While CAP seems to have taken the charges to heart, and is seeking to change its ways, the Obama/Soros-”firsters” at MMFA are digging in their heels.

This dual-loyalty charge, like most anti-Semitic claims, is even more abhorrent because it directly contradicts Jewish Law:

Seek the peace of the city where I have exiled you and pray for it to the Lord, for in its peace you shall have peace. -Jeremiah Chapter 29:7

And it is nothing new: the dual-loyalty charge made by these progressive groups have been around since biblical times, it was what caused enslavement of the Israelites by Egypt.

A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know about Joseph. He said to his people, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more numerous and stronger than we are. Get ready, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they increase, and a war befall us, and they join our enemies and depart from the land.” – Exodus Chapter 1:8-10

Jewish sources from all over the political spectrum have denounced the CAP and MMFA use of Antisemitism in their political writing.  Not many people were surprised when the Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the use of the dual loyalty term, but when the very progressive magazine, The Tablet condemned CAP and MMFA for its use, eyebrows were raised.

The root of this problem is not a twenty-something blogger writing something stupid on the Internet. Rather, it is that anti-Semitic rhetoric and logic are being protected and justified by those who are supposed to be gatekeepers. These people, often in the service of their larger political aims, are willing to apologize for or ignore what is obviously Jew-baiting and Jew-hatred…..

…This isn’t how the world works. Americans’ sensitivity to racist language directed at African-Americans has not made Americans insensitive to “real” anti-black racism. Rather it has made us scrupulous about our language, and subsequently our beliefs and practices have come to reflect, if not wholly fulfill, the promises embodied in this country’s founding documents.

What makes people insensitive to racism is when American political and intellectual elites refuse to confront racist language. The use of phrases like “Israel Firster” and “dual loyalist” that are based on anti-Semitic tropes is anti-Semitic. So is the belief that Jews fan the flames of hatred for discussing the opinions of those who hate them

CAP has denounced the term and instituted “oversight” changes — while the staffer who used “Israel firster” on his Twitter account apologized, deleted the tweets and has since left CAP for another group. The Wiesenthal Center has applauded CAP for making the changes.

The Anti-Defamation League also said in a written statement that the Center for American Progress “took the matter seriously and understood the anti-Semitic nature of raising dual-loyalty canards.” The ADL praised CAP for taking “concrete steps” to address the problem.

But as for Media Matters and its “Israel-firster” user, MJ Rosenberg, the talons are out.  These pages have provided many examples over the years how Rosenberg accuses American Jews of dual loyalty with the term Israel-firsters), or how he claims the  “evil Zionist lobby” controls both the media and the U.S. foreign policy.

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Alan Colmes earlier today made a despicable remark about how the Santorum family grieved over their child, a remark for which he had to later apologize.

Colmes faced off with National Review editor Rich Lowry, who responded to a question on whether or not undecided voters will truly stick by Santorum when it’s time to cast a vote. Colmes answered, saying that his rising support will stop short once people “get a load of some of the crazy things he’s said and done, like taking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after child birth home and played with it so that his other children would know that the child was real.”

Lowry  cut off Colmes, calling the statement “a cheap shot.”

“To take something that is that personal and that hurtful as losing a child and mocking it like that … that is beneath you, Alan,” he said. “What you’re saying is contemptible.”

It was more than a cheap shot, it was using someone else’s tragedy to make a political point. The flippant way he described taking baby Gabriel home was an attempt to make light of a horrific time for the Santorum family.  They did not take the child home to ”play with him” but because they felt before they sent him to his eternal resting place he should become a “real human being” to his siblings.

He and his wife, Karen, have seven children – including, as Santorum puts it, “the one in Heaven.” Their fourth baby, Gabriel Michael, died in 1996, two hours after an emergency delivery in Karen Santorum’s 20th week of pregnancy. The couple took Gabriel’s body home to let their three other young children see and hold the baby before burying him, according to Karen Santorum’s book of the ordeal, “Letters to Gabriel.”

Santorum’s wife described the aftermath to Gabriel’s death in a heart breaking way.

