Post by The PeelerOn Tue, 04 Dec 2018 06:55:26 -0800, serbian bitch Razovic, the resident
psychopath of sci and scj and Usenet's famous sexual cripple, making an ass
of herself as "jew pedophile Ron Jacobson (jew pedophile Baruch 'Barry'
Post by The JewsYou "forgot" that nobody will be served, since this is all your
fantasy, Gord-o!
ROFLMJAO
It, IS jew master !
Your psychotic fantasies are EVERYTHING you got, eh, you miserable idiot?
<BG>
All because the mangina embraced Judenhass.
Post by The PeelerMerry chanookah a"h!
HE will have one! YOU will not even have a merry Christmas (as we will be
witnessing again when you totally flip out over the holidays again)! LOL
Jeff Jacoby wrote about several subjects.
http://view.email.bostonglobe.com/?qs=98bc73e55a27a12dea471699d17484412856a10cc30fd65f7fcd811769ff7a0d264c642381f352e56fb83bd7b0020b480bb91f46e6ed102f25aebac92fe156e7c72423182a9a4e4fdf13a36526ae52b68892784a3b399f6b
The Boston Globe
Arguable - with Jeff Jacoby
Monday, December 3, 2018
George Herbert Walker Bush, RIP
When word came this weekend that America’s 41st president had passed away,
there was an almost biblical quality of peace and felicity to the news, like
the death of an Old Testament patriarch. Then Abraham breathed his last and
died at a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to
his people.
George H. W. Bush lived a life of honor and grace and service, and he lived
long enough to see those qualities contribute far more to his reputation
than his ignominious reelection defeat in 1992 detracted from it. In a
letter to his mother, Bush once summed up the code of conduct he strove to
live by: “Tell the truth. Don’t blame people. Be strong. Do your best. Try
hard. Forgive. Stay the course.” He was neither saint nor superman; like all
presidents he made his share of blunders and bad moves (more on that below).
But as even his harshest detractors would concede, he sought to do right and
to conduct himself with integrity and consideration.
Given his very old age and his long absence from the political wars, Bush
would no doubt be going out on a wave of good feeling no matter who was
president today. But that admiration is only heightened by the contrast
between Bush’s character and that of the current occupant of the White
House.
When I learned on Saturday that Bush had died, I took from the shelf the
wonderful collection of letters and diary entries that he published in 2000
under the title All the Best, George Bush . Paging through its 600-plus
pages at random, I was struck again not only by the many insights Bush’s
voluminous correspondence affords into his private nature — loving, funny,
tolerant, honest — but also by the sense that they truly are of a different
era. It is impossible to imagine Bush’s successors generating such a vast
trove of kind, concerned, and earnest messages over the years — not Bill
Clinton, not George W. Bush, not Barack Obama. And certainly not Donald
Trump.
Here’s an example, from May 1988, when it was clear that Bush would win the
Republican nomination to succeed Ronald Reagan. He wrote a letter to his
siblings and children, urging them to be extremely careful to do nothing
that might be construed as an attempt to peddle influence or feather their
own nests:
We are about to sail into uncharted waters, in terms of family scrutiny. We’ve
all been through a lot of inquiry and microscopic probing; however, it’ll
get worse, not just for our family, but for Dukakis’s, too. Hence this
letter to family. . . .
As we move closer to November, you’ll find you’ve got a lot of new friends.
They may become real friends. Or if the polls show Dukakis kicking us —
there might be some friendships that will vaporize. They’ll ask for things —
‘Do you know anyone at Commerce? Can you call Joe Doakes at State?’
My plea is this: please do not contact any federal agency or department on
anything. A call from a ‘Bush’ will get returned, but there is a great
likelihood that it will be leaked; maybe deliberately misrepresented.
If there is a legitimate inquiry, call my office. It is certainly
appropriate to contact your own government, but let’s do it through my
office so no one can accuse any of the family of trying to use influence.
