The Purple Pinup Guru Platform

When purple things are pulsating on your mind, I'm the one whose clock you want to clean. Aiding is Sparky, the Astral Plane Zen Pup Dog from his mountain stronghold on the Northernmost Island of the Happy Ninja Island chain, this blog will also act as a journal to my wacky antics at an entertainment company and the progress of my self published comic book, The Deposit Man which only appears when I damn well feel like it. Real Soon Now.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

SPARKY SAYS LET SKEWER ONE OF THE PUPPETS A TOUCH - FIRST HERE'S SOMEONE WHO THINKS SHE'S ONE OF THE EVIL ELITES ...

Michele Bachmann
The Honorable
Michele Bachmann


Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Minnesota's 6th district
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 3, 2007
Preceded by Mark Kennedy

Member of the Minnesota State Senate from the 56th District
In office
January 3, 2001 – January 7, 2003
Preceded by Gary W. Ladig
Succeeded by Brian LeClair

Member of the Minnesota State Senate from the 52nd District
In office
January 7, 2003 – January 2, 2007
Preceded by Satveer Chaudhary
Succeeded by Ray Vandeveer

Born April 6, 1956 (1956-04-06) (age 53)
Waterloo, Iowa
Political party Republican
Spouse(s) Marcus Bachmann
Residence Stillwater, Minnesota
Alma mater Winona State University[1]
Oral Roberts University[1]
College of William & Mary Law School[1]
Occupation Attorney
Religion Lutheran - WELS

Michele Marie Amble Bachmann (born April 6, 1956)[2] is the United States Representative of Minnesota's 6th congressional district and member of the Republican Party. She is the third woman, and first Republican woman, to represent Minnesota in Congress. The 6th congressional district includes the northernmost suburbs of the Twin Cities along with St. Cloud. ...

Article linked to Wikipedia above
==========================

Yasha Levine: Michele Bachmann: Welfare Queen


http://www.truthdig.com/images/eartothegrounduploads/AP_michelle_bachmann_welfare_queen-300.jpg

Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout” as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.

And she’s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.

Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”

But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization’s records, Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann’s recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or “socialized”—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America’s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann’s free-market dream world as Cuba’s free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.

However, Bachmann doesn’t think other Americans should benefit from such protection and assistance. She voted against every foreclosure relief bill aimed at helping average homeowners (despite the fact that her district had the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota), saying that bailing out homeowners would be “rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules.” That’s right, the subsidy queen wants the rest of us to be responsible.

Bachmann’s financial disclosure forms indicate that her personal stake in the family farm is worth up to $250,000. They also show that she has been earning income from the farm business, and that the income grew in just a few years from $2,000 to as much as $50,000 for 2008. This has provided her with a second government-subsidized income to go with her job as a government-paid congresswoman who makes $174,000 per year (in addition to having top-notch government medical benefits). “If she has an interest in a farm getting federal subsidy payments, she is benefiting from them,” Sandra Schubert, director of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, told Gannett News Service in 2007, when the subsidies to Bachmann were first publicly disclosed.

But Bachmann isn’t the only welfare recipient on Capitol Hill. As it turns out, there is a filthy-rich class of absentee farmers—both in and out of Congress—who demand free-market rules by day and collect their government welfare checks in the mail at night, payments that subsidize businesses that otherwise would fail. Over the past couple of decades, welfare for the super-wealthy seems to be the only kind of welfare our society tolerates.

In the 11 years for which the Environmental Working Group has compiled data, the federal government paid out a total of $178 billion to American farmers. We’re not talking about the Joads here. The bulk of subsidies go to the wealthy, not small farmers, as Ken Cook, the group’s president, explained to the Central Valley (Calif.) Business Times:

American taxpayers have been writing farm subsidy checks to wealthy absentee land owners, state prison systems, universities, public corporations, and very large, well-heeled farm business operations without the government so much as asking the beneficiaries if they need our money. ... Even if you live smack in the middle of a big city, type in a ZIP code and you’ll find farm subsidy recipients.

Chuck Grassley, the longtime Republican senator from Iowa who warns his constituents of Obama’s “trend toward socialism,” has seen his family collect $1 million in federal handouts over an 11-year period, with Grassley’s son receiving $699,248 and the senator himself pocketing $238,974. Even Grassley’s grandson is learning to ride through life on training wheels, snagging $5,964 in 2005 and $2,363 in 2006. In the Grassley family they learn early how to enjoy other people’s money.

Sen. Grassley railed against government intervention in the health care market, telling The Washington Times, “Whenever the government does more ... that’s a movement toward socialism.” As the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, he ought to know, especially because the government has done more for him and his kin than for Americans struggling with high medical bills and mortgages. Even the free-market think tank the Heritage Foundation criticized Grassley on his deep connections to farming interests and his stubborn lack of transparency.

Then there’s Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., whose family has been on the government take for at least the past 11 years, pocketing some $500,000. The senator recently held a “prayercast” with Michele Bachmann to beseech God to kill health care reform as soon as possible because it would bring an evil socialist spirit into America. Like Bachmann, Brownback has a fierce belief in God, the free market and a two-year limit on all welfare benefits—unless it’s welfare to rich Republicans who don’t need it.

Not surprisingly, Blue Dog Democrats are on board with this welfare-for-the-rich thing. Max Baucus, the fiscally conservative Democratic senator from Montana who did his best to sabotage the health care reform process before it ever began, collected $250,000 in taxpayer subsidies to his family’s farm while fighting to keep Americans at the mercy of free-market health insurance. Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, another Democrat, also helped hold the line against so-called socialized medicine for Americans who need assistance, even though her family farm business follows the socialized subsidy playbook to a T. The Lincolns pocketed $715,000 in farm subsidies over a 10-year period, and the senator even admitted to using $10,000 of it as petty cash in 2007. Democratic Rep. Stephanie Sandlin of South Dakota stayed true to her conservative free-market roots by voting against the public option. Meanwhile, her daddy, Lars Herseth, a former South Dakota legislator, collected a welfare jackpot of $844,725 paid out between 1995 and 2006.

