. The only country in the entire Middle East where there is a gay pride parade, is Israel. The only country in the Middle East that has gay neighborhoods and gay bars, is Israel.

Gays in the Gaza would be strung up, executed by Hamas if they came out and yet Israel is vilified and ostracized. Disinvited to the parade.

Looking for logic?

Looking for reason?

Looking for sanity?

Kafka on his darkest, gloomiest day could not keep up with this bizarre spectacle and we “useful idiots” pander and fawn over cutthroats, sinking deeper and deeper into moral decay, as the enemy laughs all the way to the

West Bank and beyond.

It is exhausting and dispiriting. We live in an age that is redefining righteousness where those with moral clarity are an endangered, beleaguered specie.

Isaiah warned us thousands of years ago – “Oye Lehem Sheh-Korim Layome, Laila v’Laila, yome – Woe to them who call the day, night and the night, day.” We live on a planet that is both Chelm and Sodom. It is a frightening and maddening place to be.

How do we convince the world and many of our own, that this is not just anti-Semitism, that this is not just anti-Zionism but a full throttled attack by unholy, radical Islamists on everything that is morally precious to us?

How do we convince the world and many of our own that conciliation is not an option, that compromise is not a choice?

Everything we are. Everything we believe. Everything we treasure, is at risk.

The threat is so unbelievably clear and the enemy so unbelievably ruthless how anyone in their right mind doesn’t get it is baffling. Let’s try an analogy. If someone contracted a life-threatening infection and we not only scolded them for using antibiotics but insisted that the bacteria had a right to infect their body and that perhaps, if we gave the invading infection an arm and a few toes, the bacteria would be satisfied and stop spreading

Anyone buy that medical advice? Well, folks, that’s our approach to the radical Islamist bacteria. It is amoral, has no conscience and will spread unless it is eradicated. – There is no negotiating. Appeasement is death.

I was no great fan of George Bush – didn’t vote for him. (By the way, I’m still a registered Democrat.) I disagreed with many of his policies but one thing he had right. His moral clarity was flawless when it came to the War on Terror, the War on Radical Islamist Terror. There was no middle ground – either you were friend or foe. There was no place in Bush’s world for a Switzerland. He knew that this competition was not Toyota against G.M., not the Iphone against the Droid, not the Braves against the Phillies, but a deadly serious war, winner take all. Blink and you lose. Underestimate, and you get crushed.

I know that there are those sitting here today who have turned me off. But I also know that many turned off their rabbis seventy five years ago in Warsaw, Riga, Berlin, Amsterdam, Cracow, Vilna. I get no satisfaction from that knowledge, only a bitter sense that there is nothing new under the sun.

Enough rhetoric – how about a little “show and tell?” A few weeks ago on the cover of Time magazine was a horrific picture with a horrific story. The photo was of an eighteen year old Afghani woman, Bibi Aisha, who fled her abusive husband and his abusive family. Days later the Taliban found her and dragged her to a mountain clearing where she was found guilty of violating Sharia Law. Her punishment was immediate. She was pinned to the ground by four men while her husband sliced off her ears, and then he cut off her nose.

That is the enemy (show enlarged copy of magazine cover.)

If nothing else stirs us. If nothing else convinces us, let Bibi Aisha’s mutilated face be the face of Islamic radicalism. Let her face shake up even the most complacent and naïve among us. In the holy crusade against this ultimate evil, pictures of Bibi Aisha’s disfigurement should be displayed on billboards, along every highway from Route 66 to the Autobahn, to the Transarabian Highway. Her picture should be posted on every lobby wall from Tokyo to Stockholm to Rio. On every network, at every commercial break, Bibi Aisha’s face should appear with the caption – “Radical Islamic savages did this.” And underneath – “This ad was approved by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Taliban, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, by Islamic Jihad, by Fatah al Islam, by Magar Nodal Hassan, by Richard Reid, by Ahmanijad, by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, by Osama bin Laden, by Edward Said, by The Muslim Brotherhood, by Al Queda, by CAIR.”

“The moral sentiment is the drop that balances the sea” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Today, my friends, the sea is woefully out of balance and we could easily drown in our moral myopia and worship of political correctness.

We peer up into the heavens sending probes to distant galaxies. We peer down into quarks discovering particles that would astonish Einstein. We create computers that rival the mind, technologies that surpass science fiction. What we imagine, with astounding rapidity, becomes real. If we dream it, it does, indeed, come. And yet, we are at a critical point in the history of this planet that could send us back into the cave, to a culture that would make the Neanderthal blush with shame.

Our parents and grandparents saw the swastika and recoiled, understood the threat and destroyed the Nazis. We see the banner of Radical Islam and can do no less.

A rabbi was once asked by his students…. “Rebbi. Why are your sermons so stern?” Replied the rabbi, “If a house is on fire and we chose not to wake up our children, for fear of disturbing their sleep, would that be love? Kinderlach, ‘di hoyz brent.’ Children our house is on fire and I must arouse you from your slumber.”

During WWII and the Holocaust was it business as usual for priests, ministers, rabbis? Did they deliver benign homilies and lovely sermons as Europe fell, as the Pacific fell, as North Africa fell, as the Mideast and South America tottered, as England bled? Did they ignore the demonic juggernaut and the foul breath of evil? They did not. There was clarity, courage, vision, determination, sacrifice, and we were victorious. Today it must be our finest hour as well. We dare not retreat into the banality of our routines, glance at headlines and presume that the good guys will prevail.

Democracies don’t always win. Tyrannies don’t always lose.

My friends – the world is on fire and we must awake from our slumber. “EHR KUMT.”

Comments?

Central NJ Chapter of the RJC Launches in Manalapan

Last night, I and two other righties from my neck of the woods attended the inaugural gathering of the Central New Jersey Chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition. For a couple years I was waiting for such a chapter to develop, being sandwiched between two distant chapters in NYC and Philadelphia.

I don’t think anyone was really able to predict the turnout, optimistically setting up 200 chairs at a room at the Excelsior in Manalapan. It turned out about 275 came!

For those of you not familiar with Garden State demographics, the central part of the state is a tad more conservative than the parts neighboring deep blue NYC and Philly. Still (especially because these are Jews we’re talking about) the turnout was amazing. It was a mixture of Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. Some were longtime staunch Republicans, others were former Democrats—even former office-holders—who had recently seen the light about the Democrat Party and its radical leftist agenda, and still others were registered independents searching for a political home. It was a fantastic, uplifting feeling. As I shouted in the crowd at one moment, this is what hope and change looks like!

The keynote speaker was Commentary Magazine’s Jennifer Rubin. Two local running Republican candidates spoke as well, Anna Little and Scott Sipprelle. Sipprelle is running against long-time incumbent Congressman Rush Holt in NJ-12. Holt, a dependable liberal, joined Bill Pascrell (NJ-8) and Donald Payne (NJ-10) and 51 other Democrats to denounce Israel’s conduct during the “flotilla” incident earlier this year.

