RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jewishpress.com/judaism/holidays/two-passover-questions/2023/04/05/

The mysterious order of the Pesach Seder and the diversity of the various parts of the evening, as well as the actions we are directed to take that are included in the Haggadah, have all fascinated commentators as well as everyday Jews for centuries.

Here are two questions that are worth asking the attendees gathered around your table this year; they should promote thoughtful discussion and debate.

Question One: How many plagues were there?

Immediately after the stage in the Haggadah when the Ten Plagues are named comes the part where we find Rabbi Yossi the Galilean initiating the very strange topic of the number of plagues that the ancient Egyptians were punished with.

This part of the Haggadah immediately precedes the section where the joyous song Dayenu is found. The three quoted rabbis in this portion in the Haggadah lived over 1,800 years ago.

Rabbi Yossi explains that there were actually 60 plagues. Rabbi Eliezer is then quoted for his take on this that there were 240 plagues. Finally, Rabbi Akiva differs with his fellow rabbis and takes the view that there were 300 plagues.

What is going on here? It is made plain in the Torah that there are Ten Plagues. Why did this debate take place at all? What’s more, why was this strange discussion thought to be important enough to be included at all in the Haggadah? Doesn’t this whole topic seem extraneous?

https://thespectator.com/topic/brandon-johnson-mayor-chicago-ruin/

Adam Smith once wisely remarked that “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” There is much less room for ruin in a city, as Portland, San Francisco and Seattle have proved in recent years, and Detroit, Memphis and Gary, did even earlier. Now, Chicago has decided to join that dismal parade.

The Windy City was already marching toward the abyss under its outgoing mayor, Lori Lightfoot. She was elected four years ago with over three-quarters of the vote. This year, she got so few votes in the first primary (about one sixth) that she was eliminated from the runoff. That second election, held on Tuesday, pitted Brandon Johnson, an African-American organizer for the powerful Chicago Teachers Union, against Paul Vallas, a Greek American who had led several major school systems around the country. Vallas’s résumé was far more impressive than his achievements in those jobs. His bumbling campaign against Johnson revealed those shortcomings once again.

These ethnic markers — a black candidate versus a white one — are important in American urban politics, where political organizations are often formed around neighborhoods, ethnicities and race. One striking feature of the late Chicago election was the complete absence of the Irish Americans. For a century, they had led the city’s political machine, handing out subordinate positions and lucrative patronage jobs to allies in various ethnic and racial communities. Those days are long gone, destroyed by the city’s changing demographics and federal court rulings that killed the old patronage machine.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/04/u-s-manufacturing-hits-new-low-under-biden/

On Monday, a report revealed that, on Joe Biden’s watch, American manufacturing has reached its lowest point since the start of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index, known as PMI, hit its lowest point since May 2020, scoring just 46.3. If the extraordinary conditions of the pandemic are not taken into account, then it is the lowest level since 2009.

The PMI serves to identify economic trends in the manufacturing sector, as well as the service sector, based on business conditions at major companies. If the PMI ever scores below 50, it indicates an economy on the decline.

The timing of the report coincides with Joe Biden announcing his “Investing in America” tour, where he will visit multiple factories across the country to tout his administration’s alleged efforts to help the manufacturing sector, as well as forcing his ideas of “green energy” on factories and businesses.

Despite claiming that “green energy” pushes will boost the economy and manufacturing alike, critics have pointed out that the billions often invested in such causes often go directly to far-left organizations, pro-Democrat billionaire donors, and Chinese manufacturers that provide the materials in the first place, while the projects themselves often fail or drastically underperform expectations.

Despite campaigning in 2020 on a platform vowing to do the opposite of everything President Donald Trump did, Biden has flip-flopped on manufacturing rhetoric since taking office. He has since borrowed phrases that President Trump frequently used as part of his America First agenda, including “Buy American” and “Made in America.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/dojs_arrest_policies.html

When Merrick Garland was questioned about why excessive force was used in the arrest of Mark Houck, an anti-abortion activist who had offered to turn himself in, the Attorney General evaded responsibility for the policy by saying,

“The determinations of how to make arrests under arrest warrants are made based by the tactical operators in the district. They made the decision on the ground as to what was safest and easiest.”

Garland did not comment on the enormous expense of sending a SWAT team to arrest a father of seven.  Also not mentioned was the fact that this early morning raid tactic, first developed by the Soviet KGB, is frequently used to arrest non-violent targets.