That’s just the way the game is played these days. Republicans and conservative Democrats bitch and moan about the allegedly Marxist underpinnings of universal health care and do everything they can to deny struggling Americans access to social services. Meanwhile, many of them profit off taxpayers in a massive welfare program.

Farm subsidies have become so corrupt that payments sometimes go to dead people for years. Federal farm subsidies, which were originally meant to help struggling farmers survive, are now little more than taxpayer robbery, taking taxpayer wealth from working Americans and sending it to the have-mores. According to 11 years’ worth of Environmental Working Group data that tracks $200 billion in subsidies, the wealthiest 10 percent of “farmers” have collected 75 percent of the money. That’s exactly the kind of socialism that Rep. Bachmann and her elite ilk like.

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

Michele Bachmann's Farm Received Over $250,000 in Federal Subsidies

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann has made herself a prominent face in the Republican Party in 2009, delivering incendiary speeches at Tea Party protests against taxes, bailouts, and other forms of government intervention. Last week, she hosted a rally in Washington against health care reform, which she opposes as a "government takeover."

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.politicsdaily.com/media/2009/12/85578179.jpg

But according to a report by the liberal political Web site Truthdig, Bachmann is not so vociferous about her distaste for "socialized" industry when it comes to her family farm in Minnesota, which accepted over a quarter of a million dollars in federal agriculture subsidies from 1995 to 2006. Most of the subsidies went to dairy and corn, which are heavily price-controlled. Bachmann's personal profit from the farm has ranged from $2,000 some years to $50,000 in 2008, according to tax documents.

Self-described "true" conservatives, like those Bachmann has led this year, are known to viciously oppose farm subsidies, which pay farmers to grow unnecessary crops that are often discarded.

Bachmann is not the only Republican to decry government benefits as socialism, but still accept federal subsidies for themselves. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley's family has collected nearly $1 million in federal handouts over an 11-year period, including $699,248 for his son and $238,974 for himself. The senator is so deeply tied to government-planned farming interests that the free-market Heritage Foundation has criticized him.

"Whenever the government does more, that's a movement toward socialism," Grassley told the Washington Times in a statement opposing what he called government intervention in health care.
==========================
Michele Bachmann Compares Tea Partiers to Doomed 'Light Brigade'

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), speaking at a "Code Red" rally against health care reform Tuesday in Washington, compared the Tea Party movement to a famous battle of the Crimean War, Talking Points Memo reports.

"It's the charge of the light brigade!" Bachmann shouted, referring to the brigade immortalized in Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade." The only problem is that the poem describes a disastrous, badly orchestrated charge by the British cavalry in the Battle of Balaclava. It became a symbol of loyalty and courage in the face of certain defeat, particularly after being described by Tennyson. The poem's ominous tone makes a lovely ode to fallen British soldiers, but is an unlikely battle cry for conservative protesters:

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."


Video: Bachmann Invokes "Charge of the Light Brigade" at Rally

==========================
Anyone who praises Ronald Reagan is a tool at best and a professionally selfish asshat at the possible worst. I just have this image of domestic terrorist Andrew Joseph Stack III as a EST graduate who would justify killing crippled 3rd world blind babies to satiate his greed.
http://lh6.ggpht.com/stygmata/SJZqQbfaGAI/AAAAAAAAAPM/f-P_1eY0Fl8/s144/damned2.jpgQuoting Whitechapel's "Sword Rampage Burglar":
Palin's support for McCain in the AZ primary is going to come back to haunt her. Nobody on the hard right is buying it, they all hate McCain with a passion, and it makes her look like a cheap political hack. McCain earned his reputation as a "maverick", such as it was, largely for ... his occasional willingness to cut deals with the Democrats. Palin can't keep trying to play both wings of the Republican party.

The fight I'm seeing shaping up after the primaries is the Liz Cheney crowd - the Nixonian, neo-conservative, internationalist pro-fat-cat crowd - versus the "peasants with pitchforks" crowd that used to be represented by Pat Buchanan. The Tea Party movement right now is floundering amorphously between the two, and the upcoming fight over immigration reform is going to split that right open.

That's going to be the real three-ring political circus. If you thought the protests and insanity the Tea Party bunch generated over health care was something to watch, just wait. The Republicans are going to crack right apart, as the rich folks who want their domestic servants and cheap fruit pickers split one way, and the Know-Nothings split the other.
==========================
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/ClipperRoute.png

Let's be clear the obscure reference to Archie comics being a hint of ultra rich elites who profit off of our misery. Thus Boston Brahmin were no doubt involved in the Opium Tea Trade. These people use and discard folks like the Bushes as disposable toadies who do the 'dirty work' - shame the smarter among the Bush Crime Clan are only loyal to money.

Clippers were built for seasonal trades such as tea, where an early cargo was more valuable, or for passenger routes. The small, fast ships were ideally suited to low-volume, high-profit goods, such as spices, tea, people, and mail. The values could be spectacular. The Challenger returned from Shanghai with "the most valuable cargo of tea and silk ever to be laden in one bottom". (Codewords for opium) ...
==================================
Pardon the ramble - am sick thanks to the colds preschoolers toss around.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Sparky Says: Even more mindless hate from the Big Mouth ...
http://www.topnews.in/files/Sarah-Palin_4.jpg
Look - it that a Nazi salute from Caribou Barbie? Shame shame shame!
What basically amused me is that they claimed 30,000 attendees but produced only 7,000. Hehe! Time to remind them they are a vocal minority spouting “hate speech” to a lunatic fringe! Let's ID the nutbars as terrorists like that Asshat Stack.


