Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Michael Oren on America and Israel in Turmoil Dec 31, 2019 Audio tape 27 minutes
Michael Oren on America and Israel in Turmoil
Dec 31, 2019 Audio tape 27 minutes
Gil Hoffman interviews former deputy minister, Knesset Member and ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, author of two books on the US-Israel relationship, Ally and Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present.
Gil and Michael speak about the similarities between US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a time when Oren says Israeli society is stronger than America's but the US has stronger institutions than the Jewish state.
They also address the increasing anti-Semitism in the US and what should be done about it by America, US Jews and Israel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj6C4pw-xLY&feature=youtu.be
Sunday, December 29, 2019
The Hill’s annual Top Lobbyists list.
The Hill's Top Lobbyists 2019 12-14-19
Welcome to The Hill’s annual Top Lobbyists list.
2019 was a frenetic year for K Street, with a number of high-profile fights on legislative and regulatory issues, even as Washington was riveted by impeachment drama and a contentious 2020 presidential election took shape.
In a busy and testing year for the influence world, these are the people who wielded their clout and knowledge most effectively on behalf of their clients.
Not all of those honored on this list are formally registered as lobbyists. The list highlights the broad range of talents needed to succeed in the influence industry. But the people below are all at the top of their game — and the ones the nation’s biggest companies, labor unions and associations turn to when they want their voices heard in the nation’s capital.
The ranks of Washington’s policy experts and influencers run deep, but these are the players who stand out for delivering results for their clients in the halls of Congress and the administration.
Corporate
Gina Adams and Lance Mangum, FedEx Corp.
Jane Adams, Johnson & Johnson
Tricia Purdy, UnitedHealth Group Inc.
Ali Amirhooshmand, Magic Leap Inc.
Bryan Anderson, Southern Co.
Bill Barloon, Sprint Corp.
Wayne Berman, The Blackstone Group Inc.
Karan Bhatia, Google LLC
Abigail Blunt, The Kraft Heinz Co.
Dwayne Carson and Justine Handelman, The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association
Maria Cino, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Mo Cowan, General Electric Co.
Sarah Fanning, The Travelers Companies Inc.
Terri Fariello, United Airlines Inc.
Fred Ferguson, Vista Outdoor Inc.
Bob Filippone, Merck & Co.
Tucker Foote and Tom Gannon, Mastercard Inc.
Maggie Gage, MetLife Inc.
Matt Gelman and Fred Humphries, Microsoft Corp.
Ken Glueck, Oracle Corp.
Bruce Harris, Walmart Inc.
Rich Haselwood, Reynolds American Inc.
James Hayes, Tenable Inc.
Robert Helm and Betsy Schmid, General Dynamics Corp.
Brian Hendricks, Nokia Corp.
Brian Henneberry, Koch Companies Public Sector LLC
Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, Univision Communications Inc.
Guy Hicks, Airbus Group Inc.
Ed Hill, Bank of America Corp.
Robert Hoffman, Accenture
Jessica Hogle, PG&E Corp.
Brian Huseman and Steve Hartell, Amazon.com Inc.
Alethia Jackson, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.
Robert Jones, Pfizer Inc.
Lesley A. Kalan, Northrop Grumman Corp.
Joel Kaplan, Facebook Inc.
Timothy Keating, Boeing Co.
Heather Kennedy, The Home Depot Inc.
Michael Kennedy, VMware Inc.
Will Kinzel, MillerCoors
Laura Lane, Dontai Smalls and Mike Kiely, United Parcel Service Inc.
Melissa Lavinson, Pepco Holdings
Chris Leahy, Intuit Inc.
Curt Magleby, Ford Motor Co.
Meagan McCanna, Airbnb Inc.
Tim McKone and Susan Santana, AT&T Inc.
Jake Menefee, Marathon Petroleum Corp.
Jeanne Mitchell, Exxon Mobil Corp.
Mara Motherway, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.
Michael Moran, Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC
Majida Mourad, Tellurian Inc.
Gregg Sheiowitz, Zurich North America
Chandler Morse, Workday Inc.
Christopher Padilla, IBM Corp.
Dean Pappas and Steve English, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.
Michael Paese and Michael Thompson, The Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Adam Peterman, Marie Sylla-Dixon and Michelle Persaud, T-Mobile US Inc.
Mike Parrish, Bayer US
David Quinalty, Waymo LLC
Robert Rangel, Lockheed Martin Corp.
Louis Renjel, Duke Energy Corp.
Isaac Reyes, Target Corp.
Mitch Rose, Comcast Corp.
Norberto Salinas and Lisa Malloy, Intel Corp.
Brian Smith, Regions Bank
Matt Stanton, Constellation Brands Inc.
Lynn Starr, Ericsson
Cindy Jimenez Turner, United Technologies Corp.
Omar Vargas, 3M
Jonathan Weisgall, Berkshire Hathaway Energy Co.
Candi Wolff, Citigroup Inc.
Molly Wilkinson and Nate Gatten, American Airlines Inc.
Cherie Wilson and Richard Lopez, General Motors Co.
Heather Wingate, Delta Air Lines Inc.
Corie Wright, Netflix Inc.
Marcela Zamora, Verizon Communications Inc.