Gabriel Michael Santorum was born at 12:45 AM on Friday, October 11, 1996. He was a beautiful boy. He did not give a cry or open his tiny eyes. We baptized him, bundled him, and held him ever so close. We sang to him, held his little hands and kissed him. Gabriel lived for two hours. In those two hours something simple but profound happened. Rick and I became parents to a newborn baby and welcomed him into our family. That was all….but it was everything. His life was so brief, yet his impact so great. In two hours we experienced a lifetime of emotions. Love, sorrow, regret, joy—-all were packed into that brief span. To have rejected that experience would have been to reject life itself.

I pray that Colmes never has to face the pain of losing a child to learn what he would do in the face of such a horrible tragedy. He has no right to make light of the pain of others.

Then again, this is the same Alan Colmes who accused Sarah Palin of causing her son’s Downs Syndrome. via Prenatal neglect Not only does that belay genetics at the time it was the most disgusting thing I have ever heard from a liberal commentator. But today Colmes topped himself.

Apparently even Colmes realized he went too far.  Santorum appeared on Hannity later in the day and said Colmes apologized.

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Media Matters for America’s Senior Fellow MJ Rosenberg has become infamous for accusing any American Jews who support Israel of dual loyalty (he calls them Israel-firsters). He also has claimed the evil Israel lobby” controls both the media and the U.S. foreign policy. He also uses the term “neo-con” as a slang pejorative term for Jews who are politically conservative.  Rosenberg is not the only Jew-Basher at Media Matters, just the most vocal.

Rosenberg and his fellow progressives at MMFA and Center for American Progress have finally picked on the wrong Jews: The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC). Formed by the famous Nazi-hunter, the SWC’s only purpose is to preach tolerance. Unlike groups such as the ADL and the AJC, which often lean left, the Wiesenthal Center is non-political. Also unlike those groups, the Center will criticize and/or praise people on either side of the political aisle.

Last week, Politico published a piece about how the Progressive MMFA and CAP were fighting with the more mainstream Democrats about Israel.  They want to change the party to the Anti-Israel Party.  The article reported that the battle was being led by several bloggers at Media Matters and the Center for American Progress’s Think Progress blog.

The piece highlighted several controversial comments that were made on Twitter by MJ Rosenberg and other MMFA and ThinkProgress bloggers calling groups that did not share their anti-Israel positions “Israel firsters” essentially repeating the antisemitic meme of dual loyalty.

In response to the progressive attacks sent to the Wapo’s Jennifer Rubin, Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center attacked “progressive” antisemitism:

“Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly difficult in this country to take a position sympathetic to the Jewish state and in favor of the continuation of America’s historic strong alliance with Israel without being called “an Israel Firster” and charged with “dual loyalties.” (more…)

Much of the bias of the mainstream media is not demonstrated by what they say but by what they omit. During the past four years there have plenty of examples of such media silence. Remember: the media ignored candidate Obama’s relationship with seedy figures such as terrorist Bill Ayers, Communist scholar/pedophile Frank Marshall Davis and hid the fact the future president’s first political office was won in part by earning the support of the Marxist New Party.

Protecting Barack Obama is not the only reason for the mainstream media to omit elements of a story, but protecting the President’s progressive agenda is usually involved.

Take for example this week’s release of a new batch of “climategate” emails.  This batch is from around the same time as the first set, leaked two years ago, and they feature the same cast of scientists such as Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Ben Santer, Tom Wigley, Kevin Trenberth, and Keith Briffa, who starred in the first set.  Scientists admit in these emails that the evidence behind man made global warming is paper thin, and the apocalyptic climate story is being pushed for political rather than environment reasons. There is even evidence of US and British government involvement in covering up evidence disproving the global warming story.

One would expect news such as this to become banner headlines across the country’s biggest papers.  Those expectations would not be met. The NY Times small story in its environmental column.  While someone seriously covering the story would post some of the controversial exchanges, the Times paraphrased some of them and concluded by explaining it was much ado about nothing:

Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA, said he found such exchanges unremarkable. He noted that difficulties in modeling were widely acknowledged and disclosed in the literature. Indeed, such problems are often discussed at scientific meetings in front of hundreds of people.

