RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://nypost.com/2018/11/03/the-jewish-left-botched-its-response-to-the-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting/

The aftermath of Pittsburgh has been a disgrace.

In ordinary times it would have been unseemly to comment on the atrocity at the Tree of Life Synagogue so soon after it unfolded. It was the most deadly anti-Semitic attack this country has ever seen. It should have given us pause and brought us together.

But these are not ordinary times. Donald Trump is president.

Before the bodies of the dead had gone cold, let alone been buried and mourned, the Jewish left sacrificed an opportunity to cry in unity and chose instead to call for division.

Bend the Arc, reputedly the largest Jewish social-justice organization in the nation, published a letter blaming the president for the attack. Other groups, such as The Jewish Vote and If Not Now, also saw the attack as a chance to castigate the president.

Apparently these liberal groups need reminding that the shooting at a Jewish community center in Kansas occurred during the Obama administration.

Instead of trying to score political points, would not a more appropriate response have been to urge calm upon the hyper-partisanship that has seen both sides court incivility?

Yet more egregious, however, was the excoriation by Jewish liberals of their fellow Jews who support President Trump. Another three Jewish social justice groups — Torah Trumps Hate, Hitoreri and Uri L’Tzedek — penned an open letter to the National Council of Young Israel (NCYI), blasting the Orthodox synagogue umbrella group for its statement condemning the attack.

NCYI’s sin?

Concluding its heartfelt statement by expressing appreciation for “the strong words of support from President Trump and the administration in urging everyone to work together to combat anti-Semitism.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/kavanaugh-accuser-admits-she-fabricated-allegations/

A woman who made graphic allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has admitted to investigators that she fabricated them to “get attention.”

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has referred Judy Munro-Leighton to the Justice Departement and FBI for investigation into potentially materially false statements and obstruction.

“The Committee is grateful to citizens who come forward with relevant information in good faith, even if they are not one hundred percent sure about what they know,” Grassley wrote in his letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “But when individuals intentionally mislead the Committee, they divert Committee resources during time-sensitive investigations and materially impede our work.”

On September 25, “Jane Doe” from Oceanside, California sent an anonymous letter to Senator Kamala Harris alleging that the then-nominee for Supreme Court and his friend raped her “several times each” in the back of a car. Details were sparse, such as the time frame and location of the alleged attack.

“The whole thing is ridiculous,” Kavanaugh said when questioned the next day by committee investigators about the allegation. “The whole thing is just a crock, farce, wrong, didn’t happen, not anything close.”

Later on October 3, Judy Munro-Leighton emailed the committee claiming to be the “Jane Doe” of the letter and said she was “sharing with you the story of the night that Brett Kavanaugh and his friend sexually assaulted and raped me in his car,” calling it a “vicious assault.”

“I refuse to allow Donald J. Trump to use me or my story as an ugly chant at
one of his Republican rallies,” Munro-Leighton wrote. “I know that Jane Doe will get no media attention, but I am deathly afraid of revealing any information about myself or my family.”

Investigators located Munro-Leighton living in Kentucky, not California, and discovered that she is a left-wing activist decades older than Judge Kavanaugh.

She admitted to investigators that her story was a “tactic” and “that was just a ploy.”

“No, no, no. I did that as a way to grab attention,” she told investigators. “I am not Jane Doe . . . but I did read Jane Doe’s letter. I read the transcript of the call to your Committee. . . . I saw it online. It was news.”

“I was angry, and I sent it out,” she said of her email to the committee describing the allegations.

“Oh, Lord no,” she responded on whether she has ever met Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh was confirmed as Associate Justice on the Supreme Court on October 6. During his acrimonious confirmation process, multiple women came forward with accusations of sexual assault against him. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified to the Judiciary Committee that Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed and attempted to rape her at a party when they were both in high school.

However, several on-the-fence senators, including Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican Susan Collins, sealed the slim majority in Kavanaugh’s favor with their votes to confirm him, citing a lack of hard evidence supporting the accusations against him.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/tech-companies-universities-scientists-attack-trump-over-erasing-transgender-people/

Last week, The New York Times reported — oh horror! — that President Donald Trump is returning the definition of “sex” in federal law to the commonsense and biological meaning of male and female the term had since time immemorial, until just yesterday. The Times breathlessly reported that Trump’s move would “erase” transgender people. This week, companies, universities, and scientists jumped on the “Resistance” bandwagon over the issue.