Early morning or pre-dawn raids are designed for maximum humiliation and intimidation. Dozens of federal agents with automatic weapons, armored vehicles, and sometimes a helicopter and amphibious watercraft are used intimidate the target, as was the case with Roger Stone. In the raid on Thomas Caldwell’s home, Caldwell’s 61-year-old wife was covered in red dots from the weapons aimed at her. She begged to put on her socks before they forced her outside in the cold. Caldwell himself, clad only in his underwear, was dragged through the grass. James O’Keefe claims he was partially clothed in front of his neighbors when he was dragged out of his apartment.

The federal government has a constitutional right to arrest people for certain offenses. When it goes to enormous expense to arrest cooperating subjects, there is another motive to their actions. Intimidation and humiliation are not proper components of an arrest. There is also the factor that SWAT raids can go terribly wrong. Innocent people have been killed in their homes. The federal government has a history of heavy-handed attacks. It paid Randy Weaver $3.1 Million for the murder of this wife and son. There was also the Waco siege resulting in 75 deaths, including 25 children.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/americas_broken_windows.html

In criminology, the “broken windows” theory posits that visible signs of crime and civil disorder encourage only more serious crimes and antisocial behaviors.  A community that is perceived to permit vandalism, fare evasion, public intoxication, and petty theft will soon find that it must defend against rising rates of robbery, rape, and murder.  Tackling smaller forms of criminal mischief nips violent crimes in the bud.  Although Wyatt Earp and other Wild West lawmen put the theory into practice long before social scientists James Wilson and George Kelling wrote about it in the 1980s, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and police commissioner William Bratton popularized its use when they successfully implemented “broken windows” policies that saved New York City from a decades-long crime spiral.

Communist Mayor Bill de Blasio later framed “broken windows” policing as inherently racist, retreated from many sensible initiatives, and punished cops for proactively fighting crime.  The residents of NYC have subsequently paid the price with their deteriorating safety.

Such has been the much larger pattern throughout American society.  Cultural Marxists and other communist coalitions attack good and sound policies as racist, sexist, transphobic, or guilty of some other ugly -ic or -ist smear; those traditional standards of behavior are repudiated; and then Americans suffer the consequences of living in a society without norms, manners, or common decency.  Throwing bricks through America’s windows while blaming others for their crimes, leftists have spent the last century engaging in purposeful destruction so as to bring about America’s demise.  Throw a brick here; throw a brick there; eventually, Americans wake up in a nation where government tyrants nonchalantly lock up their political opponents, censorship is widespread, and young adults can no longer determine whether they are boys or girls.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/04/no-one-is-above-the-law-give-me-a-break/

Lock Donald Trump up, or don’t lock him up, but don’t tell me that “no one is above the law.” It’s one of the most ludicrous fantasies peddled by the left.

Plenty of people are “above the law.” James Clapper, who lied under oath to Congress about spying on the American people, is above the law. John Brennan, who lied about a domestic spying operation on Senate staffers, is above the law. Unlike Trump advisor Peter Navarro, Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder was never going to be handcuffed and thrown in prison for ignoring a congressional subpoena. He is above the law.

Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, is also above the law. The then-Secretary of State set up a private server in her home to circumvent transparency surrounding her slush-fund foundation. She sent 110 emails containing marked classified information, and 36 of those emails contained secret information. Eight of the email chains contained “top secret” information. Every one of those instances was a potential felony punishable with up to ten years in prison.

We learned all of this from James Comey, then FBI director, who noted that Hillary had been “extremely careless” in conducting her business. Comey didn’t recommend charges because, he claimed, the state couldn’t prove Clinton’s intent — even though “gross negligence,” not intent, was the only standard he needed. Gross negligence and extreme carelessness are synonyms. Comey concocted a new standard to protect Clinton because she is above the law.

When Hillary’s husband, also above the law, perjured himself under oath, Democrats argued that puritanical conservatives were only pursuing Bill because of some trumped-up charge over “sex.” Using that logic, Trump’s campaign finance charges related to Stormy Daniels’ “hush money” are also about sex. This is different because Trump is the boogeyman, and everyone knows he’s guilty of something. The important thing is getting that mug shot.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-political-prosecutions-are-common-south-america-brazil-mexico-venezuela-colombia-peru-supreme-court-trump-indictment-prosecution-931305ea?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

As Donald Trump faces indictment, many of his opponents are losing sight of a warning they issued in 2016. Then, Mr. Trump spoke of prosecuting Hillary Clinton and his supporters chanted “Lock her up!” Critics accused him of subverting a crucially important norm against political prosecution. They said that would be a dangerous turn, and they were right.

