Hamas/Gaza War Musings #34- Praying for The USA... Hope It Helps

 

This morning I joined a few hundred people at Ancient Shiloh for special Morning Prayers for America organized by Mateh Binyamin. 

Nothing political was said... though we all know very well that elections for US President are in just a couple of days. And there's a very big difference between the two candidates. The tension in America between the two sides is probably the worst in American history.

As soon as I got down to the Basilika, where the prayers, were to be held, Josh Hasten interviewed me. You can read the JNS article here.

Not everyone was American. The USA is a world power, so its president influences the entire world. We all need Gd's help.

I couldn't take good photos of the prayers, since the Women's Section was in the back, rather hidden away. Prayers are slightly different in Israel. Birkat Kohanim, The Priestly Blessing was said. 

Many prayers were sung out loud together. It was very inspiring for sure.

Ancient Shiloh was chosen because its a very traditional site for Jewish Prayer. The Tabernacle, forerunner of the Holy Temple, stood in Shiloh for close to four hundred 400 years. And of course the Biblical Chana prayed for a son in Shiloh, promising that she'd dedicate him to serve the Jewish People in Shiloh, if Gd gives her a son. She was subsequently blessed with a son, Shmuel/Samuel who led the Jewish people and crowned the first two Jewish Kings, Saul and David.

To strengthen the minyan some yeshiva high school classes joined us. After the prayers were over, the men and boys sang and danced. 

Considering that Shiloh has been my "home town" for most of my life, I was overjoyed at the choice of location. All I had to do to get there was walk down the hill for under half an hour.

It's no secret, from what I write here on my blog and on Facebook, that I'm very worried about Israel's war for survival and the American Presidential race. Add to that the intolerance of the ironically named "Liberals" for any other view and their strong hold on media here and abroad... yes, we're in a very challenging time. Prayers are certainly needed.

I'm not going to even attempt to predict which political party will win in American elections this week. Just one thing for sure-- the loser will claim  that the winner cheated. Our prayers today are to make America and Israel better more tolerant countries, where people respect each other and election results, Gd willing.

Following are more photos from today. 

Yisrael Ganz, Mateh Binyamin

American Election Results- Was There Cheating?

I've never voted in American Elections. When we made aliyah, moved to Israel, twenty-one 21 was the voting age. I was twenty-one, but there was no way I was going to wait around in New York another couple of months just to vote. So I never did. But I've always made every effort to vote in Israeli Elections.

Voting laws are different in Israel. First of all we have Identity Cards with photos, and you can't vote without showing yours. Your name/number is marked off when you come to vote. You can only vote in your assigned voting station, with very few exceptions. There are no overseas/mail or any other way of voting, except for active soldiers and diplomatic staff. Those ballots are double or triple packed with all ID information listed. They can't be counted until all other votes have been tallied. Then the ID numbers on the outside envelopes are checked with the IDs which had been listed as voted in the various voting stations. If that number is listed as having voted, the ballot is declared invalid. Cheating is possible, but difficult. Also voting laws are the same in every city/locality, so all citizens have equal rights.

It is very different in America. The United States does not have picture IDs. Apparently, states and even cities have their own different voting laws and regulations, so all citizens aren't equal, no equal voting rights. There are even locations which declare that it's illegal to demand identification. Cheating is easy, and that can't be refuted. And anyone who thinks that there's no cheating is naïve at best.

IMHO for the United States to have any semblance of fair elections, the entire process must be overhauled, including the introduction of picture Identity Cards. And voting laws should be national, not local laws. That's the only way all citizens will have equal rights.

Facebook Rescinded Ban

former title:

According to Facebook, One Can't Mention Biden's Age

I'm in shock. According to Facebook I've gone against "community standards." All I did was share an article from The NY Post, The best and worst of Joe Biden put on display during whirlwind day by John Podhoretz to facebook and write:

It's a real shocker for me. For over a decade I figured there'd never again be an American Presidential race in which both candidates are older than I am. Joe Biden is 7 years my senior, while Donald Trump is only 3 years older than me, four years younger than Biden. If Biden's elected, he'll be over 80 before his four years as POTUS are up. In case you're wondering, Bibi is just a few months younger than me. And I'm happily retired. Why should they all want the pressure after 70?

