Rahm Rammed Even Before Swearing-in Ceremony

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A top member of Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel's transition team abruptly resigned after the Tribune inquired about recent findings that she violated state ethics rules by using taxpayer resources for political purposes while serving as executive director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education.


Judy Erwin, a former state lawmaker who also co-chaired Emanuel's mayoral campaign, stepped down from her high-level state job last summer, was fined and promised to never seek a state job after conceding that she conducted political business on state time, according to a newly filed ethics report.

Erwin admitted using her office e-mail and phone while working on a campaign committee for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, using staff resources to plan her trip to the 2008 Democratic National Convention and engaging in campaign fundraising activity while on the job, the state's Executive Ethics Commission ruled in a decision filed Feb. 16.

Source
^

The Rules for Success a la Rahm Emanuel

Claimed:

Rahm's rules for victory

...Emanuel observations suggest some answers about how Emanuel is different than the average fanatically driven, would-gladly-slit-your-throat-if-you-get-in-my-way candidate when it comes to climbing the greasy pole of politics. Here are seven Rahm rules:

Moxie

Money

Message

Mania

Moderation

Malice

Mensch

^

Rahm Emanuel - Travels and Travails of A Wandering Jew

Seems there are objections to Emanuel's candidacy:

...at least five local residents filed separate objections to the candidacy of Mr. Emanuel with elections officials here, and more objections were expected to trickle in to the city’s Board of Elections in the next few days.

Mr. Emanuel’s critics argue that in moving to Washington to work as chief of staff in the White House, he left Chicago – giving up, they say, a requirement that he have legal residency in this city for one year before mounting a run for mayor...Richard Prendergast, a lawyer who described himself as a volunteer with Mr. Emanuel’s campaign, said that the arguments offered in the filings were contrary to state statute and case law. In essence, he said, once a person establishes legal residency somewhere, they must actively abandon that home to be considered no longer a resident...Mr. Prendergast added that Mr. Emanuel consistently said he intended to come back.

One complicating factor: While he was away, Mr. Emanuel rented his home to a businessman who has, in recent days, launched his own unexpected campaign for mayor from Mr. Emanuel’s house. That has raised the prospect of testimony in the coming weeks, as these objections make their way through the system, about who really can say they reside in Mr. Emanuel’s house. Mr. Emanuel, meanwhile, is himself now living in a rental apartment.

See, Rahm, that 'coming home' feeling really is powerful.

How about Israel next?

Or maybe one of the new plots being developed here in Shiloh?

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Rahm Emanuel Desecrates Muslim Holy Site

What could have been - and what may yet be.

As a follow-up to my blog post, can you imagine the headlines?

SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL ENGAGES IN UNDERMINING AL-AQSA

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S JEWISH ADVISOR CAUGHT DESECRATING MUSLIM HOLY SITE

US PRESIDENTIAL ADMINISTRATION AIDE AND SON

SEEN DESTROYING ISLAM'S SACRED PLACE

And here's the photographic proof in Tomer Appelbaum's picture of the two destructors hard at work:



After the most recent ridiculous claim concerning the Sultan's Pool excavation, the digging at the Mughrabi Gate, the Hasmonean Tunnel incident and going back to the 1929 incitement by the Mufti and many more flareups during various periods before the state was founded as well as after, an central element of local Arab fomenting anti-Jewish violence has been the assertion that Jews are seeking to replace the Haram A-Sharif compound with the rebuilt Third Temple.

If only.

But the reality is that Jews cannot pray therein, nor read psalms or act in an overt identifiablly Jewish manner but rather as nondescript tourists. But rumours of sinister plots abound.

Will The Onion take this up?

The Pinteleh Yid

Yes, Rahm Emanuel did shed a tear at the Kotel.

Where Did Rahm Eat Tonight?

From RH:

I saw him tonight at Anna Ticho

Finally, kosher food.


And finally, an invitation to the White House.

I hope the politics there will be kosher.

It's Now "Emanuel as 'Jew'"

In the Washington Post.