In much of Latin America, the use of the judicial apparatus as a means to sideline electoral opponents is part of the political culture. In a particularly egregious example, the autocratic Nicaraguan regime of Daniel Ortega arrested more than a dozen of his rivals just months before the November 2021 presidential election, many under treason charges created by a law Mr. Ortega’s government had enacted in December 2020.

Under international pressure—mainly from the U.S.—the regime released 222 political prisoners this February and had them flown to Washington. Under yet another treason law, however, they were stripped of their Nicaraguan citizenship and effectively expropriated.

Along with Nicaragua, political imprisonment is rampant in Latin America’s other full-blown autocracies, Venezuela and Cuba. These socialist regimes hold more than 250 and 750 dissidents, respectively, in arbitrary detention according to nongovernmental organizations Foro Penal and Justicia 11J. Like their sister regime in Managua, they often resort to the tactic of liberating political prisoners on specific occasions to obtain some short-term advantage.

https://bit.ly/3ztGe7h

1. The Passover Exodus, in general, and the Mosaic legacy, in particular, inspired the US Founding Fathers’ rebellion against the monarchy, which evolved into a concept of non-revengeful, non-imperialistic and anti-monarchy liberty, limited (non-tyrannical) government, separation of powers among three co-equal branches of government and the Federalist system, in general.

The goal of Passover’s liberty was not the subjugation of the Egyptian people, but the defeat of the tyrannical Pharaoh and the veneration of liberty throughout the globe, including in Egypt.

2. The Passover Exodus catapulted the Jewish people from spiritual and physical servitude in Egypt to liberty in the Land of Israel.

3. The Passover Exodus highlights the Jubilee – which is commemorated every 50 years – as the Biblical foundation of the concept of liberty. The US Founding Fathers deemed it appropriate to engrave the essence of the Jubilee on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Thus, the Liberty Bell was installed in 1751 upon the 50th anniversary of William Penn’s Charter of Privileges with the following inscription: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof (Leviticus, 25:10).” 

Moses received the Torah – which includes 50 gates of wisdom – 50 days following the Exodus, as celebrated by the Shavou’ot/Pentecost Holiday, 50 days following Passover. Moreover, there are 50 States in the United States, whose Hebrew name is “The States of the Covenant” (Artzot Habreet -ארצות הברית).

4. The Passover Exodus spurred the Abolitionist Movement and the human rights movement. For example,  in 1850, Harriet Tubman, who was one of the leaders of the “Underground Railroad” – an Exodus of Afro-American slaves to freedom – was known as “Mama Moses.” Moreover, on December 11, 1964, upon accepting the Nobel Prize, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “The Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh’s court centuries ago and cried, ‘Let my people go!’” Furthermore, Paul Robeson and Louis Armstrong leveraged the liberty theme of Passover through the lyrics: “When Israel was in Egypt’s land, let my people go! Oppressed so hard they could not stand, let my people go! Go down Moses, way down in Egypt’s land; tell old Pharaoh to let my people go….!” 

5. According to Heinrich Heine, the 19th century German poet, “Since the Exodus, freedom has always spoken with a Hebrew accent.”  

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/03/the-indictment-of-america/

Like all of us, Donald Trump is a flawed man, but he has become a symbol to those who vested him with a sacred trust. He was made president by us to lead our nation. He fulfilled his part of that bargain, as far as he was able. But too late. The government we asked him to administer was already too corrupt to allow him to do the job, lest they themselves be held to account. Now his persecution for doing what voters asked him to do is breaking the very covenant of government under which we live.

The political drift of the last 100 years has, with a few brief exceptions, been toward authoritarian rule. With the subversion of the English Common Law that had been our foundation, the last bastion of the Republic has fallen. The why and how are worth considering, but the “what” is now before us.

Nancy Pelosi gave away the game (yet again) last week when she said that President Trump had every right to “prove his innocence,” a sentiment applauded by her fellows, who share a total lack of understanding of just how this reverses the presumption of innocence as well as the foundational direction of our nation. When she tore up the president’s State of the Union speech behind his back after he spoke, it was enough to make her sense of the world clear. Her haughty response to a question about the details of the Affordable Care Act—“we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what’s in it”—was another. And her mocking laughter in the face of a query about the constitutionality of Obamacare was still another.

A grand jury in New York City has indicted President Trump, but this is problematic. The allegations against him are unworthy of grand jury attention, even after the penalties for these so-called crimes were increased, post facto, from potential misdemeanors to felonies by the wave of a single judicial hand. Laws are now made that way, as if by magic, and not by legislatures as the Constitution once demanded. We are now ruled by men, not laws, and the struggle for power amongst them will ruin us.