Colorado Confederate

Hillary's Jewish Fundraising

2016-09-05T00:25:00.002-06:00

Today’s New York Times article on Hillary Clinton’s fund raising among the ultrarich raises questions for me about her ties to Jews. Almost every name mentioned in the article, except for the entertainers, is Jewish. They included Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein to start. It then quoted “prominent New York Democrat” Jay Jacobs. “A Democratic donor in Florida,” Mitchell Berger, said fund raising for Hillary was “like going to a wedding or a bar mitzvah.” The entry price for Haim Saban’s fundraiser was $100,000, the same price as Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild’s fundraising dinner. The article says the Clinton’s stayed in Steven Spielberg’s Hampton guesthouse. One name near the end that I wasn’t sure was Jewish was Ken Sunshine, but his Wikipedia entrystarts out, “Sunshine grew up in a Jewish family on Long Island.”

Just as Bill Clinton was known as the first black President, despite being white, Hillary may be known as the first Jewish President, despite being gentile. Then, just as Bill opened the way for Barak Obama to become President a few years later, Hillary may open the way for a real Jew to become President in a few years. In any case it’s clear that her administration will be full of Jewish cabinet members and senior appointees. John Kerry might be able to stay on at State, since he is half Jewish, as well as Jack Lew at Treasury, and maybe a few more.

Election Process

2016-08-07T00:20:00.001-06:00

One reason we have such poor candidates for President is that the election process is so terrible. The Republican debates and primaries for both 2012 and 2016 tended to destroy the chances for the best candidates. In 2012, Mitt Romney was not a terrible candidate, but he had to debate with a bunch of idiots with crazy ideas, several of whom led him in the debates and polls. By the time he emerged as the leader, any chance he had of being elected had been significantly reduced. By appearing with uninformed, extremist hacks like Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorium, Romney trivialized himself.

More or less the same thing happened in the 2016 Republican debates, but it was worse because they had more worthless hacks onstage, and there was no front runner like Romney. It was not even clear that Donald Trump was a Republican. It turned out that Trump spoke to a slice of Republicans that none of the other candidates did. He was color in a Republican world of gray. He was a clear voice amidst a group of mumblers. But his speeches turn out to be well described by Shakespeare as “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Meanwhile on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton, the embodiment of all the political evil in the Washington establishment, expected a coronation, but got a fight from Bernie Sanders. The comparison between the honest, forthright Sanders and the devious, lying Hillary was striking. She is like the basest whore; there is nothing she won’t do for money or power. (See “House of Cards.”) She might even be seen as a latter-day representative of the whore of Babylon described in the Book of Revelation, but that might be giving her a little more importance than she deserves.

While the American electoral system has been dragging the country through the mud, Britain named a new prime minister, Theresa May, in only a few days, and she has hit the ground running, dealing with the huge mess that Brexit dumped on her. Part of the difference is the British parliamentary system, but part of it is the long, corrupt, expensive process that our political parties have created for their own benefit, aided by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

Because of this terrible process, good people will not run for office. Almost everyone has done something that they later wish they had not done, even if they have lived otherwise exemplary lives. If they run, the media will find that one bad thing and trumpet it from the rooftops (and cable and the Internet). Trump and Hillary seem to have unusual characters that are immune to such slander and obloquy. I don’t think we get what we deserve, we get what the political establishment has forced on us. Hillary is the product of that establishment, and Trump is the result of the public’s pained cry against what the system has forced on it. There are better men and women in America who would be better candidates, but the system is not designed to find them.

The Battle of the Grieving Parents

2016-08-03T01:03:00.000-06:00

Donald Trump has completely blown his interaction with the Kahn family, which criticized him at the DNC. Since Mrs. Kahn did not say anything, it was pretty clear that she was there only to show the headscarf and silenly imply that the Democratic Party supports Muslim women. When asked why she did not speak, she said that seeing images of her dead son was so distrubing that she could not speak. If that is the case, Hillary’s DNC forced her to deal with the death of her son, in a way which iwas hard for her. It was a cruel thing for the DNC to do, but it worked on Donald. He took the bait, hook, line and sinker. This was a cynical use of a mourning Muslim worman, but Hillary gets no criticism for it, because Trump, by attacking the gold star family has made the whole issue about him, not about Hillary.

It may be that the Kahns were the DNC’s response to the RNC’s use of Patricia Smith, the grieving mother of one of the Benghazi victims, as the Washington Examiner noted. If that is the case, the DNC got much more mileage out of its grieving parents than the RNC did. Interestingly, Patricia Smith said that Hillary Clinton lied to her when they met. Normally I would be inclined to believe that the Secretary of State would be more believable than a grieving mother who may not have been completely focused during their conversation. But we know that Hillary lied to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday about what James Comey, the head of the FBI, said publicly about her use of the private email server that she should not have used as Secretary. If she would lie on TV about something that is on the public record, she might certainly have lied about a private conversation, but that question has never come up, certainly not to the extent that Trump’s remarks about the Kahns have been covered by the media.

Let's Not Make Islam the Most Important Religion in America

2016-07-25T16:18:00.001-06:00

Listening to the news on radio and watching TV, I am struck at how important Islam has become in American society. Everyone is talking about it, conservatives warning that Muslims are threats to us, liberals saying that they are not threats and we must love them. It’s not clear whether the spate of murders by mentally unbalanced people claiming to be carrying out jihad is really due to Islam or just to their mental condition. But the fact that there is currently almost one mass murder per day shows something is going on.

Osama bin Laden not only killed about 3,000 Americans in his original attacks, but he inspired the Bush-Cheney ill-advised response to destroy the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, thus plunging the Midfdle East into chaos. Obama added to this chaos by encouraging the people of countires not already destabliized by Bush and Cheney to rise up and overthrow their governments, which they did in Egypt, Syria and Libya, while sowing unrest in countries like Turkey. Bin Laden’s success was magnified by American incompetence.

As Americans leave traditional religions like Christianity and Judaism in droves, Islam is becoming the most important religion in America. I’m not happy with that. I hope that this too will pass, but at the moment it’s disturbing. I’d be happy to leave Islam alone if it would leave us alone.

