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October 07, 2008

McCain Hammers Obama—Finally

It's about time.

Hat Tip: Wolf Howling

Smoking Gun Alert! Read about Obama's attempts to destroy the Second Amendment.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 04:20 PM | Comments (5)

October 06, 2008

The Ad Obama is Trying to Ban

Barack Obama's handlers are desperately trying to get this ad banned. Good to know that liberals support free speech, but only when it's convenient.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:32 PM | Comments (6)

What Just Happened?

John McCain and Sarah Palin need to go on the offensive immediately about the sub-prime crisis. This crisis was engineered by the Democrats in order to make it possible for marginal borrowers to own homes. All in the name of, you know, social justice.

But when social justice leads to world-wide financial chaos, well, it's not justice, it's just destructive PC stupidity.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:06 AM | Comments (3)

October 02, 2008

...And the Financial Crisis is a Surprise Why?

Note that this is a New York Times article from Sept. 1999 about lowering credit standards, thanks to Bill Clinton, Franklin Raines—now Obama's financial advisor)—and Freddie / Fannie.

Barney Frank is also up to his neck in this crisis. Watching him and Chris Dodd pose before the cameras is infuriating. They should both be tarred and feathered.

And our friend Wolf Howling links to an excellent article detailing the history of the left's guilty hand in the current sub-prime crisis.

You see, if you voiced opposition to these sub-prime loans you were branded a rascist. And now, if you dare oppose the radical leftists policies of Barack Obama, well, you're also a rascist.

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

By STEVEN A. HOLMES
Published: September 30, 1999

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

(bold type by Seraphic Secret)

Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.

Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University 's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.

In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.

Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

Hat Tip: Dr. Peter Stevenson

Meanwhile more Weathermen terrorists declare support for Obama.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:48 AM | Comments (10)

September 28, 2008

Republican Yarmulkes: Sign of the Times

Who says our yarmulkes have to be yeshivish black velvet or the more modern knit jobs known as kepah s'ruga.

The new, must-have fashion items are cooly Conservative, colorful discsthat proudly stake out their side of the aisle with all the force of a shofar on steroids.

Here are four new designs that find inspiration in proud political slogans mixed with the joy of English and Yiddish.

These yarmulkes are also a sign of the times.

The days of Jews as default, lever-pulling, lobotomized Democrats are o-ver. Gone. Finished. End of the road.

Order your favorite yarmulkes at Vanity Kippah.

Hat Tip: Dr. Peter Stevenson

And from Jeff Jacoby via Wolf Howling, a few words of truth—in short supply these days—regarding the current financial crisis, Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank , and the liberal insistence on affirmative action housing. It all goes back to the most wretched president of these United States, Jimmy "Jihad" Carter.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:48 PM | Comments (13)

August 14, 2008

Seraphic Secret Rocks the Vote

“He said what to her?”

“Oh yeah, at least that's what I heard and it was like blah, blah, blah.”

Offspring #3 is sitting next to me on the couch. The MacBook is all snuggly in her lap as she and a Stern College friend chat via the built-in webcam.

Yenta that I am, I lean into the camera and wave hello to Offspring #3's girlfriend.

The girls giggle.

“Who was that?”

“My daddy.”

”Tell your father that I love Seraphic Secret.”

Like an anxious puppy, I sit up.

Offspring #3 cracks up and goes: “My friend is like obsessed with Seraphic Secret.”

I dive back to the computer. Oh joy, Offspring #3's friend now dons a Seraphic Press baseball cap. With such a hat she can conquer the known universe.

“What do you like best?”

Typical writer, I'm always looking for feedback, desperately seeking praise. Offspring #3's friend is single, female, 20-years old. Hmmm, she's going to tell me that she absolutely adores How I Married Karen. Easy call.

She goes: “I love when you write about Barack Obama, especially when you make fun of him. You've convinced me to vote for John McCain.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

In a few days, Offspring #3's friend is flying from the east coast to visit and help hold down the fort while Karen and I are in Israel for the First International Jewish Bloggers Convention hosted by Nefesh B'nefesh.

Showered with such praise, I'm suddenly feeling all magnanimous: “You know what, I have decided not to set up the Nanny cam to spy on you guys while we're gone.”

Offspring #3 gives me an oh-sure-as-if look, but finally grins and laughs, and her pixallated friend joins in the raucous laughter.

They think I'm kidding.

“Have you girls registered to vote?”

Offspring #3 says: “I filled out the on-line form, now I have to print it out and mail it in.”

“Don't forget.”

Both girls assure me that they'll take care of the paper work.

I'm glowing like a moon, filled with a sense of my blog-power. I'm the Jewish P-Diddy, rocking the vote.

I lean back into the lens: “I'm gonna write about you on the blog.”

Offspring #3's friend shrieks: “Oh my gosh, I'd love a shout-out on Seraphic Secret.”

And here it is.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:01 AM | Comments (19)

August 10, 2008

Iranian Olympic Swimmers Flee from Jews

As I said, I could care less about the Olympics, but hey, there is some entertainment value in witnessing the Jew-hating Islamic Republic of Iran flee like cowards from the Jewish athletes in Beijing.

Let's explore why the Persians would act in such a dumb and insulting manner:

1. The Persians view all competition with non Muslims as a religious test: Islam over non-Islam. To lose to a Jew would be theologically indefensible. It's like admitting that our G-d is stronger than their G-d. Real sophisticated theologians in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

2. They're just a bunch of racist, Jew-hating Islamo Nazis.

3. All of the above.

Hey, I have an idea, let's get Barack Obama to fly on over to Beijing and engage the Iranians in, what does he call it? Oh yeah, “tough diplomacy.” I'm sure BO, with all his ivy league charm can, you know, get the genocidal-yearning Iranians to sing kumbaya and embrace the Israeli delegation.

I mean, two years in the trenches as a community organizer, AKA Socialist agitator, has definitely prepared BO for dealing with The Islamic Republic of Iran.

As for us, here at Seraphic Secret we just can't wait for Israel to bomb the crap out of those savages.

Politics reared its ugly head at the Olympic Games once more on Saturday after an Iranian swimmer refused to compete alongside Israeli Tom Be'eri.

Mohammad Alirezaei was due to race against Be'eri in the fourth heat of the 100 meter breaststroke, but pulled out, apparently under the orders of the chiefs of the Iranian delegation.

For the complete story, please click here.

Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend from the Great North, A. Mark David, QC

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 02:41 PM | Comments (15)

August 08, 2008

Our Bestest Friends: John & Cindy McCain

I know, you're all kvelling. You want one too. Just click and make a campaign contribution. It takes money to win an election. Lots of money.

Karen and I wish all our friends a restful and miraculous Shabbat.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:10 PM | Comments (2)

July 18, 2008

Change in Iraq Obama Style

Watch Obama switch positions on Iraq, endlessly, for about eight minutes. It would be funny but for the fact that he aspires to be Commander-in-Chief.

Wolf Howling, one of the most perceptive bloggers in the known universe, masterfully Critiques Obama's New York Times Manifesto on Iraq. Bu-rutal.

And from my friend Dirty Harry, breaking news on a new film and an interview with Hollywood good guy D.B. Sweeney. What a relief for a Hollywood actor, writer, director to say the following:

There’s nothing on this planet like the feeling of watching 500 combat ready Marines come to attention for the playing of the Star Spangled banner before they screen your movie.

Nothing.

I can only dream of such a feeling and honor.

Karen and I wish all our friends a lovely Shabbos, and a meaningful fast on Sunday the 17th of Tammuz.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:27 PM | Comments (2)

July 15, 2008

Comrade Obama Purges Website

As in the old Soviet Union where history was constantly revised to suit the political ends of the Communist rulers, Barak Obama is trying to rewrite history in regard to his dead-wrong predictions about the surge in Iraq.

Not surprising when you consider that this is the candidate who spent over 20-years as an active member of a Jew-hating, black separatist church and then has the chutzpah to campaign as a "uniter."

Not surprising when you consider that this is a candidate who has learned a great deal from the Communist playbook.

Orwellian thought and language have reached new heights with Barack Obama and his politburo.

Barack Obama's campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a "problem" that had barely reduced violence. .

"The surge is not working," Obama's old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province. .

The News reported Sunday that insurgent attacks have fallen to the fewest since March 2004. .

To read the complete story, please click here.

And here's John McCain on Iraq and Afghanistan.

An excerpt:

Over the last year, Senator Obama and I were part of a great debate about the war in Iraq. Both of us agreed the Bush administration had pursued a failed strategy there and that we had to change course. Where Senator Obama and I disagreed, fundamentally, was what course we should take. I called for a comprehensive new strategy -- a surge of troops and counterinsurgency to win the war. Senator Obama disagreed. He opposed the surge, predicted it would increase sectarian violence, and called for our troops to retreat as quickly as possible.

Today we know Senator Obama was wrong. The surge has succeeded. And because of its success, the next President will inherit a situation in Iraq in which America's enemies are on the run, and our soldiers are beginning to come home.

