Did Romney deny Massachusetts seniors Kosher food?

Mitt Romney stands accused of forcing elderly Jews to eat non-Kosher food (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

It’s a great campaign line for the former speaker, and the addition about George Soros is a nice touch. The problem is, Romney never actually “eliminated serving kosher food” to Jewish residents at state nursing homes, especially not in the way Gingrich describes.

In 2002, cuts in both federal and state subsidies to assisted living facilities, combined with the rising costs of maintaining the facilities, caused a couple of Massachusetts nursing homes to consider closing their kosher kitchens. It was an unfortunate decision, but there was never actually a concern that kosher residents would be forced to eat non-kosher food – the facilities were weighing several options, including busing in the food from other nursing homes or hiring catering services. The Jewish Advocate reported in January 2003:

[Nursing home owner Genesis ElderCare] decided in November to discontinue operating the Coolidge House’s kosher kitchen due to rising costs and decreased state and federal reimbursements. Management said although the kitchen would close, Coolidge House would continue to provide kosher meals either by serving pre-packaged food, contracting with a caterer to prepare and deliver meals, or bringing food over from the Heritage House, GEC’s nursing home at Cleveland Circle. Coolidge House officials say the kitchen will remain open at least through Passover, which starts in mid-April.

The issue was the nursing home had to maintain the kosher kitchen for everyone living there, even though reportedly just a small percentage of its residents actually kept kosher:

For administrators at the Coolidge House, it comes down to the math: Only 30 percent of the 200 residents are Jewish, they say, and only 8 percent now keep kosher. By preparing meat and dairy foods in the same kitchen, administrators say, they would save about $200,000, or 14 percent of annual dining costs.

“We understand the community’s sensitivities, but this is what we have to do to stay in business,” said Larry Lencz, executive director of Coolidge House. “The bottom line comes down to simple economics and changing demographics.”

Some Jewish community groups opposed the plans to bus in food, and instead requested additional state government funding in 2003 to help the kitchens operate. At the time, Massachusetts was struggling with a budget crisis, and Romney was trying to rein in costs by blocking additional spending. The kosher food bill that he vetoed would have provided an additional $600,000 in funding to nursing homes. Whether you believe he was right or wrong to veto it, this was clearly a position that made Romney appear insensitive to the elderly and Jewish communities.

In the end, the veto was overridden by the Massachusetts state legislature, and the facilities kept their kosher kitchens after all. But Romney’s decision was not, as Gingrich claims, a choice to “eliminate kosher food for elderly Jewish residents under Medicare.”

Well, isn’t this fascinating…. Unfortunately, the availability of Kosher food at nursing homes in Massachusetts is an issue about which I know too much, as some of you know from private conversations.

Coolidge House is a facility in the heart of the Jewish community in Brookline, which used to be Kosher and used to be owned by an Orthodox Jew whom I have known for over 50 years. My grandmother spent time there before she passed away in 1990, and both my parents were there in January 2003 when the incident Alana describes happened (Dad broke his hip; Mom could not be on her own by then). The last time I saw Mom conscious was in Coolidge House in 2004. She passed away in 2005; by the time I got there she was in a coma.

What’s more interesting is that sometime in 2007 or 2008, Coolidge House not only went non-Kosher but banned Kosher patients from bringing in their own Kosher food. Not only is Coolidge House no longer Kosher, and not only do they not supply Kosher food for people who want it, you cannot bring your own food there. I was in Boston when this policy was announced and the rabbis in the community were horrified.

My Dad lived in an assisted living facility (not Coolidge House) in the center of the Jewish community in Boston from 2008 to 2010. That facility was Kosher when he got there, but six months before they decided they could no longer care for him (justifiably, by the way – he had physically declined too much to belong in assisted living), that place announced one night that it as going non-Kosher but would bring in Kosher food for those who wanted it (I won’t get into all the technicalities of why, but I would not eat there anymore even if they gave me a Kosher meal, but I do go back to visit people there when I am in Boston so I do know what’s going on). They gave six months of lead time for those who wanted to leave – how many of these people are capable of leaving?

When Dad left there, he went to a place that was not Kosher, and a month and a half later, I came in and arranged for Kosher food to be brought in privately. By then, Dad was becoming less aware (he has Alzheimers), and may not have realized what he was being fed. Today, he is in a Kosher facility and has been for nearly a year now.

