Why I’m Unsubscribing To The New York Times

Copies of the New York Times sit for sale in a rack July 23, 2008 in New York City. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

I am a lifelong Democrat, a political liberal, a Reform rabbi, and for four decades, until last week, a New York Times subscriber. What drove me away was the paper’s incessant denigration of Israel, a torrent of articles, photographs, and op-ed columns that consistently present the Jewish State in the worst possible light.

This phenomenon is not new. Knowledgeable observers have long assailed the Times lack of objectivity and absence of journalistic integrity in reporting on Israel. My chronic irritation finally morphed into alienation and then to visceral disgust this summer, after Hamas renewed its terrorist assaults upon Israel and the Times launched what can only be described as a campaign to delegitimize the Jewish State.


The Middle East conflict is complex, but the root cause of Israel’s confrontation with Hamas is not. Committed by its charter to “obliterate” Israel and kill all Jews everywhere, Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Britain, and the European Union, a designation substantiated by its raining rockets down on Israel’s civilians and tunneling under its border to kill and kidnap, indisputable war crimes.
Renowned Israeli novelist, leftist, and self-declared “Israeli peacenik” Amos Oz captured the essence of the conflict in two questions he posed to a German radio audience. “What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery? What would you do if your neighbor across the street digs a tunnel from his nursery to your nursery in order to blow up your home or in order to kidnap your family?”

The answers are self-evident to everyone except the New York Times. Its obsessive focus is on Palestinian civilian casualties, especially children, publishing photos of their corpses and little else, as if they tell the whole story. The deaths of innocents in wartime are tragic and heartbreaking; they diminish us all. But a newspaper committed to balance and fairness would provide context and perspective. It would show traumatized Israeli children running to shelters, cowering, wetting their beds, and suffering nightmares. It would publish photos and accounts of militants launching rockets from the roofs of mosques, a church, and a media hotel, alongside schools, refugee shelters, clinics and hospitals, and of weapons concealed by Hamas in UN facilities. It would substantiate casualty figures from Hamas, which is known to have falsified them in the past, before reporting them as fact. It would highlight Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields, its urging civilians to ignore Israel’s advance warnings to depart, so that Gazans would be killed and inflict PR damage on Israel. Such a paper would cover the threats of death that inhibited reporters and photojournalists from telling the true, full story. But the Times did not.

What it did instead is revealed by a sample of headlines: “As Israel Hits Mosque and Clinic, Air Campaign’s Risks Come Home;” “Israelis Watch Bombs Drop on Gaza From Front-Row Seats;” “Questions About Tactics and Targets as Civilian Toll Climbs in Israeli Strikes;” “Foreign Correspondents in Israel Complain of Intimidation;” “Israeli Shells are Said to Hit UN School;” “Military Censorship in Israel;” “A Boy at Play in Gaza, a Renewal of War, A Family in Mourning;” “Israel’s Supporters Try to Come to Terms with the Killing of Children in Gaza;” “Israel Braces for War Crimes Inquiries on Gaza;” “Resisting Nazis, He Saw Need for Israel. Now He Is Its Critic.”

Then there are the op-eds: “Israel’s Puppy, Tony Blair;” “Israel’s Bloody Status Quo;” “How the West Chose War in Gaza;” “Darkness Falls on Gaza;” “Israeli Self-Defense Does Not Permit Killing Civilians;” “Israel Has Overreacted to the Threats it Provoked;” “Zionism and Its Discontents;” “U.S. Should Stop Funding Israel, or Let Others Broker Peace;” “Israel’s Colonialism Must End;” “Unwavering Support of Israel Harms U.S. Interests, Encourages Extremism;” “Eight Days in Gaza: A Wartime Diary: Life and Death in the Gaza Strip.” The last column consumed nearly the entire op-ed page.

The straw that broke my subscription’s back came on Aug. 19, when Hamas violated yet another truce, sending a fusillade of rockets into Israel. The Wall Street Journal’s headline read, “Gaza Rocket Strikes End Cease Fire.” A U.S. State Department spokesperson condemned the renewed rocket fire, holding Hamas responsible for causing the ceasefire to break down. The Times headline: “Rockets From Gaza and Israeli Response Break Cease-Fire.” Seriously? A newspaper that cannot distinguish between starting a fight and defending oneself is intellectually deficient, morally obtuse, and profoundly unworthy of its readers.

I know the Times won’t miss me. The feeling is mutual.

Rabbi Richard A. Block is president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Hypocrisy Over Gaza

The latest from Pat Condell


Click here if the video fails to load.

Israel doesn't owe a biased world any explanation for defending itself
against murderers.

Dressing Up

Purim starts tonight.

PURIM is here!
And Western women politicians are dressing up.
But not for Purim.
They're dressing up to please Haman.

Israel And The Rest of the World

By Dennis MacEoin

Everybody hates Israel. That is not just accepted wisdom, it is a reality that chokes all rational debate on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. There are exceptions, of course, such as Canada, but most of Western Europe has slipped from support for Israel to support for the Palestinian cause, as if both sides might not have valid claims to the disputed land.

Most Americans are enthusiastic about Israel, but the U.S. government under Barack Obama, has, in recent years, shown increasing antagonism. Unsurprisingly, not a single Muslim nation likes Israel at all.

Many hate the Jewish state precisely because it is a Jewish state -- there seems no other reason why they might hate it. Many, in a display of true prejudice, have never even visited it.

