December 22, 2013 Diversity Vs Community Luke Ford No sacred cows.

Diversity Vs Community

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Luke Ford

On his show April 6, 2011, Dennis Prager said: “I’ll never forget when I was a kid [nine years old]. There was a man who was a high school math teacher, Mr. Joe Salts. What a sweet man. A member of the synagogue. He was hit by a hit-and-run driver on the West Side highway. He was blinded. The synagogue took care of this man for the rest of his life.
“The impact it made on me watching my father have people over to the house to see how much will you give, how much will you give. I have tears in my eyes. But as the state gets bigger, he just applies at some agency and has a bureaucrat take down the details.”
“Here’s another victim of the big state in terms of goodness because they say, why should I take care of my neighbor? The government will.
“This man blinded in the auto accident. The man was a member of the synagogue. The biggest thing DeTocqueville noted was how many free associations Americans made. Because the government was weak, people had strong civil society.
“I remember being a member of the Simi Valley Rotary Club. It was all men. They would get together every week. These guys, almost none of whom were wealthy, they were hard-working middle class. And you know what they devoted every meeting to? What charity they would engage in. But as government takes over more and more of charitable work, what need do you have for these charities? But we need people to join societies. The bigger the government, the more atomized the society.”

On his show Feb. 6, 2012, Dennis said he is the only person he knows who was a member of Rotary. “I have the values of guys who drink mass-market domestic beer.”

In a lecture on Leviticus 16, Dennis said: “We today have retreated further than ever from a sense of collective responsibility. The most obvious example is kids. Kids used to be raised by every adult on the block. If I acted out in front of any adult who didn’t even know who the hell I was, he would say something. ‘Hey kid, you don’t talk like that.’ If I had cursed at the local candy store in Brooklyn, some adult would’ve said, ‘Hey kid, we don’t talk like that.’ Today kids curse freely in line in front of you and you even fear reproving them. We fear that they might hurt you. And we fear what the parent might say. ‘It’s none of your business. I’ll raise my kid.’ The sense that the collective is responsible is a Torah idea.”

It is also an idea that exists solely in non-diverse communities. Dennis grew up in a non-diverse Torah community of Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews. He had no friends who were not Orthodox Jews. From this perspective, diversity can seem vibrant, but you’re not often going to find parents of different races taking collective responsibility for the other race’s children (outside of traditional religion). You’re not going to find parents of different races cooperating to build something in the community. They’re not going to form neighborhood watches together.

The kind of close-knit community Prager advocates is in inverse proportion to racial diversity noted leftist Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam, who was so upset by the results of his study that he didn’t publish it for a decade and only then with a pro-diversity spin. Putnam found that Los Angeles, the most racially diverse of America’s cities, had the least trust, meaning that people in such a racially mixed community tend to pull their heads in, go out less, cooperate less, and watch more TV. By contrast, the whitest cities such as Portland have the most neighborliness.

Steve Sailer (highly regarded by psychometricians) asked: “Can you guess which two cities lead the list of top 50 metropolitan areas in terms of the highest percentage of adults volunteering for charity? And which two cities came in last?” Lilly-white cities Minneapolis-St. Paul and Salt Lake City came in first, while diverse cities Miami and Las Vegas came in last.

A resident of Chicago, Steve Sailer worked with his community to do good things, but concluded:

Multiculturalism doesn’t make vibrant communities but defensive ones…
Putnam’s discovery is hardly shocking to anyone who has tried to organize a civic betterment project in a multi-ethnic neighborhood. My wife and I lived for 12 years in Chicago’s Uptown district, which claims to be the most diverse two square miles in America, with about 100 different languages being spoken. She helped launch a neighborhood drive to repair the dilapidated playlot across the street. To get Mayor Daley’s administration to chip in, we needed to raise matching funds and sign up volunteer laborers.
This kind of Robert D. Putnam-endorsed good citizenship proved difficult in Uptown, however, precisely because of its remarkable diversity. The most obvious stumbling block was that it’s hard to talk neighbors into donating money or time if they don’t speak the same language as you. Then there’s the fundamental difficulty of making multiculturalism work—namely, multiple cultures. Getting Koreans, Russians, Mexicans, Nigerians, and Assyrians (Christian Iraqis) to agree on how to landscape a park is harder than fostering consensus among people who all grew up with the same mental picture of what a park should look like.
The high crime rate didn’t help either. The affluent South Vietnamese merchants from the nearby Little Saigon district showed scant enthusiasm for sending their small children to play in a park that would also be used by large black kids from the local public-housing project.
Exotic inter-immigrant hatreds also got in the way. The Eritreans and Ethiopians are both slender, elegant-looking brown people with thin Arab noses, who appear identical to undiscerning American eyes. But their compatriots in the Horn of Africa were fighting a vicious war. Finally, most of the immigrants, with the possible exception of the Eritreans, came from countries where only a chump would trust neighbors he wasn’t related to, much less count on the government for an even break. If the South Vietnamese, for example, had been less clannish and more ready to sacrifice for the national good in 1964-75, they wouldn’t be so proficient at running family-owned restaurants on Argyle Street today. But they might still have their own country.
In the end, boring old middle-class, English-speaking, native-born Americans (mostly white, but with some black-white couples) did the bulk of the work. When the ordeal of organizing was over, everybody seemed to give up on trying to bring Uptown together for civic improvement for the rest of the decade…
But what primarily drove down L.A.’s rating in Putnam’s 130-question survey were the high levels of distrust displayed by Hispanics. While no more than 12 percent of L.A.’s whites said they trusted other races “only a little or not at all,” 37 percent of L.A.’s Latinos distrusted whites. And whites were the most reliable in Hispanic eyes. Forty percent of Latinos doubted Asians, 43 percent distrusted other Hispanics, and 54 percent were anxious about blacks.

Dennis Prager wrote Dec. 18, 2013 in the Jewish Journal:

I don’t think that Jewish neighborhoods are always a good thing for Jews or, for that matter, for our fellow Americans who are not Jewish. In fact, committed Jews living among non-Jews often does more good — for Jews, for Judaism, for Kiddush HaShem and for relations with non-Jews.
Having lived much of my life in Jewish neighborhoods, I think I am well acquainted with the arguments for many Jews living in one area of a city.
…And for Orthodox Jews, there is simply no choice. If you don’t live within walking distance of a synagogue, you simply cannot attend a synagogue on Shabbat or any of the other Torah holy days. And you will be very lonely on Shabbat, as there will be no one with whom to share Shabbat meals…
But there are also powerful arguments against Jews congregating in one area.
One argument is that Jews (and any other ethnic group) often become better people when they live among those who are not members of their ethnic/religious group.
Most people grow — intellectually and morally — when they have to confront outsiders. There are, of course, wonderful people who never leave their communities. But they are the exception. Most people do not grow when they lead insular lives.
In my travels through the 50 states, my favorite Jews have disproportionately been those who live in small Jewish communities.
Having grown up an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn — having only Orthodox Jewish friends, and having attended Orthodox schools and Orthodox summer camps through high school — I know what insular ethnic/religious life is like. And I didn’t find it healthy. Among many other reasons, the non-Jew (and even the non-Orthodox Jew) wasn’t real.
I first seriously encountered Jewish alternatives to my insular upbringing in my early 20s, when I drove from New York to Texas with my dear friend Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. Thanks to the “Jewish Traveler’s Guide,” we found the name of a Jewish doctor in Alexandria, La., who listed himself as providing a place for Jewish travelers in central Louisiana to have Shabbat meals and kosher food…
…It can’t be a coincidence that virtually every great Jewish religious work was composed outside of Israel, when Jews lived among non-Jews. We have, for example, two versions of the Talmud — the Babylonian and the Jerusalem. And it is the former that we study. Maimonides’ works were all written outside of Israel, sometimes in Arabic.
…My wife and I live in a non-Jewish suburb of Los Angeles — so non-Jewish that it doesn’t even have a Chabad House. The closest Chabad House, in Glendale (not a major Jewish metropolis either), is run by the inimitable Rabbi Simcha Backman. He has “appointed” me an honorary shaliach (Chabad emissary) in La Canada.
I think I build the only sukkah there, and when we opened our home one Sukkot, I recall the wide eyes of all the children of Jewish parents who had never seen a sukkah in their lives. Introducing Jews who have had little or no contact with Jewish life to Judaism is another mitzvah that a committed Jew living outside a Jewish neighborhood can engage in.
I live in a cul-de-sac, and my immediate neighbors are an Arab-American couple, whom my wife and I adore. The other neighbor is Korean. My cul-de-sac is what America is supposed to be about. It’s still a good idea.