It's worth noting that John McCain spent more time being tortured in a North Vietnamese POW camp than Obama has spent in the Senate. To say that Obama's resume is thin is something of an understatement. Oh, but I forgot, Obama served in the trenches as a, ahem, community organizer. Tough gig.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:39 PM | Comments (2)

July 14, 2008

Obama AWOL

From Wolf Howling:

Obama is refusing to appear in a Town Hall debate with McCain before a crowd of military service members and their families. The debate was organized by Disabled American Veterans, Military Order of the Purple Heart and the Military Spouse Corporate Career Network, among others. This man is devoid of substance and character.

To read the complete article, please click here.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:45 AM | Comments (12)

June 11, 2008

Obama: Without the Teleprompter

Obama is great when he's reading off a teleprompter. But when he has to think on his feet, he's a complete disaster, and these two clips are a pretty accurate indication of Obama's rambling cluelessness.

That's why his handlers will never allow Obama to accept McCain't invitation to a series of town meetings. McCain would chew him up and spit him out.

Behold, the shallowness that is Barack Obama. You have to laugh. Give the kid a breathalyzer? Completely incoherent. Obama's excuse? He's short on sleep. Really and truly.

This one is absolutely hysterical. Obama counts on his deep oboe voice to carry him through. But once again, without the teleprompter, Obama rambles, tries to make light and bluff his way out of obvious inoherence. But finally he confesses that he's, y'know, tired. For pity's sake, get the man some waffles.

Obama's rambling answers remind us of you know who.

Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend Kishke via Gateway Pundit.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:29 PM | Comments (21)

Jewish Democrats Defect to McCain

Who's the man in the blue shirt?
Obama's paymaster, arch-leftist George Soros.

Last week Obama pandered big-time to AIPAC—they claim to be non-partisan, but AIPAC's leadership is solidly Democratic, quietly shilling for Obama—and he hopes to erase all the blatantly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic material on his official Presidential website.

Yup, they're scrubbing the material now, But Charles Johnson over at Little Green Footballs has uncovered a sewer of Jew-hatred on Obama's site.

Listen if you spend over 20-years as a “proud member” of a racist, Jew-hating church, it means that Obama does not reject the vile theology of this church, it's leaders and its members.

When you proudly label Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pflagar as your “spiritual advisors” it means you're comfortable with their hatred of America, their paranoid conspiracy theories, and their vicious demagoguery.

When you associate with Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dorn, unrepentant Pentagon terrorists, it means that you're not averse to their radical message. In fact, Obama kicked off his Chicago political career with a fundraiser hosted by these two traitors.

When every major Middle East policy consultant on Obama's staff is solidly anti-Israel, well it means that Obama is in tune with their views.

Obama, like most liberals, wants America to trust his high-flying, utopian rhetoric.

But Judaism teaches that we judge people by their behavior.

And Obama's behavior is not to be trusted. Not in regard to Israel and America—and not as Iran stands on the threshold of acquiring nuclear weapons. The world is far too dangerous for an Obama presidency and his collectivist dreams.

America needs to pull the lever for McCain in November.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is attracting elite Jewish Democratic donors who backed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and are concerned about Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) stance toward Israel, say McCain backers who are organizing the effort to court Democrats.

McCain has already had several fundraising events with Jewish Democrats in Washington and Florida, say his supporters.

He also has the backing of Democrat-turned-Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.), who made history as the first Jewish vice presidential candidate and has recently raised questions about Obama’s foreign policy vision for the Middle East.

Stephen Muss, the Florida developer, is the biggest Democratic donor and fundraiser to pledge his support for McCain and the Republican National Committee, said a GOP official. Muss has given tens of thousands of dollars to help Democratic candidates in recent years, including $80,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics and CQ MoneyLine.

Muss did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.

“Many Jewish Democrats are sensing there is such an existential threat to Israel that you have to vote for an individual who strongly supports the U.S.-Israel relationship,” said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), chairman of the GOP’s Jewish Victory Coalition.

To read the complete story, please click here.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:10 AM | Comments (2)

June 05, 2008

Oil Prices

The other day I filled up the gas tank in my car and got hit with a whopping $67.00 bill. Ouch!

The Democrats self-righteously lecture that we have to exploit alternative sources of energy.

I'm all for it.

Problem is, like almost all Democratic policies, it's delusional.

The industrial world runs on oil, and creating reliable and cheap alternate sources of energy is a long way from bearing fruit.

The Democrats like to blame oil companies for the world-wide spike in prices, making believe that the laws of supply and demand do not exist. They prefer dopey conspiracy theories, accusing multinational corporations of artificially inflating oil prices in order to gouge higher profits.

Barack Obama makes a point of attacking big corporations as a source of America's ills.

It's very odd, he hates big business, but his entire platform relies on the promise of Big Government—huge government. His acceptance speech yesterday promised higher taxes, cradle to grave socialism, surrender in Iraq, an end to global warming, to make the oceans recede, provide jobs for all, universal health care—Viva Fidel!—and of course the world will love us.

And oh yeah, he promised to walk on water.

Most frightening, his audience believed him.

INTERPOLATION

Hey, have you noticed that no one is fainting at Obama rallies any more? He's not gliding forward, the calm hero, with a bottle of water for the swooning maidens suffering from the Vapors, the result, no doubt, of being so close to the Savior—a savior who spent over 20-years as a “proud member” of a racist Church.

I guess that act was a bit too transparent, even for his gullible believers.

END INTERPOLATION

Anywhoo.

The only people who hate America are leftists. Which is absolutely cool. Being scorned by America and Jew-hating leftists is something we should be proud of.

Big government: History teaches that unlimited government always yields economic ruin and personal misery. And these states inevitably evolve, by internal design, into a Big Brother rule.

As the clever cartoon points out, it's Democratic policies that enable and encourage such high oil prices. Remember that next time you fill up your tank, confront massive heating bills, pay higher prices on your airline ticket. In fact, high oil prices permeate almost every nook and cranny of our economic lives.

Alternate sources of energy will be exploited. Not by massive government programs, wasteful and inefficient, but by private entrepreneurs spurred on by the spirit of innovation and capitalism.

This Israeli company is making fine headway—with seaweed.

In the meantime, we should be exploiting the oil resources that are readily available to us. New methods of drilling now exist that do not harm the environment.

Unless we act sanely oil prices will continue to rise, and the tyrants of the Muslim world will strengthen their stranglehold on our lives, using their economic leverage to export to American and European shores the radical Islam of the Wahhabi, Salafi and Khomeinist strains—to metastasize like a deadly cancer into Western culture.

Cartoon Hat Tip: Peter Stevenson

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:18 AM | Comments (20)

June 03, 2008

Democratic Politics: The Haunted

Hizbullah terrorists give the Nazi salute. Obama wants
to talk, without preconditions, to their masters, Iran.

It's become clear that Barack Obama is not a liberal, nor a progressive, but a radical leftist. He's clueless about foreign policy, which is why he receives support from the radical Islamic world. They understand exactly who he is: a leaky American vessel who would be steam-rolled by every tin-pot dictator and Jew-hating Muslim tyrant on the face of the earth.

Any man who is comfortable, for over 20 years, as a "proud member" of a racist church has deep character flaws. Any man who draws consistent support and spiritual sustenance from America and Israel hating radicals such as Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger (I keep wanting to say Father Flotsky, recalling the hysterical Lenny Bruce routine) Pentagon bombers Bernardine Dorn and husband, partner-in-terror, Bill Ayres, cannot be trusted with this country's highest office. Obama's judgement in matters of geo-politics and national defense is not just faulty, but warped by his radical ideology.

The Democrats have made their calculations. They know that Obama cannot win the general election. Hillary could have given McCain a run for his money. But she's female and Obama is black and race trumps gender in the, ahem, progressive mind.

Rather than alienate their black base, without whom they cannot win any elections, the Democratic leadership has opted to sacrifice the Presidency in favor of propping up a nominee for the most self-serving reasons: the superdelegates, AKA the party elite, will also be on the ballots in November, and though Obama will lose, they will secure the black vote and get to keep their jobs.

The superdelegates do have their priorities.

The Democrats boast that Obama's candidacy has prompted a record number of new Democratic voters. They argue that Obama has reactivated a new, untapped base that will be a signifigant factor in the elections.

Maybe yes, maybe no.

But keep in mind that the last time the Democrats made this claim was during the Presidential candidacy of George McGovern.

Republicans can be grateful that the Democrats, who have played the race card for so many years, will now down in flames as this insidious form of racism comes back to haunt them.

As Bobby Kennedy famously remarked: "Liberals are suicidal."

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:48 AM | Comments (17)

April 30, 2008

Black Religious Traditions?

Ida Kamisnka (right) ponders black theology: “Oy vey, what if Jeremiah
Wright does represent mainstream black churches?” Super stars of Yiddish
stage and film, mother Esther-Rochel Kaminska and her Oscar nominated
daughter Ida Kaminska in the Polish-Yiddish movie Tkies Kaf,
The Handshake, 1924.

Jeremiah Wright performs at the National Press Club:

“This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright,” Jeremiah Wright said. “It is an attack on the black church.”

He goes on to appoint himself as the typical voice of Black American religious traditions.

Okay. Good to know.

Interpolation #1:

Seraphic Secret anxiously waits for hundreds if not thousands of black pastors and church lay leaders to deny Wright's outrageous libel. We look forward to a public denunciation of Wright's claim from members of the black Christian community.

So far:

Nothing.

Seraphic Secret suspects that Wright just might be right.