Associations
Craig Albright, BSA | The Software Alliance
Todd Askew, American Medical Association
Dana Atkins, Military Officers Association of America
Greg Baer and Anthony Cimino, Bank Policy Institute
Mark Baker, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association
Meredith Attwell Baker, CTIA
Michael Beckerman, Internet Association
Kenneth Bentsen Jr., Jamie Wall and Mark Schuermann, Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association
B. Dan Berger, Brad Thaler and Carrie HuntCarrie HuntThe Hill's Top Lobbyists 2019 The difference between banks and credit unions could not be clearer Updated Glass-Steagall would make banks put people before profits MORE, National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions
Joshua Bolten, Business Roundtable
Manuel Bonilla, American Society of Anesthesiologists
John Bozzella, Global Automakers
Neil Bradley and Jack Howard, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Kevin Burke and Annie Russo, Airports Council International — North America
Steve Caldeira, Household & Commercial Products Association
Nicholas E. Calio and Christine Burgeson, Airlines for America
Chase Cannon and Matt Willette, American Optometric Association
Robert Cresanti and Matthew Haller, International Franchise Association
Geoff Cooper, Renewable Fuels Association
Greg Crist, AdvaMed
Chester “Chip” Davis Jr., Association for Accessible Medicines
Jeffrey D. DeBoer, The Real Estate Roundtable
Roger Dow and Tori Barnes, U.S. Travel Association
Juanita Duggan, National Federation of Independent Business
Kip Eideberg, Association of Equipment Manufacturers
Eric Fanning, Aerospace Industries Association
Jennifer Fisher and Chris Tampio, American Dental Association
Geoff Freeman and Bryan Zumwalt, Grocery Manufacturers Association
David French, National Retail Federation
Lee Fuller, Independent Petroleum Association of America
Coley George, NetJets Association of Shared Aircraft Pilots
Marco Giamberardino, National Electrical Contractors Association
Elizabeth Goodman and Matt Eyles, America’s Health Insurance Plans
Christine LoCascio, Kelly Poulsen, and Jessie Brady, Distilled Spirits Council
Jimi Grande, National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies
Dan Grattan, Mortgage Bankers Association
James Greenwood, Biotechnology Innovation Organization
Karen Harbert and George Lowe, American Gas Association
Jason Hartke, Alliance to Save Energy
Michael Herson, American Defense International
Jerry Howard, National Association of Home Builders
Richard Hunt, Consumer Bankers Association
Chip Kahn, Federation of American Hospitals
Bradley Karbowsky, United Association of Plumbers & Fitters of US & Canada
Kori Blalock Keller, National Association of Letter Carriers
Heather O’Beirne Kelly and Karen Studwell, American Psychological Association
Maria Korsnick, Nuclear Energy Institute
Thomas Kuhn and Brian Wolff, Edison Electric Institute
Garrett Levin, Digital Media Association
Linda Lipsen, American Association for Justice
Gail MacKinnon and Patrick Kilcur, Motion Picture Association
Kyle Makarios, United Brotherhood of Carpenters
Shannon McGahn, National Association of Realtors
Nancy McLernon, Organization for International Investment
Linda Moore, TechNet
Bill Miller and Chris Cylke, American Gaming Association
Susan Neely, American Council of Life Insurers
Rob Nichols and James Ballentine, American Bankers Association
Rich Nolan, National Mining Association
Jim Nussle and Ryan Donovan, Credit Union National Association
Jason Ouimet, National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action
Jason Oxman and Shannon Taylor, Information Technology Industry Council
Mark Parkinson, American Health Care Association
Bob Pease and Katie Marisic, Brewers Association
Stanley Pierre-Louis, Entertainment Software Association
Richard Pollack, American Hospital Association
Michael Powell, NCTA — The Internet & Television Association
Craig Purser and Laurie Knight, National Beer Wholesalers Association
Rebeca Romero Rainey and Paul Merski, Independent Community Bankers of America
Bree Raum, American Wind Energy Association
Morgan Reed, ACT: The App Association
Nichole Francis Reynolds, Interstate Natural Gas Association of America
Jim Riley, National Waste and Recycling Association
Dan Roehl and Matt Walker, National Restaurant Association
Chip Rogers, American Hotel & Lodging Association
Patricia Rojas-Ungar, Outdoor Industry Association
John Rother, National Coalition on Health Care
Cinnamon Rogers, Computing Technology Industry Association
Bob Rusbuldt and Charles Symington, Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America
Jennifer Safavian, Retail Industry Leaders Association
Stephen Sandherr, Associated General Contractors of America
J.C. Scott, Pharmaceutical Care Management Association
Gary Shapiro, Consumer Technology Association
Emily Skor, Growth Energy
Gordon Smith, National Association of Broadcasters
Mike Sommers, American Petroleum Institute
Jonathan Spalter, USTelecom
Kristen Swearingen, Associated Builders and Contractors
Scott Talbott, Electronic Transactions Association
Jeff Tassey, Electronic Payments Coalition
Mary Kay Thatcher, Syngenta
Jay Timmons and Aric Newhouse, National Association of Manufacturers
Chet Thompson, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers
Stephen Ubl and Lori Reilly, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
Dirk Van Dongen, National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors
Andrew Walmsley, R.J. Karney and Scott Bennett, American Farm Bureau Federation
Kirsten Wegner, Modern Markets Initiative
Ryan Weston, Sugar Cane League
Jerry White, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
Nathaniel Wienecke and J. Stephen Zielezienski, American Property Casualty Insurance Association
Hired Guns
Josh Ackil and Matt Tanielian, Franklin Square Group
Kai Anderson, Barry Rhoads and Jordan Bernstein, Cassidy and Associates
Cristina Antelo, Ferox Strategies
Brian Ballard, Ballard Partners
Andy Barbour, Smith-Free Group
Haley Barbour, Loren Monroe, Remy Brim and Erskine Wells, BGR Group
Jim Barnette, Doug Kantor and Darryl Nirenberg, Steptoe & Johnson LLP
Doyle Bartlett and Chris McCannell, GrayRobinson
Bethany Bassett, Rasky Partners
Jennifer Bell, Chamber Hill Strategies
Bob Bissen, Cannae Policy Group
Kirk Blalock and Kirsten Chadwick, Fierce Government Relations
John Blount, Ervin Hill Strategy
Dan Boston, Health Policy Source
Chuck Brain, Capitol Hill Strategies
Paul Brathwaite, Federal Street Strategies
David Castagnetti, Dean Rosen and David Thomas, Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas
Rob Chamberlin and Sam Whitehorn, Elevate
Rob Collins and Mike Ference, S-3 Group
Justin Daly, Daly Consulting Group
Tom Daschle and Nathan Daschle, The Daschle Group
Licy Do Canto, BCW
Michael Drobac, Robert Wasinger and Mona Mohib, McGuireWoods Consulting
Ken Duberstein and David Schiappa, The Duberstein Group
Ingrid Duran and Catherine Pino, D&P Creative Strategies
Martin Edwards, Ice Miller Strategies
Missy Edwards, Missy Edwards Strategies
Steve Eichenauer and Patrick O’Neill, Public Strategies Washington Inc.
