Apologies
Dear Editor:
There are some indiscretions that I’ve committed that I want to own up to. The first apology goes to all the supermarkets in the Tri-State Area. Yes, I’ve used your wagons and have not returned them to their rightful places. Instead, I’ve left them by the area of my parking space while justifying my lack of consideration to inclement weather. It’s either too hot, too cold, too windy, or too rainy to walk the several feet to return the cart to its rightful place.
Then, once inside the store, I pile my groceries into the wagon, and on the way to the checkout line, I return half of my purchases to the wrong aisle or shelf: in other words, the closest empty spot to my arm. My husband could never understand why I loaded my wagon with clothes, shoes, and bags and then proceeded to dump half of the items on some rack or shelf before I checked out. I was then proud of the fact that I had spent so little money on my shopping spree.
Also, my apologies for parking haphazardly “inside” the lines in the parking lot. Obviously, these lines weren’t drawn for the geometry-challenged driver. I either park too forward, too much to the right of the line, too much to the left, or too much to the back of the line. Of course, I should be more considerate of my fellow parker, but I’m not. Therefore, between the abandoned cart and the poor parking, I’m my fellow shopper’s nightmare.
However, I have atoned for some of my sins. Last week, I went with some friends to a fancy Manhattan restaurant for lunch. (Anything that’s not a pizzeria is fancy.) We each received a bill, and my friends were upset to see a service charge tagged onto the bill. Since this wasn’t the tip, we couldn’t understand what it was for. What was most surprising, though, was that my receipt didn’t show any such charge. At first, I gleefully accepted it as my luck of the draw, but then I “fessed” up to the waitress about the omission. She shrugged her shoulders, and so I decided to mend my ways. Therefore, if you see me commit any of the above digressions, just give me a little nudge and reprimand.
Debbie Horowitz
Joe Must Go!
Dear Editor:
Joe Biden’s fitness for the office of the Presidency has been framed, or shall I say mis-framed as a political issue. Now that the Biden administration has transformed from an airtight operation to springing more leaks than the Titanic with terribly damaging information about Biden coming out daily, the public is a bit more aware of just how incapacitated our figurehead President truly is.
We learned a few years ago the type of prompting Biden needs when he accidentally revealed a cheat sheet with bullet points such as “You enter the room, you say hello and you take your seat.” We now know he receives detailed instructions on how to enter and exit a room, pictures included. We also learned this week that his lackeys submitted a list of approved questions for him to be asked in a radio interview. And we know from the leaks that Biden is usually not coherent after 3 p.m.
For years, conservatives – really any fair-minded person with a set of eyes and ears has known that Biden is not running the country. It’s just not plausible. Warren Hecht would likely dismiss this as speculation and a political issue. It’s not. It’s a Constitutional one. If you think it’s not, I suggest you re-familiarize yourself with Article 2 of our Constitution, which vests the powers of the Presidency in one man, the President. Some have speculated that the country is run by the numerous Obama acolytes that Biden staffed his administration with. Others have speculated that Jill Biden is running the show. Now that we know crackhead Hunter is sitting in on high-level meetings, perhaps Hunter is calling the shots now. Whether our country is being run by a committee of staffers or by Joe’s immediate family, this is all a blatant violation of our Constitution.
How the party that brands itself as the preservers of democracy are okay with this arrangement boggles my mind, but one thing is clear: Joe Must Go. Our Constitution demands it.
Avi Goldberg
How We Got into This Political Mess
Dear Editor:
Warren Hecht suggests we do some soul-searching to figure out how we got into the political mess we are currently in. I’m not sure we need a soul-search here, but I am more than happy to fill in the blanks on how we got here.
In 2019, Joe Biden decided the third time would be the charm for him and decided to run for President after his first two bids were spectacular failures. Since America already knew Biden as a backslapping, retail politician with a penchant for making stupid remarks, he needed to repackage himself. He found an angle into the race by perpetuating the Charlottesville hoax, claiming that Trump supported white supremacy, using Trump’s “there were very fine people on both sides” comment as evidence. Trump’s comments, however, were clearly referring to those involved in a dispute over whether to take down statues erected many decades before. Trump also clearly denounced white supremacists the same day, as well as multiple times after the Charlottesville march. Irrespective of the fact that he was perpetuating a hoax, Biden had his angle and he ran with it.
The problem with Biden’s candidacy in 2019 was that he was already suffering from the effects of early-onset dementia. He suffered dozens of gaffes, performed poorly in debates (Biden’s “Make sure you have the record player on at night” comment during one of the debates was my favorite), was floundering in the polls, and was far behind Bernie Sanders in the race for the Democratic nomination. The Democratic mafia bosses who run the party realized Communist Bernie wouldn’t perform well in the general election, so they had to find someone whom they could control and was also perceived by the public as moderate, to overtake Bernie. Biden fit that bill perfectly. They made backroom deals with all the candidates still in the race to drop out and coalesce behind Biden to push him past Sanders and get him the nomination. South Carolina Representative James Clyburn promised his full support for the crucial upcoming South Carolina primary in exchange for Biden picking a black woman to be his running mate.