What's wrong with it? I don't see any "spam" in what I wrote. I'm almost 71, not a kid, so why can't I mention age?

What do you think?

Democrat's Left Giving Trump 2020

Not that anyone really listens to me, but I see American political trends very clearly from far away in Israel.

The Democrats have been moving to the Radical Left, while middle America and even the Hispanics, who are doing everything legal and illegal to enter the USA, prefer old time family values and conservative morality.

What do you think? Where do you live? Reply in comments, thanks.

Who Really Won the 2018 American Elections

Just a short time ago I watched the press conference with US President Donald Trump. Of course the hot topic was the 2018 American Elections, specifically the results in the Senate and Congress.

Simply put, both parties won, since the Democrats now control the House (Congress,) while the Republicans control the Senate. Superficially, that makes it look pretty even. But IMHO, this was much better for the Republicans. There's a simple reason for that.

Congressmen/women serve two years, while Senators serve six years. Those senators elected are in for three times as long and can get a lot more done. Congressmen/women spend most of their time campaigning. The newly elected ones barely get to know their way around when they have to campaign again, since the 2020 elections are coming up. And the 2020 elections are also US Presidential elections. And the year before that, there are primaries.

Congress will be very busy with things other than their official jobs.

Time to pull up on a comfortable seat and watch the fun.

American Left Causing Its Own Problems

This isn't the United States I knew.

This isn't the United States where I was educated.

This isn't the United States where I was taught the basic principles of democracy. 

Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.

In recent years something very frightening has happened in the United States. The Left has recovered from McCarthyism, the heat of the Cold War, when they had been under attack, losing jobs, jailed. Now they are fighting basic American values, and many ordinary Americans are scared. They insist that they own morality. They don't accept that there are other opinions.

That's why Donald Trump was elected. Ordinary Americans couldn't trust the politicians, not just the Leftist Democrats. They couldn't relate to the Republican politicians either. So, in the primaries they chose the outsider, the one who said what they were thinking. They chose the man whom the establishment hated. They elected Donald Trump, the most unlikely POTUS ever.

The Left's reaction to Trump's election went against all precedent. The American Left rioted and screamed and schemed and threatened. They haven't been behaving as law-abiding, liberal democratic citizens.

I'm glad that I don't live in the United States of America. Considering what's going on in American universities, things will only get worse.


"Greatest. Video. Ever" isn't my comment. I can't clean it from the video.

Waiting to Hear That USA Won't Interfere in Foreign Elections

Yesterday I heard part of the press briefing by Sarah Sanders. In it she discussed the allegations of foreign interference in American elections, most notably the 2016 presidential elections. Of course she condemned any interference very firmly.

But I was waiting for her to say that she also condemns American interference in foreign elections. Especially during Obama's reign and even before, American officials backed Israel's Left wing parties in an attempt to get the Likud out of office.

That's how Labor led by Ehud Barak won in 1999. They unseated Likud and Binyamin Bibi Netanyahu with the help of American campaign experts. The wording of Barak's slogan about leaving Southern Lebanon was very familiar... And the damage the fleeing from Lebanon did was horrendous.

It took ten years for Netanyahu to return to power, and those ten years were among the most notorious in the History of the State of Israel. Arik Sharon's inexplicable turn Left to Disengagement, which placed Gaza in the firmly in the hands of Hamas terrorists who are at present burning Souther Israel with their incendiary balloons/kites etc, then Ehud Olmert who was tried and convicted for corruption.  Since then, the Israeli public has made it clear that although Netanyahu may not be perfect, they prefer him, head of Likud, as Prime Minister. But that didn't stop Barack Hussein Obama, during his presidency from supporting Bibi's opponents.

According to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), the State Department gave $349,276 in U.S. taxpayer-funded grants to a political group in Israel to build a campaign operation, which subsequently was used to try to influence Israelis to vote against conservative Benjamin Netanyahu in the March 2015 election for prime minister.
In the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report about the State Department’s action, Chairman Bob Portman (R-Ohio) said, “It is completely unacceptable that U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to build a political campaign infrastructure that was deployed — immediately after the grant ended — against the leader [Netanyahu] of our closest ally in the Middle East.  American resources should be used to help our allies in the region, not undermine them.” 

