Progressives (Liberals)

I am not subjecting you to a third-degree.

If you don't wish to discuss it any further, that is your right.

I will just move on.

I just find it very odd.

But, as I just said I will just move on.

Don't be so sensitive, Edgar. You state stuff here, you had better be prepared to defend it. I find it very odd that you can't mount any sort of defense for the US governments official conspiracy theory. Not one piece of evidence can anyone provide. That is really strange, doncha think?

Your neonazism is truly horrific. You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to rally people against Jews over imaginary atrocities.

I understand that, however, if you felt like that six years ago, then she couldn't very well just be copying Bernie Sanders as she held progressives ideals herself for a long time before Bernie Sanders started campaigning for President and influencing the left of the democrat party. As far as I am aware the only idea she really joined in with is Bernie Sander's health care plan. She supports it so she adopted it as her own as well. She did the same with that fellow who is big on climate change. (I forget his name) She still has a ton of policy proposals that are her own which can be classified as progressive.

I don't believe it's something shared in the upper ranks of the DNC. I mentioned Omar, and I don't believe she speaks for black voters in general.

The history of Jews and African Americans is complex. I don't pretend to be an expert but I've lived long enough to watch aspects of its development. (First I'll point out that Jews were always in the frontlines of the US civil rights movement and have been strong voices for racial equality.) Much of the "anti-semitism" blacks are accused of harboring is really a generalized anti-white feeling and not derived from the theories of racial superiority we associate with the Nazis. In inner cities it developed because there were Jewish slumlords and Jews who owned stores and maybe weren't generous with credit. It wasn't a hatred of all Jews, it was a response to particular whites who were seen as exploiting blacks. And there was resentment of the record producers and execs in the entertainment industry who were seen as treating black performers as second class citizens. Again this wasn't anti-semitic as it was anti-white. In the '60s the black power movement found common cause with the Palestinians and Israel came to be seen as a state which oppressed third world people with brown skin. Political opposition to the consequences of political Zionism is not necessarily "racist" either. Then there were ugly neighborhood confrontations in the '70s which continue to this day. These were fueled by busing and by demographic changes in urban areas and redlining — in some cities the conflicts were between blacks and Jews and in others between blacks and Hispanics and in others between blacks and Italians or other white communities. But these were turf struggles, not racist pogroms Are there black anti-semites? Sure. But is this "dark streak" (your words) of racial animosity all that common in black communities? I don't know. But I think people are awfully quick to shout "anti-semitism!" because it conveniently carries great moral weight, more than struggles between haves and have nots and more than community opposition to gentrification. Trump's accusations of anti-semitism have been transparently opportunistic.

I just posted my thoughts on her several posts back. It's not that hard to scroll back if you are interested. If you go back far enough on a2k you can find posts of me supporting the Clintons and Obama.

Gee, hightor, you can discuss all this like an adult. What happens to you when the discussion goes to the science, the evidence, the truth of 9-11?

I don't think it's antisemitism, so much as the media hiding the fact he's a Jew.

I don't think you have that right, edgar. In point of fact, the New York Times' style guide specifically impresses that any and all mentions of the name Bernie Sanders must be as follows:

"Bernie Sanders, the Jew..." or "Bernie Sanders, the progressive Israelite..." or "Bernie Sanders, of the people who killed Christ..."

Style guides, that where language idiots like Buckley, Safire, Simon, ... got their language "knowledge". Seems like you are of that group, Bernie.

I rarely read that paper anymore, since their biases turned ugly and they started charging to see the content. The only mention of his Jewishness I have seen is from Bernie supporters.

Please do support Sanders. It’s all I’m asking. He is close to Warren and has not been shy about it. Trust him, will you? The guy is no fool.

Nobody wants Bernie, Olivier. That would break the long cycle of usa president war criminals.

