Category: Politics

Jewish Democrats in Illinois

by philg

Who’s been following the Democrats’ convention in Illinois? What have you learned? Here’s my favorite part:

I think the tweet to which I am responding is inaccurate, incidentally. The Obamas have at least four houses, not three, though one of them is a house in Chicago that might not qualify as a “mansion”. So my response:

“What do I have three mansions?” asked the expert on not consuming more than she needs, “Because I couldn’t afford four.”

perhaps should be

“What do I have four mansions?” asked [Michelle Obama,] the expert on not consuming more than she needs, “Because I couldn’t afford five.”

Related… On the way out of Oshkosh in July, I stopped to visit cousins who live in the northern suburbs of Chicago. They consider their biggest enemies to be white American Republicans, with Donald Trump as the worst of the worst. They spontaneously expressed disappointment that Trump hadn’t been killed earlier in July in Pennsylvania and certainly agreed with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that Trump was an existential threat to America, Americans, and American democracy. They were afraid to go into Chicago due to crime (see Keeping the faith in Chicago for my report on the 2023 visit), but don’t blame the Democrats who run the state and city for what they perceive as a decline. They refuse to go to a Democrat-run city in Texas where a grandchild lives because they’re afraid of encountering a Republican there. The synagogue around the corner from their house has the following sign on the front lawn:

They had been all-in for the not-senile-at-all Joe Biden a week prior to our visit, but were all-in on Kamala Harris while we shared coffee (outdoors, of course, because their level of coronapanic is still at least Code Yellow; they were refraining from seeing an elderly parent, even outdoors, because there had been some recent positive COVID tests in his senior community).

What I found most interesting was that the groundswell of Democrat support for the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) and the destruction of Israel hadn’t shaken their faith in white native-born Republicans as their biggest and most dangerous enemies. As we got closer to Chicago, the percentage of people wearing Islamic headgear steadily increased. Yet these senior citizen Jews didn’t see the young rapidly growing Muslim population of the Midwest as a sign that Jews would one day be as unwelcome in Illinois as they are in the typical Muslim country. (If present demographic trends continue, their neighborhood will become majority Muslim. How would the neighbors feel about having to drive/walk by the above Rainbow Flag with Star of David while on their way to the mosque? See “‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags” (Guardian) for a story about Hamtramck, Michigan)

Separately, speaking of coronapanic, here are a couple of photos from the O’Hare airport:

We see the apparently young and healthy wearing masks. We see a Follower of Science wearing an N95-style mask over his/her/zir/their full beard, contrary to the manufacturer’s instructions. We see a slender youth wearing a basic mask in hopes of avoiding an infection that kills obese Americans at a median age of 82.

Related:

  • “New Study Looks into Strengths, Needs of Muslims in Illinois” (WTTW, 2022): Illinois is home to more than 350,000 Muslims. According to a new study, that makes the state No. 1 in the country for Muslims per capita. … Researchers found that Muslims in Illinois were the youngest and most diverse faith community in the state and the country. The sample in the study were racially and ethnically diverse. About half of the sample was born outside of the U.S. and a sizable number speak languages other than English at home. … Researchers also found that Muslims in Illinois were also highly politically active and civically engaged. 75% of the sample is registered to vote with an additional 16% expressing an intention to register.
  • “For Convention Goers in Chicago, the Issue of Migrants Comes Into Full View” (New York Times): Around downtown, migrants are not sleeping overnight on the sidewalks, they say, and some are staying in hotels that have been converted into shelters. A large number appear to be living in apartments that they obtained with government housing assistance, commuting downtown each day to sell candy and earn cash. Very few have English skills or official work authorization, leaving them in a limbo of illegal street vending that is often ignored by police officers. “It’s a totally different look for downtown,” said Annie Gomberg, a volunteer who works with migrants. “We’re not used to seeing mothers and children standing on the street selling candy and water.” … “We have had issues that involved having a lot of single males without a whole lot to do outside,” he said. “So we certainly have gotten lots of complaints involving drug use, catcalling, as well as some prostitution.”
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Our democracy is threatened by Democrats (says Cori Bush)

by philg

For at least eight years we have been informed for by Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, the New York Times, et al., that Republicans will end our democracy (see Why do the non-Deplorables deplore the Trump shooting?). Yesterday, however, I saw something new. A Democrat in a primary election says that if a fellow Democrat is elected that will end our democracy:

Unfortunately, democracy lost yesterday and it will be a different Democrat representing this district in Congress (at least until democracy is ended, as predicted, and Congress is dissolved). The Hamas-supporting politician says that the loss will “radicalize” her:

(Click through to Mona Eltahawy’s profile: “she/her” and “Cairo/New York”)

What does a radicalized ex-member of Congress do next? Can she become a lobbyist as so many former politicians have? Her job would be highlighting to Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Rashida Tlaib some additional progressive causes to fund?

