144th ANNIVERSARY LINCOLN DINNER Sunday, March 24, 2018, 3 – 8 pm Antun’s, 96-43 Springfield Blvd., Queens Village, NY 11429 For tickets and information visit: www.QVGOP.org Contact James Trent, Dinner Chair at 718-343-8830 or JTrent8830@aol.com
We anticipate a record crowd for our 144th Anniversary Lincoln Dinner on March 24th. Come and enjoy our greatest celebration of the roots of our Party, the Party of Freedom, the Party of Lincoln, and the Party of President’s Trump’s American First agenda!
The thrilling news is that Brandon Straka, the founder of #WalkAway Campaign will be our honored Lincoln Dinner guest speaker. We are proud to recognize his courageous work with the honor of our American Patriot of the Year Award.
A lifelong liberal who voted for Hillary, Straka has become an overnight sensation in the conservative movement, a superstar passionately leading the silent majority to become unsilent. In fact, recently he was denied service at a camera store in Manhattan because a salesman thought he was going to use the camera equipment for “alt-right activities.” He’s enjoyed frequent appearances on Fox News, including an hour-long interview on “Life, Liberty & Levin,” and he was a speaker at the recent annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He’s received praise from President Trump for “starting something very special.”
Fearless and undaunted, he recognized the truth and walked away from
the intolerant identity politics of the left and led thousands of others to do the
same with a video that went viral on social media, where he said: “Once upon a
time, I was a liberal. But liberalism has changed, and I will no longer be a
part of an ideology or political party that represents everything that
contradicts my values of unity, equal opportunity, personal empowerment,
compassion and love.”
Straka has created a mass exodus of awakened Americans from all ethnic
communities and walks of life encouraging them to “walk away from the divisive
tenets endorsed and mandated by the Democratic Party of today.” He
mentions that “there is there is a seat at the table on the right for
everybody.” Our club is putting out the welcome mat to embrace our new friends,
to come and join us at the Lincoln Dinner and celebrate and honor the awesome
work of Brandon Straka.
We are thrilled to present our most exciting lineup of renowned speakers, local heroes and honorees at our dinner party, including President Trump’s original campaign managers, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, our illustrious Master of Ceremonies, Frankie “Five Boroughs” Morano, and our heroic 2018 candidates, Republican Woman and Man of the Year, Vickie Paladino and David Bressler, Young Republican of the Year, Eric Butkiewicz, and our Veteran of the Year, Thomas Sullivan. Cathy Donohoe is being honored for her life-saving work as President of Bridge to Life, Charles Vavruska, honored for his vocal advocacy for saving the SHSAT. Special honors will go to Bob Turner, who has never been officially recognized for his service and dedication as former Congressman from Queens and our Party Chairman. Come to the Lincoln Dinner and join hundreds of enthusiastic Republican Patriots celebrating the Party of Lincoln and the dawn of a brand-new Republican Party!
Young Israel of Holliswood / Holliswood Jewish Center 86-25 Francis Lewis Blvd., Holliswood, NY 11427
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FREE PUBLIC FORUM: GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICAAND THE SECOND AMENDMENT
Featuring:
Robert Golomb: Nationally and internationally published columnist.
Nicholas Giordano: Professor of Political Science at Suffolk County Community College.
Donna Marino, LCSW: Licenced Clinical Social Worker in New York and Florida.
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BATTLING THE DEEP STATE
Featuring special
guest speaker:
Suzanne Israel Tufts: Trump Administration’s former Assistant Secretary for Administration in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. She will recount her personal battle with the Deep State.
Other guest speakers to be announced.
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SPEAKER’S BIOS
Professor Nicholas Giordano
Nicholas Giordano is a Professor of Political Science at Suffolk County Community College and a former Catastrophic Planning Lead for the New York State Office of Emergency Management (NYS OEM) within the Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Services. Professor Giordano teaches courses on American Government and World Politics/International Relations. Recognized and well-respected for his analysis, Professor Giordano is a senior contributor for the Your Island with Tom Schiliro radio program on 103.9fm and has appeared on FoxNews to provide analysis on current issues and trends within government, politics, international relations, homeland security/emergency management, and social/cultural related issues. In addition, Professor Giordano has been asked to provide his expertise on critical issues facing the United States and the international community.
Robert Golomb
ROBERT GOLOMB IS A NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY PUBLISHED COLUMNIST. OVER THE PAST 35 YEARS, HIS WRITINGS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN APPROXIMATELY 100 NEWS OULETS. HE IS ALSO A FORMER PROFESSOR OF GRADUATE WRITING AND EDUCATION AND A RETIRED SUPERVISOR OF ENGLISH IN THE NYC BOARD OF EDUCATION.
