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Minimal intellectual honesty compels us Jews to admit that we live in dangerous times - so dangerous that they cannot but remind us of the noxious atmosphere that led to the incomparable tragedy we will solemnly commemorate this Tuesday. Never in its annals was the phoenix-like Jewish state - literally arisen from the ashes of incinerated Jewish multitudes - so defamed, so unaccepted by the so-called family of nations and so tossed in a howling tempest of ill will. Never since the 1930s have we experienced isolation so suffocating and so ubiquitous. Never since the 1930s did our collective pariah-status...

The controversial cartoon by syndicated cartoonist Pat Oliphant that appeared on the New York Times and the Washington Post websites last month, and was also used by other American newspapers, has since been reproduced on neo-Nazi websites worldwide. Jewish groups and others criticized the March 25 cartoon as “hideously anti-Semitic� and slammed mainstream American papers for running it. Oliphant depicted a woman carrying a baby being pushed off a cliff by a goose-stepping headless figure holding a Star of David with sharp fangs. The cartoon has also now been reproduced, with the caption “Zionist Nazism,� on the website of the Lebanese terrorist...

We are about to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of World War Two. And after 70 years, and innumerable books and films, it seems as if many people in Western intellectual circles still have great difficulty in understanding what Nazism was. The NY Times cartoon claiming that Israel is equivalent to the Nazis shows this. To speak of the Nazis is not to speak of bad or mean people, or people who killed some civilians by accident. The word is, to say the least, overused today. For me to see this cartoon was especially shocking after just having...

Two Jewish groups have denounced a Pat Oliphant political cartoon on Gaza as anti-Semitic, likening its fanged Star of David to Nazi imagery before the Holocaust. The syndicated cartoon published Wednesday in newspapers across the country depicts a goose-stepping uniformed figure wheeling the Jewish symbol as it menaces a small female figure labeled "Gaza." The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish rights group with more than 400,000 members in the United States, said the cartoon is meant to denigrate and demonize Israel.

After poking fun at George W. Bush for eight years — often drawing him with big ears and a severe overbite, or as a gung-ho Joe College type, or simply as a clueless doofus — political cartoonists are finding Barack Obama a more elusive target. "I had all my villains in place for eight years and they've been taken away," lamented Pulitzer Prize winner Pat Oliphant, one of the most widely syndicated cartoonists. "I don't know that I've ever had this experience before, of a president I maybe like. This is an antagonistic art. We're supposed to concentrate on finding...

The cultivated inside-the-Beltway paper suggests we ship all the Cubans back to Fidel. The Washington Post specializes in detecting racism that is undetectable even by the most vigilant Politically Correct Policeman -- then self-righteously denouncing its alleged perpetrator. Let a sports team owner defend his team's name (Redskins) and the Post pounces: "Redskins is not a term fashioned by American Indians." Let Bill Bennet, who has spent a lifetime idolizing Martin Luther King Jr., make an oblique reference to black crime rates and a Post editorial promptly brands him "the poster child for racism." A WaPo editorial even sniffed out:"Yellow-peril...

<p>TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- The Florida Elections Commission dropped all charges and potential fines Friday against former Broward County elections supervisor Miriam Oliphant, ending a four-year saga stemming from a botched primary.</p> <p>Oliphant was suspended from office by then-Gov. Jeb Bush after the 2002 primary, when nearly two dozen polls opened late.</p>

FORT LAUDERDALE - Former Broward County elections supervisor Miriam Oliphant has won a court decision against the Florida Elections Commission, which had tried to fine her for voting problems during a primary election.Administrative law judge Claude Arrington found state elections officials did not prove Miriam Oliphant had intentionally neglected her duties when dozens of polls opened late and closed early during the 2002 primary. The commission can still reject Arrington's opinion, and it has pressed its case against Oliphant in the past despite unfavorable rulings.The commission had fined Oliphant $10,000 in November. Oliphant has argued that underfunding by the Broward...

