Detroit Jewish News

Saturday Jan 30th @ 730pm - Great Music/Great Cause :) bit.do/cafeshalom

Shalom! You are invited to complete a survey about your current Jewish ritual life activities, attitudes and experiences with relationships, self-esteem, trauma, and ideas about the body, spirituality, and healthcare through Arizona State University.

Who can participate?
• Jewish adults over the age of 18 and their intimate partners
• living in Canada and the United States

This survey:
• Should take 20--50 minutes to complete.
• You can exit and return to complete it around your schedule.
• Participation is voluntary.
• open from now until March 20, 2021.

Please follow this link to complete the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CYSBSCZ

You are welcome to message or email me if you have questions about this survey via: [email protected], subject line: “Ritual Living Survey”.

Please share this pin, share, copy the link & post on other platforms and email. Thank you and shalom.

Shalom! You are invited to complete a survey about your current Jewish ritual life activities, attitudes and experiences with relationships, self-esteem, trauma, and ideas about the body, spirituality, and healthcare through Arizona State University.

Who can participate?
• Jewish adults over the age of 18 and their intimate partners
• living in Canada and the United States

This survey:
• Should take 20--50 minutes to complete.
• You can exit and return to complete it around your schedule.
• Participation is voluntary.
• open from now until March 20, 2021.

Please follow this link to complete the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CYSBSCZ

You are welcome to message or email me if you have questions about this survey via: [email protected], subject line: “Ritual Living Survey”.

Please share this pin, share, repost, and if you feel comfortable, like and comment. Thank you and shalom.

An 1998 article in your paper on Tanya Roberts may be incorrect. It stated that Roberts's father was Irish and her mother Jewish. It is being cited in Wikipedia today.

I believe Tanya's father was named Blum, a Yiddish or German word. He could have been German, Hungarian, Austrian etc. and possibly Jewish as well.

Blum is not an Irish name.

I live in Dearborn. I have a subscription. I have not received a hard copy of my paper since December 9, 2020. I dropped my subscription when I lived in Detroit for this very reason and now it has risen its ugly head again. I am not paying to get onto a computer to read this mag, I want what I have paid for delivered to my home. I am tired of excuses.

Shalom! You are invited to complete a survey about your current Jewish ritual life activities, attitudes and experiences with relationships, self-esteem, trauma, and ideas about the body, spirituality, and healthcare through Arizona State University.

Who can participate?
• Jewish adults over the age of 18 and their intimate partners
• living in Canada and the United States

This survey:
• Should take 20--50 minutes to complete.
• You can exit and return to complete it around your schedule.
• Participation is voluntary.
• open from now until March 20, 2021.

Please follow this link to complete the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CYSBSCZ

You are welcome to message or email me if you have questions about this survey via: [email protected], subject line: “Ritual Living Survey”.

Please share this pin, share, repost, and if you feel comfortable, like and comment. Thank you and shalom.

Good news! Next week, the Hebrew Language Society is starting its winter semester with free Hebrew conversation and Israeli music lessons, and affordable Small Group Hebrew lessons! Join the best teachers and motivated students for a great learning experience!!! Lessons are from the convenience of your home!

Conspiracy against women,
Crimes against human beings,
9/11 and the real Trojan horse, Part 2: https://youtu.be/CvKALs658gE
Buy "Beyond the silver line" Special edition:
paper back from ebay http://ebay.us/kITB53?cmpnId=5338273189
e-Book: https://payhip.com/b/8Ik9

https://thejewishnews.com/2020/11/25/last-aliyah-at-iron-mountain-as-tiny-jewish-community-dwindles-historic-u-p-shul-finally-shuts-its-doors/?fbclid=IwAR1vlabzb7G_iF7m5EV86JqFTiZ3ctM8UxwgmrnHllu9B5hrJIYNUYXvkEY

Once again, Saturday mail has come and no JN this week. 2nd time this month already. Mail carrier said he had no Jewish News on his route this week. Can't wait to move so maybe we will have more reliable mail service.