While yours truly, just on the edge of 40, was present, the average age of the attendees was probably the mid-50’s. You could tell these were decent, hardworking citizens who were concerned about security for Israel, for their children in their young adulthood, and for themselves in their retirement. Many had their own stories about being the only one of their ideological ilk in their family, or at their temple. So, naturally, the sense of comeraderie among all of us, was instantaneous.

One month to go before mid-term elections. Stories have come out since 2009 about Jews abandoning Obama and the Democrat Party as it currently exists (but not necessarily jumping gleefully to the Republican side.) I know at least two relatives who usually vote Democrat who are regretful of their Obama vote and who are already planning to vote Republican against the Democrat incumbent in their district.

Let’s keep looking forward, friends. This is what hope and change looks like.

Article of Note: Jewish Message to Obama

From YNet News:

Jewish message to Obama
Op-ed: American Jews should not vote for any Democrat in upcoming US elections
Shoula Romano Horing | 09.26.10

Society For Voluntary Jewish Extinction Fights Islamophobia (D. Feder)

In an era where the Jewish American liberals everywhere are concerned more about the imagined crisis of “Islamophobia” than the real and increasing crisis of antisemitism, it’s refreshing to know that Jewish conservatives are speaking out.

Below is a cogent, albeit occasionally over-the-top, piece by Jewish über-righty Don Feder [via David Horowitz’s NewsReal blog]:

Society For Voluntary Jewish Extinction Fights Islamophobia
GrassTopsUSA Exclusive Commentary
By Don Feder, 09-20-10

In response to the rising tide of anti-Semitism, here and abroad, courtesy of the Religion of Peace, liberal Jews (Temple Beth Meshuga) have pledged to fight Islamophobia–—the “phobia” the left loves to hate.

We’re told that anti-Muslim hysteria has reached a fevered pitch. Daisy Khan, wife Imam Rauf, point-man for the Ground Zero Mosque, says it’s “like a metastasized anti-Semitism.” What, that serious? “It’s not even Islamophobia; it’s beyond Islamophobia. It’s (gasp) hate of Muslims!”

Are Muslims being lynched by rampaging mobs? Are imams kidnapped and tortured to death? Are cars filled with Muslim civilians ambushed, and pregnant women shot to death at close range?

Much worse, my friends. This uber-bigotry is epitomized by opposition to a mosque–—excuse me, a cultural center–—built near the spot where 2,752 Americans were murdered by Muslim hijackers, in the name of Islam, 9 years ago. Will the horror never end?

But, not to worry, Jewish liberals are here to save the day.

The Jewish Telegraph Agency reported that, shortly before Rosh Hashanah, officials of several Jewish organizations met with their knee-jerk counterparts of other faiths “in an emergency summit … that denounced anti-Muslim bigotry and called for a united effort by believers of all faiths to reach out to Muslim Americans.”

The unintentionally hilarious Rabbi David Saperstein of Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center (Mother Jones with a schmear) argued that Jews “have been the quintessential victims of religious persecution… and we know what happens when people are silent…. We have to speak more directly to the anti-Muslim bigotry in America today.”

This is fascinating. They don’t have to speak out about anti-Catholic bigotry (like crucifixes submerged in jars of urine, funded by NEA grants), or anti-evangelical bigotry (like commentators who compare born-again Christians to Nazis), but “anti-Muslim bigotry,” this they have to fight tooth and nail. If Catholic bishops plotted to blow up New York synagogues and evangelicals butchered Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, then perhaps Saperstein would defend them too.

The Anti-Defamation League–—which believes that a cross on public property is a clear and present danger to Jewish survival–—announced that it had organized an Interfaith Coalition on Mosques to respond to instances of “anti-Muslim bias” generated by attempts to build houses of Allah in the United States.

In one of his rare encounters with reality, ADL Director Abraham Foxman came out against the Ground Zero Mosque, because it’s “insensitive” to the families of 9/11 victims. Having briefly deviated from party line, Foxman now is furiously doing penance to the gods of political correctness, with his campaign against jihadophobia.

The crisis of Ialamophobia exists entirely in the minds of liberals. (“American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong,” whined a headline in the September 6th New York Times).

Does the Times know, or care, that in 2008, there were roughly ten times as many hate crimes against American Jews as Muslims–—many of the former perpetrated by the latter? Of all religious-based hate crimes documented by the FBI that year, 65.7% were anti-Semitic and only 7.7% anti-Muslim.

In April, Tel Aviv University released a study on the worldwide rise of anti-Semitism. According to the report, the number of anti-Semitic attacks (arson, assaults, vandalism) more than doubled between 2008 and 2009–—increasing from 559 incidents to 1,129.

For some curious and inexplicable reason, the growth of anti-Semitism parallels Muslim migration. In Western Europe, physical attacks on Jews are reaching Kristallnacht proportions.

Sweden is rarely thought of as a hotbed of Jew-hatred. That was before the invasion of Allah’s legions.

A March 29 story in The Washington Times (“Hate Crimes Force Jews Out of Malmo”) noted that of 115 bias-crimes in Sweden’s third largest city, reported in 2009, 52 were anti-Semitic, this notwithstanding that Malmo’s Jewish population numbers fewer than 700 (half of what it was two decades ago) in a general population of 280,000.

Thus, Jews represent less than .0025% of the city, but account for 45% of all hate crimes. Could that have something to do with Malmo’s 60,000 Muslims?

Malmo Rabbi Shneur Kesselman says: “In the past five years I’ve been here, I think you can count on your hand how many (anti-Semitic)incidents there have been from the extreme right. In my personal experience, it’s 99% Muslim.” Jewish resident Marcus Eilenberg, whose survivor grandparents found shelter in Malmo in 1945, says Jews there are confronting “a degree of hate that none of us–—except those who survived the Holocaust–—had experienced before.”

Let us hope that no one is challenging the construction of mosques in Malmo.

If asked for an example of supposedly rampant Islamophobia, Islam’s useful idiots point to the Ground Zero Mosque. As Nahad Awad, a founder of the Council on American Islamic Relations, puts it, opposition to the so-called New York Islamic Center (its PC name) “is trying to tell Americans that Muslims do not belong here. That Muslims are the others, when we are, in fact, all Americans.” So were members of the German-American Bund, circa 1940.

“Rabbi” Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, director of multi-faith studies at the Deconstructionist Rabbinical College (which is to Judaism what Unitarianism is to Christianity) sniffs: “The proposal for the ‘mosque at Ground Zero’ that turns out to be not a mosque and not at Ground Zero has brought to light this simple fact: We Americans need to know a whole lot more about Muslims and their religion.” On that we can agree.

When naïfs like Rabbi Nancy say we need to know more about Islam, they mean the Hans Christian Andersen (religion-of-peace-and-tolerance, jihad means a spiritual struggle) version, which bears no relation to the real thing.

By opposing the Ground Zero Mosque, are 68% of Americans “trying to tell American Muslims they don’t belong here,” and 55% of New York Jews stigmatizing Muslims as “the others”?

