Category Archives: Politics

Written July 26, 2014:

And please bear with me learning to use this blog and WordPress. Both line spacing and character spacing seem to go berserk, with line spacing very large and many returns being inserted even between letters in a word. I’m working on it. And the “Comments” area is really not built yet.

The Israel attacks on the Hamas military are apparently having success. Hamas, though heretofore unwilling to accept any cease fire, even those offered by other Muslim nations, has finally ceased or almost ceased firing the rockets.

Total Hamas rockets fired at Israel since the beginning of Protective Edge: 3,500

But Israel says Hamas has reduced launches to save their remaining supply, that they haven’t fired, still have half, some 1,700 rockets hidden.

I almost never watch CNN because it is so totally liberally biased. But on Saturdays Fox News is all markets, usually of no interest to me, no regular news, so I turn on CNN.

CNN this morning is nothing but an anti-Israel propaganda barrage, a disgusting continuous unbroken stream of anti-Israel reports including video of the damage, even injured victims in hospitals in Gaza, without a single mention of all the Palestinian attacks on Israel, without mention that Hamas stores and shoots the weapons from family homes, schools, hospitals to maximize the carnage shown to the world to increase pressure on Israel to submit, to commit national suicide.

I presume my attitude is the same as yours: I value, care for, love every Palestinian just as much as I do every Israeli. I have contributed to the welfare of Palestinians. When I visited Israel last fall, we visited the West Bank including a Palestinian college, finding the Palestinians there gracious and totally respectable; we much enjoyed the nice lunch they served us.

Of course my care for persons has a qualification: I do not value, care for, love any person who intends harm to an innocent person. I will act myself and support those who act to do whatever is necessary to stop anyone intent on harming an innocent person.

But the Palestinians (maybe not even the Palestinians but just the Hamas terrorists among them) intentionally murder innocent Israeli civilians, while Israel only defends itself, making major precautions and sacrifices to do as little harm to civilians as possible. That is the stark distinction between Palestinians and Israelis, the reason I approve and support Israel attacking Gaza, though I, with the Israelis, supremely regret every injury or damage to innocent Palestinians. Certainly I will again contribute to the recovery of Palestinian civilians after this action is finished.

Israel’s continuing stream of reports of action, casualties and rocket attacks:
http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/07/18/live-updates-ground-operation-gaza/

Facts and figures news from Israel:
http://www.idfblog.com/facts-figures/rocket-attacks-toward-israel/

Rather outside of the point of the above: To those who criticize Israel for taking the Palestinians’ valuable homeland away from them, I suggest this little summary and quote from Mark Twain’s very stark description of Palestine when he visited there in 1867:
http://ameicainpalestine.blogspot.com/2013/11/mark-twain-in-holy-land-1867-and.html

All of us need to tell our congress members and senators and the president that we want Israel supported!

And seeing the preposterous anti-Israel reactions in the world, we must work together to elect a new government which will re-assert our strong and beneficial position in the world, and from within that context work to regain the respect and friendship of the world.

I point out with reluctance that Obama’s isolationist withdrawal from world involvement, that has brought worldwide chaos, seems to me to be similar to the isolationist positions advocated by some of our more radical conservative friends.

For those of you who are not in the writing business, Roget’s Thesaurus is the most-used dictionary-like book where we writers look for different words that mean the same or similar meanings. It is used constantly by probably almost every English language writer in the world. Now Roget’s is online and is provided in essence by writing applications such as Microsoft Word.

That Roget’s now considers “right-wing” and “right” to have meaning similar to “obstructionist” and “reactionary,” and its opposite meaning to be carried by the words “liberal,” “left-wing” and “progressive” is outrageous beyond words.

Below is from National Review today:

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Thesaurus Synonyms for ‘Obstructionist’ Include ‘Right-winger,’ ‘Rightist,’ ‘Tory’
By Andrew Johnson
July 24, 2014 4:41 PM
Comments

Apparently only conservatives and others on the right can be obstructionists, according to Roget’s Thesaurus.