In the world in general, and Europe in particular, anti-Semitism is growing at a rate not unlike the 1930s. It does not take much mental grip to see the link between that escalation of the "oldest hatred" and the refined political and religious rejection of Israel as the one and only state in the world that deserves to be abolished. Or, as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once put it in Farsi, "exterminated" (Umam-e Eslami bayad Isra'il-ra qal' o qam' kard: The nations of Islam must exterminate Israel.)

In a Friday sermon, former Iranian President Rafsanjani also made the statement, "If one day, a very important day of course, the Islamic world will also be equipped with the weapons available to Israel now, the imperialist strategy will reach an impasse, because the employment of even one atomic bomb inside Israel will wipe it off the face of the earth, but would only do damage to the Islamic world."[1]

While the world focuses on Israel's flaws (often imaginary), in Saudi Arabia there are special roads for non-Muslims to ensure they cannot enter Mecca or Medina.

But then, one might surely ask, if everyone hates Israel, will it make the slightest difference if it actually is wiped off the face of the earth? Will it matter if another six million Jews are gassed or driven into the Mediterranean? If most of the people on the planet hate Israel and want to see a massive Palestinian state take its place, then who will weep if the Jews go and the Arabs come and take over, as so many people now say they have every right to do? Would it not be a blow for humanity, justice and people everywhere if the oppressive, violent, and apartheid Jewish state were to be removed from the earth?

Are you starting to feel a bit uneasy about this?

Some might hold back from wishing death on the Jews, but would not hesitate if someone else were to kill them. Or force them to pack their bags and leave their homes to make room for an army of Palestinian "refugees." If you hate Jews enough, nothing may seem too bad for them, and no history of pogroms and the Holocaust will be enough to dissuade you and your friends from doing it all over again, or rejoicing that someone else is doing it for you.

The treatment—or rather, mistreatment—of the Jews stands out in the modern era as the single greatest emblem of man's inhumanity to man. From the Christian (and post-Christian) West to the Islamic East, hatred of Jews has led to unfettered cruelty, and a continuing refusal to accept any form of moral or ethical constraint. However much Jews suffer, anti-Semites want them to suffer more. However far Jews might try to run, their self-appointed overlords will try to hunt them down and start the process of hate and persecution all over again. However much Jews contribute to human civilization, win Nobel prizes, develop cures for illness, create remarkable films, set up hospital units worldwide to treat the sick, irrigate the fields of the poorest farmers and change our lives for the better — the haters sneer and lie and kill Jews with the same knives; and every time a Jew is killed or wounded, dance on the same floors.

And what have the Jews ever done to deserve any of this? Are the Jews really the masterminds behind every war, every revolution, every economic disaster, every plot, even the Holocaust itself? Yes, according to anti-Semites, either the Holocaust never happened and was made up to secure Israel as a country for the Jews; or else the Jews instigated it to force other Jews to flee Europe to Mandatory Palestine, to take it over. Just read a few comments on YouTube as a measuring stick for this mental illness.

Of course, I know the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion says all this (apart from the Holocaust slurs), but the Protocols is a forgery;[2] and not just a forgery, but a cheap and shoddy product of the Tsarist secret police before World War I. Even though it is now more than a century later, some people still treat this libel as Gospel, and write comments on YouTube to prove that the Jews are the worst of mankind.

In Arab countries, after many years, the Protocols is still a bestseller. And Hitler's Mein Kampf, tagged in 2011 by Waterstone's in the UK as the "perfect Christmas present", in its electronic form is selling hand-over-fist. How hurtful -- and deeply unjust -- that is to Jews who have just made critical advances in medicine or saved a Palestinian child's life when operating in an Israeli hospital, or journeyed to Africa to teach better methods of farming, or traveled with an Israeli aid team to Haiti or the Philippines to save yet more lives.

The Jews are not the worst of mankind; they are like the rest of us, some bad, some good, and some so talented they have left indelible marks on every field of human endeavor. They have always been an underappreciated force, above all in the realm of ethics. No religion has developed in so well-structured a fashion as Judaism; its impact on Christian and Islamic ethics is well attested. Without the Jews, a major force for good and a barometer for moral concern would be taken from civilization entirely -- or is moral concern something the world would secretly rather do without?

The irony is that it is precisely these prejudiced, conniving, and racist haters of Jews -- including those who envisage the destruction of the one and only Jewish state and those who conjure up a realistic threat of a second Holocaust -- who have the arrogance to treat the Jews, including the Israelis, as if they are the most prejudiced, the most conniving, the most racist of all mankind -- and the most immoral -- and, of course, deeply inferior to Christians or Muslims.

The false piety of much Christian condemnation of Israel is matched only by the cheap moralizing of the followers of Islam in their attacks, both physical and verbal, on the Jewish state; or their failure to recognize that Jerusalem was always a Jewish city; that there were two Jewish temples there; and especially in the obsessive Palestinian refusal to recognize any part of Israel as a Jewish entity, or to make peace with Israel, or even to acknowledge that there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the Holy Land for three thousand years.

The loss of Israel -- engineered as it would be by a coalition of "progressive" Muslims and Western secularists, along with anti-Semitic Christians and hard-line Islamists -- would not be a victory for any of the values we hold dear. On the contrary, it would be one of the greatest disasters to befall mankind. The values we consider highest – such as peacemaking, neighborliness, cooperation, caring for the less fortunate, for those of different religions, ethnicity, and mutual defence against aggression – would start to crumble, and our sense of human progress would weaken and lose its hold on our minds and hearts. If we could do that to the Jews, a people of great deserving, who have done so much for us, what might we then do to others? For even if the Jews were gone, there would still be other, weaker people for us to persecute and eliminate.

