RUTHFULLY YOURS

RIP Joseph Sargent, Director of the Greatest Jewish Action Movie

Taking of Pelham One Two Three director died at 89

Yesterday brought the news that Joseph Sargent, the director of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, died at 89. This is particularly sad because Sargent–the journeyman director with nearly 90 credits–made perhaps the greatest Jewish action movie.

Pelham, for those of you who somehow haven’t seen it, is about the hijacking of a New York City subway in the early 1970s. It’s insanely memorable–David Shire’s thumping, horn-driven score, Owen Roizman’s gorgeous and dirty cinematography, and a cast that’s a who’s who of great character actors, including Jerry Stiller, Robert Shaw and Martin Balsam.

But let’s not forget that Pelham is also, as David Edelstein put it, “a New York Jewish comedy writer’s take on the modern metropolis going meshuggener.” It’s an action movie with the soul of a Catskills timeshare.

This story was originally published on December 16, 2010.
Brooklyn’s hip Mile End deli modernizes the traditional meal once again

Mile End opened in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, at the beginning of 2008, a deli specializing in Montreal Jewish cuisine: smoked meat instead of pastrami; poutine instead of cheese fries; those flat, sweet things they serve up there instead of what New Yorkers call bagels. Foodies loved the sandwiches. Hipsters loved the Brownstone Brooklyn setting, the Stumptown coffee, and the brunch, which is just exotic enough to be adventurous and just familiar enough to be, well, brunch.

Then, Mile End began to offer an ambitious dinner menu that took your Eastern European Jewish grandmother’s evergreens and ran them through up-to-the-minute, fat-happy trends: shmaltzed radishes, veal cholent, kasha varnishkes with confit gizzards. What was this cool Canadian place doing serving traditional food? “To me, this is what deli is,” Montreal-born Noah Bermanoff, the place’s founder and co-owner, said earlier this week. “I’m not trying super-hard to be Montreal. I’m trying super-hard to serve food as I know it.”

By Ruth King http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/twas-the-night-before-christmas-when-all-through-the-house

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through House

Not a Democrat was stirring, not even a mouse;
The RINOS left with a harrumph and a grouse

Hagan, Pryor and Landrieu were home tucked in their beds
The others just tossed with polls in their heads.

I woke up with a START from a terrible DREAM
When heard a clatter and saw a silver stream.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

I peered through the window and put on my glasses
It was a miniature sleigh with eight tiny jackasses

With a spry old driver, so lively and chipper
I knew in a flash twas the ghost of the Gipper
“Yon Feinstein, yon Schumer yon Durbin the jerk”
He scolded and shouted and gave them their work
“Sweep the tax hikes, the earmarks, and toss the pork.!!!”

A bundle of bags he had flung on his back,
And he laughed out loud while opening his pack.
With a smile and knowing and friendly look
He gave every democrat Dick Morris’s book.
Another election may we all live to fight

Merry Christmas to All and to all a good night!!

Happy Holidays to all of you!!!

In most parts of the world, it’s not easy to find a major issue on which 80% of the population agrees. An election victory in the United States is considered a “landslide” if the winner receives more than about 60% of the vote. (Such as Richard Nixon winning 65% of the vote against George McGovern in the 1972 presidential race.)

But among Palestinian Arabs in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza, it turns out there is one issue on which there is more support than any other: randomly murdering Israeli Jews.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research last week asked a sample of 1,270 Palestinian Arab adults in the territories what they thought of the recent wave of attacks in which Palestinians stabbed Israelis or ran them over with their cars. Fully 80% responded that they support such attacks.

Note that the respondents weren’t talking about theoretical future attacks. They were commenting on recent attacks which they know all about. Here is what they are endorsing:

– Ramming a car into a crowd at a train station in Jerusalem. The fatalities included a three-month old infant.

– Stabbing an unarmed young woman standing at a bus stop in Gush Etzion.

– Axing and machine-gunning four rabbis at prayer in a Jerusalem synagogue.