End Interpolation #1:

“Why am I speaking out now?” Wright challenges. “If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama and her religious tradition, and my daddy and his religious tradition and my grandma, you got another thing coming.”

Wright goes on, once again, to justify the September 11 terrorist attacks by preaching: “America's chickens are coming home to roost.”

I claim no expertise in Christian scripture, but I do know that Jesus was Jewish—which might come as a surprise to Wright—and the quote below represents normative Rabbinic Judaism. Using this particular Torah to defend Islamic terrorism indicates a depth of cynicism that is stunning.

Thus, Obama's ex-mentor and ex-spiritual advisor is revealed as just another slick race hustler—hello Jesse Jackson, hello Al Sharpton—a greedy demagogue determined to keep American blacks down on the plantation where they can be exploited by the Democratic party and a cadre of self-appointed thugs, AKA Community Leaders, who feed off a mind-set of victimhood and a litany of historical despair.

Anyway, here's Wright—as racist and intellectually brutish as the slave holders who manipulated the Bible to justify the evil of slavery: “Jesus said, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles.”

Biblical principles?

As channeled by Osama Bin Laden.

Wright moves on to his good buddy Louis Farrakhan, the black version of the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter's being vilified for and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago. He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think about him. . . . Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color.”

Barack Obama claims that until now he was ignorant of Wright's Jew-hatred, of Wright's pathological hatred of America, of Wright's assertion that the American government has purposely injected AIDS into the Black population, of Wright's endless defense of the indefensible—including Hamas.

Obama would have us believe that for the past 20 years Jeremiah Wright has been all warm and cuddly whenever Barack Obama was in Church. But magically, whenever Obama was absent from Church the good Pastor went from Jekyll to Hyde. Yup, suddenly Barack no longer recognizes the man who brought him to Christ.

I guess Jeremiah Wright is now Barack Obama's ex-ex Pastor and ex-ex Spiritual Advisor.

Whoa. I thought Barack could no more disown his ex-ex Pastor than he could disown his white grandmother?

Oh wait, he did disown his white grandmother. The woman who raised and sacrificed for him. In fact, he threw her under the bus. I guess that makes her his ex-ex white grandmother.

As Edward G. Robinson confides to Fred MacMurray about his infallible instinct for detecting liars in Billy Wilder's towering movie Double Indemnity: “The little man in my stomach is acting up. And the little man is never wrong.”

I'm eating some awesome shmurah matzah left over from Pesach and I'm watching Barack Obama on TV and the little man in my stomach is not acting up—he's doing sumersaults!

Interpolation #2:

Seraphic Secret was disheartened to observe that the NAACP chose to honor Jeremiah Wright just the other night. Wright's supporters emphasize with tedious regularity that Wright has accomplished many good works during his career.

This is the “making the trains run on time” argument. It is beneath contempt. The issue is quite simple. Wright is mired in a political theology which, if espoused by a white man, would properly be denounced as ignorant, angry, racist, separatist, and utterly backward. A white man and his congregation would be shunned by any decent society, not honored nor excused.

End interpolation #2:

Obama has been attending Wright's church for 22 years.

Obama has already told us that Wright is like a member of his family.

Obama has already told us that Wright has been a central mentor and advisor in his life.

And we know that Obama has contributed $40,000 to Trinity Church, where Black Liberation Theology, a crackpot bigotry, is known to all members of the church—except for clueless Barack Obama. For the past 20 years as Jeremiah Wright ranted and raved the Harvard educated Senator was, y'know, snoozing.

We also know that Wright performed Barack's marriage ceremony to the not so proud of her country Michelle.

Wright baptized Obama's two daughters.

Barack Obama brings his two daughters to Wright's church to worship. Obviously, Obama sees nor hears nothing wrong in Wright's church.

There are two choices regarding Obama's relationship to Wright.

1. Barack Obama is lying about what he knows and when he knew about Wright's poisonous views.

2. Barack Obama has deeply flawed judgement, and the closest he should ever get to the White House is on a guided tour of the West Wing.

Interpolation #3:

Any Jew who supports Barack Obama is delusional.

Whoops! Just discovered a whole batch of seriously delusional Jews. Wanna guess which candidate they're supporting?

End Interpolation #3:

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:47 AM | Comments (32)

April 23, 2008

Just Let Me Eat My Waffle!

Obama prefers eating important waffles to discussing minor issues like
Jimmy Carter and Hamas.

Proving once again that he's a true leader and a fearless friend of Israel, Barack Obama was asked by a reporter what he thought about Jimmy “Jihad” Carter's meeting with Hamas last week, the Messiah of the the Democratic Party snapped: “Why can't I just eat my waffle?”

Pressed again for an answer Obama whined: “Just let me eat my waffle.”

As I said, I so hope the Democrats nominate Obama. He's in full melt-down mode. But the Dems have been playing racial politics for so long that they dare not back down. They cannot win a general election without the black vote, and so they can't throw Obama overboard. That might look, y'know, nasty. So, they have to go through with this demolition derby for the White House, even though Hillary is a far stronger candidate.

As Bobby Kennedy once said: “Liberals are suicidal.”

Oh, and check out the jihadist fundraiser for Obama. No wonder Barack just wants to chow down on his waffles.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:30 AM | Comments (18)

April 07, 2008

Black Liberation Theology AKA Bigotry 101

Joshuapundit analyzes the bigotry of Barack Obama's Pastor, Jeremiah Wright. This is the theology Obama imbibed for over 20 years, and this theology is, in fact, an uncompromising racist anti-Semitism that Obama's daughters have been exposed to all their lives.

If a Republican candidate were a member of a white supremacist church for over 20 years, his career would be annihilated in hours. And properly so.

But Obama gets a pass.

In fact, Hollywood, a bastion of, ahem, progressive thought, is all for Obama. Every conversation I've had in this town confirms that Hollywood and Hollywood Jews—not really supporters of Israel as it is—just adore this pretty boy socialist whose staff is bulging with anti-Zionists.

Movements like black liberation theology reject the idea of G-d's universal nature in favor of race based superiority. The largely secular Nazis used a similar logic to co-opt the German churches with the "Aryan Christianity" movement in Nazi Germany, which claimed that Jesus was not a Jew but an Aryan Galilean, and that the Aryan race was the "chosen people".

Substitute `black' or `Afro-American' for Aryan and that is exactly where the UCC Trinity Church and Jeremiah Wright are coming from.

And this is what Obama was referring to in his March 14 speech when he said: "I knew Reverend Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago."

Interesting the way the dots connect, isn't it?

Unfortunately for Barack Obama, leftist academia is by its very nature a lot more tolerant of racism and anti-Semitism when it comes from people like Cone, Hopkins and Wright than America as a whole.

To read the rest of the aricle, please click here.

Meanwhile, as liberal Jews shill for Obama, who is no friend to Israel, but is certainly a dear friend of a rabid Jew-hater, Pastor Hagee has raised 6 million dollars for Israel.

American Evangelist John Hagee on Sunday announced donations of $6 million to a number of Israeli causes and declared that Israel must remain in control of all of Jerusalem.

Hagee, who has been in the news lately for his endorsement of US Presidential candidate John McCain and his criticism of the Catholic Church, brought hundreds of backers on a solidarity trip to Israel.

Hagee's group, Christians United for Israel, held a colorful rally at Jerusalem's convention center. The mostly American audience waved Israeli flags and cheered as Hagee joined keynote speaker Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel's hardline opposition Likud party, to insist Jerusalem remain united and under Jewish control.

''Turning part or all of Jerusalem over to the Palestinians would be tantamount to turning it over to the Taliban,'' Hagee said. Palestinians claim the eastern part of the city, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as the capital of their future state.

Among the 16 causes Hagee supported with the contributions he announced were divided the Magen David Adom emergency service and a conference center in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel.

A Hollywood friend recently objected to Hagee's involvement with Israel. My buddy observed that Hagee just wants to convert Jews. That his motivations are suspect.

My buddy, a decent guy, a Democrat who does support Israel, is not ritually observant. I told him that Hagee and I had theological differences but I welcomed his support and the support of his church. Personally, I'm never threatened by Christians. I'm secure in my religious beliefs. In fact, in the years Karen and I have been blogging here at Seraphic Secret, we've discovered a deep and abiding kinship with conservative Christians that we do not have with liberal Jews.

Update: And of course we can always count on the leadership of the Reform movement to take the exact wrong position regarding Pastor Hagee and Israel.

Eric Yoffie Excommunicates Pastor Hagee.

As if Yoffie and the Reform movement (excluding some fine individuals, many who are friends of this blog) have done a fraction as much for Israel as Hagee and his fine congregation.

As I said, I'm far more comfortable with most conservative Christians than with arch leftists like Yoffie.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:51 AM | Comments (22)

March 18, 2008

Obama's Pastor: “Israel, That Dirty Word”

Here's Barack Obama's religious adviser, whoops, excuse me, former religious adviser, former pastor, on Israel.

Hey, when did Wright become Barack's former pastor?

Wow, that was fast.

And where's Wright?

In Africa.

That's convenient. Barack's handlers don't want the old bigot and anti-Semite shooting off his mouth. He might be quoted, ahem, out of context.

But Barack wasn't in Church when Wright made these comments. He was never in Church when Wright made any of his hateful racist, anti-white, anti-American, Jew-hating comments.