Is she describing the assets she was so proud of back in her college days?

Imagine the stupidest woman on the planet likely thinks she's clever right now.
“ ... Catering to her crowd, Sarah ‘Pebbles’ Palin talked of limited government, strict adherence to the Constitution, and the 'God-given right' of freedom." ... the piece concluded, "Her fee was $100,000 for the appearance at the for-profit event."
- AP


========================
http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/author/img482Tim_McCown.JPG Tim McCown: Sarah Palin and the 10,000 7,000 desert dimwits at " Conservatives Woodstock"

It has become increasingly clear the more I hear Sarah Palin that she is suffering from an incurable medical condition. In medical terms it would be cranial rectitis or terminal stupidity in layman's terms. As a registered Democrat and a gun owner you Right Wing morons and your threats of gun violence and assaulting people are the best arguments for government to come confiscate my guns as well as yours. Anyone who shoots their mouth off as carelessly as you Tea Partiers seem too, can't possibly be trusted to handle a fire arm responsibly the argument will go.

I have no love for what this government or big corporations are doing. There is no doubt that they have no regard for our welfare nor do they care. If you really want to bring down those in power it requires absolutely no violence. You just stop complying with those in power. Violence is the tool of true Totalitarians and it always has been. A coward and a weakling resorts to violence.

Words have consequences. Before I reached my 19th birthday JFK, his brother RFK and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had all been assassinated. There is plenty of room for dissent in this nation. It is what this nation was founded upon. But there should be no tolerance for calls to violence against those you disagree with. That is what they do dictatorships.

Like it or not because what those in your movement do is done in all of your names, here is the pathetic stupid crap your movement stands for. Racial epithets, death threats, broken windows, nooses faxed to Congressmen James Claiborne D-SC and Bart Stupak D- MI. A gas line sabotaged at the home of the brother of Rep.Tom Perriello D- Va. after it was posted on line by a local Tea Party Movement group.

The racist, bigoted moronics would be bad enough but protesters showed up at Rep. Russ Carnahan's home with a coffin. Rep. Betsy Markey D-Co. recieved two threatening phone calls. One caller said, " Better hope I don't run into you in a dark alley with a knife, a club, or a gun." another said, " Better tell your boss that she better be careful when she comes back to Colorado.

A Nashville man was the victim of road rage because he had an Obama bumper sticker on his car. Rep. Vic Snyder D-Az. recieved a letter that read, " Militia control has selected you for assassination."

I realize all of you Right Wingers feel far safer in a dictatorship like we had 8 years of under George Bush. And you find it frightening discovering that a majority of America doesn't see the world through paranoid glasses. We had free elections and even though Obama isn't doing what I think he should, I will work to change things through constructive non violence and refusing compliance.

Our electoral system is co-opted by the rule of money. Our system is failing because of that. Money and Power corrupts and our government is completely corrupted. It does not work for the benefit of most of us. That said, there is nothing patriotic or even remotely connected to the American Revolution in what you Tea Partiers are doing unless the revolution you are mimicking is the overthrow of the Weimar Republic by Hitler.

Any damn fool can pull a trigger. Any coward can hurl an epithet from a crowd. All of you disgrace the Gadsden flag because they stood for principles. This movement stands for nothing. When Palin says reload the thing that really scares me most is not that she is stupid enough to use an anology to gun violence, but that not a single one of you has any idea how to think for yourself.

This movement is exactly what Neimoeller wrote about when he wrote, First they came for...


========================
Remember - All the the GOP did was fail to do nothing. No heroes there.
Sparky: MooHaha! People don't connect the war to the economy - Are they on drugs?

Jay Leno Does His Best to Make Karl Rove Cry



Karl Rove was on The Tonight Show this evening to pimp out his new memoir, Courage and Consequence, but it seemed all Jay Leno wanted to do was make the man cry about his tortured childhood. The awkward video, inside.

First, Leno asked Rove to recall the time a girl beat him up when he was nine years old because of his support of Richard Nixon for President. Then, Leno asked Rove to talk about the fact that he didn't find out until he was 19 years old—and by accident—that he was adopted. Then, Leno asked Rove what it was like to be rejected by his biological father. And finally, Leno asked Rove to recall his mother's suicide.

Isn't The Tonight Show fun?!

[The Tonight Show with Jay Leno]

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

Rove Gets Branded 'War Criminal' At Book Signing

http://llnw.image.cbslocal.com/0/2006/04/26/320x240/images_sizedimage_116120127.jpg



About 100 fans came out to hear Karl Rove at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills Monday night to discuss his book "Courage and Consequences: My Life As a Conservative In The Fight," -- but the fight wasn't contained to his book.







Anti-war protesters came out, some rushing the stage, to call Rove a "war criminal" and worse.



The fans came to get their books signed, but they never got that chance.


One woman, the co-founder of the anti-war group Code Pink, approached him with handcuffs and said she was there to make a citizen's arrest. Jodie Evans charged him with "outing a CIA agent... you lied to take us to war..." and "totally ruining the country."


KCAL 9's Dave Bryan was there and said Rove "was shouted down and forced to leave the stage."


Another woman screamed at Rove, "The only comfort I take is that ... you're going to rot in hell."


Rove, meanwhile, charged that the people shouting him down were an example of the "totalitarianism of the left ... they don't believe in dialog ... they don't believe in courtesy. They don't believe in first Amendment rights for anyone but themselves."


There were several heated exchanges between Rove and his critics before he decided he had enough and he left the stage.


He called one detractor a "lunatic." He told several others repeatedly to "get the heck out of here."