Tom Oliphant: NY Times' Trouble Like Ford's Longtime Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant announced Tuesday morning that he was accepting a buyout package from the Globe's parent company, the New York Times - explaining that newspaper industry layoffs are not unlike what's happening at the embattled Ford Motor Company. "The Ford situation is not unlike the newspaper situation," Oliphant told radio host Don Imus. "The problem, apparently, is not that these companies aren't making money. They make a lot of money. It's that in the view of Wall Street they don't make enough money." Ford shocked the business world on...

Keeping it simple this week, I'll let what is being Left speak for themselves. Because, even in the aftermath of recent savagery, what is being Left has more righteous indignation for the President of these United States, than they have for the instigators of mass murder for the sake of jihad. From The Boston Globe's Thomas Oliphant, on Al Franken's Air America show, Thursday morning: (HT: Hugh Hewitt) Franken: So these are monsters. We are dealing with monsters. Oliphant: Yes we are, but not very well in my opinion. And, um, what I think is so awful, in the short...

If there's one thing the MSM/DNC does well (and goodness knows, reporting and analysis ain't among them), presenting a unified front may be it. Since the London attacks, there's been a concerted effort on the part of their mouthpieces to force-feed the public a new meme. It is simply: "Iraq has made things worse". Echoed by Franken, Oliphant, Reagan, and many, many others, this assertion is so obviously and provaby false it would be utterly laughable were the consequences not so serious...

Spread this one far and wide, folks. Tom is not a rabid twit of a lefty, using Hugh's new definition. He's wrong, but he's not insane. This is the view of the left in America today. Go forth and dissect: HH: For a different take, now, on the war against terror, joined by Tom Oliphant, who is a columnist for the Boston Globe. Long time columnist there, as well as a frequent participant on the PBS News Hour. Yesterday, a guest on Air America. Today, a guest on Hugh Hewitt. Tom, you've covered the waterfront of talk radio in two...

Kerry Loves the Mainstream Media From the March 21, 2005 issue: . . . And has contempt for the American people.by P.J. O'Rourke 03/21/2005, Volume 010, Issue 25 JOHN KERRY EFFECTIVELY ENDED HIS political career on February 28, 2005, during a little-noticed event at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. Senator Kerry was being presented with the library's "Distinguished American Award"--a bust of John Kennedy. The artist had portrayed JFK with head slightly tilted. The bust looked puzzled. The award was presented by Senator Ted Kennedy, who phoned it in. Supposedly Kennedy was rushing to catch the...

Monday, February 28, 2005, 5:30-7:00 p.m. Senator Kerry, the Democratic nominee for President of the United States will receive the distinguished American Award from the Kennedy Library Foundation. He will share his thoughts on U.S. policies both home and abroad with Pulitzer Prize winning Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant.

http://www.ucomics.com/patoliphant/

Boston Globe columnist Thomas Oliphant (he of the annoying, "heh-heh-heh-heh" laugh) visited the Imus show this morning and lived up to his longstanding prefix, "Ignorant". And if you think I'm being cruel about his laugh, don't worry, it was openly mocked on the program by, if you can believe it, Camilla Parker-Bowles. Or maybe that was an impersonator, I'm not sure. In any event, his comments have defined a high-water mark for ignorance. Allow me to describe what kind of garbage he dispensed this morning...

WASHINGTONPRESIDENT BUSH'S emphasis on loyalty as opposed to stature has met its ultimate test. He has saved the biggest of his choices -- the anemic Treasury Department -- for last. The issue can be defined simply: Does he have the nerve to promote his chief of staff, Andrew Card, to the position Card appears to covet? And does he have the nerve to thumb his nose at the tut-tutters who would fault such an appointment on qualification grounds?Recent history would compel a "yes" to both questions, but in an administration in which secrecy is second only to loyalty, recent history...

NOW THAT virtually all of official conservatism and the Republican legislative juggernaut have opened up on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, with President Bush's winking acquiescence, it's time to explore a simple question: Just what is it that the guy has done? The answer is nada. It turns out there is no evidence that he did anything while the notorious and corrupted oil-for-food humanitarian program was operating in Iraq during the 1990s and beyond. This lack of even a charge comes in the face of Annan's unequivocal denial that he ever had a single thing to do with, or any...

