Nuff Said

Here is the beginning of my post. And here is the rest of it.

Can Jews Jump?

According to haaretz.com, Amar'e Stoudemire, the Knicks power forward's trip to Israel comes in light of his learning that his mother is Jewish.

He seems to be embracing his newly discovered religious roots, as he is quickly picking up on some Hebrew.

Other Jewish NBA players are Jordan Farmar and Omri Casspi. If Duke guard Jon Scheyer makes an NBA team, he will be added to the list, as well.

Err ahhh .... does religion have "roots?"   Maybe the Huff Post ought to consider that Mr. Stoudemire is proud if heritage?  Or is that pride in Jewish  heritage not possible if you are a "person of color?"  

Move-On Teabaggery

Endorse the Pledge

Overturn Citizens United:

Amend the Constitution to protect America from unlimited corporate spending on our elections.

Fair elections now:

Pass the Fair Elections Now Act, providing public financing to candidates.

Lobbyist Reform Act:

Pass legislation to end the overwhelming influence of corporate lobbyists by.

read full pledge text

Overturn Citizens United:

Amend the Constitution to protect America from unlimited corporate spending on our elections by overturning the Supreme Court's decision giving corporations the same First Amendment rights as people.

Fair elections now:

Pass the Fair Elections Now Act, providing public financing to candidates who are supported by small donors so they can compete with corporate-backed and self-funded candidates.

Lobbyist Reform Act:

Pass legislation to end the overwhelming influence of corporate lobbyists by: prohibiting individuals from switching from corporate lobbying to government service, or vice-versa, within a 5-year period; stopping corporate lobbyists from giving gifts and providing free travel to government officials; and posting online the attendees and content of all meetings between lobbyists and government officials.

Sad.  

Asking  elected officials to sign a pledge like ythis is worthy of a tea bag award.  Why would anyone wnat to sign a pledge for an amendment to overturn a Supreme Court decisions with not evena suggestion as to what the amendment would be for? 

The fair elections act?  Exactly how do you get this done AND protect the first amendment?

Only a tea baggier would believe that  stopping lobbysits from offering air plane rides would have any real effect in corporate lobbying.

Sad.

How about some real proposals? 

1. An Amendment restricting political funding to contributions from individuals and requiring that all contgributions above $200 be explicitly listed. Also, violating this ought to incur a felony.

2. Impoverishment punishments.  Who the hell thinks Martha Stewart got a real punishment.  Financial crimes need serious financial penalties .. not juuts dollars but impoverishment.  Make her live at the poverty level for five years!

Peace Movement in Palestine?

Protecting Us from People to the South

The country ... needs to brace itself for a wave of undocumented workers from the United States: Stubbornly high unemployment rates got you down? Not sold on the economic recovery? Look no further than America's polite neighbor

see more:

How Christian of you!

This essay began as a response to a post by Liberal Scientist demanding that Jews defend a passage from Deuteronomy.  The passage talks of a father's rights to recompense if his daughter's husband falsely claims that his wife was not a virgin.

Liberals often tout their tolerance by blaming intolerance on Judaism. Bertrand Russel, the great rationalist, blamed the Jews for Christian bigotry because he, as a European, bought into the idea that religion is evangelical and oppression.

Please do not paint Judaism with the muddy, blood soaked brush of Christianity.


Until Emperor Constantine imposed Christianity on the Roman Empire Rome was officially tolerant of its subject religions .. including atheism.

After Constantine, the last non-Christian Emperor, Julian promulgated an edict overturning Constantine's laws and declared that all the religions equal before the law.  Julian, himself a "pagan" returned temples confiscated by the Christians to their original owners and even attempted to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem.

Legend says Julian was killed by two of his soldiers, now Christian saints.  Christians have condemned Julian, calling him "Julian the Apostate."

"Religion," as you use the term, is defined by the evangelical triumphalism, exclusivism and imperialism of Christianity and Islam.  Communism too is part of that tradition.

Judaism, like most other religions, was never evangelical.  While Judaism teaches that its truth is correct, the idea of forced conversion of others was never a part of Judaism.  In fact, the Talmud teaches that the most religious person is not a Jew, but a non-Jew because she or he has no need to follow Jewish law.

"How Christian of you!" .. has never been a compliment in my book.

Here is the exchange I had over at HA.

Remembering The Bra Burners ...

Feminism, in the twenty teens
puffed up lips, tattooed mascara, thongs with anal cleft tattoos, breast implants, platform heels, and now .. faux doe eyes!
Sarah Palin for President! ... Read more.

Jewish converts in Columbia try to leave the Inquisition, tell jokes

A pair of beggars position themselves on the front steps of the cathedral for the end of mass. One wears a big Star of David, the other a humble wooden crucifix. As churchgoers file out, the beggar with the cross is given a steady stream of alms, while the beggar with the Star of David is ignored or even spat upon. The priest looks at the two of them and says, “Hey, Jew, you should move to the synagogue. You’ll have better luck with your own kind.”
The beggar with the Star of David looks at the other beggar, who is eagerly counting his money, and says to him, “Hey, Moshe! Did you hear that?”

At his home, Moshe Gomez shows pictures of his Jewish wedding, officiated by Rabbi Moshe Ohana, who came to Bello from Miami to perform a conversion ceremony.

This joke is told by 31-year-old Ezrah Rodriguez Agudelo, a convert to Judaism and a member of a Sephardic community in Bello, a neighborhood on the northern end of Medellín, the capital of Colombia’s Antioquia region, which was possibly home to a number of converso, or Marrano, colonizers fleeing the Inquisition. A former evangelical Christian, Rodriguez, dark-skinned and as spindly as a sparrow, has learned to laugh at the Jewish stereotypes. Yet the joke, which he tells in Spanish, is not just about the relationship of Jews and money. It is also a Marrano joke about the benefits of pretending not to be Jewish.