In 20-years he was never in Church when Wright was spouting his incandescent lies. As Jay Leno quipped: “Obama must have been in his Mosque.”

In fact, the great uniter was present during Wright's most hateful and bigoted speeches.

I'll bet he's going to tell us that he wasn't applauding.

Uh-huh.

Obama said in his speech this morning that some of Wright's comments were incendiary.

Hellooo, it's not incendiary. It's a series of blood libels, one crude lie after another. Cheap race hustling.

It's also clinically paranoid speech.

But Wright performed Obama's wedding ceremony to the patriotic Michelle.

Wright baptized Obama's children.

I'm pretty careful about which synagogue I join. I'm extremely cautious about which Rabbis I associate with. If ever I heard any Rabbi deliver a sermon with rhetoric like Wright's I'd head for the hills, and I'd report him to the FBI for seditious speech. I'd certainly resign my membership and I'd write a letter explaining why. I would not continue to sit in shul week after week—for 20 years.

And I certainly wouldn't remain in a shul if it honored, oh, let's say David Duke, the white equivalent of Louis Farrakhan.

I would not sit in a shul where a Rabbi screeched: “No, not G-d bless America, G-d damned America.”

I'd denounce such a Rabbi as a traitor. And anyone who cannot denounce such a man does not deserve to be President of the United States. Does not deserve to be in the U. S. Senate. Does not deserve to be local dog catcher.

There are two Rabbis in my own community who I avoid like the plague, their politics are toxic, politics of appeasement and surrender and I won't have anything to do with them.

Whom you associate with says a great deal about your character.

The New York Times spilled gallons of ink on a non-story about John McCain's non-relationship with a female lobbyist. The point of the non-story, I presume, was that McCain's character and judgment were in question because of this non-relationship.

Barack Obama has had an extremely close relationship with Reverend Wright for over 20-years. Thus, it is quite legitimate to question Senator Obama's character and judgment.

But I have no doubt that many liberal Jews will vote for Obama:

1. Because he transcends race.
2. Because he's a uniter.
3. Because he's beyond poliitcs.
4. Because he's good looking.
5. Because they are the people they have been waiting for.
6. Whatever that means, beyond the obvious narcissism.

Actually, Obama's just another liberal/leftist/progressive/greenie/whatever, who believes in the endless expansion of a crushing government bureaucracy, and who yearns to turn our health care systems into a massive and inefficient DMV.

Bobby Kennedy once characterized liberals as suicidal.

I sooooo hope the Dems nominate Obama.

I smell McGovern.

Check out Bookworm's fine analysis of Obama's deceitful speech.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:24 AM | Comments (31)

March 17, 2008

Crushing Tibet

Now that the Chinese are hosting the next Olympics and the Tibetans are starting to make some noise about the cultural genocide that the Chinese have committed in Tibet, maybe the Palestinian-obsessed media will start paying attention to the true horrrors in Tibet.

From Joshuapundit:

For those of you who don't know, Tibet was an independent country for centuries, until the Communist Chinese regime invaded and occupied them in 1950. The Dalai Lama was forced to flee the country, along with thousands of other Tibetans, many of whom settled in neighboring India and Nepal. The ones who stayed were subjected to harsh rule which was concentrated on dispersing the Tibetans, destroying their national and religious culture and subjecting them to what amounted to ethnic cleansing. Tibetans were forcibly removed from their homeland and settled in neighboring provinces while ethnic Chinese were brought in to settle in Tibet.

Due to the nature of Mao Tse-Tung's regime, the Tibetan's Buddhist religion was singled out for special repression. Something like 6,000 monasteries, nunneries and temples, and their contents were partially or fully destroyed from the period of the Chinese invasion and during the Cultural Revolution, and literally thousands of Buddhist monks were killed or driven out of the country. Human rights groups have confirmed the identities of over 700 Tibetan political prisoners in Tibet, although there are likely to be hundreds more whose names simply aren't known or confirmed. It's quite common for such people to be detained without charge or trial for up to four years through Chinese regulations calling for "re-education through labor."

It's interesting to compare the attention paid to the Tibetans, a truly oppressed and occupied people with the attention paid to the Palestinians, who are neither.

To read the complete article, please click here.

And this from the brilliant Yaakov Kirschen, Dry Bones:

Hat Tip: Soccer Dad

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:28 AM | Comments (11)

February 13, 2008

Obama's Legions of the Blissful

Leon Weseltier is a liberal. But he has a clear-eyed view of Barak Obama and the hard-left swing of the Democratic party. We disagree with Weseltier that Hillary Clinton would be a better President than John McCain. However, we do share the belief that Barak Obama is an empty suit, a slick bag of rhetorical tricks that add up to bumper-sticker, feel-good nothingness. Obama would be a threat to national security, a yoke around the State of Israel, and a profoundly immature Commander-in-Chief in a time of war against Islamofascism.

What you think of a presidential candidate is in large measure determined by what you think of the world. Different circumstances call for different talents, different sensibilities, different approaches to power. "Leadership" comes in many forms. A sterling individual may be historically inappropriate; and a person whom it is impossible to admire may accomplish significant things. The question of whether Barack Obama will make a fine commander-in-chief finally depends on your view of the direction of history in the coming years. I cannot escape the foreboding that we are heading into an era of conflict, not an era of conciliation. I do not mean that there will be many wars, though I cannot imagine that the threat to American security from Al Qaeda and its many associates can be met without a massive and sustained military operation in western Pakistan, and I cannot imagine any Pakistani government ordering such an operation. It is not "the politics of fear" to remind Obama's legions of the blissful that, while they are watching Scarlett Johansson sway to the beat, somewhere deep inside a quasi independent territory we might call Islamistan people are making plans to blow them to bits. (Yes, they can.)

To read the complete article, please click here.

Update: Howling Wolf reports on Obama's spineless Senate vote:

A major piece of anti-terror legislation was passed by the Senate with large bi-partisan support. One of the people voting against it was Barack Obama.

To read the complete article, please click here.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:27 AM | Comments (23)

November 13, 2007

Mukasey: Early Chanukah Gift

A fine article about a good and brilliant man whose nomination was opposed by a politically correct block of liberals who care more about abstract theories than the harsh realities of the war being waged upon the West by uncompromising jihadists.

The confirmation of Michael Mukasey should have been a slam dunk. Instead, it rolled around the basket for eight weeks, teetered perilously on the rim (when it was almost not recommended out of the Judiciary Committee), and, happily, finally dropped through the hoop.

It should have been a slam dunk because of the quality of the nominee. Senator Whitehouse, a Democrat of Rhode Island, commended Judge Mukasey as "a brilliant lawyer, a distinguished jurist, and a good man." Moreover, his nomination was strongly endorsed by Senator Schumer of New York, a liberal Democrat and a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who knew and respected Mr. Mukasey's qualities. The first hearing in the Judiciary Committee turned out to be something of a love fest with senators of both parties relating to the nominee with exceptional respect and admiration.

I was not surprised. I have known Michael Mukasey for almost 60 years, since he first entered the second grade at the Ramaz School. I was his teacher in a Jewish sociology course in his senior year of high school. I was his counselor at camp. In all of this growing period, he demonstrated the same qualities of dignity, integrity, refinement, brilliance, and modesty for which he is known today.

As his rabbi, I was approached by him for advice when, as a federal judge in the First District he was asked to be the presiding justice in the first World Trade Center bombing case in 1993 at the conclusion of which, he sentenced Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman to life in prison.

He was told in advance that if he took on the case, no matter what the conclusion would be, he and his wife would have to be guarded for the indefinite future by federal marshals, night and day, every place they went, including in their home. I listened to him, but I couldn't offer him advice except to say that if he declined the case I would certainly understand his reasons, but if he accepted, it would be a great service to our country. Personally, I had little doubt what his decision would be. Mr. Mukasey always was a patriot, a man of great principle, and a person of exceptional courage. That's why the president chose him, why Senator Schumer supported him, and why the Senate Judiciary Committee treated him in its first hearing with such respect. And that's why his confirmation should have been a slam dunk.

To read the complete article by Rabbi Haskell Lookstein, please click here.

Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Lance Fogel

Seraphic Friend Shrink Wrapped comments on therapy, the New York Times, the Mukasey affair and The Suicidal Pursuit of Perfection.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2007

Laura Bush Embraces Tyranny

Caroline Glick observes the First Lady don the abaya and does not like what she sees.

And neither should we.

Laura Bush now speaks the poison language of multi-culturalism. For the Muslim/jihadist world, this is a huge symbolic victory. For America, for Israel, for Democracies inclined to fight for their freedom this is another nail in the coffin.

Due to the fact that the abayas convey a symbolic message of effective enslavement of women, Mrs. Bush's interaction with women clad in abayas was the aspect of her trip most scrutinized. In the United Arab Emirates, Mrs. Bush was photographed sitting between four women covered head to toe in abayas while she was wearing regular clothes. The image of Mrs. Bush sitting between four women who look like nothing more than black piles of fabric couldn't have been more viscerally evocative and consequently, symbolically meaningful.

The image told the world that she - and America - is free and humane while the hidden women of Arabia are enslaved and their society is inhumane.

