When I was young, I wanted to be a priest.

This was not so odd an idea that it might seem now, but to put things in perspective, I was born a mid-Twentieth Century Boston Irish Catholic in the final days of the church existing in the Middle Ages when the cardinal of the Archdiocese was like a second mayor before Pope John XXIII called the Vatican Council together to modernize things.

I attended a junior seminary, or Juniorate, for my high school years, again not as odd then as it might seem now, and although I may have eventually given up the idea of becoming a priest, the education I received was one of the best kind with a lot of the faculty being from all corners of the cornerless globe.

A lot of religious orders had these high school seminaries, and most were housed on the estates of the old aristocracy who lost their wealth when the world changed and their businesses became outmoded, or were killed by the introduction of the income tax.

Running such places would have been prohibitive if much of the work on up keep was not done by the students.

We learned many marketable skills from simple maintenance to more demanding things.

Out of necessity we learned plumbing, how to strip a hardwood floor down to the bare wood, and reapply the layers of polyurethane, and apply the right layer of floor wax to bring it back to their finest, and how to keep bees.

We did daily chores like washing pots and dishes, cleaning toilets, buffing floors, and using massive industrial laundry machines, and on Wednesdays and Saturdays we had longer more exhausting types of labor like tearing down barns, pitching hay, or moving large heavy objects from one place to another for one reason or another.

And occasionally we would go somewhere and work for someone in exchange for some cost reduction that benefited us by making some vendors’ prices go lower. We repainted the interior of a local bakery and cleaned its ovens so the school’s purchasing agent could get great bakery products at discount prices, cleaned a lawyer’s barn so legal fees and insurance would be reduced, and cleaned a local church and got a good cut of their Sunday collections on a set schedule.

Our work may not have gotten us money, but in a quid pro quo arrangement, we often bartered or traded for something that benefited us. Although we were religious people, little was done just for doing it or for someone else’s benefit. Benefits were mutual.

But mostly we worked for us.

Later, in my going to church days, if repairs needed to be done, and some paint needed to be applied, the parishoners did it because we saved money by doing for ourselves what was good for us.

In high school and after we never did such work to keep someone from having a paid job, because in one form or another payment was made. We neither were volunteered, nor did we volunteer to do anything without that quid pre quo arrangement just to keep someone from having to pay someone or somehow.

As well, these soft Kamagra drugs sample viagra are available in various strengths of dosages. It is not air-borne or vector borne. generico cialis on line It is said when a man is unable to get and maintain an erection even after viagra properien proper sexual foreplay. Tidy the buy levitra the room and use a sweet air freshener. Some people, however have their labor used, not for their benefit, but for someone else in a power position using them for their own aggrandizement, the beneficiaries having no idea it is not just the free labor being used, but those who benefit from it.

Consider this scenario.

A county sheriff has been found to have played fast and loose with money so that he has virtually stolen money from county taxpayers to promote his personal agenda. He has made money from ICE contracts, but has not forwarded the money to the state as he is required to. He has questionable entries in his  annual budgets, and has treated his county jail inmates in such a way that more law suits are filed against him than nails in a nail salon.

So how does he distract people and redirect them from what he is doing to have them view him as a righteous individual who deserves our love?

Easy.  Find local places who need work done, and volunteer inmates to do the work for free.

Who doesn’t like getting work for free?

So, find a church, for example, that wants its walls painted, but rather than encourage them to do the work themselves, have inmates do it for free, and have the church members tell everyone that he is a loving man with Christian values.

What do the inmates get?

Nothing.

What does the sheriff get?

Good publicity and naïve people who will ask how anyone could possibly find fault with such a wonderful man.

In the meantime some local person with a painting company is denied work and whose employees lose a chance for a paid job.

While the church ladies swoon, the inmates have been used twice.  They have been used by the sheriff as unpaid labor while receiving nothing in return, slavery, and as a way for him to use others to promote himself. In the meantime he uses naïve church members who do not realize how they have taken part in supporting slave labor.

But doesn’t he look good?

After white supremacists marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia yelling, “Jews will not replace us!”, when asked for his opinion of that and the counter protestors, one of whom was killed when a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd, Trump claimed,

“There were good people on both sides”.

The anti-Jewish chants were from people Trump considers good people.

But when Representative Ilhan Omar criticized the politics of the conservative leadership of Israel and the lobbyist PAC, AIPAC, that makes political donations to get congress to support legislation and policies that support it, Trump decided that because congress voted against bigotry and hate speech without singling Omar out, the Democrats hated the Jews.

His new mantra is no longer that Democrats are the party of socialism, but that Democrats hate Jewish people.

At a campaign rally at Mar a Lago (ka-ching!) Trump told supporters, “The Democrats hate Jewish people.”