Does such a prognosis seem inflated, even barely respectable? Israel, however, did not emerge in the way most other countries have done, as an expression of traditional boundaries, a containment of one or more specific languages, a repository of a single culture, a place determined by one king, one dominant holy man, or one parliament, or one body of laws. Of course, Israel has had several of those things, beginning with the establishment, on that same plot of land, of the oldest set of laws after Hammurabi: the Ten Commandments and the earliest set of social welfare laws.

Modern Israel had the original acclamation of much of the international community; it set up a democratic parliament, established a set of basic laws, and, when other nations let boatloads of refugees sink at sea, served the Jews as the only sanctuary, free from a persecution which still exists to this day, and, sadly, which is once again being orchestrated by people supposedly educated enough to know better.

For civilization — any civilization — to work, there must be a core set of values that crosses from one culture to another, acquiring on the way a sort of universal validity. Small differences may exist between one country and another, one language and another, and even one religion and another. With few exceptions, people who belong to Western civilization believe that it is absolutely wrong to take a human life (except in life-or-death cases or self-defense). We strongly believe in human rights even if we are not always observant of them. In general, Western countries advocate and legislate for equality between men and women, equal justice under law, an independent judiciary, and freedom of and from belief. We attempt to expunge racism in its various forms from our streets and businesses. We defend minorities, religious, political or gender-based. And free speech, we defend that too, even when it hurts us to do so.

Islamic civilization holds often starkly different values. A man's or woman's life may be taken, often by beheading or stoning, for a wide range of "sins," from heresy (really, free thinking; there, called blasphemy) to adultery to apostasy (more free thinking). A Muslim also may not be punished for killing a non-Muslim, or even another Muslim if his intent is to further the cause of Islam. Although not Islamic in any true sense, female genital mutilation and honor killings are far from uncommon. They happen in the UK and the US, mainly within Muslim communities – as well as in Muslim countries.

Perhaps Islamic civilization would find the disappearance of the Jewish state a satisfactory gift. But Western civilization might not wear this too well, except for that part occupied by those who consider themselves as members of the far left -- Stalinists, Trotskyites, anarchists and anti-Semitic Christians who believe they do the will of God, and even Quisling Jews -- when they curse Jews and boycott Israel.

When the Nazis took power, Germany seemed to be one of the most civilized countries in the world, with a rich culture, a deep grasp of academic achievement, and a growing mastery of science and technology. Within a few years, the country had been reduced to the status of the most barbaric of countries, the most abusive of human rights, perhaps the most savage political entity in history. And not many years later, Germany was in ruins, destroyed by the very totalitarianism it had used to impose itself on the rest of Europe.

Across the world, people came to condemn the great wrongs Germans had done to mankind. Germans rebuilt their nation only by rigorously excluding that tendency to totalitarianism. Yet today, young Germans march against Israel and, in fighting Israel, fight the Jews. What conceivable right do the scions of that black period and the years of wiedergutmachen [compensation] have to treat Jews as untermenschen [subhuman] once again, to march in the streets where the SS marched, to bellow as their grandfathers bellowed, Juden Raus, "Jews out" -- out of "Palestine," out of the Middle East, out of everyplace.

Whatever its detractors may say, Israel declares loudly that it is a country where the best Western values are honored, where democracy, the rule of law, the creation of new laws through an elected parliament, the fair treatment of all minorities, rights for women, for gays, for all citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, are demanded. But say it is also a Jewish country based on Jewish ethics, and someone of limited intellect will come along clutching a copy of the Torah, the Talmud, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or anything else they can lay their hands on, and declaiming that they can prove Judaism is a bloodthirsty religion that has always worked to defeat and mistreat non-Jews. In the past years, I have only known a violent and angry Islam; yet the world is silent. The world excuses Islamic murder, but focuses on flaws, often imaginary, on the part of Israel.

The very establishment of a Jewish state stood for more than even its founders guessed. It was open defiance of the universal impulse to persecute and kill Jews.

Only in their Holy Land could the Jews weave their own destinies at last -- and do. Israel thrives. They have won Nobel prizes and made some of the greatest advances in science, technology, and medicine. Israelis create world-class hospitals and universities. They have written more scientific papers per capita than any other nation, and have saved children's lives – Palestinian children's lives – in a dozen operating theaters, and sent aid teams around the world to save yet more lives. Israeli "apartheid"? Far from it. All facilities and opportunities are equally open to all Israelis: Black, White, Arab, Christian, Jew -- everyone. Far more than in say, Saudi Arabia, where there are special roads for non-Muslims to ensure they cannot enter Mecca or Medina, or where a Bible is not even allowed in the country. Or all the mosques where every Friday congregants are told that Jews are the sons of pigs and apes. It would seem that is racism; that is apartheid.

What the destroyers of Israel would do is negate every one of Israel's achievements and more, and leave a hole in the world, in their own world. What, after all, would take the place of Israel? Another failed state, riven by strife, characterized by failure, poverty-stricken, dependent, just another victim of the authoritarian Arab way of governing? Is that something that will set civilization towards new horizons? It is up to us to keep the lights on, to place civilization against barbarism, to put our minds and bodies between Israel and all who mean her ill.