But then Mrs. Bush went to Saudi Arabia and the symbolic message of the previous day was superseded and lost when she donned an abaya herself and had her picture taken with other abaya-clad women. The symbolic message of those photographs also couldn't have been clearer. By donning an abaya, Mrs. Bush symbolically accepted the legitimacy of the system of subjugating women that the garment embodies, (or disembodies). Understanding this, conservative media outlets in the US criticized her angrily.

Sunday morning, Mrs. Bush sought to answer her critics in an interview with Fox News. Unfortunately, her remarks compounded the damage. Mrs. Bush said, "These women do not see covering as some sort of subjugation of women, this group of women that I was with. That's their culture. That's their tradition. That's a religious choice of theirs."

To read Caroline Glick's entire article, please click here.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:32 PM | Comments (3)

October 26, 2007

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week: Columbia University

by Fern Sidman

On Wednesday evening, October 24th, the tension in the air was palpable on the campus of Columbia University. In a packed classroom in the mathematics building, a panel discussion was held as part of an ongoing series of lectures in a week long event being held on over one-hundred university and college campuses. This nationwide event is entitled Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week and is the brainchild of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

David Horowitz is a former left-wing academic whose politics have now taken a giant step to the right. As one of the founders of the New Left in the 1960s, he was also the editor of its most influential magazine, Ramparts.

He is the author, with Peter Collier, of a number of best-selling dynastic biographies on the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Fords, and the Roosevelts. With Collier he also wrote Destructive Generation (1989), a chronicle of their break with the 1960's Left, that has been compared to Whittaker Chambers’ Witness and other classic works documenting a break from totalitarianism.

On his web site, www.frontpagemag.com, Mr. Horowitz champions an array of causes including the defense of the principles of individual freedom as well as defending free societies in the war against their enemies, and the reestablishment of academic freedom in American schools.

Because of the controversy that swirls around an event of this nature and magnitude, threats of protests and possible disruptions were made by a number of quintessential left-wing and pro-Muslim organizations including the Revolutionary Communist Party, United for Peace and Justice, Jewish Progressives and the Muslim Student Association, among others.

Several security guards, provided by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, who looked strikingly similar to stoic FBI agents or undercover cops ushered in the panelists and stood guard around the room. While the audience was quite diverse, outside the building stood a lone demonstrator, who held a sign reviling the event as racist. Inside, the story was a bit different.

A contingent from the Revolutionary Communist Party along with left wing representatives of the Women's Studies and Middle Eastern Studies departments got their printing presses rolling at top speed, churning out libelous propaganda aimed at discrediting the objectives of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week and took aim at the panelists, namely Phyllis Chesler. They even resorted to passing out a sheet of pre-prepared questions for audience members that reeked of bellicosity, and surely did not promote open mindedness. So much for academic freedom and freedom of speech.

The student representative who helped organize this event asked the audience to curtail their predilection to disrupt the speakers and announced the rules for the Q&A, which followed.

Judging by the persons impaneled for the event at Columbia University, it would appear that Mr. Horowitz is not the only one whose political voice has made some major modifications. Dr. Phyllis Chesler, an Emerita Professor of Psychology at the College of Staten Island was a prominent voice and vanguard of the Second Wave feminist movement and a former political progressive. When she began challenging the feminist and left-wing camps for propounding a "multi-cultural relativism" which correctly charged the Muslim world for its pervasive and barbaric abuse of women, she was labeled as a "dangerous traitor" by her former colleagues and relegated to a persona non-grata status.

Her groundbreaking views on Islamic gender and religious apartheid have caused near riots on the many campuses where she has lectured. Chesler is a self-described "culture warrior" and is passionately committed to exposing the "Big Lies" of the left leaning, liberal Western academy. She is the author hundreds of articles and of 13 books, including, "The New Anti-Semitism - The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It", (2003) which graphically illustrates the anti-Semitic agenda of intellectuals on the left, under the guise of anti-Zionism.

Ibn Warraq is a best-selling author, ex-Muslim intellectual, a dogmatic secularist, scholar and founder of the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society and a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, specializing in Koranic criticism. Warraq gathered world notice through his controversial historiographies of the early centuries of the Islamic timeline and has published works which tend to challenge traditional conceptions of the period. He is the author of seven books, including Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995), The Origins of the Koran (1998),Quest for the Historical Muhammad, (2000), What the Koran Really Says (2002),Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out(2003), the just released - Defending the West: a Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism (2006) and Which Koran? (2007).

He has also spoken at the "Victims of Jihad" conference at the United Nations that was organized by the International Humanist and Ethical Union alongside speakers such as Bat Ye'or, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Simon Deng.

The name "Ibn Warraq" is a pseudonym, to protect the true identity of a man who is "most wanted" in Muslim circles. Having been highly critical of Islam he is now considered an apostate, a marked man for his "heretical" views and for "betraying" the faith he was born into. His detractors claim he engages in anti-Islamic polemics while others such as atheist author Richard Dawkins describe him as a "deeply knowledgeable scholar of Islam."

Christina Hoff-Sommers is a former professor of philosophy and ethics at Clark University in Worcester, MA and a resident scholar at a conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI). She is an author of several books including her seminal work, Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women (1994), and The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men (2001).

She suggests that feminist leaders are not only placing their political goals above academic honesty, but they are also indoctrinating impressionable university students not with grounded science, but rather with disingenuous, emotionally-charged pseudo information. Like her co-panelist, Phyllis Chesler, Hoff-Sommers accuses the Western feminist movement of losing its moral clarity and of abandoning the cause of spotlighting and protesting against the horrific abuse of women in the Muslim world.

The evening began with Ibn Warraq offering a refutation of the late Columbia University English and Comparative Literature professor, Edward Said's 1978 book entitled "Orientalism", which marked the beginnings of postcolonial studies.

According to the impeccable scholarly research done by Warraq, he asserts that the roots of late 20th century Islamo-Fascism began with Said's premise that "all of the woes of the Arabs in the Islamic world can be blamed on America and Israel".

He points to the intellectual dishonesty of Said's claims that all Europeans are racists, thereby creating "a western style for dominating the Orient." He also reminds us that there are gross historic inaccuracies in Said's manifesto and that Said was not a Muslim and was not a scholar of Islamic thought, yet did everything in his power to foster the spread of Islamic fundamentalism.

Warraq tells us that through his writings, Said created a climate in which self-pity infected the vast precincts of the Islamic world, in which the West also appeared as the colonialist aggressor while the East remained the passive victim.

Dr. Phyllis Chesler, despite an injury to her leg, literally rose to the occasion and delivered her stirring remarks with the aplomb of a veteran academic and professor. She addressed a number of important issues including the growing concern in the Western world of the rampant spread of Islamo-Fascism which threatens to bring with it to our shores its own inimitable version of gender and racial apartheid.

That translates into forced veiling of women, honor killings, female genital mutilation, stoning, wife-beating, forced marriages and purdah, not to mention executions of women, intellectuals, dissidents, homosexuals and other infidels.

She took issue with her former feminist colleagues when she said, "Western feminists and academics must end their unnatural obsession with the so-called "occupation" of Palestine and focus of the occupation of women's bodies throughout the Muslim world. If they care about women, they must confront the issues that characterize Islamic gender apartheid and affect at least half a billion women in the Islamic world."

She also attempted to debunk the myth that former colonialist powers and imperialist forces were to blame for Islamic barbarism. Said Dr. Chesler, "The Christian Crusades did not "cause" Arab or Muslim slavery, racism, polygamy, arranged child marriage, female genital mutilation, honor murders, forced face-veiling, capital punishment for apostates (Muslims who leave Islam), or the segregation of women. It did not cause Islamic jihad or Islamic imperialism which preceded the Crusades by centuries."

She also put forth the notion of a "new McCarthyism" being spearheaded by the left that imposes fear on academics who dare speak about Muslim on Muslim violence by pigeon-holing them as "racists" and "colonialists".

The last speaker of the evening was Christina Hoff-Sommers who also addressed the issue of Islamic misogyny and said that Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare would be the liberation of Islamic women. According to Hoff-Sommers the Islamic revolution set women back for at least a century, outlining the subjugation of Iranian women under a hideous male hegemony.

She spoke of a book entitled, The Girls of Riyadh which was described as "chic literature", an Eastern version of "Sex In The City", which caused Imams in Saudi Arabia to whip men into a violent frenzy against women. She called this, "a compelling indictment of Islamic incitement."

She praised heroic dissidents who are on a civilizing mission in Islamic countries, attempting to battle the forces of misogyny and patriarchal oppression of women. Hoff-Sommers posits that Islamic women are following the example of conservative women's rights activists such as Frances Willard, the second president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and are embracing a creative interpretation of the Koran.

She chided the major Western feminist movements and women's studies departments on college campuses for focusing on such issues as the shape of women's bodies, sexual repression and the philosophy of the "Vagina Monologues", rather than championing the cause of basic human rights for women in the Islamic world.

Roberts Rules of Order seemed to prevail during the question and answer segment of the program, as the audience was again advised to keep to the question only format and not engage in diatribes or lengthy speeches.

Most of the questions focused on American military involvement in Iraq and several questioners (mostly from the Revolutionary Communist Party) intimated that this event was just a clever subterfuge for promoting the Bush administration's "war on terror" strategy, which seeks to create a groundswell of support for the war in Iraq.

