Michelle Obama’s speechwriter finds her Jewish path

When White House staffer Sarah Hurwitz took a class in Judaism she didn't expect it to lead anywhere. But nine years later she's written a book about her passion for Jewish learning.

Following a break up, not many people’s response would be to sign up to an Introduction to Judaism class. But in 2011, at the age of 36, Sarah Hurwitz had ended a relationship and found herself with some spare time to fill and that is precisely what she did. Hurwitz, who spent six years as head speechwriter for First Lady, Michelle Obama, began the course at the Washington, DC Jewish Community Centre and what she discovered totally floored her.

“The whole sensibility of Judaism spoke to me — its intellectual rigor, its creativity and humanity, its emphasis on questioning and debate,” she writes in her book, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life - in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There). This was not the uninspired, rote Judaism of her childhood, which she had chosen to detach from after her batmitzvah, but “something relevant, endlessly fascinating, and alive.”

…

And what now for Hurwitz? Back to politics, a return to law? The rabbinate? “Definitely not law,” she says, laughing hard. “And becoming a rabbi isn’t the calling for me. At the moment, I’m promoting my book and I’m also trying to find time to get back into Jewish learning and studying as I miss it when I’m travelling. That’s the amazing thing about Judaism: you can spend a million lifetimes learning about it and you still just scratch the surface.”

https://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/features/michelle-obama-s-speechwriter-%EF%AC%81nds-her-jewish-path-1.497022

NEWSWEEK: Trump Supporter Yells 'Lock Him Up' After President Talks About 'Barack Hussein Obama' at Arizona Rally

When the boos stopped, the shout "lock him up!" could be heard before Trump continued by saying that "under a period of eight years, it went to $975."

After he mentioned Obama, Trump then continued on his theme about rising median income.

"Under President Donald J. Trump, did you ever hear of him? In only three years, including regulation cuts and tax cuts, because the other one raises taxes and we cut taxes… it went to $10,000 per family. A record," he said to cheers.

Trump's crowds started chanting "lock her up" on the 2016 campaign trail, referring to Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. The chant was also used earlier this month at his New Hampshire rally to disparage Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to The Hill. Newsweek has contacted Trump's campaign team for comment.

rump has boasted about increased median income before. During his State of the Union address on February 4, he said that "real median household income is now at the highest level ever recorded."

But The New Yorker reported that the increase actually started in 2015 during the Obama administration after slipping for a decade.

Elise Gould from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said comparing the median household income across time is difficult due to changes in data methodology, and told CNBC that "2018 is not the highest it's ever been."

However it did note that 2018 median household income of $63,179, was 2.3 percent higher than in 2016 when it was $61,779, according to EPI data.

Citing the Census Bureau, Factcheck.org noted that there had been a change to the survey questions in 2014, which included other sources of income and this could explain the higher numbers.

Aside from mentioning Obama, Trump also took swipes at Democratic presidential contenders at Wednesday night's rally. He called Michael Bloomberg "Mini Mike," Bernie Sanders "Crazy Bernie," and Elizabeth Warren "a phony," USA Today reported.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-barack-obama-keep-america-great-rally-1488201

The CIA’s Role in Operation Condor

The Washington Post reported that top secret documents confirm the role that the CIA played in Operation Condor, the international state-sponsored assassination, kidnapping, torture, and murder ring run by U.S.-supported military dictatorships in South America in the late 1970s. The documents confirm that the CIA’s role in the operation was to provide communications equipment to the ring, which enabled them to coordinate cross-border efforts to kidnap, torture, and kill suspected communists, which, of course, were nothing more than people who believed in socialism or communism.

The Post article makes it clear that the CIA was fully aware of the horrific human-rights abuses that the Latin America military regimes were engaged in and said and did nothing to prevent them.

One of the most laughable parts of the secret documents are ones that imply that the CIA struggled on whether it should do anything about the abuses.

Why is that laughable?

