Former Socialist, Former Republican, Former Contributor to The American Spectator, Former Resident of Canada, Back in Boston Area After Stints in New York City & Atlanta, Current Mustache Wearer & Aficionado of Baseball, Bowling in All Its Forms, Cats, Music & Healthy Living
At the very least one could ask why Hidalgo didn't strip Abbas of the honor sooner. Abbas made nearly identical remarks to the ones he made last month more than five years ago.
Is it possible Hidalgo was unaware of Abbas' previous statements? Possibly, but I would bet against it.
My questions notwithstanding, Hidalgo nevertheless did the right thing today. Abbas' comments minimizing Hitler's efforts to eliminate Jews from the face of the Earth richly deserve scorn and I hope other leaders around the world will follow Hidalgo's example.
Former Arkansas Governor and two-time GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is warning Americans to choose Donald Trump or else.
During his show last night on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), Huckabee claimed President Biden was responsible for defeated, former President Trump's shady business dealings in New York, keeping top secret documents in his home, attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and demand to Georgia officials that they find 11,780 votes. Huckabee then issued an ominous warning:
If these tactics end up working to keep Trump from winning or even running in 2024, it is going to be the last American election that will be decided by ballots rather than bullets.
In other words, if Trump doesn't get his way and return to the White House then his supporters are going to resort to terrorism so as to intimidate voters into supporting Trump. Given that we are less than 72 hours away from the 22nd anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Huckabee's words more closely resemble those of someone who represents al-Qaeda than America. A year ago, I predicted Trump supporters would commit a 9/11 inspired attack against their fellow Americans.
If Huckabee is telling us that elections will be decided by bullets instead of ballots, then this means that Trump supporters will shoot voters they don't like for exercising their G-d given right to vote and election workers who ensure the democratic process is properly and peacefully carried out. In which case, our elections will resemble those that take place in India and Nigeria.
And why? Because Donald Trump thinks this presidency is an entitlement which he owns like one of his properties and the Mike Huckabees of the world are indulging him and his supporters in this delusion. These delusions already caused deaths on January 6, 2021. Given Huckabee's inflammatory and irresponsible statements concerning the use of bullets in future elections, we have likely not seen the worst.
They say that Hitler killed the Jews because they were Jews and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews. Not true. It was clearly explained that [the Europeans] fought [the Jews] because of their social role, and not their religion,” Abbas said in August. “Several authors wrote about this. Even Karl Marx said this was not true. He said that the enmity was not directed at Judaism as a religion but to Judaism for its social role.
The [Europeans] fought against these people because of their role in society, which had to do with usury, money and so on and so forth.
Mind you most of the 6 million Jews who died under Hitler's watch had absolutely nothing to do with banking or finance. If Hitler's enmity was exclusively towards Jewish financiers, then why round up Jewish children and send them to their deaths?
What Abbas is doing is justifying Hitler's behavior. For good measure, Abbas also falsely claimed Ashkenazi Jews aren't Semites. In saying this, Abbas is delegitimizing Jewish identity.
However, at the moment, the main reason Abbas can get away with claiming Hitler didn't have anti-Semitic motivations is because the Biden Administration needs his blessing for peace talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia to proceed. This is evidenced by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's call to Abbas yesterday as well as U.S. and Palestinian officials traveling to Riyadh presumably to discuss what concessions the Palestinians want from Israel in order for normalization between the two countries to occur.
Frankly, Mahmoud Abbas could declare that no Jew died at the hands of the Nazis, and it would not affect his standing with the United States or the international community one iota because they need him before he needs them.
Yet Musk has done a fantastic job of running X into the ground all on his own. In response to Musk's claim that ADL had single-handedly destroyed half of its value, Mike Rothschild replied:
I love the implication that the erratic management, mass layoffs, incoherent moderation, destruction of verification, decimated engineering staff, serial unbanning of racists, and crumbling infrastructure had nothing to do with twitter losing half its value. Nope, just Jews.
Anti-Semitism is nothing new under the sun. But Musk is the world's richest person, and he has the ability and resources to bring anti-Semitism out into broad daylight and give it acceptability, credibility and legitimacy.
2. Emboldening Online Anti-Semitism By Embracing Far-Right Efforts to Ban ADL from X
If Musk truly opposed anti-Semitism of any kind, he wouldn't have given the poll his blessing. In fact, he would have condemned it without reservation. But by giving the poll his blessing, Musk is welcoming the contributions of anti-Semites to X while stating that ADL is unwelcome.
If ADL is banned from X, then what makes you think white supremacists will stop there? Today, the ADL. Tomorrow, Hillel, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Simon Wiesenthal Center will find themselves removed from X because of their association with Jews.
If that happens to prominent Jewish organizations, then what of synagogues, Jewish community centers, schools and other non-profits will also soon find themselves unwelcome on X and will be branded with a scarlet letter.
3. Claiming Jews Are To Blame For Anti-Semitism By Drawing Attention To It
The ADL, because they are so aggressive in their demands to ban social media accounts for even minor infractions, are ironically the biggest generators of anti-Semitism on this platform!
In other words, the Jews are to blame for anti-Semitism by speaking out against it, and we ought to keep our mouths shut.
By making this claim, Musk effectively absolves responsibility from those who actually harbor hatred towards Jews while giving them a blank check to defame us at every opportunity.
In such an environment, anti-Semitism would be bound to become mainstream in the United States. And if this comes to pass then pogroms will be sure to follow.
This would be Elon Musk's hateful and ugly legacy.
Wright was best known for his massive hits "Dream Weaver" and "Love is Alive" which dominated the charts in 1976.
He started out as a child actor spending two years in the original Broadway production of Fanny with future Brady Bunch matriarch Florence Henderson.
