RUTHFULLY YOURS

The despair and grief energized the Jewish citizens of Palestine and world Jewry and concerned Christians to demand sovereignty in Israel. On May 4th 1948, a new link was added to the ancient and eternal chain of Jewish survival – namely, recognition of Israel as a Jewish national state.

In the 74 years of independence, Israel ranks as a gem of the decolonization movements in Africa and Asia. In spite of fractious and disputatious politics Israel remains a free-wheeling democracy; arts , theater, dance and social and philanthropic institutes grow and thrive; its contributions to global advances in medicine, science, technology, agronomy, and water purification are dazzling and outsize; its defense establishment is state -of -the -art in a citizen army with powerful ordnance; and most heartening of all is that despite wars and terrorism and human termites’ libels and bias, Israeli Jews are happy and now number well over 6 million.

On my first trip to Israel after the 1949 Armistice, my parents, my brother and I who had lost our entire family- never to know grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins -experienced indescribable emotion when we heard a roar overhead and saw a V formation of tiny military airplanes with the Star of David on the undersides.

This past March, while sitting in a plane waiting for takeoff, I saw a large jet land and taxi. Emblazoned on its gleaming steel tail fin was a giant Star of David.

You’ve come a long way, Israel! They even play your national anthem in Dubai!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!  rsk

Tonight, on Passover we will recount the history of the escape from Pharaonic tyranny, and the sojourn to Israel which revealed the Ten Commandments for decency at a time of chaos and barbarism. We will recall the Passover of 1943 in the Warsaw Ghetto when unarmed civilians rebelled and held off the Nazis for over a month- an epic rebellion during an epic time. Then we will pray for the souls of the innocent murdered civilians in Israel, Ukraine, and the persecuted Christians throughout the world.
Finally, we will retell the story of 1948, when once again the seas parted for the hulls of ships bringing the wretched survivors of the Holocaust as well as the refugees from Moslem states to the new/ancient homeland of the Jewish people. The Palestinian Jews who lived there from time immemorial welcomed them in a historic rescue with shelter, counseling, vocational training, immediate citizenship, and an army to protect them from the ensuing wars and terrorism.
Thanks to the Abraham Accords many former enemies have turned to accommodation and recognition of Israel and they too will reap the blessings of Israel’s amazing and outsize research and development of life enhancing technology and science.
However, breaking with tradition, four new questions hang in the air:
One: Why is it that in the United States, an exceptional and glorious corner of the Diaspora, the academies which should be citadels of learning and free speech permit hateful groups to libel and distort Israel’s legitimacy and history but censor the language and opinions of critics their faux narrative?
Two: Why does the mainstream media airbrush growing Anti-Semitism — including harassment and violence, and defacement of shrines, cemeteries, and synagogues — while treating every other minority victim claim as a “hate crime”? And why do they downplay the bloodcurdling threats toward America and Israel that emanate from Iran?
Three: Why are the legislators in the corridors of power so loath to criticize and censor the vile and virulent anti-Semitism of so many fellow Democrat members of Congress, bowing to partisan solidarity with these common bigots? They are political vultures whose support of all “progressive” policies borders on risible street theater.
Four: Why do too many of our brethren who trumpet every “woke” cult assiduously avoid supporting Israel and denouncing the murder of Israeli citizens going about their daily business? Is there a yet undiscovered commandment that invokes blind adherence to “progressive” policies that are inimical to Jewish survival?
We vowed “never again” to exactly what is happening once again, and the sound of silence is deafening!

Hungarians have voted in an election that is, by every account, untainted but the American Left has its knickers in a knot over Orban’s “authoritarian” policies.   Hungary’s borders are protected. Parental rights are upheld. Anti-Semitic and xenophobic parties have lost. I take up no cudgels for Orban or his policies, but on the foregoing issues, our “progressives” live in glass houses..rsk

Hospital based doctors now require patients to fill out a questionnaire regarding  their preferred gender and how they wish to be addressed and referred to. Apparently, if you are  satisfied with your biological identity the answer is “binary”.

As for how I wish to be addressed, I will renounce Ms. or Mrs. and have chosen “Seniorita.”

There is a new flurry of efforts to discredit Donald Trump….finances, accounting, visitor logs, more January 6 “revelations” etc.