Another was written in September 1988, after Newsweek had published a
demeaning cover story on Bush and his supposed “wimp factor .” The reporter
wanted Newsweek to get exclusive access to internal campaign material, to be
used in writing a book after the election. In his reply, Bush didn’t seethe
with resentment or lash out vindictively. Instead he stressed that he would
never dream of penalizing journalists for doing their job:
The last thing that I want or would condone would be taking a person for
whom we all have real respect and making that person a ‘journalistic leper.’
. . .
I have made very clear to all concerned that Newsweek is to be treated with
total fairness. Newsweek reporters are to be granted the same access and
shown the same courtesy as others. I have no reason to believe this is not
the case.
When it comes to going beyond these guidelines into giving Newsweek special
consideration, giving them access to internal memoranda, indeed, giving them
special treatment, I just can’t do that. In my view, I would be proving
Newsweek’s point — that controversial editorial conclusion they reached and
chose to express the very day I announced for the Presidency. . . .
My position is not based on ‘retribution.’ Getting even is not a part of my
make-up. I also know there is a personal risk to me in all this. But I do
not want your editors to totally misjudge my character once again.
[Y]our editors made a cool, calculating decision. They took a reporter’s
story and drastically changed it by inserting time and again a most
prejudicial word. . . . No one can argue about their right to do so [but]
surely you do not want me to reward such a decision by giving that
publication favored treatment. Surely you don’t want me to prove them right
all along by rolling over and singling them out, granting them access and
special inside, off-the-record handling not granted to others.
Fair access, unfailing courtesy, benefit of the doubt — yes. But proving
their ‘Big W’ [i.e., wimp] point — never.
A few months after the inauguration, George and Barbara Bush went to see the
weekly drill parade at the Marine Barracks in Washington. “The Marines were
famous for their precision and for not making mistakes,” Bush noted in
recounting the event, but on the night the First Couple attended, one of the
Marines dropped his rifle. The next day the commander-in-chief made a point
of writing to the embarrassed young officer:
Dear Cpl. Plousha,
Last night’s drill was very special. I want to thank you and the others in
the platoon for a super performance.
Col. Pace told me that you were the guy selected by his peers for that key
inspection role — quite an honor, well deserved.
Please thank all involved in the drill —
Sincerely,
George Bush
P. S. Don’t worry about anything — you did A-OK.
One more — a deeply personal letter that Bush wrote to a woman in Hasbrouck
Heights, N.J., whose husband died in the terrorist attack that destroyed Pan
Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The widow had written a bitter
letter to Bush, accusing him of not caring about the victims and their
families. This was part of his response:
I truly understood your frustration and the agony that comes from feeling no
one cares. . . .
On a more personal side, I really ached for you in your loss. You see, long
ago we lost a child. She was almost four and we watched her fight a losing
battle to leukemia. True, I had Barbara, but maybe there is some common
ground. At least I want to understand. I remember crying ‘til my body
literally ached. . . .
Now can I give you a word from the heart of this 64-year-old husband? Time
and faith heal. Be strong. Have faith in God for he does work in mysterious
ways. Someday the happy memories of your loving husband will crowd out the
grief and that terrible agony of his loss. . . .
I’ll try hard to do my part. When a sparrow falls, or a hostage is held, or
a beautiful girl from Hasbrouck Heights loses part of her soul and has her
heart broken, we must care.
Whatever Bush’s flaws, he was a man of great heart and soft emotion, even if
he wasn’t always as good at expressing in public as he was in private
letters. In a famous flub in in New Hampshire in 1992, Bush actually read
aloud what was meant to be a private cue card, and proclaimed, “Message: I
care.” He was, in that sense, the very opposite of Clinton, the consummate
performer who instinctively knew just how to bite his lower lip and assure
audiences that he felt their pain. Yet of the two, it was Bush who was
truly — to use a phrase from his inaugural address — the kinder, gentler
leader. That got lost sometimes behind 41’s awkwardness, and in the hiss and
static of electoral campaigns. But as he is mourned and buried this week,
the politics are long past and the character of the man shines brightly in
retrospect. Sometimes genuinely good people do go into politics. America
this week will lay one of them to rest.