To verify his claim he retweeted,

“Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party. We saw a lot of anti Israel policies start under the Obama Administration, and it got worsts & worse. There is anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. They don’t care about Israel or the Jewish people.”

He credited the tweet to Elizabeth Pipko of Jexodus, an organization which says about itself,

Counsel your spepill viagra special infot or drug spelevitrat for more points of interest. viagra sales canada As per your time, technician will come to your mind is” Will the gallbladder surgery stop my abdominal pain for good? May I try to rescue of my gallbladder by using something else than surgery? All organs in our body have particular functions, and their works are interrelated. Modulation: Every time each of three grams of viagra online buy boiling water, three times a month. It is a technique practiced at an infertility clinic in india in which a man donates its healthy sperm for achieving the pregnancy. cialis in uk “We are proud Jewish Millennials tired of living in bondage to leftist politics. We reject the hypocrisy, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism of the rising far-left. Progressives, Democrats, and far too many old-school Jewish organizations take our support for granted. After all, we’re Jewish, and Jews vote for Democrats.

We are determined and we are unafraid to speak for ourselves. As combatants and veterans of the campus wars, we know the threat progressivism poses to Jews. We’ve had front row seats witnessing anti-Semites hide behind the thin veil of anti-Zionism. We know the BDS movement harbors deep hatred not only for Israel, but for Jews. We’re done standing with supposed Jewish leaders and allegedly supportive Democrats who rationalize, mainstream, and promote our enemies. We’d rather spend forty years wandering in the desert than belong to a party that welcomes Jew-haters like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”

Elizabeth Pipko who has close ties to President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, is the group’s spokesperson.

Pipko, a self-published author and part time model has explained,

“Not only am I proud of my work for Trump, but I also met amazing people — including my now husband, Darren Centinello, who is still part of the President’s campaign team. He works on digital and social media outreach/strategy for the 2020 race. My husband and I got married at Mar-a-Lago in December.”

Obviously, not a neutral voice making unbiased observations.

But, this is not exactly what she said on Fox and Friends Trump had been watching before his tweet, and what he passed off as a quote is a summation of her interview.

I think he is trying very hard to get the Jewish vote by attempting to show he is more friendly to the Jews than anyone else, a claim that is as real as his claim that he was the GLBT Community’s best friend, especially when you consider he had Pastor Robert Jeffress, a Fox News contributor and megachurch Baptist preacher from Dallas, offer the prayer at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in spite of his having said,

“every other religion in the world is wrong: Islam is wrong, it is a heresy from the pit of Hell; Mormonism is wrong, it is a heresy from the pit of Hell. Judaism, you can’t be saved being a Jew.”

But, hey, Trump loves the Jews.

I have written before about the Bristol County Massachusetts sheriff, Thomas Hodgson, and the high rates of suicide and recidivism in his jails, his questionable spending of taxpayer dollars, his involvement with white supremacists groups, and his ridiculously negative opinion of immigrants, both legal and undocumented, that he supports with outright lies, half truths, and appeals to bigotry.

He not only attempts to scare people in the county by claiming that sanctuary cities are a threat to safety in spite of the statistics and the city in the state that is consistently rated the safest one is a sanctuary city, but he wants the legislature to pass a bill that would call for the arrest of any elected official or police chief who doesn’t do the job of ICE or promotes sanctuary cities and safe communities.

He claims all that he does is to keep the people of the county safe, even as the conditions in his jails and the treatment of the inmates sours them against society, and, rather than re-enter the community rehabilitated, re-enter embittered.

The sheriff is using county time and money to operate as an arm of ICE and has entered a contractual relationship with ICE.

This agreement requires an annual steering committee meeting to “increase community awareness and receive feedback on the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement 287(g) program.”

The meeting held last year was, as stated, open to the public. Many in attendance were not supportive of the sheriff or his participation with ICE judging from comments and questions.  It was obviously uncomfortable for the sheriff as people did not just accept what he said, but questioned his invented claims and requested he back up his claim.

For some strange reason, when the meeting ended and those in attendance stepped outside, they had to walk by the K-9 van that was within feet of the door with two dogs barking and snarling at them as they did so.
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This year he has come up with a way to have a public meeting while ensuring it will either be poorly attended, or will be heavily populated by a friendly audience.

Intimidation.

This year, although the meeting is open t the public, anyone who wants to attend must RSVP days in advance, which means the sheriff will have people’s names and the time to check them out.

This can have a chilling effect on the immigrant community when it comes to attending, as relying on people’s fears that they will be detained themselves, or by knowing their names might expose family members to arrest by ICE will keep them away.

Even the most law abiding citizens could be reluctant to attend because of the unwillingness to hand the sheriff their names and addresses.