The questioners made little reference to the obvious threat of Islamo-Fascism that was so eloquently spoken about by the panelists, but rather they focused on their own anti-American agenda as they questioned the perceived hypocrisy of the Iraqi constitution that enshrined Islam as the state religion. The panelists remained nonplussed during the Q&A and answered the questions with alacrity, armed with a voluminous amount of facts and a plethora of knowledge.

The adversaries of truth and the purveyors of the Big Lies were outdone by the valiant truth tellers and protectors of the future of western civilization as we know it.

While history may or may not record this event at Columbia University, our kudos and accolades go to Ibn Warraq, Phyllis Chesler and Christina Hoff-Sommers for summoning the moral strength and courage to bear the slings and arrows of the totalitarian left, for exercising their right of freedom of speech in the name of truth and for their shining collective consciences. May they continue to lead us to a more peaceful, secure world, unfettered by fascism of any kind.

UPDATE: How's this for irony? Columbia University was nice and civilized, but things were quite different for David Horowitz at Emory University where the tyrants of the left refused to let him speak.

Seraphic Secret will say it once again: the most serious threats to our freedoms, especially freedom of speech, comes from the left in America, not from the right.

On Wednesday evening, the Emory University Chapter of the College Republicans hosted acclaimed author and activist David Horowitz for a lecture on radical Islam as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. From the beginning of Horowitz's speech, rowdy protesters continually interrupted him and less than half an hour into the event, the crowd became so disruptive that police were called in and Horowitz had to be escorted off stage.

To read the rest of the article, please click here.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:34 AM | Comments (6)

October 19, 2007

See No Proliferation

Below, a fine editorial from, who else, The Wall Street journal.

Seraphic Secret would like to remind its readers that back in 1981, when Israel, in Operation Opera , bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility, this necessary military action was condemned by ever major editorial page in America—except for the Wall Street Journal.

Of course, Israel's preemptive strike was rational and necessary for a nuclear Iraq posed
not only an existential threat to Israel, but in the hands of Saddam Hussein, a tyrant who never blinked at murdering hundreds of thousands of people, this weapon would have afforded him genocidal power over his other neighbors.

We are still waiting for the editorial staff of The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc. to admit that their screeds against Israel were not only wrong, but in hindsight truly foolish.

We will wait forever, for as Dennis Prager has said: “Being on the left means never having to say you're sorry.”

Israel's latest strike, deep into Syrian territory, presumably on a North Korean/Syrian nuclear facility has drawn a great heaving silence from the Arab world.

This indicates two things: The Arabs are relieved that the Syrian nuclear ambitions have been shut down. Certainly the Egyptians and the Saudis are thrilled. They have no love for Syria or Puppy Assad, the weak tyrant. But it also means that the Arab regimes are deeply intimidated by Israel's ability to shut down Syria's "advanced" ground defense systems.

Modern Russian systems.

In fact, the Israelis jammed the Russian radar so effectively that the Syrians did not even know that they were being jammed.

No doubt, the Syrians would like a refund from the Russians.

All this leads to Iran.

The Persians have vowed to eliminate Israel. The Persians are, by some estimates, about sixteen months from going hot. Israel cannot allow Iran to go nuclear.

America, stuck in a terrible repeat of Carter and Clinton's desperate peace-making attempts between Israel and her implacable Arab enemies—the Arabs have no desire for peace, no desire to build a state, only to destroy a state—seems incapable of dealing effectively with the Iranian threat. Diplomacy and sanctions are a dead issue. They have never worked against any tyrant ever.

Israel will have to do the job.

The silence from the Bush Administration over Israel's recent bombing of a site in Syria gets louder by the day. U.S. officials continue to look the other way, even as reports multiply that Israel and U.S. intelligence analysts believe the site was a partly constructed nuclear reactor modeled after a North Korean design.

The weekend was full of reports about these intelligence judgments, first in the U.S. media then picked up by the Israeli press. Israel's former chief of military intelligence, Major General Aharon Zeevi Farkash, called them "logical." That's the term of art people use to confirm things in Israel when they want to get around the military censors.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Israel and offered her own non-confirmation confirmation. "We're very concerned about any evidence of, any indication of, proliferation," she said, according to the New York Times. "And we're handling those in appropriate diplomatic channels." Just what you need when your enemies are caught proliferating nuclear expertise--a little more diplomacy. The world is lucky Israel preferred to act against the threat, in what seems to have been a smaller version of its 1981 attack against Iraq's Osirak reactor.

To read the entire editorial, please click here.

Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend and Fox Business Network Producer Jake Novak

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 05:52 AM | Comments (4)

October 02, 2007

The Jewish Enemy Within

From Melanie Phillips, a fine article about Hellenized Jews.

Thus Jewish nationalism is un-Jewish, apparently, because it promotes war rather than peace (ignoring, of course, the inconvenient truth that Israel is a militarised society only because it is the historic victim of an unremitting war waged against it); and Jews are said to have a duty to be hostile to Jewish nationalism because Jews were the victims of nationalism. This, of course, is so absurd as to be incredible to anyone outside the bizarre thought system of the extreme left; the equation of fascism with national self-determination not only suggests a form of cultural nihilism, since it would make it morally beyond the pale for any people to have its own nation, but is contradicted by the left’s own championing of Palestinian and other supposedly nationalist movements claiming the very same right to self-determination.

To read the entire article, please click here.

Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Sue.

Here's a perfect example of a Jewish enemy within.

Here's another.

This group defines the term.

And here in Los Angeles, well, we have this guy. Is it any wonder Orthodox Jews keep away from UCLA?

And oh yeah, lest we forget, the 88% of American Jews who continue to vote, lemming-like, for the Democrats, a party that embraces the most vile Jew-hatred the far left dishes.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:07 PM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2007

MoveOn.org Calls General Patraeus a Traitor

...as General David Petraeus provides his Iraq assessment to Congress--the antiwar group MoveOn.org is running a full-page advertisement in the New York Times under the headline: "General Petraeus or General Betray us? Cooking the books for the White House."

Let's be clear: MoveOn.org is suggesting that General Petraeus has 'betrayed' his country. This is disgusting. To attack as a traitor an American general commanding forces in war because his 'on the ground' experience does not align with MoveOn.org's political objectives is utterly shameful. It shows contempt for America's military leadership, as well as for the troops who have confidence in him, as our fellow soldiers in Iraq certainly do.

General Petraeus has served this country for over 35 years with honor, distinction, and integrity. And this is not just about General Petraeus. After all, if General Petraeus is "cooking the books," then the entire military chain of command in Baghdad, and all the staff, military and civilian, who have been working with General Petraeus are complicit, since Petraeus did not write his report in isolation. They are all, apparently, 'betray[ing] us.'

MoveOn.org has been working closely with the Democratic congressional leadership --as an article in today's Sunday New York Times Magazine makes clear. And consider this comment by a Democratic senator from Friday's Politico: "'No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV,' noted one Democratic senator, who spoke on the condition on anonymity. 'The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us.'

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

Notice: Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama have not denounced Moveon.org. Why? Because they are in this gang's pocket, they need their money. Clinton and Obama have been bought and sold by these vile creatures.

These people have no shame. No shame at all.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:50 PM | Comments (16)

August 19, 2007

The Bumper Sticker Mind

Here's the latest in deeply progressive political thought.

Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend Yehudit, Kesher

And let's all wish Yehudit and Kesher a happy five year anniversary. Yehudit's blog is one of the oldest Jewish blogs on planet earth and one of the very finest. Yehudit's work is always thorough and incredibly articulate. The Jewish world is a richer and better place due to Yehudit's important work.

Read about Seraphic Secret's kesher, connection, with Yehudit: The Kesher with Kesher.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 06:07 PM | Comments (6)

August 17, 2007

Tibet: The Victims You Never Hear About

We are always hearing about the poor oppressed Palestinians. Lefties can't rush to their aid fast enough, and boy are they quick to condemn, ahem, Is-ra-eli a-ggression, while conveniently ignoring Arab on Arab slaughter. The Palis have cleverly positioned themselves as victims par excellence. In truth, they are victims of their own political thuggery.

And let's face it, those men and women who go about shilling for the so-called Palestinians—feeling all self-righteous and heroic—risk nothing from the Israelis. (Rachel Corrie's death was an accident) What they do risk is getting kidnapped and tortured by one of several Palestinian terror groups, made to convert to the religion of peace, and maybe even married off to the man or woman of their dreams. Mazal Tov!

Here's a true hero. A woman who knows good from evil. A woman who is risking all for the sake of Tibetan independence.

Approximately 1.2 million Tibetan Buddhists have been murdered by the Chinese Communists. Untold numbers of Tibetans have been condemned and lost in Chinese gulags. Thousands of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries have been destroyed by the Chinese. Click here for details.

Here's a Seraphic Secret: You never hear about the Tibetans for one simple reason: they are non-violent. They do not go about murdering innocent men, women and children. They do not revel in their victimhood. And of course their enemies are not Jews so of course, the oh-so-compassionate left completely ignore them. As does the U.N. and other NGO's. Much more fun to consort with genuine Jew-haters and terrorists. And besides, those checkered Arab kaffiyas are killer fashion items.

