A Tale of Two Realities

The relationship between Israel and Palestine is truly a tale of two realities where, over the decades,  people on both sides had their lives prematurely taken from their loved ones. Strong leadership committed to peace and prosperity on both sides for both sides is needed to resolve this dispute as well as the United States leadership returning to the role of Honest Broker instead of its recent overt pro-Israel posture.

On one side you have the Israelis who represent the only vibrant democracy in the region. In this country, everyone, including the Arabs, has equal rights and representation in the Israelis Parliament, the Knesset.

However, the Israelis have a problem trusting their neighbors for good reason. Before it achieved nationhood, its mandate to establish a homeland in Palestine was reduced by roughly two thirds when the British, in the first land for peace deal, called the Palestinian Territories east of the Jordan River Trans Jordan (later just Jordan) and gave it to the Arabs. Not satisfied with two-thirds of the land, the Arabs in the Jewish third of Palestine wanted that too. Giving into Arab protests, the British decided to divide that parcel up in a similar way that they haphazardly partitioned India and Pakistan (whose eastern boundaries would become Bangladesh). This arrangement was doomed to cause future conflict as the future states of Israel and Palestine were born. In the war for independence, Israel, despite the odds, survived increasing its territorial holdings on lands Palestinians abandoned at the leading Arab elites request (thinking they would return after Israel was defeated) or when the Israelis ejected them.  Whatever was left was scooped up by Jordan and Egypt in the occupation nobody seems to remember in the history books. In the later Six Day War in 1967, Israel acquired the remainder of Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, Gaza, and the Sinai Peninsula. Israel offered to return all the captured lands in exchange for peace and the Arab countries rejected the overture. Only later when Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979 was the Sinai returned. Gaza was also offered back to Egypt but the Egyptians did not want the headache. Jordan probably felt the same way when it did not insist on the return of the West Bank when it made its peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

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New Poll Shows Matt Heinz in the Lead Over Ann Kirkpatrick in Tucson’s CD2 Congressional Race

Dr. Matt Heinz
Dr. Matt Heinz

A survey of likely Democratic primary voters in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District shows Dr. Matt Heinz holding a 4-point lead over former Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick in the race for the Democratic Party nomination.

This is within the survey’s margin of error of +/-4.9%.

The poll was commissioned by Heinz. The Heinz campaign released a three-page summary offering highlights of the telephone survey but did not release the entire poll. The live phone survey was conducted by FM3 Research and dated May 9, 2018. It found that:

  • “While Democratic primary voters are familiar with both candidates, they are more likely to hold a favorable opinion of Heinz, and after hearing equal positive information about these two candidates, support for Heinz increases.”
  • “Furthermore, the survey shows that many aspects of Kirkpatrick’s voting record in Congress pose a serious problem for her among Democratic primary voters, particularly her support of Republican tax cuts, cuts to Medicare, and her former “A” rating from the NRA.”

In an initial Democratic primary ballot test, Matt Heinz currently leads the field with 27%, giving him a four-point edge over Ann Kirkpatrick (23%). These results show the highly competitive nature of the Democratic primary, and despite her high-profile and well-financed statewide candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2016, 2nd District Democrats have not embraced Kirkpatrick. The contest is very much a two-person race, as the other candidates generate only mid-single-digit support.

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Oh, SNAP! The GOP’s war on the poor in the House farm bill

Eighty percent of the farm bill’s spending is on nutrition programs, e.g., the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (formerly food stamps), but House Republicans want to start making work requirements for recipients harsher in order to benefit from these programs. No such requirements apply to the corporate welfare handed out to corporate executives to the tune of billions of dollars.

Tara Golshen at Vox.com has an explainer, House Republicans’ push to slash food stamps in the farm bill, explained:

The first draft of House Republicans’ farm bill, a $867 billion legislative package that subsidizes agriculture and food assistance programs, which Democrats say was written behind closed doors and without Democratic input. The bill has already passed out of the House Committee on Agriculture using only Republican votes. This is somewhat unusual — the farm bill has historically been bipartisan but has been plagued by a polarizing push over food assistance in recent years.

Rep. Collin Peterson, a conservative Minnesota Democrat and the Agricultural Committee’s ranking member, gave an impassioned statement just ahead of the partisan vote, saying, “We were pushed away by an ideological fight I repeatedly warned the chairman not to start.”

The House Rules Committee will devote Tuesday and Wednesday to the 2018 farm bill as members plow through a long list of amendments, raising the possibility of heated debate before it faces a floor vote later this week. Farm Bill Gets Two Days of House Rules Committee Consideration.

The Republican proposal to impose stricter work requirements and anti-fraud measures on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — commonly known as food stamps — is estimated to slash $20 billion from the program’s benefits over the next 10 years. One million people in households of more than 2 million individual could be pushed off the program or experience reduced benefits, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

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Support Sen. John McCain’s opposition to Gina Haspel at CIA

For the past several days the media has been consumed by the story that White House communications special aide Kelly Sadler joked in a staff meeting about Sen. John McCain’s opposition to President Trump’s nominee for the CIA, Gina Haspel: “It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway.White House official mocked ‘dying’ McCain at internal meeting.

While Kelly Sadler has called the McCain family to apologize privately, she has not been terminated nor has she or the White House publicly apologized for her comment. The Trump White House crossed a new threshold for political debasement this week:

U. S. Senator John McCain

The White House probably thinks it cannot punish Kelly Sadler for her awful comment about John McCain because President Trump has also said nasty things about McCain. It may worry that showing her the door would set a troubling precedent for a president who may one day cross a very similar line.

Welcome to the ongoing degradation of our political discourse. Destination: No end in sight.

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What happened this week is worse than most anything we have seen — worse even, I would argue, than Trump questioning McCain’s war hero status. What’s more, the White House is trying to ignore it, which means the bulldozer is pressing forward.

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Either because the White House is afraid of setting a standard Trump cannot meet or because Trump is demanding it hold the line against the media’s outrage cycle, it is serving notice there are more important things than Sadler’s public accountability: things like confidentiality and politics.

Case in point, Trump blasts the White House leakers as ‘traitors and cowards’:

Screen Shot 2018-05-15 at 6.44.57 AM

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Fully Funding Education is the Top Issue as LD 18 Democrats look to take both State Representative Seats in 2018

State Representative Mitzi Epstein
State Representative Mitzi Epstein

Education, Education, Education. That is the top issue for all three candidates competing for the two Representative seats for LD 18 as they vie to continue the trajectory of making this district increasingly blue in this year’s election.

As reported in a previous overview of LD 18, it is a district that includes Ahwatukee-Phoenix, Tempe, Chandler, and Mesa. Socioeconomically, it is a mostly upper-middle-class district. It is where the main campus of Mesa Community College is located as well as technology powerhouses GoDaddy and Intel.

Jennifer Jermaine

Until recently, the district has predominately elected Republican candidates for its local seats. Democrats made their first electoral gains in the district this decade with victories for State Senator Sean Bowie and State Representative Denise “Mitzi” Epstein in 2016.

The party hopes to continue this trend by re-electing Bowie and Epstein to their current positions and electing either Jennifer Jermaine or LaDawn Stuben who will run against Republican State Representative incumbent Jill Norgaard.

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