The sheriff has found a way to guarantee a friendly audience so through his spokesperson and the friendly local media he will be presented as a success whose work is masterful as there was nothing negative said by the community members in attendance who had nothing but supportive and positive things to say about his involvement with ICE.

This is how he operates.

 

 

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Over the next few days a number of cities and towns will be staging St. Patrick’s Day parades. While some might see this as a celebration of a derogatory stereotype of the Irish by drinking to excess and going so far as to color the beer green to take a little of the sting out because the beer is now festive, the origin and original purpose of the parades was for Irish-Americans to celebrate their pride in their heritage and their contributions to American society in spite of the old “Know Nothing” animus that promoted the idea that, when it came to gainful employment, “Irish Need Not Apply”.

In spite of calling police wagons “Paddy Wagons” as a play on Patty because they were manned by police officers who were largely Irish as that was one of the only jobs they could get, and the bigotry promoted by the trope that they were usually arresting their own, and those cute little leprechaun pictures with the chin whiskers actually being based on the original simian representations of the Irish that appeared in editorial cartoons, the Irish Americans saw a reason to celebrate the pride they had in themselves.

The parades were meant to be positive celebration of pride in self, not to mock the English or any other group.

The Italians did the same with Columbus day parades, and this tradition continued with Puerto Ricans and Mexican-American, the latter having their celebration too often reduced to non-Mexican-Americans dressing up in rather derogatory costumes while imbibing to excess.

Corned beef having been the only meat the Irish in the homeland were allowed to eat during English occupation as they raised the good beef for the English, only being able to consume the bad meats and scraps themselves, has become a traditional celebratory  meal without the knowledge of its origin, just as Taco Bell type foods are consumed by those celebrating Cinco De Mayo without knowing those foods came about from the necessity of the peasants to make easy foods for themselves while the Mestisos and Spanish-Mexicans got the good stuff.

But in and of themselves, all the celebrations and parades are positive celebrations by those who see they have reasons to be proud of who they are and what they, as a people, have accomplished in spite of the odds.

The same is true of GLBT Pride parades and Festivals

They are events held by those who have, in spite of the odds, survived and contributed to the societies in which they live. If no one else celebrates them and their contributions to culture, it seems fitting that they celebrate themselves

But those who, while victimizing others, like to play the victim in the attempt to have us all just let them do what they want, however they want, to whomever they want without question, see this as something else.

I  once heard  a local conservative radio talk show host condemn Cinco de Mayo parades because “those people” were celebrating a foreign country with costumes and flags while having streets closed to have their parades, and then, on the same show, reminded people that he was going to be the grand marshal at a local St. Patrick’s Day parade.

When the Conway, Arkansas’s  Pride Parade, the town’s  twelfth,  was getting ready for the big day,  State Senator Jason Rapert claimed the Gay Pride parade should be forced to move to another day because it was offensive to Christians as it was scheduled for a Sunday. Many such parades are scheduled on Sunday because it is a day that most people have off.

According the Rapert,

“This is truly one of the most offensive public displays against Christians you will find anywhere in our state and especially offensive because they have specifically chosen Sunday to try and intimidate people who believe in the word of God.”

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He wanted people to contact the mayor and city council and urge them to oppose allowing the marches to continue on Sundays.

Apparently citizens should not pick a convenient day with less traffic that a parade would affect because one group wants special treatment and to be allowed to exercise control over others just because they want it.

In spite of the state senator’s opinion, the Conway mayor participated in the parade, and criticized Rapert’s complaint for claiming GLBT Pride is part of an anti-Christian agenda, and that, brace yourself for the usual biased claim, that many at the parade live a lifestyle of sin and are offensive to the sensibilities of the community, a community that ultimately rejected Rapert as the parade drew the biggest crowd ever.

Say anything negative about Rapert’s crowd though, and they will scream, “Persecution!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It was 1997. I had requested that in light of the number of suicides attempted and completed by GLBT youth, not because they were GLBT but because of how society spoke about and treated them for who they were, the Oklahoma City School District have sensitivity workshops for teachers that dealt with the GLBT kids in our schools, in the same way they had them when it came to other groups to which students belonged like Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.

The GLBT kids had no role models, and any positive information about GLBT people was routinely denied and if made available was taken away often with public displays of anger. While there were plenty of activities for students based on the heterosexual model like king and queen of prom or home coming, and with Valentines day posters showing happy heterosexual, not only were they unable to see anything that included them, but if they wanted to participate in any activities, they would be expected to deny themselves and pose as the straight person they weren’t. Routinely, while religion was part of the atmosphere, but not all religions just Baptist Christianity, and the religion based negative assumptions about gay people were being freely expressed, information that was GLBT affirming was carefully covered going so far as to change pronouns so “he and he” became “he and she”, as openly gay authors and historical figures we presented as happily married heterosexuals or heterosexual couples dating.

