Latest / The Bill Handel Show / Canada Imposes Tariffs | Jewish as an Ethnicity

Transcript

Canada Imposes Tariffs | Jewish as an Ethnicity · The Bill Handel Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handel On Demand from KFI AM 640.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: You are listening to The Bill Handel Show. KFI AM 640,
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Bill Handel. It is a Taco Tuesday, September 8th.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: This morning at 8 o'clock, Rich DeMuro, some of the
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: stories we are looking at, well, the big story we're
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: looking at and I want to talk about is that tariffs,
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Canadian-American tariffs, or particularly Canadian tariffs, have kicked in as
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: of 12.01 this morning. And I want to start with
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: a little fact, okay, or a big fact. And that
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: is the president continues to say that the countries we
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: are tariffing, they pay the tariff. And I called my
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: partner yesterday because we import cookware from China. And I
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: just asked him, I know we pay it, but I
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: asked him, how does it work? Well, we pay Customs
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: and Border Patrol. That's the way the mechanism works, at
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: least in our case. And then they pay the Treasury.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: We pay 59.5% for our cookware. We buy $ 100 cookware.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: And then a check or a wire goes out to
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: the U.S. government for $ 59. 50 for every $ 100. And wait
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: a second, isn't China supposed to pay that?
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: So a couple of things about the tariffs. The Canadian
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: tariffs kicked in as a result of the American tariffs
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: that the president has invoked on Canada. Now, the president,
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: I believe, has his heart in the right place when
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: it comes to these tariffs. The point of the tariffs,
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: as far as the United States is concerned, is not
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: so much to punish these other countries, although it does,
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: or the point is to punish because they are protecting
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: their industry with tariffs, which means that in Trump's argument,
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: that means the factories, the products that should be built
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: here are being built overseas.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: For example, cars should not be built overseas.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: We should not buy BMWs or Volkswagens or cars, fiats
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: that are built overseas.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: We should buy American cars.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: And his premise is that any country that sells more
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: to us than buys from us should be tariffed to
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: protect our workers. Now, tariffs have been around forever to
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: protect our industries and our workers. And tariffs, for example,
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: say from Canada. Canada does not allow dairy goods and
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: hasn't or tariffed them so high to protect its farmers.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: You have lumber being tariffed because Canada, that's a lumber
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: industry that Canada wants to support.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Same thing with cars.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: You know, we don't let Chinese cars be sold in
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: this country. And as far as EVs are concerned, the
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Chinese are miles ahead of us. They produce a better
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: EV for less money. And if they were allowed to
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: sell here, the EV industry, the major car industry would
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: be decimated. So what do we do? What does the
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: president do? Well, we tariff cars from China. It's 100
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: percent tariff from China, which means no one's going to
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: buy it. And so there's no distribution. There is no
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: infrastructure system. And what the president wants to do is
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: tariff lumber coming in from Canada. Now, he says that
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: it's going to not hurt us because it'll create jobs
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: because we're going to have to buy lumber here in
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: the United States, which we do have lumber. But can
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: you imagine the infrastructure that has to be built? Because, right,
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: all of it is going from Canada, especially in the
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: northern states. How do you build an infrastructure that quickly?
