Wanted

God give us men. The time demands
  Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and willing hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
  Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
  Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
  And dam his treacherous flatteries without winking;
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
  In public duty and in private thinking.
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds, - -
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land and waiting justice sleeps!

- - Josiah Gilbert Holland

(If appropriate men cannot be found, we reluctantly s'pose women - O! lowly ribsters! - t'will do.
  Women of such ilk as Eleanor Roosevelt, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher,
Almost good as a man!  Forsooth!)

Comments

[The Town Crier]

The RJC should be ashamed, not proud of the stunt they pulled with that those horrific ads
http://tinyurl.com/sql6v
kudos to the community who was not fooled.

[Gail]

Liberal use of the word "horrific."

LOL. I made a funny.

If I were to use the word, I might reserve it for, oh, I don't know, beheadings or genocide or flying planefuls of innocent people into buildingfuls of innocent people.

The RJC are nice folks. They don't do "horrific" things.

(Pssst! Just cause you don't agree with something, it doesn't make it evil, sinful, murderous or horrific.)

[westbankmama]

I think a few good women are also needed....

[The Town Crier]

I was justifiably horrified from horrible horror that was the horrifically horrid.

This was much more than disagreeing with something. I'd be the first to tell you and agree that difference of opinons does indeed not make someone "sinful, evil, murderous or horrific."

This is not about difference of opinon it is about innacurate misleading and false spin to promote a false damaging agenda for alterior gains.

[Gail]

Ok. Thank you for visiting.

[DRaftervoi]

If being "innacurate" is a sin, let he who is without...oh, never mind.

[Gail]

Judaism espouses a different view of hypocrisy than Christianity. That's because it doesn't matter what you believe - it's only your actions that count. Therefore, if you are a thief who goes around saying that stealing is wrong you actually get credit for it, because people may listen to you and you may actually convince them not to steal.

However, evil speech and gossip are huge no-nos for Jews. We are not permitted to say things which ruin the reputation of others unless we have very good reason. Once words are said, they can't be unsaid. There's no way that a ruined reputation can be adequately repaired or compensated for.

So, the RJC felt it necessary to provide information and inform the public that in the belief of its members, the Democratic party does not support Israel as well as the Republican party does. And Town Crier felt that this was lashon hara, though he did not say so in those words. However, the RJC has a duty to inform people of what it so fervently and truly believes. So, this was not "horrific." it was simply a case of the RJC doing its job.

TC - you will have to "get them" on something else. It is extremely unlikely that the RJC said anything untrue or illegal in their ads. I'm sure they have advisors and legal staff to prevent that sort of thing. And I am even more sure that its Democrat counterpart, the DJC or whatever it's called, would sue the pants off them if it were the case.

"Support for Israel" is, at least in some part, in the eye of the beholder. Through my eyes, the RJC had it absolutely right.

[DRaftervoi]

There is a certain sort of immature personality that counts hypocrisy as the greatest of sins, and uses it's presence as an "I gotcha" to discount or ignore the underlying argument. Since all of you talking monkeys infesting the Earth's surface are imperfect, you can find hypocrisy anywhere you care to look, provided that you're willing to look hard enough. So what happens is that instead of examining the arguments, you put the other side under a microscope and look for flaws. This is not a characteristic of either the Right or the Left; it's part and parcel of ALL humans (except, of course, your Humble Narrator DRaftervoi, who, having transplanted his insect ganglion into a bubbling vat of translucent blue goo, is no longer heir to the foibles of FleshWorld).

This is why the Left spends so much time on hypocritical preacher Babtists boinking boys or billy-goats, and why the Right spends so much time on the ultra-rich Democratic leaders pretending to be working-class populists...(or any of a half-dozen other examples that you can find). It keeps you from having to engage with the arguments by focusing on the fact that people - all people, everywhere - are lying venal bastards, and it's easier to call 'em bastards than to argue the issues.

What you have to do is to say to yourself, "So...since you caught Preacher Billy-Bob in flagrant delecto with a two-dollar crack whore, you're saying that it invalidates everything he says. Therefore, your argument is that people should be adulterous thieving rascals because the man who told us that theft and adultery were wrong wasn't able to live up to his own standards. May I have your daugher's phone number?" Same goes for the other side: just because a rich-pig tells me to look out for my poorer brethren does not invalidate the underlying message.

In the case of the most common political scandals, i.e., sex or money, there is never any great revelation about the underlying political philosophies in question. So (Demo/Repub name goes here) likes to f*** young (boys/girls/sheep), or wants to have a big pile of money in his freezer...what, exactly, does that tell you about anything except that human beings are freakin' fallible dopes? It says nothing about how or why we ought to organize public policy. You will ALWAYS find corruption on the other side; what's sad is that some people think that their side is somehow super-human, impervious to the sins of the flesh.

[Gail]

The ball is in the hands of the Democrats, to a large extent. So far the loudest voice I hear is the one of doom and gloom, cut and run.

What I want to hear is self-confidence, strength, teeth-gritting determination, and take-charge optimism. But many continue to be more interested in finding any and every reason to say, "I told you so" than they do in liberating the world from Islamic terrorism.

Speaking of re-grinding yesterday's chopped liver, I can't think of anything less relevant to anyone anywhere than the content of the ads put out by the Republican Jewish Coalition for a campaign that they LOST!

[DRaftervoi]

Ugh. Liver. Gross, man. I'd rather eat sea cucumber. Unless, of course, you're talking about liver paste, like, braunschweiger. That's pretty good.

[Gail]

Chopped chicken liver is fabulous Eastern European peasant food that folks with more delicate tastes are unfortunately unable to appreciate.

Picky eater, eh?

[DRaftervoi]

Oh, CHICKEN liver, that's a whole different thing entirely. I was on about BEEF liver, which is no great shakes.

But picky? No, I'll try anything. At worst, I'll learn that I don't like something. At best, I'll have a new favorite food.

Fried grasshoppers, for example, were on the former list. Oysters on the latter.