Transgender identity has critics on the Right (concerned about confusing children and putting women and girls at risk) and the Left (among radical feminists who link transgenderism to “rape culture” and “conversion therapy”).

Congress could pass a law adding “gender identity” to “sex” on the list of protected characteristics, following the democratic process for achieving this change. Instead, Barack Obama unilaterally redefined the term, which Congress clearly intended to mean biological sex. Obama, not Trump, is the undemocratic innovator in this case.

Yet, in an exercise of topsiturvidom that would impress George Orwell, big businesses like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and JP Morgan Chase have teamed up with hundreds of scientists and universities like Princeton and Rutgers to criticize Trump for imposing a “restrictive” view of sex.

Activists have glossed over important issues in their rush to normalize transgender identity. Transgender “treatments” — hormone therapy and the more drastic surgery — have left people scarred. Hormones increase the risk of deep-vein thrombosis (for men on estrogen) and ovarian cysts (for women on testosterone). Max Robinson, a 21-year-old woman who once identified as a man, regrets having taken male hormones and removing her breasts, calling such “treatments” “not a cure at all.”

The science behind transgenderism is shoddy at best. At the genetic level, human beings are either male or female. Sex is biologically geared toward reproduction, and therefore is inherently binary — as children result from one male and one female.

“They are trying to recreate humanity in terms of cis and trans, instead of male and female,” Dr. Michelle Cretella, executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, told PJ Media in September. This new idea makes “our bodies meaningless. But our bodies mean everything. They tell us who and what we are, scientifically, concretely.”

None of this is to deny that people who identify as transgender are people, have basic rights, and should be treated with respect. They may need legal protections, and both sides should debate the issue. Powerful people are avoiding that debate, teaming up to effectively erase the human body, and claiming that Trump’s defense of biology, common sense, and democratic norms is actually “erasing” transgender people. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/brooklyn-synagogue-vandal-a-black-democratic-activist-and-former-city-hall-intern/

The alleged vandal of a Brooklyn synagogue is a Trump-loving, anti-Semitic white supremacist, right?

Well, not exactly.

James Polite, a 26 year old black Democratic activist and a former city hall intern who worked on hate crime issues was arrested yesterday and will probably charged with a hate crime.

Literally everyone rushed to frame the vandalism as another example of anti-Semitic hate being enabled by the president and Republicans.

ABC7:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed the Hate Crimes Task Force to investigate, releasing the following statement:

“I am disgusted by the discovery of anti-Semitic graffiti at a house of worship in Brooklyn. At a time when the nation is still reeling from the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, New Yorkers stand united with the Jewish community and against hate in all its forms. In New York, we have zero tolerance for discrimination in our laws or in our spirit. I have directed the State’s Hate Crimes Task Force to investigate this hideous act and hold those responsible accountable to the full extent of the law. As governor, I am also doing everything in my power to ensure our religious institutions are free from violence and intolerance. This week, we announced the launch of an additional $10 million grant program to help protect New York’s non-public schools and cultural centers, including religious-based institutions. The disgusting rhetoric and heinous violence in this nation has reached a fever pitch and is ripping at the fabric of America, and it must stop. In New York, we have forged community through chords of commonality and we will always stand together against hate and discrimination.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-growth-dividend-for-workers-1541201213

Don’t think tax reform and deregulation matter for working people? Consider the evidence from Friday’s gangbuster jobs report for October that showed the tangible dividend for workers from faster economic growth resulting from better economic policy: More jobs to choose from and higher pay to boot.

That’s the essence of the news that the marvelous machine called the American economy created 250,000 new jobs last month, including 246,000 in private industry. Average hourly wages rose again and are now 3.1% above a year ago, the fastest increase in a decade. (See the nearby chart.) This is the growth dividend that Republicans promised if the dead weight of Barack Obama’s policies could be lifted from the backs of American business and workforce.

