HAPPY NEW YEAR!

If you're sick and tired of all the bad news we've been bombarded with this year, check out CNN's interactive Good News Generator for 2022!

Whoopi Goldberg - Please Change Your Last Name!

You may not be Jewish but your last name is, so please change it to Smith or Jones. We Jews would rather not have an antisemite like you using a name like Goldberg.

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From United With Israel: STAGGERING IGNORANCE: Whoopi Doesn’t Know Basic Holocaust Facts

Whoopi Goldberg recently defended her false statements about the Holocaust, claiming that the Nazis “were not killing racial; they were killing physical,” leading to calls for her resignation.

By United with Israel Staff

“'Remember who they were killing first. They were not killing racial; they were killing physical,'” Whoopi Goldberg recently told the UK’s Sunday Times in an interview that was published Saturday.

According to 'The View' co-host, Adolf Hitler’s genocidal plan to exterminate the Jewish people 'wasn’t originally' based on race.

Goldberg, who has no Jewish ancestry and scrapped the name Caryn Elaine Johnson for a Jewish-sounding stage moniker at the outset of her career, appeared to be rehashing statements she made during a January 31 episode of the 'The View,' which led ABC News President Kim Godwin to suspend her for two weeks.

On that show, Goldberg claimed 'the Holocaust isn’t about race' during a discussion of a Tennessee school board’s decision to ban 'Maus,' a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel that deals with the Holocaust.

'This was clearly idiotic,' responded Israel-based British commentator Melanie Phillips at the time.'

'The signature characteristic of German Nazism was that it set out to exterminate Jews as a race, identifying them as targets for annihilation on the basis of even a tenuous ancestral connection with Judaism,' wrote Phillips on JNS.org.

Phillips added, 'Attempting to apologize in the ensuing storm, Goldberg made things even worse. Saying she had now learned that ‘Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race,’ she then told Stephen Colbert on his late-night comedy show that the Nazis had lied and actually had issues not with race but with ethnicity, which caused further outrage and prompted another apology.'
In the Times piece over the weekend, the interviewer corrected Goldberg after she appeared to repeat claims that the Holocaust wasn’t related to concepts of race"

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Sorry, Whoopi! The word "race" doesn't only mean blacks!

Instead of Helping Others, Looters are Helping Themselves

It was sickening to read about, and see video footage of, the looting going on in Buffalo.  Imagine, after a horrific blizzard that has killed at least 30 people and trapped many more inside their homes, these lowlives managed to have the energy to get to the stores to loot and destroy -- and even boast about their crimes on live feeds!

"'They're breaking into the Rent To Own, they're taking TV sets,' said Cichocki, who blamed the justice system for this fallout during the blizzard. 'They're not looting food and medicines, they're just looting items that they want so these aren't even people in distress these are people that are taking advantage of a natural disaster,' Mayor Brown said." 

The mayor referred to them as "the lowest of the low", but he was being much too kind.

Minimizing COVID

This is another excellent column by The Tyee's Andrew Nikiforuk:  "Ten COVID Facts Health Officials Dangerously Downplay. We should be rallied to defend ourselves and ur kids. Our leaders offer timid silence."

"Seeing Auschwitz" Exhibition

 

This is from the UK Jewish News: "‘Startling and sobering’ Auschwitz exhibition. The exhibition everyone is talking about has a strong message and lasting impact"

This looks like a very powerful exhibit,  But if the photos of dead Jews at Auschwitz hasn't moved the antisemites, I doubt these will.

Ridiculous Speech Codes -- Yet Again

Don't colleges and universities have better things to do than create lists of "harmful speech"? I thought they were supposed to educate people, not make them dumber.

I have never changed the words I use, and I definitely will not use the alternatives listed here by Stanford.

"Among the words the university urges people to avoid in the imprecise language section is the term, "American." People are instead asked to use "U.S. Citizen" because "American" typically refers to "people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas." The Americas, the index notes, comprises 42 countries."

"Other terms deemed harmful in this section include "abort," which offers the replacement of "cancel" or "end," because of moral concerns about abortion; "child prostitute" is replaced with a "child who has been trafficked," so the person is not defined by just one characteristic; and "Karen" is replaced with "demanding or entitled White woman."

"Under the ableist section, the index urges people to use "accessible parking" instead of "handicap parking," "died by suicide" instead of "committed suicide" and "anonymous review" instead of "blind review." It also says people should use "unenlightened" as a replacement for "tone deaf," and a "person with a substance abuse disorder" as a replacement for "addict."

Must-Reads About the Tripledemic

Things seem to be spiraling out of control these days between COVID, the flu, RSV, strep throat, and other ailments. Here are some well-written articles on the subject.

Geoff Nesnow writes, "We Can’t Wish Covid-19 Away.  Covid-19 is insidious and it’s coming for all of us unless we do something differently".
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Emergency doctor Joe Vipond,  dermatologist Lisa Iannattone, and biologist T. Ryan Gregory write, "We don't know what's causing the tsunami of sick kids, but we'd better figure it out fast."