Bryan reported that security was apparently lacking and Rove was "left to fend for himself."

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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

Cowards always run away - look at Palin ...

Monday, March 29, 2010

Moses is America's prophet

By Bruce Feiler, Special to CNN
March 29, 2010 1:28 p.m. EDT
tzleft.bruce.feiler.courtesy.jpg
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Bruce Feiler calls this week, from Passover to Easter, Moses week in America.
  • Feiler says U.S. and its leaders have referred to narrative of Moses for over 400 years
  • Pilgrims, Jefferson, Statue of Liberty, spirituals, Superman refer to Moses, he says
  • Moses represents courage, balance of freedom and law, ideal of justice, he says

RELATED TOPICS

Editor's note: Bruce Feiler is the author of "Walking the Bible," "Abraham" and "America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story." His new book, "The Council of Dads," will be published in April.

(CNN) -- This Saturday, millions of Americans will watch the annual spectacle of Charlton Heston acting the part of a Cold War hero in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments." The TV air date is no accident.

This week, beginning with Passover and ending with Easter, is "Moses week" in America. It's the one time of year when the biblical hero steps to the forefront of religious ritual, renewing the special bond that has existed between the great prophet and the United States for over 400 years.

Moses was an American icon long before there was an America. When the Pilgrims left England in 1620, they described themselves as the chosen people fleeing their pharaoh, King James. On the Atlantic, they proclaimed their journey to be as vital as "Moses and the Israelites when they went out of Egypt." And when they got to Cape Cod, they thanked God for letting them pass through their fiery Red Sea.

By the time of the Revolution, Moses had become the go-to narrative of American freedom. In 1751, the Pennsylvania Assembly chose a quote from the Five Books of Moses for its State House bell, "Proclaim Liberty thro' all the Land to all the Inhabitants Thereof -- Levit. XXV 10."

The future Liberty Bell was hanging above the room where the Continental Congress passed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Congress' last order of business that day was to form a committee of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams to design a seal for the new United States. The committee submitted its recommendation that August: Moses, leading the Israelites across the Red Sea. In their eyes, Moses was America's true Founding Father.

Two-thirds of the eulogies at George Washington's death compared him to Moses.
--Bruce Feiler

But escaping bondage proved to be only half the story. After the Israelites arrived in the desert, they faced a period of lawlessness, which prompted the Ten Commandments. The message: Freedom depends on law.

Americans faced a similar moment of chaos after the Revolution. Just as a reluctant Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and then handed down the Ten Commandments, a reluctant George Washington led the colonists to victory and then presided over the drafting of the Constitution. The parallel was not lost. Two-thirds of the eulogies at Washington's death compared him to Moses.

Although Moses was a unifying presence during the founding era, a generation later, he got dragged into the issue that most divided the country. The Israelites' escape from slavery was the dominant motif of slave spirituals, including "Turn Back Pharaoh's Army," "I Am Bound for the Promised Land" and the most famous, "Go Down, Moses," which was called the national anthem of slaves.

Yet as abolitionists used the exodus to attack slavery, Southerners used it to defend the institution. The War Between the States became the War Between the Moseses. It took America's most Bible-quoting president to reunite the country. Abraham Lincoln talked about the exodus at Gettysburg, and, when he died, he too was compared to Moses.

"There is no historic figure more noble than that of the Jewish lawgiver," Henry Ward Beecher eulogized. "There is scarcely another event in history more touching than his death." Until now. "Again a great leader of the people has passed through toil, sorrow, battle and war, and come near to the promised land of peace, into which he might not pass over."

The country's greatest icon, the Statue of Liberty ... even Superman [were] modeled partly on Moses.
--Bruce Feiler

Political figures weren't the only ones compared to Moses; national icons were, as well, including Uncle Sam and Old Glory. The country's greatest icon, the Statue of Liberty, was designed with spikes of light around her head and a tablet in her arms to mimic Moses' pose when he climbed down Sinai with shafts of light around his head and tablets of law in his hands.

Even Superman was modeled partly on Moses. The comic-book hero's creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, modeled their superhero on the superhero of the Torah. Just as baby Moses is floated down the Nile in a basket to escape annihilation, baby Superman is launched into space in a rocket ship to avoid extinction. Both Moses and Superman were picked up by aliens and raised in strange environments before being summoned to aid humanity. Superman's birth name was Kal-el, which is Hebrew for "swift god."

But it was Cecil B. DeMille who turned Moses into a symbol of American power in the Cold War. The 1956 epic "The Ten Commandments," the fifth highest-grossing movie of all time, opened with DeMille appearing onscreen.

Forty years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. compared himself to Moses, the Hebrew prophet is as resonant as ever.
--Bruce Feiler

"The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God's law or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator," he said. "The same battle continues throughout the world today."

To drive home his point, DeMille cast mostly Americans as Israelites and Europeans as Egyptians. And in the film's final shot, Charlton Heston quotes the Liberty Bell (even though it comes from three books earlier in the Bible) and recreates the pose of the Statue of Liberty, forever securing America's place as the new Promised Land.

Today, 40 years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. compared himself to Moses on the night before his assassination, the Hebrew prophet is as resonant as ever.

George W. Bush said in an Oval Office interview that he was inspired to run for the presidency by a sermon in Texas in which his preacher said Moses was not a man of words but still led his people to freedom. Barack Obama said in 2007 that the civil rights pioneers were the "Moses generation," and he was part of the "Joshua generation" that would "find our way across the river." And this week, Obama holds the second White House seder.

What explains this ongoing appeal?

First, Moses embodies the courage to escape hardship and seek a better world. He keeps alive the ministry of hope. "Not America," as W.E.B. DuBois put it, "but what America will be." Moses is the figurehead of "America will be."