Karen and I wish all our Seraphic Friends a lovely and meaningful Shabbos.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:52 PM | Comments (4)

August 14, 2007

The Jew Hating Crunchy Granola Gang

University of Maryland student Mia Lazarus recently went to buy some chips and juice at the Maryland Food Collective. The clerk at this grocery and sandwich shop in the student union read her t-shirt’s “Baltimore Zionist District” and “I Stand for Israel” slogans and then declared, “Your shirt offends me. I won’t ring you up.”

Another coop cashier eventually sold Lazarus her chips and juice. But more instructive than Lazarus’s ability to finally buy her groceries has been the aftermath. After an hours-long, “teary” meeting between Lazarus, her friends, and the collective, the coop agreed that it would serve any customer who wasn’t physically or verbally abusive, but that workers offended by a customer’s politics could arrange for another clerk to serve a patron.

To read the entire article, please click here.

Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Dr. Carol

A few observations:

1. Any serious threat to freedom of thought and freedom of speech comes from the left in America, not from the right.

2. Virulent Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism has found a comfortable home on our campuses, and it emanates from the left. It is always the left who shuts down speakers who represent pro-Israel, and pro-American speakers. Now the left has made common cause with radical Muslim student organizations. Speakers whose mission it is to support Israel and America and expose the jihadist threat are regularly threatened with physical violence, viciously intimidated.

3. Jew-hatred, under the guise of anti-Zionism, has found eager, and honey-tongued spokesmen among Professors in the groves of academia. They call themselves deconstructionists. Do not be fooled. This is just another label for Marxist/Lenninist. Another label for Jew-hater.

4. Gutless university administrators do nothing to stand up to leftists tyrants and Muslim demagogues. Many are former 60's radicals and have fond memories of the good ol' days. The fact that they are Jews and acting as kapos seems to make little impression. I have Christian friends who have a deeper connection to Judaism.

5. The problem is getting worse as Universities appease these leftist and Muslim thugs. Appeasement invites aggression. Soon, entire universities will become, like the 22 backward Arab/Muslim countries, Judenrein.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:50 AM | Comments (9)

August 05, 2007

Democrats Pander to the Daily Kossack

When, criticism of Israel is one-sided, slanted, or knowingly factually wrong, and far worse behavior by Palestinians is ignored, excused, or lies parroted, that IS anti-Semitism….

Appearing with or sharing a podium with such people, outside of civil debate, is to legitimize them. That IS anti-Semitism….

In short: The Democrats' inconsistency is anti-Semitism.

To read Bruce Kessler's entire article, please click here.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:47 AM | Comments (2)

July 25, 2007

Save John Doe

The Democrats want to kill the John Doe Amendment. The Republicans want to save it.

Here's the roll-call. The Senate Democrats are on suicide watch for this nation.

Next time you get on a plane and you see someone suspicious, you'll hesitate to report it because of course if you're wrong, you'll get sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars and spend the rest of your life in court and in debt. And if you're right, well, you're dead.

If you watched the Democrats You Tube debate you'll notice they never mentioned Islamic terror. They never talked about the war on terror. It's not an issue for them. They see it as a criminal matter. That's why they want to close Gitmo. That's why they want to extend habeus corpus to non citizen terrorists who do not wear uniforms. It's the reason they concentrate on so-called global warming rather than Islamic terror; if they acknowledge world-wide terror then they have to do something about it, and the Democrats are incapable of waging an offensive war against such an evil ideology. It's too much for their multi-cultural brains to process. Thus, they make war on the weather.

The “John Doe” amendment still has a chance.

People need to be aware of this crucial amendment. Please send a message of support to your Congressman and Senators.

For a listing of Congressman and Senators and their contact information click here.

Some background information follows:

In Washington, a House-Senate conference committee on a homeland security bill is considering whether to include a measure to protect, from lawsuit, Americans who report suspicious behavior. The so-called "John Doe" measure comes in response to a lawsuit by six imams who were booted from a plane that was about to fly from Minneapolis late last year because they were acting very suspiciously, refusing to sit in their assigned seats, asking for metal seat belt extenders, and speaking loudly and disparagingly about the United States. The imams plan to sue not only the airline but the passengers who reported their behavior -- a step that, if successful, could have a chilling effect on whether other Americans come forward to report such behavior or whether they decide that doing so isn't worth the legal fees. Without this protection, Americans would have no reason to follow the motto of law enforcement agencies: "If you see something, say something."

Separately, the "John Doe" legislation passed both the House and Senate by overwhelming margins. But key Democrats are trying to drop it from the homeland security bill, which would kill it. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson isn't enthused about it, and Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy spoke against it on the Senate floor. The conference committee is meeting and will make a final decision on this vital legislation in the coming days.

If you agree Americans should be encouraged to report suspicious behavior, if you agree they should not be intimidated by the threat of a lawsuit that could bankrupt them, now is the time to act. Call or e-mail your own Senator and your House member. Tell them to insist that the conference committee include "John Doe" protection in this bill. And after calling or e-mailing your own Senator and House member, contact Congressman Thompson and Senator Leahy. Also contact House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Senate Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin.

Don't leave Americans who do the right thing by reporting suspicious behavior out in the cold. Don't let Americans be intimidated into keeping quiet. In the war on terror, there's too much at stake for all of us.

Click here for the complete article, or copy and paste this link into your web browser:
http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/article.php?id=1573

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:30 PM | Comments (17)

July 20, 2007

Anti-Israel Democrats

Joe Lieberman is no longer a Democrat. If you read John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, you'd swear it was being given by a Republican. Scoop Jackson, Hubert Humphrey, the old guard of the Democrats, are gone — and their ideas forgotten. The new Democrats are sliding deeper to the left. The George Soros wing are loud, and profoundly anti-Israel. There is no question that the Democrats cannot be trusted with national security, their priorities are clear: so-called global warming is their big issue. If you go to the websites of all the major Democratic candidates, the words "Islamic terror" simply do not appear. Jihad does not exist. Indeed, the Democrats prefer to label Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad a "peacemaker" (c/o useful idiot Nancy Pelosi) and heap abuse on George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Israel, in the past the province of the Democrats, has fallen into disfavor by the leftists who are growing in power and influence in the Democratic party.

History marches on and now it is the Republicans who value Israel as a bulwark of democracy, and as a strategic ally in the war against Islamic terror. Meanwhile, the Democrats dither, cozy up and play games of moral equivalence and appeasement to their very vocal left anti-Israel, some say Jew-hating wing.

Here's a fine article that articulates why those who love Israel, who care about freedom, should vote Republican.

Support for Israel has long been a tenet of both political parties. Major Democratic and Republican 2008 presidential contenders have demonstrated their support for Israel by, among other things, attending the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington, touting their pro-Israel voting records and personally traveling to the region.

Yet pockets of anti-Israel sentiment are active in American politics and have found a home among a small group of Democratic lawmakers and leftist activists. While it's tempting to dismiss them as irrelevant, the left's views on Israel have in recent years seeped into mainstream politics.

A small but significant group of overwhelmingly Democratic members of Congress have consistently voted against efforts to support Israel in its continual struggle against terrorists and now an Islamist Hamas government in Gaza. These votes demonstrate that anti-Israel views are a minority in Congress — but a minority composed primarily of the most left-leaning members of the Democratic Caucus.

Read the full article by Jennifer Rubin, here.

Hat Tip: Republican Jewish Coalition

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:25 AM | Comments (4)

June 15, 2007

Waldheim: Nazi War Criminal

You have to admit, Waldheim found the perfect job: Secretary General of the U.N. Talk about typecasting.

Kurt Waldheim’s record of direct involvement in Nazi slaughter of Jews and of others who resisted or were deemed threats in the Balkans was ignored by both the Russians and the United States, who both had evidence in their possession immediately after the war.

By early 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission listed him as a suspected war criminal subject to trial. Yet no government pressed to bring Mr. Waldheim to account or even to disclose his history.

It was not until these and additional records were revealed in 1985, first by rival politicians in Austria and then further investigated and publicized by the World Jewish Congress, that the world woke up. But, On June 8, 1986, in a two-round election, Mr. Waldheim won the run-off for Austria’s presidency with 53.9 percent of the 4.7 million votes cast.

To read Bruce Kesler's entire article, please click here.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:41 PM | Comments (5)

Tolerance in Indonesia

Karen and I are outraged, and saddened that this story has not received more play in the mainstream media. This is signifigant and timely, and it is a measure of the MSM's addiction to jihadist propaganda that they willfully ignore news of truly moderate Muslims. We should also add that Mr. Sol Teichman, the Holocaust survivor in this story is a close friend of the Avrech family and one of the finest people we have the honor of knowing. Mr. Teichman is a unbelievably generous Baa'l Chesed, a charitable man, and dedicates a good portion of his valuable time to educating people about the Shoah.

BALI, Indonesia (AP) - A Jewish Holocaust survivor made a plea for tolerance Tuesday at a conference in the world's most populous Muslim nation that also brought together religious leaders and victims of attacks by Islamic extremists.

One of the goals of the meeting was to counter a December conference hosted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that tried to cast doubt on the killing of an estimated 6 million Jews during World War II.

"I hope people will learn from the past," said Sol Teichman, 79, who was a teenager living in Czechoslovakia when his city was occupied first by the Hungarian army and then the Germans. "We should try to improve life instead of destroying it."