Raising Our (Jewish Kids) in Seattle

There is a lot that is great about raising Jewish kids in Seattle ... some very good shuls, a multiethnic community that has very Jewish .. or perhaps Swedish .. principles.  We have museums, great parks, fine book stores, Pike Place Market, Broadway, the ID and several neighborhoods with large Jewish populations.

All this is great .. except for one huge problem ... the schools.  Jewish parents, like many other  parents in Seattle, come from a tradition that places a high value on public schools.  We want our kids to go to school with all kinds of Americans, but we want our kids to have the best opportunity to succeed.

In that one way we are elitists.

Often, Jewish parents in Seattle grew up attending elite public schools.    I went to one of those, Boston Latin, and owe a huge amount to BLS. Besides igniting my long lasting interests in science and literature, Latin introduced me to very bright kids from all of Boston's ethnic groups.

Seattle does not have a BLS because the schools insist that opportunity must be equal for all kids.

As a result Seattle kids who are better off, either because of parental money or because they have the motivation to get scholarships, end up leaving the SPS for private schools.  The fact that the private schools are segregated apparently does not bother the parents .. many of whom remain activists in re other folks' kids in the SPS.

The extreme end of this form of classism and racism is seen in the approximately 100,000 new dwellings growing in Belltown and SLU. An entire city is being built there with NO public schools!

The worst evidence of this disdain for academic opportunity is the effort by the current Superintendent to disassemble Garfield High School.  For those unaware of the phenomenon, under Principal Amon McWashington, Garfield became an extraordinary success story.

Amon managed to attract and serve some of Seattle's best students while also building a local high school with outstanding records in athletics and Jazz. The "natural" environment for interethnic education at GHS was outstanding.  This became THE place for kids from Seattle's gifted programs to go, not because it was in any way segregated but because Amon understood how to create an atmosphere for excellence.

During Amon's era I did a study of students taking advanced placement classes at GHS as compared with Lakeside.  The GHS kids walloped Lakeside! 

The district response?  No public support for Principal McWashington.

Now the Superintendent wants to disperse the programs from GHS to give "all kids" the same opportunities.

Hopefully politically active parents will prevent this stupidity ... but, in defense of liberals fleeing from Seattle or choosing to send their kids to Catholic, Jewish or secular private schools, , that sort of committment by any parent is very difficult.  It is simply easier to go live in the Burbs. 

Iranian Hair

Iran rules on islamic vs non islamic hair styles for men.

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/#ixzz0syLFL400

Censored ... by China!

tried logging into http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/

 

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /english/ on this server.

Happy 4th

A Jewish Fourth .. story from Texas .. “when the family lived there, the Klan was very powerful. They didn’t like Jews. One day, when your grandfather was away on a buying trip, a group of (KKK) started milling around the house and the crowd got bigger and louder. They were drunk. Your mother and her sisters and your uncle, the youngest, were in the house. I didn’t know what would happen if it just went on.

“I’ll tell you what I did. With my left hand, I grabbed the American flag that we kept in the house and grabbed a heavy, cast-iron skillet in my right. Then, I stepped outside. One of the roughnecks was standing on the steps not a foot away. His name was Barbour. He was over 6 feet tall and even standing on one of the lower steps, he was taller than I was. I took that skillet and I hit him on the head as hard as I could and I knocked him out. I held the flag up as high as I could and I said, ‘I am an American and you are Americans. I have just as many rights as you have. You have the right to say who can be on your property, and I have right to say who can be on my property. Now get the hell off my property or I’ll go inside and get the shotgun.’ ”

Flickers of Hope?

Hamas representative Oussama Hamdan has said that the international community has condemned Israel's storming of a Gaza aid flotilla.

Obama speaking on immigration policies. 

Obama presents a rational argument for how to resolve the immigration mess.

The Republican response was typical.  They found this admittedly silly image, another way to demean a rational man.

Do the Republicans have ANY real policies or are they using the Senate as a cat box?

There must be serious people with business like ideas.  So many of the current issues really do need a balanced discussion.

Unfortunately … we will never hear anything serious from the current collection of tomcats as long as all they think about is how to get their balls back.

Of course , the “left” also has such people … it just seems as if these Democrat version are dogs and that these dogs have been box trained.

Maybe we need a new reality TV series … The Catfight where the tomcats can hurl verbal cat shit at each other? … a variation on Fox, co hosted by Rush Limbaugh and Maxine Waters?

Detroit .. Pompey in Progress?

Detroit's ruins bring visitors, but rankle critics within the city


Whether you like or loathe "Detroit Disassembled," the provocative new show at the Akron Art Museum will likely hinge on your attitude toward Detroit's fabled abandonment and collapse. - 3:32 pm

Nigeria: Sports have outcomes!

2010 W/CUP FALLOUT: FG bans Eagles for 2 years •To audit NFF’s accounts •We’re yet to be informed -FIFA
FOLLOWING the uninspiring performance of the Super Eagles in the ongoing World Cup in South Africa, the Federal Government has ordered the immediate withdrawal of the country from all international football tournaments organised by FIFA and related events for two years to enable the country to properly reorganise the sector. Tribune

Obviously Nigeria needs Jewish players. 
Obama's cousin, Rabbi Capers Funnye may be able to help!

 

Germans hail multicultural WC team

Many feel ethnic diversity of country's players in World Cup has made squad more exciting and dynamic.

Leftists harass immigrants supporting Germany

read here .......