Blah-Blah
Dear Editor:
Okay, whose bright idea was it to change all gas pumps to self-serve pumps? Sure, my son-in-law showed an inordinate amount of patience with me when he attempted to teach me how to pump my own gas. Unfortunately, my attention span is about five seconds, and everything after that is “Blah, blah, blah.” I was going to move to New Jersey until my husband’s aide made me do it myself after watching him pump the gas first.
Have you ever had a fix-it man or plumber come to your house and start explaining what he’s going to do with assorted pipes and connectors. You smile, but the only two things that interest you are his bill and his ability to fix what’s wrong. Otherwise, he could be speaking Swahili for all you care.
How often is it that someone asks what the Rabbi’s drashah was about, and you draw an absolute blank. I blame it on my inability to take notes. I do recall anecdotes or significant names or numbers, so maybe I have selective amnesia. I recall details that I find fascinating. For example, in Nach Yomi I learned that the boy whom Eliyahu brought back to life was Yonah.
There’s a good reason why, when you meet with the doctor to discuss a diagnosis, you should bring someone with you. Otherwise, you hear “Blah, blah, blah.” No, you are not suffering from dementia. You can’t pay attention because your head is stuffed with too many details. In other words, your parents and teachers knew what they were talking about when they said, “Pay more attention!” They just left out the words: “to important details.”
Debbie Horowitz
P.S. Thanks, Governor Hochul, for ruining my article about congestion pricing!
Dear Editor:
Over the years, restaurants have come and gone in Kew Gardens Hills – but more new restaurants have come into the neighborhood than old restaurants have left. Most have delicious food, and some of the restaurants that stayed in the neighborhood have gotten better over the years. Yes, the prices have gone up, but in some restaurants, portion sizes have increased, as well. We are fortunate to have such a variety of restaurants here.
Elliott Wittert
Dear Editor:
Warren Hecht’s columns the past few weeks have nothing but praise for this country’s justice system. The justice system “worked,” he crows, regarding the Trump conviction, a decision that will go down as one of the most absurd trial court decisions in our country’s history. To reach such a ridiculous conclusion, Mr. Hecht must be sporting the world’s thickest blinders.
Mr. Hecht, like all Democrats, spews the “No one is above the law” mantra at Trump while pretending the criminal cases are all on up and up with no political motivations behind them. He conveniently ignores the Special Prosecutor in Florida, Jack Smith, waiting three years to bring charges against Trump for no reason other than to interfere with the 2024 election. He also ignores the fact that both District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Attorney General Letitia James campaigned on prosecuting Trump. Mr. Hecht finds nothing suspicious about a Prosecutor downgrading 75% of felonies in his county to misdemeanors but elevating an eight-year-old misdemeanor into 34 of the most dubious felonies against the leading candidate for President.
Mr. Hecht likes to mock Trump for insisting that the system is “rigged.” To further his phony narrative that the system works, was never manipulated for political ends, and all the adverse actions taken against Mr. Trump were taken independent of the Biden administration, Mr. Hecht must ignore a number of damning facts. Mr. Hecht conveniently never mentions that one of the highest-ranking members of the Biden Department of Justice, Matthew Colangelo, accepted a demotion to work under NYC District Attorney Alvin Bragg. That is an extremely odd career move, unless, of course, Bragg was working with the Biden administration all along in targeting Trump. If this is too conspiratorial for Mr. Hecht to believe, perhaps the Special Prosecutor in Georgia, Nathan Wade, who was actually stupid enough to bill the State of Georgia for meetings with White House Counsel will convince him that the Biden Administration’s filthy fingerprints are all over these Trump indictments.
After Democrats demonstrably rigged the justice system against their political opponent for their own political gains, Mr. Hecht has the unmitigated gall to gaslight QJL readership and blame Republicans who pointed out the rigging, of undermining confidence in the legal system. All in pursuit of ensuring that a man with mid-stage dementia whom no one would trust to run a bingo game, runs this country (into the ground) for four more years. Truly pathetic.
Jason Stark
Dear Editor:
As per the usual arrangement, Warren Hecht has it all backwards again, calling the Trump jurors “heroes” for rubber-stamping a guilty verdict in the kangaroo court trial he was given in Manhattan. How much courage does it take to convict the Republican former president in a deep blue district like Manhattan?!
On the contrary, Mr. Hecht, it would have been courageous for even one of the jurors to stand up to his/her neighbors, work colleagues, friends, and fellow jurors and explain that he/she couldn’t convict the defendant of a “crime” that most lawyers including you, Mr. Hecht, are still struggling to identify.