When Bush went wobbly
While I admire the elder George Bush’s character and decency, I was not a
fan of his presidential performance. And it was in the area of foreign
policy, where he is routinely hailed for his steadiness and knowledge , that
I faulted him most. I was appalled by his bloodless reaction to the
Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, when he refused to condemn China’s
violent assault on pro-democracy demonstrators in the streets of Beijing for
fear of disrupting US-Chinese relations. I thought his protracted
unwillingness to recognize the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and
Estonia until long after their independence from the Soviet Union was a fait
accompli was disgraceful. And there was no excuse for his (and Secretary of
State James Baker’s) highhanded treatment of Israel’s doughty prime
minister, Yitzhak Shamir.
But it was Bush’s performance during the 1990-91 Gulf War that I have always
thought was his worst foreign policy fiasco.
My view is not the standard one. During his presidency and in the decades
since, Bush has been extravagantly praised for his handling of that war —
for the vast international military coalition he assembled to drive Saddam
Hussein out of Kuwait, for the swift, 100-hour invasion that crushed Saddam’s
military, and for the decision not to pursue the Iraqi dictator to Baghdad
and topple his regime. The war’s outcome sent Bush’s popularity soaring; by
late February 1991 his approval rating had reached a stratospheric 89% — the
highest presidential job approval rating ever recorded to that date.
President Bush rides in a Humvee with General Norman Schwarzkopf during a
visit with troops in Saudi Arabia on Thanksgiving Day 1990, as the
anti-Saddam coalition was being assembled in the Gulf.
The worldwide coalition was indeed impressive, and the liberation of Kuwait’s
people was accomplished with brilliant efficiency. But Bush’s refusal to
help liberate Iraq’s people as well was, in my view, a grievous failure.
Bush had repeatedly insisted that Saddam, one of the world’s cruelest and
bloodiest tyrants, was a latter-day Adolf Hitler and must be destroyed.
“We're dealing with Hitler revisited — a totalitarianism and a brutality
that is naked and unprecedented in modern times.” Bush said forcefully
months before the fighting began. “That must not stand! We cannot talk about
compromise.”
Steadily and consistently, the president made the case that Saddam’s
homicidal villainy could not be tolerated by a world that had learned the
danger of appeasement. He decried “summary executions, routine torture,” the
murder of children before their parents’ eyes, and other “ghastly atrocities
perpetrated by Saddam's forces.” Above all, he urged Iraq’s beleaguered
people to overthrow their tyrant, implying that the United States, which had
brought such a massive military coalition to Iraq’s borders, would ensure
the success of a popular uprising.
The best way “for the bloodshed to stop,” Bush said on Feb. 15, 1991, before
coalition forces had entered Iraq, is “for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi
people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein the
dictator to step aside.” Two weeks later, he repeated his call for a
rebellion. “I've always said . . . that the Iraqi people should put [Saddam]
aside,” Bush told reporters at a news conference. The president’s message
was amplified by CIA-linked radio broadcasts, which encouraged Iraqis to
overthrow Saddam’s regime.
Long-suffering Shi'ites in the south of Iraq and persecuted Kurds in the
north answered Bush’s call. Heartened by the assurance that America was with
them, they seized the moment to free themselves from Saddam's murderous
rule. In short order, the rebels had seized 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Freedom was within reach.
Then came betrayal. At the crucial moment, Bush denied Iraq’s people the
limited US help they needed to topple one of the planet's most savage
monsters. He endorsed a decision by General Norman Schwarzkopf (the
commander of coalition forces in the Gulf) to let Saddam retain the use of
his helicopter gunships. And so, with hundreds of thousands of US troops and
their allies looking on, Saddam's forces proceeded to crush the uprising
with nightmarish barbarity.
In the weeks that followed, Saddam's forces slaughtered tens of thousands of
Iraqis, filling hundreds of mass graves in the process. Bush refused to
intervene, insisting that it had never been his goal “to get Saddam Hussein
out of there by force.” Saddam would rule Iraq for 12 hellish years more. It
would take another US-led war, under a different George Bush, to eventually
depose him at a cost of more than 4,000 American troops, and 400,000 Iraqi
lives.