Suzanne Israel Tufts, Esq.
Suzanne Israel Tufts is a the Trump Administration’s former Assistant Secretary for Administration in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, led by Secretary Ben Carson. Suzanne was nominated by President Trump and was unanimously approved for office by both the Senate Housing, Banking and Urban Affairs Committee and the full Senate.
She is a attorney, consultant and executive with a diverse background in law, political campaigns, conservative causes, entrepreneurship training/adult education, bioethics/patient advocacy, eldercare and voluntarism. She has extensive experience in management, budget, public and private administration, external and government relations, audits, investigations, national and local television and radio, fundraising and development.
Suzanne is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University, where she created the university’s first major in Biomedical Ethics and where she received the first undergraduate degree in this field awarded by Princeton. She graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law, where she was a Dill
Suzanne previously served in the Administration of President George H. W. Bush as the Regional Director of ACTION (now the Corporation for National & Community Service). She was President and CEO of the American Woman’s Economic Development Corporation (“AWED”) the nation’s first entrepreneurship training center for women, where she was responsible for eliminating the organization’s ten year old debt while expanding funding, improving programs and outcomes and building a Board consisting of CEO’s and C-suite leaders.
In March 2001, Suzanne was recognized by President George W. Bush for her service to New York’s small business community in the wake of the 9/11 including the creation of an emergency business relief programs for AWED alumnae, students and faculty within 72 hours of the attacks while keeping the organization fully functional despite a crisis-related 400% increase in demand for services.
Suzanne has practiced law with an emphasis on corporate governance, white collar and complex corporate litigation and investigations. She has worked for some of the nation’s most prestigious major law firms including Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison and Friedman Kaplan Seiler and Adelman, and has served as a strategic advisor to the boards and staffs of exempt organizations and for-profit companies. She has held leadership roles in numerous Presidential and Victory campaigns as well as in state and local Republican and Conservative political campaigns in New York and nationally.
Suzanne has served on the University of Virginia’s Law School Jefferson Fellowships National Selection Committee, on the IRS Region II Exempt Organizations Advisory Council and in numerous alumni leadership roles for Princeton University. Suzanne is a member of the Federalist Society and the Republican National Lawyers’ Association. She has served on the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on Election Law and has presented Election Day Continuing Legal Education trainings on behalf of the New York City Board of Elections.
She lives in Forest Hills, New York with her husband, Bob Tufts, a fellow Princeton graduate and former Major League baseball player, Wall Street executive and a cancer survivor who is currently a professor at the Sy Syms School of Business at Yeshiva University. He is the founder of My Life Is Worth It which advocates on behalf of patients for access and choice to innovative treatments. Her parents, the late Abraham and Henriette Israel, were Holocaust rescuers and survivors.
Donna Marino
Donna Marino, LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New York and Florida and member of the Queens Village Republican Club. A graduate of New York University, Donna has dedicated 28 years to the field of Social Work. Her services were employed by the Holliswood Hospital, and The Summit School, in Jamaica Estates, Queens. Her private practice is located in Fresh Meadows, NY.
The February Club meeting at Flavor of India Restaurant was the scene of a special presentation by Carrie Sheffield, founder of Bold TV and a forum of candidates for NYC Public Advocate. A special election will be held on February 26, 2019 to fill former Public Advocate Letitia James’ vacated seat. All Public Advocate candidates have been invited. The following four were represented in the video of the forum.
Carrie Sheffield, our special guest speaker discussed the topic: “How the GOP can improve its messaging with millennials, minorities and women.” Carrie is the founder of Bold, a digital news network committed to bipartisan dialogue & innovation for people, business & communities.
Special thanks goes to James Doukas, our videographer: jaydees2002@yahoo.com
There is probably not one elected official in Washington DC
more focused on the decision of Democrat Susan Rice to run or decline to run
for the Maine U.S. senate seat up for grabs in the 2020 election than Senator
Susan Collins, the state’s moderate Republican incumbent, who would have to
defend the seat she has held since 2009 against Rice.
Rice, who had served in several high level foreign affair
positions in both the former Presidents Clinton and Obama Administrations,
first spoke of her interest in taking on Collins early this past October, days
following the Republican Senator’s announcement that she planned to vote to
confirm Brett Kavanaugh (who shortly later was approved by a 52- 48 margin) as
an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court. Speaking at a NYC
media event several days after Collins pledged to cast her vote for Kavanaugh,
Rice accused her potential senate opponent of “putting politics” over the
rights of victims of sexual assault.