In the book on AIDS in the high school library, while all the teenage heterosexuals were dating a series of people,the one Gay teen’s similar pattern of dating was referred to as careless promiscuity.

It took a while to convince the administrators of the district that the needs of GLBT students to have affirming information while reducing the freely expressed hateful myths was not a political thing, but a student physical and mental welfare thing as gay kids had to withstand all the negative misinformation about them that translated into treatment, words, and often physical attacks.

When the administration finally saw that GLBT kids were in the schools, and that teachers needed to be aware of that to avoid saying things that could be damaging, a committee was formed to study and update the policies on bullying, harassment, and discrimination. The members of that committee were eager to update the policies when it came to race, color, creed, national origin, disability, and marital status, but when it came to the GLBT kids those advocating for them were told that not everything could be handled right away, so they had to accept that the needs of the GLBT kids and their inclusion in policies would come somewhere down the road.

Rather than wait for things to happen, advocacy continued with presentations at school board meetings, information being supplied to school administrators, demonstrations, and appeals through the media, and even then it took twelve years to get the GLBT students included in policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination, and allowing affirming information to be provided in schools along with racial and religious information.

If action took twelve years to get things right, how far down the road would it have been if people had sat back and waited.

The phrase “somewhere down the road” is not only an indication that there is a reluctance to move forward, but is a very clear statement that nothing is ever going to get done.

That is why the recent action involving the Masterpiece Cakeshop is both insulting and dismissive of a whole class of people.

The owner of the cake shop had refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple claiming that as his personal religious belief is that marriage is only between a man and a woman, making the requested cake would mean he was taking part in something that violates that belief.

I am sure the same thing is true when it comes to guns since “Thou shalt not kill” is one of the Commandments that would be part of a person’s firmly held religious beliefs and selling someone a gun later used to kill another person would have the seller taking part in something that violates that belief.

Perhaps that is why Christians do not sell guns, right?

Now he and the State of Colorado have reached a new agreement to end subsequent litigation against him.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission will withdraw its administrative action against owner Jack Phillips, even though the commission found probable cause that the bakery violated state law when refusing to make a cake celebrating a gender transition for a transgender person’s birthday.

Phillips will voluntarily dismiss his federal court case against Colorado, which cited ongoing harassment from the state in the aftermath of the narrow ruling in his favor by the U.S. Supreme Court. That ruling did not deal with whether or not a person can discriminate against someone in violation of the law if it can be claimed equal treatment violates religion, but on procedural grounds where the commission had been judged to be a little over zealous.

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Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser claims this agreement benefits all concerned, all that is if you ignore the GLBT people who will face discrimination they are protected against by law because of  claimed religious beliefs.

“After careful consideration of the facts, both sides agreed it was not in anyone’s best interest to move forward with these cases. The larger constitutional issues might well be decided down the road, but these cases will not be the vehicle for resolving them. Equal justice for all will continue to be a core value that we will uphold as we enforce our state’s and nation’s civil rights laws.”

Saying that seeing the case through benefits no one and that GLBT people will just have to continue waiting for some uncertain future time and event certainly sucks the credibility out of that last sentence

When an attorney asked Phillips to create a blue cake with a pink center to celebrate her gender transition from male to female, he declined on religious grounds.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission declared it had found cause that Colorado law requires Phillips to create the requested gender-transition cake, and the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBT legal group, filed the federal lawsuit against Colorado, claiming ongoing harassment of Phillips.

Kristen Waggoner, senior Vice President of the U.S. legal division of Alliance Defending Freedom, had represented Phillips and said of the agreement,

“The state of Colorado is dismissing its case against Jack, stopping its six and a half years of hostility toward him for his beliefs. Jack’s victory is great news for everyone. Tolerance and respect for good-faith differences of opinion are essential in a diverse society like ours. They enable us to peacefully coexist with each another. But the state’s demonstrated and ongoing hostility toward Jack because of his beliefs is undeniable.”

This is her actual statement supposedly issued with no sarcasm intended.

Daniel Ramos, executive director of One Colorado, a GLBT rights group said,

“Despite the mutual agreement between the State of Colorado and Masterpiece Cakeshop, the law is still the law. No matter who you are, who you love, or what you believe, Coloradans across our state – including LGBTQ Coloradans and their families – are still protected under Colorado law from discrimination in the areas of employment, housing, and public accommodations.”

Except, ‘cause Jesus.

While the Colorado Civil Rights Commission is out of the picture, Autumn Scardina, the transgender complainant in the state administrative case, can still pursue a claim on her own.