Imam Abdul Feisal Rauf, husband to Daisy and impresario of the Mosque of Conquest, has become the poster-boy for fairy-tale Islam. Obama’s State Department spent $16,000 to send the Imam on a tour of the Middle East to “foster a greater understanding about Islam and Muslim life in the United States” amongst his overseas brethren.

But the establishment’s favorite Muslim moderate is, in fact, a salesman for jihad-lite. “We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of non-Muslims,” Rauf declares. Also, “United States policies were an accessory to the crime (9/11) that happened.” Moreover, “The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.”

The Imam is also a great friend of the Jewish people. When asked if Hamas is a terrorist organization, Rauf does a little two-step: “I’m not a politician. I try to avoid complex issues. The issue of terrorism is a very complex issue.” Right. Whether or not a group that deliberately murders civilians–—that revels in their slaughter–—is a terrorist organization is “a very complex issue.” But opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque is a clear case of Islamophobia.

Today, Islam is the greatest threat to the survival of the Jewish people, both in Israel and the Diaspora. Besides the Jewish state being in the sights of nuclear-armed Iran, the Palestinians make no secret that establishing Jihadistan in the West Bank and Gaza will be a step toward the obliteration of the rest of what Islamicists call the Zionist entity.

From the meanest mosque in Gaza to the Grand Mosque of Mecca–—from Muslim heads of state to imams on Egyptian television–—anti-Semitic propaganda and agitation comes almost exclusively from the Muslim world.

Ahmadinejad’s response to threats by a Florida pastor to burn a Koran? It’s a Zionist conspiracy. (“The Koran burning will bring about Israel’s annihilation.”). Hasn’t he heard of liberal Jews’ campaign to counter Islamophobia?

The late Saudi King Faisal gave copies of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” to his guests. Outside of religious texts, “Mein Kampf” is one of the most popular books in the Arab world.

When he met with John Paul II in 2001, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad informed the Pope that Jews “try to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality with which they betrayed Jesus Christ.”

In a 2003 address to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (the most powerful body in the Muslim world), former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said “Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight for them.”

Earlier this year, Mohammad revealed that the Jews of Europe had “always been a problem.” That’s why “they had to be confined to ghettos and periodically massacred. But they still remained, they thrived… held whole governments to ransom.” Eventually, he’ll get around to blaming the Jews for global warming. (“They poisoned the ozone layer.”)

And how were Mahathir Mohamad’s earlier remarks received by the representatives of 57 Muslim countries which comprise the Organization of the Islamic Conference? Not a word of dissent. “Very correct.” and “A very wise assessment” were typical responses.

Speaking on Egypt’s Al-Nas TV on December 29, 2009, Muslim cleric Muhammad Hussein Yaaqub warned his fellow religion-of-peaceniks: “The Jews are our enemies. Allah will annihilate them at our hands. This is something we know for certain.” There followed a recitation of the Koran’s kill-the-Jews verses. The Koran–—that’s, you know, the book they study in mosques.

Morton Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America, puts it succinctly: “Hatred of Jews is widespread throughout the Muslim world. It is taught in the schools and preached in the mosques.”

This torrent of Jew-hatred is acted upon–—regularly, and in the most horrific ways.

• While the Jewish left was having its emergency summit to combat Islamophobia, Hamas gunmen ambushed a car on the outskirts of Hebron, killing four Jewish residents of Bet Haggai, including a pregnant woman. After riddling the car with bullets from their automatic weapons, the assassins approached the vehicle and shot its passengers at point-blank range. When contacted by the Weekly Standard, Imam’s Rauf’s Park51 group refused to comment on the murders. (“We are an apolitical community center. Please allow us that respect.”). In Gaza, meanwhile, 3,000 peace-loving Palestinians, the left’s favorite victims, took to the streets to celebrate the slaughter of pregnant Jewish women.

• In signing the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act in May, President Obama (who has pledged to fight what he calls misrepresentations of Islam) blathered, “Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination, because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is”–—as if Pearl was John Peter Zenger. Daniel Pearl was ritualistically murdered because he was a Jew (a confession he was forced to make on tape, before his head was sawed off) not because he was a journalist. BTW, videotapes of the atrocity were a hot-selling item throughout the Muslim world.

• From an Islamic perspective, killing a Jew is good–—but torturing him to death is a special treat. When Ilan Halimi, a Parisian Jew, was kidnapped by a Muslim street gang calling itself “the Barbarians,” he was tortured over the course of three weeks. Flesh was cut from his body. He was burned with acid and cigarettes. Finally, flammable liquid was poured over Halimi and he was set on fire. When the police found him, he had burns over 80% of his body. But don’t ask Imam Rauf to condemn this atrocity. He’s “not a politician,” and “terrorism is a very complex issue.”

• When Muslim terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Taiba attacked Mumbai in December 2008, they specifically targeted the few Jews in the city. After seizing the Mumbai Chabad House, they murdered Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka (pregnant six months), but not before they were brutally tortured. A mortician who examined the bodies said he was “traumatized.”

• Closer to home, in 1994, a Lebanese cab driver opened fire on a van carrying Hasidic students on the Brooklyn Bridge, killing a 15-year-old. In 2002, a permanent U.S. resident from Egypt opened fire at the EL Al ticket counter at LAX, fatally shooting an airline security officer. In 2006, Naveed Afzal Haq killed a woman and wounded five others at the Jewish Federation building in Seattle. In 2009, four Muslim converts were arrested for plotting to blow up two New York-area synagogues. At their arraignment, Asst. U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder said, “These were people who were eager to bring death to Jews.” The foregoing scratches the surface.
  

By all means, let us have more mosques in the United States, more Saudi-trained imams, more spokesmen for “moderate” Islam like Imam Rauf, and more spiritual strugglers like the Muslim shrink at Ft. Hood who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers in cold blood. Why should Europeans have all the fun?

Liberals are naturally unstable. The Jewish left’s latest craze–—monitoring opposition to the construction of mosques, speaking out “more directly against anti-Muslim bigotry”–—should land them on a suicide-watch. (Keep sharp objects away from them. Confiscate belts and shoelaces.)

In the midst of a world war against Jews, Jewish liberals want to ensure that no one is mean to the pogromists’ cheering section and recruiting center. Islam is the religion of peace they cry, as Jewish families bury the victims of peace.

Saperstein, Rabbi Nancy, Foxman and friends–—call them the Society for Voluntary Jewish Extinction.

This article makes a ton of valid points. You can feel Feder’s frustration toward the Jewish Left, with which I completely empathize. However, in places he gets a little too snide for my taste. For instance, I didn’t think it was necessary to put scare quotes around Reconstructionist Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer’s clerical title, nor was it necessary to demean that entire denomination of Judaism as “Destructionist.” While I disagree with their generally liberal politics, I have participated in many Reconstructionist worship services and find them wholly Jewishly substantive.