Posted in Dennis Prager, Steve Sailer | Comments Off

Do I Still Have My Blog?

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Luke Ford

Last week, a friend asked me via FB: “Are you still doing your blog? Why if yes?”

I replied: “You can always check my FB updates to see and why I do it.”

I was annoyed. I felt like asking him, “Are you still married? Why if yes?”

As important as his marriage and family was to him, my blog is to me. Why do I blog? Because I think spreading truth is more important than spreading lies.

I followed up with my friend in person. He said, “You’ll never get married as long as you have your blog. Would you still blog if you realized you could never marry because of it?”

Luke: “No. But I don’t think my blog is the primary thing blocking me from getting married. My primary problem is not that I am weird, but that I am weird and poor. If I were weird and rich, I’d be able to marry.”

Friend: “Why not blog under a psuedonym?”

Luke: “Because it is not honorable. I want to walk down Pico Blvd and go to shul and take full responsibility for everything I write.”

Friend: “Well, at least turn your blog into Child Predator Central. Everyone will love you for that.”

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Why Should America Be Obsessed With Israel’s Safety?

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Luke Ford

Why should America be any more concerned with Israel than with Taiwan or other outlying democracies surrounded by tyrants? I’m forgetting why it is in America’s strategic interest to make Israel central to its concerns. I’m Jewish and I support and I love the Jewish state just like I expect Polish-Americans love Poland and Taiwanese-Americans love Taiwan. I also love freedom and democracy and I love that Israel has them while its neighbors and enemies don’t, but why should America care?

To what extent did American Jewish intellectuals such as Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer support the invasion of Iraq because they thought it was in Israel’s best interests? Is there any difference between America’s interests and Israel’s interests or are they identical? To what extent do American Jewish intellectuals such as Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer support the bombing of Iran because they think it is in Israel’s best interests?

What are some common problems with America’s leading Jewish intellectuals? Steve Sailer suggests:

– Utopianism: Bombing Iraq into an America-loving democracy is only the latest disastrous project

– Cult-Worship- of- the-All-Knowing-Scholar-Sageism: Marxism, Freudianism, Randism, Straussianism, etc.

– Ethnocentric nostalgiaism: vividly seen in the current immigration debate, where Ellis Island-worship is substituted for facts and logic

– Be-Like-Meism: e.g., the common suggestion by Jewish pundits that all Mexican illegal immigrants have to do is act like the Jewish immigrants of 1906 and everything will turn out fine. Well, swell …

– Pseudo ethnic Humilityism: few Jews actually believe that Mexicans are just like Jews — they think Jews are much smarter — but they don’t want anybody else to notice that Jews are smarter so they advocate immigration policies that depend for their success upon Mexicans being just as smart as Jews. That this immigration policy is obviously bad for the country is less important than keeping up the charade that nobody mentions in the press that Jews are smarter than everybody else on average.

– Rube Goldbergism: overly complicated plans and analyses with too many moving parts to work reliably (e.g., the neocon plans for fixing the Middle East through invasion)

– Is-It-Good-for-the-Jewsism: I am a huge fan of enlightened self-interest, so I don’t object to this on principle

– Rube Goldbergian Is-It-Good-for-the-Jewsism: This could also be called He-Who-Says-A-Must-Say-B-C-D-E-Q-W-and-Zism. Jewish intellectuals have a tendency that on any topic related to Jews, they tend to think baroquely many steps down the line. Thus, the full panoply of the subjects that have been assumed to be bad-for-the-Jews and therefore ruled out of discussion in polite society is breathtakingly broad — for example, IQ has been driven out of the media in large part because it is feared that mentioning that Jews have higher average IQs would lead, many steps down the line, to pogroms.

– Missing-Piece-of-the-Puzzleism: One obvious problem with this tendency is that you can’t make a Rube Goldberg analysis work in the real world if you’ve banned the use of crucial moving parts, such as IQ

– Pay-No-Attention-to-that-Man-Behind-the-Curtainism: The biggest unmentionable, as the Mearsheimer-Walt brouhaha demonstrated once again, is also one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle for understanding how the modern world works: the influence of Jews.

– Enemy Nostalgiaism: Difficulty identifying current and future enemies because of emotional obsession with past enemies: e.g., the obsession with “The Passion of the Christ” combined with the inability to identify growing Latin American populism as a future threat due to immigration, etc.