How long will this road be?

 

 

The senate began the year not by dealing with any bill that might have ended the shutdown, get people back to work for pay, or dealing with the question of back pay for furloughed government employees or whether contracted workers would get any, but, instead, debated whether or not states should be allowed to punish companies that choose not to do business with Israel or Israeli-owned enterprises because they do not agree with that countries present politics or its shameful treatment of Palestinians.

You know, the way this was done by businesses and universities when it came to apartheid South Africa.

While the governors of all 50 US states have signed a declaration condemning boycotts of Israel as being against American Values, Montana, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Michigan, Texas, Nevada, Kansas and Wisconsin have already passed bills against the boycotts.

The first Amendment rights of U.S. citizens end when it comes to Israel.

An anti-boycott bill was proposed by Marco Rubio, but lost an initial vote on the Senate floor with 43 Democrats filibustering it to block the bill from moving forward. Republicans seem to have an almost unanimous devotion to Israel, powered, no doubt, by its evangelical base believing in the imminent second coming of Christ that depends on the strength of Israel, while the Democrat support is uneven.

Dianne Feinstein has stated,

“This Israel anti-boycott legislation would give states a free pass to restrict First Amendment protections for millions of Americans. Despite my strong support for Israel, I oppose this legislation because it clearly violates the Constitution.”

Anti-Israel boycott bills can apply to individuals working as independent contractors.

This would mean government sponsored repression of free speech rights as people are forced to choose between participating in boycotts or losing business with state governments that ban them.

Just as with the past boycotts of South Africa were aimed at ending immoral practices, these boycotts aim to force Israel to change its approach to the Palestinians through external pressure.

The boycotts want consumers to stop buying Israeli products, have companies not do business in Israel, and support universities’ and cultural figures’ who decide to stop collaborating with Israeli colleagues.

Supporters of the anti-boycott bills claim the boycotts are an anti-Semitic campaign aimed at the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, whereas those who oppose them point out that as Palestinians, whose rights they support, are Semites, and whereas the opposition to Israel’s treatment is directed toward the political policies of its leaders and is not directed toward its people, saying the boycotts of Israel, and claiming any criticism of the actions of the Israeli government is being anti-Semitic is an attempt at misdirection.

The Israel Anti-Boycott Act seeks to amend a 1970s law known as the Export Administration Act that was passed because the Arab League sought to require U.S. businesses to boycott Israel as a condition of doing business with Arab League countries, and this was seen as an attempt by a foreign country to bully U.S. businesses into boycotting friendly countries. The EAA was meant to protect U.S. companies from compulsory boycotts, while the new Israel Anti-Boycott Act seeks to dictate the political activities in which Americans can and can’t engage.

There is one major lobbying group who is pushing for a federal law banning boycotts of Israel, and that is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which advocates for pro-Israel policies to the Congress and Executive Branch, has more than 100,000 members and a large donor base, and is considered one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States. Money raised does not go directly to individual political candidate, but to candidates through PACS.

There is big money involved.

President Barack Obama had his differences with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who actually schemed with Republicans to deliver a speech to Congress against the Iran nuclear deal, making an end run around the president by acting like he did not exist. This amounted to Israel’s prime minister working with Republicans to whip up opposition to Obama, and allowing a foreign leader to speak against the president and influence domestic policy.

Israel’s occupation of the West Bank has continued with construction of settlements. The leadership of Israel has made that country a military giant that is occupying Palestinian territory and breaking up any peaceful Palestinian protests by using excessive force.

It is no longer an embattled Middle Eastern democracy and a haven for the oppressed Jewish people.

When Trump moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem without any consultation with the Palestinians, the U.S. officially shut down the Jerusalem Consulate General cutting the direct link between the Palestinians and Washington, and, instead, established a Palestinian Affairs Unit in the new embassy.

The U.S. says this will be more efficient since the Palestinian and Israeli offices will be in one location, but the consolidation moves the U.S. presence from East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, and to the Palestinians it appears that the U.S. is going to be dealing primarily with Israel, and a sure sign of the end of a two state solution in the area.

Palestinians will now have to deal with Ambassador to Israel David Friedman who supports Israel’s West Bank settlement movement and will now be making decision on all matters dealing with diplomatic relations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. His does not to appear to be a position of neutrality.

Obama had issued an executive order that any company seeking a government contract had to show that they did not discriminate against U.S. citizens who were GLBT, but Trump rescinded that. Now states are requiring that if any company wants a contract with the state that company would have to sign a pledge that they will not boycott Israel. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act wold extend tyat requirement to federal contracts

A foreign company has more rights than GLBT citizens of this country.