Other than that, Mr. Feder, I’m totally with you. The Jewish Left, which means the majority of America’s Jews, is committing suicide by political correctness by falling for this leftist myths that (1) “Islamophobia” is running rampant across the nation (it is not, although antisemitism, especially Muslim-originating antisemitism is!), (2) as a “phobia,” such a sentiment is not rational or justified (it most certainly is), and (3) that Jews have a moral obligation to speak in opposition to it (not when the very same individuals they are defending preach and revel in slaughtering them!)

With Friends Like This, Who Needs Enemies: Rabbis On Conf Call With Obama -- AGAIN

So that’s why in the days preceding Yom Kippur, I caught wind of pro-GZ Mosque sermons from two prominent rabbinic figures in the Reform Movement: Day wuh followink awduhs frum der Fuhrer! 

The New York Post reports:

Rabbi Obama's holiday message
September 15, 2010

Last week, Obama asked a conference call of about 600 rabbis to preach his Mideast peace plan from the pulpit.

He did the same thing last year, pressuring 1,000 rabbis to give campaign-style sermons promoting ObamaCare—news that broke when one rabbi tweeted the highlights of their conference call. [I posted on this year]

This year, the White House wised up. No, it didn't quit bullying the rabbis. It just made it clear: no more tweets.

And this year Obama asked the rabbis to use their "deep moral authority" to stand up for Muslims' rights—a not-so-veiled plea to promote the Ground Zero mosque in their holiday sermons.

It's worth noting that plenty of the president's allies have defended the mosque by touting the separation of church and state.

It's shameful that Obama is ignoring that counsel now.

What's worse, of course, is that some of the rabbis will probably do the president's bidding. …

Dear G0d. My people are committing suicide by mindless PC liberal ideology, and our so-called leaders are the ones leading them to the slaughter.

Again, if it had been discovered that George W. Bush had conducted conference calls with hundreds of evangelical ministers to give them their marching orders (because that’s what Obama is giving: marching orders) on what to say to their congregations at Christmas or Easter, the entire "theocracy!!!" and "separation of church and state!!!" crowd—including these hypocritical Jewish leaders!—would have been all over it.

But as I’ve been arguing for a long time, these Jewish leaders really aren’t preaching Judaism anymore. They’re preaching knee-jerk, leave-your-brains-at-the-door liberalism.

This is why I withdrew membership from a Reform synagogue two years ago and why I will never return.

Why I Left Liberalism #3: Hating Good and Loving Evil

I was just discussing with a friend how liberal thinking in this country is so bass-ackward. The liberal left are unabashed apologists for radical Muslims, yet they demonize the Tea Party.

They rally around radical terrorist-coddling, Israel-hating imam Rauf, but crap all over Sarah Palin.

They revel in the religious freedom reflected in a controversial mosque being planned by a controversial imam in a controversial location, but totally slam and mock Glenn Beck and his "Restoring Honor" rally in D.C.

They ignore the blatant, blood-soaked violence left by hundreds if not thousands of Muslims on a daily basis, yet, despite no evidence whatsoever, aver that Tea Party gatherings are the equivalent of Nazi marches or KKK rallies.

They accuse 70% of the American people of intolerance, bigotry, and "Islamophobia," while conveniently ignoring that no non-Muslim, no female, and no child is safe anywhere Muslims govern.

The dangerous upside-down thinking of the left - their loving acceptance of destructive, murderous Islam and their blind white hatred for the Tea Party movement is very well illustrated in the New York Times. Above an op-ed bashing the Tea Party (again) is this not-so-coincidentally placed ad:

 

In response to this disgusting ad, John Hawkins at Right Wing News says:

... the same organization that's dishonestly claiming the Tea Party represents the "fringe," "extremism," and a "toxic message," is giving the thumbs up to what is undeniably a fringe, extreme, and toxic ad of their own at the exact same time. And why is it okay? Solely because it's aimed in the OTHER DIRECTION.

This is so typical of American politics. It's the bully who claims to be the victim, the extremist who cries over extremism, and the bombthrower who always demands civility.

What adds even more insult to this slanderous injury against millions of decent Americans is that from the very beginning the Times has been cheerleaders for a radical global movement who publicly worship the mindset and practices of the actual Nazis.

So, to think like a liberal is to literally think completely upside-down: Tolerate the intolerant, while being intolerant of decent people only crime is not agreeing with your point of view; Elevate the evil, while demonizing the good.

Even my own co-religionists are hopelessly on the leftist bandwagon. Just this past week of the Jewish High Holy Days, at least two prominent liberal rabbis have published pieces imploring American Jews to exhibit tolerance - tolerance of Islam celebrating its own intolerance by building a victory mosque overlooking the destruction of their co-religionists - all the while being themselves intolerant of those who disagree with them about the mosque building.

The Bible commands us to hate what is evil and love what is good. I regret to say the modern left, including what seems to be the majority of Jews in America are doing just the opposite. They are not only abetting evil by apologizing for the radical Islamic movement that has infiltrated all corners of the globe, but demonized millions of decent Americans peacefully and lovingly exercising their right to free speech.

May G0d have mercy upon them - and upon us, whose welfare and security they endanger with every day.

Liberal Antisemitism: Daily Kos

At BigJournalism.com Jeff Dunetz half-jokingly writes:

The other day I was reading the Daily Kos and my wife came up and read my laptop over my shoulder. She asked “why are you reading a site that is mostly progressive propaganda?”

“I am tired of reading the conservative sites,” I answered. “All they talk about is the economy stinks, the government is getting too big, and on and on. It gets depressing. But sites like the Daily Kos make me feel empowered. They keep talking about how the Jews control the media, the Jews control the banks, the Jews control the government. ...

The kernel of truth underlying this joke is that the Daily Kos, the flagship source for all things leftist, is virulently anti-Israel, which in more cases than not, simply means antisemitic. Consider:

       

How does such a supposedly progressive, tolerant, and enlightened site get away with pictures like this?

I have yet to hear even self-styled "moderates" or "independents"  condemn such blatant antisemitism. Certainly the mainstream media doesn't expose it; hell, they more likely than not agree with it! If a conservative website had hateful crap like this, it would be a media story for a month. Every conservative/Republican from Sarah Palin to Sean Hannity to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell would be called upon to denounce such hatred and intolerance. Yet, the media is completely silent about this recurring antisemitism spewing from DK. Coincidence?

In fact, I have a number of lefty Jewish friends who are Daily Kos readers. Certainly they number among those liberati who believe that the Tea Party movement is at worst a wholly racist organization, or at best an organization that has "racist elements" (whatever the &*$#^ that means) which the rest of us have a moral obligation to publicly denounce or else be considered supporters of such racism by our silence.

(And this is, of course, without actual racism or "racist elements" existing, but rather with it occurring only in the feverish imaginations of race-obsessed people who know deep down that any progress made by the Tea Party movement means another nail in the coffin of their failed liberal agenda.)

Let me now return the "favor" to my supposedly enlightened Jewish leftists: You better acknowledge that the Daily Kos is at worst an antisemitic website, or at best a website that has antisemitic elements which you have a moral obligation to publicly denounce or else be considered supporters of such antisemitism by your silence. That goes for you all in the media too.