– Faux Sabraism: as Francis Fukuyama pointed out to Charles Krauthammer, American neocon thinking about Iraq was motivated less by hardheaded is-it-good-for-Israel analysis — Sharon’s government was only modestly enthusiastic about the Iraq Attaq — than by What-Would-the-Israelis-Do emotions. Armchair warriors like Douglas Feith are particular susceptible to this kind of Let’s Pretend thinking.

Posted in Israel, Jews | Comments Off

AIDS In Africa

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Luke Ford

PR exec Justine Sacco was fired for tweeting: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” She just happened to tell the truth. Whites are at much less at risk of getting AIDS or any STD than blacks (in Africa or in America) because they have different patterns of sexual behavior (whites are more likely to be serial monogamists, which reduces risk of disease transmission).

Steve Sailer writes about America: “STD rates are quite similar to crime rates in their racial ratios. For example, the CDC says: “In 2007, the gonorrhea rate among black men was 26 times higher than that in white men,” although that is anomalously high — the usual black-white ratio for the various diseases is more like 8 to 1, with the Hispanic to white ratio typically in the 2 or 3 to 1 range, and Asians the same or healthier than whites.”

From the New York Review of Books:

Epstein’s view is that the cause of the AIDS crisis in Africa is what has now become known in AIDS jargon as “concurrent” relationships. Africans have about the same number of sexual partners as anyone else; they are just more likely to have more than one long-term partner at a time. Crucially, both men and women have multiple partners, in contrast to other poor societies where men may often stray but women’s monogamy is jealously guarded. Western men and women are more likely to practice serial monogamy or engage in one-night stands. To oversimplify a little, Africa’s AIDS tragedy is that it combines greater Western-style sexual equality for women with social norms that permit simultaneous long-term sexual relationships for both partners.

Multiple long-term relationships are prevalent in Africa for many reasons. In southern Africa (where the epidemic is concentrated), one of the few opportunities for gainful work open to men is to become long-distance migrants to the mines. Both husbands and wives may have other long-term partners during the months when they are separated. The African tradition of polygamy (described by historians like John Iliffe as a cultural response to maximize fertility in what used to be a lightly settled continent) has given way to modern relationships between older, well-to-do, gift-bestowing men and multiple young girlfriends. This is not so different from the successive trophy wives of American fat cats, but much more widespread since Africa’s poverty often makes it a matter of survival for African young women to have a rich (older) boyfriend. The desire of young women for young boyfriends can be accommodated on the side.

For many reasons, concurrent, long-term sexual relationships are much more dangerous for the spread of AIDS than serial monogamy. When both men and women have concurrent relationships, they are part of a huge web of sexual partners by which the HIV virus moves through the population. Long-term relationships are much more likely to spread AIDS than one-night stands because of the low probability of a single sex act spreading the virus. Since the HIV-positive are most contagious soon after they themselves become infected, a long-term partner who has just become infected in another relationship poses much more risk than a prostitute who has been infected for a long time. Serial monogamy in the West kept the virus largely trapped within single relationships, a fact Epstein nicely illustrates with some clever graphs. Her explanation based on concurrent relationships has gained broad acceptance and has been confirmed by mathematical modeling and by surveys of sexual habits in various countries; but one still wishes the evidence was a little more extensive for such a critical issue. At this point, however, it looks like much stigma, denial, and inaction took place simply because of lack of understanding of African sexual behavior. …

To illustrate the role of political agendas, Epstein discusses the famous success story by which AIDS infection rates in Uganda decreased as a result of the ABC campaign—”Abstain, Be Faithful, and Use Condoms.” Epstein damns both the Western right and left for their misuse of the lessons of Uganda. The religious right played up the “Abstain” part because it happened to fit their particular moral preferences. People on the left, who had different sexual morals, said just use condoms. The “Be Faithful” message, precisely the one in Epstein’s story that was critical in Uganda (led by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who called for “Zero Grazing”), was a political orphan, disdained by both left and right. …