Steve Elmendorf and Jimmy Ryan, Subject Matter
Holly Fechner, Bill Wichterman and Muftiah McCartin, Covington & Burling LLP
John Feehery, EFB Advocacy
Mitchell Feuer and John Anderson, Rich Feuer Anderson
Camden Fine, Calvert Advisors LLC
Shannon Finley, Warren Tryon and Ann Jablon, Capitol Counsel
Jeff Forbes and Dan Tate Jr., Forbes Tate Partners
Jim Flood, Crowell & Moring
Omar Franco and Bert Gómez, Becker
Elizabeth Frazee, TwinLogic Strategies
Kimberley Fritts, Cogent Strategies
Noe Garcia and Charles Cooper, Signal Group Consulting
Sam Geduldig, John Stipicevic and Mike Catanzaro, CGCN Group
Chris Giblin, Moses Mercado and Karissa Willhite, Ogilvy Government Relations
Rich Gold, Kathryn Lehman, David Whitestone and Scott Mason, Holland & Knight
Gregg Hartley and Andy Blunt, Husch Blackwell Strategies
Ralph Hellmann and David Lugar, Lugar Hellmann Group
Michael Herson, American Defense International
Mike Hettinger, Hettinger Strategy Group
Susan Hirschmann and Matthew Hoekstra, Williams & Jensen
Josh Holly, Holly Strategies
Mike House and Ivan Zapien, Hogan Lovells
Erik Huey, Platinum Advisors
Joel Johnson, The Glover Park Group
Travis Johnson, 1607 Strategies
Matt Keelen, The Keelen Group
Kevin Kelly, Clark Hill
Ken Kies, The Federal Policy Group
Israel “Izzy” Klein and Matt Johnson, Klein/Johnson Group
Lisa Kountoupes, Lori Denham and Julie Hershey Carr, KDCR partners LLC
Chris Lamond and Andy Rosenberg, Thorn Run Partners
Marc Lampkin, Al Mottur and Greta Joynes, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck
Bryan Lanza, Mercury
Blanche Lincoln, Lincoln Policy Group
Robert Livingston, The Livingston Group LLC
Esteban López-Rosado, LGA Strategies
Trent Lott, John Breaux and Jack KingstonJohon (Jack) Heddens KingstonThe Hill's Top Lobbyists 2019 Hundreds apply to fill Isakson's Senate seat in Georgia Nancy Pelosi is ready for this fight MORE, Squire Patton Boggs
Patrick Martin, Cozen O’Connor
Frank McCarthy, McCarthy Advanced Consulting
Mike Merola, Winning Strategies Washington
Jeff Miller, Miller Strategies
Kyle Nevins, Steve Stombres and Jonathan Slemrod, Harbinger Strategies
Don Nickles and Stacey Hughes, The Nickles Group
Larry O’Brien, The OB-C Group
Tom O’Donnell, Gephardt Government Affairs
Kevin O’Neill, Eugenia Pierson and Dana Weekes, Arnold & Porter
Manuel Ortiz, VantageKnight
Scott Pastrick and Charlie Black, Prime Policy Group
Ilisa Halpern Paul and Jodie Curtis, District Policy Group
Jeff Peck, Andrew McKechnie and Drew Cantor, Peck Madigan Jones
Steven Phillips, DLA Piper
Jim Pitts and Chris Cox, Navigators Global
Heather Podesta, Invariant
Brian Pomper, Hunter Bates, Scott Parven, Arshi Siddiqui and Geoff Verhoff, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
Lendell Porterfield, Dwight Fettig and Dawn Sears, Porterfield, Fettig & Sears LLC
Thomas Quinn, Venable LLP
Robert Raben and Estuardo Rodríguez, The Raben Group
Bob Rapoza, Rapoza Associates
Oscar Ramirez and Dana Thompson, Fulcrum Public Affairs
Mark Rayder, Alston & Bird
Vin Roberti, Steven Irizarry and Drew Cole, Roberti Global
Chuck Rocha, Solidarity Strategies
Jerr Rosenbaum, Tim Hannegan and Jennifer Poersch, Hannegan Landau Poersch & Rosenbaum Advocacy
Emanuel Rouvelas, Darrell Conner and Bart Gordon, K&L Gates
John Russell and Sander Lurie, Dentons
Scott Segal and Dee Martin, Bracewell
Rhod Shaw and Jason Schendle, Alpine Group
Michaela Sims, Sims Strategies
Marsha Simon, Simon & Co
Mike Smith and Jim Richards, Cornerstone Government Affairs
Tracy Spicer, Avenue Solutions
David Tamasi, Chartwell Strategy Group
Linda Tarplin, Tarplin, Downs & Young LLC
Carl Thorsen and Alec French, Thorsen French Advocacy
David Urban and Manus Cooney, American Continental Group
Mark Van de Water, Baker Donelson
Bob Van Heuvelen, VH Strategies
Stu Van Scoyoc, Jennifer LaTourette and Steve Palmer, Van Scoyoc Associates
Stewart Verdery, Kate Mills and Andrew Howell, Monument Advocacy
Jack Victory and Rick Shelby, Capitol Hill Consulting Group
Alex Vogel, The Vogel Group
Chris Wall, The Policy Group
Henry WaxmanHenry Arnold WaxmanThe Hill's Top Lobbyists 2019 Lawmakers come together to honor Cummings: 'One of the greats in our country's history' Lessons from Congress' last big battle on climate MORE, Waxman Strategies
Scott Weaver, Wiley Rein LLP
Jonathan Yarowsky and Rob Lehman, WilmerHale
Grassroots
Brandon Arnold and Pete Sepp, National Taxpayers Union
Lauren Augustine, Student Veterans of America
Matt Bennett, Third Way
Michael Breen, Human Rights First
Garrett Bess, Heritage Action for America
John Bowman and Alexandra Adams, Natural Resources Defense Council
Jeremy Butler, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America
Thomas M. Conway, United Steelworkers
Ken Cook, Environmental Working Group
Steve Ellis and Autumn Hanna, Taxpayers for Common Sense
Susie Feliz, National Urban League
Marvin Feuer, American Israel Public Affairs Committee
Karen Hobert Flynn and Aaron Scherb, Common Cause
Joe Franco, LeadingAge
Lily Eskelsen García, National Education Association
Vanita Gupta, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Joshua Habursky, Grassroots Professional Network
Mary Kay Henry, Service Employees International Union
Craig Holman and Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen
Marty Irby, Animal Wellness Action
Frederick Isasi, Families USA
Fred Krupp, Environmental Defense Fund
Nancy LeaMond, AARP
Joanne Lin, Philippe Nassif and Daniel Balson, Amnesty International USA
Liz Lopez, YWCA USA
Tom McClusky, March for Life Education & Defense Fund
Meredith McGehee, Issue One
Bill McKibben, Natalie Mebane and Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, 350.org
Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. Public Interest Research Group
Eric Mitchell, Adtalem Global Education
Abby Tinsley, National Wildlife Federation
Janet Murguía, UnidosUS
Katie Murtha, Environment America and U.S. Public Interest Research Group
Matthew Myers, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
Brendan Mysliwiec, Appalachian Trail Conservancy
Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform
Tim Phillips, Americans for Prosperity
Melinda Pierce, Sierra Club
Andrew Roth, David McIntosh and Scott Parkinson, Club for Growth
Lee Saunders, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
Thomas Schatz, Citizens Against Government Waste
Christopher Shelton, Communications Workers of America
Tiernan Sittenfeld and Sara Chieffo, League of Conservation Voters
Richard Trumka and Bill Samuel, AFL-CIO
Heather Valentine, Bread for the World
Fred Wertheimer, Democracy 21
Dylan Williams, J Street
John Feehery is a columnist for The Hill.