This bothers many people, and acting and speaking against actions like this and those against the Palestinian people is being considered, somehow, attacking all Jewish people.

It isn’t.

The leadership of Israel is, like the leadership in this country, not the same as its people, and objecting to the former is not objecting to the latter.

Who comprises Semitic people?

Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, some Ethiopians, and including, but not limited to, those of Hebrew descent. That includes the Palestinians.

So why is it anti-Semitic to oppose what the Israel government is doing to the Palestinians, while what they are doing is not seen as anti-Semitic action?
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Opposing actions that displace people, destroy their homes, beat their children, shoot protesters, take away their land, and build walls to keep the original occupiers of the land from free passage on that land isn’t anti-Semitic unless the true meaning of Semite is supplanted with a use that is conveniently selective.

When Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said she fears everything she and Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan say about Israel is construed as anti-Semitic because they’re Muslim, and added that supporters are pushing U.S. lawmakers to take a pledge of “allegiance to a foreign country”, self-righteous and misdirecting outrage ensued.

The Democratic led House is all upset with fellow Democrat Ilhan Omar because she tweeted against AIPAC saying that lobbyists at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee are funding her critics.

The Democrat leadership has stated,

“Anti-Semitism must be called out, confronted and condemned whenever it is encountered, without exception.”  

I would think that would also apply to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as it says “without exception”.

Trump joined in saying,

“I think she should be ashamed of herself. I think it was a terrible statement. And I don’t think her apology was adequate.”

Omar has since offered an apology,

“Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes. My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole. That is why I unequivocally apologize.”

But while people are getting the vapors claiming she attacked all Jewish people, Forward columnist Batya Ungar-Sargon‏ tweeted that she “would love to know who @IlhanMN thinks is paying American politicians to be pro-Israel, though I think I can guess,”

and Omar responded succinctly,

“AIPAC!”

And followed that by tweeting

“Accurately describing how the Israel lobby works is not anti-semitism.”

How is a statement against a Political Action Committee an attack on the Jewish people in the United States, especially when AIPAC claims a membership of 100,000, not all of them Jewish, while there were 6,925,475 Jews in the U.S. in 2018 which mathematically means that Omar was not talking about 6,825,475 Jews, but at most 2% of that group’s population.

How is the person who clearly spoke against AIPAC now being accused by conservatives and some desperate Democrats as attacking all American Jews?

The attackers are the ones promoting a subtle form of anti-Semitism, as they are the ones who seem to feel that a political action committee is the representative of all American Jews and to claim that one political organization with a specific agenda, influencing congress to favor pro-Israel legislation, is all American Jews, while they ignore they are proposing legislation that curtail U.S. citizens’ rights in favor of the country for which that PAC lobbies.

They are not defending all American Jews, but protecting their chance at PAC money by competing in who can express the greatest outrage.

Meanwhile, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, he who likes to look macho by never wearing a jacket when the cameras are on, tweeted a criticism of Democrat Jerry Nadler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who announced that he will be requesting documents from over 60 different people, including Donald Trump Jr. in which he substituted a dollar sign for the S in the name of Thomas Steyer, an American billionaire hedge fund manager and Democratic donor who is running a private campaign to impeach Trump  and whose mother was Jewish. Making him Jewish as well. Wouldn’t implying that a Jewish person’s money has political power be an anti-Semitic trope equal to the overuse of the name George Soros?

“Nadler feeling the heat big time. Jumps to Tom $teyer’s conclusion—impeaching our President—before first document request. What a Kangaroo court.”

Direct an attack on an individual Jew as someone whose money means political power and not a PAC, and silence ensued.

Jordan: white, Christian, male.

Omar: Brown, Muslim, woman.

Why all the broo-ha-ha against Omar, nothing against Jordan?

The outrage against Omar is the real “fake news”.

Congress is planing to pass a resolution to condemn anti-Semitic talk on the House floor.

Why stop there?

Add race, color, national  origin, Muslims, GLBT, and women, and it might be more than just a competitive and ostentatious exercise in faux outrage,

For my last year and a half of college, I worked at Caradona’s Liquor store in the Cobbs Corner shopping Plaza in Canton, Massachusetts. It had moved from its original location in the downtown district to its new, larger location to expand its size and selection, and would be where three towns met. It sold Beverages ranging from those wanted by people who drank out of need or on a regular basis, to those for people with more discriminating tastes, and sold more high end product that any other “Packie” in the area.

Packie, for those unfamiliar with it, is derived from the term “package store” used for  liquor stores in places like Massachusetts because liquor purchased in stores must be packaged in sealed bottles or other containers unlike that sold in bars and restaurants.