Second, Moses encapsulates the American juggling act between freedom and law. "Since the exodus," German poet Heinrich Heine said, "freedom has always spoken with a Hebrew accent."

Finally, Moses is a reminder that a moral society is one that embraces the outsider and uplifts the downtrodden. "You shall not oppress a stranger," God says in Exodus 23, "for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt." Moses represents the ideals of American justice.

Yet he reminds us that we often fall short of our dreams. As King said, "I've been to the mountaintop. And I've looked over. I've seen the promised land. And I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that we as a people will get to the promised land."

These words capture what may be the most enduring lesson of Moses: The true destination of a journey of hope is not this year at all but next.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bruce Feiler.

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

Hata clan

Ying (嬴)
Country Qin Dynasty
Parent house
Titles Emperor of China
Founder Zhuanxu
Final ruler Qin Er Shi
Founding year 778 BC
Deposition Surrender to Liu Bang 207 BCE
Ethnicity Han Chinese, Japanese

The Hata clan (秦氏?) was an immigrant clan active in Japan since the Kofun period, according to the epic history Nihonshoki.

Hata is the Japanese reading of the Chinese (state and dynasty) name 秦 given to the Qin Dynasty (the real family name was Ying), and given to their descendants established in Japan. The Nihonshoki presents the Hata as a clan or house, and not as a tribe; also only the members of the head family had the right to use the name of Hata.

The Hata can be compared to other families who came from the continent during the Kofun period: the descendants of the Chinese Han Dynasty, by Prince Achi no Omi, ancestor of the Yamato no Aya clan, the Sakanoue clan, the Tamura clan, the Harada and the Akizuki clan; the descendants of Seong of Baekje (Kudara in Japanese) who sought refuge in Japan, for example the Ōuchi clan and the Sue clan; also, the descendants of the Chinese Cao Wei Dynasty by the Takamuko clan.

Nihonshoki

The Hata are mentioned by name more often than almost any other immigrant clan in the Nihonshoki, one of Heian-period Japan's epics, combining mythology and history.

The first leader of the Hata to arrive in Japan, Uzumasa-no-Kimi-Sukune, arrived during the reign of Emperor Chūai, in the 2nd century CE. According to the epic, he and his followers were greeted warmly, and Uzumasa was granted a high government position.

Roughly one hundred years later, during the reign of Emperor Ōjin, a Hata prince called Yuzuki no Kimi visited Japan. He said he is from Baekje and he wanted to migrate to Japan. but Silla did not permit. So 120 persons of his clan are staying in Minama. Enjoying his experience, he left and returned with members of his clan "from 120 districts of his own land", as well as a massive hoard of treasures, including jewels, exotic textiles, and silver and gold, which were presented to the Emperor as a gift.

Origins

According to Nihon Shoki, Yubukinokimi(弓月君)moved to Japan from Baekje with people from 120 towns, and named themselves as Hata clan. Some scholars say Hata clan did not come from Baekje, but Silla or Gaya area. [1]

The Hata are said to have been adept at financial matters, and to have introduced silk raising and weaving to Japan. For this reason, they may have been associated with the kagome crest, a lattice shape found in basket-weaving. During the reign of Emperor Nintoku (313-399), the members of the clan were sent to diverse parts of the country to spread the knowledge and practice of sericulture.

Members of this clan also served as financial advisors to the Yamato Court for several centuries. Originally landing and settling in Izumo and the San'yō region, the Hata eventually settled in the areas of what are now Japan's most major cities. They are said to have aided in the establishment of Heian-kyō (modern-day Kyoto), and of many Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, including Fushimi Inari Taisha, Matsunoo Taisha, and Kōryū-ji.

Emperor Yūryaku granted the clan the family name of Uzumasa in 471, in honor of Sake no kimi's contributions to the spread of sericulture. Over the next few centuries, they were given the rights to the status (kabane) of Miyatsuko and later Imiki.

A number of samurai clans, including the Chōsokabe clan of Shikoku, the Kawakatsu clan of Tamba and the Jinbō clan of Echigo province, claimed descent from the Hata.

The Koremune clan, also descended from the Emperor of Qin, were related to the origins of the Hata as well. Prince Koman-O, in the reign of Emperor Ōjin (c. 310), came to dwell in Japan. His successors received the name Hata. This name was changed to Koremune in 880. The wife of Shimazu Tadahisa (1179-1227) (son of Minamoto no Yoritomo and ancestor of the Shimazu clan of Kyūshū), was a daughter of Koremune Hironobu.

In addition, many towns in Japan are named after the clan, such as Ohata, Yahata, and Hatano. The population of Neyagawa in Osaka Prefecture includes a number of people who claim descent from the Hata.

The Hata were also claimed as ancestors by Zeami Motokiyo, the premiere Noh playwright in history, who attributed the origins of Noh to Hata no Kawakatsu. According to Zeami's writings, Kōkatsu, the ancestor of both the Kanze and Komparu Noh lineages, was the first to introduce kagura Shinto ritual dances to Japan in the sixth century; this form would later evolve into sarugaku and then into Noh.

While most scholars believe in this line of descent from the Emperors of Qin, others attest that the clan was originally from Central Asia. Ken Joseph Jr explains that Yuzuki no Kimi means Lord of Yuzuki, and he found a place written 弓月 in Central Asia. The problem with this theory is that Kimi doesn't mean "Central Asian Lord", but was a Japanese official's rank under the authority of a Japanese governor of province (Kuni no miyatsuko) or a governor of district (Agata-nushi). The second problem is that Yuzuki doesn't refer to a location, but was the Prince's name. Ken Joseph Jr also explains that the family name Hata was given to all the naturalized foreigners, which is wrong. The name Hata (秦 Qin in Chinese reading) was reserved to descendants of the Chinese Qin Dynasty established in Japan.