The following have published opinion pieces on thehill.com in 2019: Lauren Augustine, Haley Barbour, Tori Barnes, Michael Beckerman, Neil Bradley, Tom Daschle, Juanita Duggan, Geoff Freeman, Lisa Gilbert, James Greenwood, Vanita Gupta, Mary Kay Henry, Karen Hobart Flynn, Craig Holman, Carrie Hunt, Jack Kingston, Fred Krupp, Nancy LeaMond, Tom McClusky, Meredith McGehee, Bill McKibben, Linda Moore, Philippe Nassif, Susan Neely, Rob Nichols, Grover Norquist, Jason Oxman, Christopher Padilla, Mark Parkinson, Tim Phillips, Chip Rogers, John Rother, Thomas Schatz, Christopher Shelton, Jonathan Spalter, Robert Wasinger , Kirsten Wegner, Fred Wertheimer
We Should Investigate Why The New York Times Is Wrong All the Time Matt Vespa Townhall
We Should Investigate Why The New York Times Is Wrong All the Time
Matt Vespa Townhall
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2019/12/25/ny-post-columnist-we-should-investigate-why-the-new-york-times-is-wrong-all-the-time-n2558526?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=12/26/2019&bcid=9930c656b2212929c884960baf64bc5a&recip=26163198
Someone mentioned this on social media. In fact, many have when it comes to The New York Times and others caught peddling fake news. I mean it’s become abysmal since the 2016 election. Granted, a blind squirrel finds a nut. The publication can dole out some solid pieces—not doubt. The Upshot is a decent section, but the batting average isn’t good. And yes, it’s a liberal paper. I’m sure you all know this but there are some folks out there who think the NYT, MSNBC, and CNN are impartial sources of news. You almost have the chuckle a bit. Yet, when you get egg on your face for the 10,000thtime, maybe there needs to be an internal review. That’s what The New York Post’sMichael Goodwin suggested due to the paper’s serial failures while adding that Trump is Teflon. He will not be taken down by the snowflake brigade that infests so many newsrooms. He also added that if Democrats thought their liberal media allies will be able to drum up support for impeachment, they were sadly mistaken (via NY Post):
Backed by a press corps eager to get Trump, Pelosi felt confident to authorize the flimsy effort to remove the president from office. She assumed media bullhorns would push the public into her camp and that would win her Republican votes for a bipartisan takedown.
She certainly got the media support, but the public and the GOP aren’t following. Indeed, the harder that Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler push and the louder the anti-Trump media scream, the more the public resists impeachment over the Ukraine piffle.
That was true even before last week’s sensational revelations that the FBI was both corrupt and incompetent in the Russia collusion probe. The report and testimony by Michael Horowitz, the inspector general of the Justice Department, further undermined impeachment by revealing the rampant misconduct in the earlier case.
[…]
Thankfully, the accountability fallout from the Russia misconduct has started, with Attorney General Bill Barr suggesting possible prosecutions of FBI agents and perhaps others.
But what of the media? After all, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and the broadcast networks were spectacularly wrong in their coverage.
[…]
Pulitzers and other journalism prizes lionized some reports that are now as discredited as the Steele dossier. Yet the news organizations still protect the secret sources who misled them and act as if they themselves did nothing wrong.
One glaring example. The Times reported last May that the FBI sent a female investigator “posing as research assistant” to spy on the Trump campaign in 2016. The woman, who called herself Azra Turk, met with George Papadopoulos in a London bar.
[…]
The Times’ story also says Turk and another informant, Stefan Halper, “failed to glean any information of value” from several meetings with Papadopoulos, but that is not true, according to the inspector general. He says one of the FBI’s most significant “inaccuracies and omissions” was the failure to tell FISA judges that Papadopoulos repeatedly denied to Halper and Turk that the campaign was collaborating with Russia or WikiLeaks.
Did the Times reporters know about that exculpatory information, or did their FBI sources lie to them? Either way, the paper now knows its May story was wrong on key points, yet it remains uncorrected.
[…]
Days after the 2016 election, the Times issued an apology of sorts to subscribers for failing to realize that Trump could win. “Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?” the publisher and editor wrote.
[…]
So now it’s time for a second apology — a sincere one. And an honest inquiry into how the paper continues to get the big stories so wrong.
I mean the list of how many times the liberal media has stepped on a rake when covering this administration could stretch from New York to San Francisco. It’s got to the point where even voters who lean Democratic in swing states refuse to believe what’s being printed about the president. It’s that bad.
It’s also the cumulative effect. The partisan blitzes Democrats and the liberal media have tried to execute against the Trump White House have given the game away. Democratic voters think Trump is Satan. Republicans are finally happy we have a growing economy and a president who doesn’t play by the liberal media’s rules. He punches back and the Left doesn’t know what to do. Meanwhile, Independents are moving closer to the MAGA camp in the face of a hyper-left wing 2020 agenda and an impeachment push that’s total garbage. The allegation is that there was a quid pro quo scheme between Trump and Ukraine over military aid. Trump threatened to withhold it unless there was a corruption probe into Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden. The charges stemming from this are obstruction of Congress and abuse of power, two charges you’d expect from a Democratic majority infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome. This push has done nothing but boost Trump’s approval ratings and pushing swing state voters away from Democrats.
Yet, the Russian collusion narrative, which suffered two shots to the head, is the holy grail for all of this nonsense. First, the report submitted by ex-Special Counsel Robert Mueller killed the narrative and debunked the Trump dossier, from which this whole meth-addled narrative about Trump-Russia collusion was born. It was fake. For starters, the dossier was a Clinton-funded opposition research project that was cited as credible evidence in securing of a FISA spy warrant against Carter Page, a former Trump campaign official. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote a memo saying how the FBI committed no wrongdoing in the process. Well, the Department of Justice Inspector General shredded that partisan nonsense up, noting 17 times the FBI omitted or outright omitted exculpatory information when applying for this spy warrant. Schiff is wrong, but that’s not shocking. He’s been lying for years. His memo was a work of fiction. He knew about the Trump-Ukraine nonsense prior to it becoming public knowledge. It all stemmed from a so-called whistleblower complaint. The so-called whistleblower, who is also a reported CIA agent and a registered Democrat that had worked with a 2020 candidate, approached his staff. Schiff knew the contents and prepared to weaponized it prior to leading the official impeachment march. Yet, another reason not to believe the Democrats with their rule of law and institutional integrity talking point when it comes to this top-notch political theater engulfing Washington.
Based on how the FBI-FISA story blew up, it quite clear why the liberal media keeps getting buckshot to the face. They take whatever Democrats give them as gospel, which is quite dangerous when you’re dealing with the mentally ill.
Making Journalism Great Again By J.B. Shurk American Thinker 12-28-19
Making Journalism Great Again
By J.B. Shurk American Thinker 12-28-19
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/making_journalism_great_again.html
A new year is upon us, and I am keenly aware of the Fourth Estate’s four New Year’s Resolutions for 2020: (1) get Trump; (2) get Trump’s friends and family; (3) ridicule anyone who has voted or would consider voting for Trump; and (4) protect the Democratic Party from scandal. If the “free” press can do this while impersonating the virtuous hero withstanding onslaught from the impenitent pretender in the White House, then all the better. There is nothing they like more than playing Saint George to Trump’s dragon.