Conflicting Op-Eds in the NYT

2016-07-25T12:59:00.001-06:00

Two op-eds in the July 15 New York Times caught my attention as representing contrasting opinions by influential Jews on current political issues.

David Brooks writes about how in the past people felt that they should work to preserve their own societies, but that today they sacrifice their own communities to benefit poorer communities that they have no relation to. He says this view, espoused by Jonathan Haidt, is that “morality is not based on loyalty to people close to them; it’s based on a universal equality for all humans everywhere.” He says the division between these two ways of thinking is the difference between nationalists and globalists. You have the “same moral obligation to a boy starving to death in South Sudan as to a boy drowning in the lake in front of you.” The universalists see the Trump nomination as a sign that the pendulum as swung too far in their direction and is now swinging back toward nationalism. Brooks argues that the American approach of assimilation has made it unnecessary to choose between the two views, but this election would indicate that the current situation is not ideal for at least a significant number of Americans.

In the same edition, Paul Krugman writes that high stock market prices do not indicate a strong economy. He says that the high market prices today indicate the increasing importance of corporate profits in today economy versus the declining importance of labor. It’s interesting to me that as Jew Krugman points to the evils of the declining value of labor despite the fact that Jews tend to make their money from capital, rather than labor. He says capital as become more important even as it has ceased investing in new production; it is becoming more important by manipulating the market, mainly by moving toward more and more monopoly. Secondly, Krugman says because of low interest rates, there are no good alternatives to investing in the stock market. Big American companies are sitting on huge piles of cash with they are not investing. Finally, he argues as he always does, for more infrastructure investment by the government. (The current merger proposals of four healthcare companies, Aetna, Humana, Anthem and Cigna illustrate the move toward monopoly. Wikipedia says Anthem CEO Joe Swedish is a refugee from Eastern Europe; it does not say whether his family was Jewish. The other three CEOs do not appear to be Jewish.)

I see David Brooks’ article as espousing typically Jewish viewpoint. Jews are always afraid that they will be discriminated against (or worse), and therefore espouse a universalist view, i.e., white Anglos should not discriminate against anybody (especially Jews). The two philosophical writers he cites, Jonathan Haidt and Peter Singer, are both Jews. On the other hand, Krugman seems disturbed by financial activities that are typically pursued by Jews.

Another irony to me is the huge Jewish support for Hillary Clinton, and Jewish lack of support for Bernie Sanders, an ethnic Jew, if not a religious Jew. The Clintons have repeatedly shown their loyalty to the Jewish community, from Bill Clinton’s pardon of Mark Rich to Chelsea’s marriage to a Jew whose father, Ed Mezvinsky, is a convicted felon for financial manipulation. Of course, Trump’s son-in-law’s Jewish father, Charles Kushner, also spent two years in jail.

The Bernie Sanders controversy indicates to me that many Jews are more loyal to their “tribe” than they are to any particular country that they happen to live in, except for Israel, to which they are extremely loyal. For them America is a good place to live and make money, but so far, despite they huge political and economic power, they do not see it as their country. Joe Lieberman’s defeat as Vice President probably indicated that at least at that time, America was not ready for a Jewish Vice President. So today, they throw their support behind Hillary who is a solid friend of the Jews. Jews are leaders in the Democratic party in both the House and the Senate, although the discrimination by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a Jew, against Bernie Sanders, a Jew, has cost her her in the party. Wasserman-Schultz was important as a fund raiser, no doubt because she could get contributions from many rich Jews, many in her Florida home state. In the Senate, Jewish Chuck Schumer is no doubt staying very quiet as waits to replace Harry Reid.

What Does the Star of David Represnt?

2016-07-07T00:58:00.000-06:00

The New York Times says that Donald Trump has defended the use of a six-pointed star in one of his tweets about Hillary Clinton. I find it odd that the national press associates the six-pointed star of David with corruption. Many of them are Jewish, so it seems strange that they would associate the Jewish emblem with lying, cheating and dishonesty. You would think that Jews would be proud of the symbol, not see it as an evil emblem like the swastika. The heads of many of the networks that have come after Trump with knives drawn, calling him an anti-Semite, are Jewish. If they see the Jewish emblem as a symbol of corruption, they must know something. The head of Comcast and NBC, Brian Roberts, is Jewish. The head of Walt Disney and ABC, Bob Iger, is Jewish. The head of Viacom and CBS, Sumner Redstone, is Jewish. The Sulzberger family that publishes the New York Times is Jewish. Why do they believe that the Jewish emblem represents corruption? You would think that Hillary would be pleased to be identified with Judaism, but she was apparently horrified to be associated with Jews. I guess she doesn't want any Jews in her country club.

Hillary's Voters

2016-06-30T01:01:00.002-06:00

Hillary’s electoral base consists of blacks, Hispanics, Jews, and old women. For better or worse, it’s enough to win.

Bill Clinton made himself the first black President by appealing to blacks and pushing for programs that benefitted them. Thus Obama was really the second black President, and Hillary wants to be the third. Blacks and Hispanics have pretty much voted as a group, while the white vote has been more evenly split According to Roper, these are the percentages showing how different races voted in Presidential races where race was a major factor. .

Election	Blacks	Hispanics	Whites
Clinton 1992	83%	61%	39%
Clinton 1996	84%	73%	44%
Obama 2008	95%	67%	43%
Obama 2012	93%	71%	39%

Because immigration has been such an important issue this year, Hillary can probably count on an even greater Hispanic vote.

In addition, Hillary is making a strong appeal to women. So far, the commentators say that she is succeeding with older women, but less so with young women, who prefer Bernie Sanders, and thus are less enthusiastic supporters of Hillary than old women.

These dependable blocs of Hillary voters probably assure her the election.

In addition to these pools of voters, the Clintons have developed a reliable base of Jewish supporters. The Jews don’t have much to offer in numbers of voters, but they have immense amounts of money to offer. This Jewish money will enable her to run the ads and the ground campaign to turn out the voters she needs.