I'm waiting ...

Ground Zero Mosque and Tolerance

Good points here:

Ground Zero on the Tolerance Issue
Debra Saunders

… First, the right opposes the mosque. Conservative figures like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich don't like a mosque near ground zero. They say as much.

Then, in a Pavlovian response, the left embraces the mosque and proclaims itself more tolerant of religious freedom. But the left is not more tolerant of religious freedom. Only the left, you see, has the sagacity to recognize that, as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd put it, Rauf is "the moderate Muslim we have allegedly been yearning for."

What you're seeing is the culture-war equivalent of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Quoth House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some." Translation: This issue is poison for Democrats.

And: "I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded." That's Bay Area tolerance for you — a well-placed Democratic politician wants an investigation into the funding of conservative dissenters. …

So it's more than ironic to watch the same folks who jump all over devout Christians now rush to Muslims' defense. This isn't about the left being more tolerant, as much as it is about the left disdaining the right. …

Bingo.

Video Exposed of Protesters Hurling Racial Slurs and Encouraging Violence Against Obama

A disturbing video was unearthed and posted on YouTube yesterday. It was a 3:45-minute clip from a rally  in Washington, D.C. At this rally, which took place on November 7, 2009, the speakers cursed incessantly before a cheering crowd—including young children who were watching while sitting on the stage.

One speaker declared that they were at war [with other Americans] and that they all needed to take up an aggressive struggle against their adversaries—fellow U.S. citizens.

Another speaker besmirched the Jewish people and Israel and rambled on like a lunatic about Zionist plots against them and their allies 

Yet another dedicated his speech to the Fort Hood shooter, who had blown away 13 innocent people just two days prior.

Oh, there’s more: These speakers and their audience were clearly not fans of President Obama. How do I know? Because to a still cheering and encouraging crowd, speakers called Obama a coon, a m*therf**ker, and, several times, a n*gger. One speaker, a foul-mouthed woman who made particular use of these racial slurs, demanded that someone “whup [Obama’s] ass.”

Yes, dear reader. There is now actual clear video evidence of President Obama being the target of racial slurs and receiving violent threats.

This must be one of those racist Tea Parties we keep hearing about, right? The ones with the “racist elements”?

Or maybe it’s a group of angry, white old people who gathered to hear from their favorite Fox News commentators or right-wing talk-show hosts?

Perhaps it’s a recent gathering of the RNC or some conservative group that has been the media has accused of stoking racial tensions and unrest since a black man got in the White House?

No, no, and no. It isn’t any of those things. This public display of hatred, violence, and racism was brought to you by a coalition called “Black Is Back” and the event was co-organized by one Reverend (!) Curtis Gatewood, a long-time official of the NAACP in North Carolina.

 

David Stein, who runs my favorite new website as of 30 minutes ago, YesButHowever!, writes:

If the majority of Rev. Gatewood’s controversial actions and statements have been under the radar, his first major clash with the national NAACP leadership was not. Four days after 9/11, on September 15th, 2001, Gatewood (then in his position as president of the Durham NAACP) gave a fiery speech at a monthly local NAACP meeting in which he implied that the World Trade Center victims were racists, and he called upon African-Americans not to fight in any wars against terrorism.

“Black males can no longer be used as sacrificial lambs at the time of war….Those black males who make it back home alive from war are likely to come home and be discriminated against by the very people whose businesses were headquartered in the World Trade Center, racially abused/profiled by an American police officer, killed on the streets in their crime-infested neighborhoods, or harmed by Bush administration policies….This is not the time to sacrifice our fathers, sons and brothers to a country that has not protected our rights.”

Jeez. This guy almost makes Jeremiah “G0d damn America” Wright look moderate by comparison.

You might be wondering at this point why a coalition of black people are so pissed off at Barack Obama.

As you will find out from watching the video below, it is mainly because he is too lenient to whites, as well as to Jews and Israel. That is, in their eyes, Obama isn’t “black” enough. They believe he has coddled those they consider the biggest enemies of blacks, and that he has sold out to who his true friends should be, including the Palestinians and other areas of the Muslim world supposedly oppressed by whites and Jews, and even Jeremiah Wright.

All right. Here’s the clip [from YBH via Weasel Zippers]. I highly recommend you watch it far away from sharp objects.

November 7, two-thousand-freaking-nine. Nearly 10 months this event took place. And we’re just finding out now what went down there.

These are sick, and, quite frankly, dangerous, people. Yet there they are under the auspices of the NAACP, which, as we are all very aware, is very sensitive to the “racist elements” of certain groups. As Stein reminds us:

At its July 2010 annual convention, the NAACP approved a resolution condemning “racist elements” in the Tea Party movement and calling on the movement’s leaders to repudiate bigotry and reject any “racism and anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in their movement.”

Well guys, how about rejecting this? In fact, at the end of the video, the words on the screen present three questions:

Where is the outcry from the media?

My answer: There won’t be. Only whites can be racist. In this current political climate, even if there’s no evidence of racism, you’ll either be accused of thinking racist thoughts or you’ll just have stories about you made up out of whole cloth.

Where is the outcry from the NAACP?

My answer: They’ll most likely pull a Sherrod/Breitbart by claiming the video was either doctored or taken out of context, and then ignore it.

What if this had been a Tea Party protest?

My answer: It wouldn’t have been. Because, unlike these hateful pieces of human excrement, members of the Tea Party movement never have and never would behave this way.

Liberal Lie #14: The Right Is Violent, the Left Is Civil - Oil Exec's Wife Hurt by Mail Bomb

For over a year-and-a-half now Democrat politicians, their accomplices in the media, and President Obama himself have lamented that the “inflammatory” and “incendiary” rhetoric of the Right can have violent consequences. Right-wing talk radio, the Tea Party movement, and certain outspoken Republican politicians who have the nerve to question President Golden Calf (e.g., Sarah Palin) have all been accused of stoking violence against Obama and Democrat Congress. Janet “Big Sis” Napolitano officially had the Tea Party movement labeled terrorists and extremists!

Yet, those predicted acts of violence from the Right never seem to happen, do they?

But you know who we do get plenty of actual instances of violences from? The Left. The Obama-loving, Democrat-voting, conservative-bashing, capitalism-despising, Republican-fearing Left.

And who does the stoking of this violence? Well, Democrat politicians of course. Consider these gems:

• “I want you to argue with them and get in their face.”
  
• “I’ll put Mr. Burgess up against Sean Hannity. He’ll tear him up.”
  
• “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”
  
• “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
  
• “… so I know whose ass to kick.”

Those incitements to violence, my friends, are from the mouth of the President of the United States. The same guy who is constantly worried that any opposition to his destructive policies is enough to drive someone to anti-Obama violence.

It’s bad enough that liberals/Democrats live in an entirely upside-down Bizarro world. It’s even worse when our own president does.