The daylong gathering on Bali island was attended by high-profile moderate Indonesian Muslim leaders, including former President Abdurraham Wahid, and Hindu spiritual head Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, as well as Buddhist teachers, a Jesuit priest and rabbis — a rarity in a country that does not recognize Israel or the Jewish faith.

"All too often, hatred and violence replace peace as religion is manipulated for political purposes," the conference wrote in a final statement.

It said religious leaders have a special obligation to reject such manipulation and to "mobilize their communities to not only respect, but also defend the rights of others to live and worship differently."

Indonesia earlier this week refused to sign a U.N. Security Council agreement condemning Iran's president for making statements that encouraged the destruction of Israel. But that did not stop Wahid, who was president from 1999 to 2001, from offering his own objections to claims the Holocaust was a myth.

"Although I'm a good friend of Ahmadinejad, I have to say that he is wrong," he said. "I visited Auschwitz's Museum of Holocaust and I saw many shoes of dead people. Because of this, I believe the Holocaust happened."

His daughter, Yenny Wahid, who is a prominent supporter of liberal Islam, said it was up to Muslims "to bring religion back to its original intention ... to underline the importance of finding shared values."

"We have to find ways to promote tolerance and understanding for mankind," she said. Also participating in the conference were victims of a terrorist attack in Israel and of suicide bombings by Muslim militants on Bali in 2005. More than 220 people have died from two attacks in Bali. "It has been difficult for me to excuse in my heart those who committed this act," said Tumini, a Balinese woman who was severely burned when al-Qaida-linked militants targeted two nightclubs in 2002. She said she still has not recovered emotionally, physically or financially.

Bali is a mostly Hindu enclave in Indonesia, which has some 190 million Muslims, more than any other nation in the world. Its government is secular and most people are moderate, although a vocal militant fringe has grown louder in recent years.

The conference was sponsored by the Libforall Foundation, a U.S. based non-governmental organization that seeks to counter Muslim extremism in the Islamic world by supporting religious moderates, and the Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance.

Teichman said he lost 70 family members to the Nazis, including his sister, brothers and grandparents, and was taken to Auschwitz, Warsaw, Dachau, Kaufering and Landsberg concentration camps before allied forces liberated them in 1945.

He said Ahmadinejad's decision to host a conference in December questioning whether the Holocaust took place made him want to "push a little harder to meet Muslim leaders."

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:01 AM | Comments (4)

May 10, 2007

Sarkozy: Past & Future

In an interview Nicolas Sarkozy gave in 2004, he expressed an extraordinary understanding of the plight of the Jewish people for a home: “Should I remind you the visceral attachment of every Jew to Israel, as a second mother homeland? There is nothing outrageous about it. Every Jew carries within him a fear passed down through generations, and he knows that if one day he will not feel safe in his country, there will always be a place that would welcome him. And this is Israel.”

To read the entire article, please click here.

Hat Tip: Seraphic Tante Pearl Keiler.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:53 AM | Comments (5)

May 03, 2007

Boycott Citgo

Chavez is playing games with our country’s oil supply and, ultimately, American consumers. Chavez has made it clear he wants China to be Venezuela’s biggest oil customer, instead of the United States. Such a policy, artificial market manipulation when you think about it, would likely drive prices up. And such a shift would take time. In the meantime Venezuelan production, lacking full-bore overseas commercial help, will probably fall off. State-run outfits are notoriously bad at getting things done. So be it through design or incompetence, Chavez wants to drive our prices up.

A short, but eye-opening article about dictator Hugo Chavez; please click here to read the entire post.

Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Jake Novak

I just found out yesterday that Seraphic Secret was nominated for Best Series in the JIB Awards for my How I Married Karen Series. Two chapters are posted as samples: Backstory and Seraphic Duel.

The voting is open only until Sunday. I've sort of missed the boat, but even without asking for votes I'm now in second place.

Anywhoo!

I take a great deal of pride in this series, and would greatly appreciate your vote in this First Round, so , please click here to vote for Seraphic Secret's How I Married Karen.

Thanks so much.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:57 AM | Comments (7)

April 27, 2007

Presidential Power & Terrorists

America’s criminal justice system is actually intended to give each citizen the maximum opportunity to fight the government and return to the streets. That’s why we have Miranda warnings, bail, the right to a speedy trial, the right to counsel, evidentiary exclusion, the rules of evidence, etc. Everything is meant to give a citizen a fighting chance against the government. Sentencing for all but the most heinous crimes is limited and specific. And, of course, there is our generous appeals process, which ensures those convicted repeated bites at the apple. Lastly, after people have served their time, they are then, at least in theory, invited to rejoin society as fully functioning members.

All of the above is the exact opposite of our goals with a captured fighter. It’s entirely irrelevant whether he was a lowly foot soldier, a crack sniper, or a bomb maker, just as it’s irrelevant whether he actually succeeded in killing or wounding Americans as he carried out those tasks. When considering prisoners of war, what really matters is that, for the duration of the war, they cannot return to the battlefield. After all, even if a POW’s IEDs didn’t work before, they may work in the future. Civil rights cannot apply when your sole purpose is to decrease your enemy’s strength. And before you get all bent out of shape about how it is so not fair to imprison someone indefinitely just because he had the misfortune to be caught fighting for his beliefs, keep in mind that this is vastly more civilized than the old system of dealing with captured enemy combatants — summary execution.

A superb article by Bookworm, to read the entire post please click here.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:09 PM | Comments (2)

The White Feather

For the first time in American history the House of Representatives has informed the military that it knows more than the Commander in Chief about conducting a war. In doing so this Congress also has notified the enemy in our ongoing war in Iraq when the enemy should expect us to begin pulling out troops and precisely how many months it will take for complete withdrawal.

If only the Congress had thought of this idea earlier - perhaps back in 1944 - we could have sent a telegram to the Germans that included the D-Day schedule. This certainly would have saved the United States Government a lot of money and saved the Nazis a lot of trouble!

To read the rest of Paul Weyrich's article, please click here.

And this via the Mighty Michelle Malkin:

The White Feather has been a symbol for cowardice. I suggest that white feathers be sent to the leaders of the Senate and House for the cowardly vote that abandons our soldiers around the world. I was in Vietnam the day that the 101st took "Hamburger Hill" -- the headline in the Stars and Stripes was Teddy Kennedy's statement to the effect that it was all such a waste. I am sure it raised the spirits of the folks on top of the hill -- I know it gave my morale a boost. Surely these leaders of our country will head out on a USO tour to encourage the troops further.

As far as I am concerned this is a Congress of Quislings.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:34 AM | Comments (6)

April 26, 2007

Romney in Yeshiva

"What Jimmy Carter fails to understand is what so many fail to understand: Whether it is Hamas or Hezbollah or al Qaeda, there is an overarching goal among the violent jihadists that transcends borders and boundaries," Romney says. "That goal is to replace all modern Islamic states with a caliphate, to destroy Israel, to cause the collapse of the West and the United States, and to conquer the world."

Mitt Romney at Yeshiva University, click here to read the entire article.

*******

We recently found out that Serapic Secret was nominated for Best Personal Blog for the Jewish Israeli Blog Awards. Thanks so much for the nomination. Anyway, the first round of voting is taking place right now and if you feel like voting for us, well, we'd greatly appreciate it.

Click here to vote for Seraphic Secret for Best Personal Blog.

There are great blogs out there and no matter what, it's lovely to be nominated once again.

Karen and I thank all of you have voted for Seraphic Secret. We are deeply touched.

We'd also like to know who nominated us so we can send you a peronal note of thanks.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 04:12 PM | Comments (2)

April 24, 2007

Bedlam Revisited

Why the Virginia Tech Shooter was not Committed

I was in graduate school, studying clinical psychology when they began shutting down the asylums. The place was California, the time was the early 1970s, and "they" were an unprecedented confederation of progressives, libertarians and fiscal conservatives.

To read the rest of this article by my friend Jonathan Kellerman, please click here.

Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Kishke

On the same topic, an Orthodox shul in my neighborhood hands out food to homeless people once a week.

These unfortunate people are, for the most part, mentally ill. I see them wandering the streets of Pico-Robertson with their shopping carts, chattering away to invisible companions. They are deperately ill and should be given hospital care.

One day, and I can pretty much guarantee this, someone is going to get knifed at this shul.

The Rabbi and the members of this shul may get all warm and fuzzy about their lunch program, but in the end, their actions only add to the problem.

This is not a problem of the homeless, but of mental illness and caretaker irresponsibility.

Here's what our synagogue does with our surplus food: after every Shabbos we deliver boxes of delicious food to a local shelter.

This is how responsible and mature adults behave.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:27 AM | Comments (11)

April 19, 2007

A Culture of Passivity

The students at Virginia Tech were grown women and — if you’ll forgive the expression — men. They would be regarded as adults by any other society in the history of our planet. Granted, we live in a selectively infantilized culture where twentysomethings are “children” if they’re serving in the Third Infantry Division in Ramadi but grown-ups making rational choices if they drop to the broadloom in President Clinton’s Oval Office. Nonetheless, it’s deeply damaging to portray fit fully formed adults as children who need to be protected. We should be raising them to understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect yourself — and, in a “horrible” world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself or others. It is a poor reflection on us that, in those first critical seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor, Professor Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act.

To read Mark Steyn's eloquent defense of self-defense,