There was one specific, now famous, victim Rice was
referring to: Christine Blasey Ford. As
reported in the media throughout the world last fall, Ford had come forward
during the senate confirmation hearings to accuse then nominee Brett Kavanaugh
of committing sexual assault against her while both were in high school in the
mid-1980’s. While Ford was unable to
remember the date or location of the alleged assault, was unable to identify
even one corroborating witness, and could not produce any evidence to support
her accusation, Susan Rice, just like the entire American left, found Kavanaugh
guilty of the charge, and denounced Collins, who had based her support of
Kavanaugh on “legal principles about due process, the presumption of innocence
and fairness”.
Such an argument by Collins, while seemingly reasonable,
might prove to be a problem in a race against Rice in a state whose registered
Independents, a crucial 34.9%, have been known to swing left on women’s
issues. Those independent voters combined
with the almost one third of registered Democrats (Republicans have just over
one third) would seem to present a difficult obstacle for Collins to overcome
to best Rice in 2020.
But if Collins finds herself able to overcome her penchant
for praising those who merit condemnation, she might find Rice to be an easy
candidate to defeat, for foremost of the underserving beneficiaries of the
Republican Senator’s over the top rhetorical kindness, was, ironically, Susan
Rice herself. That kindness goes back to January 2009, the early days of the
first Obama Administration. At that time
Rice was in the process of being confirmed by the senate in what turned out to
be a one hundred to zero vote in her favor for the post of U.S. Ambassador to
the United Nations.
Following that rare bi-partisan, unanimous confirmation,
Rice received lavish praise from Republican and Democratic lawmakers
alike. But few were more effusive in
their praise than Susan Collins, who in a press release praised Rice as a
“remarkable woman”, whom she had met in the past at foreign policy
seminars. The senator then fulsomely
added that she had been “so impressed with her brilliance and nuanced insights
as we discussed foreign policy”.
To defeat Rice in 2020, and perhaps even to be able to fall
asleep at night, Collins must find a way to throw those words in the sewer.
Where else do words that praise an enabler of genocide belong?
In Rwanda over the span of 100 days, then 29 year- old Susan
Rice, who held the key position of Assistant Secretary of State for African
Affairs under then President Clinton, was – along with her boss Richard Clarke,
the special presidential assistant in global affairs in the National Security
Council (NSC), and, of course, President Clinton himself- nothing less than an enabler of the genocide
that ravaged that tragic African nation. That genocide, which took place from
April 6, 1994 through July, 16, 1994, ended with the slaughter of an estimated
800,000 Rwandan men, women and children from a population of 8 million. The victims were members of the Tutsi
community, a minority ethnic group living in that beleaguered nation. Their
murderers belonged to the extremist faction of the majority ethnic group, the
Hutus, who used the Tutsis as their scapegoats to blame for the country’s
increasing economic, social and political troubles.
Tragically, rather
than taking immediate military and diplomatic action to stop the massacre President Clinton, with Susan Rice and
Richard Clarke at his side, took the opposite path. During the first five days of the slaughter, he devoted all of our
nation’s efforts solely to the evacuation of the approximately 250 Americans
living there at the time. Completed
within five days, the evacuation would have been laudatory had Clinton not kept
silent and inert about the horrors that precipitated it.
Then in early May, Clinton, again with Rice and Clarke as
his major advisors on African affairs, went a step further to enable the
slaughter in Rwanda- by now 6 men, women and children murdered every minute of
every day: And their dirty deed was committed in the halls of the United
Nations. There American diplomats succeeded in pushing a resolution through the
security council reducing the then already understaffed 2,500 U.N. peace
keeping forces in Rwanda to a mere 270, even as humanitarian organizations,
such as the Human Rights Watch, had been warning that if the U.N. forces were
removed “Rwandans will quickly become victims of genocide”.
In fairness to Clinton, Clarke and Rice, it needs to be
remembered that during the time leading up to the Rwandan genocide, Congress
had been pressuring the Administration to cut the costs of U.N. peacekeeping
forces, which were largely paid for by America. In addition, the three had been
faced with an increasing isolationist mood in our nation, which had been
hardened after 18 U.S. Rangers had been killed while on a mission in civil war-
torn Somalia on October 3rd, 1993, only six short months before the
genocide in Rwanda was to tragically begin, and, significantly, only one short
year before the November 1994 United States Congressional elections were to be
held.