The most risible  “pottie- mouth” rumor that he stuffed critical documents into the toilet seems to have been flushed by the media.

Could the reason be that the Durham revelations vindicate his often stated suspicions about chicanery in elections and the waste in time and money and public attention in the  “Russiagate” misinformation episode?

Or, could it be that an increasing number of pivotal states are re-examining and revealing real election interference?

Hmmmmmm…..rsk

A contranym is a word that has opposite meanings depending on context.
For example, the word sanction:
Definition 1: to permit or grant approval. Definition 2: to condemn or penalize.
The word cleave:
Definition 1: to join or adhere closely Definition 2: to split or divide
The word “liberal” has become another contranym.
Definition 1. A Democrat progressive socialist Definition 2: A Conservative Republican
As conservatives define it, liberals sanction (Def. 1) small government, state’s rights, capitalism, merit as the only consideration instead of numerical goals and quotas, freedom of speech and debate and tolerance of dissidence, legal immigration, English as the national language, respect for truth in reporting and facts in history, limits to fatuous regulations and mandates that inhibit economy and business, opposition to mindless “cancel culture” and indoctrination in education, equal justice in law and order.
As the leftist and progressives define it, liberals abhor and sanction (Def. 2) all the forgoing and prefer big government with endless legislation and mandates, socialism, quotas and diversity above merit, censorship of speech, subjective “truth” versus facts in education and national history, altering the language, open borders and unfettered immigration, moral equivalence between protests and terrorism, and cancel culture.
Conservatives cleave (Def. 1) to the founding principles of democracy.
Progressives cleave (Def.2) the nation in a tyrannical effort to grab and consolidate power, censor dissent, and impose obedience and indoctrination on all citizens. rsk

First: I think that Donald Trump was the best President since Ronald Reagan and I also believe that serious election irregularities occasioned his “defeat” in 2020.
However, despite his perseveration on his many accomplishments, events will come to haunt him. His legal problems will continue and January 6 libels will pummel him. Furthermore, his initial clumsy handling of the pandemic-instead of appointing a panel of distinguished virologists and epidemiologists, he brought Fauci and Birx out of mothballs and conducted boring and disjointed press conferences- will be fodder for his opponents.
The future for the conservative agenda rests with younger and principled possible candidates who defy the disastrous policies of the Biden administration.
They are in the mold of Senator Tom Cotton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Ric Grenell-former US ambassador to Germany, Governors de Santis of Florida, Youngkin of Virginia, and Abbott of Texas, Winsome Sears Lt. Governor of Virginia, Alexander Acosta, Former Secretary of Labor, Young Kim- Korean-American Representative California District 39, Geraldo Cadava, Hispanic historian and professor at Northwestern University, John James, West Point graduate and candidate for Senate in Michigan.
These are just a handful of possibilities if Donald Trump has the probity to step aside…..rsk

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS AND ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE,

NOT A CREATURE WAS STIRRING NOT EVEN A MOUSE.

AT THE WHITE HOUSE A GENT FOUND REFUGE IN SLUMBER,

FROM FAILURES AND CRITICS GROWING IN NUMBER.

I TRIED TO SLEEP WITH NO SUCCESS,

WITH WORRY ABOUT OUR NATIONAL MESS.

INFLATION, CRIME, AND A MILITARY GONE WOKE,

A VICE PRESIDENT WHO’S BECOME A NATIONAL JOKE.

NON-CITIZENS WILL VOTE WITH NO BORDER CONTROL,

A DEMOGRAPHIC CALAMITY THAT WILL TAKE ITS TOLL.

PRE-K SCHOOLS TEACHERS SHUN EDUCATIONAL TOYS,

PUSHING GENDER CONFUSION ABOUT GIRLS AND BOYS.

 IGNORANT FACULTY PROMOTE THE FALSE GLAMOR

AND INFINITE LIES OF THE SICKLE AND HAMMER.

CONSTITUTIONAL FREEDOMS ARE MANDATED AWAY,

WITH FOREIGN POLICY IN COMPLETE DISARRAY.

I MUSED AND WORRIED WHEN I HEARD A JOYFUL CLATTER.