Shinshūkyō and the Common Origin Idea

The notion that the Hata clan were among the Lost Tribes of Israel, though far from widely accepted or even seriously considered in formal scholarship, is central to the beliefs of several Japanese New Religions and to the writings of various contemporary Japanese antiquarians. While there are tantalising indications that the Hata were Semitic or Central Asian in origin, most serious scholars have not jumped to the conclusion that they were definitely Jewish, or among the Lost Tribes. Dr. Yoshiro Saeki (1872-1965), an expert on Eastern Christianity, is one of the primary scholars who has proposed the theory that the Hata were Semitic in origin practicing a form of early Judaism, and that they had a profound impact on Japanese culture. Ikurō Teshima, founder of the New Religion Makuya, and author of several books on the Hata, is another proponent of the theory.

Hata tribe members of note

Hata no Kawakatsu

Hata no Kawakatsu, in a book illustration by Kikuchi Yōsai.

Hata no Kawakatsu (秦河勝?), sometimes called Hada no Kōkatsu, was a semi-mythical figure in Japanese mythical history, who is believed to have introduced kagura Shinto dances to Japan in the sixth century. He is also considered the progenitor of a hereditary line which includes many of Noh's greatest playwrights and actors, such as Hata no Ujiyasu, Zeami and Komparu Mitsutarō. Though in legend he is portrayed as the reincarnation of the first emperor of Qin, if Kawakatsu truly existed he was likely a Chinese immigrant to Japan, or someone from further afield who came to Japan via China or Korea (see Hata tribe).

According to legend, as told by the preeminent Noh playwright Zeami, Hata no Kawakatsu first appeared as a child, during the reign of Emperor Kimmei (509-571), discovered in a jar near the gates to the Miwa Shrine by a high court official. The Hatsuse River had overflowed its banks, and the jar had been carried along on the current. As the official believed the child to have come from heaven, these events were reported to the emperor. That night the emperor dreamed of the child, who said that he was the spirit of Qin Shihuangdi, first Emperor of Qin, reborn. The child also explained his appearance in the dream as a result of his destiny being connected to Japan's.

As a result, the child was brought to the Court, by order of the Emperor, to serve as a Minister. He was given the family name of Chin, which was read as Hata in Japanese, and it was thus that the child came to be called Hata no Kawakatsu. Kawakatsu was then asked by Shōtoku Taishi to perform sixty-six dramatic pieces, in order to help settle disturbances in the land. The Prince made sixty-six masks to be used for this purpose, and the performances were then done at the Shishinden (Great Attendance Hall) of the imperial palace at Tachibana. Since this was successful in creating peace for the land, Prince Shōtoku decided that this form of entertainment should be kept for the ages, and dubbed it kagura (神楽, "entertainment given by the gods"). The form of entertainment known as sarugaku, along with its name, would later be derived from kagura.

Kawakatsu is said to have served a number of rulers, including not only Kimmei and Shōtoku, but Emperor Bidatsu, Emperor Yōmei, Emperor Sushun, and Empress Suiko. Having passed on his art to his descendants, Kawakatsu fled Naniwa in a hollowed-out wooden boat. The winds and currents took him to Harima province, where he came ashore no longer in human form. It is not clear from Zeami's version of the tale what sort of spirit or demon Kawakatsu was meant to have been, but it is implied that from the time he was discovered in the jar to this point he was never truly human. In any case, he haunted and cursed the people of Harima until they began to worship him as a kami, in order to placate him. They called him Taikō Dai-Myōjin (対抗大明神, "Great Raging Kami"), and later recognized him as an incarnation of Bishamonten. Prince Shōtoku is said to have prayed to the spirit of Kawakatsu for victory against Mononobe no Moriya, who led an armed force in opposition to Japanese adoption of Buddhism.

In 1907, Dr. Yoshiro Saeki, a supposed expert on Japanese Christianity, claimed to have discovered Kawakatsu's tomb, and a shrine devoted to him, on an island in the Inland Sea. Saeki was one of the leading scholars of a movement to assert and argue that the Hata were in fact Hebrews, and likely members of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.

See also

References

  1. ^ Translations and comments of Baekje history - Japan part, 2008, South Chungcheong province of Korea
  • Frederic, Louis (2002). "Japan Encyclopedia." Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  • Rimer, J. Thomas and Yamazaki Masakazu trans. (1984). "On the Art of the Nō Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami." Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
  • Teshima, Ikuro (1973). The Ancient Refugees From Religious Persecution in Japan: The Tribe of Hada - Their Religious and Cultural Influence. 1.

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

Japanese

Some writers have speculated that the Japanese people themselves may be direct descendants of part of the Ten Lost Tribes. There are some parallels between Japanese and Israelite rituals, culture, traditions, and language, which provide some evidence for this possibility.[1][2] An article that has been widely circulated and published, entitled "Mystery of the Ten Lost Tribes: Japan" by Arimasa Kubo[3] (a Japanese writer living in Japan who studied the Hebrew Bible), concludes that many traditional customs and ceremonies in Japan are very similar to the ones of ancient Israel and that perhaps these rituals came from the religion and customs of the Jews and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel who might have come to ancient Japan.