Orlando vs Charleston

2016-06-21T01:05:00.005-06:00

Today a caller to Rush Limbaugh was concerned about an issue that has also bothered me in light of Obama’s response to the Orlando shootings. When the Obama administration first released the 911 transcripts of the 911 calls from the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, they redacted anything referring to ISIS or terror or Islam. Clearly they were trying to downplay any “radical Islamist” connection to the murders. They were trying to say that the incident was about sex, the availability of guns, or mental instability. Mateen’s being a Muslim and pledging allegiance to Islam and the Islamic state was redacted as being unimportant. Attorney General Lynch was saying, Mateen thought he was killing people because he was a Muslim and a terrorist, but we know it was because he was a repressed gay man who couldn’t deal with his feelings; he masked his homosexuality by falsely claiming to be a terrorist. His statements are worthless; we know what his real motive was. A Muslim would never do this; it is against the Koran.

On the other hand Dylan Roof’s murder of nine black women in a church in Charleston was quickly imputed to sully all Southern white people who still had respect for their ancestors killed in the Civil War. Both men clearly had serious mental problems evidenced simply by the acts they performed, but in Mateen’s case Obama quickly blamed the mental issue, as opposed to outside Muslim terrorist influences, while in Roof’s case he quickly blamed the outside influence of the Confederate flag. To Obama, Mateen was a mental case, but Roof was a white racist murderer. What Roof did was not something that he would have gotten from Southern history. With some exceptions, whites did not kill their black slaves, who were valuable property. Most whites then would have respected a church and would not have committed a heinous crime in a church. Whites, especially well-off slave owners prided themselves on being gentlemen, who would have adhered to strict moral code in all of their dealings. So, Roof’s specific act was not in any way prefigured by the normal conduct of the antebellum South. Yet, the black community spurred many in government to tar the whole white race, antebellum and current, with approving of Roof’s conduct

Obama is a racist, but so were Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and many other Presidents. But now the racism is spread among many races, not just whties. Blacks hate whites. Hispanics dislike whites, but probably not to the extent the blacks do. Asians and Jews see themselves as superior to all the other races in America. Blacks feel no particular loyalty to a government that brought them here as slaves. Hispanics came here for money or to escape murder in their home countries; they have no particular loyalty to the form of government established by the “founding fathers,” who have fallen into general disrepute today.

In the last generation or two, there has been a huge influx of immigrants, and blacks have gained much more political power. The result is that America today looks very different from the way it looked after World War II, which was probably the peak of its greatness. It’s downhill from here. Fortunately, we are starting from a strong position from which to decline. And I may be wrong. All the pro-immigration people say immigrants make a country better and stronger. I think that depends on the immigrants. Maybe not. Maybe America has some magic way of turning immigrant lead into gold, but transmutation didn’t work in the Middle Ages, and I doubt it will work today.

Mitch Daniels Is Not the Answer

2016-06-17T09:41:00.003-06:00

George Will has a new Republican candidate for President, Mitch Daniels, whom he touts in his Washington Post column. He’s a little late. Bill Kristol’s candidate, David French, isn’t going to be President either. Nobody likes Trump, and almost nobody, except the black community, likes Hillary. The black community sees Hillary as the third black President, after Bill and Barak, and supports her almost unanimously. Hillary’s appeal to “minority” blacks, Hispanics, and women leaves pretty much only white men as possible supporters for her opponent, Trump. Enter Mitch Daniels.

Will’s candidate, Daniels, is a traditional Republican, who favors hard work, etc. Will does not address what is one of the most pressing current problems, income inequality. Will is rich and likes it; his column drips contempt for anybody who is not as rich as he and Daniels are. If you are not rich, you are trash to them.

Trump has more empathy for the common man than George Will or Mitch Daniels do. Mitt Romney was unapologetically rich. He shared Will’s contempt for people who are not rich, expressed in his infamous talk rich donors. Will can’t understand why Romney wasn’t elected four years ago. So, now he will push Mitch Daniels. Can he win if he campaigns as an elitist who hates the middle class? I don’t think so. He and Will make Trump look like a political genius.

Hillary's AIPAC Speech

2016-03-22T01:00:00.002-06:00

Hillary’s militaristic, fawning speech to AIPAC demonstrates that she has joined Sammy Davis, Junior, as one of those rare people, a black Jew. As she bids to become the third black President, after Bill and Barak, she now adds her credentials as a Jew who will defend Israel at any cost to the United States. She believes Israel’s survival is more important that America’s. This is a major break from Obama’s foreign policy, which tried to deal with Israel on equal terms, only to be lectured publicly by Netanyahu that Israel must be America’s highest priority. Hillary’s view of Israel is shared by most of the Republican party, which invited Netanyahu to address the US Congress to rebuke Obama’s attempt to block Iran’s nuclear program. The Republicans and the Jews are both consumed with a desire to shed Arab blood, particularly Iranian blood. They were very disappointed that Obama would not approve a joint US-Israeli military strike on Iran. Hillary shares their bloodlust. She is the matron of death.

Obama properly believes that America’s future lies in its relations with Asia, but for Jews the important region is the Middle East because of Israel. Hillary’s policies are dictated by the rich Jews of Wall Street. Ironically, Bill Clinton ended his term by pardoning a rich Wall Street Jew, Marc Rich. The Clintons have been paid back handsomely by the Jewish community through the Clinton Global Initiative for what they did during Bill’s term, and for what Hillary will do during hers, if she is given a chance. Hillary will use her Wall Street Jew money to buy black votes. Bernie Sanders’ voters seem to indicate that Hillary does not have the Hispanic vote tied up like she does the African-American vote.