The economy has now added 218,000 jobs on average over the last three months, up from 210,000 over the last year, as the unemployment rate held steady at 3.7%. That’s remarkably strong labor growth for an expansion that is nine years old at what some economists claim is already full employment.

Apparently thousands of Americans have been waiting for the right job, or a better paying one, because the civilian labor force grew by 711,000 in October and four-fifths of them found jobs. Job growth was especially robust in leisure and hospitality (42,000), health care (35,600), manufacturing (32,000) and transportation and warehousing (24,800).

Hurricane Florence, which struck the Carolinas in September, has caused some noise in the data. But the big job gains in October offset tepid payroll growth in September. Labor force participation ticked up 0.2 percentage points last month to 62.9%, which is at the higher end of its range in recent years.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/republicans-do-right-by-black-americans/

The party that freed the slaves continues to liberate black Americans today.

‘What the hell do you have to lose?” candidate Donald J. Trump queried black Americans in 2016, as he asked for their votes with characteristically blunt eloquence. Eight percent of black voters bought his pitch. While this seems like a rout, Trump outperformed Mitt Romney by one-third; 6 percent of blacks backed 2012’s GOP nominee. Trump’s total was astonishing, given that the Left/media slandered him as the guy who brings the lighter fluid to a cross burning.

So, what do blacks think of Trump today? Rasmussen’s tracking poll Monday found Trump’s approval among blacks at a record-high 40 percent, versus 50 percent nationwide. How could this be? The Trump-hating Left/media’s attacks have been ruthless, relentless, and more one-sided than a flounder. Answer: President Trump and Republican leadership have made black Americans better off than they were two years ago.

• Black unemployment was 8.6 percent in October 2016. Last month, it hit 6.2 percent, marginally above May’s lowest-ever 5.9 percent.

• The Labor Department counted 18.1 million blacks employed in October 2016 versus 19.3 million last month. In short, 1.2 million more black Americans have found work since Donald J. Trump was elected.

• Blacks below poverty fell from 21.8 percent in 2016 to 21.2 percent in 2017, the latest and historically lowest such reading.

This great news flows from Republican policies: abundant tax relief, robust deregulation, and a pro-business tone in Washington that is healing Obama’s “You didn’t build that!” public abuse of American enterprise.

The party that freed the slaves has done even more to liberate black Americans today:

• The GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which every single Democrat in Congress opposed, includes Opportunity Zones. These areas “offer tax incentives for businesses to invest in economically distressed communities, making them a powerful vehicle for economic growth and job creation,” a White House statement explains. Across America, 8,761 communities have been declared Opportunity Zones, not unlike the Enterprise Zones that the late Congressman Jack Kemp (R., N.Y.) advocated during the Reagan era. “Through these tax incentives, we will jumpstart our American communities, create momentum for economic recovery, and attract investment to diverse areas across our Nation.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy/u-s-job-growth-surges-annual-wage-gain-biggest-since-2009-idUSKCN1N70AJ

U.S. job growth rebounded sharply in October and wages recorded their largest annual gain in 9-1/2 years, pointing to further labor market tightening that could encourage the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates again in December.

The Labor Department’s closely watched monthly employment report on Friday also showed the unemployment rate was steady at a 49-year low of 3.7 percent as 711,000 people entered the labor force, in a sign of confidence in the jobs market.

Sustained labor market strength eased fears about the economy’s health following weak housing and business spending data. President Donald Trump cheered the robust jobs report, which came less than a week before the midterm elections that will decide who controls the U.S. Congress.

“These are incredible numbers,” Trump tweeted.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 250,000 jobs last month as employment in the leisure and hospitality sector bounced back after being held down by Hurricane Florence, which drenched North and South Carolina in mid-September.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/jeff-benson/

Dear Rabbi Myers,

Please accept my condolences on the terrible murders of your congregants and fellow Jews this past Shabbat.

I want to express my deep admiration and appreciation of your gracious welcome to President Donald Trump, his family and aides when they visited you and your Beit K’nesset this past Tuesday in Pittsburgh.

I saw your first reaction in a CNN interview on Sunday to the question of whether you would welcome a visit by the President. Without hesitation, you affirmed that you are “an American and he is my president” and therefore you would extend respect and honor to him.

