Republicans in full
By 
When Rabbi Susan Talve heard that Patricia and Mark McCloskey would be among the speakers addressing the Republican National Convention, she decided she could no longer stay quiet.
“It’s so upsetting that they have a national audience,” Talve said. “It’s upsetting we make heroes out of people who hate.”
The McCloskeys are Talve’s neighbors. Their property’s northern wall abuts the property of St. Louis’ Jewish Central Reform Congregation, where Talve is the rabbi.
In 2013, the synagogue placed beehives along the wall to produce honey for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. One morning they found the hives destroyed and all the bees dead. Mark McCloskey had taken an ax or sledgehammer to them.
His issue? The fence between them sat six inches inside the McCloskey’s property line. The hives were his to wreck.
“He could have picked up the phone and said, ‘Hey, those beehives are on my property,’ and we would have happily moved them,” said Talve.
She said children at the synagogue wept when they heard the news of the hives. The synagogue maintains raised bed gardens on its property that supply some 2,000 pounds of fresh produce to a local food pantry, as well as pear, fig and apple trees.
“We were going to have our own apples and honey for Rosh Hashanah!” she said.
She said the McCloskeys didn’t contact the temple at all before lashing out.
Instead, McCloskey left a note threatening to sue the synagogue for damages if the shattered hives were not removed at once.
“Civility,” Talve said. “I’m willing to speak out now because there’s such a lack of civility that’s happening, and I don’t feel like I can be a part of that, and silence is complicity.”
Talve paused.
“They are bullies,” she said. “The fact that they’re speaking at the convention is a win for bullies.”
I wouldn’t watch it if you paid me, but apparently the overarching message of the first night of The Triumph of the Shill was dedicated to the proposition that re-electing Joe Biden president would be a disaster.
Predictably, Nikki Haley and the Republican party’s Black Friend each got lots of kudos from the Liberal Media for delivering lightly disguised ethno-nationalism in a timbre other than completely insane rant.