While I have deep worries that Hillary would be willing to subjugate America’s interests to Israel’s for money, there are things I don’t understand. In a recent New York Times, there was a full page ad attacking Hillary for her reliance on Sidney Blumenthal as an adviser. It said “Hillary Clinton must disavow her anti-Israel advisors,” but Sidney Blumenthal is Jewish. According to Mondoweiss, this is because Sidney’s son Max has written a book called Goliath, which is very critical of “Israel’s militant rightwing political culture.” Mondoweiss says the ad was paid for by Shmuley Boteach, who was probably funded by Sheldon Adelson. Mondoweiss, which is critical of the Times coverage of Israeli issues, implies that the Times treatment of this ad and the Goliath book, may raise questions of editorial integrity. Sidney Blumenthal’s name has come up repeatedly in the much discussed Clinton emails; he was certainly a close advisor, whether pro- or anti-Israel.

Hillary’s obsequious speech to AIPAC and her reception by the AIPAC crowd certainly showed no anti-Israel bias that I could discern. I am willing to defend Israel, but I want to know how far America should go in defending Israel. Show America be willing to destroy itself in order to defend Israel, e.g., by risking a nuclear attack from one of Israel’s enemies? Already we give Israel billions of dollars in “aid,” and give or sell it the most advanced military weapons and equipment that we will give to no other country outside of NATO. Must we do more?

Hillary mentioned the Arrow missile, which was a problem for me when I was at the State Department. The Arrow is an anti-missile missile. It is much more sophisticated that the much vaunted Iron Dome. The Iron Dome is remarkable in being able to shoot down tactical, relatively short-range missiles, but it cannot stop large, long-range, strategic or intermediate-range missiles which fly at much faster speeds. The intent of the Arrow is to shoot down those larger, harder-to-stop missiles, but back then there was always a question whether it violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. There was always a lot of hemming and hawing, legal nit-picking to justify America’s role in the Arrow program. Since Israel was not a party to the ABM treaty, there was no problem for Israel. After I left, George W. Bush solved this problem by abrogating the ABM treaty, so that we were no longer a party either. Thus, there is now no legal question whether we can cooperate with Israel on the Arrow missile, and Hillary loves it.

Hillary, the Rich and the Poor - Part 2

2016-03-21T00:56:00.002-06:00

On Sunday Fareed Zakaria discussed the book Listen, Liberalwith its author, Thomas Frank. It sounds like its thesis is that the Democratic party has ignored the middle class for at least a generation. This follows my earlier post about Hillary, the Rich, and the Poor. A description of Frank’s book says:

Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming.

Basically, Bill and Hillary offer food stamps to the poor while they pour much greater tax benefits to the rich. The Fiscal Times says the Food Stamp program (SNAP) costs about $74 billion per year. Reuters says the Congressional Budget Office estimates that tax breaks will cost about $12 billion over ten years, or a little over $1 trillion per year, greatly dwarfing the cost of food stamps. The article adds that the top 20% of income earners will recive more than half of these tax benefits, i.e., about $500 billion per year.

Bill, Hillary, and their Democratic colleagues basically buy the votes of poor blacks, by offering welfare programs like food stamps, while their big giveaways are really to the wealthy, who give them the campaign funds to keep them in office and keep the scam going.

As I and Thomas Frank noted, the Clintons and the Democrats skip over the middle class, which they take for granted. It’s possible that both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are making public the Clinton’s contempt for the middle class, and the middle class is unhappy about it. The Republicans have played half the game as well, aiding the rich, but shortchanging both the poor and the middle class.

Hillary, the Rich, and the Poor

2016-03-18T12:16:00.003-06:00

The New York Times reported that Hillary Clinton is not liked by white men. The reason may be that she does not like white men, maybe including Bill, and white men recognize that. Hillary is appealing primarily to the rich and the poor, taking for granted the people in the middle. She is seeking big money from Wall Street financiers, West Coast techies, and Hollywood celebrities. She uses those big bucks to buy votes from poor blacks, mainly in the South, but also in northern industrial states. Poor blacks do seem more susceptible to typical political tactics that often persuade people to vote against their own financial or social interests for some unrelated promise. Poor, white social conservatives have been victims of this tactic for years, supporting Republicans who destroy their jobs and their livelihoods, because they oppose abortion and support guns.

Bernie Sanders has called her bluff to a certain extent by highlighting her close connections to Wall Street and her support for trade agreements that have destroyed American jobs. It’s significant that Bernie has had trouble getting votes from the black population, when they would be some of the main beneficiaries of his proposals. It shows the power of Hillary’s appeal to blacks, financed my her wealthy backers. Bill Clinton was often called the first black President, essentially making Obama the second black President, while Hillary is now running to fill Obama’s shoes and be the third black President.

The New York Times story indicates that many white men see that Hillary is ignoring them and has no plan to help them. She appeals to women by calling on them to vote to make her the first female President, perhaps offsetting any perception by middle class white women that she is ignoring them. She appeals not to their financial or social positions, but simply to the fact that they are female. It works, but she has no similar appeal to while men, who recognize that a Hillary presidency would not be good for them.

KKK for Trump

2016-03-01T16:33:00.000-07:00

I don't see what the problem is with the KKK's endorsement of Trump. Trump did not endorse the KKK. It seems to me that saying that the KKK cannot endorse Trump is an abridgement of free speech. It's just political correctness and race hatred run amok. It's politically correct to hate white people, as the Chris Rock and the TV commentators illustrated at the Oscars.

Bernie Sanders Versus the Jews Who Run Wall Street

2016-01-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

Bernie Sanders’ America ad is great. I have no doubt about Bernie’s loyalty to America, unlike some Jews, who I think may be more loyal to Israel than to America. One person I suspect of this is Senator Chuck Schumer of New York; another is Mayor Raum Emanuel, who served in the Israeli military, rather than the American military. They may be okay, but many Jews, and others, including most Christian evangelical politicians, seem to view Israel more as a 51^st state rather than a foreign country. Although Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was orchestrated by the Israeli embassy, the main proponents in Congress were Christian Republicans, led by Speaker John Boehner.

