RUTHFULLY YOURS

He was not the Big Apple’s first Jewish mayor…..that was his predecessor Abraham Beame (1974-1977). Although he rescued the city financially,in my opinion he fell short of being the best mayor. That praise is shared by La Guardia and Rudi Giuliani. Koch was the most colorful, brash, gutsy, original and spunky mayor. He was the last of his kind….a diehard Democrat who was also conservative jousting like Don Quixote at political correctness. He was always feisty and combative, but my best memory of him actually comes from my son.

In 1990 Koch gave a speech at Harvard Law School (Incidentally…that was while President Obama was there…but I don’t know if he attended). After his talk he took questions from the audience. One young lady raised her hand and before she could ask her question….he blurted out (I paraphrase based on my son’s recollection) “Oh I remember you. You accosted me before in New York. Sit down!” Next he was asked about legalizing drugs and he evoked the “Singapore solution”….life in jail. Best was his answer to a question about terrorist suspects being held in a 60 square feet room. His answer: ” They should hold 60 suspects in one square foot. Next question!”

For almost twenty years I have had the privilege of being invited four times a year to a small and private breakfast which Ed Koch never missed. He was often crass, insulting and combative. At the last breakfast he showed me a children’s book he had just written. He had many better angels. May they guard his rest.

N.B. the best way to Queens is the bridge from Second Avenue and 59th St. in New York City. It is now the Edward I. Koch Bridge.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/on-the-death-of-ed-koch/print/ Six days ago, Ed Koch described the tombstone that he had arranged for himself. On my tombstone, which awaits me at the Trinity Church nondenominational cemetery at 155th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, I had inscribed the last words of Daniel Pearl — uttered at his publicly viewed murder — which were, “My father is […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/339590/senate-republicans-arm-brotherhood-andrew-c-mccarthy I’m done grumbling about how President Obama is empowering America’s enemies. After all, it is not just Obama. When it comes to abetting the Muslim Brotherhood, Republicans are right there with him. Not all of them, of course. This week, for example, Senator Rand Paul proposed an amendment that would have prohibited our government […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/339573/containing-hagel-mark-steyn You don’t have to be that good to fend off a committee of showboating senatorial blowhards. Hillary Clinton demonstrated that a week or so back when she unleashed what’s apparently the last word in withering putdowns: What difference does it make? Quite a bit of difference it seems. This week, an over-sedated Elmer Fudd […]

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/01/27/what-near-death-experiences-tell-us/?print=1 There is an afterlife, and a benign deity. At least, that’s the testament of tens of thousands (some say it’s now millions) of people all over the world who have had near-death experiences (NDEs) (an online collection of these reports is here). Two books now at or near the top of the New York […]

http://dev.d-intl.com/en/articles/international/2013-01-31/french-journalism-drowns-trying-save-charles-enderlin PARIS. The honor of French journalism reached new depths on January 16 with one more absurd hearing in the lawsuit brought by France 2/Charles Enderlin against Philippe Karsenty, convicted of slander in 2006, acquitted in 2008, thrown back into Appellate Court after the highest court (Cour de Cassation) rejected the 2008 judgment on a […]

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=301727 Into they Fray: Time and time again the Israeli voter has been hoodwinked into voting for allegedly centrist parties only to have them evaporate later. This [remark by Yair Lapid] showed a kind of crude contempt, mixed with a whiff of racism, for those whom Lapid does not consider part of his political camp. […]

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3361 Reports of an alleged Israeli strike against a Syrian weapons’ convoy headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon — followed by threats of retaliation from Damascus and Tehran — have sent Israelis lining up at gas-mask distribution points across the country. The above example of Israel’s external problems, coupled with the current internal uncertainty as to […]

THANKS DPS
Just to clarify, the vote was to ‘table’ the amendment which is why there are more YEAs than NAYs.

Rand Paul’s amendment “To prohibit the sale, lease, transfer, retransfer, or delivery of F-16 aircraft, M1 tanks, or certain other defense articles or services to the Government of Egypt” failed in the Senate today by a vote of 79-19.

The only 19 Senators who tried to block the transfer of weapon’s to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood were:

Boozman (R-AR)
Coats (R-IN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
Cruz (R-TX)
Fischer (R-NE)
Grassley (R-IA)
Heller (R-NV)
Lee (R-UT)
Moran (R-KS)
Paul (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)

Rubio (R-FL)

Scott (R-SC)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)

If I had to hyphenate myself I would be a Senior-Hispanic-Polish-Jewish-American. To heck with that….American is just fine. I am an immigrant. I came to America from Bolivia when I was ten years old, arriving on a Thursday. By the following week I was enrolled in a public school in Portland,Oregon and there was no bilingual education. It was sink or swim regarding English. After some water treading I learned English within two months and I remain fluent in Spanish. We settled finally in The Bronx.

By the time I got to Bronx High School of Science all almost all of my friends were born elsewhere and had similar stories. Many parents learned English in night schools. Becoming a citizen was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for all our families. My own father insisted that my brother and I memorize “I Hear America Singing” by Walt Whitman. On the lovely day we were finally sworn in, we all went to the swanky Hotel Waldorf Astoria for dinner. I have that picture. The next day our parents joined the Republican Party and never missed a single election until they died. My father used to crow that in America “I vote, therefore I am.”

The controversies and policies about immigration all range from awful to passable. My meager suggestion is not a solution but a serious option.

English is the official language of the United States of America, not an option for pushing the number one. It should be taught and learned and mandatory for anyone seeking residency and citizenship. In 1948 after Israel’s independence hundreds of thousands of refugees from Arab lands and Europe’s graveyards entered Israel. Some estimates state that there were over one hundred different languages and dialects among these people as well as differences in alphabets. At that time, outside of Israel and orthodox schools, probably more people in the world, spoke Khalmic Mongolian than Hebrew. Nonetheless Israel successfully implemented a series of schools for newcomers named Ulpans where practical Hebrew was taught including lessons in shopping, commuting, and communicating with the endless bureaucracy.

Within a year or less this great incoming population spoke Hebrew, and identified themselves simply as Israeli citizens….no hyphens. Nothing like this has ever been seen anywhere else in the globe. Why can’t we do the same instead of tolerating the mangling of our national language among those who only learn to be functionally illiterate in two languages instead really learning one?