Of the new release of e-mails, Dr. Schmidt said, “It smacks of desperation.”

Dr. Mann said he hoped the fresh release, apparently first posted to a computer server in Russia, would provide new clues for the British police as they seek to catch the hacker or hackers.

“Who are the criminals?” he asked. “Who is funding this effort, not just to steal these materials but to promote them?”

Time Magazine reported on the scandal by ignoring the bulk of the emails and calling it a ”weak sequel.” Interestingly it seems as if Health and Science reporter Bryan Walsh didn’t read any of the emails himself, but simply reported what others said before concluding that thy contained nothing new. Just like the NY Times, by omitting a broad selection of the emails, Time Magazine skewed the story.

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Sometimes it astounds me the extent to which a progressive “journalist” will go to spin stories in their direction, thus putting politics before serving the readers. Sometimes it astounds me the extent to which a progressive Jew will go to promote their favorite politicians thus putting politics before either their home country, America or the Jewish people.

In his latest column in the paper he publishes, Gary Rosenblatt of the Jewish Week astounded me times two, as he talked about the disastrous ADL/Abe Foxman request for Jews to avoid criticizing the POTUS and warned that if American Jews upset President Obama, he might be really bad toward Israel in a second term.

Case in point: There are no more savvy experts on the mood and politics of the American Jewish community than Abe Foxman and David Harris, professional heads of the ADL and American Jewish Committee, respectively, our two leading mainstream national Jewish defense organizations.

But Foxman and Harris seem to have been caught off guard last month by the sharp criticism of their joint National Pledge for Unity on Israel, which they no doubt thought would be widely accepted in the Jewish community — a kind of motherhood-and-apple-pie affirmation of the ongoing power, and need, for bipartisan support in Washington for the Jewish state.

The outcries over the unity pledge, particularly on the right, have underscored just how fractured political activists in our community are over Israel. More specifically, the issue speaks to the debate over the wisdom of criticizing the Obama administration, and especially the president himself, as being Israel’s adversary as he seeks re-election.

Things need to be put in context. In this column a progressive publisher, is supporting a progressive advocate who is supporting a progressive president while not admitting to their political bias, which is a disservice to the readers, in the case of the Jewish Week and the donors in the case of the ADL.

As I pointed out when the “shut up pledge”  was first published, Abe Foxman has been running the ADL as his own personal progressive activist group. Indeed the organization spends as much time promoting progressive social issues such as abortion and illegal immigration as it does Jewish issues.  So of course Abe will do just about anything he can to get his progressive prophet re-elected.

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Some of my friends criticize me because they believe I am too hard on President Obama. They say they can’t believe that there is not one of his policies which I support wholeheartedly. Even a broken clock is right two times a day, they say; isn’t there one policy to which you can urge “let’s help Obama on this one”? And I would reach down to the bottom of my soul and really try to come up with something, but I always failed … until today. I have finally found something we should all help Obama implement. He doesn’t like talking to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu all the time; all of America should be behind our President insuring that he doesn’t have to talk to Bibi every day.

During the G20 meetings, President Barack Obama and French President Sarkozy got caught talking in front of a hot mic.

The conversation began with President Obama criticizing Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting in favor of the Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO despite Washington’s strong objection to the move. But then the two got personal:

“I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama. The POTUS replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”

Nothing leads to good political pundit material like pair of catty politicians speaking candidly an without realization that they’re in front of an open mic.  In true Los Angeles Times fashion, the “journalists” in the room agreed not to report the comments (remember during the 2008 campaign the Los Angeles Times withheld a potentially damaging video tape of Barack Obama toasting his friend and former PLO press spokesman Rashid Khalidi).  Then all of the reporters in the room signed a pledge to withhold the damaging information (although there is no truth to the rumor that Abe Foxman of the ADL insisted on the written pledge).

What happened next is what usually happens in cases like this. (more…)

The Occupy protests, supported by President Obama and my congressman, the supposedly pro-Israel Congressman Steve Israel (NY-2), tried to take over the Israeli Consulate in Boston over the weekend. If you missed it, it’s because the incident wasn’t covered by the mainstream media.