Just a thought… Did John Boehner do a favor for rich Jews by leading the campaign for Netanyahu’s speech to earn a good post-politics job, just as Clinton did a favor for rich Jews by pardoning Mark Rich as one of the last acts of his administration? They both wanted to make sure that there would be some rich, well connected Jews waiting to take care of them when they left office. The Clintons went the extra mile when they encouraged Chelsea to marry a Jew, assuring that their grandchildren (like Donald Trump’s) would be Jewish. Bill Clinton’s main contribution to Jewish interests was probably the elimination of the Glass-Steagall controls on banking at the urging of his Jewish Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, which inspired the huge financial speculation by big New York banks that led to the 2008 Great Recession.

I don’t see any of this divided loyalty between Israel and the US in Bernie Sanders. He is American; he can’t help it that his parents were Jewish. But his candidacy means that Jews increasingly dominate American life, not just in politics, but in business, media, art, and many other areas. Hanukah increasingly shares the Christmas holiday, even as Christmas becomes less religious and more commercial. Bagels have become standard breakfast fare. So, you find Bernie leading the inequality fight against the super wealthy, a disproportionate number of whom are Jewish. Jews lead both sides of the inequality fight.

Of course, Bernie’s alter ego on the inequality issue is Elizabeth Warren, not a Jew. I would like to know more about why President Obama refused to name her to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I think Obama did it under pressure to please Jamie Dimon (a gentile) and many of the leading Jews on Wall Street, who opposed her strenuously. Their opposition to her is a virtual admission that a big share of banking profits comes from cheating ordinary citizens out of their money. Warren’s election as Senator was a clear rebuke to Obama’s cowardice and corruption vis-à-vis the bankers. I wish that Warren were not so quiet now, but I guess maybe she just wanted to do good for ordinary people. She really just wanted to head of the bureau she created, and she only became Senator because she was denied that. Maybe she sees her job as being a good Senator for the people of her state, unlike Cruz and Rubio.

I don’t know whether it’s better to have a Jewish Bernie Sanders running against the New York Jewish banking interests, or a gentile Elizabeth Warren, which might appear to be partly an ethnic conflict. In any case, I’m glad Bernie is there, and that he doesn’t appear to be concerned about his Jewish ancestry, which he does not run from. He basically says, “I’m Jewish, but so what?” We need more politicians like him and fewer Jewish (and Christian) politicians who want America to kill Muslims for Israel, as we have done in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in other countries. The invitation to Netanyahu to speak to Congress was basically the Republicans saying they would be happy to bomb Iran, as Senator McCain sang in his variation of the old Beach Boys song, “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.”

Trump or Who?

2016-01-21T23:10:00.001-07:00

It's true that Donald Trump is sort of a bully, but at least he is my kind of bully. He's a white Christian of western European background. When he read from the Bible at Liberty University, despite saying "two Corinthians," he appeared to quote from the King James Version of the Bible, rather than some newfangled version.

Trump probably has mixed feelings about immigration, just as most people do. He and I are willing to give immigrants a break, as long as they have the potential to contribute to the country and not to threaten it. We're willing to help someone down on his luck, or who is being threatened by some joint enemy, but we are not willing to risk the survival of out country to do so. This includes the assumption that at some point the immigrants will benefit the country productively and not just be an economic drain on it. There is a concern that we would take a great, prosperous country and turn it over to immigrants who just want to collect the freebies, without contributing to its future.

I tend to see the whole Muslim immigrant issue as political correctness. If we shouldn't automatically exclude Muslims, also we shouldn't automatically include them just because they are Muslims. If there is aquestion about whether they will benefit the US, that is a legitimate question that deserves an answer. The only test should not be whether they need to get out of Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan, which we have sacrificed thousands of lives and billions of dollars to make safer, more livable places.

Ideally, we would have a good leader to be the next President. If it is not Donald Trump, who is it? We seem to have a group of midgets, except for Trump, Clinton, and Sanders running for Presdent. We have no other outstanding political leaders as governors or other national political figures. Al Gore would be a possibility, but he has been off the national stage too long. Bernie Sanders is a good man, but he seems more like a gadfly than a national leader. He doesn't have the charisma that we would like a President to have. He is very strong on domestic issues, but not so much on international and security ones. Joe Biden is better on international issues than Sanders, and he is a much more honest and decent person than Hillary Clinton, but he has taken himself out of the race.

I worry that Trump's main appeal is his celebrity. The US has become obsessed with celebrity, particularly with the rise of social media. Celebrity comes with unfavorable publicity as will as with good, e.g. Bill Cosby. There are not business or military leaders who have the aura to make them Presidential material. The military profession has fallen into disrepute since the Vietnam War draft. And business has become more and more corrupt as corporations and banks have become larger and larger with less restraint on the morals of their leaders. American business is largely led by blackguards, as illustrated by the subprime mortgage crisis. If we got someone from the business community they would probably turn out like a Warren Harding, and if we got a military man, he would probably turn out like a Ulysses Grant. So, Trump does not have a lot of competition.

Charleston Shooting and the Confederate Flag

2016-01-18T11:27:00.002-07:00

Virtually all of the news pundits have linked the shooting of nine blacks by a young white man at the AME church in Charleston to the Confederate flag, while the same pundits have tried to delink killings by Muslims to any Muslim organization, saying Muslim killings are about the individual people, not the organization. I argue that the same is true, perhaps more so, of the Charleston killings. The perpetrator, Dylann Roof, appears to have had mental problems, like many of the people who have committed such mass shootings. I think the main culprit was the mental problem, not the Confederate flag. He apparently was more obsessed with Rhodesia than with the Confederacy; so, why did the Confederate flag become the scapegoat? It’s just political correctness, part of Nikki Haley’s campaign for Vice President.

The real problem is giving guns to mentally ill people like Dylann Roof. Nobody is doing anything about that because of their fear of the NRA. It’s easier to attack the Confederate flag than the real culprit, guns in the hands of dangerous people.

Cuban Refugees

2016-01-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to vote for a Cuban refugee for President. The President should be a real American, not someone whose world vision is shaped by a hatred of Fidel Castro. . So, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are off of my list of potential Presidents.