Avi Goldberg
Timing Is Everything
Dear Editor:
Timing is everything in life. The 2024 political landscape is no exception. When one looks at the events that have occurred along with those yet to unfold, one should be mindful of the timing of these events.
For instance, Democrats have attempted to jam four criminal trials made up of extremely dubious charges in an election year despite sitting on evidence for years or, in the New York case, almost a decade. The timing was perfect to tie Trump up in court and keep him from campaigning. They succeeded in nailing a felony conviction on Trump that will undoubtedly be overturned on appeal but only long after the 2024 election is history. The timing on this, too, is perfect, as “Trump, convicted felon” will be the lead on every Democratic campaign ad from now till November.
If Trump loses the election, it will be of no consolation when his conviction is overturned in 2026. It will just be another case of Democrats outsmarting their Republican counterparts with their underhanded, election-year cheating. No different from Democrats trotting out 51 US intelligence members two weeks before the 2020 election to lie to the American public and state that the Hunter Biden laptop, which contained a treasure trove of felonious conduct, was “Russian disinformation.” That too was unwound three years later, too little too late for Trump in an election he suspiciously lost by a few thousand votes.
One should keep timing in mind, when Joe Biden takes any action in the next few months. He will predictably lower the strategic petroleum reserves to previously unseen, dangerously low levels in the months before the November election to artificially lower gas prices that are still more than a dollar higher than gas under Trump. Since inflation is running too high for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, Biden instead has offered his voting base goodies that will only worsen inflation, including $25,000 for first time home buyers and the unconstitutional student loan forgiveness that has been struck down by the Supreme Court. Biden pretended for three years and seven months that he did not have the power to close the border, but five months before the election, he has now offered a border proposal, albeit a weak and useless one at that. Strange timing indeed on that one.
These next few months are perilous ones for Americans, as Biden, who is down in the polls to Trump, will try anything to time a political win for himself at the risk of doing irreparable damage to this country.
Jonathan Goldgrab
Response to Mr. Pecoraro and Mr. Ribner
Dear Editor:
Joe Biden’s approval rating hovers today in the mid-30s, a record low for someone seeking a second term as President. There are two ways to look at this. One is: Of course it’s that low. After all, he’s the worst president in our country’s history: worst on illegal immigration, worst on inflation, worst on foreign policy. On the other hand, an approval rating in the mid-30s translates to tens of millions of people who approve of the job this corpse of a president is doing. How is that even possible? Fortunately, we have a former Vice President – no, not of the United States, but of the Rosedale Jewish Center – to fill in the gaps for us.
In reaching the conclusions he reaches, namely that there’s no inflation issue, wages have outpaced inflation (why VP Pecoraro has to point out that wages outpaced inflation if there’s no inflation issue remains a mystery), gas prices are lower now than they were under Trump (no explanation provided for why he travels from Rosedale to the Oceanside Costco to get gas that’s still $1 higher than gas under Trump), and crime rates going down under Biden, we are left with no plausible explanation other than that Mr. Pecoraro lives in a utopian parallel universe where the everyday challenges Americans face thanks to Biden’s dreadful policies do not exist.
I don’t want VP Pecoraro to think that I’m singling him out, so I will also address Mr. Ribner’s letter from two weeks ago which rivaled War and Peace for its length while also rivaling The New York Times for its partisanship and inaccuracies. Unlike Mr. Ribner, I will limit my response to two points. He states that District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s quotes during his campaign about getting Trump were “fairly innocuous.” First of all, why is any DA targeting an individual citizen? And second, when Bragg says he has “sued Trump over 100 times” and will “hold Trump accountable” what everyone except apparently Mr. Ribner understands that to mean is if Bragg won the election, he would indict Trump. Mr. Ribner concedes that relying on a pathological liar such as Michael Cohen to convict Trump is not ideal, but Trump is a liar also, so too bad. Sorry, Mr. Ribner, that’s not the way the justice system works in America, at least not in non-Trump cases. Prosecutors have to prove their cases and a defendant’s bad behavior, even if it were the same as the star witnesses’ (which it is not) is not grounds for a conviction without a prosecutor submitting evidence to prove the existence of all the elements of the crime he is being charged with.
It truly is scary that there are tens of millions of people in this country who think like Pecoraro and Ribner, believing lying Democrat talking points even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary.
Doniel Behar
Dear Editor:
Our Torah demands that we choose life and the good. With just over five months to go, we certainly have time to objectively consider both. On November 5, choose wisely!