Joseph Eidelberg's "The Biblical Hebrew Origin of the Japanese People" makes a similar case:

Late in his life, Joseph Eidelberg began analyzing ancient traditions, religious ceremonies, historical names, haiku poems, Kana writings and Japanese folk songs, discovering thousands of words with similar pronunciations, sounds and translations between Hebrew and Japanese. These discoveries are history in the making, giving credible new information on the meanings of many unknown Japanese words, numbers, songs and cultural traditions – and this book is the first time that these remarkable similarities are combined into a single consistent theory.
[47]
==
  1. ^ Japan article, Nova episode: Lost tribes of Israel, PBS website.
  2. ^ Israelites Came To Ancient Japan , Arimasa Kubo.
  3. ^ isralbooks.com listing
==
History of the Jews in Japan

Jews are a minor ethnic and religious group in Japan, presently consisting of only about 2,000[1] people or about 0.00016% of Japan's total population. Although Jews have been present in Japan and Judaism has been practiced since the 16th century, on a very limited scale, in Japan, Japan comprised but a small part of Jewish history from the ending of Japan's "closed-door" foreign policy to World War II.

Jewish history in Japan


Early settlements

The first confirmed contacts between the Japanese and people of Jewish ancestry began during the Age of Discovery (16th century) with the arrival of European travelers and merchants (primarily the Portuguese and Dutch). However it wasn't until 1853, with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry following the Convention of Kanagawa ending Japan's "closed-door" foreign policy that Jewish families began to settle in Japan. The first recorded Jewish settlers arrived at Yokohama in 1861 establishing a diverse community consisting of 50 families (from various Western countries) as well as the building of the first synagogue in Japan. The community would later move to Kobe after the great Kanto earthquake of 1923.

Another early Jewish settlement was one established in the 1880s in Nagasaki, a large Japanese port. This community was larger than the one in Yokohama, consisting of more than 100 families. It was here that the Beth Israel Synagogue was created in 1894. The settlement would continually grow and remain active until it eventually declined by the Russo-Japanese War in the early 20th century. The community's Torah scroll would eventually be passed down to the Jews of Kobe, a group formed of freed Russian Jewish war prisoners that had participated in the Czar's army and the Russian Revolution of 1905.


View of Beth Israel Synagogue in Nagasaki.

From the beginning of the 1900s to the 1950s the Kobe Jewish community was one of the largest Jewish communities in Japan formed by hundreds of Jews arriving from Russia (originating from the Manchurian city of Harbin), the Middle East (mainly from Iraq and Syria), as well as from Central and Eastern European countries (primarily Germany). During this time Tokyo's Jewish community (now Japan's largest) was slowly growing with the arrival of Jews from the United States and Western Europe for multiple reasons. Both of these communities were formed based on constitutional values along with community organizations that had a committee president and treasurer and communal structure. Each community now has its own synagogue and welcomes anyone of the Jewish faith 18 years or older to become a member.

Jewish settlement in Imperial Japan

Some Japanese leaders, such as Captain Inuzuka Koreshige (犬塚 惟重), Colonel Yasue Norihiro (安江 仙弘) and industrialist Aikawa Yoshisuke (鮎川 義介), came to believe that Jewish economic and political power could be harnessed by Japan through controlled immigration, and that such a policy would also ensure favor from the United States through the influence of American Jewry. Although efforts were made to attract Jewish investment and immigrants, the plan was limited by the government's desire not to interfere with its alliance with Nazi Germany. Ultimately it was left up to the world Jewish community to fund the settlements and to supply settlers, and the plan failed to attract a significant long-term population or create the strategic benefits for Japan that had been expected by its originators.

Ironically, during World War II, Japan was regarded as a safe refuge from the Holocaust, despite being a part of the Axis and an ally of Germany. During World War II, Jews trying to escape Poland could not pass the blockades near the Soviet Union and the Mediterranean Sea and were forced to go through the neutral country of Lithuania (which was occupied by belligerents in June 1940, starting with the Soviet Union, then Germany, and then the Soviet Union again).

Of those who arrived, many (around 5,000) were sent to the Dutch West Indies with Japanese visas issued by Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul to Lithuania. Sugihara ignored his orders and gave thousands of Jews entry visas to Japan, risking his career and saving more than 6,000 lives. Sugihara is said to have cooperated with Polish intelligence, as a part of bigger Japanese-Polish cooperative plan.[2] They managed to flee across the vast territory of Russia by train to Vladivostok and then by boat to Kobe in Japan. The refugees in number of 2,185 arrived in Japan from August 1940 to June 1941. Tadeusz Romer, the Polish ambassador in Tokyo, had managed to get transit visas in Japan, asylum visas to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Burma, immigration certificates to Palestine, and immigrant visas to the United States and some Latin American countries. Most Jews were permitted and encouraged to move on from Japan to the Shanghai Ghetto, China, under Japanese occupation for the duration of World War II. Finally, Tadeusz Romer arrived in Shanghai on November 1, 1941, to continue the action for Jewish refugees.[3] Among those saved in the Shanghai Ghetto were leaders and students of Mir yeshiva, the only European yeshiva to survive the Holocaust. They, some 400 in number, fled from Mir to Vilna with the outbreak of World War II in 1939, and then to Keidan, Lithuania. In late 1940, they obtained visas from Chiune Sugihara, to travel from Keidan, then Lithuanian SSR, via Siberia and Vladivostok to Kobe, Japan.[4] By November 1941 the Japanese moved this group and most of others on to the Shanghai Ghetto in order to consolidate the Jews under their control.[5]

Throughout the war, the Japanese government continually rejected requests from the German government to establish anti-Semitic policies. Towards the end, Nazi representatives pressured the Japanese army to devise a plan to exterminate Shanghai's Jewish population, and this pressure eventually became known to the Jewish community's leadership. However, the Japanese had no intention of further provoking the anger of the Allies, and thus delayed the German request for a time, eventually rejecting it entirely.

One famous Orthodox Jewish institution that was saved this way was the Lithuanian Haredi Mir yeshiva. The Japanese government and people offered the Jews temporary shelter, medical services, food, transportation, and gifts, but preferred that they move on to reside in Japanese-occupied Shanghai.