Moderates and Neo-conservatives Cannibalize Progressives

By John Burl Smith

Why is it, every time middle-of-the-road moderate and conservative Democrats lose, they began cannibalizing progressive because they lost. This scenario played out again after the November 3, 2020 election. Now, moderates and neo-cons are blaming progressives because voters rejected their warmed-over middle-of-the-road rhetoric during the election, trying to sound like Trumpism dressed up in Democratic clothing. Voters are intelligent! They do not want Democrats that mouth Republicans talking points. If Pres. Joe Biden had played that middle-of-the-road Trumpism game, he would have lost too.

Moderate and neo-con Democrats must accept the first law of politics; all who win an election are not the best candidate, and when they face a better candidate, they lose!! Voters choose between what is on the ballot. The thing is, moderates and neo-cons have very short and selective memories if they have any memory at all. So in the words of my favorite talk show host Roland Martin, “Let me help y’all out!” Middle-of-the-roaders did not want to get out front and attack Trump. Similar to many Republicans, now that Trump has lost re-election, die-hard Republicans are still afraid of Trump’s base in their states. They would not embrace progressive ideas and tried to out Trump Trump, hoping to avoid his tweets or skim off some of Trump’s votes, but lost. It is as simple as that; it’s a no brainer.

Now, let us go back to May when this scenario began. Back then, moderates and neo-cons, while coronavirus began waging its battle royal, killing Americans without relief, their shrill cries to Mr. Biden was “compete aggressively in more states and press the party’s advantage down the ballot.” I counseled, at the time, that was the wrong prescription for the wrong election. And now, after their losses, they are blaming progressives because neither Pres. Biden nor House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would cover their backsides with money or appearances. They have forgotten how they ran away from Trump while embracing Trump-ism rhetoric for the last 3 and 1/2 years, shaking in their shoes, scared to open their mouths against Trump.

I have worked for Democrats seeking public office from the local level to the White House since I walked door to door with my mother, Mrs. Willie May Gray, a centenarian, who campaigned for Adlai Stevenson in 1952 for my first outing. The 2020 election allowed her to cross her number two off her bucket list, vote for Pres. Joe Biden, but number one was voting for the first black President Barak H. Obama. Although we lost the 1952 race, I was hooked on fighting for my political rights.

So, I digress to 1968 for an instant replay of today. Back then, I was fighting against the war in Vietnam, and Richard Nixon was championing the “silent majority.” Democrats supported the failed policies of that unjust war in Vietnam while attacked progressives for their opposition and handed Nixon the Presidency. Nixon was a scurrilous scoundrel, and his re-election is where this lesson begins. Disgraced and humiliated, Nixon’s resignation put Jerald Ford in the White House.

I was part of a small group of progressives, led by State Rep. Derrick “Teddy” Withers from Memphis that climbed aboard Jimmy Carter’s bandwagon, and we road to victory in 1976, like Joe Biden today. However, with Ford’s lost, Republicans abandon their party wholesale, as Republicans today, and many became Democrats. These renegades were welcomed into the Democratic Party by moderates and neo-cons, as well as given party positions, while so-called moderates and neo-cons pushed progressives to the margins, if not out of the party altogether, in favor of renegade Republicans.

Suddenly, to Democrats surprise, Ronald Reagan rose to prominence and flipped the “silent majority,” dubbing it his “sunbelt strategy” to slide into the White House. Facilitating Raegan’s slight of hand, a strange breed of Democrat was born called “Reagan Democrats,” which were not new, but those renegade Republicans that deserted their party, now deserted Jimmy Carter, giving Raegan the inside track to the White House. Reagan Republicans simply went back home. Deserting moderates and neo-cons, they hollowed out the Democratic Party and left it without leadership for the next 16 years. Moderates and neo-cons cannibalized progressives and any young Democratic hopeful to hold on to power. Moderates and neo-cons refused to look at their open-armed acceptance of renegades Republicans as the beginning of the problem. They preferred blaming progressives, calling them “Socialists.” They continued Raegan’s attacks on workers’ right to unionize, increased welfare support for poor Americans, anti-war protest, social change, and social justice for blacks and other minorities (white women).

Democrats ostracized progressives that came into the party to support Carter after the Nixon debacle. Following Carter’s loss, no one talked about how Democrats accepted elected Republicans that deserted their party and joined the Democrats to continue in office and avoid Democratic challenges. They killed any progressives challengers by refusing to support their campaigns. Moderates and neo-cons attack progressive as socialists, enabling Raegan to echo charges, which allowed Republicans to keep the White House and dominate Congress those 16 years.