Of course, this hand nothing to do with Donald Trump, but it still would have been nice for him to admit that Americans have done the forbidden and he promises that under his leadership it won't happen again.

And The Joke's on Hollywood 😀😉

I'm sure that most people consider the "Head of State," the 2003 American comedy, to be part of Hollywood's preparation for the USA to elect Barack Obama, the truth is that the unlikely and unexpected president and his campaign much more like that of Donald Trump.

Storyline

One candidate for the presidency dies in an accident a couple of weeks before the election. Meanwhile the alderman Mays Gilliam becomes a hero when he rescues a woman and her cat from an old house that would blow up. However his fiancee Kim does not pay his bills and dumps him, and Gilliam loses everything including his fancy car. When Senator Bill Arnot sees the news on television, he plots a scheme with the party advisors Martin Geller and Debra Lassiter to invite Mays to be the party nominee and lose the election for the other candidate, Vice-President Brian Lewis. Four years later, he would be the candidate and would have the chance of winning the election. Mays has a terrible beginning of campaign but when his older brother Mitch Gilliam meets him in Chicago, he advises Mays to be himself. Will he have the chance to be the first African American President of the USA? (Head of State)

I'm sure I'm not the only one who saw Trump's electoral victories, first in the primaries and then in national elections to read more like a comedy than serious politics. There was nothing funny about Obama's campaign and election. In many ways his entire rise to prominence is more like a conspiracy. Wealthy international Leftists choose tall photogenic biracial law graduate...

What do you think?

How Was Donald Trump Elected to the US Presidency?

First I'd like to make it clear that this isn't an article supporting Donald Trump as a person. I admit that he's certainly one of the least attractive and certainly one of the most problematic US Presidents ever elected. But Donald Trump was elected, because the Democrats put up a candidate, Hillary Clinton, with more faults and less charisma.

How Was Donald Trump Elected to the US Presidency?

1. Trump was elected legally, according to American Law
2. Trump was nominated because now there's a primary system, rather than allowing the politicians to wheel and deal.
3. Many Americans were completely turned off by Democratic policies and so-called "successes" of the Obama administration.
4. Hillary Clinton insulted many voters.
5. The Democratic Party has moved to the Extreme Left. 
6. Many Americans feel under attack by the Left/Democrats.
7. Donald Trump made many Americans feel more confident in the future. 

These are my observations from abroad. I've been living in Israel for almost half a century. In all honesty, I'm not only glad that we made the move right after our wedding, but I'm sure that if we hadn't done it then, we, too could have been sucked into American Jewish life.

As Israelis who've lived in Shiloh thirty-seven years, we had no problem seeing the growing antagonism from the United States. The anti-Israel policies that had formerly come mainly from the State Department, has now spread to almost all parts of America, academia, the Democratic Party, the media and hollywood. Please don't forget that Obama ended his presidency with a strong attack on Israel in the United Nations. 

All we in Israel have left in "our camp" are some committed Jews, mostly Orthodox, but not all, middle America and the Evangelicals. Coincidently, they are the same Americans, on the whole, who voted for Donald Trump.

• They are the ones who just can't forget how Hillary Clinton as FLOTUS kissed Suha Arafat after a hateful, lie-filled anti-Israel speech. 
• They are the ones who aren't overjoyed at the legality of same-sex marriage being legalized, one of the great accomplishments of the Obama administration.
• They are the ones who prefer to check the policies and platform of a presidential candidate, rather than the sex or race. 
• They are the ones who don't want how-to sex education for young children.
• They are the ones whose children serve in the US Military and Police Forces.
• They are the ones who don't think that a person's sex can be changed by surgery and hormones. 
• They are the ones who believe in absolute values and rules.
• They are the ones who fear that their country has been hijacked by radical extremists who not only rioted when they didn't like the 2016 Presidential Election results, but have made it difficult for others to voice opinions.

From my vantage point halfway around the world, I see the United States losing basic democratic values. The media and academia are preferring to voice and accept only one opinion. 

My husband and I greeting US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center

What do you think about my points?