To summarize, in 2020, Democratic Party operatives picked a man with dementia whose entire impetus in running for President was based on a debunked hoax. That dullard then decided his pick for Vice President would be based entirely on irrelevant, immutable characteristics such as race and gender. It’s 2024 now, and the President’s dementia has gotten progressively worse and his wholly unqualified, DEI-selected Vice President, who polled at zero in her own state while running for President, has not exactly lit it up the past four years either. She is Biden’s #1 insurance policy against being replaced on the ballot.
So, we are left with a President who belongs in an assisted living facility with round-the-clock care; and we are left with a Vice President who is such a failure, she lacks the political aptitude to replace a President who belongs in an assisted living facility with round-the-clock care. That, Mr. Hecht is how we got into the current political mess.
Jason Stark
Self-Preservation
Dear Editor:
Why have the media turned on Joe Biden and finally started to tell the truth regarding his senility and infirmity? Senility and dementia are progressive conditions, yet the media has turned on a dime, giving the appearance that this occurred overnight and are now shocked that President Biden looks like a corpse and is no longer fit to be President.
What is really going on here? Rule #1 of consuming mainstream media is not to trust anything they say, because there’s usually a (liberal) angle driving what comes out of their mouths. They covered up for our senile President for three and half years, telling us what a great job he was doing and not to believe what our eyes were seeing, namely that he is wholly incapable of doing his job and should not be doing anything more demanding than shuffleboard on Deerfield Beach.
Then, last week, in front of 50 million watching people, Biden blew their cover with his debate performance, letting everyone know that the media has been lying about his condition for years. Thus, the faux shock and outrage of the media is just another cover-up of their initial cover-up. For the media, it’s all about self-preservation. They will do everything within their power to ensure Democratic rule, and now that Biden has exposed them for the frauds they are while simultaneously becoming a liability for continued Democratic rule, they have turned on him and are more than willing to throw Biden overboard.
It’s not just the media who have turned on Old Joe. Democratic members of Congress who also have said nothing for years now have their knives out for Biden. Why now? Again, it’s all about self-preservation. Biden, in his now exposed, weakened state, is a drag on all the down-ballot candidates in November. If Biden is still running for President, it will likely have a negative effect on the chances for Congressional Democrats in their own races. So, they too, like the media, are more than eager to dispose of Biden if he is a political liability.
Bottom line: The mainstream media is just an extension of the Democratic Party and will do all the bidding of the party. As for Democratic Members of Congress, don’t let them ever tell you they are public servants. Anyone who was truly serving the public would have brought up the 25th Amendment and exposed the ruse of the Biden Presidency years ago.
Jonathan Goldgrab
Dear Editor:
Despite some potshots from a couple of letter writers, I think what I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the mental state of the presidential candidates, that while not perfect, held up pretty well based on the debate. President Biden is very old, and it showed, perhaps more than ever. Dementia, no, but the fact that it’s even a question is a problem. Putting his opponent aside, his lethargy and unsteadiness is not something you want in a president. Then there’s former President Trump, who as usual had several incoherent answers and could not directly answer any policy questions. (I still don’t understand why, whenever he’s asked about climate change, he starts talking about how clean the water was during his administration.) And, of course, he let loose a stream of lies. But, yes, he did it all somewhat vigorously and without stuttering, if that’s the only criteria you care about.
But the aftermath of the debate showed a fundamental difference between the two sides. Biden supporters are not in a cult, so there was a torrent of criticism on the left towards Biden and his team, and plenty of handwringing over whether he should drop out of the race. Meanwhile, you had to look really hard to find a negative word about Trump’s performance in the conservative media or with his supporters. They seem totally fine with having such a candidate. Even the remaining centrist Republicans are too afraid of blowback by the dominant MAGA wing to dare criticize Trump, while the traditionally conservative “never-Trumpers” have been excommunicated from the party.
Moshe Hill takes it even further. Not only does he not have a word of criticism for Trump, he deems those on the left who oppose him as insincere and being strictly motivated by power. This is somewhat ironic, as it is all in the service of a man who at the debate doubled down on everything that happened after the last election as he desperately sought to hold onto power and made it clear that he would not accept another loss as legitimate.
Mr. Hill’s other column about the recent Supreme Court decisions uses a similar argument. A theme of the rulings was the supposedly originalist Court inventing new powers for themselves. Mr. Hill praises the decision overturning Chevron for taking regulatory decision-making power away from unelected bureaucrats (i.e., the subject matter experts Chevron gave deference to), but instead it is now in the hands of unelected judges with lifetime positions, with the Supreme Court giving themselves the ultimate power to decide which regulations stay and which go. With their hyper-partisan makeup, they seemed primed to simply overturn anything that conservatives don’t like.
