Republicans missing a wing

Thomas Friedman's column (Not a Test, 3/11/2009), decrying the "politics as usual" of the Republican party and their hope to "see the country fail" reminded me that some years ago, Russell Baker in one of his columns for this paper, noticed that the Republican party's main mission was to "comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted."

Now, at a time when even some of the comfortable are being afflicted financially, it is high time for the blind (or, at the very least, short sighted) followers of the doctrine of failure, preached by right wing radio blowhards, to examine their role in the rebuilding of our economy.

The obstructionists Republicans claim to be concerned about the size of the deficit and the debt that our children will inherit. But if we look at the spending habits of past Republican administrations, we see that this concern occurs only when the Democrats are in power.

The shining light and exemplar of present day Republicans is Ronald Reagan. There are many reasons why they worship him: He is the one that advocated the trickle-down theory that turned into a gusher of riches to the wealthiest people in the country. Even his Vice President, papa Bush, dismissed this policy as "Voodoo Economics" (that was before he became VP). But most of all they worship his declaration that "Government is the problem."

Reagan attempted to prove it by almost running the country into bankruptcy as his term in office was nearing its expiration date. His Republican successor (papa Bush, again) had to raise taxes, negating his "read my lips, no taxes" promise.

And, of course, the biological son of President Bush, and ideological son of Ronald Reagan (junior Bush), managed to turn the largest surplus into the largest deficit in our history. He did it by involving us in an unnecessary war and appointing incompetent sycophants to run the government.

It was said that the nay sayers are the right wing of the G.O.P., but the left wing of the Republican party does not exist anymore. A bird with only one wing may skip and jump but will find it impossible to fly.

March 11, 2009

The Brothers

Lowe's cartoon in todays (3/7) paper was, as usual, sharp and to the point. It depicts Governor Bush as a know it all that decided to divert tax money from needy kids to greedy kin.

While enjoying it, an old joke came to mind:

It is an old Jewish custom to say some nice things about the deceased during burial services. However, when an obnoxious politician died, no one volunteered. The Rabbi, conducting the service, asked if anyone has something to say. The silence was long and embarassing. Finally a member of the Congregation srood up and said:

"We all knew the deceased. He was arrogant, incompetent and irresponsible. He never kept his promises to the people who elected him. He took away needed help from needy people, and gave tax breaks to the very rich. He disregarded referandums approved by the majority, and appointed incompetent cronies to high positions. But you know what -- his brother is worse."

3/7/06 (SS)

Israel is not at heart of Mideast unrest

The Iraq Study Group perpetuates the myth that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the cause of the unrest in the Middle East. But they do not address the role that Islamist extremists played in the region in the past, and continue doing so now.

Consider these facts: A thousand Iraqi Muslims are killed each week by their brothers in Islam. Is Israel to blame? Millions of Iraqis and Iranians, both countries being Muslim, were "martyred" in the war between those two countries. Was it a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? And did Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait as part of an Israeli conspiracy?

The Egyptians dispatched an army to fight in Yemen's civil war in the 1960s, and used poison gas on fellow Muslims. Israel again? Hafez Assad, the previous ruler of Syria, slaughtered tens of thousands of his fellow countrymen in Hama in 1982, and so did Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Is it the fault of Israel?

When bands of Mexican bandits raided the southern United States, we invaded Mexico in order to ensure a safe border. So what is Israel to do when a terrorist militia, armed and trained by Iran and Syria and represented in the Lebanese government, starts hostilities and aims rockets at population centers?

The Islamic teachings promulgated by the Saudi-Wahabi-sponsored preachers teaches intolerance and hatred to those not strictly Muslim. It encourages murder by promising homicide bombers a place in paradise (and rewards to the families through so-called Muslim charities). I am not a scholar of Islam, but where are the voices of their moderate believers?


December 20, 2006

Copyright (c) 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Republican Elephants

The 183 Republicans in the house of Representatives that voted unanimously against the Stimulus bill, proved the wisdom of their predecessors selection of the elephant as the symbol of their party.

Like trained circus elephants they clung to the tail of their leaders, and held on to the tail of the elephant that preceded them. They did not care, and they could not see where they were going, which might explain the indifference that they displayed to the pain and suffering of millions of Americans.

In the wild the most destructive animal to the natural environment is the elephant. The party with the elephant as its symbol is set on destroying the living and working environment of the American people. They say that the elephant never forgets, but we should remember, too. Lets us make the Republican elephants an endangered species.

2/13/09

Senator Obama

Senator Obama in his op-ed article (9/13) stresses the importance of education for the future of our country, with the emphasis of the long-term benefits to our nation. He did not address the need for educating those that had already fallen through the cracks of the present educational system: the poorly educated voters.

When Henry Louis Mencken (who died in 1956) observed that "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public", he unintentionally

provided the direction that the Republican Party of the twenty-first century chose to follow in

its political campaigns.

The Republicans sold us a "compassionate conservative" that led us into two wars, provided huge tax breaks to the richest people and corporations, while at the same tine he let the poor people of New Orleans, and the rest of the country wallow in misery. The Republican president destroyed the economy, brought us into a recession, and presided over the highest gas prices ever.