Words to Savor

On Rahm Emanuel:

He has been front and center in the “bully Israel” approach to the Middle East, which ranks up there with the most lame-brained ideas of this administration.

I'd Go For A Probe, Too

Does that look like a wanted poster picture to you?



The key word here is probe. Sure I'd go for a probe:

Odd Couple Demands Probe of Rahm Emanuel

Of course, my idea of a 'probe' is probably a bit different than the intention of the story.

And what is the story?

Two strange bedfellows have asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate President Obama's right-hand man, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, for his potential role in the near collapse of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, just as Treasury lifts the cap on their bailout money.

The letter by Jane Hamsher, founder of the liberal Firedoglake Web site, and Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform Chief, was sent Wednesday, one day before the Treasury Department announced that it will lift the $400 billion financial cap on loans to the government-sponsored enterprises to make sure they stay afloat.

...Hamsher and Norquist want to know now whether the bailout was in part the result of corrupt practices by Emanuel while he was a board member at Freddie in 2000-2001.

They cited a Chicago Tribune story that described a plan by the executives and the board to use accounting tricks to show shareholders they were reaping massive profits even as they continued down a path of risky investments. The profits were then used to justify the executives' big bonuses. When Emanuel left the board to enter Congress in 2002, he was qualified for $380,000 in stock and options and $20,000 cash.

The two wrote they would like the Justice Department to "begin an investigation into the cause of Fannie and Freddie's conservatorship, into Rahm Emanuel's activities on the board of Freddie Mac (including any violations of his fiduciary duties to shareholders)...

In their letter to Holder, Hamsher and Norquist wrote that the White House has stonewalled any inquiries into Emanuel's role on the board, noting that the acting inspector general was "stripped of his authority earlier this year by the Justice Department, relying on a loophole in a bill Mr. Emanuel cosponsored and pushed through Congress shortly before he left for the White House."

..."Under the influence of Rahm Emanuel, the White House is moving a trillion-dollar slush fund into corruption-riddled companies with no oversight in place. This will allow Fannie and Freddie to continue to purchase more toxic assets from banks, acting as a back-door increase of the TARP without congressional approval," Hamsher and Norquist wrote.

Asked about the letter on Thursday, White House spokesman Bill Burton did not address the allegations, saying, "I have the feeling that Rahm's job is very safe."

That sounds like a great reason for a probe.


(Kippah tip: BT)

Rahm Gets Really Rammed

The New York Times editorial lays it into Rahm Emanuel:-

Peacemaking takes strategic skill. But we see no sign that President Obama and Mr. Mitchell were thinking more than one move down the board. The president went public with his demand for a full freeze on settlements before securing Israel’s commitment. And he and his aides apparently had no plan for what they would do if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said no.

Most important, they allowed the controversy to obscure the real goal: nudging Israel and the Palestinians into peace talks. (We don’t know exactly what happened but we are told that Mr. Obama relied more on the judgment of his political advisers — specifically his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel — than of his Mideast specialists.)

But then the writer (Tom Friedman?) goes too far on another point:

At some point extremists will try to provoke another war. and the absence of a dialogue will only make things worse.

Now, we know there are Arab extremists capable of launching a war but are there Jewish/Israeli extremists who can?

The Rahm Emanulemel F*cking Jew Vid

From Latma:



YouTube

(Kippah tip: Ella)

Oh, and the original song from Mike Burstyn's 1966 movie "Two Kuni Lemel":



====================

Note: Since I do not get paid, nor do I have ads, please except my apologies for not being able to put up a translation immediately. I went down the hill to shop, was kidnapped to a ceremony of inaugurating a vineyard on two dunams of land (see this other post) and only now have returned and will give you
almost a word-for-word translation.

Rahm Emanuel's character is asked about he being behind President Obama's rather harsh pressure on the issue of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and the right of Jews to reside therein, even halting construction in Ariel, a city of some 18,000 Jews.

