Resisting War, Terrorism, And Genocide (First of Three Parts) All things move in the midst of death, even nations and civilizations. From 1948 to the present day, certain of Israel’s prime ministers, facing war, terrorism, or even genocide, have been deeply reluctant to admit core national vulnerabilities. Indeed, rather than acknowledge the plainly exterminatory intent […]
http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/7427 Well, the 2012 General Election is in the history books, but for the final absentee ballot counts and splattering of recounts and lawsuits. President Obama survived a number of lethal issues – a disgraceful unemployment rate, an honesty deficit, a scandal involving the death of attachés and a majority unhappy with his ham-handed Obamacare […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3443/cair-tampa Those who attend CAIR’s fundraising banquet in Tampa tomorrow should understand that they are bringing money to an organization that employs radicals – a group that raises many “red flags” if not black flags. Tomorrow, November 10, the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will be sponsoring its Mid-Florida Region’s 8th […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3442/belgium-islamic-state The statements of Mark Elchardus, author of a 426 page study, who linked Islam with anti-Semitism, earned him a lawsuit filed by a Muslim group, which said that his comments violated Belgium’s anti-discrimination law of 2007, which forbids discrimination on the basis of “religious convictions,” and Article 444 of the Belgian penal code as […]
I AM A JEWISH LATIN AMERICAN WOMAN…..BUT ….THIS IS NOT QUITE UP MY ALLEY….AS MY E-PAL M.P. ASKS “WHAT EXACTLY ARE “INCLUSIVE PUBLIC SPHERES…..MAYBE URINAL FOR WOMEN????”
The Sword, the Pen, and the Uterus: The Role of Jewish Latin American Women in Creating Inclusive Public Spheres
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
3:30PM
Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall, HBI
Epstein Building, Brandeis University,
515 South St., Waltham, MA 02454 (Directions/Map)
From 1976 until 1983, Argentina lived under a repressive military dictatorship. Join current HBI Scholar-in-Residence Dalia Wassner to learn about the creative activism of Jewish women in Argentina as they fought to bring transparency and accountability to the period of terror through film and writing. Members of the public are welcome to join Fernando Rosenberg’s class, “Culture and Social Change in Latin America” for this lecture. Learn more about the event.
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2309/America-2012-Running-Scared.aspx
If Election Day is about picking winners, the morning after is for post-mortems. That’s when we slice open the losing campaigns, set aside the hundreds of millions of dollars that gush out and pick apart the cause of death.
Why did the Romney campaign fail? Maybe the country is now GOP-proof. That is, maybe a Constitution-guided, free-market, limited-government candidate no longer can “appeal” to the majority of the electorate. It could be that the death knell rang early this year once 67.3 million of us, or one in five Americans, had come to depend on federal assistance, formerly known as “the dole.”
This nearly takes us back to the level we hit in 1994 (23.1 percent), before President Bill Clinton and the GOP-led Congress “ended” welfare as we knew it. After a noticeable decline, the percentage skyrocketed during President Obama’s first term. So, too, did the percentage of Americans who pay zero federal taxes, now a shocking 49.5 percent. Right off the bat, half the country listens to Mitt Romney promise to relieve taxpayers of the onerous burdens imposed by the federal government and either fears for its livelihood or hears static.
It was exactly such an economic message that formed not just the core of Romney’s campaign, but all of it. On one level, this exclusive focus on economic issues to the point of tunnel vision marked a campaign determined to play it safe. On another level, it was a huge gamble, a roll of the dice on which Romney staked everything.
Why? I think this risky strategy evolved from the defensive crouch the average center-right politician assumes even to enter the intensely hostile environment our mass media have made of the public square. Seeking to avoid media retaliation, Romney advanced a cramped line of attack. For example, we have in Barack Obama a president more demonstrably socialist than any since FDR, but if Mitt Romney were to have mentioned that or called Obama a socialist – with fact-based backup from, say, Stanley Kurtz’s scholarly book “Radical-in-Chief” – the media catcalls would have begun.
http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5109
“The game is still on. Conservatives have the persuasive case to make, but invective, insult, rant and rave won’t do it. Reasoned argument will. This goes for Democrats, too. They should remember the infallible Pruden Principle: Nothing recedes like success. History proves it.”
Woe is us. But next time, the woe will be for the other guys. Keeping that in mind is the secret of surviving the morning after.
Losing an election always hurts; winning hurts the other guys, which is why winning is so sweet. This one hurts conservatives a lot, and it’s particularly painful for those with unrealistic great expectations.