[1] "Iran Calls for the Destruction of Israel," Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Center for Special Studies, Special Information Bulletin, November 2003, citing Khabar TV, December 14, 2000. Cited in Joshua Teitelbaum, What Iranian Leaders Really Say About Doing Away with Israel, Jerusalem Center for Pubic Affairs.
[2] See David Aaronovitch, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, London, Jonathan Cape, 2009, pp. 22-48.

Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish!

For 3 years Americans have been subjected to the Liberal rantings of Piers Morgan.  A man who wants to live here in America but cannot stand our Constitution, Laws and way of life.  An advocate for strict gun control, strict knife control and a coddling of criminals.

He didn't become a big hit.  In fact his ratings were so low that he couldn't go any lower.

Dear Piers took over for Larry King.  A show that for 25 was high in the ratings.  A show that set the standards for Primetime talk.

But now he is out!

There have been times when the CNN host Piers Morgan didn’t seem to like America very much — and American audiences have been more than willing to return the favor. Three years after taking over for Larry King, Mr. Morgan has seen the ratings for “Piers Morgan Live” hit some new lows, drawing a fraction of viewers compared with competitors at Fox News and MSNBC.

It’s been an unhappy collision between a British television personality who refuses to assimilate — the only football he cares about is round and his lectures on guns were rife with contempt — and a CNN audience that is intrinsically provincial. After all, the people who tune into a cable news network are, by their nature, deeply interested in America.

CNN’s president, Jeffrey Zucker, has other problems, but none bigger than Mr. Morgan and his plum 9 p.m. time slot. Mr. Morgan said last week that he and Mr. Zucker had been talking about the show’s failure to connect and had decided to pull the plug, probably in March.

Crossing an ocean for a replacement for Larry King, who had ratings problems of his own near the end, was probably not a great idea to begin with. For a cable news station like CNN, major stories are like oxygen. When something important or scary happens in America, many of us have an immediate reflex to turn on CNN. When I find Mr. Morgan telling me what it all means, I have a similar reflex to dismiss what he is saying. It is difficult for him to speak credibly on significant American events because, after all, he just got here.

I received a return call from Mr. Morgan and was prepared for an endless argument over my assumptions. Not so. His show, he conceded, was not performing as he had hoped and was nearing its end.

“It’s been a painful period and lately we have taken a bath in the ratings,” he said, adding that although there had been times when the show connected in terms of audience, slow news days were problematic.

“Look, I am a British guy debating American cultural issues, including guns, which has been very polarizing, and there is no doubt that there are many in the audience who are tired of me banging on about it,” he said. “That’s run its course and Jeff and I have been talking for some time about different ways of using me.”

SOURCE

A bath in the ratings?!?  That is one of the understatements of the year.  He was trounced by FOX's Megan Kelly.  Americans don't want to hear a whiny Brit.  They don't want a FOREIGNER telling them how bad their way of life is, how bad their form of government is, how bad they are for not doing things the British way.

Piers Morgan is still under contract to CNN so be prepared to see on that network again.  Or maybe he will go to where his liberalism is excepted:  MSNBC.  He is perfect for them.  Another anti-Semite to join their anti-Semitic lineup of Sharpton, and gang.

South Africa In The Shadows

From Frontpage

This week Nelson Mandela died.  His life is being hailed as one of compromise and promise.  But what is the promise that South Africa has?  What is the results of Mandela's rule?

“People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them,” James Baldwin wrote. Few men have had as much history trapped in them as Nelson Mandela.

To those outside South Africa, the country has been reduced to Nelson Mandela just as it was once reduced to apartheid. Mandela was the ending to a story that everyone thought they knew. With his death, the story comes perilously close to losing its meaning.

The history trapped in Mandela escapes with his death forcing both those inside South Africa and those outside it to come to terms with all the complex realities of history packed away into one man’s life.

Like Gandhi, Mandela became an iconic figure who appeared to encompass the moral of his own story. The fictional Nelson Mandela has appeared in dozens of movies. He has been played by everyone from Danny Glover to Sidney Poitier to Morgan Freeman. And each of those movies has made the real man and the real South Africa that he leaves behind in death seem that much more unreal.

Western liberals like simplistic stories and Mandela was their happy ending. His very existence freed them from the need to learn anything more about what happened after apartheid. By knowing him, they knew, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story. Mandela freed them from knowing history.

Everyone knows the history of South Africa and no one knows it. The dynamics of a troubled past that were reduced to a happy ending built around one man are still playing out in South Africa. Even as the mourning for Mandela goes on, one child is raped every three minutes in South Africa and three children are murdered every day.

If there is anything that the world ought to mourn, not only today, but every day, it is a horrifying reality in which a South African woman is more likely to be raped than to learn to read, a quarter of the men admit to having raped and men with AIDS believe that they can find a cure by raping a baby.

Troubling facts like these defy the easy inspiration of the happy ending. They remind us that history does not stop the way that a film script does. There is no moment when the crowd cheers, the camera pans up and the audience is free to leave the theater and look no further because the story has ended.

South Africa’s story did not end with apartheid. It does not end with Mandela’s death. South Africa remains in twilight. The credits do not roll. The happy ending has not come.

The Mandela era gave way to the Mbeki era and the Zuma era. Mbeki had been trained in the USSR and Zuma, like Mandela, had been a member of the Communist Party. Their rule was characterized not only by corruption and violence, but by the denial that the corruption and violence existed. Mbeki claimed that HIV was not linked to AIDS and that those pointing out the escalating crime rate were white racists. Zuma has said that the child rapes are “inexplicable”; but had been put on trial for raping an HIV-positive AIDS activist while claiming an equally magical way of preventing the disease.