And it’s just happened again:

Woman injured when box explodes outside home

A Houston woman was injured on Friday after a device that appeared to be a homemade bomb exploded when she opened a package in her back yard, authorities said.

The woman, who authorities said was in her 60s, was taken to Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, officials said.

Between 6:30 and 7 p.m., she opened a shoebox-sized box that had been dropped off at her home in the 2100 block of Seamist Court in northwest Houston. …

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the house was targeted, however, Eyewitness News found out the home is owned by an oil company executive.

Gee … who has been stirring up antipathy towards oil executives nonstop since the beginning of the BP oil spill?

But this act of violence is just another of a long humiliating list. Back in March, NewsBusters [h/t Flopping Aces] compiled this marvelous but bone-chilling list of all the actual left-wing violence that has taken place just since Obama has taken office.

• It was not the fear of conservative violence that caused Ann Coulter’s speech to be cancelled this week. 
  
• It was a liberal who bit the finger off a man who disagreed with him on healthcare. 
  
• It was Obama-loving Amy Bishop who took a gun to work and murdered co-workers. 
  
• Joseph Stack flew his plane into the IRS building after writing an anti-conservative manifesto. 
  
• It was liberals who destroyed AM radio towers outside of Seattle. 
  
• It’s liberals who burn down Hummer dealerships. 
  
• It was progressive SEIU union thugs who beat a black conservative man who spoke his mind. 
  
• It’s doubtful that a conservative fired shots into a GOP campaign headquarters. 
  
• In fact, Democrats have no monopoly on having their offices vandalized. 
  
• Don’t forget it was Obama’s friend Bill Ayers who used terrorism as a tool for political change. SDS is still radical, with arrests in 2007 and the storming of the CATO Institute in July 2008. 
  
• It was a liberal who was sentenced to two years for bringing bombs and riot shields to the Republican National Convention in 2008. 
  
• It was a liberal who threatened to kill a government informant who infiltrated her Austin-based group that planned to bomb the RNC. 
  
• It was liberals who assaulted police in Berkeley. 
  
• It was liberals who intimidated and threw rocks through the windows of researchers. 
  
• The two Black Panthers who stood outside polls intimidating people with nightsticks were probably not right-wingers. 
  
• Every time the G20 gets together, it’s not conservatives who destroy property and cause chaos.

Of the top of my head I can add seven more to this since this list was compiled:

• It was a leftist anti-Semite who gunned down innocent people at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
• It was Sarah Palin’s church, not Barack Obama’s, that was firebombed with people still inside it (a crime I believe that has yet to be solved.)
• It was liberals who rallied with messages of violence against Arizona governor Jan Brewer in protest of their just-passed illegal immigration bill.
  
• It was liberals who destroyed downtown Toronto during last month’s G20 summit.
  
• It was liberals who destroyed Oakland, California—despite the fact that business owners boarded up their windows beforehand—following a judge’s ruling on a white policeman who killed a black civilian.
  
• The New Black Panthers who were caught on tape rambling on about killing white crackers and cracker babies, were not Limbaugh-listening, Beck-watching Tea Partiers.
  
• And it’s a pretty safe bet that the a-hole who put a freaking mail bomb in the mailbox of an oil executive, injuring his wife, was not a Limbaugh-listening, Beck-watching Tea Partier.

But remember: Tea Partiers are stoking violence. Glenn Beck is stoking violence. Rush Limbaugh is stoking violence. Sarah Palin is stoking violence.

How do I know? Because that’s what Obama told us. That’s what Democrat politicians—like those liars accusing Tea Partiers of making racist slurs—told us. And that’s what the liberal media told us.

Whatever.

Listen & Learn: Four Segments of El Rushbo Broadcast Excellence (7/13/10)

El Rushbo was on a roll yesterday. The first hour was just a series of monologue after brilliant monologue. The audio clip below contains four of those segments, edited, as usual, for long silences, commercial breaks, and other extraneous parts.

In the first segment, Rush wonders out loud why liberals are perpetually unhappy. And rightly so. Here we have a black president, a Democrat House and Senate, the eeeeevil private sector being tarnished and torn while the government gets bigger and bigger, government-run health (s)care passed, plus all of their favorite countries are being coddled, and hated countries being scorned. We are living in a virtual liberal utopia, so why are they still unhappy? Listen to the clip to find out.

The second segment, beginning at around 5:20, is my favorite: a Limbaugh-esque reply to Obama advisor David Axelrod. Axelrod recently made the oft-repeated Democrat claim that the GOP wants to “turn our country backward.” In response, Rush does the unexpected: He agrees with him!

The transcript of the response is here, for anyone who wants to copy it and share it online or by email. It’s that good:

“Recently, Obama advisor David Axelrod stated that America would be going ‘backwards’ if they allowed the GOP to take the majority in 2010”? Well, let me tell you something: I don’t know about you, folks, but I would love to go backwards! I would love to go back about a year and a half.

I’d love to go back when people’s houses had value, and the expectation was that the value would increase every year.

I’d love to go backwards to when we had a 4.7% unemployment rate.

I would love to go backwards to where our taxes were lower.

I would love to go backwards where our health care was affordable and excellent.

I would love to go backwards when our investments had a good chance of growing.

I would love to go backwards when people’s children could get jobs with their expensive college educations.

I would love to go backwards when we had leaders motivating and inspiring young people to seek the world, to seek their dreams.

I would love to go back to that period of time. It’s just a year and a half ago and beyond. Who wants to live in an era where the president and the first lady tell college graduates to screw it? Don’t get into the money making professions. Oh, yes, Mr. Axelrod, I would love to go back!

I would love to go back to a period of time when my president actually liked my country.

I would love to go back to a period of time when my president respected my country and my president was proud of it.

I would love to go back to a period of time where my president was not trying to destroy things that he thinks have been unfair for 20 or 30 years or 230 years.

I would love to go back to a period of time where my president did not look at the United States as the problem in the world.

I would love to go back, Mr. Axelrod, to a period of time where we had leaders who could the United States was exceptional and could indeed be the economic engine and the freedom engine of the world.

I would love to go back, and we don’t have to go back very few, Mr. Axelrod. Just 18, 19 months. Oh yes, I would love to go backwards, Mr. Axelrod.

And speaking of going backwards, isn’t that what Axelrod wants to do? Doesn’t Axelrod want to go back to the sixties? Aren’t he and his buddies perpetually trapped in the idealism and the promise of the 1960s? Perhaps we could say they would love to go back even further, to the time of Marx. Anita Dunn might like to go back to the time of Mao Tse-tung in the 30’s and 40’s! Some of the great dictators of all time are the professed inspiration for many members of the regime. So, yeah, we’re not the only ones that want to go backwards.

Told you it was classic.

Next, at around the 8:24 point, Rush talks about the death of longtime N.Y. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in a way that he himself admitted was going to drive the liberati into apoplexy, mainly (1) As a capitalist, Steinbrenner knew when to die: before the death tax is reinstated in 2011, and (2) For a “cracker,” Steinbrenner sure made a lot of African-Americans wealthy.