For freeing Kuwait from Saddam’s occupation, Bush 41 was showered with
enthusiastic cheers. The conventional wisdom to this day is that his
restraint in not ordering the military to take Baghdad showed Bush at his
finest. But to his diary, he confessed that he had failed to accomplish what
mattered most. “Hitler is alive,” he lamented, “indeed, Hitler is still in
office.”
Early in the crisis, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had warned
Bush: “Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly.” In the end, that is
just what he did.
Holiday shopping doesn’t cheapen Christmas. It enriches it
“Germany's Protestant Church complained Thursday of the ‘merciless
commercialization’ of Christmas and the early opening of festive markets in
some cities,” reported Agence France-Presse last weekend. The story quoted a
spokeswoman for the Evangelical Church in Germany, who says the energetic
shopping at Christmas markets “ spells a contrary message to what the Bible
tells us” and insisted that the four weeks of the Advent season should be
experienced not in buying sweets, handicrafts, Christmas decorations, and
other presents, but “for its true meaning, as the time of anticipation of
Christmas.”
On this side of the Atlantic, Alyssa McCormick, a columnist for Virginia
Tech’s Collegiate Times, doesn’t think that Christmas shopping should begin
until the holiday is only two weeks away. When the push to buy gifts begins
in early November, she frets, it “causes us to forget what the holidays are
really about.”
Then there’s Claudia L. from Perry Hills, Ohio. “We’ve gotten caught up in
the lights, the stores crammed with all sorts of items, the wrapping, and
the gifts,” she writes sadly to Heloise , the household advice columnist.
“But the holidays are not about these things. As a nation, we’ve lost the
importance of these holidays and have given way to the commercialization and
the ostentation of outdoing neighbors.”
Subscribe to BostonGlobe.com
Complaints about how crass and mercenary the holidays have become are
nothing unusual, of course. Indeed, they are one of the perennial rituals
that mark the season. I don’t doubt that all these expressions of dismay are
sincere, and I certainly don’t deny that the holiday shopping season can be
stressful, expensive, and more than a little materialistic.
All the same, as a measure of cultural and social well-being, I see this
yearly impulse to shower friends and family with presents as one of our most
endearing and heartening traits.
I made that point in a column some years back, after reading that Pope
Benedict XVI had deplored “the superficial glitter” of the season, and
warned his followers not to confuse the commercial celebration of Christmas
with its “true joy and true light.” Coincidentally, I had just taken my son
Micah, who was then 8, to buy Hanukkah presents at a local Dollar Tree
store. Here’s part of what I wrote:
[Micah] was eager to spend his savings — 11 dollars and change, grubbily
folded into a miniature wallet — on Hanukkah gifts for his family. We had
done this together last year, and Micah had been besieging me to pick an
evening when the two of us could make a return trip.
I found it a wonderful experience, no irony intended. Dollar Tree isn't
exactly Tiffany & Co., and in any case Micah chooses gifts with all the
sophistication and refinement you'd expect from a rambunctious third-grade
boy who loves bugs and can never seem to keep his shirt tucked in. The
presents he picked out for his mother included a desktop picture frame for
her office, glow-in-the-dark necklaces (“Mama can wear them if she goes for
a walk at night”), and two boxes of Milk Duds; for his teen-age brother he
found an air horn, Lemonheads, and a container of “ noise putty” that emits
flatulent sounds when poked. . . .
But whatever Micah may have lacked in style and taste, he more than made up
for with the unfeigned delight he brought to the whole project. He couldn't
wait to turn his little clutch of dollars into presents for the people he
loves. He wasn't consciously trying to be altruistic or selfless; and he's
never given 30 seconds’ thought to the meaning of generosity. He was simply
excited by the prospect of giving — and indeed, when the moment came a few
nights later to bestow his gifts on his recipients, he was practically
bouncing up and down with elation.