Former president Bill Clinton -- during his last term in office -- urged Americans to have "a candid conversation on the state of race relations." OK. ABC's "Monday Night Football," in a silly attempt at cross-promotion, opened with a sexually suggestive skit involving "Desperate Housewives'" Nicollette Sheridan and Philadelphia Eagles' Terrell Owens. In the skit, Owens, in full football gear, heads out to play, only to be seduced in the empty locker room by a towel-clad Sheridan. When Sheridan drops the towel, Owens says, "Aw hell, the team's going to have to win without me," and she jumps into Owens'...

Clinton did a masterful job putting the art of governance into a broader perspective last week at the dedication of his remarkable library in Little Rock. Typically, The Natural performed this feat while winging it, instead of trying to read a prepared speech in a driving rainstorm. In just a few minutes of oratory while the rain plastered down his hair, the former president managed to say more of consequence than any other political figure has blabbered since the latest ugly election season mercifully ended. Instead of new thinking or deep thinking, politicians have mostly been positioning themselves, thinking narrowly....

Disgusting, Racist Treatment of Dr. Rice November 17, 2004 This Condoleezza Rice business: you know, ladies and gentlemen, what is being done to her, particularly -- and it's not just articles. It's even worse here in a series of editorial cartoons, and I saw these editorial cartoons last night, and I've been eagerly waiting all day today to see if there's any reaction to their at all, and I didn't think there would be, and the reason I didn't think there would be is because every one of these editorial cartoons is in a big liberal newspaper, and every one...

Both before and after her elevation to secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice has been the target of a series of racist caricatures by liberal cartoonists. Rush Limbaugh points out three: a Doonesbury strip by Garry Trudeau that refers to her as "Brown Sugar," a Jeff Danziger cartoon that portrays her as Prissy from "Gone With the Wind" (also the topic of a Wall Street Journal editorial last month) and, most recently, a Tuesday political cartoon from Pat Oliphant that depicts the secretary-designate as a parrot with enormous lips. (This seems to be a running feature; yesterday's Oliphant cartoon does it...

Leftist columnists and cartoonists have opened up with both barrels on Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice. As many remember, moonbat Ted Rall used his waste of space in newspapers everywhere this summer to insult Dr. Rice's race. Project 21 sent a formal letter of protest (under my signature) to Rall's synidcator, Kansas City-based United Press Syndicate, demanding Rall's removal from their slate of cartoonists, barring an apology. We also sent letters to the National Association of Black Journalists, the NAACP and Rainbow/PUSH, asking for their support in the matter.United blew us off, saying that it was a free-speech issue; the...

Led by the nation's number one radio host Rush Limbaugh, America's conservative talkers blasted a series of cartoons on Wednesday that used racist stereotypes to attack Secretary of State nominee Dr. Condoleezza Rice. "You have to see these [cartoons] to appreciate the pure racism, bigotry, and grotesqueness, as well as the prejudice that's involved," Limbaugh fumed, referring to caricatures of Dr. Rice that have appeared recently in the Washington Post and New York Times. In one Pat Oliphant cartoon carried by the Post, Rice is drawn as a parrot with thick protruding lips and buck teeth, echoing her boss in...

This Condoleezza Rice business: you know, ladies and gentlemen, what is being done to her, particularly -- and it's not just articles. It's even worse here in a series of editorial cartoons, and I saw these editorial cartoons last night, and I've been eagerly waiting all day today to see if there's any reaction to their at all, and I didn't think there would be, and the reason I didn't think there would be is because every one of these editorial cartoons is in a big liberal newspaper, and every one of these editorial cartoons is drawn by a big...