Here’s the key: In Massachusetts, you have no right to Kosher food (even today). In New York, for example, you have a right to Kosher food even if you’re not in a Kosher facility. If what Romney vetoed (and it’s not clear to me from the article) was a bill that would have granted a right to Kosher food, that’s despicable. There are hundreds of elderly Jews in Massachusetts who are in Medicaid facilities (which means you had to spend them down to get them in) who cannot get Kosher food. That’s just plain wrong. If, on the other hand, what he did was to allow facilities to close their Kosher kitchens, but still obligate them to supply Kosher food to those who wanted it, that’s nowhere near as objectionable (although it’s still not good).

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

I’m more pissed off about what he said concerning Jonathan Pollard and the mere mention of the fake 1967 borders.

Gaza divorce rate goes up. Israel blamed, of course.

Palestine Press Agency reports that the divorce rate in Gaza has been increasing, reaching 17% last year.

The reason?

[Experts] attribute the high divorce rate among Palestinian youth to unemployment, which increased as a result of the split between Fatah and Hamas, as well as the Israeli blockade which is still deeply hurting parts of Palestinian society, including married life which now lack the minimum requirements needed.

Yet the divorced people interviewed in the article give lots of reasons – none of which these analysts choose to mention.

One man divorced his wife because she liked to go out without his permission. Another did because of “extreme stubbornness and suspicious actions.”

One woman said “I wish to live a life like I see in Turkish TV, where they are people who are civilized and respect the women and their privacy, and you cannot find this in Gaza, where the orders of her husband are a sword hanging over the neck of his wife.”

Now, if you blame the higher divorce rate on Israel, who can you blame for a low divorce rate?

In fact, Palestinian Arabs used to brag that their divorce rate is the lowest in the Arab world.

In the first two years of the intifada, the divorce rate in the territories plummeted as much as 70% in Nablus  - because, according to this book, men couldn’t afford the expense of a new bride.

So poverty causes divorces, and it also causes a reduction in divorces – and either way, Israel is at fault!

Incidentally, recent divorce rates are 20% in Saudi Arabia, 24% in Bahrain, 25.6% in the UAE, 34.8% in Qatar and 37.1% in Kuwait.

I’m sure that Israel is to blame somehow for that as well.

via elderofziyon.blogspot.com

Stay Classy Palestine

US drone strikes in Pakistan over the past 8 years have killed at least 1,715 people, says the New America Foundation

(AFP)According to an AFP tally, 45 US missile strikes were reported in Pakistan’s tribal belt in 2009, 101 in 2010 and 64 in 2011.
The New America Foundation think tank in Washington says drone strikes in Pakistan have killed between 1,715 and 2,680 people in the past eight years.
Human rights campaigners have expressed deep concern over increased use of drone strikes. The State Department also confirmed it used surveillance drones to protect US diplomats in so-called “critical threat environments” overseas.
The United States had until now refused to discuss the strikes publicly, but the program has dramatically increased as the Obama administration looks to withdraw all foreign combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Looks like Obama wants to get re-elected

New Study: “Global Warming” Ended 15 Years Ago and it’s about to get very COLD!

Someone please tell Al Gore to sit down, this “ain’t” gonna be pretty. Two pieces of bad news were released earlier this week that put a dent into the argument that global warming was “settled science.”Actually, allow me to put it a different way. Two studies were released that corroborate the statement that climate change is a hoax.

One study reports that the earth hasn’t gotten warmer for the past 15 years, the other indicates that the future might bring a bit of a cold spell. What makes these studies even more impressive is they both come from proponents of the global warming hoax.

The first piece of bad news comes from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (the folks who gave us climategate)–based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations it confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

A NASA study reports the sun is now heading towards a  “low cycle” of output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.

According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.

However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

Of course the Global warming moonbats are having a cow, but the bottom line is, the longer it takes for it to get warmer, the bigger the gap between the computer models and reality. As the gap continues to widen the entire global warming house of cards will collapse.

Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in North Carolina, is the author of several papers that argue the Met Office climate models show there should have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’.

‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said.

He believes that as the Met Office model attaches much greater significance to CO2 than to the sun, it was bound to conclude that there would not be cooling. ‘The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate,’ Dr Scafetta said. Meanwhile, one of America’s most eminent climate experts, Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said she found the Met Office’s confident prediction of a ‘negligible’ impact difficult to understand.