The Republican Party did very well underestimating our intelligence, but the Democrats were too timid and too gun shy to step out and start educating us about the lies that the President's party was spreading daily. Senator Obama and his party should start a massive educational effort NOW.

Make people aware that voting over 90% with the President, does not make McCain a maverick. That choosing a poorly qualified woman to succeed him as President, if he does not finish his term, is just a gimmick designed to hide his consistent voting record against granting women rights. And, most importantly, if he really thinks that the Alaska governor is the most qualified person in this country to be President, what are going to be the qualifications demanded by him for nominees to the Supreme Court.

Senator Obama, you have only six weeks left to try and educate us why we should not have four more years of Bush or McBush. So start now and keep at it every day and every hour.

9/15/08

Is McCain a Hero?

Whenever I see, or hear, the media refer to John McCain as a war hero, I keep wondering: WHY?

I do understand that every nation needs war heroes. It is not enough for us that the thousands of young men and women who are facing enemy fire are performing heroic deeds. We need bigger than life heroes, people that went above and beyond the call of duty to be set as examples for others to emulate in the next war.

The first World War gave us Sergeant Alvin York, in the second World War we had Audie Murphy, but then we ran into trouble. We has a brutal, unpopular, and different kind of war in Vietnam, a war that was not conducive to the creation of real-life super heroes -- so we had to create fictional ones: the simple minded, but good, Forrest Gump, and the dedicated and handsome professional, John McCain.

Now, don't get me wrong, there really was, and is, a John McCain. But is he an American war hero, as his admirers refer to him? As an aviator he rained bombs from thousands feet up, on the Vietnamese during twenty-two missions, before being shot down. To me, that is hardly heroic. He endured five and a half years as a Prisoner of War, during which time he was brutally tortured, but he was only one of about a thousand American POWs tortured by their captors. Their, and his, survival is an act of courage and perseverance, but should he be singled out as a hero, while his fellow POWs were neglected by the press and maligned by anti-war protests.

John McCain is, first and foremost, a survivor, as he proved in the Keating five affair, in rebounding from his defeat by George Bush in his previous presidential run, and by defeating Milt Romney in the primaries.

John McCain is definitely a survivor, but hardly a war hero.

7/20/08

Intelligence, or the lack of it

When Henry Louis Mencken (who died in 1956) observed that "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public", he must have had in his mind visions of Florida in the twenty-first century. He probably foresaw butterfly ballots with tailing chads flying all the way to Washington and being ignored by five political appointees, sitting in the Supreme Court, who imposed upon the rest of us an incompetent, ignorant and less than truthful politician, as an appointed President.

And if this wasn't scary enough, he might have envisioned Tallahassee and the nincompoops that inhabit the Florida Legislature. I doubt that even he could have believed that the majority Republicans would defy their party and move up the primary date, risking the loss of half their delegates to the national convention. They were, of course, eagerly supported by their Democratic colleagues that stood to lose all their delegates.

That was the same body of political hacks that offered us a very expensive "tax cut" that was embraced by the Florida public. We are going to pay for it not only by higher fees on just about everything, but also by diminishing services in every field, from police protection to education. On second thought, is it possible that the Republicans gleefully engineered the cuts in education as a furtherance of their political agenda: an uneducated, ill informed and egocentric public is more likely to vote for Republican candidates.

While the American public may be less than intelligent, the leadership of the Democratic party must be the bottom of the barrel. Every political pundit in the country is aware of the importance of electoral Florida, but the Democratic Party is oblivious to this fact. If they keep alienating the Democratic Florida voters, the Republicans may carry the state, and the general election, and validate the cynical wisdom of H. L. Mencken.

