George Soros Is A Goddamn HERO
And it's time we started saying so!
Huddle up, kids! I'm about to tell you Uncle George Soros's One Weird Trick for making money. READY?
Figure out the difference between reality and the BS people believe because they want it to be true, and bet the spread. You can call it arbitrage, or use his own "Theory of Reflexivity"terminology, but that's basically it. George Soros didn't invent it, and he sure as hell didn't make the laws that allow it, but he did use them and his own prodigious intellect to make billions betting against the British pound in 1992. For which he was labeled"The Man Who Broke the Bank of England." Welcome to being a Jew in the modern world -- play the game by rules you didn't set up, then get called a cheater when you win.
Yes, this is less worse than African Americans having to work twice as hard to get half as far. But we are not in competition for world's most oppressed minority. It's not a zero-sum game, and we all need to lift each other up. Indeed, George Soros spent tens of billions of dollars lifting up poor people across the globe and promoting democracy. And that's why Republicans hate him. Because in their screwed-up worldview, a man who put up $35 million to secure matching federal funds to get every poor kid in New York City $200 for school supplies is an existential threat to the American way of life. Very Christian!
And he did flee the Nazis, by the way. Trump's bigoted base happily swallows lies peddled by Fox and the wingnut demimonde that Soros was a collaborator who led Jewish deportees to their deaths, or even that he was an SS officer. In fact, he was a 14-year-old Jewish boy in Hungary, using false papers claiming to be a Christian child, who fled to England, started out hawking souvenirs, and wound up with a master's degree from the London School of Economics. He became the most successful hedge fund manager in history, and went on to donate at least $20 billion to making the world a fairer place through various pro-democracy and pro-Democratic efforts. Which is philanthropy and political activism when your side does it, but is nefarious fifth-column stuff when the donor is on the other side. And so much the better if he's an un-photogenic Jew with an accent!
Soros used his fortune to promote marijuana decriminalization , death with dignity , and the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He also established a mega-philanthropy called the Open Society Foundations which makes grants to hundreds of charities across the globe. Hence the ubiquitous allegations that "Soros-funded" entities are somehow controlling every liberal cause in America. Because George Soros funded OSF, and OSF funded the Center for Popular Democracy, and one of the protestors confronting Jeff Flake in the elevator about his support for Jude Rapenough works for CPD, so obviously George Soros is paying for an astroturf campaign to take out Kavanaugh. Right? Look, it makes total sense if you're a Nazi. Or maybe you're just Nazi-adjacent -- like you don't burn a cross in the yard, but the idea of some secret Jewish cabal manipulating the media to undermine the country doesn't sound completely insane to you.
Because it is. Completely. INSANE.
And you might not be a racist if you think OSF's efforts to close the black achievement gap and end racial bias in police searches are a danger to society. But you're definitely racist-adjacent. And you might not be a gay basher if you have a problem with OSF-supported NGOs that lobby for marriage equality in the EU or decriminalization of homosexuality in India, but you're definitely basher-adjacent. And you might not be a fascist if you have a problem with supporting free speech in Hungary and journalists in Afghanistan who cover government corruption, but you're definitely fascist-adjacent. And you might not be a Putin stooge if you think OSF's support for democracy in former Soviet republics like Ukraine , Georgia , and the Czech Republic is a bad thing, but you're definitely stooge-adjacent.
And you might not be an anti-Semite if you run ads claiming that an octogenarian Holocaust survivor who has given more than half his fortune to help lift up the poor and disenfranchised is somehow paying an army of Honduran migrants to invade Texas, but you're definitely ... NOPE, YOU'RE DEFINITELY AN ANTI-SEMITE.
Even if your allergist, your dentist and your gastroenterologist are all Jewish. Even if you have a Jewish son-in-law. Even if you support Israel. Even if you take a hundred million dollars from Sheldon Adelson.
Because it doesn't matter if you don't personally hate Jews. If you are willing to trade on vicious lies and stereotypes for a political win, then you simply don't care that you are making Jews everywhere less safe. Which is exactly how George Soros wound up with a bomb in his mailbox the same week 11 elderly Jews gathered for Sabbath prayer were murdered in Pittsburgh.