A search for synonyms of “obstructionist” on Thesaurus.com, which cites Roget’s, reveals that the source considers several words related to conservative and right-leaning political stances to fit the definition of a “person who is cautious, moderate; an opponent of change.” Under antonyms, it lists left-leaning words.

Included in the list of obstructionist synonyms are “right-winger,” “right,” and “rightist” and ”Tory,” the British conservative party.

Other synonyms listed for obstructionst are “traditionalist,” “conserver,” “conventionalist,” “unprogressive,” and “redneck.”

In its section for antonyms for obstructionist, “left-winger,” “liberal,” and “progressive” are listed.

This is the second time in recent weeks that a reference book has equated a negative quality with conservatism. Earlier this month, the Daily Caller found that both the Oxford English and Merriam-Webster dictionaries included “right-wing” and “conservatism,” respectively, in their definitions of “bigotry.”

The Obamacare cancellation of the subsidies political situation is so confused!

And now flights are being cancelled into Tel Aviv! I sure hope Israel is able to end the rocket launchers and collapse the tunnels pretty soon and with as few Palestinain casualties as possible!

Did you happen to see just minutes ago Carl Rove on Fox trying to explain a NYT piece today that, even with Obama being blamed for all these disasters, the world falling apart due to his inactions, IRS criminality, FBI, Benghazi, etc., etc., there has been ZERO swing- “wave” he called it- by the American public toward Republicans. In a current poll asking, “If elections were held today, would you vote for the Republican or the Democrat?”, the result was exactly split 42% to 42%.

I keep going back to that week-ago Watters World hour-long special on O’Reilly where half the interviewed people couldn’t answer simplest questions like, “Who was the first president of the United States?” or “Who is Vice President of the United States?” A huge percentage of Americans are just out of it, unconcerned, not aware, numb regarding politics or even the currently most sensational happenings.
We think that everyone is aware like we are, and feels about politics like we feel, but we are VERY VERY WRONG in that! We who are aware and care about it are a small minority- the majority of Americans are NOT AWARE like we are, and DO NOT CARE about politics like we do.

Millions of people will be hurt very seriously as they lose these large health insurance premium subsidies. But how will all these millions of numb and out-of-it people feel about that? They don’t understand ANYTHING about it, anything that’s happening. They only know Obama and the Democrats gave them the gift. And now it has been taken away by someone not Obama, but by someone else.

And the someone else who took it away from them, damaged them severely, they will easily be led to believe was us Republicans.

The mainline networks blanketing Americans with their liberal propaganda is a huge and close to insurmountable obstacle to defeating Democrats in 2014 and 2016!

Quote from the following link: “From 1999 to 2009, Kaiser found that the insurance premiums had climbed 131% or 13.1% per year, and workers’ contribution toward paying that premium jumped 128% or 12.8% per year. In 1999, workers’ average contribution to the premium was $1543, and in 2009 it was $3515. For employers, their contribution was $4247 in 1999 and $9860 in 2009.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_costs_in_the_United_States

Kaiser (somehow is the main group keeping track of these numbers across all Americans) says as of this month:

I can’t believe those numbers! For families, in 2009 workers paid $300/month plus nearly $200/month in deductibles, plus employers paid over $800/month, total health care cost being paid per worker is $1,300 per month!

The important issue that’s not being discussed is that our health care cost must be reduced. No other countries pay our high cost and many of them have better care than we have. My pet peeve is the astronomical malpractice awards by courts which drives doctors’ and hospitals’ insurance premiums to astronomical amounts. A large part of what we pay to doctors and hospitals is just those premiums. We recently dealt with a situation where a nursing home resident needing to go to a clinic for a 15-minute test could be driven by either, 1) a friend for no cost, or 2) by the home’s medically-equipped and -attended van at cost of over $1,000, almost entirely because of the home’s bus’s liability insurance and precautions.

Raining lightly here today. This morning when Teegray went out and barked at a cow some distance away, three small heads rose up out of nearer grass, and three calves got up and hurried over toward another cow, likely their mother. Triplet elk calves? Very unusual!