I know that you were challenged by many for taking this noble stand and I was happy, grateful and proud that you stood by your first instinct and welcomed the President’s visit.

This past Shabbat, the public chanting of the Torah portion of Vayera was tragically not heard in the Tree of Life synagogue sanctuary. Vayera (“and the Lord appeared”) begins with Abraham turning his attention from God to welcoming three visiting angels – God’s messengers. This teaches us, according to the Rabbis of the Talmud, that showing respect and concern for visitors, even when you yourself are in pain, is a value more supreme than communing with the Lord.

To Abraham and Sarah, the angels Michael and Raphael brought messages of comfort and glad tidings for the future. The angel Gabriel was tasked with a mission to destroy evil.

I believe that the President and his family, in visiting you when you were (and are still) engulfed in pain and grief, brought these same messages for you and your congregation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-paradox-of-american-anti-semitism-1541080901?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=contextual&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

The national outpouring of grief and horror that followed the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh last weekend points to the great contradiction of American anti-Semitism. It is at the same time feeble and deadly—a fringe phenomenon that nevertheless has the power to determine the mood and shape of Jewish life.

America’s acceptance of Jews and Judaism is profound, certainly greater than in any other country where Jews have lived in the diaspora. Last year, the Pew Research Center released a poll in which Americans were asked to rate different religious groups by the warmth of the feelings they inspired. The group that received the friendliest response—as measured by a “feelings thermometer” on a scale of 1 to 100—was Jews, who scored just above Catholics and mainline Protestants. (The lowest-ranking groups were Muslims and atheists.)

Even so, when Robert Bowers walked into the Tree of Life synagogue and murdered 11 people, shouting “all Jews must die,” the reaction among American Jews was more shock than surprise. In part, this is because massacres in what should be safe places are no longer surprising in the U.S. If angry, heavily armed men can commit mass murder in kindergartens, high schools, movie theaters and nightclubs—as well as a black church in South Carolina and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin—there is no reason to think that a synagogue would be immune.

But the Pittsburgh massacre was no random shooting, and it seemed to confirm a growing anxiety among American Jews that anti-Semitism is on the rise. According to a widely quoted statistic from the Anti-Defamation League’s annual “Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents,” the number of such acts increased by 57% from 2016 to 2017.

If you look at the ADL report in detail, however, the picture is more ambiguous. In 2017, anti-Semitic assaults actually decreased by almost half, to just 19 in the whole country. The number of threats made to Jewish institutions jumped dramatically, by more than 100% over the year before, but almost the entire increase is owed to a single individual, an Israeli teenager who phoned bomb threats to dozens of American Jewish schools and community centers. If you take him out of the statistics, there was basically the same level of anti-Semitic threats in 2017 as in 2016.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-department-spokeswoman-expected-to-become-u-n-ambassador-1541096354?mod=hp_lead_pos4

WASHINGTON—President Trump is expected to nominate Heather Nauert as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a senior administration official said.

Ms. Nauert, a former Fox News correspondent, joined the Trump administration last year and is currently the chief communications official at the State Department.

She would replace Nikki Haley, who announced plans to step down from the position last month.

Mr. Trump also has considered replacing Ms. Haley with Kelly Craft, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, or with Dina Powell, a prominent former White House official.

Other potential appointees have included Kay Bailey Hutchison, the former Texas senator who now serves as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Another Texan, Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, also was considered.

Ms. Nauert has no prior diplomatic experience. She became the State Department spokeswoman in April 2017, serving under former secretary Rex Tillerson and continued in that job after Mr. Tillerson was fired by President Trump and succeeded by Mike Pompeo.

She also served as acting undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs from March 13 to Oct. 10, 2018.

Before her arrival, Mark Toner, a career foreign service officer and former deputy State Department spokesman under the Obama administration, briefed the press in an acting capacity.

At Fox News, Ms. Nauert served as a television news anchor and most recently appeared on the program Fox & Friends. She last appeared on Fox News in February 2017.

Ms. Nauert, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, hasn’t appeared publicly at the State Department this week. In her place, Robert Palladino, a career foreign service officer who has been Ms. Nauert’s deputy since August, has briefed reporters three times this week.