Finally, at around the 10:00 mark, Rush discusses some polls—including a couple in the Washington Post of all places—that reports on the growing disillusionment with President Obama among voting blocks which are very important to the Democrats, including independents, environmentalists, the young college-educated, Hispanics, and Jews.

Enjoy these 14 minutes of brilliant broadcast excellence!

[Edited for long silences, commercial breaks, and extraneous talking]

(Download clip here)

Sensible Liberal: Elton John

Last week I was gratified by El Rushbo’s story about Elton John performing at his wedding, and about the events leading up to their unlikely friendship. (In a nutshell, they “met” while staying at the same hotel in Hawaii at the time Rush had his heart scare.). John apparently has gotten a lot of flak from his fellow ohh-so-tolerant liberal friends for befriending such a supposedly Neanderthal homophobe. So much for that “can we all get along” thing. John actually walked the walk, and gets criticism for it!

In any case, John has not been a fan of American Republicans/conservatives before. He was particularly vocal in his distate for George W. Bush.

Because of his politics, I don’t know what exactly motivated Elton John to reach out to Rush in Hawaii. But the fact that he did and the friendship that developed is very telling of John’s character. For that alone he deserved a “Sensible Liberal” post, but being on my blog vaca (which I’m still on, technically!) I didn’t get to write one.

Well, here’s one for him now, because for the second time this month he’s dared to go against the global Leftist grain:

Elton John rocks Israel after other artists cancel
Jun 18, 4:16 AM (ET)

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) - A concert by Elton John has given Israelis a boost after a string of cancellations by other world-famous artists.

The British rocker performed late Thursday in front of a screaming crowd of nearly 50,000 fans at a Tel Aviv stadium.

John, who wore blue-tinted sunglasses, told the audience those cancellations “ain’t gonna stop me from playing here, baby.”

Recent cancellations by the Pixies and Elvis Costello, who cited Israeli government policies, have added to Israel’s growing sense of isolation.

John swiped at those artists, saying, “We do not cherry-pick our consciences,” before hitting the opening chords of his 1972 hit “Crocodile Rock.”

To say the least, this whole thing with Israel–“peace” flotilla thing is so infuriating. Israel is the most democratic and humane country in the Middle East, and are in the Leftist world’s crosshairs because they have the audacity to defend themselves when agitated by the thugs that surround them. And I personally take the Left’s aversion toward Israel as veiled anti-Semitism. Helen “Go back to Poland” Thomas might agree.

It might sound cliché, but I consider this is a very dangerous time for Israel. Not only is the world on its back for perceived indiscretions, but she no longer has its most stalwart and powerful ally—the U.S.—on its side.

I just came back from a conference of several hundred Jews where I was virtually the only right-of-center person there. While I didn’t push political conversation, it was a very safe bet that I was the only one who didn’t vote for Obama and the only one who regrets that he is the president. President Golden Calf’s ultra-liberalism trumps all other transgressions to my fellow Jewish friends. And his treatment toward Israel, especially in light of the beating she’s taking from the rest of the world, is proof of that.

Is Elton John still a flaming (bad word choice?) liberal? Of course he is. But that doesn’t make these actions any less honorable.

Meanwhile, I wonder if my friends will have second thoughts about any artists who might have cancelled concerts in Israel.

Or will they keep them on their iPod’s singing along with them about love and peace and unity and togetherness. All while riding along in their fuel-efficient cars which still don Obama-Biden bumper stickers.

Oy.

Listen & Learn: Mark Levin on Senate Dems Granting the EPA Unconstitutional Powers

Yup, I couldn't stay away from the blog for too long. Told you I'd post if something important came up. And it did.

Last week, I got into a political debate with a co-traveler. I had just spent nearly week at a conference with several hundred fellow Jews -- all of them (as far as I know) liberal Democrats. Despite promising myself I would not get into politics at this event, I was admittedly chomping at the bit to get into some "trouble." Well, a group of us were waiting at the airport for flights back East when one friend -- who was so offended by my right-of-center Facebook comments she actually admitted to resorting to blocking my posts altogether. (I know, liberals are oh-so tolerant and open-minded. Blah blah, f**king blah.)

Anyway, she followed up that admission with the question of how I can support the Tea Party, when some of them are just so crazy. (Yes, that was her word.) I wasn't going to go off on this person right there in front of other friends and colleagues, so I responded simply that all parties have "crazies." "Look at Barack Obama," I said plainly, "and all the czars and cabinet members he's appointed, and what about his Supreme Court nominees." 

"But those people don't really have any authority," some objected.

"Oh, really?" I pressed. "Obama's czars, etc., were not elected by the American people, yet they have virtually unlimited and unchecked policy-making power."

That was really the end of that debate. For my friends, there was really nothing else to say. The conversation ultimately turned to right-wing talk radio and how offensive and hateful Rush Limbaugh supposedly is. I asked my interlocutor if she ever actually listened to Rush Limbaugh. Of course, she did not but she assured me all she needed to know was the clips played for her on her favorite hosts (on MSNBC and NPR, naturally). With an involuntary rolling of the eyes, I insisted those liberal commentators are very adept at taking Rush out of context. They have to. There's no other way to marginalize and polarize him.

But anyway, back to my temporary return this evening to blog-hood. I was catching up on the past two weeks of talk radio when I got to Mark Levin's show Thursday. The first hour was devoted to a vote by the Senate to give the EPA -- an unelected unaccountable organization -- unconstitutional regulatory powers, namely, to create and enforce policies related to carbon dioxide emissions and other so-called pollutants. The vast majority of yay votes came from 53 Democrats (No surprise there). 

Aside from the fact that Mark's entire report made my blood boil, I couldn't help recalling the conversation with my liberal Jewish friends at that Midwestern airport. To them, certain Tea Party politicians were "crazy." What about the 53 Democrats who just crapped on the Constitution for the umpteenth time, by giving an unelected body legislative and executive powers. Because of these Democrats, Mark explains, energy costs and everything related to energy (which means just about everything you can possibly think of) is about to go through the roof.

So here's 15 minutes of the Great One Mark Levin telling it like it is. I dedicate this clip to my liberal Jewish friend who has blocked my posts on Facebook because she's too offended to read anything that doesn't jibe with her MSNBC-NPR-filtered reality. I'm sure if any one of those two stations actually report what the Senate did on Thursday afternoon, you would have no problem with it anyway. It's OK to cr@p on the Constitution, as long as you're doing it to further the Leftist agenda.

[Edited for commercials, long pauses, and other extraneous content]

levin2010-06-10_80kbps.mp3

That's Right, China, America Does Have a Discrimination Problem

Like many other sentient Americans, I was absolutely disgusted upon hearing that ASSistant Secretary of State Michael Posner apologized to China—China!—for alleged American human rights violations, most notably the Arizona illegal immigration bill and its “potential discrimination.”