Just as Mbeki’s successor was worse than him so too Zuma’s successor is likely to be worse than his predecessor. The difference between South Africa and Zimbabwe is only one of degree. And to prove that very point, Zuma has praised Zimbabwe’s Mugabe calling him a fellow freedom fighter.

In his address to the nation, Zuma said that, “What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves. And in him we saw so much of ourselves.”

There is certainly some truth to that. But it is not a truth about Nelson Mandela. It is a truth about people who are caught up in chaos and searching for something to believe in. Zuma said that South Africans, “mourn the loss of the one person who, more than any other, came to embody their sense of a common nationhood.” But the unpleasant truth is that there is no more South African nationhood.

The more liberals wanted South Africa to escape from its own history, the more it became trapped in real problems with no easy solutions.

South Africa is just as divided by race as it was when Mandela was in prison. It is broken up into countless tiny factions protected by real and metaphorical violence. There is no trusted institution in the country that unites it. There is no trust by South Africans in each other.

When a farmer’s family is brutally murdered by his own workers and men rape the children of their neighbors in the hopes of curing themselves of AIDS—there can be no such thing as trust. The story told in so many of the movies where Mandela played by Sidney Poitier or Morgan Freeman teaches blacks and whites to set aside their hatred has not worked out nearly as well in real life.

In the new apartheid, the black government represses a white minority and abuses its power over the black majority in ways that Western liberals would never tolerate if it were being practiced by men with Dutch last names. Every government crime is covered up by more incitement against the white minority with each generation of activists struggling to outdo the previous generation in its anti-white racism.

There has been no moment of transcendence that endured. No cure for the things tearing the nation apart. There is no new spirit in South Africa. There is a new apartheid defined not by law, but by hate. Freedom and democracy are equally vaporous under the rule of a political movement obsessed with the vicious pragmatism of power now being exercised by Mandela’s African National Congress successors.

“People pay for what they do and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become,” Baldwin wrote. “And they pay for it very simply by the lives they lead.” There is no place where that is quite as true as in post-apartheid South Africa where the violence unleashed still haunts the townships.

In working nations, the death of a Mandela would create a symbol. In South Africa, it removes one of the few fragile symbols whose meaning is as disputed as everything else about the post-apartheid era.

For Western liberals, Mandela’s death provides them with permission to stop caring about South Africa. Having reduced South Africa to Mandela, his death permanently removes its existence from their minds. They may show up to the theater if Denzel Washington or Jamie Foxx decide to play Nelson Mandela. Otherwise they will comfortably banish the entire country to the dusty attic of forgotten history.

Meanwhile one child is raped every three minutes and three children are murdered every day.

I can predict easily that if South Africa continues on the path it is on that it will become the duplicate of Zimbabwe in a decade.  Very few White citizens will live under the new apartheid, they have the means to leave South Africa and given the right motivation they will.

He Resigned? Horse Hockey Puck!

This just in:

Martin Bashir quits MSNBC.  Yeah right.  He quit.  Right after meeting with MSNBC President Phil Griffin. And I'm the Pope.

Martin Bashir has resigned from MSNBC, nearly three weeks after delivering a scathing personal attack on Sarah Palin that brought him widespread condemnation.

The afternoon talk show host, a former co-anchor of "Nightline," says he decided to leave the network after meeting with MSNBC President Phil Griffin.

Bashir had already apologized for what he called "offensive" comments about the former Alaska governor, whom he also called an "idiot" and "dunce." He told viewers in a scripted commentary last month that someone should defecate in Palin's mouth. He was invoking an old slave punishment in response to a speech by Palin, a Fox News contributor, comparing the national debt to slavery.

Bashir took off two weeks for what was billed as a vacation, and criticism mounted as MSNBC took no disciplinary action against him, even as it booted Alec Baldwin over an alleged anti-gay slur hurled at a photographer. In retrospect, it's clear that by failing to suspend Bashir, MSNBC allowed public pressure to build to the point where the only way to control the damage was to sever its relationship with the British journalist.

In a statement, first reported by Mediaite, Bashir said:

"After making an on-air apology, I asked for permission to take some additional time out around the Thanksgiving holiday.

"Upon further reflection, and after meeting with the president of MSNBC, I have tendered my resignation. It is my sincere hope that all of my colleagues, at this special network, will be allowed to focus on the issues that matter without the distraction of myself or my ill-judged comments.

"I deeply regret what was said, will endeavor to work hard at making constructive contributions in the future and will always have a deep appreciation for our viewers -- who are the smartest, most compassionate and discerning of all television audiences."

In his own statement, Griffin said: "Martin Bashir resigned today, effective immediately. I understand his decision and I thank him for three great years with MSNBC. Martin is a good man and respected colleague -- we wish him only the best."

SOURCE

He was called on the carpet and fired is the real truth.  His ratings are in the tank, he is a liability to the network and can't distinguish liberal bias from reality.

Good riddance to bad rubbish I say!

There's No Racist Like A Liberal Racist

The latest rant by Pat Condell.  This time on Liberals and Progressives.



Click here if the video fails to load.

"Progressive" used to mean socially enlightened and forward looking. Now it's just another word for a creepy liberal racist.

Good piece by Nick Cohen on liberal racists and the harm they do
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/nick-coh...

Liberal intellectuals are frightened of challenging Islam's honour-shame culture
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ric...

Muslim opinion polls: Challenging the "tiny minority of extremists" myth
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pag...