During Republicans 16-year rule, Democrats ran away from progressives policies, trying to out Raegan Raegan, afraid of being tainted with the charge of “socialist” or “communist,” which moderates and neo-cons have revived today. Hence, Democrats drowned in middle-of-the-road politics, standing for nothing, so voters could not distinguish a dime’s worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans. Finally, in 1992, progressive held their noses and supported Bill Clinton and reclaimed the White House.

However, Clinton, for progressives, was more of a wolf in progressives clothing as he waffled along but never embraced progressive’s ideas. Attempting to succeed Clinton, Gore was left without a real policy program that allowed him to attract people Clinton left out of the prosperity of the 1990s. Enacting policies that pleased moderates and neo-cons, Clinton’s drug policies devastated black communities across America. Nibbling around the edges and basically, showing progressives the back of his hand, Clinton left a weakened and timid Al Gore vulnerable to similar raging Republicans. Gore accepted a flawed election, far more than the claims Trump is currently making. Democrats came out on the wrong side of a bad count and the short end of an equally bad court decision.

Finally, we reach 2008, and almost everyone has a vivid memory of the eight years of Pres. Barak H. Obama’s Presidency, where he had to justify every act and fight Congress to get the Affordable Care Act, even with a Democrat majority in Congress. Making this u-turn we end on Hilary Clinton’s 2016 pole driven campaign. Her middle-of-the-road policies and reliance on older voters gave the nation—Donald Trump. That long recapitulation brings us to 2020, where no one other than Joe Biden thought it was possible to beat Donald Trump, certainly not any moderates and neo-cons.

President-elect Joe Biden must take charge of a party run by old white men, who refuse to concede any power to its growing young base, which has shown they can attract new voters, who will not stop talking on their cell phones, long enough to listen to anything old men are saying. Moderates and neo-con are claiming credit for the dominant position the Democratic Party now occupies when back in January 2020, seemed nearly impossible. I begin with a conversation in The New York Times, “Speak Of Divisions Among Dems” by Dominique Mosbergen, with US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC did an excellent job, stating progressives’ case, “We were pivotal in helping to get the vote out for winning candidates on November 3rd.” She won re-election convincingly, garnering more than 68% of the vote in New York’s 14th District. She pointed the finger at officials and other elements of the Democratic Party that blamed progressives for loses in Congress. “Democrats have historically forgotten about the support received from grassroots movements and activists once elections are over.”

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez called on her party to engage in an honest reckoning about embracing its activist base. “I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy. And that its base is not the enemy. The Movement for Black Lives is not the enemy; also that Medicare for all is not the enemy. More importantly, this isn’t even about winning an argument. It’s that if they keep going after the wrong thing ... they’re just setting the party up for obsolescence in the eyes of young and first-time voters again.” I agree, which is why I gave the long retrospective on how the party got here, giving America Trumpism. Pausing to think for a moment, then continuing Ocasio-Cortez said, “I don’t know how open the party will be, but I hope Present-elect Biden will be open to more progressive politics. It’s just that the history of our party tends to be; it gets really excited about the grassroots to get elected. Then those communities are promptly abandoned right after an election.” Black communities have saying this for over 50 years.

AOC described her feeling, being marginalized by mainstream Dems. She admitted she almost did not run for re-election this—in part because of a “lack of support” from the Democratic Party—which she said “seemed to perceive me as ‘the enemy.’ However, in the end, I chose to run to ‘prove that the progressive effort is real. That this movement is real and that I’m not a fluke.’” More importantly, “people really want and need guaranteed health care, and they really want the Democratic Party to fight for them. It’s really hard for us to turn out nonvoters when they feel like nothing changes for them. They feel like people don’t see them, or will not acknowledge their turnout. I’ve been begging the party to let me help them for two years. I’ve tried really hard to help.”

Even though Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden won this heated election, Dems fared poorly in congressional races, and the blame game began before he was declared the winner. Seven Democratic incumbents lost seats in the House, which began moderates and neo-cons historical fight to hold on to total control of the party, attacking its progressive base. This white male grouping, have controlled the party for time immortal, and see a power shift in the Democrats voting base to younger and more minority voters. They do not want to concede power to groups they see as outside the main stream.