‘The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor Curry. As for the warming pause, she said that many scientists ‘are not surprised’. 

She argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

‘They have insufficiently been appreciated in terms of global climate,’ said Prof Curry. When both oceans were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled. The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold mode in 2008 and the Atlantic is also thought likely to flip in the next few years .

Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some scientists found the importance of water cycles difficult to accept, because doing so means admitting that the oceans – not CO2 – caused much of the global warming between 1970 and 1997.

The same goes for the impact of the sun – which was highly active for much of the 20th Century.

‘Nature is about to carry out a very interesting experiment,’ he said. ‘Ten or 15 years from now, we will be able to determine much better whether the warming of the late 20th Century really was caused by man-made CO2, or by natural variability.’

Meanwhile, since the end of last year, world temperatures have fallen by more than half a degree, as the cold ‘La Nina’ effect has re-emerged in the South Pacific.

‘We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’

Unfortunately in those three years, plenty of unnecessary damage can be done to the economy of the world and the United States by proponents of the hoax.

via yidwithlid.blogspot.com

when you can’t market “Global Warming”… “Climate Change”!!!!!

4,000 Americans died so a democratic Iraq could ban travel to Israel

More than 4,000 Americans died so that Iraq could have a parliament, and one of the first actions that parliament is taking is to ban travel to Israel.

The bill was proposed following a number of incidents at the Bagdad airport. A local security officer working there said the passport had caught a number of Iraqi officials carrying passports with Israeli entry visas. The officer, speaking on a condition of anonymity, reported that the passports of some nine high-profile Iraqi politicians were clearly marked with Ben-Gurion Airport stamps as well.

According to the source, the politicians made their first trips to Israel after the Iraqi elections, held on January 2010, until around October that same year. The officer claimed that during questioning of the Iraqis, it was discovered that they were operating as envoys to Israel on behalf of Iraqi politicians.

In response to the report, Iraqi Parliament Member from the National Iraqi Alliance Mohammad Redha al-Khafaji declared that some 50 parliament members have already put their John Hancock to a bill proposing to ban such trips to Israel. Khafaji emphasized that in the past, Iraqi senior officials had visited Israel secretly.

Meanwhile, a member of the parliament’s judicial committee said these signatures do not necessarily mean that such a law should be passed.

Forbidding a citizen from traveling is against the Iraqis’ right to freedom, as written in the constitution. However banning travel to Israel has nothing to do with politics, she told Al Jazeera, explaining that Iraq has never had any diplomatic or political relations with Israel, nor has it acknowledged the State of Israel.

The West suffers from two delusions. One is that having elections means you have a democracy. And the other is that if an Arab or Muslim country has a democracy, it will no longer seek to destroy Israel.

They forget that after World War II, the allied powers occupied Japan and Germany for a number of years to root out the toxic effects of Nazism and fascism, before turning those countries over to their own citizens who were ready to behave in a democratic way. Neither of those occupations had any time limit, but when it was time to end them, the allies (at least on the Western side of the Berlin Wall and in Japan) ended them.

Of course, to be able to do that without turning your troops into target practice dummies you first have to utterly defeat the other side militarily to the point of surrender. Has any country surrendered to a Western power since Japan? Not that I can recall.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Why not ban travel to Israel? Countries that are hip to the club scene like Dubai and Qatar already do. If I wanted to go back to the college I graduated from I couldn’t take some classes because they are in Qatar. Why should Iraq be any different from any of the Arab nations that our media approves as exotic. Why would we be shocked? Try asking @Chevron on twitter if an Israeli is allowed to work for their energy company…. and meanwhile Nelson Mandela is calling Israel Apartheid. It all works in a certain consistent logic.

Diana West: The C-SPAN Interview

Last week Diana West, the author of The Death of the Grown-Up, was interviewed by Brian Lamb on C-SPAN. During their hour-long conversation they discussed Hollywood, the Left, the growing threat of Islamization, the American military’s counterinsurgency strategy, and “nation-building” in the Middle East.

Near the end of the interview you’ll hear a particularly interesting exchange in which Diana points out how neatly the infantilized and politically correct culture of 21st-century America dovetails with the Islamic institution of dhimmitude:

A full transcript of the above interview is available at Q-and-A.org.

via gatesofvienna.blogspot.com

Soros can’t tell Barack Obama from Mitt Romney

Is he getting old, or are there really so few differences between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney?