Quote Of The Decade

With thanks to Norman

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America 's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America 's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, "the buck stops here". Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better".

Senator Barack H. Obama, March 16, 2006

A National Shouting Match On Racism

Stolen From Faultline USA

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
************************************

As a Southerner, I am used to -- well, allow me to rephrase that: as far as it is possible, I am used to being called a racist, a bigot, a redneck, and several other epithets that I refuse to print here. That is not to say that I am comfortable with them, I am not. Nevertheless, again, as a southerner, hardly a day goes by that such disparaging words are not used, in reference to yours truly, singularly, as an individual, or collectively, as a member of the politically conservative right, or regionally, as a Southerner.

I suppose the thing about all this infantile name calling that troubles me most is the utter hypocrisy of those using such hurtful language. I have learned as an adult that many, if not most, of those tossing about such colorful, yet hollow charges, are soaked in ignorance of the origins of such words and the history of the my region of America, and indeed, the history of America itself.

For instance -- before the American Civil War, (you know -- the war we Southerners refer to, and think of, as “The War for Southern Independence,”) it was the Democratic Party, that had a death grip on the Southern States, which our young scholars have been erroneously, taught were the only slave holding states in the country.

That is far from the truth, very far. The Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic States, including Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, had legally sanctioned slavery in the 17th, 18th and even part of the 19th centuries.

This may come as a shock to you but… not only were black people enslaved in the North for over two hundred years, but the vast majority of all slave trading in America was done by northerners. Yes, we did just say: “The VAST Majority….” Remarkably, half of all North American voyages involved in the slave trade originated in Rhode Island, and all the northern states benefited. This is a fact much hidden from the youthful eyes of America’s young scholars for many, many, decades. In fact, many of those folks who so piously refer to Southerners as racists (because of our ancestors participation in the detestable trade) themselves hail from regions (and, yes, even families) that made fortunes on the trade of African blacks into slavery.

Shocked? You needn’t be. It has been SOP in America’s public (Government) school system for many years. It is the foundation of the ignorance from which springs the scurrilous charges made against so many of my ancestors and yes, even this scribe today.

I tell you this so you will be less shocked when we say that much of the name calling of southerners and politically right conservatives is coming from Representatives and Senators, of those Northern States who desperately want to paint all members of the political right as racists, and bigots.

There is also a statement made, time and again, which goes something like this: Blacks, or, if you prefer, African-Americans, cannot be racists because they lack power or clout. That is absolutely pure, unadulterated nonsense, clap-trap, BS, horse hockey, and a few other things we dare not print for general consumption. If one human hates another because of the color of his skin, regardless of the color of his own, that is bigotry. We see it everyday, as well, or hear it referenced every day in the music popularly known as “Rap” Music and "Hip-Hop" music.

The left claims to want a national “conversation” about racism in America. They don’t, of course. If they did they’d stop using the first sentences out of the mouths of members of the right to label them racists, which simply shuts off all conversation instantly.

No. The left does not want a national confab on racism in America. It is a ploy, that’s all.

White America has grown tired of pretending not to see the overt racism of the left. We’ve grown exceedingly resentful of being used as a punching bag and we’re beginning to punch back.

The national conversation on racism in America, the left claims to want, may yet materialize – in the streets of the nation’s cities as black and white mobs clash. It will be a conversation of the fist and club and, eventually, the gun.

Nobody in their right mind wants this to happen. But that is exactly where America is headed once the last straw is applied to the camel’s back.

I DO realize the weight of the words above. I DO realize, as well, that until we are ready, as a people, as a nation, to face up, honestly, to the racism of the left -- and the black community in particular – then it is a non-starter. Until that time a civil conversation will not be had for it cannot be had.

The best we can hope for is the continued stand-off and the barely concealed hatred boiling just beneath the surface. The plain truth is, I believe, the very best we can hope for is that the black community will continue to pretend they're not racists and the white community will continue to pretend that it doesn't notice black racism.

No, there will be no national conversation on racism. There WILL be more shouting matches, bruised egos, and hurt feelings, which will do nothing to salve the wounds of the vicious national argument on racism.

WE Americans have tried for 237 years to hold the people of the country together in some sort of union -- even with the numerous cracks and fault lines running between us. Today those cracks and fault lines have become chasms. And some are un-crossable. This is one of them.

Riding The Whirlwind

Stolen From Faultline USA

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

A whirlwind is a vertical column of air whirling around itself as it moves over the surface of the Earth.  Think about that for a moment.

Now.  Consider this:  "For they sow the wind; and they reap the whirlwind."  That is from the Old Testament book of Hosea chapter 8 verse 7.

Like so many of the conservative commentariat,  I am STILL trying to analyze why America deliberately decided to turn a corner, or choose a path, that will unquestionably lead to its own destruction.  

The choice to forsake a constitutional republic for a socialist, collectivist, Marxist, form of government is surreal.  It's like something from a bad science fiction movie in which the population is entirely controlled by some malevolent entity intent upon controlling the world.

I must confess:  I made a terrible mistake in that I assumed the American people still had enough common sense, enough discernment, enough honor left to do the right thing. 

Last November the American electorate proved me wrong.  Woefully wrong.

Our ship of state was (is) (so obviously) headed toward the jagged rocks I assumed we would remove the less-than-adequate helmsman and replace him with a real mariner who would stir us away from certain destruction on the shoals and rocks. I was terribly wrong. 