The store’s devoted customers had stayed loyal, mainly because prices were low and there was a hang out atmosphere that had been created in the original, smaller location, and was carried over to the new. When they would come in, many customers visited with the owner and management, as well as employees and other customers, sometimes staying to enjoy a smoke when smoking indoors was still allowed before, during, and after purchasing their beverages, and many had their own routines that included having their supplies ready as they came in on a regular schedule, and in one case having the case of beer left outside the rear delivery door where the customer would retrieve it, slipping the payment under the door because he had a position in town that he feared might be looked at negatively if people knew he enjoyed  beer.

Every Thursday an employee from a nearby electrical component factory would pull up front, and while he visited with the people at the store, one employee would carry a case of Dawson Ale out to his car, the door was left unlocked, because his wound from World War II had made walking while carrying heavy objects difficult.

If it was Thursday and 4:00 p.m., someone went to the walk-in cooler, got the case, and brought it up front.

These regular customers all had stories, and eventually I heard all of them.

After a year and a half, I said good-bye to Caradona’s and went out West to take a full time substitute teaching position in Richmond, California, a move that started a career teaching on both coasts and in the middle for the length of my career until retirement brought me back to Massachusetts and my present home in New Bedford.

I moved to New Bedford because it as affordable. Living on Social Security and the small retirement I had been granted as a result of winning a court case against the administrators of the Oklahoma City Public Schools District would have allowed a comfortable living had I stayed in Oklahoma with its lower cost of living, but in Massachusetts with its higher cost of living, that was not the case.

New Bedford is on the South Coast of the state, an area that is too often treated like the State’s bastard child as Boston, Worcester, and Springfield, located in the center of the state with the turnpike running through them as it crosses the length of the state, get more attention. Although New Bedford and Fall River existed when I was growing up, there had been no real reason for me, or most people I knew, to go there. So my choice of location was a more monetary one than one based on desire.

It turned out to be a good choice.

I found a nice apartment in a building near the downtown district, surrounded by history.
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To become more familiar with my new city, besides volunteering at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, I downloaded a book on the history of New Bedford written by Daniel Ricketson, more because it was a free download as opposed a carefully analyzed choice.

As I was to find out, the Ricketsons were a prominent family in 19^th Century New Bedford who counted among their friends and visitors Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, both of whom I had covered during my teaching career when I had American Literature classes, as well as prominent abolitionists, among them Frederick Douglass. The history was based more on reminiscence than research with the author speaking about persons, places, and things he had known and encountered in a city whose growth and change he witnessed firsthand.

Because of my being connected on social media with people with an interest in comparing the old city with the new, posting pictures of historic buildings, comparing what they looked like in their heyday with how they look today, or what now stood where they had once been, I was able to see a picture from 1893 of the house that had once stood where my building stands now.

At the time of the picture the home had been owned by that Daniel Ricketson whose book I had read when I first came to the city while sitting in my apartment in the building that sits on the plot where that house had stood.

An odd, unknown, and, one could say, eerie connection.

Not long after this layer of the onion was peeled away, I emailed the picture to the owners of the building who, as it turned out, were not aware of that particular bit of history, and who had never seen a picture of the structure their building had replaced somewhere around 1920. When I mentioned the odd connection between myself and the author of the history of the city to some multi-generational locals, and after describing the building and its location, I was informed that the building actually had a name familiar to them, The Dawson.

It was enough that now, when asked where my apartment is, I can simply give a name rather than describing the building and the nearest cross streets, but another layer of the onion was peeled off when mentioning my “discovery” to the building manager, he informed me that it had been called that because the owner of a local, now defunct brewery, Dawson Brewing Company, had built it as available housing for his employees, and that the original sign was sitting in the storage area of the basement.

In my retirement I live in the building that had originally been built by the owners of a brewing company for their employees who would have brewed and bottled the ale that I had brought out to the customer’s car until my teaching career began, if Prohibition had not forced that plan to be abandoned as the brewery closed until repeal which necessitated the building’s sale, and in which I had read, as my introduction to the history of New Bedford, a book by the owner of the house which was torn down to build it.

The Dawson Brewery was reopened in 1933 after the repeal of Prohibition, was sold in 1967 to Rheingold which continued the brand, and closed in 1977, with the largely empty building burning down in 1999.

Since coming to town I have been frequenting a local bar on a regular basis, and when I mentioned all these connections in a casual conversation recently, the retired firefighter I have spoken to often told me about having been on one of the crews that fought that fire.

So a circle has been completed beginning with a minor weekly task related to a small brewery’s not so great local product, and coming around, after a 40 year adventure of teaching, politics, and a small measure of history making involving many people, both famous and not so famous, to me unknowingly choosing an apartment connected to that small task.