Asked about his origin, if he is an 'international citizen Israel', he insists he is "of Middle Eastern ancestry from what is thought as Israel but I'm an American".
"A Jewish American?"
"No, I am a secular person from roots of the Mosaic religion from distant relatives. I have no connection to Jews and don't malign me." "
So, why do you promote anti-Israel initiatives?"
"I'll explain, simply."

And then the dream sequence appears with a take-off on a song which is from "Two Kuni Lemel", an Israeli film about two brothers, twins, one from America, secular and smart and the second, an Israeli Yeshiva bochur, borderline idiot, who get switched in a matchmaking arrangement attempt.

A few lines:

"I had a complex already in my childhood because at school they called me a Jew. And therefore I'll prove that more than anyone, Rahm Emanuel will screw Israel. They say that I am not an antisemite but that alarms me for if I am not an antisemite, who am I at all?"

And the chorus repeats that refrain but adds: "And they all say that he's just a f*cking' Jew and that bothers him, for if not, then who is he at all?"

"And who is Obama's aide? Who is the best? - Rahm Emanulemel!"

"Now that I have power, the games are over. Everyone will fear and tremble before me. Obama has a kapo-on-the-house - and so to the "settlers" we'll say: 'Juden raus'.

Chorus section repeated.

John Podhoretz on Rahm Emanuel on Israel

...Emanuel, the son of an Israeli who is said to be hawkish, is, in part, inserting himself into policy matters relating to Israel—and is doing so to speak out against Israel’s own sense of its own interests in the matter of the natural expansion of long-extant “settlements” that are really part of the metropolis of Jerusalem. Those American Jews who have said both in private (to me) and in public that Obama could be trusted not to take the sorts of positions on Israel suggested by his long association with Jeremiah Wright and his intimate friendship with PLO apologist Rashid Khalidi, in part because of Emanuel’s presence in his inner circle, can no longer hide behind Emanuel’s paternity and the fact that he curses a lot and is a tough guy to offer Obama such scant and pathetic cover.

Source

What's Unique In This Picture?

In Saudi Arabia yesterday in the King's Palace:

That's right, the Saudi King is stitting next to a Jew and a former serviceman in the IDF.

Ramming Rahm

Rahm Emanuel got a dose of his own medicine at last night's weekly bipartisan White House mixer for members of Congress.

Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio), one of only a handful of Republicans who made the cut for this week's happy hour, gave his old colleague one doozy of an F-bomb greeting. Emanuel couldn't have done it better himself.

With an impressively straight face, LaTourette walked up to Rahm and said something that began with "you mother" followed by a number of bleeped out expletives, according to eyewitnesses.

Emanuel responded by giving LaTourette a friendly punch in the stomach, followed by a handshake. LaTourette then introduced Rahm to his wife, Jennifer LaTourette, a lobbyist who used to be Congressman LaTourette's chief of staff before she became Mrs. LaTourette.

Emanuel, the former congressman turned White House chief of staff, is so famous for his way with four-letter words that President Obama joked at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner over Mother's Day weekend that Rahm is "not used to saying the word 'day' after 'mother.'" Obama also said, "For Rahm, every day is a swearing-in ceremony."

Source


Take a look at this which includes this:


WHO IS THE REAL RAHM EMANUEL? I’M KNOWN AS A STRAIGHT SHOOTER. JUST LIKE JIM WEBB.
I AM A MAN WHO HAS BEEN CALLED TEMPERAMENTAL, VINDICTIVE, FOULMOUTHED AND MEAN. AND THAT’S JUST MY MOM BRAGGING ABOUT ME. FRIENDS CALL ME TOM DELAY – EXCEPT WITHOUT THE WARM, CUDDLY SIDE. IN MY DEFENSE, IF I SOMETIMES SEEM TOUGH, IT’S BECAUSE I’VE FACED SOME REAL ADVERSITY IN MY LIFE. AS A TEENAGER, I WAS WORKING IN A RESTAURANT AND ACCIDENTALLY SLICED OFF THE MIDDLE FINGER ON MY RIGHT HAND. OF ALL THE FINGERS TO LOSE! I COULD NOT EXPRESS MYSELF FOR MONTHS. I HAD TO LEARN TO TALK WITH MY LEFT HAND.