Apparently, the Obama administration’s ostensible determination to foster “diversity” in the military is a one-way street. Army Chaplain Joseph Lawhorn was disciplined for mentioning his faith and the Bible as part of a November suicide prevention training seminar with the 5th Ranger Training Battalion. “You provided a two-sided handout that listed Army resources on one side and a biblical approach to handling depression on the other side,” wrote Col. David Fivecoat, commander of the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade at Ft. Benning, Georgia, in an official Letter of Concern. “This made it impossible for those in attendance to receive the resource information without also receiving the biblical information.”

Lawhorn received the letter following orders to appear in Col. Fivecoat’s office on Thanksgiving Day. The letter continued:

As the battalion chaplain, you are entrusted to care for the emotional wellbeing of all soldiers in the battalion. You, above all others, must be cognizant of the various beliefs held by diverse soldiers. During mandatory training briefings, it is imperative you are careful to avoid any perception you are advocating one system of beliefs over another.

The sequence of events leading to the action taken against Lawhorn should sound familiar. The session took place Nov. 20 at the University of North Georgia. Lawhorn handed out the two-sided document, recited some scripture, and explained how he used the Bible to cope with his own bout of depression. A single soldier was “offended” by Lawhorn’s presentation and reported him to the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers (MAAF). Writing on behalf the MAAF, former Army Captain Jason Torpy characterized Lawhorn’s presentation as “an abuse of power and a violation of regulations.” He further accused Lawhorn of engaging in “conscience protection” which he defined as “an insidious legal tool designed to allow military chaplains to use their power and authority to evangelize vulnerable military populations.”

Going by the standard liberals hold conservatives to, Al Sharpton clearly has blood on his hands.

Going by objective standards of reason and fairness, Al Sharpton is not to blame for the assassination of two New York City cops over the weekend. Nor are New York mayor Bill de Blasio, U.S. attorney general Eric Holder, President Obama, or any of the protesters and activists they supported, encouraged, and allied themselves with. Going by what we know, the only person to blame is the man police identified as the killer, Ismaaiyl Brinsley.

This is the standard I’ve upheld in this space for years, when one madman after another has killed and maimed in the name of one cause or another. It’s also been necessary to uphold this standard when madmen have killed for no political cause whatsoever, but politicians and journalists have been determined to claim otherwise.

The most glaring example of this was the horrible 2011 shooting spree in Tucson that claimed six lives and horribly wounded then-U.S. representative Gabrielle Giffords. The shooting occurred during a period of maximum liberal paranoia about the tea-party movement. And in a riot of groupthink, much of the elite media convinced itself — absent any evidence — that the killer, Jared Loughner, was inspired by, variously, Sarah Palin’s Facebook map of congressional races (there were targets over various districts where Palin wanted Democrats defeated), Minnesota representative Michele Bachmann’s overheated speeches, and other forms of what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called “eliminationist rhetoric.”

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 the Cold War that had existed between it and the U.S. since the end of World War Two came to an end, but there was ditritus, loose ends like Cuba and it has taken until now for an end to the diplomatic obstacles whose roots reach back to the Eisenhower administration. In 1960 it had approved a CIA plan to arm and train a group of Cuban refugees to overthrow the Castro regime.

The Cuban dictator, Flugencio Batista, fled Havana on January 1, 1959 and Fidel Castro and his rebels entered the capital a week later on January 8. One sees the world through the prism of one’s own life and, that event was six months prior to my graduating from the University of Miami.

Among my friends in college were young men who were the children of well-to-do Cubans, so I was more aware of what was occurring than most my age when Castro took over. In 1960 I was inducted into the army and it was big news when the Bay of Pigs invasion occurred on April 14, 1961. President Kennedy had moved ahead on the CIA plan, but it was a failure and it was followed by the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. The nation was literally on the edge of nuclear confrontation.