Here’s her successful opponent, Wesley Bell, on the most impactful issue of our time:

The St. Louis region has been enriched and strengthened by generations of immigrants choosing to start new lives in our community. But for decades, Washington politicians have kicked the can down the road instead of actually coming together and tackling this issue. It’s time for comprehensive immigration reform that addresses current challenges and prepares for the future as well.

We need to work toward finding the appropriate balance in creating a system that ensures safety and security at the border, while also treating people with dignity and respect, and honoring the rights of asylum seekers. A pathway to citizenship must be established for those who are already here, working hard, and paying taxes. We need to ensure that our country is protected from MS-13 gang members, drug traffickers, and terrorists. You can count on me to fight to ensure that the Department of Homeland Security has adequate funding to serve our country.

I can’t figure out how this kind of statement, which seems to be standard at least for Democrats, is convincing to American voters. He implies that he will limit the number of low-skill migrants (“appropriate balance”) and in the same sentence talks about “honoring the rights of asylum seekers”. Yet under our present laws, the right to seek asylum is without limit and, thus, the only way to honor the rights of asylum seekers is to have unlimited low-skill immigration.

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A Constitutional amendment to impose an age limit of 67 on the President?

by philg

An immigrant physician friend, simply based on videos that she watched in 2020, diagnosed Joe Biden with dementia four years ago and referred to him as “the senile puppet” long before the New York Times editorial board noticed that anything was wrong. Democrats now believe that Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities are insufficient to handle the job of U.S. President. Democrats also hate Donald Trump and there are at least some Republicans who prefer Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley to Mr. Trump.

I wonder if these groups could get together and do a quickie amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would impose a mandatory retirement age of 67 (the current Social Security full retirement age for those born after 1960) on the job. We need three-fourths of the states to ratify such an amendment and then both the Republicans and Democrats would have to nominate younger politicians for the November election.

We’ve already got a minimum of 35:

Why not a maximum?

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Jamaal Bowman, art, and Hitler

by philg

International Jewry is responsible for Dr. Jamaal Bowman, Ed. D.’s recent defeat in New York. The Hill:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) slammed American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for pouring tens of millions into fellow Democratic New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s divisive primary race Wednesday after Bowman lost the primary to a more moderate Democrat.

Bowman, a second-term progressive, faced tough opposition from the pro-Israel political advocacy group AIPAC because of his criticism of the Israeli government.

Who else had superior ideals and blamed International Jewry for obstructions to their implementation? From The Women Who Flew for Hitler:

Over tea that afternoon, Hitler once again ‘leapt up in a fit of frenzy, with foam on his lips, and shouted that he would have revenge on all traitors’. Interrupted by a call from Berlin, he screamed orders ‘to shoot anyone and everyone’ before announcing, ‘I’m beginning to doubt whether the German people are worthy of my great ideals.’ [this was following the aristocratic assassination and military coup attempt against Germany’s democratically elected leader]

Blaming the war on Jewish incitement, and defeat on the betrayal of his officers, Hitler ended his last statement with the injunction that his successors should ‘above all else, uphold the racial laws in all their severity, and mercilessly resist the universal poisoner of all nations: international Jewry’. [from the bunker]

In one of the few parts of Porto that isn’t mobbed with tourists, maybe due to the outrageous-by-Portuguese-standards 24 euro entry price for the Serralves Foundation (mercifully free for the kids), I found the following artistic collaboration between Yayoi Kusama and Dr. Jamaal Bowman, Ed. D.:

Kusama is 95. It’s a shame that she wasn’t born in the U.S. or she could run for President.

Circling back to Dr. Jamaal Bowman, Ed. D., could the reason that progressive Democrats haven’t managed to take control of the entire U.S. be that Americans aren’t worthy of great ideals, e.g., stopping climate change, providing asylum to 8+ billion humans if they want it, ending homelessness, liberating Al-Quds and establishing a river-to-the-sea Palestinian state, a living wage for everyone who attempts to work, eliminating the acquisition of unnecessary wealth, etc.?