Let’s go to the videotape (Hat Tip: American Power).

Hmmm.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

He’s right. Both Romney and Obama are believers in the fake 1967 borders that never were!!!!!

Israel’s Foreign Ministry praises Muslim Brotherhood

(Carl) I don’t know who in Israel’s foreign ministry thought up this brilliant idea, but they ought to be fired. Israel has congratulated and praised the Muslim Brotherhood on winning the Egyptian elections (Hat Tip: Catholic Lisa via Twitter and Voice of the Copts).

Israel apparently has decided not to go head-to-head against an Egyptian regime headed by the radical Muslim Brotherhood and has congratulated it for its efforts to achieve freedom, democracy and economic development.

…

The Israel Foreign Ministry has decided to take an optimistic view, at least publicly, and stated, “We send the new parliament our wishes of constructive and fruitful work for the well-being of the Egyptian public. We trust Egypt will continue to uphold the importance of peace and stability in our region.”

What the heck are they thinking? What could go wrong?

not shocked

Palestinian TV airs show praising Fogel family murderer

(haaretz.com)

Palestinian television aired an interview with the relatives of the Fogel family murderers earlier this month, praising the two cousins convicted with the brutal attack as “heroes.”
The broadcast was aired as part of a weekly show on the Palestinian state-run station called “For You,” which focuses on Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israel.
The show featured the aunt and mother of Hakim Awad, who along with his cousin Amjad was convicted of brutally stabbing to death five Fogel family members in an attack on their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar on the night of March 11, 2011.
Hakim Awad’s mother sent her regards to her son, proudly describing him as the perpetrator of the Itamar attack and that he was sentenced to 5 consecutive life sentences.
Awad’s aunt then proceeded to describe her nephew as a “hero and a legend.”
The unusual broadcast was reported by the Israel-based media watchdog organization Palestinian Media Watch
Late last year Amjad Awad was convicted of the murdering Ehud and Ruth Fogel, along with three of their young child-ren, Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and Hadas, 3 months old, before fleeing the scene. His cousin Hakim was convicted a month earlier. Both men were sentenced to five consecutive life sentences by an IDF court.

It’s Come to This: 15-Year-Old Occupy Oakland Kid Murders Adoptive Parents

Obviously the fine, upstanding citizens from Occupy Oakland provided good role models. Surely seeing all the anarchy had nothing to do with this “alleged” murderer.

Friends and relatives said Susan Poff and Robert Kamin of Oakland were the perfect pair to adopt a foster child.

They had dedicated their careers to helping others escape poverty, she as a physician assistant in a city-run clinic in the Tenderloin and he as a clinical psychologist for inmates in the San Francisco County Jail system.

But now, less than a decade after they adopted, their 15-year-old son stands accused of strangling both Poff, 50, and Kamin, 55, then hiding their bodies in the back of the family’s PT Cruiser.

Police were called to the family’s home on Athol Avenue on Friday by a co-worker who was concerned when Kamin did not show up for work.

According to an Oakland police source familiar with the case, the co-worker first called the son, who said his parents were out for a walk. Police arrived at the home Friday, spoke with the son, and didn’t find anything unusual. When the co-worker called the boy a second time later in the day, the son said he was in the bathroom and couldn’t pass the phone to his parents. Suspicious, the co-worker called police again.

Officers returned that night and noticed charring on the car, parked in front of the house, as if someone had tried to set fire to it. Then they looked inside the automobile.

Initially the son, whose name is being withheld because of his age, denied any involvement, but later told officers what had happened, authorities said. He was arrested on suspicion of murder Saturday and is being held at the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center in San Leandro.

Co-workers said Poff and Kamin were having some arguments with their son, some of it having to do with him spending too much time in the Occupy Oakland encampment, but nothing that sounded beyond the scope of typical teenage rebelliousness.

“I never heard her express any fear about her kid, ever,” said Joshua Bamberger, medical director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Housing and Urban Health Clinic, where Poff worked.

Sadly, a lot of these “Occupy” kids are going to need de-programming and years of mental and substance abuse counseling.

Great job, Democrats. Now two innocent people are dead just so you can gin up your base of support.

Take a bow, Stretch.

via jammiewf.com