The reelection of Obama was a grand victory for ignorance.  It is the pay-off for years of indoctrination in our public schools.  The old Judeo-Christian ethics have been purged from our public education system in favor of secular humanism.  You can lay the blame for paving the way for it at the feet of our leftist, radical, Supreme Court and the Court's rulings from as far back as the 1960's. 

Abraham Lincoln is given credit for saying: "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."  Whoever said it -- it was spot on. 

The old Proverb -- "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree" is absolutely correct.  I think the ultimate source of this old proverb is from the Bible: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."  Proverbs 22: 6.  We see ample proof of the wisdom of this proverb in our public education system today.

If you, perhaps, thought those of us who warned for decades of the trouble ahead for America due to the secular (and even religious) humanism being taught in our public schools were just blowing smoke -- consider the following carefully: "Expanding upon the role the public education establishment should play to bring about the goals described in the Humanist Manifesto II, John Dumphy wrote: "I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being...The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new -- the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent with the promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal of 'love thy neighbor' will finally be achieved." (Emphasis by underlining is MINE.)  SOURCE

The generation of Americans who elected -- and then reelected -- Obama were graduates of this public school system.  They were programmed to act as automatons, to choose loyalty to the state over loyalty to God and their family.  They marched to the polls and did as they had been told, indeed, had been taught, programmed, -- indoctrinated to do.

Author Ron Taylor, in his book  "Agenda 21: An Expose of the United Nations" in which he writes of  the  "Sustainable Development Initiative and the Forfeiture of American Sovereignty and Liberties" says the following:  "It is their stated goal...to steal one generation of children and teach them to place loyalty to the state above loyalty to family."

See, this generation knows almost nothing of American history.  They know next to nothing about the Judeo-Christian origin of America.  They are ignorant of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.  The only thing they know about capitalism and the American system of free markets is what they were taught -- that capitalism is bad.  They know far more about the benefits of Socialism and Marxism and "equality." 

"Those coming out of years of humanistic brainwashing masquerading as public education know little of the Bible, America's Christian origins and founding documents, and the blessings of free-market capitalism. Instead, they know a great deal about sex education, values clarification, moral relativism, Darwinian evolution, Socialism and Marxism, earth worship, multiculturalism, one-world globalism, Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and appeasement foreign policy. Products of these schools comprised the Obama voters in 2012."   SOURCE:

The definition of discernment is:  The cognitive condition of someone who understands.  It also means:  The trait of judging wisely and objectively.  We learned on November 6th, of last year, that "discernment" is something that is "verging" on extinction in America today.  We no longer know our right hand from our left -- nor good from evil.  Thanks to moral relativism, better known as political correctness, modern Americans believe there is no such thing as good and evil, or right and wrong.  Everything is, well, relative. 

It no longer matters what scripture teaches us, what history teaches us, what experience teaches us, what common sense teaches us, nor what plain old morality teaches us. No.  Now it is -- how do I feel about it.  "I," and/or "Me," is at the center of their very existence. 

For a perfect example of this self-centered life, one has only to listen to one of our President's speeches.  Try to keep a running tally of the number of times the words "I" and "Me" and "MY" are spoken in a single address.  What is equally troubling is how effective the narcissism indoctrination of our young scholars has been.  For the most part, they don't even notice the over-abundant use of those personal pronouns "I" and "me" and the  "possessive" adjective "my,"  because,  to them, it's NORMAL!   How inexpressively sad that is.

Some years ago, I left my church when I "discerned" it was swinging away from the Gospels and embracing the apostate teachings of the leftist political agenda.  Now,we have social justice, environmentalism, inclusiveness, tolerance, multiculturalism, all lovingly spoken of from the pulpits of our religious community. 

With all the respect I can muster for those of America's religious community who have sold out to mammon, allow me to ask:  Are you REALLY surprised that the leftist agenda you supported, and led your flocks to support, would come back to bite you?   As you have now learned, you cannot pick and choose which parts of the leftist agenda you will support and which parts you will not. It is all -- or nothing!

The reason so many are so concerned about America's future under Obama's second term is not JUST his Socialist/Marxist agenda only.  It is the sudden understanding that this was a culmination of all the work the progressive left has done in our schools and our churches since, at least, the late 1940's.

The progressive left has successfully created a hybrid American. They have created a society wholly dependent  upon others for, well, everything.  Easily led these new Americans can be made to do, say, and believe anything their masters want.  They are the perfect slaves.  And they are self perpetuating.

Ultimately, it means the death of America as the stabilizing force on the planet. Without America, chaos will reign on planet earth.  We are already seeing ample evidence of this all over the globe today.

This is why so many of us on the right are so troubled and upset by the results of the election last November.  Obama's reelection was the final step toward a single world-wide government or "global governance."

For many decades we have sown the wind.  Now, we shall reap the harvest from that which we have so blithely sown -- the whirlwind.  And having no choice now, we must learn to ride the whirlwind we have created. 

You Never Know Who's Packing!

From Bob (With Thanks)

"Pistol Packing MAMA MIA!"

And if LOOKS could kill, she wouldn't need a gun ... or a knife, or a sword, or a grenade, or a harpoon, or a flame thrower, or some poison, or an atomic bomb, or even Cloverleaf Food, ...

If Eleanor Roosevelt can have a gun, shouldn't we all be able to have a gun?

BTW:  Even then official pictures looked terrible!

'Gun Culture' -- What About the 'Fatherless Culture'?