Likewise, the immunity decision allows prosecution of a president for non-official acts, but not for official acts. Guess who gets to decide what actions fall into each category. The courts, of course! (Note that many of the justices are on the record as saying presidents are not above the law – now with Trump facing consequences, they are equivocating.) So, Mr. Hill looks at this power grab and says it is the side that is opposing these rulings that are the true power-hungry ones. That’s some projection!
Regards,
Yaakov Ribner
The Real Embarrassment
Dear Editor:
In Mr. Hecht’s column last week, he stated that the Presidential debate was “an embarrassment” because of Joe Biden’s frailty and Donald Trump’s lies. Mr. Hecht conveniently omits all the lies Biden told from beginning to end: lies such as no troops dying during his Presidency, black unemployment being lower during his Presidency than during Trump’s, having lower illegal border crossings than during the Trump Presidency, and billionaires paying only 8% in taxes. The biggest whopper of the night was when Biden declared that the only existential threat to humanity is climate change. With hostilities in the Middle East and Ukraine heating up, the threat of World War III, nuclear bomb threats, and the unknown number of terrorists that Biden allowed to waltz into our country, the only threat that comes to mind for him is climate change?!
As for the debate itself, I was expecting it to be much more biased since it was on CNN, which perpetrated the Russian collusion hoax on its airwaves for three years. As for the moderators, the husband of one of the CNN moderators, Dana Bash, is a CIA operative and one of the 50 intelligence agents who interfered in the 2020 election by signing the infamous letter with the lie that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. The other moderator, Jake Tapper, has compared Trump to Hitler on numerous occasions. The bias was not in how they ran the debate, but more on how the questions were selected. The 2020 election and January 6 questions were asked to Trump, but Biden did not get one question about how he straight-up lied in the 2020 debate about his corrupt family business dealings and the contents of Hunter’s laptop. Even more indicative of the shameless bias at CNN was the one question they asked regarding lawfare. It was lobbed at Donald Trump for theoretical lawfare he could wage as President in 2025. Not one question for Biden on the actual lawfare, namely the four cases that were initiated at the behest of and with the aid of his administration.
As for Mr. Hecht’s comparison of Biden to John Fetterman, that is ludicrous. Biden is a senile old man who, five minutes after his Presidency ends, we will all learn has Alzheimer’s or some other brain-rotting disease. Fetterman was a 51-year-old who suffered a stroke and was campaigning while still suffering the after-effects. He has since recovered his brain function, something that will never happen for Biden, whose condition is way more severe and progressive.
Mr. Hecht still endorsing this feeble, senile, wholly unqualified man to be President for another four and a half years is the real embarrassment.
Doniel Behar
Dear Editor:
Mr. Hecht, it is only you and fellow Democrats who are embarrassed. Some 75 million US citizens are proud of our nominee, will support him to November 5, and vote for him. I predicted last week that you or one of the other liberal writers would call Trump a liar at the debate. That was an easy one. The fact is, the economy was better. Food and gas prices were lower. Illegal immigration, while there was some, was not out of control. Our allies respected us, and our enemies feared us. There were no wars raging in the world. Joe Biden lied so many times, that a baseball official scorer would run out of room on the paper. Biden got fact-checked in real time, when the Border Patrol tweeted on X that they have never and never will endorse Joe Biden for President, despite President Biden saying during the debate that they did.
Are you embarrassed because you voted for an applesauce jar? Anyone who has had a family member struck with, R”l, cancer or dementia has seen up close and personal the deterioration of the mind and body right in front of them. Most of us knew this back in 2020. If you’re so gullible that you didn’t see this, then who’s the fool? You’ve been defending and promoting this jar for four years now. Maybe stop attacking Trump and do some introspection on your beloved party? After 2024, you’re in deep trouble with a weak bench and no bullpen help.
Maybe you’re embarrassed because of all the Democratic Party projecting and gaslighting these last six months? That it is your party that is the real threat to democracy and not Donald Trump. It is your President that defied a Supreme Court ruling on student loan debt in order to buy votes in November. The Supreme Court shot down Biden’s CDC as they attempted to stop evictions post-Covid. Biden was reversed again by SCOTUS in another power grab. This time, President Biden was using OSHA to mandate Covid vaccines on corporations. Biden’s DOJ is going after political opponents. Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro are in prison. President Trump is defending himself in court against frivolous charges. President Biden has opened our borders in defiance of immigration law and has welcomed murderers and rapists to waltz in on a red carpet. He canceled ANWR drilling, hurting not just Alaska’s economy, but also US gas prices. Biden has artificially lowered gas prices by draining our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is necessary in case of a catastrophic emergency. Seems to me, President Biden is the dictator.
However, Democrats have their political heads up their ideological rears and don’t think with their brains for two seconds. The Supreme Court ruling just saved President Biden and those in the Executive Branch. They cannot be held criminally responsible for any official acts done. So, while all this is going on, should President Trump win, his DOJ cannot throw any of these circus clowns in prison.
Shalom Markowitz