In the lead up to that the Second Infantry Division of which my unit was a part ceased its training mission and converted to one of battle readiness. In my case, however, I had already been discharged in April 1962. Kennedy declared a blockage of Cuba which had installed the Soviet missiles. Wisely, the Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev agreed to remove them.

Staggering.

The United States of America – Earth’s sole remaining superpower – capitulated to both Cuba and North Korea in one day. Final Score: Open-air Museums of Stalinism – 2; Land of the Free and Home of the Brave – 0.

Obama announced on Wednesday that Washington and the Castro regime would resume diplomatic relations after a 53-year estrangement. This platinum-medal prize for totalitarian legend Fidel Castro, 88, and his brother Raul, a sprightly man of 83, came at a cost to them of . . . nothing!

Normalization might have made sense in exchange for the Castros’ liberating all political prisoners from their dungeons. (In 2008, Obama promised that normal relations only would happen after the Castros’ political jails were emptied.) A strict timetable for free elections might have merited Obama’s move. So might have Cuba’s adoption of freedoms of movement, speech, press, property, and religion – for starters. The Castros still offer their people none of the above. Fidel and Raul get to eat their dictatorial cake and have it, too, with diplomatic-relations frosting on top. Free of charge.

Obama’s Christmas present to these aging autocracts lacks the geopolitical genius and strategic benefits of President Nixon’s February 1972 overture to China. Instead, it’s just one young strongman handing the ultimate bucket-list item to two ancient strongmen. The only strings attached to Obama’s gift are the ribbons around the wrapping paper.

America’s surrender to North Korea and its hackers is even more bothersome.

Baden-Baden has been a spa town since Roman times, drawing tourists for its therapeutic waters, and more recently for a festival hall that features prominent classical artists. It also has a Faberge museum, which seems appropriate at this time of year: Christmas in Germany is like a brightly decorated eggshell with no egg inside. The forms of the holiday are merrily observed, but not the faith. To declare one’s belief in a personal God counts for proof of mental defect here as well as in most parts of Europe, especially among educated people. Nonetheless there is more faith left in Germany’s Protestant establishment than among America’s mainline Protestant churches, and it’s something for a visiting Jew to rejoice about here at Christmas time.

The Presbyterian Church USA, the flagship church of America’s fading Protestant mainline, voted to boycott the state of Israel earlier this year, and nearly voted to prohibit the use of the word “Israel” in its prayers. The new Marcionism of the mainline churches justifies its aid and comfort to Israel’s enemies by rejecting a link between the living Jewish people and the God of Abraham. By contrast, both Pope John Paul II of blessed memory and Benedict XVI emphasized that God’s covenant with the Jewish people never was revoked.

That is also the firmly-stated view of the German Evangelical Church, the main body of German Protestantism, and it was front-page news in Die Welt, one of the country’s quality dailies, this morning. Its new chairman, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, told the newspaper,

Barack Obama has proven to be a determined man when it comes to achieving goals he really cares about. He may not get everything he wants when he wants it, but he has shown that there is often more than one way to advance his agenda, and he can be patient when the political environment is unfavorable. This has been true on both the domestic front and in foreign policy.

Obama has used federal agencies such as the EPA and NLRB to move aggressively to favor Obama interests (bashing coal producers, making it easier for workers to organize into unions) when Congress did not adopt climate change legislation or “card check” legislation. The Department of Health and Human Services has regularly changed the rules of Obamacare, seemingly making the rules up as they go along when it became clear that certain provisions were either very badly conceived or politically unpalatable to important Obama interest groups.

There has also been subterfuge to make it seem that the abuse of the separation of powers and routine bypassing of Congress has not really occurred. The president says he has issued far fewer executive orders than prior presidents, when in fact he has issued far more when you include his memoranda [1] – which serve the same purpose.

In foreign policy, the administration has pursued several policies with the same doggedness. One of these has been to damage the historically close ties between Israel and the United States. The alternative way to say this is that so long as Israel elects leaders who do not see things the way the administration does, it will be very much out of favor with the White House.