The attempted attack on the consulate should be a big surprise to people who read the mainstream media as they have been reporting the anti-Israel/anti-Semitic incidents coming from the Occupy protests were the product of a few lone-wolf nuts. This particular anti-Israel event wasn’t a fringe group or a lone nut: it was an officially sanctioned Occupy Boston event.

Thankfully they didn’t get into the consulate – only the building’s lobby, but even if they got to the embassy there would have been no one there because these Occupy “friends of the Jewish Community” forgot that Consulates of the Jewish State are closed on the Jewish Sabbath.

One of the Protesters, Kade Ellis explained what they were doing–via her twitter feed.

Kade Ellis of Occupy Boston has the MySpace nickname: Zionismisracist

According to the “No Cure For That” website the reason for the attempted attack on the consulate was:

Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin is the perfect example of what a conservative writer should be (if conservatives were supposed to be liberal).

Rubin is the type of writer who delights in bashing conservatives in the name of saving them, kind of the way progressives bashed the medical field during the Obamacare* debate. The progressives claimed to have the medical people’s best interests at heart as they worked on a piece of legislation that would cause them all to leave the field.

* Please Note: the word Obamacare used in the above paragraph has been declared obscene by Congressional Democrats–if anyone is offended by that harsh word, I sincerely apologize.

“Conservatives” such as Rubin spend more time bashing conservative principles than supporting them. For example Rubin bashes supporters of a balanced budget amendment as extremists; this is from her summary of the debt ceiling deal at the end of July:

The president gets a deal through 2012; the House gets its cuts; and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gets his commission. And the GOP extremists don’t get their balanced budget amendment passed and sent to the states or the satisfaction of blowing up the deal. As for the country, if it passes, the agreement will take us from the days of automatic debt-ceiling raises to the first, tentative steps toward fiscal sanity.

I supposed it didn’t matter to this “conservative” that a balanced budget amendment is a key policy pushed by most conservatives and it is supported by the majority of voters. (more…)

WARNING: This Image of Hate From Occupy LA May Have Been Placed in Our Minds by GOP Mind Control Operatives

Jews across the country who were frightened by those anti-Semites at the Occupy Wall Street protests can all relax now, because the Slate’s Dave Weigel says it’s all safe. According to Weigel OWS isn’t really anti-Semitic and/or anti-Israel it’s all just a Republican plot. Although he doesn’t say it, the implications are clear. The GOP has mind control experts who have the know-how to cause Americans to see things that aren’t there.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the RNC and NRCC tried their damnedest to argue that Occupiers are inhabiting anti-Semites. The crown jewel of the effort is one of those videos that makes liberal use of shaky video and pounding music.

There is a problem: The movement isn’t anti-Semitic. It started in New York. Its ideological hero is Naomi Klein. This is a movement studded with liberal Jews! Here’s one video that’s gotten less play than the one of the irate anti-Semitic dipshit with the “Nazi bankers” sign: The Kol Nidre in New York, at the Occupy camp.

Is it just totally nuts to worry about anti-Semitism here? Well, no. This is a protest against the banking industry. The chairman of the Fed is Jewish. The president of Goldman Sachs is Jewish. The Secretary of the Treasury is Jewish. If “anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools,” there’s a hell of a risk that people could get foolish about this.

See? Dave Weigel who is Jewish, is so calming you wouldn’t know he is a bit off the mark on just a few key points.

• “It started in New York” What does that mean? Is that Dave’s version of Jesse Jackson’s calling the “Big Apple” Hymie Town? Sure, if it started in New York it must be pro-Jewish.  I guess Weigel forgot Al Sharpton got his start in NY, where he incited two anti-Semitic Pogroms, one in Crown Heights, the other in Harlem. “It started in NY” didn’t work in that case.

• “Its ideological hero is Naomi Klein” Oh thank God! She’s a Jew, that makes me feel so much better.  That Dave Weigel really knows how to calm people down.