AOC commented on this reality, “Before the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused my help. And all five of the vulnerable or swing district people that I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every single one that rejected my help is losing. And now they are blaming us for their losses.” Clarifying her statements, AOC said, “I’d already found the party had a feeble online presence. I’ve been unseating Democrats for two years. And so we knew how extremely vulnerable Democrats were because of how they run campaigns. I don’t think anybody, who is not on the internet in a real way in the Year of our Lord 2020, and loses an election can blame anyone but their self. If you’re not even really on the internet, you’re a sitting duck.” Following House losses, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) promised to do a “deep dive” probing the election losses.

Reminiscent of Republicans after Richard Nixon’s loss, now Republicans are looking to cross over to the Democrats to remain relevant and keep vulnerable seats. Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Biden ally, is a classic example. He began his insurgency with a twitte, “the ‘far-left’ had threatened Biden’s presidential campaign.” Talking to CNN, he stuck his head through that pie hold saying, “The Democrats have to make it clear to the ‘far-left’ that they almost cost Biden the election. That people in this country are basically center, center-right, center-left. They are not ‘far-left,’ and they are also not far-right.” Kasich is such a liar. What does he call “white Militias, if not far-right?

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez had a pie ready and bullseyed Kasich, and deservingly so, as she pointed to examples of how “progressive elements of the Democratic Party helped win critical votes in battleground states like Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia.” She lambasted him, loading up with more pies in a tweet. “I, with other progressive candidates over the past two years have unseate powerful Dem incumbents that were supported by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).” Yet, no one in the party ever asked me about weaknesses I saw in the committee’s operation. How can they believe people like Kasich? “It is as though nobody in the party noticed 94 percent of Detroit went to Biden, after Black organizers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia, and overlooked entirely, organizers in Philadelphia. Simultaneously, the Democratic Party sent signals, as though John Kasich won this election!” But, the pie all over Kasich’s face is he didn’t even win Ohio, his home state, then had the audacity to point fingers. “Pres. Biden lost there, and it was not even close, so what good is Kasich’s advice? I can’t even describe how dangerous his thinking is for the party.”

“If Pres. Biden’s administration follows this pattern, I’d be bummed, because we’re going to go back to losing, coming election, as in the past.” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It is yet to be seen whether the Biden administration will behave differently, but if they don’t,” she warned, “the party’s future will be bleak. However, never having listened to old white men regarding election strategy or election outcomes over my 60 years of campaigning for Democrats, I have always banked on young people for several reasons. First, they listen, are more energetic, and believe they are helping to build a world they will run someday. Old folks like Kasich and Donald Trump have only the past to reminiscent and long to have again. The essential facts are there are more young people than old folks, so their majority is replenished by births and will continue growing. In contrast, seniors’ majority tents stagnate, drawing only on a replacement population.

So what do the numbers say beyond young people voted. For 2020 some young, left-leaning voters did a good deal more than just vote. Young people donated time and energy to campaigns they didn’t fully trust or believe in. Democrats have powerful reasons to reward those voters as best they can. What should impress Dems, as these young voters grow into middle-aged, the advantages will accrue to the Democratic Party over the years. According to the Circle research institute at Tufts University, President-elect Biden would not have prevailed against Trump without voters aged 18 to 29. His margins among young people in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, exceeded his statewide victory margins. And that margin was decisive nationwide.
The easiest part of the electorate for Democrats to reach is young people. And because partisan attachments begin early, often with the first president a voter chooses, those voters can keep paying political dividends if their experience is positive. Exiting polling from estimates provided from Pres. Biden’s camp, show he won first-time voters by 66% to 32%; won voters aged 18 to 24 (9% of voters) by 67% to 29%; won voters aged 25 to 29 (7% of voters) by 55% to 42%; won voters aged 30 to 39 (16% of voters) by 52% to 45%. As the numbers show, Pres. Biden’s percentages dropped with age. In other words, had his campaign concentrated more on young voters, as I advised, his margins would have increased.

