There are really more, like how well my baseball team will do this coming season, but we need to focus on a couple of big issues that affect us all and our entire country. The first issue is our insane national budget deficit. One would think that since the effects of the pandemic receded more than a year ago, the 2023 budget deficit would plummet as well. Not a bit. The budget deficit is $1.7 trillion, a $320 billion increase over the prior year. To be fair, some significant increase is due to increased interest expense because of higher interest rates. Our elected officials did not plan for that even though they had to know that interest rates would not stay forever at absurdly low rates. Yet they acted like irresponsible children stuffing Halloween candy in their mouths without regard for how their stomachs would feel the next day. Republicans are also guilty as the last Republican President, Trump, did little to reduce spending. The Democrats exaggerate Trump’s deficits. Biden’s people stuffed his massive spending bills into Trump’s record as his last fiscal year ended nine months after Trump left… Read More

A friend and regular reader of my column came to me at our Hanukkah party and suggested that I should write more about positive things. Unbeknownst to him, I had already planned my next two columns regarding the Christmas season with a decidedly positive bent. In response to his request, this column attempts just that. There was an absolutely horrible event in Israel on October 7th, to state the obvious. Twelve hundred people were murdered, and many innocent people including Americans were taken hostage. But many good things have occurred out of this horrific event. Israel was a fractured country at the time. They were fighting over whether to restructure its court system. That ended. People were called up to enter the battle against the mass murderers and more people volunteered than were expected. Even those religiously exempt showed up in major numbers. The country once again faced their obligation to protect not only the future of the Jewish people but one of the most egalitarian countries in the history of this planet. My understanding is that Israelis have stayed united in order to find their way of ridding themselves of this evil enemy on their… Read More

This is a column I ran a few years back and I thought was particularly important during this Christmas season to revisit. A friend was visiting that I only see on occasion. After talking about our common interests, he told me he was currently splitting his time between where he lived and where he grew up. That was because his 90-year-old father needed to have a family member nearby. After commending him for doing the right thing in taking care of his aging parent, I asked whether he had any siblings who could help. He stated he had one who was no longer in communication with him or his father. His answer as to why was because his father and the sibling had a fight five years ago. Shocked by the statement I inquired of him “You mean to tell me your sibling got so upset with an 85-year-old man that they no longer communicate?” The idea of estranged relatives has destroyed me for a while now. Along with parents divorcing, family members refusing to interact with their parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles or cousins just drives me crazy. We have enough problems with broken families and families that never fully formed. We have shrinking … Read More

When the Presidents of MIT, Harvard and University of Pennsylvania were invited to denounce open race-hatred on their campuses, they wrapped themselves in the mantle of free speech. People have a right to say what they think as long as it doesn’t become threatening conduct, they said, and on this narrow point they’re right. But that doesn’t explain why antisemitism is rampant on their campuses. It is not a tolerance for outrageous speech that is the problem – it is a complete intolerance of patriotic speech. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the two most intolerant and oppressive universities in the country are Harvard and UPenn. MIT ranks 136th out of 254 universities surveyed. How is it possible that such depraved and discredited philosophies as Marxism, totalitarianism, racism, Islamic-fascism and antisemitism now flourish on these college campuses? Because for years, the antidote to these social pathologies – the American founding principles of freedom, democracy, tolerance, and justice that have always kept them in check — have been systematically suppressed and removed from campus discussions. A… Read More

I was at one of my local casual restaurants for lunch on a Saturday. I asked my waiter, who I know, for my check and said to him jokingly that if the restaurant wants to, they can cover me for the day. He said that would be tomorrow, Sunday. I suggested that was his Sabbath and it would be more appropriate to cover me today on my Sabbath. He came back to my table and launched into an unsolicited, heartfelt appreciation for everything the Jewish people have done for the world and how grateful he is for Jews who have made the world so much better. At any time, faced with what he was saying, I would be brought to the edge of tears. Since this happened after October 7th, I was particularly moved.

Now, in return, I want to give Christians back their most precious holiday — Christmas. It is not that observant Jews are the ones who started using the milquetoast, ill-defined, all-inclusive term “happy holidays.” But we can help to stop the words from being used and revert to how we used to greet people – Merry Christmas. Any regular reader of my columns knows I have no problem with addressing Christmas. A few years back I wrote a… Read More

Because of my background as a weekly journalist, a committed Jew and former member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, I have been asked many times recently “Are you surprised by the level of anti-Semitism that occurred after October 7th”? My answer, NO. My question is why anyone is surprised by the large crowds gathered to support a group (Hamas) that closely resembles the Nazis and proudly revels in the fact they successfully butchered 1,200 Jews in one day in their sneak attack on civilians. Does anyone really believe most of the people in the rabble really know what they are protesting? What the cause is really about? Enough on-site interviews validate their ignorance. It is astonishing that any woman in the United States or Europe is out marching for this cause when they live in societies that have advanced the rights of women to the highest point in history. Odder still are Gays and the related alphabet soup cheering a group that would be happy to bury them alive. This has been brewing for years. The leaders of this thinking have been working for half a century to overturn the underpinnings of our society. Names like Angela Davis,… Read More

I have recently concluded that white liberals are the most dangerous people in our society. I decided to expand on the concept and explain why these sanctimonious people are so harmful. Across America people are regularly elected who make clear they want to radically change the landscape of American politics, particularly the justice system. Some may not distinctly state their desires, but once in office their plans become clear. The critical support of white liberals is what gets them into those seats. These white liberals first and foremost reject candidates that are labeled “Republican” even if their Democrat opponent expresses radical policies. The idea of voting for a Republican no matter how moderate is so abhorrent to them that they think if they vote for that Republican that God will strike them dead on the spot. It does not matter what the Democrat’s policies are as stated or once in office, white liberals will stick with their choice even as they see the policy choices are against their own self-interest. If the candidate is black, they will support the candidate even if that candidate has completely different policy … Read More

There was a blatant episode recently that exemplifies how deteriorated our press has become. The immediate disclosure to the world that the Hamas propaganda machine blamed Israelis for a hospital bombing in Gaza – in reality the hospital parking lot — and the killing of 500 people – which was actually 50. These irresponsible reports spread a blood libel that gave justification for riots throughout the world and cancellation of meetings with President Biden. But that is just a small sample of the distortion done on a regular basis by the legacy media. Meet the Press, one of TV’s most iconic news programs, transitioned to a new host on September 17th. That morning saw Kristen Welker anchor her first show after succeeding long-time host, Chuck Todd. It would be easy to take the position that it would be Tweedle-dee, Tweedle-dum. But in the spirit of writing this column and being part of the journalist world, I committed to giving her a shot. She was able to book former President Donald Trump for her first show, no question a big “get.” Trump is difficult to watch as a guest because of his repetitive rhetoric and chest pounding, so watching… Read More