Naomi Klein is the perfect person to be the OWS ideological hero, she has been attacking capitalism and corporations for her entire career.  Less known is the fact that, Klein has another ideological similarity to the OWS protests, she has been demonizing Israel for almost as long as she has been demonizing capitalism.

It’s not just that she disagrees with Israeli policy but she demonizes and tries to de-legitimize the Jewish state. She uses that age-old blood libel and invents Israeli atrocities.  “[Some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free-card.”

In her book The Shock Doctrine Klein explains that Israel is run by a vast military-industrial complex who purposely perpetuates war against the Palestinians so they can develop and more importantly sell, new weapons on the world-wide market.

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Two weeks ago, I responded to the mainstream media labeling the Occupy Wall Street protests the left-wing version of the Tea Party. Apparently the reasons given to prove that comparison false were too vague for the media to understand, because they continue to  make that comparison.

So to be helpful to the people in the “fourth estate,” I have created sort of a “difference between the Occupy Wall Street Protests, and the Tea Party Movement” guide for idiots and the Mainstream Media. It follows below:

• There was never a turd left on a Police Car during a tea party but there was at least one left during an Occupy Wall Street protest.

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While speaking during his “Hardball” show earlier this week, Chris “Thrill Up His Leg” Matthews waxed poetic about how wonderful the universe would be if only Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012.  Well, almost — what he really said was how lousy things he would be if a Republican were elected. He created a paranoid litany of inevitable consequences to a Republican electoral victory:

Tea Partiers and neocons… celebrating the death penalty, elevating torture, ending environmental protection as we know it, breaking unions, punishing gays, starting more wars, and enacting one more giant tax cut for the rich – or worse.

Maybe Matthews has a point. While the list of horrors he mentioned are close to our agenda, Matthews is a bit off on every item he listed, but he has spurred me think maybe it’s time for the tea partying neocons like me to admit what we really have in store for this country should our candidates get elected in 2012. Since no one else is willing to do it, I guess it will be up to me to let the world know. Below is the secret Tea Partier’s list of what we will get done in the first year after we take over.

• The Death Penalty- Matthews is wrong to insinuate conservatives celebrate death; we celebrate life and those who believe in a death penalty feel it is a necessary evil.  That being said, we plan to add two crimes to the Capital Punishment list:

–Wearing too much perfume. You know those people who always plop down next to you on a train or bus who smell like they’ve basted themselves is “aire de cheapo perfume?” Sorry ladies (and fellows with cologne), but that is a crime against humanity.

–Cell phone abusers. You’re on the 6 a.m. train into Manhattan catching a precious few extra moments of sleep when suddenly, two rows in front of you a guy disturbs your slumber by talking loudly into his cell phone about his “conquest” the night before. Under a GOP/Tea Party administration, DHS agents will be on each and every bus and train car with orders to shoot and kill the loud public phone talker.

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The liberal media has constantly found new ways to put down the tea party movement.  First came the sexual slurs; we were “tea baggers.” Then we were racists, we were stupid, and finally, we were stubborn extremists whose only wish was to close down the government and/or remove Barack Obama from office.

The media’s latest slander of the tea party puts all of the others to shame. They are calling the left-wing “Occupy Wall Street” protests in New York a “liberal tea party.”  Ladies and gentlemen, I know the tea party; I have been to some of their rallies, and some local groups’ leaders are friends of mine. It is with 100% certainty I can report that the only similarity between the tea party movement and the Occupy Wall Street protests is they are both comprised of Homo sapiens.

That doesn’t stop the liberal media, though. Take NBC News, for example; on Saturday night’s evening news program, correspondent Michelle Franzen quoted Columbia University’s Dorian Warren, who asserted the Wall Street protests were “a liberal version of the tea party.” He added, “I think this could potentially carry over into the 2012 elections and get people to the polls.”