Throughout the war, the Japanese government continually rejected requests from the German government to establish anti-Semitic policies. At war's end, about half these Jews later moved on to the Western hemisphere (such as the United States and Canada) and the remainder moved to other parts of the world, many to Israel.

Accusations of antisemitism

With only a small and relatively obscure Jewish population, Japan had no traditional antisemitism until the 20th century, when Soviet antisemitism and Nazi ideology and propaganda influenced a small number of Japanese. Antisemitism became relatively widespread, and persists today,[citation needed] taking the form of a subculture of conspiracy theory which is expressed in the context of Western conspiracy to subjugate the world (or Japan),[citation needed] which is ultimately controlled by Jews.[citation needed] Antisemitic and conspiracist books and pamphlets are sold in major bookstores (although mostly in Tondemo category), and antisemitic themes enter the popular culture and even affect the educated academic community.

Current antisemitism in Japan includes elements of the occult and of conspiracy theories. Furthermore, Japanese society lacks many of the taboos held by the Western world on racial characterizations, as they have less experience with racist connections; this is occasionally reflected in elements of Japanese popular culture, reflecting stereotypes or other forms of expression regarding the Jewish people, or other peoples, that would be considered outrageous in the West.

In 1918, the Japanese army sent troops to Siberia to aid the White Army against the Bolshevik Red Army. It was at this time that Japanese were first introduced to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a conspiratorial text describing the Jewish global conspiracy in detail.[citation needed]

Though deeper research by the Japanese military and government unearthed no evidence of a global Jewish conspiracy, a small number of officials and officers continued to believe in the economic and political power of the Jewish people. In the early 1930s, a plot known as the Fugu Plan was thus hatched, in which this small cadre of "Jewish experts" convinced the government and military to arrange for the re-settlement of thousands of Jews from Europe in the Japanese Empire. The underlying belief behind this plan was that a population of Jews could create amazing economic benefit for Japan, and that the power of Jews in other parts of the world, particularly in the United States, was great enough that the rescue of Jews from the Nazis could benefit US-Japan relations.

In 1936, lieutenant general Shioden Nobutaka (四王天延孝), translated the Protocols into Japanese. Shioden became a believer in a Jewish conspiracy while he was studying in France. According to Dr. David Kranzler, "The key to the distinction between the Japanese and the European form of antisemitism seems to lie in the long Christian tradition of identifying the Jew with the Devil, the Antichrist or someone otherwise beyond redemption ... The Japanese lacked this Christian image of the Jew and brought to their reading of the Protocols a totally different perspective. The Christian tried to solve the problem of the Jew by eliminating him; the Japanese tried to harness his alleged immense wealth and power to Japan's advantage[6]."

As Japan was allied with Nazi Germany in World War II, Nazi ideology and propaganda regarding the Jewish people came to be circulated within Japan as well, contributing to the development of Japan's particular brand of antisemitism. However, while various theories about the Jewish people may have gained a degree of acceptance among the Japanese people as a whole, the Japanese government and military never gave in to Nazi recommendations that extermination programs or the like be undertaken.

By the end of the 20th century, a great many books were published relating to the Jewish conspiracy or the theory that Japanese and Jews have common ancestry. Various theories and explanations for the alleged Jewish control of the world were thus circulated, many involving elements of the occult and intellectual play, and gossip. Occult theories relating to the Jewish people, along with theories connecting the Jews and Japan, play a major role in a number of so-called "New Religions" (Shinshūkyō) in Japan. However, anti-semitic books in Japan are usually regarded as a type of tondemobon (トンデモ本, dodgy/outrageous books, a term which covers a very wide range of occultist subjects, such as UFOs and psychic power), and are generally taken very lightly by the vast majority of the population.


Jews and Judaism in modern Japan

After World War II, a large portion of the few Jews that were in Japan left, many going to what would become Israel. Some of those who remained married locals and were assimilated into Japanese society.[citation needed]

The Israeli embassy and its staff is based in Tokyo. Presently, there are several hundred Jewish families living in Tokyo, and a small number of Jewish families in Kobe. A small number of Jewish expatriates of other countries live throughout Japan, temporarily, for business, research, a gap year, or a variety of other purposes. There are always Jewish members of the United States armed forces serving on Okinawa and in the other American military bases throughout Japan.

There are two major active synagogues in Japan. The Beth David Synagogue is active in Tokyo, and the Ohel Shlomo Synagogue is active in Kobe. The Chabad Lubavitch organization has two centers in Tokyo [1] [2].

Tokyo Jewish Community

Chabad

List of notable Japanese Jews

People of Jewish descent
Refugees, short expatriates
Other related people to Judaism and Jews in Japan
Films
  • Jewish Soul Music: The Art of Giora Feidman (1980). Directed by Uri Barbash.
See also

References

  1. ^ Golub, Jennifer, JAPANESE ATTITUDES TOWARD JEWS. PACIFIC RIM INSTITUTE OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE
  2. ^ Palasz-Rutkowska, Ewa. 1995 lecture at Asiatic Society of Japan, Tokyo; "Polish-Japanese Secret Cooperation During World War II: Sugihara Chiune and Polish Intelligence," The Asiatic Society of Japan Bulletin, March-April 1995.
  3. ^ http://www.polish-jewish-heritage.org/Pol/maj_03_Romer_pomogal_Zydom.htm
  4. ^ Shanghai Jewish History
  5. ^ Pamela Shatzkes. Kobe: A Japanese haven for Jewish refugees, 1940–1941. Japan Forum, 1469-932X, Volume 3, Issue 2, 1991, pp. 257–273
  6. ^ Kranzler, David. Japanese, Nazis & Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community in Shanghai, 1938-1945. p.207
  7. ^ http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=410&letter=P

General
Occultism
History
Jewish life in modern Japan
Judaism and Japan