This articlehttp://townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/2013/01/17/gun-culture--what-about-the-fatherless-culture-n1490940/page/full/ by Larry Elder was sent to me by a friend.  And while I am not Black, it speaks volumes to the culture of violence, gangs, and drugs that is prevalent in the Black Community.

The face of gun violence is not Sandy Hook. It is Chicago.

In 2012, President Barack Obama's adopted hometown had 506 murders, including more than 60 children. Philadelphia, a city that local television newscasters frequently call 'Killadelphia," saw 331 killed last year. In Detroit, 386 people were murdered.

Since 1966, there have been 90 school shootings in the U.S., with 231 fatalities. Yes, Sandy Hook shocked us. But the odds of a child being killed at a school shooting are longer than the odds of being struck by lightning.

Of the 11,000 to 12,000 gun murders each year, more than half involve both black killers and black victims, mostly in urban areas and mostly gang-related. The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is not auto accidents or accidental drowning, but homicide.

Rapper/actor Ice T ("Cop Killer") and I attended the same high school. In the 1991 John Singleton film "Boyz n the Hood," the teenagers attend that school, and car-cruise the South Central Los Angeles boulevard after which the school is named. Crenshaw High opened in 1968. By the time Ice-T left, less than a decade later, Crenshaw had become, in the rapper's words, "a Crip school" -- meaning one controlled by that street gang. Because of the school's reputation for violence, Time Magazine called it "Fort Crenshaw." A powerhouse in basketball and football, the school lost its accreditation 2005, before getting it back in 2006 on a short-term basis.

In 1970, I was part of the second graduating class in the new school's history. Some kids, who started with me in the 10th grade, did not finish. But it was the exception rather than the rule. By 2012, only 51 percent of Crenshaw's students graduated.

What happened?

Dads disappeared. Or, more precisely, to use Bill Cosby's term, the number of "unwed fathers" exploded.

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote "The Negro Family: A Case for National Action." At the time, 25 percent of blacks children were born out of wedlock, a number Moynihan called alarming. Fast forward to the present, 72 percent of black children are now born out of wedlock. In fact, 36 percent of white children are born out of wedlock. Of Hispanic children, 53 percent are born outside of marriage.

In "Boyz n the Hood," Tre, played by Cuba Gooding Jr., has an active father in his life. Doughboy, played by Ice Cube, was raised without a father. His mother resents him because she dislikes his father. On the other hand, Gooding's hardworking, responsible father, played by Laurence Fishburne, stays on his son. He warns him against hanging out with the wrong people and that becoming a street criminal was a trap. He lectures his son that "any fool with a (penis) can make a baby, but only a real man can raise his children."

Studies show that children of divorced parents can have outcomes as positive as those coming from intact homes, provided the father remains financially supportive and active in his children's lives.

But what happens without dads in the 'hood?

In 1979, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth found that fatherless kids were twice as likely to drop out of school and that girls who grew up without dads were 2.5 times more likely to become pregnant teenagers.

Rutgers University sociology professor David Popenoe published "Life Without Father" in 1996, where he describes the "massive erosion" of fathers in America. Popenoe concluded that boys raised without fathers were more likely to have problems with drugs, alcohol, behavior and social interactions. Several studies during the '90s found that disruption in family structures was a predictor of children's gang involvement.

Many on the left dismiss the importance of fathers as "right-wing," blame-the-victim propaganda. Well, the late rapper Tupac Shakur, in the posthumously released documentary "Resurrection," said: "I know fora fact that had I had a father, I'd have some discipline. I'd have more confidence." He admits that he starting hanging out with gangs because he wanted to belong to a family structure, and it offered structure, support and protection -- the kind of thing we once expected home and family to provide.

The formula for achieving middle-class success is simple: Finish high school; don't have a child before the age of 20; and get married before having the child. Preparing for the future requires dedication. It requires deferring gratification, precisely the kind of "discipline" that Tupac admitted he lacked because he grew up without a father.

Doing what you want to do is easy. Doing what you have to do is hard. Dads, by getting up and going to work each day, send a powerful message every day to their children: Hard work wins. There are no short cuts. The outcome is unknowable. But the effort is entirely within your control.

Just this last year, in 3 cities (Chicago, Detroit, Killadelphia Philadelphia) 1,223 people were murdered with guns.  47 times the number of deaths at Sandy Hook.  Yet to the loony liberals 20 dead white children are more important to their agenda than 60 dead black children murdered in Chicago.  Sandy Hook was an upper middle class enclave.  The streets of Chicago are the ghetto.  The lives of the upper middle class are more important, more vital to the nation than any person living in the ghetto.

Chicago, Detroit and Killadelphia Philadelphia all have strict gun control laws.  In fact Chicago has the strictest gun laws in the nation.  And Chicago has the most gun deaths in the nation.  Gun control doesn't work.  Those 3 cities are proving it every day.

Where are the so-called black leaders?  Where is Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton?  Why are they not marching down the streets demanding that these boys stand up and become men?  Why are they not in the ghettos working to fix the problem?  Is it because there is no money in this problem?  Is it because they cannot accuse White people for this problem?

I fear that as we become more entrenched into a Nanny State the problem of Bastard Children and absent "Fathers" will become more and more prevalent.  In fact the language of the ghetto already reflects this idea in the name:  Baby Daddy.  In fact it is an apt name for these boys.  They cannot be called men, for they have no idea what manhood is and what the responsibilities that come with manhood.  Instead we have a bunch of boys who refuse to grow up.  While cute in a children's story is obscene in real life.