They’ll need to dig deeper if they expect any of us to take them seriously ever again. This isn’t a “one-too-many Christmas cookies requiring a jump on the Peoloton” kind of resolution year. This is a full-blown “been drinking Christmas cocktails since November 9, 2016, and desperately need an intervention” moment for the press. Journalists keep leaning on the imaginary crutch that their blown credibility stems from one lone man in the country calling them out for their fake news from his Twitter account. Chris Wallace has gone so far as to claim that there has never been a more dangerous time for the First Amendment than when the President of the United States exercises his free speech. To save the press, we must regulate who is allowed to speak. Finally, a license journalists can get behind!
If the ones with journalism degrees did some investigative reporting, they’d discover that we backcountry folk simply find their prose unconvincing. They don’t have to visit Sharyl Attkisson’s long list of media malfeasance in the Trump Era, although that would be a good start for a journalist on the road to recovery. What might be illuminating for the select congregation of the Fourth Estate, however, is if they sat down, red felt-tip marker in hand, and reread the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post for every day from this last year, circling each headline that is not entirely, one hundred percent accurate. If they did so, they might be amazed at how much red ink covers the graffiti of record. It’s an astonishing exercise. You would think that the reporters writing the stories were, like meteorologists, predicting tomorrow’s news, rather than recording for posterity known facts and affairs. It is said that gross inaccuracy should be tolerated in the news business because reporters, even when very wrong, manage to reveal important unknown events when allowed to “chase a story” like a detective unearthing a clue. When you flip through a year’s worth of pages now bleeding scarlet red dye, though, it is not courage but shame that comes to mind. How many red-encircled headlines should be endured before reaching the conclusion that this is not “news” but speculative fiction or straight-up propaganda?
Is there a certain percentage of inaccuracy that we could all agree is impermissible? Would coastal newspapers still feel haughty if they had to print disclaimers below the fold stating that forty percent or more of what you are about to read might later be proven to be false? Is it possible to peddle so much false information but still take umbrage at being called “fake”?
I suggest four different resolutions for the press this year: (1) Headlines should accurately encapsulate facts that form the crux of any given story. It does me no good if your headline is describing the third sentence of paragraph six or scraps the newsy part for a misleading editorial in headline form. Headlines matter. Sometimes they are all a busy person has time to read. Sensational headlines not backed up by the sentences that follow are straight-up lies. (2) Anonymous sources are bunk. Testimonial evidence is only as powerful as the perceived credibility of the witness. Most of the time, we see your anonymous sources as successfully using you to push a story, rather than the other way around. Anonymous sources should be exceptional aberrations, not the norm. If you can’t allow us to evaluate someone’s reputation for truthfulness or motivation for falsehood, that person better be providing life-and-death information while behind enemy lines. Otherwise, they are pushing a narrative, you are their willing mark, and we are an audience being manipulated, not informed. (3) When you ignore this and use anonymous sources anyway, stop giving your secret quote-givers special nonsensical titles. When you say “high-ranking Pentagon official,” I know you want me to think “admiral,” “general,” or “Secretary of Defense,” but most of the time you mean somebody who ranks slightly higher than fifty percent of the millions of employees who work somewhere in our vast national security apparatus. “Current or former White House aide” should mean one of the five people actually in the Oval Office during the meeting in question, not some disgruntled out-of-power political operative who last relished White House privileges in 1996. (4) Expert sources matter, too. Strangely, you think we see a “Dr” before a name or “PhD” after it as some holy affixation giving that person authority. We don’t. You may think all scientists are the same, but we know that engineers and chemists are not equal to gender-study sociologists and peddlers of Marxist revisionist history. If you pass off an ethnographer as an expert in the effects of carbon dioxide emissions, you are lying. If you use Howard Zinn as your expert on American history, you are lying, too.
The coasts are fond of telling us that “democracy dies in darkness.” Here in the Great Middle, though, we have long known the more important truth: “Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.”
Saturday, December 28, 2019
The 10 best things Trump did in 2019 Marc A. Thiessen Washington Post 12-26-19
The 10 best things Trump did in 2019
Marc A. Thiessen Washington Post 12-26-19
10. He continued to deliver for the forgotten Americans. Unemployment is at record lows; this year the number of job openings outnumbered the unemployed workers to fill them by the widest gap ever; wages are rising, and low-wage workers are experiencing the fastest pay increases. Fifty-seven percent of Americans say they are better off financially since Trump took office.
8. He has got NATO allies to cough up more money for our collective security. Allies have increased defense spending by $130 billion since 2016. And the White House reports almost twice as many allies are meeting their commitment to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense today than before Trump arrived.
7. He stood with the people of Hong Kong. He warned China not to use violence to suppress pro-democracy protests and signed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. Hong Kong people marched with American flags and sang our national anthem in gratitude.
6. His withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty is delivering China and North Korea a strategic setback. The United States is now testing new, previously banned intermediate-range missiles. These weapons will allow us to compete with China’s massive investment in these capabilities, and also provide a fallback in the likely case negotiations with North Korea fail — obviating the need for temporary deployments of U.S. carrier battle groups and allowing us to put North Korea permanently in our crosshairs.
4. His tariff threats forced Mexico to crack down on illegal immigration. Mexico is for the first time in recent history enforcing its own immigration laws — sending thousands of National Guard forces to its southern border to stop caravans of Central American migrants. Plus, Congress is poised to approve the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free-trade agreement, which would not have been possible without the threat of tariffs.
3. He delivered the biggest blow to Planned Parenthood in three decades. Thanks to Trump’s Protect Life Rule that prohibits Title X family planning funds from going to any clinic that performs on-site abortions — Planned Parenthood announced this year that it is leaving the Title X program barring a court victory. This is a major pro-life victory and another reason Christian conservatives continue to support him.
2. He ordered the operation that killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It was a high-risk mission that required U.S. forces to fly hundreds of miles into terrorist-controlled territory. If things had gone horribly wrong, Trump would have been blamed. That risk is why former vice president Joe Biden advised President Barack Obama not to carry out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Trump did not hesitate the way Biden did. President Trump on Oct. 27 compared the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to Osama bin Laden, who was killed in 2011.
1. He has continued to appoint conservative judges at a record pace. The Senate recently confirmed Trump’s 50th pick for the federal circuit courts of appeal, which have final say over about 60,000 cases a year. In three years, Trump has appointed just five fewer circuit court judges than Obama appointed in eight years. And he has flipped three of these courts from liberal to conservative majorities, giving conservatives the majority in seven out of 13. Conservatives are winning the battle for America’s courts, a triumph decades in the making. This is how they did it. (Dalton Bennett, Jesse Mesner-Hage, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)
There are many other significant achievements that did not make the top 10. Despite an inexcusable 55-day delay, he gave Ukraine the lethal aid that the Obama-Biden administration refused to deliver. He secured the release of additional American citizens held abroad. He launched cyberattacks on Iran, approved a major arms sale to Taiwan, imposed visa restrictions on Chinese officials over Beijing’s oppression of the Uighurs, and refused to make major concessions to North Korea.
