As we noted yesterday, to the surprise of even me, House Republicans have put in place a new rule aimed at manufacturing a Social Security funding crisis – with the apparent aim of returning (a decade later) to efforts to start pruning the program. We’ve been digging in to find out just what the plan seems to be and we’ll be bringing you a follow up tomorrow. Stay tuned.
As you can see, we’ve got multiple police and hostage situations unfolding in France which we’re following closely in LiveWire. But don’t miss today’s feature on Dem progressives demanding their turn running the Democratic Party.
Our follow up inside look at the GOP’s new long game to manufacture a funding crisis over Social Security. A big, big deal.
Does French Jewry have a future?
As you can see, one of two unfolding hostage situations in Paris is at a kosher supermarket where gunman have already killed two people and appear to be holding five hostages, including women and children. On a Friday afternoon, such a venue would be filled with mothers and children. (As I wrote this piece, the hostage standoff ended; there are still conflicting reports about how many of the hostages survived.) This comes after a series of attacks on French Jews over recent years and a series of crowd actions and riots last year during the latest Gaza War which were more ambiguous but still contributed to a climate of generalized menace. A leader of French Jewry predicted late last year that the number of French Jews emigrating to Israel (making ‘aliya’) would reach 6500 in 2014, double the number in 2013. The estimates of the total population of Jews in France range between just under 500,000 and 600,000. So while these numbers are small, they are substantial for a single year. And they appear to be growing, rapidly.
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Social Security supporters are worried what stance President Obama will take as Republicans work to manufacture a new funding crisis for the program.
An interesting backstory to Benjamin Netanyahu’s very prominent presence at the solidarity rally in Paris over the weekend. It turns out that President Hollande initially sent a back channel message asking Netanyahu not to attend. And, to my surprise, Netanyahu complied. The Shin Bet wasn’t crazy, it seems, about the security challenges in any case. So Netanyahu agreed. At least at first.
I had a lot of responses to my post on Friday about whether French Jewry has a future, many of them highly spirited. One point that isn’t widely appreciated in the US is that France’s Jewish population is not only – actually not primarily – the descendants of France’s historic Jewish population, those who survived the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. A majority of Jews in France are post-World War II immigrants from North Africa (and their descendants), specifically France’s former North African empire. So, it’s some level of irony, that people on both sides of this crisis – French Jews and French Muslims of North African descent – are both in the country in a significant degree as part of the aftermath of the collapse of the French Empire in North Africa. In any case, among the many responses was this email from TPM Reader ES, a longtime reader and frequent correspondent of mine. For a bit of context, in the email ES identifies himself as a French Jew. I believe he is at least a longterm resident of the US and possibly a US citizen …
I’d like your opinions on this.
Around New Year’s I noticed a lot of people sending off 2014 with various comments to the effect that 2014 was a disappointing or rough or terrible year and that they were excited to move on to 2015. I think there’s some element of dissing the out-going year to get pumped for the new one. There’s some element of tradition to that. But this seemed like a lot more than that. And I’m still seeing people say stuff like this. I know, not a scientific survey. But it seems like more than random noise.