Folks want presidents that blow up NYC steel framed high rises using ONLY American made products - NANOTHERMITE

From the Forward:

Why Don’t More Jews Like Bernie Sanders?
Aiden Pink, August 22, 2019

The first sign of trouble might have been in May, when a poll showed him doing far worse among his fellow Jews than with Democratic voters in general.

Or it could have been in July, when the Forward found that Jews formed a smaller part of his major donor base than nearly every other candidate.

And when the Forward asked its 100,000 Facebook followers last month what they thought of Sanders, the responses, even from people who voted for him in the last primary, were decidedly mixed. “I fully supported Bernie in 2016 but the best I could hope for now is that he help another (younger) candidate,” wrote reader Benjamin Kweskin, who added that he still backs Sanders’s policies.

Now, with six months to go before the Iowa caucuses, it’s not that he’s doing badly, exactly. But still: Why isn’t Bernie Sanders doing better with Jews? In a wide-open field with two dozen aspirants, shouldn’t it be easy for him to be the chosen candidate of the Chosen People?

“I think it’s somewhat substantive, but I don’t think that’s the main thing,” said Marilyn Katz, a political consultant in Chicago and a board member of the left-wing Israel lobby J Street. “It’s cultural and age-related.”

American Jews’ perceptions of Sanders – both of his policies and of his Jewishness - seem to be resonating more than the facts of what he’s actually said about those subjects. But for that gap to be bridged, the Sanders campaign would have to do more to target and connect with Jewish would-be voters – and that doesn’t appear to be a priority.

The Sanders campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Too Jewish, Or Not Jewish Enough?

Sanders’s mannerisms are familiar to many Jews - he has a strong New York accent, he shouts and gesticulates. It wasn’t a stretch for him to appear in a movie as a character named “Rabbi Manny Shevitz.”

For some Jews, this is a bad thing.

“There’s some worry that if there is a Jewish nominee or president, it will somehow increase anti-Semitism. I knew if my parents were still alive, that’s exactly what they would have said,” said University of Florida professor Kenneth D. Wald, the author of “The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism.”

Larry Ellman, a Jewish Democrat from Austin, compared Sanders to Leon Blum, the socialist Jewish prime minister of France during the 1930s; far-right hatred of Blum’s policies led to increasingly public anti-Semitism in the years before the Vichy French regime collaborated with the Nazis.

“I fear that a Bernie presidency would become a polarizing and ineffective Leon Blum type of experience that would leave the country and American Jews in a very vulnerable position,” Ellman wrote on the Forward’s Facebook page.

Ironically, the Jewish progressives who feel least comfortable with Sanders are the older ones who are most demographically similar to him, said Katz, who herself voted for Sanders in 2016 but has donated to multiple candidates this time around.

“They love Bernie’s passion, but they find him grating. I think it’s probably the New York Jew thing,” she said.

Those older Jewish progressives, she continued, were more likely to back Senator Elizabeth Warren, who supports many of Sanders’s policies but, unlike the socialist, calls herself “a capitalist to my bones.”

When it comes to his Jewish identity, Sanders seems damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Some Jews are uncomfortable with a Jewish candidate, but in 2016, many Jews were turned off because they felt that he was uncomfortable discussing his Judaism.

He’s been doing a lot more talking about it this time around — after President Trump said Jews who vote for Democrats show “great disloyalty,” Sanders retorted, “I am a proud Jewish person, and I have no concerns about voting Democratic. And in fact, I intend to vote for a Jewish man to become the next president of the United States.”

But the increased effort to talk about his Judaism is reportedly because he’s repeatedly been pressured to do so by his aides. And the Jewish community in his home state of Vermont has complained for years that Sanders has iced them out.

“I know he’s Jewish and I know he has a good heart, but give us something, make us feel proud of you,” Rabbi James Glazier of Temple Sinai in South Burlington told JTA in 2015. “I can’t tell him what to do — that’s not my business. He owns his own spiritual journey. But we need a Jewish hug from him every once in a while.”

