If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. -- Benjamin Franklin
Shimon Peres said England was "deeply pro-Arab ... and anti-Israeli", adding: "They always worked against us."
He added: "There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary."I really cannot think of another country on Earth that would say to a democratically elected ally "Your people hate us, your leaders hate us, and you have always hated us."
His remarks, made in an interview on a Jewish website, provoked anger from senior MPs and Jewish leaders who said the 87-year-old president had "got it wrong".
But other groups backed the former Israeli prime minister and said the number of anti-semitic incidents had risen dramatically in the UK in recent years.
The controversy follows the furore last week over David Cameron's remark that Gaza was a "prison camp", as he urged Israel to allow aid and people to move freely in and out of the Palestinian territory.
Mr Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is three years into his seven-year term as president and was awarded an honorary knighthood by the Queen in 2008, said that England's attitude towards Jews was Israel's "next big problem".
"There are several million Muslim voters, and for many members of parliament, that's the difference between getting elected and not getting elected," he said.
Forgetting about the implications for the administration, I've been struck for some time about the apparent need among a fairly large number of Americans to pretend that racism is ancient history with which we no longer need to be concerned (at least as it pertains to racial minorities.) The fact is that Shirley Sherrod lived during the great cataclysm of the civil rights movement and paid a huge personal price for standing up against the forces that killed her father. But that wasn't the end of it. She has spent the rest of her life trying to fight other insidious forms of racism like these discriminatory loan practices that continue to this day. I suspect that somebody forgot to send her the memo that the whole thing is over and that she just needs to move on. Indeed, it's been made crystal clear that the fight isn't over. (The fact that she was targeted for statements about racial reconciliation is even more galling.)
Sixty-seven percent of American adults say they have an alcoholic beverage on occasion, the highest level in 15 years, with beer the preferred drink, followed by wine and liquor, a Gallup poll said Friday.
Drinking was most prevalent in 1976-1978, when 71 percent of Americans said they drank alcohol, and least popular in 1958, when only 55 percent admitted doing so, said Gallup, which began its drinking surveys in 1939.
By age, alcoholic beverages were most favored by 18-54-year-olds (72 percent), followed by the 55 and older crowd (59 percent), Gallup found in its July 8-18 survey of 1,020 adults.Beer costs money, you know. No dinero, no drinky. And if you look at the history of alcoholic beverages over the years, it's always been a moneyed thing traditionally. It's college grads making six-figures who are having a tipple of ripple, and the rest of us are cutting back on the six packs.
There was also a marked difference in drinking habits by education, with college graduates topping people with a high school degree or less by 79 to 58 percent respectively.
Income also mirrored drinking levels, with 81 percent of people making 75,000+ dollars per year saying they drank, followed in descending order by lower incomes until only 46 percent of those making less than 20,000 dollars said they drank.
But a year and a half later, many of the critics have retreated from their sharpest attacks as they watch the auto industry once again turn a profit and begin adding jobs in communities such as Detroit, which desperately need them.
Obama's visit to a Chrysler plant in Detroit on Friday was designed as a victory rally -- complete with campaign-style trappings -- an "I told you so" event aimed squarely at his Republican critics who had attacked the auto bailouts as government takeovers.
A feisty Obama was welcomed with loud applause by about 1,500 auto workers inside the plant that makes the Jeep Grand Cherokee, a vehicle the president said was the first new car he ever owned. If his critics had won, he said, the plant would have been shuttered and dark.
There's no satisfying some, like radio host Rush Limbaugh, who this week referred to GM as Obama Motors. And the auto turnaround is not enough to fix places like Detroit, where 30 percent unemployment has ravaged the city like few others in the United States.
But as Obama arrived here Friday to trumpet the industry's progress, Corker refrained from saying that the bailouts were bad for the country. He says the administration's methods were "heavy-handed" but also takes credit for helping to shape the bailout. He prodded the Obama administration to force the companies to lessen their debt and achieve a more favorable union agreement.
"The ideas we laid out there were followed through," Corker said in an interview. "I take some pleasure out of helping make that contribution. . . . I think what we did is we forced a debate and we forced a hard look at these companies."And now of course Republicans like Corker are trying to take credit for something that Republicans bitterly opposed, while the rest of the GOP is still bitterly complaining that Obama is a socialist. At least the press is finally paying attention to the fact that if the Republicans were in charge right now, America wouldn't have an auto industry outside of Ford.
"I think Charlie Rangel served a very long time and served-- his constituents very well. But these-- allegations are very troubling," Obama told Harry Smith in an interview to be aired on the "Early Show." and first broadcast on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.That's not just Obama throwing him under the bus, that's throwing him under the bus at near relativistic velocities, having top people then retrieve Rangel from under the bus, cleaned up nicely and then having Charlie given a tasteful little gilded sign to put on neck that reads "Enjoy your retirement there Chuck, Your pal, Barack." CSI people should be walking around leaving little folded number cards and a chalk outline.
"And he'll-- he's somebody who's at the end of his career. Eighty years old. I'm sure that-- what he wants is to be able to-- end his career with dignity. And my hope is that-- it happens. "
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