Michael Gerson on the West Point speech: “After a sober, coherent beginning, the speech became defensive and overly self-referential. Large portions of his remarks concerned his own personal views and struggles, designed to prove he did not take the decision ‘lightly.’ … Great war speeches involve policy, words and tone. On Tuesday night, the president’s policy was strong. His words sent conflicting messages of resolve and reluctance. His tone was uninspired and uninspiring. But we can hope that good policy is good enough.”
Jon Stewart goes to town on Climategate: “Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions: “The attorney general himself admitted during his testimony that military commissions — part of settled law for hundreds of years — are a perfectly proper way to try war criminals. In fact, as KSM and his cohorts are sent to New York, the administration is sending five other terrorists before military tribunals. So let’s be clear: The KSM decision was not compelled by our Constitution. Nor was it a strategic decision designed to increase the government’s chances of success at trial.”
Once again, “No!”: “Iran said Wednesday it will enrich uranium to a higher level on its own, the latest indication the country was rejecting a U.N.-backed proposal aimed at thwarting any effort by Tehran to make material for a nuclear weapon. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted Iran will not negotiate with the West over its nuclear program.”
Some doctors’ groups are catching on: “The state’s largest doctors group is opposing healthcare legislation being debated in the Senate this week, saying it would increase local healthcare costs and restrict access to care for elderly and low-income patients. The California Medical Assn. represents more than 35,000 physicians statewide, making it the second-largest state medical association in the country after Texas. … They join a handful of other state medical associations that have opposed the bill in recent weeks, including Florida, Georgia and Texas.”
Not even Democratic governors will back this monstrosity: “Republican governors are not alone in being concerned about what the proposed health care legislation might mean for their already overstrained budgets: Democrats share the same worries. ‘We’ve got concerns,’ Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware said in an interview Wednesday, hours before getting elected as the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. ‘And we’re doing our best to communicate them. We understand the need to get something done, and we’re supportive of getting something done. But we want to make sure it’s done in a way that state budgets are not negatively impacted.’”
But they’ve worked so hard this year: “The House will work a total of 17 days during January and February of next year, according to the 2010 legislative calendar released Wednesday by the Majority Leader’s office. Finishing what many veteran Capitol Hill aides described as the busiest legislative year they can remember, the House now appears to be setting itself up for a significant downshift in 2010.”
New math: “We’re spending $450 billion on subsidies to drive up insurance premiums in the individual insurance market by 10–13% (according to the CBO), and this is defined as ‘success.’ Remember when health-care reform was about lowering costs?”
capitalism
I’m all for freedom of the press and will leave books like the one mentioned to the marketplace to sink or swim. That said, a press release written by the company’s public relations manager that enthusiatically uses terms like “organized jewry” and “Zionist machinations”? That the company is publishing and promoting the book is one thing. The way they are promoting it is quite another. Should a press release from a respectable publisher sound like The International Jew?
Is any pro-Israel material also being offered by this subsidiary? If so, is there a similarly gushing email press release? If not, why not?
Is “Satanic Verses” available? Does the write up portray Muhammed the same way Salman Rushdie allegedly did? Something tells me no.
Is this the same Mark Green that was the Democratic Candidate for Mayor of New York a few years ago, and an associate of Ralph Nader??? Hope not.
Is this the Mark Green who now heads Air America Radio and who ran for mayor of NY?
WHICH “organized Jewry?”
The “red diaper” secular Jews who finance and run the far left wing of the Democratic Party? (According to the Forward more than 30% of the Dem superdelegates are Jews; according to Joe Biden more than 50% of Dem funds come from Jews) and dominate American media.
Or the Jews who support the State of Israel?
I can tell you who I think are the most dangerous and newsworthy and LEAST covered by the press.
This is another logical conclusion of the collapse of the western educational system and the commercialization of every endeavor that used to be based on expertise and quality control.
It is part and parcel of western cultural decay and decadence.