Roseanne, Aliyah Would be Great, But Forget PM

Apparently, the irrepressible Roseanne has announced that she'd love to join her people in Israel and even become the chief aka Prime Minister.

“I want to make aliya, I do, and before all the stuff is sold – all the real estate,” she said. “I still have this fantasy of being an old Jewish lady living in the Jewish homeland... I want to buy a farm there and maybe bring my family.”
Of course, Barr won’t be moving just yet, since she just signed on to another year of her smash hit TV show, the revival of Roseanne. Barr said it’s true she committed to another year “but you never know what’s going to happen.”
Weiss asked Barr about the phone call she got from US President Donald Trump after the premiere of her show scored excellent ratings.
“He said ‘Congratulations on the ratings.’ He’s really into ratings like I am,” said Barr. And then the actress said she had a message for Trump – to thank him for his decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

Being the rare TV star who not only supports US President Trump, but Roseanne Barr says so on nationwide television. The PCs don't seem to scare her.

I guess Roseanne looks at the real numbers, like the fact that although all the pundits and most polls had predicted an easy win for Hillary Clinton, it was Donald Trump who won the most recent United States Presidential Elections. So, nobody should be surprised that her revived television series is a hit. More Americans agree with her than the media and Hollywood care to imagine.

Roseanne would feel at home in Israel, though I hope that her talks of getting involved in running for the Knesset, which is the only way to be a Prime Minister, was just for the headlines. Like all Jews, she should make aliyah, Gd willing.

Politics, Can We Trust The Polls?

LIkud Primaries, Electing the Leader of the Likud Party

Even though weather forecasts have become much more accurate in recent years, those of us who follow politics can reel off lists of elections that had been called totally wrong. There's no way that a few thousand people, even chosen by chance,  can accurately represent millions of voters. We've all seen how many mistakes there have been, especially in national elections, here in Israel and the United States.

The other day I saw Jeremy's headlines saying:

Maagar Mochot Poll: Yesh Atid 25, Likud 24, Bayit Yehudi 14, Zionist Union 12

And today they say:

Geocartography Poll: Likud 31, Yesh Atid 26, Zionist Union 13, Bayit Yehudi 12

How could there be such a difference? They were posted only one day apart. What do you think?

Why isn't Hillary Clinton POTUS?

aka Why did Hillary Clinton lose the American Presidential Elections?

And NOT Why did Donald Trump win?

Robert J. Avrech wrote some interesting things Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Understand George Orwell’s 1984, and I just had to throw my two cents 2¢ in the ring.

More than running a bad campaign, the truth is that Hillary Clinton just doesn't have the temperament and character to be a national leader.

• The other day I saw a clip of Hillary explaining that she couldn't do well on debates, because she was unnerved by Trump staring at her. Duh?! Need I say more about how she'd handle real pressure?
• Instead of presenting herself as a national leader, Hillary stressed her support for Extreme Left issues.
• Instead of presenting herself as a national leader, Hillary belittled and insulted Trump supporters.

Hillary Clinton a Feminist? You must be kidding.

• Hillary has stuck by Bill all these decades even though his philandering has been public knowledge.
• A true Feminist would sympathise with the female victims of her lecherous husband, but Hillary attacks them and stands by her man.
• A true Feminist isn't afraid to be on her own; Hillary has remained tethered to Bill.

Extremely important to remember: 

Hillary's policies were in opposition to Traditional Family Values which lost her votes in demographic groups which she had been certain were hers.

Someday a woman will be elected President of the United States, and for the sake of the USA and the world, I hope and pray that it will be a woman who can run on her qualifications and character, rather than trying to play the gender card. It's sexist to say that one should vote for a candidate, because "it's time we put a woman in the White House."

Congress Finally Recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's Capital

I see this biparty recognition as a great improvement in American -Israeli relations.

US CONGRESS PASSES RESOLUTION MARKING JERUSALEM UNIFICATION
In passing the resolution, the Senate reaffirmed its support for the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which compels the US State Department to relocate its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the ancient city. (Jerusalem Post)
Senate approves resolution on Jerusalem reunification
By a vote of 90-0, Senate passes resolution reaffirming that Jerusalem is Israel's undivided capital. (Arutz 7)

And if you add the fact that United States President Donald Trump has been instructing his United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley to defend Israel and protest the anti-Israel policies there, you just can't deny that there has been a great improvement in relations with the State of Israel.