Atticus Finch, Big Jim Folsom and Malcolm Gladwell

2016-01-09T13:35:00.001-07:00

In connection with the release of the Harper Lee sequel to “ To Kill a Mockingbird,” Malcolm Gladwell tweeted about a New Yorker article, “The Courthouse Ring,” that he had written years ago which compared Atticus Finch to Alabama Governor Big Jim Folsom. I thought this was interesting because I vaguely remember Big Jim Folsom being governor, probably during his second term from 1955 to 1959. The main impression I have of him, no doubt from my parents, was that he was corrupt, a guy who promised anything to anybody.

Gladwell’s criticism of Folsom and Finch is that they favored fairness and equality for blacks, but on a separate but equal basis, rather than abolishing any separation between the races. Gladwell’s position seems to be that instead of planning to appeal the conviction of his client, Tom Robinson, Atticus Finch should have raged against the judge and jury for being racists, although it’s not clear how that would have freed Tom.

There is something to be said for working honestly within the law. When Tom is lynched, it’s because the law was violated. Atticus tried to encourage obedience to the law, rather than rebelling against it, unlike the lynch mob. Big Jim Folsom probably did little to improve race relations in Alabama, but perhaps he helped some. His problem was that he was corrupt and thus did little to gain respect for other aspects of his governorship, like improving race relations. People just wrote it off as some cheap political trick to get votes. Atticus was an entirely different kind of man, a man of honorable character who was respected by the community.

A lot has been made of the fact that Harper Lee’s father was less of a reformer of race relations than people thought before the new book came out. But I think Atticus should be judged in the fictional world created by Harper Lee, not by some real world person on whom he may or may not have been modelled. As a half-black man, Malcolm Gladwell is obviously carrying a lot of hatred and resentment against white Americans. That’s understandable, but it doesn’t mean that American policies on race should be driven by hatred and rate. Atticus’ quiet decency is a better model.

Chicago Is the Most Segregated City

2015-12-23T11:46:00.003-07:00

Who would have thought that Chicago is the most segregated city in the US? Blacks moved North to get away from segregation in the South. Apparently going to Chicago did not help much. Neither did going to Detroit, which more or less ceased to be a major American city after the black migration there. It degenerated into a giant, poverty-stricken slum. Whites in Chicago may be afraid that they will follow Detroit down the drain.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2015/12/21-chicago-race-inequality-reeves

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/end-segregated-century-racial-separation-americas-neighborhoods-1890-2010-5848.html

Why Is Trump Trying to Speak Yiddish?

2015-12-22T13:03:00.002-07:00

Trump’s controversial use of the word “schlonged” in referring to Hillary’s 2008 campaign has been all over the news. For me it raised the question of what is Trump’s connection to the Jewish community, since schlonged is apparently a corruption of the Yiddish word schlong. What is Trump doing speaking Yiddish, even if he has the word wrong?

I worry about Trump’s Jewish connections because the general image of Jews is as heartless, greedy, misers, often in the real estate business like Trump. They appear to have no compunction about putting tenants who are behind in their rent out in the snow to freeze. In their view, if the stupid, gullible Christians want to help them, so be it, but the Jews can watch them freeze to death and be content that they have complied with the law. That’s probably one reason why Trump has done real estate business with Jews like the Kushners, so that they can do his dirty work.

Of course Jews give lots of money to charities, but usually to Jewish charities, and usually not so much that it hurts their bottom line. It is often to places like universities or hospitals that will put the donor’s name on a very public building to enhance his reputation.

Interestingly, both Donald Trump’s daughter and Hillary Clinton’s daughter married Jews. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, has converted to Judaism, so that Donald’s grandchildren are definitely Jewish. As far as I know, Chelsey Clinton has not converted to Judaism, so that it is less clear if Hillary’s granddaughter is Jewish, since Jews usually make the status of the mother, not the father, the deciding factor for the ethnicity of the child. In any case, I would guess that both grandchildren have the right to be issued Israeli passports if they want them.

Also interestingly, the fathers-in-law of both Ivanka and Chelsey are convicted felons for various types of financial crimes. Ivanka’s father-in-law, the real estate mogul Charles Kushner, was convicted of tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering. Chelsey’s father-in-law, politician Edward Mezvinsky, pled guilty to 31 felony charges of bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud amounting to about $10 million.

The characteristics of greediness and heartlessness often attributed to Jews are not solely theirs. Charles Dickens’ Scrooge is presumably not Jewish, but has many of the same characteristics, which are highlighted by the story “A Christmas Carol” at this time of the year. Nor does Mr. Potter, the mean banker in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” appear to be Jewish, although he has many of the same traits.

So, maybe the problem is that Jews seem attracted to the real estate and banking professions, two that are often associated in popular mythology with cruel, heartless, greedy people, no matter what their ethnicity or religion. Of course, Trump is also a real estate mogul, whose schoolyard bullying tactics in the Republican debates may illustrate that he has some of these same traits, despite being a Presbyterian. I just didn’t start thinking about it until he started trying to speak Yiddish.

Freedom Caucus Members

2015-10-23T12:57:00.002-06:00

Here is a list of the Freedom Caucus members from Pew Research. I’m guessing that most of these Congressional districts were gerrymandered to guarantee the election of a Republican, so that they have no concern abut being defeated by a Democrat. They just have to out-Republican any primary candidate against them. The people who live in these districts apparently believe that America is a doomed, failed nation that should commit suicide. Most of them are probably good, ole white boys who long for the 1950s. I do too, but it’s not coming back. We need to see what we can make of what we’ve got now. If the US goes down, where are they going to move? Australia? England? China? Sweden? Poland? Russia? There are not a lot of countries out there today that are going to feel like 1950s America.