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30 years of Republican cuts to the food stamp (SNAP/EBT) program

by philg

From the member of the U.S. Congress who called for “river to the sea” liberation of Palestine after the October 7 Hamas/UNRWA/Palestinian Islamic Jihad victory:

There have been previous cuts. The program has been gutted. A yet larger cut is forthcoming unless everyone votes for Democrats.

After 30 years of “cuts” to this program that is part of what used to be called “welfare”, how has the number of beneficiaries changed?

USDA publishes data from 1969 through 2023 regarding the number of Americans who are dependent on their brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters who pay taxes. Based on the table below, the number of dependents has grown from 2.9 million in 1969 to 42 million in 2023:

How does it work in practice? Here’s a tutorial video:

Note that this post is not an argument against taxpayers being forced to provide for those who wisely elect to refrain from work. It is about the subtlety of the American progressive mind, in which people can believe and say that a government program has been “cut” or “gutted” while spending on that program grows.

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God’s principal gifts to Americans: elderly Democrats

by philg

It’s Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week for observant Christians. In the old days, the majority of Americans believed that Jesus was God’s greatest gift to humanity. What or who has replaced Jesus? “Marilynne Robinson Considers Biden a Gift of God” (New York Times, February 15, 2024):

I’m less than a year younger than Joe Biden, so I believe utterly in his competence, his brilliance, his worldview. I really do. You have to live to be 80 to find this out: Anybody under 50 feels they’re in a position to condescend to you. You get boxed into this position where people who deal with you are making assumptions about your intellect. It’s very disturbing. Most people my age are just fine. What can I say? It’s a kind of good fortune that America is categorically incapable of accepting: that someone with a strong institutional memory, who knows how things are supposed to work, who was habituated to their appropriate functioning is president. I consider him a gift of God. All 81 years of him.

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Democracy in Florida today

by philg

Today was our presidential primary. From CNN, an example of how democracy is supposed to work from the party that says its sacred mission is to preserve our democracy:

And a baffling result from the Party of Tyranny (TM):

How does Nikki Haley, who has never tried to do anything for Florida, get more votes than Ron DeSantis, who has worked hard (and, if we believe the meager net worth on his financial statements, honestly) on behalf of Floridians for about 10 years (first in Congress, then as governor)?

I went to the local branch of the Palm Beach County public library system to vote today. The parking lot was packed at 1:45 pm and I took this as a sign of citizen engagement. It turned out, however, that the cars were parked at the library because people were using the library part of the library (despite CNN and NYT informing us that books are banned in Florida). Voting was in a community room and there were booths sufficient to accommodate more than 20 voters in parallel. The three poll workers told me that I was Voter #25… for the day. I’m grateful for the work that Ron DeSantis has done in his job as our governor, so I put in a thank-you vote.

For Irish readers, a snapshot from Sunday evening’s St. Patrick’s Day block party in our MacArthur Foundation-created development (Abacoa):

A week earlier, Abacoa hosted the Jupiter Irish Fest, complete with about 25 performers from the local Irish Dance school.

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Super Tuesday nostalgia for Ron DeSantis

by philg

Today is Super Tuesday, an important milepost in what is shaping up to be a fight among two guys in Memory Care (and one gal for whom Americans don’t seem to share my own enthusiasm (and even I have been put off by Nikki Haley’s seeming lack of coherent philosophy)).

A bit of nostalgia for Ron DeSantis, then! He lacked the ability to project empathy that Americans cherish, but he was the only candidate in the race with a coherent philosophy of government combined with a reasonable age for handling a demanding job. A mailer we got in November 2022, when Mr. DeSantis was running for reelection as governor:

(I don’t understand how a governor can take credit for having “raised teacher pay”. Counties negotiate with teachers’ unions and the U.S. Congress no doubt did the most to raise teacher pay in nominal dollars by generating raging inflation through deficit spending.)

In other news, let’s check the political diversity in the center of our empire…

There were just over 2,000 people who were willing to identify as Republican and vote in the primary a couple of days ago (total D.C. population is over 700,000; more than 500,000 should be eligible to vote (source, which notes that D.C. has “the most diverse and educated voting population in the U.S.”)).

Finally, what about the project that state-level Democrats have been engaging in around the nation to preserve democracy by preventing their subjects from voting for Donald Trump? The Supreme Court has ruled this was illegal and unconstitutional and not just the Republican-appointed justices who are characterized by Democrats as corrupt and illegitimate. All 9 justices. Will there be any apologies from Democrats for violating the U.S. Constitution? From the Newspaper of Record (TM):

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Gerald Ford’s foreign policy challenges and the Houthi situation

by philg

An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford covers a few mostly forgotten foreign policy challenges that Gerald Ford faced.