The Higher You Are...

President-elect Barack Obama's incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had a deeper involvement in pressing for a U.S. Senate seat appointment than previously reported, the Sun-Times has learned. Emanuel had direct discussions about the seat with Gov. Blagojevich, who is is accused of trying to auction it to the highest bidder.

Emanuel talked with the governor in the days following the Nov. 4 election and pressed early on for the appointment of Valerie Jarrett to the post, sources with knowledge of the conversations told the Sun-Times. There was no indication from sources that Emanuel brokered a deal, however.

A source with the Obama camp strongly denied Emanuel spoke with the governor directly about the seat, saying Emanuel only spoke with Blagojevich once recently to say he was taking the chief of staff post.

But sources with knowledge of the investigation said Blagojevich told his aides about the calls with Emanuel and sometimes gave them directions afterward. Sources said that early on, Emanuel pushed for the appointment of Jarrett to the governor and his staff and asked that it be done by a certain date.

At least some of the conversations between Emanuel and Blagojevich were likely caught on tape, sources said.

Source

So, Sins of Fathers Are Visited on Sons - Or: Rahm Booed

Rahm Emanuel apologizes for father's disparaging remarks about Arabs

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel apologized to an Arab-American group on Thursday for comments disparaging Arabs made by his father.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee sent a letter to Emanuel calling on him to distance himself from remarks made by the elder Emanuel in an interview with an Israeli newspaper following his son's appointment last week.

In the interview, Benjamin Emanuel was reported as saying: "Obviously, he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House."

While some political analysts have said Rahm Emanuel, a veteran Democratic congressman, should not be held responsible for the actions of his father, there was also a sense that an apology was unavoidable.

"Today, Rep. Emanuel called Mary Rose Oakar, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, apologized on behalf of his family and offered to meet with representatives of the Arab-American community at an appropriate time in the future," a statement from his office said.

The committee, in a statement on its website, said Emanuel told Oakar it was unacceptable to make such remarks against any ethnic or religious group.

"From the fullness of my heart, I personally apologize on behalf of my family and me. These are not the values upon which I was raised or those of my family," the group quoted him as saying.

More Problems for Rahm?

After his father's reamrk (see my comment), I wonder, will the feminists also get angry at Emanuel and Obama now:

Let's Get Historical Facts Straight

A New Republic blogger, Eli Lake, notes, in regard to Rahm Emanuel, that:-

The family name, Emanuel, is a tribute to Rahm's uncle, Emanuel Auerbach, who died in 1933 fighting the Arabs in Jerusalem (or: "during a skirmish with Arabs"). "Obviously [Rahm] will influence the president to be pro-Israel," his father told Ha'aretz last week. "Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House."

First of all, that quote came from Ma'ariv, the Jerusalem Post claims.

Secondly, I don't think he was "fighting Arabs" or in a "skirmish". In 1933, Arabs were killing Jews as part of an initiated short period of terror.

Here is a notation from an archival file at St. Antony's College on a former Palestina Policemen:

Jaffa Riots
i) Police dispositions for 27 October 1933.
ii) JAMF’s charts outlining the sequence of events leading up to the Jaffa riots;
description of the events; names of witnesses to each event; JAMF’s statement and
report on the disturbances of 27 October 1933; extract from La Falastine, 27 Dec.
1933 - a suggestion by Professor Jamal Husseini concerning the refusal to bring
JAMF to trial.
iii) Personal statements (in English and Arabic) by those who had opened fire
during the riots.
Box 2
2/1 i) Copy of Falastin 12 Nov. 1933 with photographs of the Jaffa riots.
ii) Album of photographs of the demonstrations which took place in Palestine in
1933, pub. Theodore Sarrouf, Press & Publication Office, Jaffa.