Friday, December 27, 2019
Israeli Intelligence Continues to Help Thwart Terrorist Attacks Abroad
Israeli Intelligence Continues to Help Thwart Terrorist Attacks Abroad
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Thursday, December 26, 2019
Why is JNS and Jonathan Tobin so much better for Israelis and American Jews than is David Suissa and the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles? [Possibly the answer is provided by VAJA.]
Why is JNS and Jonathan Tobin so much better for Israelis and American Jews than is David Suissa and the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles? [Possibly the answer is provided by VAJA.]
From: carol greenwald
I just returned from the UK where I gave three talks on Trump at the Limmud conference, the largest gathering of British Jews. I was on a panel with a managing editor of the LA Jewish Journal, Kelly Hartog. She was horrible. She read a litany of "sins" against Trump. She was the most unbalanced individual. If she is at the Journal, there is little hope.
From: L Marshall Howard
I had great hopes for David Suissa… but so far he has been a disappointment.
Bigger disappointments are Chuck Schumer and Adam Schiff. Chuck Schumer was granted a dispensation by Obama as long as he did not organize an opposition. His vote was not needed.
On the other hand Adam Schiff was given 100% of the intelligence relating to Iran. We obtained it through France. Adam Schiff knew what he was doing when he joined the Rhodes operation to create an echo chamber. The New York Times had a full article in which Rhodes bragged about how he shanghaied the media and employed organization such as Plowshares to saturate the media with editorials in favor of the JCPOA. Adam Schiff knew that vast areas of Iran would not be subject to any inspections and those that were subject to inspection would require advance notification and permission for any inspections. Adam Schiff also knew that they would not be any snapback sanctions for Iranian violations given the complex mechanism of finding them guilty. The saddest part is that Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, etc. are providing ammunition to the anti-Semites who believe that the anti- Trump efforts are a Jewish plot. This is at the same time that Adam Schiff’s left-wing supporters in the Democratic Party are claiming that the US foreign policy establishment is controlled by Jews and that Israel is a criminal nation.
Currently, my mentor ******, who is Jewish, is actively trying to provide information to David Suissa in the hope that David Suissa will present a more balanced approach in the various Jewish publications that he oversees. The rest of us are all concerned that David Suissa is identified by name as “vulnerable" [useful idiot ] by VAJA ( Vezarat-e Ettela'at Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran) , the primary intelligence agency of the Islamic Republic of Iran
From: Shirley Lewis
This should be on the cover of next week's Jewish Journal if the JJ was truly serving the Jewish community and not the Democratic Party:
The Jewish Journal is a Democratic Party front. It does not care if the working class has job opportunities or if their wages go up. The Democratic Party won't even vote for the new Canada/Mexico/US trade deal that is favorable to US workers. THE greatest social justice program ever invented is an economy pumping on all cylinders. Democrats prefer a stifled economy (a la during the Obama era( and open borders which guarantee suppressed wage growth. Jewish Democrats, including the JJ, promotes that anyone that wants border security to help increase US worker wage growth is a racist. Jewish Democrats, including the JJ, promotes that if you believe everyone who comes to US should be vetted like our parents were is a racist. There is NO genocide going on in Mexico and Latin America but we are supposed to pretend that those crossing illegally are escaping genocide are be treated like potential Holocaust victims. Anti-Semitsm both on and off campus is the cancer, but the Jewish Journal allows the Jewish Dem group to call Trump the cancer. See link below with photo of Democrat Tlaib wearing the call to kill-Jews kaffiya on the floor of the House of Representatives. Think Jewish Democrats of the Jewish Journal really cares. Maby we'll get a "tisk-tisk”.
In addition, the Jewish Journal covers up:
The depth and breath of anti-Semitism on US campuses
The do-nothing-real about the nonstop assaults on Jews in Brooklyn by the big, well-funded Jewish groups.
The do-nothing at all about the US imams that are preaching Jewish genocide from their pulpits.
What the big name Muslim organizations really are: CAIR, MPAC and ISNA.
The depth and breadth of anti-Semitism in mainstream media despite the fact that CAMERA does all the research, would be so easy to pick up.
The depth and breadth of incitement to hate and violence by the fake "moderate/peace partner" Abbas/PA/Fatah/PLO despite PMW doing all the research, sould be so easy to pick up.
Sunday, December 22, 2019
IS THERE A DEEP STATE COUP UNDERWAY AGAINST BIBI NETANYAHU? Dovid Mark 2-18-19
IS THERE A DEEP STATE COUP UNDERWAY AGAINST BIBI NETANYAHU?
Dovid Mark 2-18-19
With Israel heading to a third election and the Prime Minister now indicted, the real story is what is driving the judicial system against the Prime Minister. Mark Levin, in a comprehensive show below explains how the current crisis and political upheaval are really a product of a Deep State coup underway against Bibi Netanyahu.
Israel’s Deep State as I have pointed out in other places, has an entrenched interest in keeping their power within the Justice system and Law enforcement agencies. This is where the left’s hold on Israel’s system remains the strongest and provides for an ability to thwart the nationalist and rightwing capabilities to actually implement policies that are beneficial to a majority of Israelis.
This struggle between the national camp and those hold overs within the bureaucracy of Israel is the real internal war going on now. The cases against Netanyahu are flimsy and yet the judicial system has used its power to create obstacles for Netanyahu to easily defeat them.
For example, the Attorney General has filled the case files with over 300 witnesses, many who have little or nothing to do with the cases themselves. One reason to do this is to keep the Prime Minister’s case going for years, forcing him to step down to handle it.
Why a Coup?
Ultimately, the left has recognized that the younger generation of right wing politicians in Israel are now coming of age. They have grown and matured under Netanyahu’s cover and are willing to do away with the Left’s Deep State once and for all. By taking the Prime Minister down and ensure a center-left coalition, or even someone amicable to the judiciary from the center-right, they can hold on longer to their power.
Ironically, it is the Prime Minister, when asked years ago to change the system to ensure more transparency, opted to protect it rather than alter it. This decision may have been a mistake as he underestimated the determination that the Deep State would have at taking him down.
What to Expect Next?
As Israel is in a period of chaos, predictions seem to be unwarranted as most have been deemed wrong over the last year. One thing is clear, after 70 years we seem to be reaching a point of national reckoning with two great founding movements the Labor Zionists who morphed into the secular Deep State and the Zionist Revisionists represented by the Likud throwing down for a final battle of rulership in the Holy Land.
Perhaps Israelis have matured more than their leaders and will opt to go a third way altogether. These days, anything is possible
View-video::
Mark Levin and special guest Arthur Fergenson dissect the indictment against Prime Minister Netanyahu and some of the political machinations behind it.
Friday, December 20, 2019
THIS TIME IT IS PERSONAL — FOR US by DOV FISCHER December 20, 2019
THIS TIME IT IS PERSONAL — FOR US
by DOV FISCHER December 20, 2019
https://spectator.org/this-time-it-is-personal-for-us/
“America First” is an honorable slogan; America’s traditional culture, values, and history are precious.