In response, “Snarky Basterd” at the Feed Your ADHD blog lets loose with this delicious rant:

… America has a discrimination problem when a candidate for the U.S. Senate flat out says the American people aren't, “let me be clear,” smart enough to understand legislation that has removed their ability to make their own health care decisions , especially since we read every page of all 7 competing bills long before she opened her fork-tongued mouth.

America has a discrimination problem when freshman (and soon to be unemployed)Congresscriminal Alan Grayson stands in the middle of a family restaurant and screams at his constituents simply because they don't agree with him.

America has a discrimination problem when Senate majority leader Harry Reid (Dickhead, Nevada – but not for long! ) refers to peaceful American citizens exercising their Constitutional right to free speech as “'evil-mongers' using 'lies, innuendo and rumor,' to drown out rational debate .”

America has a discrimination problem when the Wicked Witch of Congress calls these same people Nazis and later admits that she would have no pangs of regret about arresting any one of them who refuses to buy health insurance .

America has a discrimination problem when the men and women who shed blood and relinquish their personal freedom in the service and defense of this country are considered potential “right-wing extremists ” and enemies of the Regime.

America has a discrimination problem when an American citizen supports the head of an Islamic terrorism organization that would prefer that all Jews gather in Israel so he and others don't have to hunt them down to complete a second Holocaust .

America has a discrimination problem when Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano say on camera they haven't read a bill that enforces their own immigration laws, while endlessly bullying a governor who has decided that if they won't do their jobs she will, while a public school teacher openly advocates revolution against the United States of America and the leftwing media and federal government (I know: there's a difference?) stand by, quiet as church mice.

America has a discrimination problem when the pResident of the United States dismisses a powerful movement of fed up people, who are black and white and young and old and liberal and independent and libertarian and conservative and rich and poor and all persuasions in between, as “folks waving tea bags around ," or, even more representative of the Liar in Chief's “civility,” lovingly demonizes us as “that wing" of the Republican Party, the “tea-baggers.”

America has a discrimination problem when the threat of a boot on the throat is the perfect phrase to describe the people who dangle our nation's future for ransom over a cliff overlooking an abyss.

Absolutely brilliant. May I also add:

America has a discrimination problem when the Democrat-media complex immediately blames confrontations involving police on conservative white Christian males, without having any of the facts. (Remember Skip Gates?)

America has a discrimination problem when the Democrat-media complex immediately blames a terrorist attack (botched or successful) on conservative white Christian males, without having any of the facts.

America has a discrimination problem when its citizens voted for a person to be the leader of the free world not on the basis of his character (of which he has none) but primarily because of his race.

America has a discrimination problem when all its political and media elite do when discussing a prospective cabinet member or SCOTUS nominee is fixate on their gender, race, ethnicity, and/or sexual orientation, rather than whether they are qualified and principled to successfully do the freaking job.

Poll: Obama has Lost Almost Half of his US Jewish Support

United States President Barack Obama has lost nearly half of his support among American Jews, a poll by the McLaughlin Group has shown.

The US Jews polled were asked whether they would: (a) vote to re-elect Obama, or (b) consider voting for someone else. 42% said they would vote for Obama and 46%, a plurality, preferred the second answer. 12% said they did not know or refused to answer.

In the Presidential elections of 2008, 78% of Jewish voters, or close to 8 out of 10, chose Obama. The McLaughlin poll held nearly 18 months later, in April 2010, appears to show that support down to around 4 out of 10. …

Read the rest at Israeli National News.

Sensible Liberal: The New York Times

Yes, friends. Somewhere pigs are flying and Hell is one huge glacier.

Shortly after doing this post quoting an article by Kris Kobach on Arizona S.B. 1070, I discovered this: The New York Times, to its credit, published this Opinion piece from Prof. Kobach, which contains even more liberal myth-busting.

Why Arizona Drew a Line
April 28, 2010

… Predictably, groups that favor relaxed enforcement of immigration laws, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, insist the law is unconstitutional. Less predictably, President Obama declared it “misguided” and said the Justice Department would take a look.

Presumably, the government lawyers who do so will actually read the law, something its critics don’t seem to have done. The arguments we’ve heard against it either misrepresent its text or are otherwise inaccurate. As someone who helped draft the statute, I will rebut the major criticisms individually:

It is unfair to demand that aliens carry their documents with them. It is true that the Arizona law makes it a misdemeanor for an alien to fail to carry certain documents. “Now, suddenly, if you don’t have your papers ... you’re going to be harassed,” the president said. “That’s not the right way to go.” But since 1940, it has been a federal crime for aliens to fail to keep such registration documents with them. The Arizona law simply adds a state penalty to what was already a federal crime. Moreover, as anyone who has traveled abroad knows, other nations have similar documentation requirements.

“Reasonable suspicion” is a meaningless term that will permit police misconduct. Over the past four decades, federal courts have issued hundreds of opinions defining those two words. The Arizona law didn’t invent the concept: Precedents list the factors that can contribute to reasonable suspicion; when several are combined, the “totality of circumstances” that results may create reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed.

For example, the Arizona law is most likely to come into play after a traffic stop. A police officer pulls a minivan over for speeding. A dozen passengers are crammed in. None has identification. The highway is a known alien-smuggling corridor. The driver is acting evasively. Those factors combine to create reasonable suspicion that the occupants are not in the country legally.

The law will allow police to engage in racial profiling. Actually, Section 2 provides that a law enforcement official “may not solely consider race, color or national origin” in making any stops or determining immigration status. In addition, all normal Fourth Amendment protections against profiling will continue to apply. In fact, the Arizona law actually reduces the likelihood of race-based harassment by compelling police officers to contact the federal government as soon as is practicable when they suspect a person is an illegal alien, as opposed to letting them make arrests on their own assessment.

It is unfair to demand that people carry a driver’s license. Arizona’s law does not require anyone, alien or otherwise, to carry a driver’s license. Rather, it gives any alien with a license a free pass if his immigration status is in doubt. Because Arizona allows only lawful residents to obtain licenses, an officer must presume that someone who produces one is legally in the country.

State governments aren’t allowed to get involved in immigration, which is a federal matter. While it is true that Washington holds primary authority in immigration, the Supreme Court since 1976 has recognized that states may enact laws to discourage illegal immigration without being pre-empted by federal law. As long as Congress hasn’t expressly forbidden the state law in question, the statute doesn’t conflict with federal law and Congress has not displaced all state laws from the field, it is permitted. That’s why Arizona’s 2007 law making it illegal to knowingly employ unauthorized aliens was sustained by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In sum, the Arizona law hardly creates a police state. It takes a measured, reasonable step to give Arizona police officers another tool when they come into contact with illegal aliens during their normal law enforcement duties.

And it’s very necessary: Arizona is the ground zero of illegal immigration. Phoenix is the hub of human smuggling and the kidnapping capital of America, with more than 240 incidents reported in 2008. It’s no surprise that Arizona’s police associations favored the bill, along with 70 percent of Arizonans.

Congrats.

Who the heck at the NYT allowed this to go to print!?