Because it is clearly nothing more than a “cover ourselves” protection in the event that Operation Condor ever was uncovered.

How do we know that?

Because the Operation Condor goons were doing precisely what the U.S. national-security apparatus wanted them to do — eradicate the threat of communism in the Americas!

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/20/the-cias-role-in-operation-condor/

>>8194076

Interesting angle even if I'm Not sure what this author is getting at. Something like, OK, it wasn't the Russians but Trump still colluded with Wikileaks?

Pardoning Julian Assange: Trump, WikiLeaks and the DNC

The central pillar to Democratic paranoia and vengefulness regarding the loss of Hillary Clinton in 2016 was the link between Russian hacking, the servers of the Democratic National Committee and the release of emails via WikiLeaks. Over time, that account has become a matter of hagiography, an article of faith, with grave conclusions: WikiLeaks and Russia elected Donald Trump.

The Russia-DNC angle received another prod in pre-extradition hearings being conducted against Assange in the Westminster Magistrates Court, with his legal team disclosing details of the visit paid to the WikiLeaks publisher by former California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in 2017. The visit in question was not entirely a matter of surprise. The Wall Street Journal reported in September that year that Rohrabacher had contacted the White House in an attempt to broker a deal with Assange designed to alleviate his legal troubles. A conversation was said to have taken place between the Congressman and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, canvassing the possibility of ending the impasse in exchange for evidence that Russia was not behind the hacked emails.

Assange’s legal team, through Edward Fitzgerald, disclosed that President Trump had instructed Rohrabacher to discuss the possibility of a pardon for Assange provided he agreed to deny any Russian connection in the DNC hack. A statement produced by Assange’s personal lawyer, Jennifer Robison, included the following description: “Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”

For his part, former Congressman Rohrabacher is dissembling, claiming he had not discussed Assange with Trump prior to his “fact finding mission” to London. “At no time did I offer Julian Assange anything from the President because I had not spoken with the President about this issue at all.” Rohrabacher admitted to speaking with Kelly in a brief conversation after his trip to the Ecuadorean embassy in London. “No one followed up with me including Gen. Kelly and that was the last discussion I had on this subject with anyone representing Trump or his Administration.”

In 2018, Rohrabacher, in an interview with The Intercept, claimed that Kelly blocked him from briefing Trump about his London meeting with Assange. Both the congressman and his travel companion Charles Johnson had been shown “definitive proof [by Assange] that Russia was not the source of the Democratic Party communications that WikiLeaks published during the 2016 campaign.” The reason for Kelly’s obstruction lay with concerns that the special prosecutor might take an interest in Rohrabacher’s discussions about Russia, and how “that would appear to out-of-control prosecutors that that is where the collusion is.”

To keep matters interesting and mendacious, Trump now claims to “barely” know Rohrabacher while White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham insists that the allegations are “absolutely and completely false”, “a complete fabrication and a total lie. This is probably another never ending hoax and total lie from the DNC.”

The latest instalment in the case that keeps giving is a reminder of how trenchantly the Democrats have been seeking to link the DNC hack to Russia, WikiLeaks and their defeat. What Trump and Assange share, on some level, is the same tarnishing administered by the same brush.

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Since then, the Mueller Report has sought to ensconce the Russia hack-DNC narrative, dismissing Assange’s inside job thesis with almost withering disdain. “As reports attributing the DNC and DCCC hacks to the Russian government emerged, WikiLeaks and Assange made several public statements apparently designed to obscure the source of the material that WikiLeaks was releasing. The file-transfer evidence … and other information uncovered during the investigation discredit WikiLeaks’s claims about the source of material that it posted.”

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser has yielded to Assange’s team on the material produced at the pre-extradition hearing, potentially linking WikiLeaks to the highest deliberations in the White House. The addition, along with the vast picture of surveillance targeting Assange, has the makings of a very compromising picture, indeed.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/20/pardoning-julian-assange-trump-wikileaks-and-the-dnc/

>>8194302

He looks like your Pepe!