House Freedom Caucus Members

All members are Republicans

Member	District	House terms served	Ideological score
Amash, Justin	MI-3	3	0.712
Blum, Rod	IA-1	1	0.532
Brat, David	VA-7	2	0.753
Bridenstine, Jim	OK-1	2	0.752
Brooks, Mo	AL-5	3	0.587
Buck, Ken	CO-4	1	0.693
Clawson, Curt	FL-19	2	0.669
Desantis, Ron	FL-6	2	0.676
DesJarlais, Scott	TN-4	3	0.568
Duncan, Jeff	SC-3	3	0.767
Fleming, John	LA-4	4	0.573
Franks, Trent	AZ-8	7	0.751
Garrett, Scott	NJ-5	7	0.690
Gosar, Paul	AZ-4	3	0.573
Griffith, Morgan	VA-9	3	0.514
Harris, Andy	MD-1	3	0.578
Hice, Jody	GA-10	1	0.700
Huelskamp, Tim	KS-1	3	0.756
Jordan, Jim (chairman)	OH-4	5	0.692
Labrador, Raúl	ID-1	3	0.734
Loudermilk, Barry	GA-11	1	0.729
Lummis, Cynthia	WY-At large	4	0.670
Meadows, Mark	NC-11	2	0.625
Mooney, Alex	WV-2	1	0.573
Mulvaney, Mick	SC-5	3	0.764
Palmer, Gary	AL-6	1	0.727
Pearce, Stevan	NM-2	6	0.467
Perry, Scott	PA-4	2	0.623
Posey, Bill	FL-8	4	0.490
Rothfus, Keith	PA-12	2	0.474
Salmon, Matthew	AZ-5	5	0.698
Sanford, Mark	SC-1	5	0.704
Schweikert, David	AZ-6	3	0.653
Stutzman, Marlin	IN-3	4	0.744
Weber, Randy	TX-14	2	0.797
Yoho, Ted	FL-3	2	0.720
MEDIAN		3	0.691

"Gone with the Wind" on TCM

2015-08-21T15:42:00.004-06:00

Turner Classic Movies recently showed “Gone with the Wind” and a documentary about the making of the movie. The documentary brings out how obsessed the whole United States was with the book and the movie, not just the South. Part of its appeal is the love story, but part of it is the portrayal of the Old South. The Southerners were portrayed as fighting for their homes and their way of life, not to preserve slavery, although slavery was an important element to their way of life. Of course, relatively few Southerners lived on plantations, but those who did represented a gracious, polite, beautiful lifestyle that almost everyone admired. In the movie, the black slaves and the white masters were not enemies. This was probably truer for the slaves who worked in the household than those who worked in the fields, but it is probably a more accurate portrayal than the hatred that many people today claim existed. After the war, the slaves had been freed, but many stuck with their families. Many of those who did not were taken advantage of by carpetbaggers who came down from the North and used the freed slaves for their own personal gain, politically and financially.

The hatred that blacks are showing today for Southerners is not a result of the old slavery days; it is part of a new struggle for political and financial power. No one alive today was ever a slave. Most blacks are six or seven generations removed from any ancestor who may have been a slave. Segregation may have delayed and hindered their rise, but it was not slavery. They were free to move to the North, the West, or to rebel against segregation in the South. Legal segregation has now been gone for several generations. Slavery and segregation are not the reason for any failure of blacks to become equal to all other races in America today. This is illustrated by the fact that many blacks are equal to the members of any other race today. Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey are examples of blacks who rose from poverty to be successful leaders of the nation. Barak Obama is a special case whose upbringing was not typical of most blacks in America.

The Confederate flag appears in “Gone with the Wind,” and it was not characterized as a symbol of racial hatred. It was part of a war. Courage in battle used to be respected for itself; today almost nobody in the US has any firsthand experience with combat. Only about one percent serves in the military, most of those from lower classes who serve mainly because they need the money. Of those who serve, the Navy and Air Force don’t see real combat; their lives are seldom at risk. So, that cuts down the percentage of Americans familiar with combat. Mainly Marines and Army infantry shoulder the load of combat with the enemy, along with the small group of members of the Special Forces from all branches. So, the people who disparage the Confederate flag and the veterans it symbolizes have no idea what it is like to fight for their country, and probably would not fight for it. As a Vietnam veteran, my views are colored by my coming home to widespread contempt for all veterans as baby-killing war criminals. Today there is publicly much more sympathy for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, but I think a lot of it is political correctness, words of praise, but inward contempt or indifference for people that they think could not succeed in the civilian economy. Contempt for the Confederate flag is just a part of a more generalized contempt for the military. Otherwise, why don’t graduates of Ivy League schools join the military in large numbers? Where are the elites who want to make American safer and stronger? There aren’t any.

But there were some in 1860, both in the North and the South. “Gone with the Wind” celebrates their patriotism, and I am glad that it does, because it is a trait that is dying out in America.

Ban Gang Symbols along with the Confederate Flag

2015-07-30T13:48:00.002-06:00

If America wants to ban the public display of the Confederate flag, it should also ban the display of gang symbols. Many more people die because of gang violence than because of violence related to the Confederate flag. It is unlikely that Dylann Roof was motivated to kill the nine people in the Charleston church by the Confederate flag. If the Confederate flag did not exist, it is likely that he would have done the same thing because of other factors, mainly racial prejudice, mental problems, and easy access to a gun. The main reason these people died is because the United States and South Carolina failed to control the access to guns by people with homicidal tendencies. Take away the Confederate flag, these people would still have been killed. Take away the gun, and they would still be alive.

In America today political correctness is becoming more important than free speech. If America is going to limit the free speech of Southern Americans by banning the display of the Confederate flag, then it should also ban the display of gang symbols. More people were killed in one weekend in Chicago than were killed in the Charleston church, probably all related to gang violence. Gang members shoot to kill members of rival gangs. People with Confederate flags don't shoot people with American flags, although they did during the Civil War. People re-enact the Civil War, but they don't kill each other. Gang members do. It is sad that the black and Hispanic communities just accept black on black violence and Hispanic on Hispanic violence. There is no excuse for a white policeman to shoot an unarmed black man, but one reason it happens is that the white policemen are scared. They see the killing that takes place among the gangs, and they don't want to get shot. Both communities need to work together to establish greater trust and security. One of the main beneficiaries would be the black community itself.

One way to begin to establish trust and security would be to eliminate the signs of gang territory, if the police can't eliminate the gangs themselves. If they are going to limit Confederate flags, they should limit gang symbols as well.