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: You don't.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: And his argument is that if we tariff everybody and
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: make it so expensive for their goods to be sold
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: in the United States, then it will be U.S. factories
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: that will be building. It'll be American workers. So a
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: word or two about tariffs. tariffs in themselves, it's, you know,
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: if you want a free market system, which we are,
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: tariffs do not make a free market system. What tariffs
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: do is stop products effectively from coming into this country
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: or purchasing products because it's too expensive to buy here.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: For example, my cookware business with my partner, we buy
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: from China because buying from US factories would be exactly
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: twice as much However, tariffs, we now pay 59.5% tariff. Incidentally,
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: when you hear, oh, China is paying for the tariffs,
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: not true. We pay for the tariffs. I write the
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: check or our company writes the check to the U.S.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: government for 59.5% of the value that we bring in.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: And anyway, so tariffs are– You know, they make sense
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: because they protect American products, American workers, American factories. And
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: so do other countries that do the same thing when
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: they tariff our goods or other goods. Countries all over
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: the world use tariffs to protect their own resources, their
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: own factories, their own workers. And what the president is saying,
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: it makes all the sense in the world, anybody who
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: buys more.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Than us, then they're okay.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: If anybody that sells products to us, they're okay.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: And some of them works.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: Canada, for example, cutting off the lumber, tariffing lumber. Or
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: the United States tariffing lumber from Canada.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: It makes sense.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: Canadian lumber comes in here, and that means that the U.S.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: does not buy American lumber. It does in the Northeast.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: But how about the northern states? where lumber is part
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: and parcel of everything that's built. Cars, for example, we
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: can buy American cars. The problem is, what's an American
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: car when it's built in Canada? We want Canadian, we
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: want American cars to be built in America.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Makes sense.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: With China, we want my cookware to be manufactured in
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: the United States.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: Well, here's what happens. It's too expensive.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: And what we do, the president may want us to
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: be fair, with an open market system. The buyers, when
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: we go to Walmart, we are not interested in paying
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: twice as much for the same product that's made in China.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: And in terms of balance of trade, China blows us away.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: We buy so much more. Even though Canada is our
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: trade partner, biggest trade partner, the deficit, the balance of
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: payments is ridiculous in terms of what we buy from China.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: So there's two ways of dealing with tariffs.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: One is, which makes sense, we can do what we
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: can do. And for example, we can make cars. We
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: can supply lumber, although it's difficult. We can build our
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: own regional jets, although we buy from Brazil, Embraer, we
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: buy from Canada, Bombardier, which are sold in the United States.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: And the president says, that's done. We have to buy
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: American jets, which are manufactured here. Makes sense, even though
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: they're a lot more expensive. How about goods that we
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: can't buy? We can't produce China with rare earths. China
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: produces 90% of the rare earths in the world. Boy,
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: we have to buy from them on that one. We
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: have no choice. And every bit of electronics that are
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: out there, computers, cars, phones, they use rare earths.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Hey, Bill, a quick question.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: It's one thing with China, like that makes sense because
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: they have cheaper labor and stuff.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: How is Canada- cheaper than us.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Because they, first of all, the wages in China are less.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: Second of all, the dollar, the dollar is stronger here.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: So it buys more goods.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: In other words, the Canadian dollar costs 70 cents.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: So right there, it's a better deal for us. So
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: on the one hand, it makes sense. On the other hand,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: it's really impossible to enforce.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: And the He has said unfair trade practices, which is true.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: We practice unfair trade practices in terms of protecting our workers,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: our factories. So a couple of things have come into play.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Tariffs that Canada is imposing, American Steel, cars, car products, lumber. No,
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: these are American tariffs. The bombardier planes. 2,800 parts of
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: Bombardier are paid for manufacturing in the U.S.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Clothing, wood.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: Now, what is Canada saying in terms of tariffing its goods?
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: And it's saying, you're not going to buy this stuff
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: or we're going to make it so much more expensive.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Hockey sticks.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: By the way, I'm not exaggerating here.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: You know those little bands that hold erasers on the
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: top of pencils?
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: No.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: No, the little metal bands? Yeah.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: I'm not exaggerating. They're manufactured in Canada. That's now being tariffed.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Beaver pelts?
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Migratory bird ID bracelets are, I want to know
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: who sits there and decides what tariff. I can see
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: the big picture stuff, you know, lumber, car parts, aerosols.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: I can see that. But tariffs are paid for or
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: determined by individuals, and there's 28,000 of them.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: There's two ways you can do tariffs, too. You can
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: do entire sector tariffs. For example, oil.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: We will not buy oil from a given sector. From
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: that country, the whole thing is stopped. Or the way
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: we really do it is product by product. And there's
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: like 28,000 products that are tariffed. We just talk about
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: the big ones, but those damn... pencil grips that hold
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: erasers at the top of pencils. Those are actually being tariffed.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: And I wonder who sits there, the tariff people. And
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: I guess they sit around the table and say, okay,
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: we buy this from Canada and no, we're going to
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: tariff this one. So is an American manufacturer going to
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: come up and say, yeah, yeah, they're going to be
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: able to make those eventually. And then the other much
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: bigger picture is even if the president believes that the U.S.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: worker has to be protected and U.S. factories should be
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: built to sell products and not bring those products in. Well,
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: here's the bottom line, which is not being talked about.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: Tariffs can be invoked this afternoon. The president literally has
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: the power to say, OK, starting midnight.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: We're going to kick in tariffs.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: By the way, he does that all the time, starting
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: midnight and then at four o'clock, he changes his mind.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: And the next morning is something else. And then the
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: next afternoon and it changes completely. So tariffs can be
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: invoked immediately. Building a factory, a car factory, for example,
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: making sure that we don't import any cars. How many
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: years do you think that takes to build a car factory?