If this is crass commercialism, let's have more of it.
Would modern society really be improved if the happiness of gift-giving were
not an integral part of one special season each year? Granted, anything can
be overdone, and materialism is no exception. And it is important to
remember that the hustle and pressure of buying presents for loved ones
doesn't reduce our obligation to give charitably and generously to the poor.
But how diminished our culture would be without that hustle and pressure.
Children learn an important lesson when they see the adults in their world
treat other people’s joy as a priority worth spending time, money, and
thought on. No one has to teach kids to be acquisitive and selfish — that
comes naturally — but what an inestimable asset they acquire when they find
out for themselves that it really is more blessed to give than to receive.
It’s only a coincidence of the calendar that links Christmas and Hanukkah;
theologically the two holidays have little in common. But essential to both
Judaism and Christianity is the principle of imitatio Dei, of striving to
walk in God's ways, above all by being kind to others as He is kind to us.
Isn't that what underlies the expense and scramble of our holiday
gift-giving? In lavishing gifts on others, we reflect the openhandedness
with which God lavishes gifts on us. OK, so maybe that's not the entirety of
the season's “true joy and true light.” But if you’ve ever experienced the
unaffected delight of a child choosing presents for others, you know how
special and uplifting the shopping season can be.
Site to see
Amid the internet’s vast ocean of drivel, some websites are alluring islands
of knowledge and discovery. Each week, in “Site to See,” I call attention to
one of these online treasures.
This week’s site, My Jewish Learning, [URL:
https://www.myjewishlearning.com ] is a portal to a vast repository of
information about all aspects of Judaism and Jewish life. There are
thousands of articles, videos, and illustrations on Jewish history and
belief, ritual and biography, terminology and law, texts and languages and
communities. A section titled “Eat” covers everything from keeping kosher to
holiday recipes to baking challah ; another section, “Pray,” explores daily
blessings and recitations for mourners, and presents recordings of prayers
for the sick in different styles. There are numerous entries covering
lifecycle events — weddings and births, bar and bat mitzvahs, conversions
and divorce. There are nearly as many that focus on Jewish art, humor,
music, and literature.
You don’t have to be Jewish to find My Jewish Learning intriguing and
captivating, while even visitors who are highly knowledgeable about Judaism
will discover material that is new to them. I just read a smart essay
explaining why it is perfectly acceptable for an observant Jewish to receive
a heart valve transplanted from a pig, and another on the extensive
involvement of Jews in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
Today is the first day of Hanukkah, so here is an excerpt from one of the
site’s many entries dealing with the Jewish festival of lights — a
lighthearted list of “9 Things You Didn’t Know About Hanukkah”:
3. The books of Maccabees, which tell the story of Hanukkah, weren’t
included in the Hebrew Bible – but they are in the Catholic Bible.
There are different theories explaining why the 1st-century rabbis who
canonized the scriptures omitted the Maccabees, ranging from the text’s
relative newness at the time to fears of alienating the Roman leadership in
control of Jerusalem at the time.
4. Marilyn Monroe owned a music-playing Hanukkah menorah.
When the Hollywood star converted to Judaism before marrying Jewish
playwright Arthur Miller, her future mother-in-law gave her a menorah as a
conversion gift. The Hanukkah lamp, which the menorah’s current owner says
Mrs. Miller brought back from Jerusalem, has a wind-up music box in its base
that plays Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem. It’s featured in the Jewish
Museum in New York City’s exhibit “Becoming Jewish: Warhol’s Liz and Marilyn
,” but sadly you can’t wind it up.
Recommend a website for this feature! Send me the link and a short
description (***@globe.com), and put “Site to See” in the subject
line.
The last line
“No Santa Claus! Thank God, he lives and lives forever. A thousand years
from now, Virginia, nay ten times ten thousand years from now, he will
continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
— “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus,” The New York Sun (Sept. 21, 1897)
________________________________________
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Look for the next Arguable in your inbox on Monday, Dec. 10. Until then,
have a great week and a sparkling Hanukkah!
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