I RUSHED TO THE WINDOW TO SEE WHAT WAS THE MATTER.

MAINSTREAM REPORTERS FELL ON THEIR HEAD,

SLIPPING AND SLIDING ON THE B.S. THEY SPREAD.

DURHAM GALLOPED IN ON A BUCKING STEER

WITH THE STEELE DOSSIER IMPALED ON A SPEAR.

SUPERIOR COURTS GAVE BIDEN A SLAP ON THE WRIST

HE REMAINED IMPERVIOUS, IF YOU GET MY GIST.

PARENTS AND TEACHERS WERE ON A SPREE

TO STOP INDOCRINATION AND C.R.T.

ECO-ELECTRIC CARS WERE STALLED IN THE MIRE

WITH KERRY, CLIMATEERS, AND FAUCI THE LIAR.

BIPARTISAN DEMOCRATS DESERVE HONORABLE MENTION

GOV. POLIS AND SENATORS TESTER, SINEMA AND MANCHIN.

THE OTHERS SLUMPED WITH FEAR OF ELECTION LOSS,

AWARE THAT VOX POPULI IS THEIR ULTIMATE BOSS.

SANTA FAILED TO APPEAR AT THE MERRY CELEBRATION

NEITHER HE NOR THE REINDEER HAD PROOF OF VACCINATION

SO, IN A STAB AT PENTAMETER WITH RHYMES AND CHEER.

I WISH YOU ALL JOYFUL HOLIDAYS, GOOD HEALTH, AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

R.S.K.

https://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/conventions/san.diego/transcripts/0815/dole.fdch.shtml

When the late Senator Bob Dole accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention on August 15, 1996, he delivered a most eloquent speech touching on every issue that engages us today. Take the time to read it all at the site. Rest in peace Senator Dole. rsk

When the late Senator Bob Dole accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention on August 15, 1996, he delivered a most eloquent speech which rings true today. Take the time to read it all at the site. Rest in peace Senator Dole.    rsk

EXCERPTS

And who am I that stands before you tonight?

I was born in Russell, Kansas, a small town in the middle of the prairie surrounded by wheat and oil wells.

And the first thing you learn on the prairie is the relative size of a man compared to the lay of the land. And under the immense sky where I was born and raised, a man is very small, and if he thinks otherwise, he is wrong.

Let me be the bridge to an America than only the unknowing call myth. Let me be the bridge to a time of tranquility, faith and confidence in action.

And to those who say it was never so, that America’s not been better, I say you’re wrong. And I know because I was there. And I have seen it. And I remember.

And our nation, though wounded and scathed, has outlasted revolutions, civil war, world war, racial oppression and economic catastrophe. We have fought and prevailed on almost every continent. And in almost every sea.

We have even lost. But we have lasted, and we have always come through.

And what enabled us to accomplish this has little to do with the values of the present. After decades of assault upon what made America great, upon supposedly obsolete values, what have we reaped? What have we created? What do we have?

I am here to say to America, do not abandon the great traditions that stretch to the dawn of our history. Do not topple the pillars of those beliefs — God, family, honor, duty, country — that have brought us through time, and time, and time, and time again.

The war(WW) was fought just a generation after America’s greatest and most intense period of immigration. And yet when the blood of the sons of immigrants and the grandsons of slaves fell on foreign fields, it was American blood. In it you could not read the ethnic particulars of the soldier who died next to you. He was an American.

And when I think how we learned this lesson I wonder how we could have unlearned it. Is the principle of unity, so hard-fought and at the cost of so many lives, having been contested again and again in our history, and at such a terrible price, to be casually abandoned to the urge to divide?

And so tonight I call on every American to rise above all that may divide us, and to defend the unity of the nation for the honor of generations past, and the sake of those to come.

And when I look back on my life, I see less and less of myself and more and more a history of this civilization that we have made that is called America.

There is on the eve of Thanksgiving Day so much to be grateful for in my personal life but this is a national holiday where our gratitude is directed to our magnificent nation. The song “America the Beautiful” expresses it eloquently. The lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates (August 12, 1859-March 28, 1929) and the music composed by a church organist Samuel Augustus Ward (December 28, 1848 – September 28, 1903).

“America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!”

I wish you all a joyous holiday!….rsk