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: or even to repurpose a car factory where the car
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: business has gone out of business. And we've had a
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: huge influx. I remember when the Japanese cars came in.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: The first car, I think, was a Honda or a Nissan,
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: and they were pieces of junk.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: They really were. And it was a joke.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: And American car manufacturers were very complacent. It was a joke.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden, they turn around, and
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: oh my goodness, What percentage of foreign cars are sold
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: in this country?
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: This is a fun topic. And for obvious reasons, obviously,
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: I'm up to my eyeballs in this and find this fascinating.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: California looks like it's going to become the first state
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: to treat Jewish identity as an ethnicity.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: On official forms.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: It'll be the first time there'll be an optional checkpoint
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: heading to Governor Gavin Newsom's desk.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: And what— this is interesting.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: Do you know that California has about 50 different ethnicities
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: that you can claim that California recognizes? Pacific Islander, you've
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: got— what do you call it? Certainly Hispanic, just across the board. Now, religion-wise,
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: we know how many Catholics there are. We know how
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: many Christians there are because the government keeps track, but
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: only for purposes of statistics.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: I mean, they can't give various groups, giving them more than.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Other groups based on religion. That's impossible. And so what
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: is it about?
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: Well, because I guess Jews want to be recognized as
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: their own identity.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: And what does that mean? Here's the problem. What is Judaism?
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Is it a religion? Yes, it is. Is it an ethnicity?
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: It can be.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: Is it a culture? Oh, you betcha. I mean, there's
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Jewish food. When's the last time you heard of Christian food?
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: Other than those crackers, you know, those wafers where you
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: go to, if you're a Catholic, and you go and
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: take that little wafer and the little Ritz cracker that
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: they put Cheez Whiz on.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: And shake butter into lambs sometimes.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: So there's been an argument going in for a very
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: long time as to what Judaism is, because it is
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: the only religion I know that is a culture, that
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: is a religion, that is an ethnicity.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: And when you talk about an ethnicity, no, it's not. Well,
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: how about this?
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: Tay-Sachs disease is limited for the most part to Ashkenazi
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: Jews that come from Eastern Europe, white Ashkenazi Jews. much
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: like recognizing African Americans as an ethnicity, which is true. Why? Well,
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: let's look at sickle cell anemia. We're just talking about diseases,
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: and that is African Americans. We're Africans in general. So
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: the question becomes, are you a religion if you are Jewish?
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, that is true.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: I'm often asked, I'm a Brazilian, how can you be
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Brazilian and also Jewish? Well, because there's something called the diaspora,
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: where Jews have been kicked around for millennia. And they
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: had to leave. They had to leave various countries because
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: the country's no longer one of them. One of the
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: big stories is 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: And on the way to the port.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: Columbus turns left and gets on his three ships. The
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: Jews turn right and they get on their ships and
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: are kicked out of Spain, where before that they were
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: regarded as part of community. And so there was a
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: lot of anti-Semitism in this world. As a matter of fact,
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: I don't think there are very many people that are
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: willing to become Jewish.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: I've always wondered that.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: Unless you happen to be a Christian woman who And
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: you're about to marry someone with a pile of money.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, then I'll become Jewish.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: But you're becoming religiously Jewish. Doesn't make you ethnically Jewish.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: That is correct.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: And here's the point. And there are people that are
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: ethnically Jewish. I am ethnically Jewish. I come from a
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: long line of Jews. There were no Christians in my family.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: If you look at my ancestry, I mean, there may
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: be little bits and pieces. But my partner Saville, he
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: did an ancestry and me thing. He is 100% Ashkenazi Jew.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: He doesn't have anything else going.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: Not for that. Yeah, I know. And so what is
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: it about an ethnicity? Well, it's too spread out to
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: be an ethnicity. But at the same time, it is
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: an ethnicity. Because Jews regard themselves as Jews. I'm not religious.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: That's the other thing. Is it religious to be Jewish? Well,
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: that's true too. And I have Orthodox Jews that look
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: at me and go, you're not religious.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: You eat ham. You eat lobster. Damn right I do.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Matter of fact, there's nothing like a lobster and ham
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: sandwich to really kick it off on a bagel.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Damn, that's good.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: And so I'm accused of not being Jewish because I am,
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm not religious.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Well, can you be Christian and not religious? Yeah, I
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: think so.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: You could be culturally Christian.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, what's the culture in Christianity?