U.S. poised to warn U.N. rights forum of possible withdrawal

The United States is expected to signal on Tuesday that it might withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council unless reforms are ushered in including the removal of what it sees as an "anti-Israel bias", diplomats and activists said.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, who holds cabinet rank in President Donald Trump's administration, said last week Washington would decide on whether to withdraw from the Council after its three-week session in Geneva ends this month. (Reuters)

None of us can or should forget the vicious anti-Israel swan song by Obama and Kerry as their reign was ending.

I certainly don't claim that Trump is perfect, but from my vantage here in Israel, we're grateful not to be the target Obama had made us. And I have no doubt that Hillary wouldn't have treated us any better. Her smile would have been brighter, but her policies would have been the same as Obama or worse.

And again I suggest that both American political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, start promoting some serious open/fair-minded presidential candidates for the 2020 elections. Look at people's experience and policies, not their sex or race as qualifications.

International Revolt of Ordinary People Against Mainstream Politics

During the recent American Presidential Primaries and actual campaign, I wrote quite a few times about the dissatisfaction many Americans, Right, Left and Center, had with the establishment candidates. And that is the big reason that Donald Trump is the President of the United States of America. Neither Hillary Clinton and the getting more Leftist by the second Democratic Party nor the mainstream Republican politicians, most notably the Bush dynasty attracted enough American voters in enough states to win the elections.

The Democrats, who preached their Radical Left New Morality, ended up scaring Middle America straight into the arms of Donald Trump, who, as a top marketing expert should, knew just what to say to appeal to the fears of ordinary Americans.

As I've written many times, politics can be as much fun to observe as sports. It is a sport in a sense. Like in most games, there is only one winner.

As the two candidates enter the final lap, each can reasonably claim a part in changing the face of French politics. Ms Le Pen secured 7.7m votes, 1.3m more than at the first round in 2012, and a big jump from the 4.8m her father got in 2002. When he made it into the run-off, he scored only 18%. That she might well more than double that on May 7th is a reflection of her success in turning the FN into a fixed feature of the French party system. Even if she loses, Ms Le Pen has had an outsized influence over this campaign.
As for Mr Macron, he has already pulled off a historic feat. Last summer, he was a rank outsider, whose hopes of running defied all French rules about the way presidential candidacies are slow-cooked over the years. Now, the man with a dream, a gamble and a heavy dose of luck appears well placed to become the youngest-ever president of France’s Fifth Republic. After that, the hard part begins. The Economist

CNN

politico.eu

In another week France is having run-off Presidential Elections between two non-mainstream candidates, Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron. Macron, like Trump, has never held elected office though he was appointed Minister of the Economy in 2014. Marine Le Pen has revamped her father's extreme Right party and may actually pull off a victory.

For the moment, surveys predict that Macron will win with a bit less than 60%, but Le Pen has been constantly rising in polls in recent days. Jerusalem Post

As "brand loyalty" is becoming a thing of the past in marketing, the same phenomenon is showing its head in politics. Nowadays, before buying a refrigerator or plane tickets, people check their options online and choose by price and servicing, rather than getting the latest model of their old fridge or sticking with "frequent flyer" options. That's why simple marketing and voicing the needs and worries of the voter is the modern way to win an election.

USA 2020 Presidential Elections Begin

Yes, I have no doubt that American Presidential Election Campaigns begin long before polling day, and no doubt that 2020 has begun.

credit

As I have written, Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign began in around 2007 when she realized that Barack Hussein Obama was going to get the Democratic nod for 2008. For her cooperation aka "silence," she was promised clear sailing in 2016, which she got. She spent a good portion of that waiting time sewing up all of the heavy donors, so that nobody, with a chance, could afford to run against her.

