Gas Mileage, Gay Marriage, Other Things

Gas Mileage, Gay Marriage, Other Things
By RAY HANANIA • Friday, May 18, 2012
Southwest News-Herald, Chicago
For all the talk that we hear from people who want to kick out all those “illegal aliens,” the same people are not talking about why American cars get less miles per gallon than European-made vehicles.

A recent survey by TrueCar.com shows the average MPG for an American car is 21.2 while it is 27.6 for South Korean drivers. It’s still better in Europe — 23.4 MPG, and in Japan it’s 25 MPG.

That’s six more miles to the gallon. Most cars take 17 gallons to fill up so that’s an extra 102 miles on a tank of gas for foreign drivers, and 102 less for us Americans.

You remember “Americans,” right? They’re the people who led the world in terms of defending free speech, freedoms and even ingenuity.

Well, all that hatred from Sept. 11, 2001 has sure changed a lot of that. We spend more time blaming our rising unemployment rate not on the greed of our American businesses but rather on those “illegal immigrants” who are taking our jobs.

US Congressman says racism is okay – against Palestinians

US Congressman says racism is okay – against Palestinians
By Ray Hanania/Saudi Gazette May  13, 2012

Ever since the terrorism of Sept. 11, 2001, American politics has been moving further and further to the right.

The migration from moderation to extremism has been slower among Democrats but it has been an avalanche among Republicans where being conservative is not enough.

Just this week, Republican US Senator Richard Lugar, the longest serving member of the Senate, was ousted by Richard Mourdock, Indiana’s little known but loudmouth state treasurer.

Mourdock made the cornerstone of his campaign the charge that Lugar was “too moderate” and “too bipartisan”.

Most sane politicians recognize the terms “moderate” and “bipartisan” as good things for America. But not to the growing Republican fanaticism that has dubbed itself the “Tea Party.”

Many Republicans have recognized this growing extremism in their party and are not waiting to be steamrolled out of office by upstarts like Mourdock and the right-wing Tea Party movement.

So they are doing everything they possibly can to get in front of the Tea Party by rejecting moderation, eschewing bipartisanship, and embracing screaming rhetoric that only a few years ago would have been renounced as outright racism.

Egyptian democracy will undermine ‘peace’ with Israel

Egyptian democracy will undermine ‘peace’ with Israel
By RAY HANANIA 05/15/2012 JERUSALEM POST

Are Israelis surprised that as democracy trumps tyranny in Egypt, one of the first casualties of the pro-democracy movement will be the very undemocratic peace accord Egypt signed with Israel? The Egypt-Israel peace accord was supposed to be the cornerstone of a region-wide peace that was to include direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians. That was the intention of Egyptian dictator Anwar Sadat.

It never happened. Sadat was more concerned with how his dramatic PR gesture would impact the West than with whether the Israelis would be reliable partners or whether the Egyptian people backed his unilateral decision.

The peace accord was flawed from the get-go. The main reason was that the “peace agreement” was made between Israel and an Arab dictator, not with the backing of a free Egyptian people. Israelis had a voice in the peace process, but the Egyptian people never had a voice in Sadat’s action.

The failure of Israel’s peace with Egypt has been obvious since day one and is underscored by the fact that the Middle East does not have peace today. Peace today is as tenuous as it was the day Sadat made his failed gesture.

THE EGYPTIAN people may have been swayed to accept the peace accord had it achieved the goal they were promised it would seek, a final accord between Israel and the Palestinians.

US Congressman says racism is okay – against Palestinians

US Congressman says racism is okay – against Palestinians
BY RAY HANANIA
Saudi Gazette Newspaper 5-12-13 

Ever since the terrorism of Sept. 11, 2001, American politics has been moving further and further to the right.
The migration from moderation to extremism has been slower among Democrats but it has been an avalanche among Republicans where being conservative is not enough.

Just this week, Republican US Senator Richard Lugar, the longest serving member of the Senate, was ousted by Richard Mourdock, Indiana’s little known but loudmouth state treasurer.

Mourdock made the cornerstone of his campaign the charge that Lugar was “too moderate” and “too bipartisan”.
Most sane politicians recognize the terms “moderate” and “bipartisan” as good things for America. But not to the growing Republican fanaticism that has dubbed itself the “Tea Party.”

Many Republicans have recognized this growing extremism in their party and are not waiting to be steamrolled out of office by upstarts like Mourdock and the rightwing Tea Party movement.

So they are doing everything they possibly can to get in front of the Tea Party by rejecting moderation, eschewing bipartisanship, and embracing screaming rhetoric that only a few years ago would have been renounced as outright racism.

Why Is Luis Gutierrez Even Holding Office?

Why Is Luis Gutierrez Even Holding Office?
By RAY HANANIA • Friday, May 11, 2012
U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez has made a career out of exploiting and dividing the Mexican American community in his 4th Congressional district to preserve his lock on the district.

He is Puerto Rican, a Latino community with automatic American citizenship. That contrasts sharply with Mexican Americans, many of whom are not yet citizens or have family members and relatives who are seeking citizenship or have issues with our nation’s anti-Hispanic Immigration and Naturalization policies.