After Wednesday’s House impeachment vote (YouTube screenshot)
Those pathological haters and congenital liars impeached not only President Trump on Wednesday night. They impeached us. This time it is personal. That ismy vote they are trying to take away. As an Orthodox Jew, I know plenty about governments taking away my vote. Rome did it to me in Talmudic times. Western Europe did it to me in the Medieval ages. The Ottoman Sultan did it to me. Sheiks did it to me. The Tsar did it to me. Hitler did it to me. Stalin did it to me. Damned if I am going to let a mob of socialist and lying Democrats do it to me. The muck stops here.
For four years, polling has documented that the president’s strongest support demographic is America’s Orthodox Jews. The support runs between 70 percent in radical Los Angeles to 90 percent most everywhere else. This has been documented here and here and here and here and here. Much of that support stems from a deep affinity with his stands on the whole gamut of traditional American cultural and social issues. Many faithfulChristians, including devout and committed Catholics, small business owners, and working-class households with traditional values in the heartland between the two coasts all feel the same, determined to rush in to protect this president’s back.
Mr. President, you are not alone.
The corrupt Democrat impeachment charade now, for the first time, has made their three-year war against Trump personal for his backers, too. We now have “skin in the game” — because the Democrats not only are trying to nullify him but also to nullify us, to annul our 63 million ballots and 304 electoral votes, our role at the heart of the American process. We realize that this moment in history demands that we have Trump’s back, too, not just Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, Devin Nunes and Steve Scalise, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin and Rush. The toxic Democrats and their Corrupt Journalist Corps voted, with defections, to steal our votes and our election. Now it is personal as it never before has been for Trump backers. His poll numbers have survived Pelosi’s gambit magnificently, and we now support him more passionately than ever. Here’s why.
America First
We are deep America Firsters. Contrast this video and this with the gutless coward, LeBron James. Just listen to this Lee Greenwood song once again: “I’m proud to be an American.” And they can’t take that away.
We do not care that vile haters a century ago used the “America First” slogan to incite xenophobia because we focus on the different contexts of then and now. Words and terms change meanings over time. A century ago, the word “liberal” would have fit today’s “conservative” perfectly. It meant inter alia that you supported the free market and opposed state control of the economy. By contrast, after the Left arrogated it, the term became so loaded with failure that Democrats have run away from it and now call themselves “progressives.” Similarly, the word “stalwart” is a fine word, meaning someone who takes a stand and sticks to it with loyalty, someone you can trust and count on. But a century and a half ago, that term instead identified a faction of the Republican Party, typified by the likes of Chester Arthur, that promoted “machine politics” and patronage, the Swamp that handed out government jobs based on political connections rather than on merit. Even as that term has changed over time, consider that the era’s opposing Republican faction, associated with such as James Garfield, were a group who believed nobly in honest government run by the best people; yet they were called —yikes!— the “Half-Breeds.” Go ahead and use that term today. We are Trump stalwarts, as the word is used today. And likewise we are America Firsters.
We despise the Left’s obsession withColin Kaepernick and the troglodytic multi-millionaire ingrate lemmings like him. No Nike athletic shoes or outdoor in our homes and no moreNFL football on our TV. We strongly and enthusiastically support building the Wall. Why should we not be enthusiastic about sealing off a porous border (i) that allows the smuggling of deadly drugs including opioids that murder tens of thousands annually, (ii) that fails to keep out animals like MS-13, and (iii) that facilitates and even invites the most vile human trafficking in women and children for unspeakable perversions and quasi-enslavement? We virulently oppose the Democrats’ cynical effort to import millions of illegal immigrants so that, having failed for generations to persuade the majority of self-sufficient Americans who live here legally and know the score, they instead seek to change vote outcomes by importing millions whom they know will rely on Democrat welfare programs. That was their formula in New Mexico and then in flipping California from the Golden State of John Wayne and Reagan to the Homeless State of Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff. And now they press on to Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado. We are furious that there was not a president nor even a viable candidate for president in the past half century — and that includes Bush, the other Bush, Dole, McCain, Romney, and the whole bunch of them — until Trump who frontally would try stopping the surge of illegal immigrants.
We see no comparison between the illegal immigrants of today, a group that has no statutory claim to enter and must not be allowed in, in contrast to the plight of Irish who fled famine in the 1840s, otherNorth Europeans who flocked to Ellis Island a century ago, and Jews who fled Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s — because each of those prior groups endeavored to enter the United States legally within the allowed immigration quotas and by the proper procedures.They were not admitted on government handouts and did not assert “entitlements” for public assistance of any kind because they never had the brazen audacity to imagine themselves “entitled” to anything but a chance. They had to demonstrate that family would house and support them from becoming a public charge. There was no welfare state for them, no food stamps, no bilingual education. In the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Jewish immigrant children who spoke Yiddish in the public school hallways had their mouths washed out with soap because in America, you speak English.
To the degree that Jews do remember bitterly the American immigration impediments during the Hitler years, notedHolocaust scholarProfessorRafael Medoff has documentedthat Roosevelt consciously altered the laws to keep Jewish immigrants from Hitler out, so190,000legally authorized immigration openings never were filled during FDR’s presidency. Any comparison between the Ellis Island immigration struggles then and the southern border issues now is blasphemous. ICE of today feeds illegal immigrants, houses them, provides them with medical care and plumbing facilities. Those who ignorantly compare that to concentration camps and Auschwitz, where inmates did not voluntarily seek to enter but instead were transported forcibly there from their homes, then were enslaved into 15-hour work days, experimented on medically, starved, taken to be shot to death or gassed with Zyklon B, and then incinerated in crematoria are not merely idiots; rather, they reflect the dereliction and impact of American conservatives having abandoned wholesale to the Left the sacred task of educating our future generations.
America’s Traditional Culture, Values, and History Are Precious
We Trump stalwarts are socially conservative. For Orthodox Jews for example, our Written Laws of Judaism (Torah) and Oral Laws of Judaism (Talmud) recognize only two genders (Genesis 1:27). Our religion’s positions on homosexuality, transgenderism, bisexuality, and gay marriage are defined by Judaism’s unequivocal texts (Leviticus18:22and20:13; Tractate Chulin92a-b). America’s Christian faithful share that core tradition and those values. Orthodox Judaism’s position on abortion is that a fetus is a human life after 40 days (Tractate Yevamot69b). Thus, this year the Rabbinical Council of America, an association of 1,000 Orthodox Rabbis, severely condemnedNew York’s newly enacted abortion-on-demand law. Our position on capital punishment is that, in almost all cases, a person who takes a life with premeditation should pay with his or her life. We oppose assisted suicide. We pray patriotically for the welfare of the government. And these are values shared by Trump supporters across the religious, ethnic, and racial spectra. On issues of law and order, anyone can walk through an Orthodox Jewish community any hour, day or night, male or female, adult or child, and the only danger that may arise will come from outsiders in a passing car or others from outside the Orthodox Jewish community. And so it is wherever Trump support is strong, no matter the religion or color. Police are not concerned for their safety when assigned to patrol communities where Trump support is strong. We deeply believe that Blue Lives Matter. These identical cultural values are held equally by faithful Christians, working-class households in the heartland between the coasts, married women and soccer moms, and Jewish conservatives. And that is why Democrats from Kentucky to Virginia to New Jersey to Florida keep trying to extend the vote to felons, another of their core support bases.