Rivka Olenick Gitnik
Dear Editor:
With respect, I’d like to correct Rabbi Schonfeld. No Entebbe hostages were murdered on the plane. Two were killed in a crossfire at the old terminal because they did not know that the IDF was there to rescue them and didn’t follow the “stay down” order. Dorah Bloch was in the hospital at the time of the airport rescue and murdered by Idi Amin after he heard that his Israeli captives were rescued.
Threats of violence are not protected under the first amendment. What is currently taking place to Jews throughout this country, but especially in New York, is frightening. Occurrences such as threats to Jewish students on college campuses, “protesting” in front of the Nova Music Festival Museum in lower Manhattan, taking over subway cars and asking who in the car is a Zionist, and defacing homes of Jews with fake blood are now rampant.
This is today’s Democratic Party. Since its inception, it has been the Party of hate. Beginning with slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow, they have now moved to anti-Semitism. Democrats are vandalizing statues commemorating our history, such as those of Lafayette and Rochambeau. They’ve already taken down Confederate statues and Confederate flags throughout the South, so no one can know what those symbols really represent.
The Democratic Party has no morality. It has no pride in American history. It is a hate-filled party that is anti-Israel, anti-Jew, and anti-America. It is doing all it can to destroy western civilization. And Mr. Pecoraro, Mr. Ribner and Mr. Hecht only want to write about “convicted felon” Trump because they cannot defend the indefensible. No Jews should have anything to do with the Democratic Party. It is their party that is the domestic terrorists and modern-day Nazis.
Stand in front of an abortion clinic and you get arrested by the FBI. Speak up against sexually inappropriate material in elementary school libraries at a local school board meeting and you’re arrested by the FBI. Stand on the grass outside of Congress on January 6, 2021, and you’re thrown in solitary confinement. This is totalitarian. Now we have Nancy Pelosi on tape admitting that she should have listened to President Trump and requested the National Guard troops he had offered her to protect the Capitol on January 6. Amazing, once again, President Trump vindicated. Oh, and by the way, anyone who’s ever applied for a gun or filled out any federal form can see the warning of committing perjury if you lie on the form. Hunter Biden is a felon because he actually committed a crime.
Shalom Markowitz
Dear Editor:
After reading the half page unhinged screed from fellow reader Shalom Markowitz, I feel it necessary to try to present reality.
Perhaps a bit of compare and contrast in a Tale of Two Trials can help him. Trump appointed both the federal prosecutor and the federal judge presiding over the trial of President Biden’s only surviving son, Hunter. And, while our President could legally have dismissed the prosecutor, he refrained. President Biden, as a Delaware resident, had nothing to do with either DA Alvin Bragg or Judge Juan Merchan being in office.
Trump violated his gag order with malicious intent. Neither Hunter nor President Biden said one cross word about any witness, the prosecutor, or the judge.
The 12 brave jurors who convicted Trump on 34 felony counts were doxxed by Shalom’s fellow MAGA followers and must now live their lives in fear because Trump still threatens retribution. The Delaware jurors felt free to speak about Hunter’s case without fear.
The charges of filing false documents that Trump was convicted on are commonly brought in New York. There is no record of any person ever being tried for filing a false statement about drug use on a gun permit application where that was the top count – not a single one.
In fact, the law Hunter was convicted of violating has been found unconstitutional in the conservative 5th Circuit of Louisiana and Texas. The hopelessly corrupt right-wing SCOTUS will likely affirm that decision, especially after just ruling that bump stocks, like the one that killed 58 innocent country music fans in Las Vegas, which effectively transform semi-automatic rifles into machine guns.
The same leaders who openly laughed at Trump revere President Biden, praying that he can defeat Trump one more time.
Pope Francis, who could barely hide his disdain for the sinful Trump, glows when speaking with the most pious president we have had in almost a half century.
Dictator Putin proposed a one-sided deal to destroy Ukraine at the bargaining table with the knowledge that his lap dog Trump will do his bidding if (G-d forbid) he is returned to the Oval Office. President Biden signed an agreement with democratically elected President Zelenskyy to use seized Russian assets to defend and reconstruct Ukraine.
And then there is the amazing American rebirth due to Bidenomics.
Crime was at record levels under Trump in 2020. Crime has gone down dramatically under President Biden.
These are all mathematical facts that can be verified if, as the sage Casey Stengel suggested, Shalom would just look it up after he escapes his right-wing bubble to join the real world, where President Biden now rightfully leads convict/would be dictator Trump in polls of battleground state voters.
David S. Pecoraro
Former Vice President
Rosedale Jewish Center