Ironically, the 4th Congressional District was drawn up to elect a Mexican American representative. Yet they can’t. Why?

If the ethnicity of an elected official has an impact on representation, then the 4th Congressional district is turned upside down.

The district is 74 percent Hispanic/Latino American. There are about 630,000 residents in the district, which means that there are more than 466,000 Hispanics in the district.

Yalla Peace: Offense is in the eye of the beheld

Yalla Peace: Offense is in the eye of the beheld
By RAY HANANIA
05/09/2012 JERUSALEM POST

The new IDF anti-hitchhiking campaign is stomach-turning
n more ways than most Jews might think.

Sometimes I think Israelis and Palestinians spend too much time encouraging people to be prepared for the worst, rather than focusing our energies on concepts and ideas that might safeguard our mutual futures.

We look at each other and instead of seeing the majority of our community that is good, we instead see the dark side, the minority of our community that are extremists and prone to violence.

Take the new IDF campaign to discourage soldiers from hitchhiking, arguing in a powerful message that doing so might expose soldiers to kidnapping by “Palestinian terror groups.” The website features a movie of a kidnapped soldier reading his abductors’ demands to release all of the “freedom fighters” in Israeli prisons. At the end, the soldier says: “Sorry mother.”

The campaign was launched because information obtained through the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) – Israel’s secret police – revealed a Palestinian member of Islamic Jihad released to Gaza as part of the Schalit deal had told relatives in the West Bank how to kidnap soldiers.

Hitchhiking was high on the list, apparently.

New GOP Chairman Has Many Hurdles

New GOP Chairman Has Many Hurdles
By RAY HANANIA • Friday, May 04, 2012
Aaron Del Mar is only 33 years old, one of the youngest people to step into the big shoes and dusty shoes of the Cook County Republican Organization.

The committeeman of Palatine Township, he would the chairmanship with a majority of the party’s vote. But the Republican Party is divided — very divided, between reasoned moderates and right wing nutjobs from the extremist Tea Party movement.

And those Tea Party folks could care less if they drag the Republican Party down this November and in ever election thereafter. All they care about is their hardline ideology and their bitter rhetoric.

But Del Mar says he doesn’t care about the snipes and criticism and his goal is to find qualified candidates to run for office and do his best to bring Republicans together.

That is a gi-normous challenge in Cook County which is overwhelmingly Democratic. As long as Chicago is the foundation of Cook County, the suburbs will never be free and voters in the suburbs will never be able to vote on issues rather than on party loyalty.

Why we can never compromise on principle

Why we can never compromise on principle
By RAY HANANIA
05/02/2012  JERUSALEM POST/CREATORS SYNDICATE

We do not need to become terrorists to defeat terrorism.

One year after the killing of Osama bin Laden, I have to wonder: what has America become? Once again, CBS TV’s 60 Minutes was the focus of an American debate, one year after the killing of Osama bin Laden. A CIA interrogator, Puerto Rican American Jose Rodriquez, admitted on the TV show that his unit used torture, claiming it extracted information from al-Qaida prisoners.

Rodriquez wouldn’t call the measures “torture,” although most other international agencies would.

He insisted the “enhanced interrogation techniques” produced results that prevented other acts of terrorism against the United States.

Well, I wonder how many enemies of the United States were watching the same program, because it spelled out the American case for when torture can and should be used.

In other words, the next time the United States in involved in a war like the one we fought in Vietnam in the 1960s, our captors could find justification to torture our soldiers?

Christians face uncertain future under Israeli rule

Christians suffering in their homelands
By Ray Hanania – America is a Christian country yet this country doesn’t act like a Christian country. In fact, this Christian country acts like it is ashamed to be Christian.

I’m not talking about the growing influence of non-Christians in America such as the Jewish and Muslim communities. I am talking about how Christians in America have turned their back on their brethren in the Holy Land because of this country’s lopsided and unfair policies in defense of Israel.

CBS 60 Minutes reporter Bob Simon did a special look at the Christians in Israel and under Israel’s brutal oppressive occupation in the West Bank.

Israel was so upset about the fact that an American News agency would address the topic that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his aides discussed how to stop the CBS report with Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren.

Oren called the Chairman of CBS News and Executive Producer of 60 Minutes and tried to get the station to prevent the broadcast.

Israel’s Ambassador to the US Michael Oren should resign

Israel’s Ambassador to the US should resign
By Ray Hanania – Bob Simon of CBS TV’s 60 Minutes recently did a report on the fate of Christians in the Holy Land.

It’s not the first time the topic has been addressed by the media. And like all the others, it was packed with controversy.

Although Simon pointed out that Christians were facing serious challenges in several Muslim countries, he also pointed out that they were fleeing their ancestral homes in Bethlehem, Jerusalem and the entire area of Palestine and in Israel.

Michael Oren, Israel’s former director of inter-religious affairs and now the Israeli ambassador to the United States, argued Christians were the victims of discrimination and threats from Muslims, but Arab spokesmen claimed they are the victims of Israeli discrimination too, both in Israel and in the Occupied West Bank.