My pitch was to target high school graduates and first-time voters, which voters like Shaquille O’Neal, an admitted first-time vote show. There is a powerful racial component to those numbers, which speaks volumes for diversity. Going forward, young American voters will constitute an overwhelming majority and are less likely will be white. But among white Trump voters, the 18-to-29 cohort was Trump’s weakest age group. The Harvard Youth Poll released in late October found that 70% of 18- to 29-year-olds (including half of Republicans in that group) “think that the government should do more to reduce systemic racism.” Black Lives Matter brought millions into the streets this year. If ever there were an easy contrast to draw with Trump and one on which progress easily can be made through both executive rhetoric and action, this is it.

The “big boogeyman” for moderates and neo-cons is “socialism,” which has polled favorably among young Americans for the past decade, in an era scarred by global financial crises and extreme wealth inequality. Sen. Bernie Sanders was young people’s choice in the 2020 Democratic primary, as he was in 2016. But Republicans routinely call mainstream Democrats, evens Barack Obama and president-elect Biden “socialists.” It is hard to know exactly what broad support for “socialism” means to young voters. Although painted as such, “Medicare for All,” free education for low-income students defunding police, and eliminating student debt for middle-class student is not seen as socialism by young voters. Young people look at bailouts for corporate America as welfare for the rich; they see no difference between that and aggressive efforts to curtail climate change?

Likewise, Pres. Biden can produce immediate relief for young immigrants in the US, including students and those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program, both of which were victims of Trump policy. On the climate Pres. Biden can follow through on his pledged to rejoin the Paris climate accord immediately; both programs symbolize and can be enacted without congressional support. How the possibility of regrets is being expressed by progressives. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez expressed her concerns that the left will again get the brushoff now that Democrats have secured the White House. Many believe Pres. Biden will be constrained—either by Republicans if Democrats fail to win run-offs in Georgia’s two Senate races in January, or by the most conservative Democratic senators, if Democrats do manage to win both contests. Based on current projections, Democrats need to win both Georgia races to produce a 50/50 partisan alignment in the Senate, under which Vice President Kamala Harris would cast tie-breaking votes. Moderate and neo-con Democrats would prefer to lose those seats than to recognize the growing power of young leftists, which would allow them to heap even more blame on progressives. Either way, moderates and neo-cons will be disappointed because progressive will fight tooth and nail to win them, but know either way they are in this fight for the long haul, because they are fighting for the survival of people who cannot win this fight alone.
Pres. Biden will have significant influence on how Democrats frame issues such as racial justice—including policing. Moderates and neo-cons explode in outrage when defunding police is raised. But what would their response be if they were the parent of Gerald A. Griggs, an unarmed 17-year-old black teen shot in the back twice and killed in Cobb, Georgia, back on July 13, 2020, but police are only now releasing information to the public. Moreover, police have given several different versions of the shooting to his parent. Gerald was unarmed and was running away when he was shot dead for a crime that did not carry the death penalty, even if he was guilty. Such situations are why black families are demanding to defund police, because police I black communities are judge and jury on the street with “qualified immunity.” These are reasons why defunding police is so important to black and young voters; their lives are at stake. Finally, policing is jobs program for “white men” I black, brown and red communities, which are like occupation zones.

Pres. Biden promised, for example to “expand and use the power of the US Justice Department to address “systemic misconduct in police departments and prosecutors’ offices.” Like the past two presidencies, Biden’s will begin acutely polarized by race. Some 57 percent of voters reported a favorable opinion of the BLM movement, while only 52 percent held a favorable view of the president-elect. Some 71 percent of voters said they thought racism is one of or the most important issue facing the country. A majority of voters (53 percent) said they believe the criminal justice system treats Black people unfairly.

Many say the left is simply not going to get what it wants on a variety of issues, from health care and taxes to green energy investment. That is not the issue for progressives, nor should it be for Mr. Biden. Those issues are what voters said they wanted, not what progressives told voters they wanted. President Biden campaigned on those issues, and that is why they voted for him, rather than Trump. So it is voters Pres. Biden must answer to not progressives. Delivering on those campaign promises will be to please voters, not the left. And in that regard, Pres. Biden should deliver on his pledge to fight COVID-19 first, then put Medicare for All before Congress, and the voters will hold those in Congress responsible in 2022 because that is what the 74 million-plus voters said they wanted. Progressives will live with his effort because progressives are intelligent. They know the President cannot do everything at once, and as long as he shows a real commitment to working toward such issues as climate change, he will be their choice.