Israelites and Jews

Most American Jews do not practice the Jewish religion. As a matter of fact most Israeli Jews are not observant either, and neither are their brethren around the world.
Now if a Baptist, or better yet a Catholic, will cease to attend religious rites, that person will become a lapsed Catholic or no Catholic at all. But a Jew is always a Jew.
Why? What makes a Jew Jewish?
The answer given by fundamentalist rabbis is that a person whose mother is Jewish, or one who was converted according to the ancient rituals specified in the "Halachah" is Jewish. Taking that centuries-old tradition one step further the Palestine National Charter declares that "Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own."?
The answer given by fundamentalist rabbis is that a person whose mother is Jewish, or one who was converted according to the ancient rituals specified in the "Halachah" is Jewish. Taking that centuries-old tradition one step further the Palestine National Charter declares that "Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own."
In my humble opinion both fundamentalist rabbis and extremist Palestinians are equally wrong. Of course part of the blame is our own because we still consider religion as the controlling factor of our Jewishness. We are not merely a religious congregation -- we are a nation in Israel and a nationality in other countries.
In view of the changing historic nature of nationalism and nations, would it be wrong to consider the laws of Moses as the forerunners of a modern-day constitution and Bill of Rights? After all, those laws transformed a group of people whose only bonds were their blood ties, and their faith, into a nation.
It seems to me that when Moses led the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, his purpose was not to create a new religious group -- after all the descendants of the Hebrew patriarchs had been practicing a unique monotheistic religion for hundreds of years by then -- but to build a nation; and the laws of Moses, in addition to codifying the existing religious practices, established the social and political canons necessary to govern a nation.
We might bear in mind that Moses did not start his life as a religious leader, but as a political one. Having been raised, and presumably educated, in the court of the Pharaoh, he probably was acquainted with Egyptian law and might have been familiar with the codes of the Babylonian King Hammurabi. The uniqueness of the laws of Moses is their inclusion of monotheistic religious aspects.
Although religion was an important part of the Jewish national heritage, it was by no means all of it. Every nation and many tribes of that era had in addition to their rulers, their own Deity to worship. The Jewish religion was used as a unifying code of conduct for tribes of semi-nomads to weld them into a nation and to protect -- and separate -- them from the many different cultural influences outside their fluid borders, as well as from the alien population within.
But it also had its drawbacks. The Jewish religion, demanding almost total subjugation to the highest divine authority, frowning on proselytization and asking its adherents to be passive and submissive to the will of God, contrasted sharply with the needs of a Jewish nation to defend itself in the many wars waged against it.
It is therefore understandable that when the Jewish tribes formed a kingdom -- disregarding the religious leaders disapproval -- the first king, Saul, tried hard to separate the state from the church, or at least to establish the primacy of the monarchy -- but like so many later rulers in world history he found out that he was battling a formidable institution. His successors, David and Solomon also had their disputes with the religious establishment, as did all the following Israeli Kings, and many other royal heads of state throughout history.
Later, when the Kingdoms of Israel were overrun and defeated by the Romans, Rabbinical Judaism took over the vacuum created by the lack of political authority. The task that the Rabbis faced -- keeping the Jewish nation alive -- necessitated shifting the focal point of the unifying codes of the nation. Thus holidays that once had a national meaning were modified to emphasize their religious aspect. The exodus from Egypt, which marked the beginning of Jewish nationhood was transformed into a celebration of the deliverance of the Israelites from bondage by the Lord, with services that omitted any mention of Moses. The liberation of the country from Hellenic rule by the Hashmonaim and the restoration of the Jewish kingdom was turned into the miracle of the pure oil for the lighting of the Menorah. The harvest festival became a commemoration of the giving and receiving of the Torah.
It worked, we managed to retain our identity for two thousand years under extremely adverse circumstances. However, even the priesthood realized the needs of the nation and incorporated nationalistic themes into the religious rites. The result was that the Jewish religion also preached the return to the homeland ("Next year in Jerusalem".)
The claim that Judaism is solely a religious expression is far removed from reality. It is a fact of modern life that there are some Israelites, all over the world, that do practice the Jewish religion -- just as there are many that do not, but we all trace our historical roots to the land ruled by the ancient prophets and kings of Israel.
Even the Star of David that many of us wear to denote our Jewishness has no religious significance. Unlike the crucifix, it does not play a part in religious services, and if we call it by its Hebrew name -- Magen David -- which means the shield of King David or his coat of arms, we refer to a national symbol. It is, of course, no accident that the Star of David is displayed on the national flag of the State of Israel.
In the twentieth century there was only one country that acknowledged Judaism as a nationality -- the Soviet Union -- and its reasons for doing so were not entirely motivated by enlightenment, but in the attempts of the Communist regime to curb religion and rampant anti-Semitism.
Today a great many citizens of the United States denote their roots and heritage by hyphenation. We have Mexican-Americans and Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans and just about every other nationality-hyphen-American. At times the hyphenation process evolved through many stages as in the case of the Afro-Americans that went through period of referring to themselves as Negro, Colored and Black, before arriving at the present designation.
We should join the ranks of the hyphenated nationalities and start referring to ourselves as Israelite-Americans. Being a Israelite-American does not signify, to me, merely a religious affiliation -- it proudly states that I am a direct descendant of an old and honorable nation. A nation that contributed greatly to the advancement of humanity for thousands of years. It is hard to imagine the state of Western Civilization today if it were not guided by the teachings of the writers of the Bible, the preaching of Jesus, the interpretations of Maimonades and Spinoza, the insights of Freud, or the inquiring mind of Einstein -- to name but a few great fellow Israelites in the last two thousand years.
Of course during most of that time we had no state of our own, except in our hearts and minds, and it was our nationalistic religion that kept us united and acted as a buffer against assimilation among our host nations. Today things are different -- the State of Israel re-emerged and the role that religion plays in our lives is greatly diminished. That presents us with a modern dilemma.
The Israelite-Americans face a long-term problem of diminution and dilution. As mixed marriages are on the rise and religious affiliation is on the decline, it is not a far fetched assumption that in two or three generations our numbers will diminish greatly. It is a historic fact that among people that do not actively practice their Jewish religion the rate of assimilation and loss of national identity is almost total in three or four generations.
Do we want this to happen? Do we want to be the penultimate generation of Jews, do we have to? I, for one, do not wish for it to happen.
We cannot instill religious observance in our children and grandchildren, if we ourselves do not practice that religion. But we can, and we should, at the very least, raise them to be aware and proud of their national Israeli heritage.