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Well, you could celebrate Christmas and Easter and things like that,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: but not be religious about it.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Okay, so you're celebrating Christmas as basically a non-religious holiday.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: You don't celebrate Jewish holidays without the religious connotations.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: There aren't.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: For example, for Yom Kippur— on the most holy day
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: of the year, you don't stand up and jump and
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: go to Disneyland and have a rip-roaring good time.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: No, but you're an atheist and you still celebrate all those.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: I'm not an atheist. You're an agnostic. I am agnostic.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: That is correct. Do I celebrate?
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: I do because of my culture. I do because I
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: consider myself culturally Jewish. Yeah, but all those cultural things
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: are religious. And I consider, well, okay, but I consider myself,
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: we can get into that for a long time, but
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: I consider myself, and I don't celebrate Christmas.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, I have a Christmas tree because of Lindsay.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: But we also have a Hanukkah bush, which is a
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Christmas tree that's blue and white. Oh, a quick word
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: about Lindsay, by the way. A quick word about Lindsay.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: Lindsay wanted to convert to Judaism. And I said, absolutely not.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: You will not convert. I do not want another Jewish wife.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: I've been there. Not interested.
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: Judaism, religion, a culture... It is it is ethnicity. Is
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: it you know, we don't know. I don't know what
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: an ethnic Jew is, because one of the reasons that
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: kids that are Jewish come through the mother, not the fathers,
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: because Jewish women were raped so many times over so
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: many years. For example, in Russia, where the program started,
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: it was these Cossacks that kept on raping Jewish women.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: So there was no way to tell. So it's through
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: the mother.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: And so a lot of people are saying, wait a minute,
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: Jews are not, this is not ethnicity.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: This is religion. Well, it is ethnicity. It is religion.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: It is cultural. I am a cultural Jew.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: And ethnic to the point where I go back a
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: whole lot of generations being Jewish on both sides. Okay,
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: here is a quick story I want to end with,
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: and it has to do with ethnicity.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Who makes a Jew? Who's a Jew a Jew?
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: And keep in mind that, well, for example, Barack Obama,
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: a Kenyan father, American white mother, and he regarded himself
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: as a black man. Could he have said just as easily,
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: I'm a white guy? Yeah, he could, although that wouldn't
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: fly in the United States very much. So here is
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: a story about my dad. My father, during World War II,
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: was assigned to an intelligence group, and part of that
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: group were a bunch of– Ethiopian Jews, very small group
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: of Jews who considered themselves the only real Jews out
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: there in the world because they could look at their
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: line and they can follow the line directly from.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: And based on that, all through millennia, they were Jewish
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: to the point where they considered everybody else mumsers. Mumzer,
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: by the way, is a Jewish word for bastard or
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: a Yiddish word for bastard, which they considered every white
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: Jew in the world or Hispanic Jew. And when, and
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: my dad was an officer, and when one of these Falashis,
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: one of these European, black European Jews would come up
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: and talk to him, he would be saluted and he'd go, yes, sir,
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: Lieutenant Mumzer Handel. They called everybody Mumzer. superiors, everybody else,
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: because they consider themselves not only Jewish, and they kept kosher,
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, they were pretty serious, but they considered themselves
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: ethnic Jews, going all the way back to biblical times.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: No other Jew can do that. No other Jew in
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: the world can do that. Native Americans, how many pure
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: Native Americans are there?
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: There aren't any.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: You know, somewhere in the line, there is, you know,
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: it's been interrupted. Same thing with Jews. How many pure
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: African-Americans aren't there? Not too many. And so is it cultural? Yeah,
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: in my case, it is cultural.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Is it religious? Not in my case, it's not religious.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: So it runs the gamut. So is it fair? Should
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: the government? Should the government? No, I don't think so.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: And then one quick bit of history I want to
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: share with you. No, I'll save that for another time.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: And it is another, it's a handle history, but I
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: want to spend some time talking about it because that goes,
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: that's an important story. And remind me to do that story, okay?
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: What happened in Germany and Europe during the Holocaust. I
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: guarantee you it's a topic that, or a fact that
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: you have never heard of. And we'll do that over
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: the next couple of days. In the meantime, coming up,
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: Rich DeMuro. And it's Tech Tuesday with Rich. And do
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: not go away. This is KFI AM 640.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to The Bill Handel Show. Catch my
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: show Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.