On Sunday’s ”Meet the Press,” host David Gregory, speaking with Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne about the movement, mentioned, “your column out tomorrow talks about the equivalent tea party movement on the left [emphasis mine].” (more…)

This week President Abbas made a disastrous application for a unilateral declaration of Palestinian Statehood at the United Nations. This bid, more than anything, was a result of Barack Obama’s disastrous Middle East policy, but not according to Bob Beckel. Beckel on Friday’s “The Five” suggested that Obama’s policies had nothing to do with the UN disaster, nothing to do with the fact that Abbas refuses to negotiate, and nothing to do with Palestinians’s refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish State. It’s all the fault of the settlements, the settlements, the settlements.

Honestly, I can’t remember if he repeated the words “the settlements” three or four times but Beckel certainly made his point. He also proved that he is either too partisan to admit the truth, or too lazy to research recent  history, but either way he is wrong.

Allow me to explain the facts and for brevity’s sake I will start with the Obama Administration.

While the Palestinians have never accepted Israeli settlements, secession of all settlement building has never been a precondition to talks. Israel had long ago agreed not to build new communities in Judea and Samaria but would continue to add housing units to existing communities.

During the government of PM Ehud Barak, there were direct talks and construction continued in existing communities.

It was the Obama administration’s naiveté that made the settlements an issue. Hillary Clinton first demanded the freeze in 2009 and was quickly backed up by Obama. What the President and his advisers perceived as a minor concession (a settlement freeze including no new housing units in existing communities) was for Israel a grave sacrifice. From their point of view Obama was telling adult Israelis that their children could no longer live near their parents. He was also saying that a policy not accepted in the United States (allowing people of a certain faith to live anywhere they want) was OK as long as it appeased the Arab world.

It is interesting that the man who pushed for Muslims to build a mosque on Ground Zero, and for illegal immigrants to live in Arizona, believes that Jews should be banned from living on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Making the settlement a cornerstone of the new administration’s Middle East policy was a major naivete-driven error by the Obama administration. It was further compounded by their inclusion of Jerusalem in the mix and their constant public berating of the Jewish State. This turned the Israeli population against Obama, especially the Israeli left who would be more inclined to support a settlement freeze demand. A May 2011 Smith Poll conducted for the Jerusalem Post showed that only 12% of Israelis believe Obama is pro-Israel while 40% believe he is pro-Palestinian.

Obama’s demand for a freeze of natural community growth broke a US/Israel agreement made during the Bush administration.

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Its really amazing how little the progressive mainstream media really understands. In yesterday’s NY Times, media reporter Jeremy Peters issued a warning to young journalists in a front page article “Covering 2012, Youths on the Bus” The warning?  There are partisan bloggers out there who are out to embarrass mainstream journalists. By partisan bloggers Peters means conservative bloggers, because to the NY Times a liberal bias is the definition of fair coverage.

CNN fired Octavia Nasr, its senior editor for Middle East affairs, after she composed a 19-word Twitter message expressing sadness after the death of a Hezbollah leader.

Here’s an interesting back story to MSNBC’s hiring of racial riot instigator Al Sharpton as their latest evening host.  Back in March of 2000, MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough was Congressman Joe Scarborough  and he introduced House Resolution 270  condemning Al Sharpton as a racist and a bigot. Read the text of the bill which was dug up by Legal Insurrection:

106th CONGRESS 2d Session H. CON. RES. 270

Condemning the racist and anti-Semitic views of the Reverend Al Sharpton

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

March 8, 2000

Mr. SCARBOROUGH submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

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CONCURRENT RESOLUTION Condemning the racist and anti-Semitic views of the Reverend Al Sharpton

Whereas the Congress strongly rejects the racist and incendiary actions of the Reverend Al Sharpton;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as `bloodsucking [J]ews’, and `Jew bastards’;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as `white interlopers’ and `diamond merchants’;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton was found guilty of defamation by a jury in a New York court arising from the false accusation that former Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones, who is white, raped and assaulted a fifteen year-old black girl;

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New York Congressman Charlie Rangel should have quit after having his wrist slapped by the Congressional Ethics committee. The poor guy is not as sharp as he used to be, either that or he has never been interviewed by the likes of Laura Ingraham.