and this biographical note about Musa Azzam El-Husseini:

Partly as a result of his disappointment with the British pro-Zionist policy, and partly because of the pressure of the action-oriented Palestinian groups that emerged during the late 1920s, he led the October 1933 Palestinian demonstrations against Zionist immigration in Jerusalem.

and one more selection from an academic article:

The unrest took various forms. In August 1930, there was a minor Arab outbreak at Nablus, and the years 1930 and 1931 were marked by a series of small-scale attacks on Jews. The rank and file Arabs displayed animosity by resorting to agrarian crime, uprooting trees, wounding cattle, trespassing and grazing, as means of obstructing the sale of land to Jews. Arab scouts patrolled the coast in order to prevent illegal immigration, seemingly tolerated by lax British patrols. In October 1933, Arabs escalated the disturbances in the form of riots, shootings and strikes in response to a resolution of the Arab Executive condemning continued Jewish
immigration and land purchases in Palestine. The Arab Executive was upset by what it
regarded as disproportionate Jewish influence in London, and by aggressive statements about future Jewish immigration into Palestine emanating from the 1933 Zionist Congress in Prague (R.I.I.A. 1946, 85). The 1933 disturbances, though well below those of 1929, nevertheless represented a milestone in the conflict. For the first time, the Arabs directed their hostility against the British government, as well as against the Jews. Through 1934 and 1935, the British administration played down the disturbances.

I dwelled on this because the misinformation bandied about regarding the Auerbach family member killed (and even it was in 1936, the same situation existed) permits me to highlight the earlier period of Arab terror, killing and mayhem that was directed at civilian targets: Jews, their property and their investments.

An additional point is that Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifadah was upset at the selection of a "pro-Israel hardliner", saying

Emanuel's father as "a gun runner/

smuggler

for the Irgun, the Zionist, pre-Israel Zionist, militia that carried out numerous terrorist attacks on Palestinian civilians, including the bombing of the King David Hotel. Of course, Rahm Emanuel himself is not responsible for any of that, but his record is sometimes far to the right of President Bush when it comes to supporting Israel."

"Palestinian civilians" were indeed targets of Zionist militias, the Irgun, the Lehi and the Hagana and Palmach but only in repisal attacks, in response to Aran-initiated terror.

One last point, on the "Arab cleaning" remark, I wrote, leaving a comment at one blog site on the senior Emanuel's remark,

...As for his father's reamrk, indeed, it was quite insensible. Of course, having a relative murdered by Arabs in the 1930s, before the state of Israel was even created, simply because he was a Jew and perceived by Arabs to be a legitimate target for their own political violence and terror, may have influenced his inconsiderate words.

P.S.

Things can get weird:

Sherman Skolnick of Chicago called Rahm Emanuel the "Acting Deputy Chief for North America of the Mossad ­ Israeli Intelligence"...Skolnick went on to say that Emanuel's father Benjamin had been "part of the Israeli assassin team that murdered Sweden's Count [Folke] Bernadotte" in 1948.

FYI: Bernadotte was a Lehi operation, not Irgun, and I knew all four members of the team and none of them was Emanuel Sr.

November 29th - Good-and-Bad News

In Zionist history, November 29 is a very problematic day.

On the one hand, the UN officially recognized the right of the Jewish people to establish a Jewish state. Yes, a "Jewish" state (so all you liberals who are upset that Israel adopted a law defining Israel as a "Jewish democratic state" can relax now).

On the other hand, the decision mandated a severe partition of the historic Jewish homeland which way back in 1922-23 was mapped out as including territory on both banks of the Jordan River. Israel lost historic areas and the loss endangered the survival of the state by drawing ridiculous borders, borders that never came into being because the Arabs, local and foreign, refused to recognize those lines and invaded the country leading to Armistice boundaries.

And now, it has another significance: Rah Emanuel's date of birth is November 29th, 1959.

Will he, too, be good-and-bad news?

The "Obama Rakes Rahm" Clip

At a 2005 event hosted by Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy