Suddenly, Echud Olmert has another problem. He has been under police investigation for years but nothing could be proved against him. Now they discovered an issue in the Municipality of Jerusalem that took place during the time he was Major. The issue has been added now to the accusations in his unending trial. The thing I am talking about is the Holyland building (pic), a design that had been rejected by several planning committees when suddenly (and suspiciously) the City Engineer changed his mind and started to push the project towards its final approval. The City Engineer, Uri Shitrit (he left in 2006) received, so the Police maintains, several million dollars in design fees from real estate developer Cherny, a Russian-Jewish oligarch. The monies were paid to the architectural firm Shitrit owned, which then issued fake tax receipts.
I am rather sceptical about the whole issue. The real target is Olmert. He was the Major. Shitrit did everything on the open: he asked for permission to use the architectural studio he owned (but was not involved with during the time). It cannot be proved that there is connection between that the City Engineer's voltaface and the monies paid to his architectural firm. Regarding the tax evasion, I have no opinion.
The search for an "evil engineer" has to be put into the context of the building shown in the pic. With the years, the public's dislike of the project has been growing. It is popularly known as the "Monster". The Judge (female) sitting in this case declared publicly that she cannot understand how such a Monstrous Creation had been allowed to ruin Jerusalem's sky line. The project has turned into the very symbol of those evil and corrupt real estate developers and engineers that destroy Mother Nature and despoliate either/or pollute Jerusalem's rocky hills. The police has invaded the Municipality's offices and are taking away old files related to the project. The "greens" always maintained that immoral greed and evil corruption is the reason for the erection this ugly, offensive, godless building. Now they have demonstrated it. Only that I doubt it. The pics are intended to lift the reader's spirits. Not all is ugly in Jerusalem.
As Sherman McCoy from The Bonfire of the Vanities concludes: Dont get cought by the criminal justice machine.
15 comments:
But those pictures to the right are so small! I don't feel that uplifted!
Its all in the mind. So they say.
That building is the ugliest thing I ever had to look at when I lived in Jerusalem. Thanks for making it bearable by adding those girls.
אל לא דבר
The small pictures-are they off Amish Blog?
Anon.
Anon, Actually there is an Amish Blog, but it seems to focus on barn building in Lancaster county.
I came to the small pics in my research on water recycling for car wash installations. Serendipity.
Here is a picture of a true Jewish beauty: Elena Kagan, rumored to be at the top of the list for the Justice Steven's Supreme Court seat (making her Jew #3 out of 9, which is statistically appropriate - most top honors in the United States - Nobel Prize winners, etc. go about 1/3 to Jews):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Elena_Kagan_1.jpg
You must agree it is a haimish punum. Maybe not as sexy as the others but unmistakably Jewish.
K
K, all of those Jewish justices are Democrats, which fits perfectly with Jewish voting patterns. Let me list the two current Jewish SC justices, Kagan and some other information.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Democrat & feminist
Arthur Goldberg
Liberal, nothing else significant.
Elena Kagan
Quotes from Kagan's Wikipedia article:
During her deanship, Kagan supported a long-standing policy barring military recruiters from campus, because she felt that the military's Don't ask, don't tell policy discriminated against homosexuals.
At her confirmation hearing (for Solicitor General), Kagan also drew criticism for arguing that battlefield law, including indefinite detention without a trial, could apply outside of traditional battlefields.
If confirmed the Supreme Court will have six Catholics and three Jews.
I think the Supreme Court should have some ethnic balance. But that would demand to recognize that there are ethnic groups and people are not an undiferentiated mass of "human elements".
More proof, if proof is needed, that the old line WASPs are a spend force in America - Republicans usually appoint Catholics and Democrats usually appoint Catholics and Jews. The only chance for a Protestant is a black Democrat. Nobody defeated the WASPS of America - they defeated themselves. Once you lose confidence in your faith and ideology, once you no longer have the energy to even reproduce, everything else (bad) follows.
K
I don't care if the Democrats want to nominate candidates from only one group, they can do whatever they want with their party. In fact, compared with people who worry that the island of Guam might capsize because there are too many people at one end, the Ashkenazi are gods among men. There aren't any Republican nominated Jews on the Supreme Court since all of the right-wing Jews make aliyah, leaving only the liberals behind.
What irks me is that the Republican party has only been able to squeak through non-Protestant, non-White candidates, or else doesn't nominate any to begin with. In fact, the current head of the GOP is a Negro Catholic (link)
I mention this because historically White Catholics vote almost to the left as Jews, and yet for some reason they are considered prime material to make Republicans out of. If you look at the 1960 election and scroll down to Catholics you will see that in that year they gave 78% of their vote to the Democratic candidate. Wikipedia's coverage of American presidential elections is spotty, but for the year 1980, wiki provides a nice table showing that White Protestants voted 2 to 1 for Reagan.
Why the Republican party is less than worthless is a good question, but it amazes me that the average WP doesn't get this.
White Catholics are assimilating at a glacial pace, but as soon as the slightest provocation comes along they get spooked and run back to the Democrats (link)
This country is slowly becoming a madhouse.
There aren't any Republican nominated Jews on the Supreme Court
Douglas Ginsburg was nominated by Reagan but was disqualified because he once smoked a joint or two. Obama's cocaine use OTOH was no problem. It's hard to say whether Ginsburg would have been a more reliable conservative than the wish washy Kennedy who took his seat. There is a long history of Republicans nominating people who turn out to be closet liberals - funny it never works the other way.
K
K, you are freak among men as a Jewish Republican. In order for the Republicans to nominate a Jew they might have to come to your door and beg you to throw your hat in the ring.
Whenever the Republicans nominate someone to the High Court they have to consider the likelihood of the candidate actually making it through the process to confirmation. With dinosaurs like Ted Kennedy in the Senate any nominee that is openly right wing usually gets "borked", so the R's try to squeak through nominees as right wing as they can. Funnily enough even Bork was a papist.
If you go back to my previous post and click on the link on White Catholic voting you will notice that WC's oscillated back and forth between McCain and Obama during the weeks leading up to the election. I think the reasons the R's nominate papists only is that they need the WC's as part of their base to succeed, but they also know that these people are easily spooked because they have their neighborhood priest telling them that the Dems are the party of God.
The result is an effective Catholic veto on Supreme Court appointments.
Ronduck,
I have no dog in this fight but I don't know of many priests who instruct Catholics how to vote (except when urging them to vote for anti-abortion candidates) and even if they did, mostly they wouldn't listen (those that even still attend church). For example, the Church's teachings on birth control are ignored by the majority of Catholics. I thought the last time someone called a Catholic a "papist" was around 1860 but apparently not.
I'm guessing that the reason why so many Catholics get nominated by the Republicans is that (a) they are reliably anti-abortion while at the same time being (b) relatively main stream. Anti-abortion Protestants tend toward evangelicals who are not acceptable in "mainstream" (read liberal) circles. Maybe Catholics waver as a group (remember that many Catholics are Hispanic who are a Dem. party welfare constituency) but those Catholics that make the S. Ct. are pretty solid conservatives - Scalia, Thomas, etc. - you'd be hard pressed to find more solid conservatives in the US. Certainly a lot better than the WASP RINOS of the old "Rockefeller wing".
K
This was the link I was referring to, and it clearly shows White Catholics wavering and then going to Obama based on what they saw on the nightly news.
I was a little harsh in stating that the local priest instructs his flock to vote Democratic, but as group WC's have a history of liberal voting which is due to the overall liberal views of the Church on economic matters. This liberalism on economic matters goes back to at least Aquinas and his belief in a Just Price.
As the process of assimilation grinds on WC's lose their economic liberalism, but it still pops up at the worst times, such as in the 2008 election.
I don't believe that Catholics in general, including the White ones are as reliably anti-abortion as is commonly believed. Massachusetts is 50% Catholic if I remember correctly and that state spent the last half century voting for Ted Kennedy. Ted even was able to receive communion during a papal mass that was held here in the US (source).
If you look at no other link, look at this one. Wiki's statistical coverage of American elections is spotty, since the 1980 article has a nice detailed table showing how each subgroup voted, but the 2008 article doesn't have a table comparing how Blacks and Whites voted. If you look at the line marked White Protestants you will see that in 1980 they went 2 to 1 for Reagan, which as far as I can tell is usual for them in most elections. The same table show the 1976 election and shows that the Catholic vote swung from supporting Carter to opposing him, but the swing was no larger than seven points.
The table aslo shows that White Protestants were 41% of the electorate in 1980 and gave 62% of their votes to the Republican candidate. Sooo, let me multiply that out:
0.41*0.62=0.2542
In order for the Republicans to get 50% and win an election they need more than just the WP vote, so an appeal has to be mounted to WC's who won't simply make up their minds and vote Republican. The constant change in the White Catholic vote explains a lot of the elections since WW2.
I saw a poll on Gallup's website that showed Protestants voting much the same way in 1952, and since Blacks mostly couldn't vote back then this 2 to 1 preference for the Republicans is pretty typical.
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