Ingraham has been filling in for Bill O’ Reilly this week. On Wednesday she interviewed, Allen West, Congressman from Florida (who is a real mensch!). Congressman  West made a pretty controversial (but true) statement during the interview. The Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) made the point that the Democrats have  been ignoring the Black voters for years, because they knew African-Americans will vote Democratic no matter what.

West Described himself a” modern day Harriet Tubman” who can help rescue blacks from the Democratic Party by leading them “on the underground railroad away from that plantation.” West told Laura Ingraham that some black leaders “are nothing more than the overseers of that plantation.”

In the interests of “Fair and Balanced” the next night Laura Ingraham had Charlie Rangel as a guest on the show so he could rebut Congressman West.

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Twenty years ago this Friday a tragic car accident in Crown Heights Brooklyn escalated into a pogrom against the Jewish people.  The media gives it a politically correct description, violence between the area’s Blacks and Jews. However the violence was not two-sided. The Crown Heights riot was an attack on the Jews by the neighborhood’s Caribbean community, fueled in part by Al Sharpton, now an MSNBC host and adviser to President Obama.

Black Antisemitism in the Summer of 1991

Jews were a key part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s,  when the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous march to Selma Alabama, he walked hand in hand with many Jews including Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Along with the Jews was a contingent of Torahs to emphasize that the quest for Civil Rights was a holy mission for the Jewish people.

In spite of the strong Jewish participation in the civil rights movement the transformation from the peaceful marches to Black power movement introduced considerable friction into African American-Jewish relations, especially within the “Black Muslim” movement.

During the 1970s and 1980s African-Americans stopped looking at Jews as their allies but as their oppressors. The Jews were seen as having the political power that the African-Americans desired. Black  leaders such as Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson went public with anti-Semitic comments.

Adding to the hatred were the leaders of the South African anti-Apartheid movement who traveled throughout the United States as conquering heroes, and spreading Jew-hatred.  For example, in 1984  Desmond Tutu publicly complained about American Jews having “an arrogance—the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support.”

Understandably Jewish/Black relations were already rocky as NY City entered the summer of 1991.

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There was an interesting exchange between Jake Tapper and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney earlier this week. Just a short while after Carney proclaimed that the President would “not rest until everyone in America who wants a job has a job,” the White House announced that the President will be taking a nine-day August rest in Cape Cod.  This means that Obama plans to have unemployment fixed within the next two weeks or his “not to rest” promise dropped very quickly even for this President.

Tapper decided to ask Carney about the contradiction.

Jake Tapper from ABC News asked Carney if the vacation was appropriate.

Jake Tapper, ABC News: “You said the President will not rest until the joblessness and the economy are worked out, but the President is obviously going on vacation…. Is there any concern about the impression that the President going to Martha’s Vineyard for 9 or 10 days might leave on the American people? And also, if this is such an important issue for Speaker Boehner, for Harry Reid, for President Obama, why the R&R?”

Jay Carney, WH press secretary:... I don’t think Americans out there would begrudge that notion that the President would spend some time with his family. It is also, as I think anyone who has covered in the past, either in this administration or others, there is no such thing as a presidential vacation. The Presidency travels with you. He will be in constant communication and get regular briefings from his national security team as well as his economic team. And he will of course be fully capable, if necessary, of traveling back if that were required. It is not very far.”

I don’t begrudge the President from taking a vacation either, except the timing does seem to be a bit inappropriate. Also the man who defended the President’s vacation, Jay Carney, bashed President Bush for taking one ten years ago. (more…)

As a guest on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Meredith Whitney thought she was on safe ground when she opined that Tea Party members were”freaked out white men who are unemployed,” then followed up with blaming the grass roots movement for the problems in Washington DC. Whitney should have should have looked at the schedule before she spoke, because Rick Santelli was on next. As you would expect after he was done with his Chicago exchange report Santelli, who helped start the tea party movement with an epic rant, lit into Ms Whitney giving her a classic, well-deserved verbal “bitch slap” even getting a bit personal.