In fact, to the Human Rights Watch and other critics of the
Clinton Administration, its seeming indifference to the mass slaughter in
Rwanda was predicated on the political considerations attending to those 1994
Congressional elections. And it turned
out to be Susan Rice, above even Clarke, whom the Clinton Administration
selected to author the political talking points on its Rwanda policy. It was a job she performed with gusto.
On May 6, 1994- a
date that marked the first month anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda and
which pre-dated the crucial October Congressional elections by nearly a full 6 months-
Susan Rice composed a series of talking points on America’s position on Rwanda
for then Vice- President Al Gore.
First delivered by Gore to U.N. Secretary General Boutros
Boutros- Ghali, the initial talking point, generally interpreted as a
declaration of American policy in Rwanda read, “We have serious reservations
about proposals to establish a large peace enforcement mission, which would
operate throughout Rwanda with a mandate to end the fighting, restore order and
pacify the population”.
One week later, those American “reservations” about a U.N.
peacekeeping force were evidenced again in a handwritten note that Rice had
written during a White House meeting on Rwandan genocide: “I.O. (International
Organizations- the division in the state department and National Security
Council that effects American United Nations policies) is looking proactive
while vetoing this resolution {to maintain a U.N. peacekeeping force in
Rwanda}.”
The threat of America vetoing such a U.N. resolution proved
to be the excuse used by the world body’s aforementioned withdrawal of its
peacekeeping forces in Rwanda- a withdrawal that resulted in the last chance
the world possessed to end the mass murder of the people of that tragic nation.
The question of what could have been on Susan Rice’s mind
during this time appears to have been provided by Samantha Power, Rice’s
successor at the U.N. In a September 1, 2001 column she had written for the
magazine the “Atlantic”, Power quoted one of the several participants of a late
April, 1994 U.S. Government interagency teleconference, joined in by Rice, on Rwanda.
That particular participant, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Marley,
as Power wrote, revealed to her that during the teleconference Rice had
shocked the government officials on the line when discussing the mounting death
toll in Rwanda she asked, “If we use the word ‘ genocide’, what will the effect
be on the November { Congressional elections} ?” Here, to paraphrase the words that Rice
herself was to use nearly a quarter of a century later in her criticism of
Senator Collins’ support of Brett Kavanaugh, it might be stated, ‘Susan Rice
placed politics over the lives of the 800,000 children, women and men who were
slaughtered in Rwanda.’
Rice, of course, would never agree to such an assessment.
Rather over the years she has denied the major role she played in the
formulation of the Clinton Administration’s policy of inaction during
the Rwandan massacres. The standard
excuse she has repeated over the years has been that she was only a “low- level
official” during the genocide in Rwanda.
As if believing her
own lie, Rice, in a 2012 interview with the magazine the “New Republic”, seemed
to lack any feelings of guilt about her role as an enabler of the slaughter in
Rwanda. “To suggest that I’m repenting
for {Rwanda} or that I’m haunted by that or that I don’t sleep at night because
of that or that every policy I’ve implemented subsequently is driven by that is
garbage”, she told the magazine’s reporter.
But Rice might well have lost sleep over another lie she
delivered that same year, this time at the behest of then President Obama. Appearing on five separate political talk
shows on Sunday September 16, 2012 to be questioned on the then recent murders of
four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, in the
city of Benghazi, Rice, at the time the American Ambassador to the U.N., contended
that the murders had been the result of a spontaneous response by a group of ordinary
Libyan citizens consumed by anger over an anti- Muslim video posted over the
internet from American airwaves.
As Republicans were to later discover, however, Rice had
lied that day: Within two days after the attack, the Obama Administration,
including Rice herself, had learned that the slaughter, rather
than being a spontaneous assault spawned by a video, had been planned long in
advance by a group of Islamic terrorists intent on killing Americans. It was a lie that Republicans were to soon
later use to stop Rice’s promotion from UN Ambassador to Secretary of State.
It was also a lie that up to this day has made the name ‘Susan
Rice’ and the 8 tragic words, ‘The murder of four Americans in Benghazi’ inseparable.
Also inseparable should be the name ‘Susan Rice’ and the
words, ‘one of the callous and
calculating enablers of the murder of an estimated 800,000 innocent
human beings in the nation of Rwanda.’
Robert Golomb is a
nationally and internationally published columnist. Mail him at MrBob347@aol.com and follow him on
Twitter@RobertGolomb