When well-conceived efforts to improve prevention do exist, they often run afoul of the aid industry. Epstein observes that there was already a huge international bureaucracy devoted to combating population growth by distributing condoms. When suddenly condoms became marketable for preventing AIDS as well as pregnancy, this presented a huge new growth opportunity for family-planning organizations (which had been losing foreign aid market share as people realized that population growth was not as scary as originally thought). The condom bureaucracy did what it does best, which is flood countries with condoms. Alas, supply does not create its own demand. Condom-saturated countries like Botswana have made little progress in reducing new AIDS infections, since people there don’t like to use condoms and are not yet convinced that they are at risk of HIV infection if they don’t. Meanwhile, the “Be Faithful” message was neglected because it was not of interest to the bureaucracy concerned with AIDS. As Epstein muses acidly: “Zero Grazing” had “no multimillion-dollar bureaucracy to support it.” …

Posted in Africa, AIDS, Blacks, Race | Comments Off

What Is ‘Call of the Shofar’?

Posted on December 17, 2013 by Luke Ford

The program “Call of the Shofar” is an Orthodox Jewish version of EST aka Landmark Forum. It is popular with many Lubavitchers and is a form of LGAT – Large Group Awareness Therapy. As such, it is very dangerous, according to this one rabbi.

Is The Possible You seminar a form of LGAT? It sounds like it.

About half of my friends swear by LGAT but I would never participate in such a thing.

Jim* emails: “Call of the Shofar is pop psychology using cult-like methods of mental and emotional manipulation; wrapped in a Jewish theme; conducted by self-appointed (and oftentimes unstable) gurus; and performed on searching, troubled, or otherwise vulnerable individuals…for profit. It is ironic that although purported to be “Torah based,” Call of the Shofar is founded in the philosophies and practices of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, new-age nihilism, and narcissism, to name jut a few antithetical-to-Judaism sources. Why on earth would any reputable rabbi or mental health professional fall for this?”

Robin Garbose posts: “I have chosen to put my name on my posts because I have experience in combatting cult mind control. There are many ways in which manipulative people/groups exert influence. I am bothered by this group’s recruitment techniques. I am bothered by the euphoria participants are reporting. I am bothered by the loved ones who are concerned about personality changes. I am concerned about the Eastern influence and similarities to EST and the Forum. Of course participants want to connect in a real way, and I am concerned that their vulnerability is being exploited. Groups that practice deceptive persuasion use the bait of truth as well as love-bombing to recruit members. Everyone needs to get educated on the subtle and insidious practices of mind control. Their leader, Mr. Frischling, needs to be thoroughly vetted by experts. I would suggest consulting Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh of Kfar Chabad who is an expert on these matters. The hundreds of posts speak for themselves, and, at the very least, contain many alarming red flags.”

Post: “for all those that have a little bit of objective analytical skills, you will find that this is a copy of LANDMARK FORUM.
landmark, is a ponzi scheme and cult.
though it would be nice to be able to have a “chassidus” workshop where you pay $800 for a 3 day chassidus group therapy program that could help you redirect your life!
in the case of the shofar, the idea is to reduce ones self esteem. it would be nice to have a real good program which would help people create healthy self respect and attitude.
Call of the shofar is an unhealthy program, and out there to make one dependant on their moneymaking schemes. it is detrimental to the people who go there, and they don’t even realise it till they become objective. if they are smart.
many, aren’t smart enough hence they didn’t research the program first, but relied on a psyched up and excited friend of theirs. that is how people are convinced to join anyways. it’s called “sharing” where you are encoureaed to “share” with people you care about.
be careful people!!”

Post: “It is well known and documented that Landmark forum, and the call of the shofar are the same style and baloney.
the intent is to affect detrimentally ones self esteem, which will cause a small hype in the person, but cause more damage then one could believe.

The answer to those who feel they could use the call of the shofar, is to do some autobibliotherapy, instead!
Read a twerski book, on self esteem. (pretty much any of them)

who-ever can seriously think that living in a cult like setting for 3 days, yes cult!
Where classes start at 8-9am and finish 10-11pm,
where speaking with other members is against the rules
going to the bathroom is highly discouraged
congregating after classes is forbidden,
sleeping times are limited to 5-6hrs (realistically)

if this is not symptoms of cult brainwashing then you are obviously post shofar. because NO-ONE who is pre-shofar would rationalise that!