There's already talk about Michelle Obama running for the Democrats in 2020. She does have a strong chance to beat some Republican contenders, unless the Right versus Left demographics, family size, continue to influence voting results. While the Left in America will gladly vote for a woman, regardless of her policies, the Right is more cautious and is wary of another Obama in office. This has nothing to do with gender and color. Many are terrified of the America being planned/envisioned by the Left and political Democrats. So even the most feminist of Republicans will prefer voting for a man who shares her ideology.

And in the Republican Party, those who are hoping for 2020 to be their year are already trying to make points around the country, like  Ted Cruz. The Republicans had a nice healthy, young crowd who competed against Donald Trump during the primaries, so no doubt that a few of them will use that experience to try again for the Republican Nomination.

Let's just pull up a seat, since the show has already begun.

Give Trump a Chance, The democratic Way

It isn't a typo. I purposely wrote "democratic" in the title with a lowercase "d." There's a reason. With an uppercase "d" it would be the name of the political party that lost the American Presidential Election. But the meaning of the word in lowercase is:

According to political scientist Larry Diamond, democracy consists of four key elements: (a) A political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections; (b) The active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life; (c) Protection of the human rights of all citizens, and (d) A rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.^[3] Wikipedia

And that should be taken very seriously by Americans. According to American Law, Donald Trump won the Presidency. People can be disappointed, but to protest the results the way we've been seeing is anti-government, anti-rule of law and anti-democratic.

credit

"The Times They Are a-Changin"

It seems that "change" has come to the United States. Hasn't it? I was playing around, as only an English Teacher can do with the grammar of that first sentence:

Change is coming...
Change has come...
Change will be coming...

Or should I just quote Bob Dylan and say:

"The Times They Are a-Changin"

Telegraph

Dylan may not like my using his words for this blog post. According to Wikipedia, Dylan wanted to "encourage" change in a certain direction, but I'm using the title of his song to describe a change that the "experts" had failed to predict, and the politicians from both parties, Democrats and Republicans had failed to notice or comprehend. Yes, American politicians Right, Left and Center were caught flat-footed by a tsunami of Republican Primaries voters who chose the hard to categorize unconventional and idiosyncratic television personality, the building mogul Donald Trump, over a slew of wannabes to be the Republican nominee for the Presidency.

And then completely shocking all of the professional pollsters, and possibly himself, too, not only was Donald Trump elected President of the United States, but the Republicans took the Senate, Congress and more governorships than they had expected.

nbcnews.com

Yes, the United States had change, though not in ways that Obama, the Clintons and the perpetually Leftist media, academia and celebrities in both film and fields can accept.

I see a very broken, split disunited United States of America. Americans on both sides of the political spectrum are angry. The "Right" is so angry with the directions they see their country going that they preferred voting for a gutter/locker room-mouthed New Yorker rather than anyone else, and the Left is in shock that Americans, even women, blacks, Mexicans and other minorities all over the country didn't want more of Obama-type  policies and didn't think "it was time for a woman in the White House." Voters from most states also weren't impressed by the movie stars and athletes who had come out telling them to vote for Hillary Clinton.

American Jews who support groups like J Street are in shock that in a Trump White House they will no longer be the "court Jews." Gd willing by next Shabbat, a different type of Jew will be welcomed in the White House, and most of those not only will be eating kosher food, they won't visit on Shabbat.

It's time for Americans to accept changes and make peace with each other. I don't claim it will be easy and speedy, but for the sake of the future of the United States of America, it must be done.

And until that glorious day, please don't drive us in Israel crazy about "peace" in our area of the world. We have a much more serious problem. The Arabs want the State of Israel to be destroyed and all Jews banished. The only way there can be peace here is for the State of Israel to be stronger and sovereign here in all of the Land we hold. We deal with very big problems here, so please take care of yours, and we'll take care of ours.

Best Thing About Hotel... Fox News

Yes, I must say that the best thing about being in a nice warm hotel this week was getting Fox News on television. It was even better than the heat which I kept turning off. Their coverage of Israel and opinions were much better than one hears on the Israeli television news.

Re: Obama on Fox

Of course, considering all the hysteria USA versus Israel because of the Security Council Resolution and then Kerry's horrendous anti-Israel speech, it was the perfect week to watch the station.

But my favorite clip, which I can't find, was when two of Fox's model-like news "men" interviewed someone from the Democratic Party who told them his plans for returning to power.