Wright planned a career in medicine but turned his attention to music while studying in West Germany. After making his way to London, Wright formed Spooky Tooth along with guitarist Luther Grosvenor, drummer Mike Kellie. Greg Ridley on bass and lead singer Mike Harrison. Spooky Tooth released three albums with little commercial success. With Wright's death, Grosvenor is the group's only original surviving member.
Notwithstanding the lack of commercial success, Wright had built a reputation as a superb pianist and organist with his contributions to George Harrison's All Things Must Pass which led to a lifelong collaboration and friendship with the former Beatle. Wright also played piano on Nilsson's cover of the Badfinger song "Without You".
After reforming Spooky Tooth with a different lineup in 1972 again with little success, Wright's fortunes would change dramatically after signing as a solo artist with Warner Brothers Records. In December 1975, Wright would release The Dream Weaver, a keyboard and synthesizer driven record with no guitars which spawned his two biggest hits "Dream Weaver" and "Love is Alive".
Wright would never attain the commercial success of The Dream Weaver in his subsequent releases over the next five years and would gradually turn his attention to soundtrack work as well as both world and new age music. In this century, Wright would participate in Spooky Tooth reunions and was also part of Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band. In 2014, Wright released his autobiography Dream Weaver: Music, Meditation, and My Friendship with George Harrison.
Sadly, Wright has weaved his last dream, but the love will remain alive. R.I.P.
Last night, I went to the Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge to see Golda starring Helen Mirren as the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
This film has been greatly maligned for two reasons. First there's the objection to Mirren's casting because she isn't Jewish. To me, this is utterly silly. She's an actress for G-d's sake. Actors and actresses pretend to be all sorts of people. If Cate Blanchett, a non-Jewish woman, can play Bob Dylan, a Jewish man, then why can't Helen Mirren play Golda Meir?
With that said, I have mixed thoughts on Golda. Let me begin with the positive. Mirren turns in a splendid performance as Golda Meir while Liev Schrieber plays former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with restraint.
What troubles me about Golda was how the movie focuses narrowly on the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Of course, it is a significant event in Israeli history and would ultimately bring her political career to an end. However, except for a brief exchange with Kissinger discussing how her father protected her and her siblings from Russian pogroms against Jews while she was a child, the viewer doesn't get to know much about Meir herself.
After all, let's keep in mind, that when Meir became Israel's Prime Minister in 1969, she was only the fourth woman in human history to be elected a head of state or government. The three women who preceded her (Khertek Amyrbitovna Anchimaa-Toka of the Tuvan's People's Republic, Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon/Sri Lanka and Indira Gandhi of India) were parts of political dynasties connected to husbands or fathers who were previously heads of state or government.
This was not the case with Meir who spent her formative years in the United States in Milwaukee and in Denver where she became exposed to socialism and Zionism. Meir and her husband would move to British Mandated Palestine in the early 1920's where she would become a trade union activist with Histadrut and later became a key figure within the Jewish Agency raising money to encourage Jews to emigrate to British Mandated Palestine. Meir was also one of the signatories of Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948 and would be a key cabinet minister under David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharrett and Levi Eshkol as Minister of Labour and later Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Although Meir stepped down as Foreign Affairs Minister in 1966 due to poor health, she was chosen to succeed Eshkol as Prime Minister when died suddenly in 1969. Meir would lead the left-wing Alignment movement to win 56 seats that year, the closest Israel has ever come to having an outright majority government in the Knesset.
The point here is that Meir did things from the 1920's through the 1960's which were not done by women anywhere else in the world. If Golda was a grand biopic which encompassed these events rather than focus exclusively on the Yom Kippur War, then I believe it would have made for a far more compelling movie. Perhaps such an epic will see the light of day.
But for better or for worse, Golda is about the Yom Kippur War. What also troubles me was in the film's introduction made a point of stating that Meir and Israel's leadership were in a state of hubris. I don't see it that way. Meir was given a conflicting set of facts where it concerned Egypt and Syria's intentions to go to war. An Egyptian asset had told Israel that Egypt and Syria would launch a surprise attack in May 1973 and when this did not come to pass, Israel was less inclined to take the possibility of an attack seriously. Meir made what she thought was the best choice. Of course, it didn't turn about to be the best choice, yet it might very well have been Meir's only choice as the Nixon Administration explicitly warned Israel not to launch a preemptive attack. Kissinger would later tell Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan that had Israel struck first, it would not have received so much as a nail. Presidents and Prime Ministers often don't have the luxury of choosing between good and bad options but rather a series of bad options and which one will cause the least amount of harm.
Whatever one thinks of Golda Meir's handling of the Yom Kippur War, she was truly a feminist pioneer. But because Meir was Israeli, the Left treats her as a pariah and discards her socialist credentials. And if the Left doesn't have an open mind when it comes to Golda Meir, it certainly does not have an open mind when it comes to Golda.
Buffett went from being a struggling musician in the early 1970's to carving himself a niche embracing laid back Caribbean flavored country-folk music for people in pursuit of a good time with hits like "Margaritaville" and "Cheeseburger in Paradise". His concerts developed a devoted following of fans known as Parrotheads. Buffett would open a chain of restaurants named after his two most famous songs, wrote several bestselling fiction and nonfiction books and made numerous cameo appearances in movies and TV shows. All of which made Buffett a billionaire.
Yet I suspect that Buffett would have been a happy man, money or no money. My favorite Buffett song is "Come Monday" which was his first hit back in 1974. In its official video, Buffett notes the video was shot with "no money" and his girlfriend (and future wife) Jane working for free. They are joined by two other women and Buffett looks like he is absolutely having the time of his life. We should all be so fortunate. R.I.P.