So, yeah, Kevin McCarthy, you're an anti-Semite.
And Donald Trump, shockingly, also an anti-Semite.
And Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis rants about #SorosConspiracy hours after #DevicewasSent Andrew Gillum ahead in polls www.youtube.com
And Mike Huckabee, also a huge anti-Semite. Even though he has that weirdass plaque in Yardenit, Israel, on the banks of the Jordan River where they sell "holy water" to unsuspecting tourists who get all pissy because there's so much Jewish history in Jesus's land, and someone on the tour bus said that maybe nobody from the "real" bible was even baptized here at all, and the hotel never serves sausage at breakfast, just funny-looking cheeses!
Billionaire George Soros is discovering that despite pouring many millions into American elections, voters are not… https: //t.co/JJOLfM5Zsq
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@Gov. Mike Huckabee) 1528816743.0
And Chuck Grassley is an anti-Semite.
“I tend to believe it,” Chuck Grassley said when asked if he believed Soros was paying the Kavanaugh protesters. “I… https: //t.co/m3phuUTS78
— Ronald Brownstein (@Ronald Brownstein) 1540765241.0
And Matt Gaetz is an anti-Semite.
BREAKING: Footage in Honduras giving cash 2 women & children 2 join the caravan & storm the US border @ election ti… https://t.co/KjXWfblR73
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@Rep. Matt Gaetz) 1539801418.0
And. And. AND.
Which is goddamn shameful, since George Soros is a HERO. He's given away billions of dollars to help other people. Not because he wants a tax break like the Koch brothers. Or a casino license like Sheldon Adelson. Or to make himself viceroy of Afghanistan, like Erik Prince. Or to destroy public education and replace it with Jesus, like Eric's sister Betsy DeVos.
George Soros just wanted to make the world a better place, so he did.
Here's what he said to NPR about the 2009 gift to New York kids.
"Philanthropy has been badly hit by the financial crisis and so the usual donors actually are cutting back. I feel that people who can afford it should step up to the plate and actually increase their philanthropic donations."
The gift is being made by Soros' Foundation to Promote Open Society, the sister organization to the Open Society Institute. Under the program, families on food stamps or other forms of public assistance will automatically receive the funds. "They don't have to ask for it. And that's one of the things that appealed to me — that there are no strings attached and they don't need to apply — it just comes to them," Soros says.
Soros also was the recipient of aid when he was a student at the London School of Economics. To make ends meet, he worked at night as a waiter. But when his tutor found out about it, she submitted his name to the Quakers, he says, and he subsequently received a check for 40 pounds.
"And it touched me, I must say; I felt then that this is a very nice way to help people," Soros says. "And so it gives me personal satisfaction to be able to do it on a much larger scale."
And for this they slapped him with every anti-Semitic conspiracy trope in the book and accused him of a plot against America. So, yeah, the GOP has an anti-Semitism problem. To wit, they're a bunch of craven bigots who don't care if they get us all killed. Sorry, Republicans -- the shoe fits, and you all chose to wear it.
[ NPR ]
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Wonkette is, oddly, unfunded by George Soros and the OSF. We are funded ONLY by YOU. Be the George Soros you want to see in the world!
I'll tell you then. Ours is good. He's not in business and his contributions aren't about business. He had nothing to do with citizens united. Theirs did. They're in business, their contributions changed after Citizens United.
You're very welcome.
I do know several very devout Christians who give a significant percentage of their income to worthwhile charities, and others who have no money to spare who donate their time as volunteers, but they are the exceptions.
One of my uncles is a retired fundamentalist minister, and he has never been known to give a penny to anyone outside his own church or his own children, yet he firmly believes he is a good Christian and "saved". He is such a miser that he doesn't even offer guests coffee when they visit, but he likes to drop in to other people's houses just before meal times and be invited to eat, and then he saves the price of a meal.
God, I hate misers. They really seem to think they can take it with them. It must be very frustrating for them when they get old and sick and are dying, and they realize that they can't, and that it won't buy them immortality.