BDS Barely Describes Sanders

Another factor harming Sanders’s standing with American Jews: His stances on Israel – or in some cases, what they think his stances are.

An October 2018 poll found that more than 60% of American Jewish voters are critical of Israeli policies. But it may matter how and when that criticism is given.

Sanders has long been one of the Senate’s most vocal supporters of Palestinian rights, condemning Israel’s settlement policies and blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. When the American Jewish Committee invited the Democratic candidates to submit short videos to their annual Global Forum in June, Sanders’s language was more visceral than his opponents, talking about “Palestinian people crushed underneath a military occupation now over a half-century old, creating a daily reality of pain, humiliation, and resentment.”

Steven Windmueller, an emeritus professor at Hebrew Union College who studies American Jewish political behavior, said that Jewish Democrats are concerned about rising anti-Israel sentiment from the “Squad” of Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a former Sanders campaign organizer), Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

Windmueller said many Jewish voters are disappointed that Sanders hasn’t pushed back on them. And indeed, Sanders defended Omar after she was accused of anti-Semitism for her remarks about the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC in March – but then again, so did other candidates like Warren and Senator Kamala Harris. And Warren, Harris and former vice president Joe Biden all joined Sanders in decrying Israel’s decision to ban Omar and Tlaib from entering the country.

Indeed, Sanders’s record on Israel isn’t that much different from most of his primary opponents.

Like all the other presidential candidates, he opposes BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel, saying that it won’t solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Earlier this year, he voted against a bill protecting states that penalize BDS supporters, saying the bill infringed on boycotters’ First Amendment rights. Senators Harris, Warren, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand voted the same way.

Sanders called the Israeli government “racist” in April – but former Rep. Beto O’Rourke used that term to describe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.

In a departure from many Democrats, Sanders has questioned American military aid to Israel, saying he’d be willing to consider using it as “leverage” and arguing that the Jewish state should decline American aid if they want to ban American congresswomen.

But he’s not alone there either: South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg has explicitly promised to cut aid if Israel annexed the West Bank. And Buttigieg is the candidate who has received the most money from American Jewish donors, according to a Forward analysis.

But still, “Bernie is more critical of Israel than a lot of Jews feel comfortable with,” admitted Jack Lieberman, a printer in South Florida and the administrator of the Jews for Bernie 2020 Facebook group.

‘Bernie Is The Ticket’

To be sure, Sanders has passionate Jewish supporters, especially among young people, who feel he’s exactly their kind of Jew: leftist, morally outraged and inspired by their tradition and history to pursue justice.

For example, while no one knows how many volunteers each campaign has, it’s likely Sanders will have one of the largest corps. He has the endorsement of the Millennial-powered Democratic Socialists of America, and Lieberman said he’s seen huge Sanders support among young Jewish activists in South Florida, especially in the growing Latino Jewish community.

“For younger Jewish activists, Bernie is the ticket,” Katz said. “They love his passion, they love his outrageousness, they love that he challenged [Clinton].”

With a little bit of effort, Sanders could dispel myths that many Jews have about him and expand his Jewish base – especially in states like California and Massachusetts, which hold elections early enough in the primary process that a few votes from their large Jewish communities could make a big difference in the battle for convention delegates.

But it seems like he’s decided not to bother. Jewish Currents – a magazine run by young Israel-skeptic leftists of the type that form much of Sanders’s Jewish support – published a profile last month titled “What Being Jewish Means To Bernie.” Three top campaign aides participated, but Sanders himself did not.

To be clear, there are all sorts of “non-Jewish” reasons that Jewish voters might not prefer Sanders, like policy disagreements, concerns that he might lose to Trump, or even the fact that he’s no longer the only progressive option.

And the two best measures of support we have right now – polling and donation data – likely undercount Sanders’s backing, since he’s the most popular candidate among young people, who are less likely to donate or participate in polls. (Though then again, they’re also less likely to actually vote.)