Oliphant:Doonsbury:Danziger:

This week I've heard/read more racist, sexist comments about Condi Rice than I've ever heard about a human being before. Please post those comments/cartoons here so we have a single source. I will write letters to the editor and call to those organizations who have been involved in these disgraceful activities.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - Broward County officials want prosecutors to investigate about 30 registered voters who attempted to cast ballots twice in the Nov. 2 election. Members of the county's canvassing board, who certified the county's election results Friday, said they were concerned about voters who cast ballots by touch-screen voting machine at early-voting sites in the days before Nov. 2, then tried to cast paper ballots at the precincts on Election Day. Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes said she....(excerpt)

Contrary to popular belief, the threat of international terrorism and the continuing war in Iraq were not the same issues, politically. Terrorism (18 percent said it was number one) continued to be a Bush strength; those voters who said it was their most important concern split for the president by even more than 5-1. However, among those most concerned about Iraq (15 percent), the advantage for Kerry was 76-23 percent. By a statistically insignificant margin of 51-48, voters approved of Bush's handling of his job. By an equally insignificant margin, 49-47 percent, they said they favored the decision to go...

PHOENIX THIS FASCINATING state is like the rest of the country politically -- except that it's about two weeks behind the trend. On the day of last week's final presidential debate, both campaigns agreed that John Kerry had been closing on President Bush and was probably sitting just outside the margin for polling error. The one publicly available survey, by Northern Arizona University, showed the President with just half his September lead, up 5 points.

WIN T-SHIRT -- Caption Contest! www.capitalideasblog.com What's the deal with Thomas Oliphant? Besides being an elitist, liberal hack, Oliphant is a goof -- and I find it a bit difficult to believe he is married -- or that he doesn't sit down when he urinates. Best single caption or set of captions wins a Capital Ideas t-shirt.

WIN T-SHIRT -- Caption Contest! What's the deal with Thomas Oliphant? Besides being an elitist, liberal hack, Oliphant is a goof -- and I find it a bit difficult to believe he is married -- or that he doesn't sit down when he urinates. Best single caption or set of captions wins a Capital Ideas t-shirt.

THE COUNTRY doesn't need Dick Cheney any more. After his 90 minutes on the stage last night, it is clear he is no longer an essential person in politics and government. What he brings to the table are liabilities. In debate against an opponent with the dangerously attractive attribute of freshness, Cheney paled -- literally. He's not special, it turns out. He doesn't know anything special, he hasn't done anything special, and for the future he doesn't offer anything special. Cheney is now just another vice president who has had his hour on the stage without really mattering or making...

Office politics By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Columnist | September 19, 2004 WASHINGTON JOHN KERRY gave a more than decent account of himself in Michigan last week in an important oration about the economy. But several new members of his campaign staff thought it more important to step all over his message and promote themselves as the new bosses of the effort. Later in the week, Kerry was even more forceful and effective in Nevada as he discussed the murderous mess in Iraq. But again, his campaign's Narcissism Caucus got between Kerry and the public by spinning the political press into...

WASHINGTONJOHN KERRY gave a more than decent account of himself in Michigan last week in an important oration about the economy. But several new members of his campaign staff thought it more important to step all over his message and promote themselves as the new bosses of the effort.Later in the week, Kerry was even more forceful and effective in Nevada as he discussed the murderous mess in Iraq. But again, his campaign's Narcissism Caucus got between Kerry and the public by spinning the political press into glowing accounts of their campaign coup.All this madness began unfolding while the Bush...

few weeks ago, Thomas Oliphant of the Boston Globe was on PBS' ''Newshour'' explaining why the hundreds of swift boat veterans' allegations against John Kerry's conduct in Vietnam was unworthy of his attention. "The standard of clear and convincing evidence," he said, talking to Swiftvet John O'Neill as if he were a backward fourth-grader, ''is what keeps this story in the tabloids -- because it does not meet basic standards.'' Last week, we got a good idea of what Thomas Oliphant's ''basic standards'' are. Dan Rather and the elderly gentlemen at ''60 Minutes'' were all atwitter because they'd come into...

Tom Oliphant (aka 'Squeaky Fromme') talks about jounalistic excellence regarding the Swiftboat Vets: "...And we keep going in this endless cycle of, see, I put this out there, I made this accusation, I made this charge, but held to a higher standard, I'm not saying your... that this didn't happen or that something did happen, I'm saying that you haven't come within a country mile of meeting first-grade journalistic standards for accuracy."