He made it clear that the Democrats would go further Left to "show America" what's best for it, and those two women thanked him for it. Why? They tried to explain that it would just give the Republicans more seats in the Senate and Congress and more governorships, because American voters in most localities do not want the Obama/Clinton/Democratic policies.

2016 electoral map by county.

As 2016 is about to end, and on the Jewish Calendar it's the first of the Jewish Month of Tevet, Chodesh Tov, and may we all see a better year in 2017.

I wish the world well, really.

Let everyone learn to respect each other. That's stage one.

Americans, Please Put Down Your Swords and Make Peace

I'm sure that I'm not the only person in the world who has been horrified by the behavior of the American public, American citizens who have been condemning the results of the recent Presidential Elections, not with the usual benign disappointment, but with riots, lawsuits and more.

I don't know how Basic Democracy and Democratic Principles are taught nowadays, but way back when in the middle of the previous century we were taught that you had to accept your loss with dignity. Here in Shiloh, I've been on the Election Committee for almost every local election for thirty years or so, and it has happened many more times than once, that after the votes were counted, I'd discover that none of the candidates I had voted for had been elected. And sometimes I really don't like the results at all. That's life. I've always taken pride in how fairly and legally I've run elections, and that's why now two generations of Shilohnians like seeing me in charge.

Now, after at least two years or more of campaigning and mudslinging and worse, the 2016 American Presidential Elections are finally over. Yesterday was the voting of the Electoral College. And they voted, as is the law/custom according to the state voting results, for Donald Trump.

People protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump as electors gather to cast their votes for U.S. president at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, U.S. December 19, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Republican Donald Trump prevailed in U.S. Electoral College voting on Monday to officially win election as the next president, easily dashing a long-shot push by a small movement of detractors to try to block him from gaining the White House.
Trump, who is set to take office on Jan. 20, garnered more than the 270 electoral votes required to win, even as at least half a dozen U.S. electors broke with tradition to vote against their own state’s directives, the largest number of “faithless electors” seen in more than a century.
The Electoral College vote is normally a formality but took on extra prominence this year after a group of Democratic activists sought to persuade Republicans to cross lines and vote for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. She won the nationwide popular vote even as she failed to win enough state-by-state votes in the acrimonious Nov. 8 election. (Reuters)

It's time for all Americans to accept the results. That's what true democracy is all about. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose, and sometimes it really hurts.

Dumb Question: Voter Identity in USA, Easy to Cheat?

As you may know, I've never voted in American Elections. We made aliyah a couple of months before my first possibility. In those days, voting age was twenty-one 21. I turned the age in May, got on the boat late August, and Elections were in November. It never even crossed my mind to apply for an Absentee Ballot. And over the almost half a century since then, I've gotten no further than mulling over the issue.

Here in Israel voting is very organized and it's pretty hard to cheat, other than those who arrive with an Identity Card of a similar looking dead person who hasn't been registered as dead, or the same sort of thing with someone hospitalized. As long as nobody in the polling station staff realizes it or "squeals," it can be done.

wikimedia.org

Yes, in Israel we have Identity Cards, with pictures. Some of us have very old ones, which can be problematic, since we don't look much like the photos. That's why there's usually a lot of pressure on the staff in the Ministry of the Interior to produce new cards for many in the weeks before an election. 

In Shiloh and other small communities, there's pretty much always a neighbor on the "staff" who can easily vouch. Also, we're all sent notices telling us exactly where we are supposed to vote. And we must vote there. If there was a mistake by the clerk in the Ministry of Interior, which happens --such as sending someone to Shilat, rather than Shiloh-- one can get free public transportation.

There's no "absentee ballot/voting" in Israel. The closest is the voting by soldiers, diplomats stationed abroad, etc. And those ballots are in multiple envelopes to preserve secrecy. On the outer envelope is the name and ID number of the voter. After polling station votes are counted, then those envelopes are checked to see if that ID number had voted in person. If so, the envelope is voided, ripped, destroyed whatever.

Now, in the United States, there aren't required Identity Cards, and from what I've read, there is no longer an assigned place to vote. So how does it work? Besides just trusting people...