We hate what has happened in American education and the degrading of America’s traditional culture and Judeo-Christian heritage. Many of us Orthodox Jews who grew up before the 1960s went to public schools before the widespread rise of yeshiva parochial schools. We sang in public-school choirs, and that meant singing Christmas carols in school. Fine. My wife Ellen, the Rebbetzin (wife of an Orthodox rabbi) of our shul, knows every single lyric to every single Christmas carol so well that, for decades, she always would win the “Name That Christmas Carol Lyric” contest at the annual Christmas party at the office where she managed investigations of alleged white-collar crime, working as a certified fraud examiner and a certified internal auditor. Only one year did she ever come in second place, the year they brought in a “ringer” who was choirmaster at his church. In the year when they wanted someone else besides The Rebbetzin finally to win for a change, with winking apologies to her they held the party at a non-kosher restaurant where she could not attend. America needs Christmas carols in public schools and Christians wishing each other “Merry Christmas.” Go ahead and keep the crosses on government seals and war monuments. None of this Obama “Happy Holidays” junk —bah, humbug! Thus, Orthodox Jews continually advocate for America’s public schools to begin each day with a prayer, the way it was in the old days when we were younger, when kids started the day with some humility that a G-d reigns supreme — and when kids did not shoot each other in school.
The public schools do not need to teach ideologies: cisgender, transgender, non-binary gender
the whole leftist agender. They do not need public school teachers to hand out condoms or teach sexual strategies for avoiding pregnancy, nor courses on who in history was gay, who was straight, who had bellies inside-out or outside-in. Rather, the schools need to teach reading and writing and arithmetic, hard sciences and technology. Even with texting and keyboards, kids still should grow up knowing how to read a handwritten birthday card or write one. And even with calculators and smartphones, they should be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide on their own. Just look at Congress to see what happens to people who grow up without skills needed to balance a checkbook. And they need to learn real history, not the pure garbage that now consumes valuable pages in texts and jams kids’ minds with dross and detritus. Just imagine if, instead of being encouraged to whine and blame, they were taught the heroism and sacrifice of Americans of all ideologies and races during World War II. They should learn what their grandparents and great-grand parents lived: what if we had lost Midway, what it took to win Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and to take back the Philippines. The suffering and heroism of the Bataan Death March. The thousands who died in the air on utterly exposed daytime bombing runs over Germany until we revised strategies, supplying fighting escorts and shifting to nighttime raids. Liberating Italy, the difference between heroes like Patton and screw-ups like John Dahlquist, the struggles at Anzio and Monte Cassino, the heroic struggles and leadership miscalculations at Market Garden and Hürtgen Forest and the heroic discipline of American soldiers who answered the call, and of course Omaha Beach. The Battle of the Bulge. If taught right, how can students not be inspired to patriotism? That it is why it is not taught.
Teach the Civil War, too. Teach real history — the ugliness of slavery and real racism, but also the heroic sacrifices of more than half a million White people who gave their lives to end it. Teach about the Revolutionary War. Teach about real sacrifice like Nathan Hale and about the rich White men who signed a Declaration of Independence that guaranteed their deaths and the confiscation of all their enormous wealth if the Revolution had failed. When a young person really learns about what areal American Congress once was when it was made of greatness, he or she instantly will perceive the sham impostors of today’s House who pledge neither their lives nor their fortunes— and who have no sacred honor to pledge anyway. The Torah instructs, “Remember the days of yore. Understand the years of generation to generation. Ask your father, and he will tell you; your elders, and they will say it to you” (Deuteronomy 32:7). A nation cannot survive if its future generations do not know its actual history, its vision, its “mission statement.”
Today’s kids go through college, get lofty-sounding degrees that make them feel really smart, just as the Scarecrow felt brilliant immediately after the Wizard gave him a diploma from Universitatas Committeeatum E Pluribus Unum(and, by the way, he convoluted the Pythagorean theorem) — but they are a generation of factually challenged Ocasio-Cortezes, ignoramuses who know more about mixing an alcoholic drink and tweeting a meme than they do about reality: real history, real climate science, real economics. An advanced degree in Identity/Grievance Studies prepares that scholar for a life of jealousy and coveting what others have. Those who stand with Trump know that the key to the American Dream is not wanting to take what others have but to look upon their success, to figure out how they did it — and then to work hard and honorably, learning from their lessons to secure a piece of that pie, too.
We voted for Trump because he was the first since Reagan — and truly even better than Reagan — who spoke our language, gave voice to our values, and truly had demonstrated that he has the executive skills, drive, and determination to keep the promises he made. We knew there was a terribly expanding Swamp that was subverting our democratic republic from within, but neither he nor we realized how deep and all-pervasive it had become. We knew the Swamp had grown to implement its own agenda, impervious to “interference” or “meddling” by the office-holders actually elected by the American people. We watched the Swamp consume everything from the Democrat hedges to the Republican Bushes, subverting and controlling everything from domestic economics to energy and environmental policy, from bank lending to education policy to foreign affairs. We knew it had overtaken the State Department, for example, but most of us had no idea how deeply it even had entrenched itself within agencies of the Justice Department, like the FBI.
Donald Trump dared to take them on. Our 304 electoral votes gave him our Constitution’s most sacred authority to do so. Now the Pelosi House has voted to impeach us, too, to cancel our votes. President Trump has had our backs, and now we have his because this time it is personal — for us, too.
Dov Fischer
Rabbi Dov Fischer, Esq., a high-stakes litigation attorney of more than twenty-five years and an adjunct professor of law of more than fifteen years, is rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California. His legal career has included serving as Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerking for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and then litigating at three of America’s most prominent law firms: JonesDay, Akin Gump, and Baker & Hostetler. In his rabbinical career, Rabbi Fischer has served several terms on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America, is Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, has been Vice President of Zionist Organization of America, and has served on regional boards of the American Jewish Committee, B’nai Brith Hillel, and several others. His writings on contemporary political issues have appeared over the years in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Jerusalem Post, National Review, American Greatness, The Weekly Standard, and in Jewish media in American and in Israel. A winner of an American Jurisprudence Award in Professional Legal Ethics, Rabbi Fischer also is the author of two books, including General Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine, which covered the Israeli General’s 1980s landmark libel suit.
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
JCT's Keeping Score: Democrats Oppose Trump's Pro-Israel Policies
JCT's Keeping Score: Democrats Oppose Trump's Pro-Israel Policies |
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