The Fall of Saigon in April 1975 was depressing, but people didn’t blame Ford for it.

One that lifted his reputation was a debacle by body count standard: the Mayaguez incident (May 1975). The Khmer Rouge seized a merchant vessel and its crew. The U.S. military rescue operation resulted in as many deaths among our soldiers as the number of crew members rescued. The American public was nonetheless happy to accept this as a victory and it boosted Ford’s approval rating substantially.

The U.S. gave the green light to Indonesian President Suharto to invade East Timor in December 1975, a former Portuguese colony, so long as the Muslim takeover of the Christian territory was done quickly. At least 100,000 Christians were killed, mostly via starvation, out of a total population of about 600,000. After decades of occupation and war, East Timor became a country in 2002. It’s fair to say, therefore, that Gerald Ford had a far larger impact on the Catholics of East Timor than he did on Americans.

Palestinians killed our ambassador to Lebanon, Francis E. Meloy Jr., in June 1976, and left his bullet-riddled body at a garbage dump. Having gone nuts with aggression in response to the kidnapping of the Mayaguez crew, none of whom were harmed, we didn’t retaliate.

The Mayaguez response included “Ford ordered the Air Force to sink any Cambodian boats moving between Koh Tang and the mainland” (Wikipedia). It’s unclear why we aren’t doing that with the Houthis. They’ve attacked U.S. warships as well as merchant ships. Why do we allow them any use of the ocean? We recently lost two Navy SEALs who were trying to board a ship:

This wouldn’t have happened under Ford’s orders because the ship would have been sunk by a plane or shell without being boarded.

Ford put a lot of effort into negotiating with the Soviet Union, but ended up with nothing to show for it. Ford and Henry Kissinger (later a Theranos board member… for three years!) spent a lot of time trying to take away from Israel territory won in the Yom Kippur War (a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria that, like October 7 for the Gazans, began well). Ultimately, Jimmy Carter could take credit for the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt (1979) and the SALT II agreement with the Soviets (1979; repudiated by the U.S. Senate after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan).

The book is a good reminder that we’re not the boss of the rest of the world and nobody listens to us unless we present a credible threat of carpet bombing with B-52s.

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Vivek Ramaswamy unaware of the family court sector of the U.S. economy

by philg

A tweet from Vivek:

Here’s an idea to bridge the divide on abortion: codify sexual responsibility for men into the law. If a woman carries a child to term, she can automatically make the man fully $$ responsible both for herself and for the child, if confirmed by paternity test. Should be an idea that both parties can agree on.

Elon Musk responded with “Yes”. You’d think that he would already be aware of the U.S. system; see “Elon Musk Battles To Keep Custody Case In Texas Where Child Support Is Capped At $2,760 Per Month For 3 Kids, Despite Being The Richest Man In The World”:

Elon Musk is in the midst of a custody battle with Grimes, and things are getting as complicated as a SpaceX mission.

According to reports from Business Insider, Musk initially filed in Texas, accusing Grimes of moving to California to avoid the Lone Star State’s child support cap of $2,760 per month for three kids.

Grimes fired back with a countersuit in California, seeking physical custody. Musk reportedly had custody of their 3-year-old son X Æ A-Xii against Grimes’ wishes. The different child support limits in California, where there’s no cap, could mean a hefty sum for Musk, currently the richest person in the world.

Given that family court profits are a huge sector of the U.S. economy and Vivek was claiming to be qualified to run the whole thing, I find it fascinating that Vivek is unfamiliar with the current system in which having sex with an already-married specialist physician can yield a spending power equivalent to what an American who goes through medical school and residency to work as a primary care doc can enjoy (profitability depends heavily on the state in which the plaintiff resides/sues). Some lawyers who specialize in this area refer to child support as “woman support” since the typical plaintiff identifies as female, the money is paid to the adult plaintiff, and there is no requirement that a successful plaintiff spend any of the family court profits on the child.

Hunter Biden was reported to be paying $20,000 per month to Lunden Roberts (Daily Mail), thus giving her an after-tax spending power in excess of a primary care doc’s (the $240,000 per year was tax-free). Why wouldn’t someone in politics such as Vivek have followed the Biden family and thus learned that sex in the U.S. can pay better than most jobs?

Of course, it isn’t just Vivek. Twitter shows over 5,000 replies to the post. Most of them seem to be from people unaware that it is already possible to get a court-ordered paternity test and then 18-23 years of cashflow (depending on the state).

How can this blind spot be explained?

Related:

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