as well the long lengthy classes 8am-10pm a monologue, of information being pushed on you. i’d like to see any sane person, tell me they can succesfully listen to and productively pay attention to a lesson with 5hrs sleep, a day for that amount of time.
it is clear that your defenses break down with such long lectures, and after the first day once the new stuff is introduced your tired and less defensive to new ideas.
Even if EVERYTHING they teach IS good, why do it in such a horrible and cult like manner? i would love to hear a rationalism?
the famous bait method they employ is ridiculous! they claim they have tools you can get from them, that will improve your life, but NEVER, do they say what they are, they always just tell you that through the call of the shofar, you will get the answer. it is the “chanukah gift” trick. where there is an empty box, and you say “in this box is the answer” “i have the answer here… pay attention and you may get a glimps” when they don’t teach what these skills are but get you beleiving that there is something there!
no-one from the call says “i learnt how to improve my self esteem from the call” they always say “it changed my life” “it is so powerful!” what? they don’t know… but something! how did it change your life? write it down? explain? why does it need to be experienced? not written? why can you not document the ideas taught?
It is a ponzi scheme people. and it is a danger too your neurotic health.”

I remember circa 1995 I was offered a free ticket to Aish’s Discovery seminar if I promised not to ask any questions publicly.

Rick Ross’s website CultEducation.com argues:

Participation in such programs is not recommended. Case histories suggest that the powerful psychological techniques and emotional stressors used in LGAT can in some cases overwhelm the coping mechanisms even of “normal” people who otherwise were functioning well, leading to decompensation, mental breakdown, or transitory psychosis (#2). There is little to suggest that these mental breakdowns lead to long-term patterns of psychopathology. However, the outcome of transitory psychosis by itself is a severe injury. Although some people seem to enjoy the psychoactive effect of their LGAT participation, others who decompensated as a result of their participation have described it as “hellish”. Even though the benefits sought by many participants are those of personal growth and psychological well-being, to my knowledge there is no credible evidence that LGAT participation leads to significant improvement in core measures of mental health. If it were not for the intangible nature of the psychological process, this form of amusement product would most likely be banned as unsafe.

Opinions about LGAT are polarized, with some people experiencing a “conversion” or becoming promoters of a particular LGAT system, while others may decry the same program as destabilizing, dangerous, or detrimental (#7). Those who do become converts or proponents of the particular LGAT they participate in, often seem to pay a significant cost in unpaid labor they perform for the LGAT corporation. This cost is usually not accounted for when deciding whether or not to enrol. One might also question whether such converts have been distracted from lifelong goals that they may have focussed on instead. While similar questions may be raised with respect to extreme religious conversion, the lack of labeling for the secular LGAT conversion process is especially problematic.

This polarization seems to exist within the mental health professions no less than among the general public. However, aside from case reports of psychological injury and the lack of evidence that LGAT has any real benefits (#3), consideration of professional ethics (#8) clearly mandates that mental health professionals should avoid LGAT involvement.

Posted in Cults | Comments Off

Big hips on a woman frighten me

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Luke Ford

* Sometimes I’ll be all entranced by a woman’s face and personality and then my eyes drift down and I get scared by the width. I’ve met women in bad light, been intrigued by her pretty face and nice manner, invited her out, picked her up the next day in clear light, and oy vey, she’s enormous and I can’t fit the seatbelt around her and I can’t wait to get away.

One of my bottom lines for emotional sobriety is to not get with any woman I’d be ashamed to be seen with in public. A few years ago, I used to get with all sorts of sloppy chicks, and I lost respect in the eyes of my friends. I’d wake up the next morning and go, “Ewww! What did I do? Ohmigod, I am so ashamed. I hate myself. How do I get out of this as quickly as possible?”

* Ethnics put far more pressure on their kids than do WASPs (to come home for Christmas, Thanksgiving, education, marriage and life choices, etc). What do you want your adult children to feel like they owe you the parent? Ethnics pile on far more guilt and pressure than do WASPs. (Dennis Prager)

* I couldn’t see marrying most of my girlfriends because I thought I could do better (it’s discouraging 20-30 years on that I haven’t), and the ones I would’ve married, they thought they could do better, and now none of us have married.

* A friend asked me: “Out of curiosity. If I were an illegal immigrant, would you turn me into immigration?” No, I have never turned in anyone for being illegal and could only imagine doing so if I thought they posed a substantial danger.