Rabid anti-semitism and anti-zionism are coming out of the woodwork in the US. That’s the scapegoating that usually emerges when societies are in crisis, as the west and particularly the US is now. Americans are not used to such decline and they thrash out at the traditional scapegoat, as was routinely done in history. The notion that the US is unique and escapes the normal social forces proves to be an illusion.
oao
http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/
Wow
Ian is exactly right. It’s one thing to offer this but it is certainly another to sing it’s praises.
Here’s the key line:
“This riveting volume provides a broad and exhilarating inspection of Zionist machinations as well as the entrenched taboos and covert alliances that sustain them.”
Can’t you just see this exact line in a review in some German paper in the early 30′s of Mein Kampf.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so scary.
“Is any pro-Israel material also being offered by this subsidiary? If so, is there a similarly gushing email press release? If not, why not?”
And if so, so what? The opposite of pro-Israel is not anti-semitic. I will agree not to label all criticism of Israel as being anti-semitism, but please do not remain silent when Israel’s mistakes or misdeeds are proffered as an excuse for antiSemtiism.
People of good will can argue where to draw the line, though I like Natan Sharansky’s 3-D test, but I hope we can agree that by any standard, someone crosses the line when When someone starts talking about Zionism “shaping U.S. policies abroad as well as cultural transformations at home”, “entrenched taboos and covert alliances”, “unearth[ing] the unchecked malfeasance within the political wing of organized Jewry” or the “international lobby” and its “political excesses”.
According to Amazon, people who enjoyed this book also enjoyed a book by Kevin McDonald detailing how inherent Jewish traits of aggressiveness, intensity, ethnocentrism and intelligence make Jews a formidable force who have been at the center of every signifant development of the 20th century, including Bolshevism, Nazism, the admission of massive numbers of non-white immigrants to the US, and the destruction of the US’s culture.
Those Amazon people are on to us now.
I thought I was part of the destruction of the US’s culture but wasn’t sure.
And I guess the Jews were at the center of the development of Nazism by the sheer number of Jews murdered by those same Nazis.
Unless we’re even trickier than we thought and we sacrificed 6 million of us to throw the rest of the world off our trail.
I don’t mean to make light of this but its unbelievable. Please leave me in a room alone with Kevin McDonald for just a few minutes. The world would be so much better off.
“I’m all for freedom of the press and will leave books like the one mentioned to the marketplace to sink or swim.”
That’s fine, since you have no choice. But do you really think people will critically read this sort of thing and then dismiss it for the logic-twisted bunk that it is? No, most readers will bob there heads up and down in agreement just like you see at a Rev. Wright sermon. People mostly believe what you tell them; especially when the subject is about a people that they think are different. These types of books are dangerous, but all one can do to counter it is point out the illogic and errors whenever possible and to try and spread truth.
“James Petras, Charlie Reese, Alison Weir, Kevin MacDonald, Gilad Atzmon, Ray McGovern, Joe Sobran ”
with the exception of macdonald, these aren’t fringe characters. Sobran and Reese wrote for national review for decades
Wasn’t Sobran called out by Buckley for anti-semitism?
Jay, in the words of another great Texan “If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s an ethnocentric racist * * * You could hear that honky holler as he hit that hardwood floor . . .
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/k/kinky+friedman/they+aint+makin+jews+like+jesus+anymore_20079424.html
Ian: Joe Sobran was fired by Buckley for anti-semitism. And if you go to Drudge today, you can find Sobran listed among the featured columnists.
Sobran is slightly to the right of Buchanan in his Jew-baiting. He skirts close to the line and has been known to wonder aloud whether “the Jews” ought to look at themselves to answer the question of why there is so much anti-semitism. (Actually, this is also Kevin MacDonald’s position as well.)
It is a question that only an antisemite could pose or answer.
I’ve mentioned this before on this blog, but I’ll repeat it. If anti-semitism pays, Amazon is more than willing to forego morality and cash in.