What about Atticus?

2015-07-12T01:15:00.003-06:00

I find it hard to get sucked up into all the handwringing about Harper Lee’s new book, “Go Tell a Watchman,” like that in the article about the book in the Wall Street Journal. First, it’s not clear that Harper Lee would have published the book if she were healthy and of sound mind. It seems likely that some of those close to her are using this old draft novel to make some money. That may not be bad if Harper Lee needs some money for her care in her present condition. But it that is the case, there is no basis for comparing this book to her earlier book, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which she published in her prime.

Secondly, I don’t think that the fact that Atticus may have had some segregationist leanings makes him a bad man. He was a child of his times. In “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Atticus defends a black man being prosecuted by the white establishment not because he is black, but because he is innocent. I’m not sure the book says that he wanted to marry a black woman or take on a black law partner. I’m not sure he was the white Martin Luther King that the WSJ article makes him out to be.

I haven’t read the book, so if it says that Atticus participated in a lynching or joined the Ku Klux Klan, then maybe I have to revise my opinion. But if he is a decent man who wants equal justice for all before the law, even though there is still some social discrimination in the South, then I don’t think that means he is so different from the Atticus in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” If those WSJ writers believe that America today is a perfect racial paradise where Atticus appears as a racist bigot, then they haven’t been reading their own newspaper this summer.

Confederates in National Cemeteries

2015-07-10T13:07:00.003-06:00

I was surprised by the debate in Congress over whether Confederate flags could be placed on graves in national cemeteries, as reported in the New York Times. I didn’t think Confederates would be buried in national cemeteries, almost by definition, but it turns out that they are. There is even a Confederate section in Arlington Cemetery, which ironically used to be Robert E. Lee’s home, but was turned into a cemetery by the Union so that Lee could never go home to Arlington. The Arlington Cemetery history of the section says that there were few or no Confederates in the cemetery until about 50 years after the war, when tempers had cooled and reconciliation was taking place. It is sad that 100 years later, tempers are flaring again, and old hatreds are being stirred up. The people stirring up these hatreds have even less idea what slavery was like than their grandfathers who were reconciling 100 years ago. I suppose the blacks would argue that they were not part of the reconciliation 100 years ago, and can only get their revenge today when they have more political power.

That position highlights the fact that black slaves did not free themselves. They were freed by Northern white men. It’s interesting that in hundreds of years of slavery in the South, including plantations with hundreds of slaves, there doesn’t seem to have been a serious slave uprising or revolt. Certainly there were small ones, and there were many slaves who escaped to the North, but the slaves did not rise up and defeat their masters. This is sort of the reverse side of the argument that the Civil War was all about slavery. It was about slavery, but it was also about politics. The South was an agrarian economy based heavily on slavery; the North was an industrializing economy, in many cases based on immigrant labor. In many cases the immigrants were treated little better than slaves, although there were clear legal and moral differences between economic oppression, which still exists today, and slavery. Nevertheless, these differences affected laws across the board. How do you regulate or tax land versus labor? In foreign trade, which is more important, cotton or iron? As the US expanded westward, it was clear that if slavery did not expand, the industrial Congressional delegations would soon control the Congress, to the detriment of everything that benefited the South. Therefore, the South felt that there had to be new slave states, if only to protect the political interests of the old slave states. It was this impasse that led to the Civil War. It was not started to free the slaves; it was started because the South believed that the only way it could protect its economic and political interests was to form its own country before it fell totally under the control of the North in the US Congress. It was only after we were deep into the war, which turned out to be much bloodier and more costly than most people had expected, that Lincoln decided to free the slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation, issued in 1863, well after the war started in 1861. In any case, the slaves were freed almost entirely due to the efforts of white people, not due to the slaves themselves. Even after the war, there does not seem to have been a significant uprising by the former slaves against their masters. To hear the black community today, you would think that all of the former slaves should have slit the throats of their former masters as soon as the South surrendered to the North. By and large that did not happen, which is to a large extent a tribute to the decency of the former slaves, but also to some extent due to the fact that there were personal bonds between master and slave which meant that not all of the slaves hated their masters. Of course there were attacks on whites, and there was also a white response, which led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, among other ways of protecting white interests. In any case, race warfare did not break out in the South after the war, despite its defeat by the North. Reconstruction was supposed to give blacks political power, but by and large that was a failure. It took about 100 years for the black community to really rise in rebellion and gain political power in the 1960s.

One of the most striking images from the recent discussions about the Confederate flag in South Carolina was this one from the New York Times, which shows a black South Carolina legislator in a suit and tie, meeting with two good-old white boys in blue jeans carrying Confederate flags. Who has the power in this image? Who represents the future?

On the cemetery issue, I first learned that there had been a reconciliation for Confederate soldiers when the United Daughters of the Confederacy asked if they could put a tombstone provided by the federal government on my great-grandfather’s grave. My great-grandfather’s grave is in a local cemetery just a few blocks from where I grew up. The plot never had any headstones, although there are about ten people buried there. I don’t know why. My grandfather knew this, and it did not seem to bother him. Perhaps my great-grandfather had some personal object to tombstones. In any case, at this late date, I agreed to allow the UDC to place the marker, which apparently cost them nothing since it was provided by the government. In this local cemetery, Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile, Alabama, there is a Confederate cemetery that is not a US national cemetery. I always heard that my great-grandfather won a prize for suggesting the inscription on the monument in the Confederate section, “The Confederate dead.”

In any case, it seems to me that descendants of Confederate veterans should be able to put Confederate flags on the graves of their ancestors if they want to, wherever they are buried, in private cemeteries, or in national cemeteries. If there are no Confederates in a cemetery, I see no reason to have some law allowing the flag. In fact I see no reason for a law of any kind on the subject. People should be free to respect their ancestors however they want to. It would not be appropriate to put Confederate flags on the graves of Union soldiers, or on the graves of black people, but it seems like common decency is enough to prevent that, and the cemeteries could control that like they do other things like defacing graves, or leaving improper memorials.