Pessimists abound. Rep. Ron Paul, who holds the North American franchise for pessimism, says we no longer have to worry about the “fiscal cliff” because we’re already lie in the rocks and weeds at the bottom of Gruesome Gulch. Rep. John Boehner, the speaker of the House, who promised defiantly on election eve to hang tough on the Republican mantra of “no new taxes” even if the president were to be re-elected, now sounds not so sure.
Some of the more prominent conservative pundits are on their way to New York City in search of a building high enough to jump out of. Rush Limbaugh went to bed on Election Night “thinking we had lost the country, I don’t know how else you look at this.” Sean Hannity told his Fox News audience that he wouldn’t succumb to depression but it looks like to him like America is “no longer the center-right country that it once was” and “has been conditioned to be an entitlement society.” If that’s not depression it’s a reasonable facsimile of it. When Ann Coulter, the prolific author and pundit who writes exclusively in purple ink, told talk-show hostess Laura Ingraham that the nation is now interested only in handouts, “There is no hope.”
Miss Ingraham told her: “Pep up, move forward, girl.” Good advice. It’s easy for anyone to be misled by the media, whose patron saint is Chicken Little. The media covers politics the way television “journalists” cover the weather: all panic all the time. They can’t help it, it’s all they know. The coverage often reminds me of my devout grandmother, beyond elderly when she called me in tears one day many years ago to tell me that “God is dead, they just announced it on the television.”
Another Tack: Shelly’s macho-man mentor Hanna Rovina, the late-great first lady of the Israeli theater, once quipped: “people with connections don’t need protectzia” (“favoritism,” in Israeli parlance). This is perhaps why in days bygone retiring IDF generals invariably gravitated to the Labor Party, where they had ample connections which guaranteed them a helpful leg-up to the […]
http://send.hadavars.com/index.php?action=message&l=3603&c=13681&m=12193&s=a317a26441993bdd8f740ee9a6c71bce Just like the role of “Red Lights” in intersections, so would “Red Lines” reduce the probability of a military collision with a nuclear Iran. Clear “Red Lines” would upgrade the US posture of deterrence and enhance preparedness against – and minimizes the cost of – aggression. On the other hand, the absence of “Red […]
http://yeshaviews.blogspot.com/
“How will we in Israel deal with the election results?
We will do fine. It might get a little difficult. The road might become slippery, rocky, and sometimes seem impassable, but we will engage in the 4X4 mode, put it in low gear, and get through what we need to get through, shoving aside as many obstacles as necessary through the hilly terrain. We are stronger than any candidate, and we have what to show the world.”
I landed in the US on Nov 7… the “day after”. Like many others on my flight, if not the majority, when I checked the results of the election, I was not surprised. I watched as the faces changed from the joy of landing safely and beating out the Nor’easter, to near horror-stricken when realizing that the White House would not be changing hands.
At the same time, I felt a bit of relief. It’s over, results known; time to assess, and to move forward. Reports conveyed that approximately 70% of the Jewish vote went to Obama − again no surprise there. There were statements of shock regarding just how many “religious” Jews voted for a candidate who is in favor of ripping the Jewish heartland from its people. In fact, the chasm between those of us who live in Israel, and those in the US, once again proved to be as wide as ever, with no prospect of attenuating the intensity.
That chasm which is the real problem, that had it been truly addressed, analyzed, and properly challenged would have brought about a different result in the “Jewish” vote, and perhaps even in the election results.
The tens of millions of dollars or more donated to the Romney campaign by our Jewish brethren did little to sway the Jewish vote. Nine percent change in the Jewish voting margin cannot be considered success.
While Israel is not the top swing topic of liberal Jewish voters, it is right up there, next to Women’s and Gay rights and other human rights issues. The Israel/Palestinian peace efforts have affected many of our voters and I find it troubling that 70% of American Jewish voters do not comprehend what’s at stake. Worse yet, if they do comprehend then they presented a clear statement of apathy.
The support for Obama conveys indifference on the part of American Jewry over Israel giving up its heritage and its heartland. Their apathy paves the way for a new Arab state to rise, void of the ideals and values treasured in western culture, a state, which would undoubtedly be hostile to Israel and the United States.
Conversely, polls communicated unmistakably the over 80% of Israeli support for Romney as their choice for US president. Israelis, for the most part, recognize that Obama cannot be trusted with regard to Israel’s security.
We are on our own, and we accept that.