On its German website, Amazon peddles what it calls a “PLO Pali Tuch”, i.e., a PLO kefiyah. You can see Amazon’s offerings here:
http://www.amazon.de/s/ref=sr_kk_3?ie=UTF8&search-alias=aps&field-keywords=plo%20tuch
When I queried the company about overtly marketing items as the garb of terrorists dedicated to slaughtering Jews, the best Amazon could do was argue that the company does not believe in censorship. Imagine that: if a retailer refuses to stock items representing despicable ideologies (think Nazi armbands, KKK hoods, etc.), it is assaulting free speech. If this nonsense were not enough, I pointed out to Amazon that its very own policies for private sellers who market items on the Amazon website expressly prohibit the sale of items the Company considers indecent.
I stopped purchasing altogether from Amazon and, frankly, I can’t see how anyone with a half a conscience could stomach doing business with these low-lives.
Mike,
People mostly believe what you tell them; especially when the subject is about a people that they think are different.
To appreciate and acquire knowledge, reason and independent, critical thinking people must be educated and trained accordingly. When they are not — as is the case in the west today — what you describe is what you get: gullibility and manipulability. That’s how fascism, left or right, occurs.
hanoch,
If anti-semitism pays, Amazon is more than willing to forego morality and cash in.
Right now it does. And it’s not just amazon. The question is not why amazon sells it, but why has it become profitable to sell it.
Has anybody notified the JDL or the ADL? I am not kidding.
Even the ACLU might take this to court. It regularly takes minor cases that it opposes ideologically in order to promote the fiction that it’s a civil rights organization rather than a seditious communist organization.
ian- the late william f buckley was not in charge of deciding who is and who isn’t anti semetic. if he felt that way, fine. But again, these guys aren’t random commie weirdos they have been writing and been pubilshed for decades. Since before many of the topic starters here were born. Which is to say over 23 years ago.
oao- “Right now it does. And it’s not just amazon. The question is not why amazon sells it, but why has it become profitable to sell it.”
neoconservatism has brought back anti semetism.
rininger- good fascist answer
Lester now weighs in with a comment that Joe Sobran would cheerfully endorse: “neoconservatism has brought back anti semitism.”
Unbundle this bit of wisdom. First, it confirms the antisemitic stereotype that neo-conservatives are all Jews. Otherwise, one might argue that Cheney and Bush should have triggered an anti-Protestant backlash, or the late Jeane Kirkpatrick an anti-Catholic backlash. But no, due to the efforts of his fellow leftists (whose gleanings lester did not originate but more likely, simply absorbed) Jews are Neocons. (Lester’s parents and grandparents likely held analogous views: in the ’50s, Jews were communists, in the ’30s, bankers, and at the turn of the century, they were simply Elders.)
Next, Lester declares (in much the same old whine) that the Jews have only themselves to blame for anti-semitism. This is Sobran’s argument, repeating many times in his column. (If it was African-Americans who were subjected to Lester’s ire, they might respond by saying that this attitude amounts to “blaming the victim.”)
Finally, Lester’s facts are wrong. No one is in charge of defining anti-Semites except anti-Semites–of which I believe Lester belongs to the species, Leftist category. What Buckley did do was to write a book that represents one of the more intelligent accounts written by a non-Jew about the phenomena–if Lester should ever read, he might discover his own face staring back at him.
And it is undisputed that Buckley fired Sobran for the latter’s antisemitic screeds. One has only to read enough of Sobran (which I doubt Lester has done) to realize that he is a Jew-baiter par excellence, albeit one who lacks the courage of his convictions. (Sobran only baits but does go the “Der Sturmer” route for fear that his Drudge standing might be forfeit.
Hey Lester, does that mean that Sobran is being censored by us Elders?
“First, it confirms the antisemitic stereotype that neo-conservatives are all Jews.” It goes even deeper, Richard F.
Only an anti-semite such as Lester would accept the underlying assumption — that all Jews are to be blamed for the blameworthy actions or views of some Jews. Without this underlying assumption, it would not matter that Lester thinks all (or most or many) neo-cons are Jews, or that all or most or many Jews are neocons. It would not matter that he considers the actions and views of the neocons to be blameworthy. The same is true of the various charges that were made before there were Neocons — whether Zionists, communists, rootless cosmopoltians, capitalists, international bankers, international pornographers and drug dealers (as periodically charged by the PA, Libya and others), the developers of AIDS (as charged by the PA and a Chicago “civil rights” activist), Christ Killers, or what have you.