NEW YORKYOU CAN always try putting lipstick on a pig, as President Bush did last night, but the result is rarely helpful, much less transforming. Promises of tax reform that contain not a syllable of specifics, the confusion (usually attributed to liberals) between legislation and results on education and prescription drug costs, the rehash of a vague, four-year-old idea for partially privatizing the Social Security system without paying for it -- these were the main lipstick ingredients in a familiar political response to a familiar political problem.

IT MAKES perfect sense to a person marooned in a convention city suffused with phony symbolism that the first famous advance man in politics worked for a dictator, albeit a somewhat enlightened one. In the 18th century, Catherine the Great mixed a preference for modernity with a ruthless hold on power. Artifice was as important to the ruler as it was to the ruled, illusions being central to the totalitarian mind-set. Enter Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin. On a journey through the Ukraine and Crimea -- what might be called a campaign swing today -- it was Potemkin's precedent-setting duty to...

NEW YORK Of all the business tycoons assembling for their favorite party's convention this week, none will get a warmer, perk-filled welcome than the personal finance crowd that has figured out how to imprison tens of millions of ordinary Americans with interest charges and other fees worthy of loan sharks.They are profiteering on a growing mountain of debt that is increasingly crucial to meeting expenses in a "recovery" marked by stagnant household income. [...] The campaign cash is also gushing because the personal finance people know Bush will back another attempt in Congress to make it harder for Americans to...

Kerry, on the other hand, may have done more than Dole to qualify as a genuine war hero

Pat Oliphant, the syndicated cartoonist whose work appears in numerous broadsheets across the US, published an editorial cartoon that attempts to paint the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as a bunch of drunk, wannabe sailors stooging it up for George Bush. Apart from the execrable Ted Rall, Oliphant may be the most disgusting example of left-wing character assassination in American politics today. Here's the cartoon, which the Minneapolis Star-Tribune saw fit to reprint in today's edition: In Oliphant's world, men like Paul Galanti -- who suffered torture for his country during his seven years as a POW in North Viet...

. . . it is unbelievable the depths these people will stoop to. This is yet another piece of garbage peddled by the Universal Press Syndicate, this time by Pat Oliphant . . . Kathie Kerr, Universal Press Syndicate, Director of Communications Phone: (816) 360-6945 Email: kkerr@amuniversal.com

FOR REASONS he might like to explain, John Kerry last night raced through an acceptance speech that was way too long for a time slot he knew about for weeks. Desperate to stay within the broadcast networks' paltry 60 minutes, Kerry stepped on his best thoughts and lines and blurred important proposals and distinctions, committing the sin of interfering with his own ability to communicate with an electorate eager to learn much more about President Bush's opponent. At a Democratic convention planned to showcase a candidate and his basic approach to two huge situations -- a bogged-down military adventure in...

Suspended Elections Chief in Florida County to Seek Old Job Rachel La Corte/Associated Press FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - The suspended head of Broward County elections filed to run for her old job Friday even as the Senate continued a hearing on whether she should be reinstated. "Under the constitutional rights of the state of Florida, due process is entitled to me and the voters who voted for me in November 2000," Miriam Oliphant said. "This is an opportunity for them to make that decision." Oliphant's replacement and two other people are seeking the office as well. Gov. Jeb Bush...

OLIPHANT IN COMING BOSTON GLOBE: 'I was 4 or 5 feet behind John Kerry. I watched Kerry reach with his right hand into the breast pocket of his fatigue shirt. The hand emerged with several of the ribbons... There couldn't have been all that many decorations in his hand -- six or seven -- because he made a closed fist around his collection... From what I could observe firsthand about Friday, April 23, 1971, Kerry did not make even the slightest effort to pretend that he was throwing all of his military decorations over that fence.... Kerry had arrived here...

BROWN: Tom, when asked earlier today what you thought Senator Kerry's weaknesses -- or weakness -- principal weaknesses was, it's actually, for a guy running for the presidency, a harsh response. What is it? OLIPHANT: Well, it flows out of a strength, actually, Aaron. We've had a 30-plus year conversation about what Vietnam meant. And I remember one time he said to me late one evening years ago that Vietnam had made him a skeptic about the use of American power. And, on the one hand, there's an obvious plus there. But, on the other hand, it does suggest the...