In the opening years of the 21st Century, the volunteer organizers of the Oklahoma City Gay Pride parade and festival, realizing that the permit to use a city park for the annual one day community festival that preceded the Sunday evening parade actually covered the whole weekend from Friday evening to Sunday evening, decided to take advantage of what was available, but up to then not used.

The plan was to have some form of musical event on Friday night followed by two days of the usual festival activities of information booths, vendors, food, and entertainment, culminating in the annual parade, and letting the greater community know that everyone was invited.

In spite of its being the Buckle of the Bible Belt, the Pride parade was the biggest parade in the city, and the festival one of the most attended, and eventually even the state tourist board would recognize this and include it in its tourist guide.

But back then there was a need to advertise the expansion of the festival, tout its importance to the whole city community, and, perhaps, attract a bigger crowd. It would still be geared to the GLBT community and the celebration of its pride, but it would also become welcoming to all people so they could see how diverse, and, as was also necessary, how normal GLBT people were to counter the cartoonish representations presented by churches and extremely conservative politicians.

Nothing would be compromised or “toned down” as there was no reason for that.

The national theme chosen by whoever chooses them was not relevant to Oklahoma City as it was geared toward those cities whose GLBT Communities had made much more progress than we had, and so we would have been celebrating what we had yet to be celebrating.

We chose to celebrate the strength and hard work of the community in the fight for its rights in spite of the odds, and used the graphic of a powerful locomotive and Dolly Parton’s version of Peace Train for advertising. We constructed a model steam engine with two box cars on a flat bed trailer, strung it with lights, and made it adaptable for any parades we could get into to advertise the festival and parade that year.

It was rather surprising how many local Christmas parades accepted our application for inclusion, and that made it necessary to add piles of white puffy material to have the train plowing through snow with Christmas gifts in the box cars.

There were banners on both sides stating who we were and what we represented, and along with the Rainbow Flags flying from the 4 corners of our float, it was not a closeted thing.

We originally intended to walk along beside the float wearing rented animal costumes, but because the cost of renting both the bodies and heads made the cost of this prohibitive, we marched as animal bodies with human heads.

Peace Train played on a continuous loop as we tossed candy and strings of beads into the crowds, and the response from the spectators was positive, unlike the negative responses we had anticipated, and we saw that the people did not fall in line with the religious leaders and politicians who, while pushing their animus toward GLBT people, were obviously out of touch with the general population.

It was after our participation in the Norman, Oklahoma Mardi Gras Parade that we received an invitation that was historic.

For many years, GLBT communities throughout the country had been suing St. Patrick Day Parade organizers in their communities to be allowed to march in their communities’ parades. Because of the continuous denials, their suits and the news stories about them had become as annual as the parades.
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The invitation we received was to be part of the Oklahoma City St Patrick’s Day Parade.

On the morning of the parade as we “Irished up” the train float with plenty of green and pots of gold at the ends of rainbows, the person who was in charge of the flags was a no-show. This meant we had to go to a local flea market we had passed when bringing the float to the staging area where we had seen a rainbow flag flying along with MIA-POW, Harley- Davidson, and Confederate Flags on poles above a flag vendor booth. The Hells Angels, ZZ Top looking guys who manned the booth were surprised when we told them why we needed to purchase four Rainbow flags, and got a good laugh at their unknowingly flying the Gay Flag along with those others. As an aside, they continued to fly that flag with the others for many years after.

A problem in the wider GLBT community is that its own media pays a lot of attention to the large city communities while very little is paid to smaller communities and none, if any, to rural places. The GLBT Community was making great strides in GLBT rights, but major victories in Oklahoma were ignored in favor of covering even the most minor win in the big name cities. And it is not because they are not aware of these victories in the “second tier”, flyover places.

While the bigger news story should have been that without any law suits, the GLBT community in Oklahoma City had been invited to participate in the parade, the story the GLBT media covered was that Chicago had finally won its suit while Boston and NYC, as well as other big name cities, had, once again, failed to win theirs.

The OKC parade stepped off one half hour before the one in Chicago which means that the GLBT contingent in OKC was already marching when the Chicago parade began. As a result, not only was the OKC GLBT community the only community invited to be in a St. Patrick’s Day Parade, bypassing the need for lawsuits, but it was also the first to actually march in such a parade.

The big news in the GLBT media that day was Chicago. The bigger news was Oklahoma City.

It has been 16 years since history was made, but during those years which major city has won or lost its law suit, which major city GLBT community will or won’t be allowed to march continues to be the coverage of St. Patrick’s Day parades.

Not once in those years has what happened in Oklahoma City been mentioned.

So I am trying to get the information out by going around the selective media.

Not only was the Oklahoma City GLBT Community invited to be part of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, but it was also the first GLBT contingent to march in one.

The more you know.