I didn’t say jews were to blame for anti semetism, i said that neoconservatism has brought it back. and it has. is it justified? I don’t know or care.
I could just as easily havee said “the iraq war has brought back anti semetism”.
the point is it’s back.
I don’t speak the language you are in regads to what this or that means or what anti semetism has looked like throughout the ages. I’m saying people blame neoconservatives for the iraq war. in general, don’t you think this is true?
richard- i read one articlee about judaism by Sobran. i thought it was obsessive and stereotyping ironically the same way he the jews he does’t like: frankfurt school, freud, marx, neo cons of being. but his other columns I have read were good anti state conservatism a la Buchanan.
ahad “in the ’50s, Jews were communists, in the ’30s, bankers, and at the turn of the century, they were simply Elders.)”
right. whose point are you trying to make here? were those perceptions not dangerous for jews?
I don’t want jews to be in danger!
Lester- Just to respond, it seems to me that if you are going to cite a writer’s experience at the National Review as proof that they are not on the political fringe, then noting that this writer was ultimately fired by that same magazine for anti-semitism is a pretty compelling counter-argument. If, as has been suggested, this is not conclusive proof of the charge, then you need to cite actual evidence demonstrating the illegitimacy of the accusation. Admitting subsequently that an article you read by Sobran about Judaism was obsessive and stereotypical does not help the cause. There is of course no anti-semitism police in charge of determining who is or isn’t an anti-semite. As with any form of bigotry, that job falls to each of us individually. Yet while this evaluation inevitably is in the eye of the beholder, at what point is the beholder himself subject to doubt in the validity of their assessments? Perhaps when the beholder cannot admit there is ever anything to behold? It is possible that the single hold-out on the jury is a heroic truth-seeker operating within a world of one-eyed men. However experience certainly would suggest (Twelve Angry Men aside) that this single holdout is probably a crackpot. Truth, like sanity, is not statistical, but this is a pretty reliable indicator nonetheless.
it is really sad to see reasonable man get involved with an infantile troll.
please don’t feed him.
oao- is pat buchanan a troll? He outsells all the writers here and is on MSNBC like all day every day. If that’s troll then sign me up for troll hood.
ian- i disagreed with sobran on one or two things he said abuot jews. that doesn’t make him an anti semite.
the thing abuot me using natinal review as a benchmark for conservatism and his geting fired by it is clever, but lacks substance on closer inspection. who knows why he was fired?
Final comment-Because Buckley in a long essay went into express detail about why Sobran was fired. This is not exactly a mystery.
We can’t prevent the publication of hideous lies, much less require those publishers from disclosing the real (false) basis of the lies. It’s up to schools and the media to teach and inform from the facts, as much as can be determined. Especially to let folks know that such lies are out there and who’s behind them.
I’d expect the Amazon info page on this book to matter-of-factly state whether there’s any substance to this book’s claims, to clearly label it either as “opinion” and/or “fiction.”
Considering the general state of public education and the mainstream media, we’ve got plenty to worry about.
Yuval Levin,
Please tell me what credibility do you have as a Jew?
Pat.
Stop complaining, Yuval Levin. If you don’t like it don’t buy it. Mark the e-mail as spam and never hear from BookSurge again.
You said Amazon, “has taken on an unusual level of responsibility for some of the content it now sells to readers.” Wrong. Amazon is simply offering free market choices. And that’s not an “unusual level of responsibility”. It’s simply good business. So stop using words like “unusual level of responsibility”. There’s no common sense in it. Your just trying to sound important.
Amazon is correct to offer such items for sale. After that, it’s up to readers whether or not to buy it. It’s called freedom.
And people need to stop saying that anti-zionism is anti-semitism. It makes no sense. I know many Jews who don’t support zionism.