MEREDITH WHITNEY,  Banking Analyst: I would suggest that the debate is really around unemployment, and I think that, you know, call the Tea Party whatever you will, the fringe element is, you know, I characterize freaked out white men who are unemployed and have been unemployed for three years and they’re scared to death. And three to four million of them are just about to roll off of unemployment benefits in the next three months. So, this is only going to get worse. For this reason, you have to deal with structural issues. So, if you are a Machiavellian Democrat, you want to deal with this issue and defuse the Tea Party as fast as you possibly can, because this poses the biggest threat to their reelection I think in ’12.

BTW, not only is Ms. Whitney wrong in her opinion of the nature of the tea party, but she is also wrong about the gender. According to Dr. Helen Smith writing for the PJ Tatler:

Many of the tea party’s most influential grass-roots and national leaders are women, and a new poll released this week by Quinnipiac University suggests that women might make up a majority of the movement as well.

After the Banking expert gave her little speech about the Tea Party, Santelli gave his regular report and then began his take-down of Ms Whitney.

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On the evening of Aug. 8th, Jews across the world begin their observance of the fast of Tisha B’Av, mourning the loss of the two Jerusalem Temples (and many more calamities to the Jewish people). The Talmud tells us the cause of the Second Temple’s destruction was senseless hatred and political insults.

We are taught that during the first century CE,  a man threw a party and intended to invite his good friend Kamtza. His servant screwed up and mistakenly invited the host’s enemy, Bar Kamtza. This led to the insulting of Bar Kamtza, his slandering of the Jewish people to Caesar, and Bar Kamtza’s purposeful wounding of an animal Caesar sent to the Holy Temple to be sacrificed as a peace offering making it unfit to be used.

The offering was rejected by the Great Sanhedrin (think of the Sanhedrin as a Rabbinical Supreme Court whose 71  Judges were some of the wisest  scholars who ever lived.) The Sanhedrin met at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem until it was destroyed, after which they moved to Tiberius where today sits the Holy Land’s greatest Kosher Chinese restaurant, Pagoda (personally I do not believe that is a coincidence, from this we learned that the wise Rabbis of the Great Sanhedrin enjoyed take out now and then).

Anyway, Caesar took  the fact that his animals were rejected as a political insult and rebellious move  so he invaded, resulting in the destruction of the Holy Temple.

The public insulting of one man by one other man steamrolled out of control with the ultimate consequence of the destruction of the Holy Temple, and the exile of the Jewish people from Israel (and the ultimate Kosher Chinese place)  for almost 1900 years.

The story of the Kamtzas is apropos for the solemn day of Tisha B’Av,  but is also be a warning for America following two months of a debt ceiling debate riddled with personal insult and hateful rhetoric.

Despite the insults within and between both political parties, the compromise deal gives a political victory for some and though impotent in a cost cutting way,  it does provide an opening for our leadership to take use this “starting point” as a platform for the additional change necessary so the United States may avoid the Greece scenario and return to fiscal heath.

Although many in the movement would vehemently deny it, the big winner in the debate is the tea party movement. As recently as June 22nd the progressive Democratic Party were talking about a new stimulus package as part of a debt ceiling bill … but thanks to the tea party movement that scenario is long dead. The tea party movement switched the debate from “spending vs. cutting” to how “much should be cut and/or from where,” a huge accomplishment.

Major tea party demands going into the talks were achieved; no new taxes and cuts to the deficit larger than any increase in the debt ceiling. The biggest demand not achieved through the negotiation was the passage of the Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA). The bill passed by the House required that the Senate pass the Amendment, while the final compromise merely requires a vote. The difference is a huge one.  Since almost all of the states have a balanced budget requirement of some sort, and polls report that somewhere between 70-75% of voters want a BBA, once passed by two-thirds of each house of Congress this amendment is likely to “speed” its way thorough the state approval process (75% of the States must approve for it to be added to the constitution). A BBA would most certainly pass the house, house but will be rejected by the progressive-controlled Senate whose members are reluctant to give up their unlimited credit card.

Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell were also winners. They held to the “no new taxes” pledge despite rumors they had folded. Boehner gets more credit as he was the face of the opposition, took most of the heat, and showed himself willing to compromise not only with Democrats but with his own coalition to make a deal happen.

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