No matter the result of the primary, the middling Jewish support for Sanders may reflect a more meaningful phenomenon – Jewish voters don’t feel obligated to support him just because of his heritage.

“In a way, that’s progress,” said Aaron Keyak, the former director of the National Jewish Democratic Council. “If he was running 40 years ago for president, the fact that he was Jewish would be in every single article that’s written about him.”

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward

https://forward.com/news/national/429822/bernie-sanders-jewish-democratic-primary-israel-anti-semitism/

But you've said that you don't follow mainstream news media outlets, so how could you know?

But why on earth do you imagine that his Jewish heritage is newsworthy? Why would it be information worthy of suppression? Would you have news media research and write about the religious/cultural heritage of all political candidates?

But aside from all that, the number of subscribers to the NYT or the WP who do not already know that Bernie is Jewish is going to be as close to zero as you can get.

The American Jewish community's relationship with Sanders is interesting. But it doesn't speak to what edgar is suggesting.

The NYT did a number of articles on the molten/vaporized WTC structural steel, Bernie. Did you read about it? Of course they all knew full well that molten and vaporized/evaporated structural steel TOTALLY sinks the US governments official conspiracy theory.

So they did what all western MSM did, they deep sixed any such stories. Very Nazis like isn't it? Only put out good propaganda. You are a big fan of Western MSM, aren't you?

Sanders has been doing what I have been doing since the 60s. The only one in politics doing it so thoroughly and sincerely. While I didn't chain myself to another person and get arrested, I was in demonstrations for civil rights and also against fighting the war in Vietnam. I still have the reply I received from Robert Kennedy after I wrote to plead for him to enter the race for president. Hillary and Warren were Republicans at the time. I have always resented the loss of Roosevelt's New Deal and most of the safety net in general, after Reagan's time. So does Bernie.

It's not just the election that's on the line, it's the direction we take after Trump is gone. If the wrong Democrat gets in, there will be little hope we can avoid the demise of this nation or fight global warming. Even with a man like Sanders in there, the chance of success is small. It is my view that Warren and Biden are beholden to the military-industrials that Eisenhower is often quoted to warn us of and that they will sit on the situation. Warren would be better than Biden, but she is in bed with the wrong people.

I guess Olivier, in his inimitable French way, is demanding that I back up my comments with a source.
==========

I-A. The 2002 FEMA Report
New York Times journalist James Glanz, writing near the end of 2001 about the collapse of WTC 7, reported that some engineers said that a “combination of an uncontrolled fire and the structural damage might have been able to bring the building down,” but that this “would not explain,” according to Dr. Barnett, “steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures.” [13]

Glanz was referring to Jonathan Barnett, a professor of fire protection engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Early in 2002, Barnett and two WPI colleagues published an analysis of a section of steel from one of the Twin Towers, along with sections from WTC 7, as an appendix to FEMA’s 2002 World Trade Center Building Performance Study. [14] Their discoveries were also reported in a WPI article entitled “The ‘Deep Mystery’ of Melted Steel,” which said:

“[S]teel – which has a melting point of 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit [1538°C] – may weaken and bend, but does not melt during an ordinary office fire. Yet metallurgical studies on WTC steel brought back to WPI reveal that a novel phenomenon – called a eutectic reaction – occurred at the surface, causing intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese.”

Stating that the New York Times called these findings “perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation,” the article added:

“A one-inch column has been reduced to half-inch thickness. Its edges – which are curled like a paper scroll – have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes – some larger than a silver dollar – let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending – but not holes.” [15]

In discussing “the deepest mystery,” the New York Times story said: “The steel apparently melted away, but no fire in any of the buildings was believed to be hot enough to melt steel outright.” [16] That was an understatement, because a building fire, even with a perfect mixture of air and fuel, could at most reach 1,000°C (1,832°F). [17] In fact, Professor Thomas Eagar of MIT estimated that the fires were “probably only about 1,200 or 1,300°F [648 or 704°C].” [18]