* Everything this Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson said was authentic to the Judaic and Christian views of homosexuality. It essentially came word for word out of the Bible. I guess Jews and Christians in the public eye have a choice — they can be authentic to their religion or they can soft peddle and hide their views to get along and have a nice career and comfy life. This guy is being punished for simply repeating the Bible.

Marcus called Dennis Prager’s show Dec. 16, 2013 with the traditional Jewish/Christian perspective: “By just saying this is a war fighting the redefinition of marriage, you’re losing the battle for marriage because really what you should be talking about is the real truth of the matter — that it is an immoral, depraved and physically and mentally unhealthy relationship, especially between two men.”
Dennis: “I think language like that only alienates all the people we need to win over and it is unfair to people who have it. I have sympathy and tolerance of the homosexual individual but I am opposed to same-sex marriage, but to call what they all do ‘depraved’. I understand the Bible calls the male homosexual act an ‘abomination.’ I am a believer in the Bible. I juggle that but I don’t think it is language we need to use. I don’t know what it gains.”

Posted in Homosexuality, Personal | Comments Off

What Causes Homosexuality?

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Luke Ford

Therapist Mark E. Smith: “Every homosexual man I’ve known was abandoned by his father. You will not meet a homosexual man who was emotionally close with his father growing up. Every one I’ve known was enmeshed with a woman, be it grandma or mom or a whole house full of women, but they overly connect with them, and then during adolescence, because of these wounds and everyone is twisted up in everyone’s sexuality, the root cause is their childhood emotional wounds, and the little boys hunger for male love and they over-identify with the feminine. They did not choose to be gay but it is all because momma devoted too much to be super-mom.”

“A third dysfunction is having too large of a family… Two people can’t raise eleven people. That’s insane. It’s worse than alcoholism because the older ones don’t get a childhood, they have to raise the younger ones and the middle ones get lost, and then by the time the younger ones come along, the parents are exhausted. Nobody gets what they need. If I hear of a family with more than five kids, I know they’re insane. I know it is family full of broken empty people. It is wickedly dysfunctional.”

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How Does The LAPD Get Away With This?

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Luke Ford

I can’t find the names of the LAPD officers who mistakenly shot two Hispanic women during the Christopher Dorner manhunt. How does the LAPD get away with not naming these guys? An LA Times reporter tells me the officers won’t be named until next year.

From the LA Times:

About 5 a.m. Thursday, three and a half hours after the shooting, about 60 miles west of Riverside, an aluminum blue Toyota Tacoma rolled slowly down a wide, well-lit street in Torrance.

In the back seat was Emma Hernandez, 71, who was handing copies of the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal to her daughter, Margie Carranza, 46, who was driving with one hand and tossing papers onto porches with the other.

They were both small women, the mother under five feet tall, the daughter just a little taller. They were from El Salvador and spoke little English.

They had risen that morning in a Torrance tenement with a graffiti-scratched elevator. Hernandez shared the single bedroom with her granddaughter; Carranza slept in the living room near her teenage son.

The women were squirreling away money so that the boy could afford college. They did the two- and-a-half-hour shift seven days a week, 365 days a year, and held down separate jobs as housecleaners.

They drove to the newspaper distribution center to pick up their stack of 400 papers, and began their route. Their custom was to drive with headlights and hazard lights on.

The daughter noticed a police car parked at the corner of Redbeam Avenue and Norton Street, all four doors open, with no officers in sight. She was apprehensive. She never saw police here.

The women did not know that a team of LAPD officers was on the block guarding the house of a captain who had been targeted in Dorner’s manifesto. The police also had just received a radio call that a truck resembling Dorner’s had left the freeway and was headed their way.

The truck windows were open, and yet the women heard no orders to stop, no commands to surrender. They heard only the sound of gunfire exploding through the truck.

Glass shattered, and the air filled with splinters of plastic. Bullets flew through the seats, the headrest, the glass. “I am just the newspaper woman!” the daughter yelled, but the shots kept coming.

In the back seat, the mother saw her daughter’s head sway from side to side, and feared she would be shot in the head. “No tengas miedo!” she cried. Don’t be afraid.

She hugged the back of her daughter’s seat, to shield her from the barrage of bullets. She did not want her grandchildren to lose their mother. “God have mercy on our souls!” she said.

One bullet went in high on the right side of her back, and emerged just above the collarbone. Another bullet struck her lower back, close to the spine. A small fragment of glass flew into her eye.

Neither woman could tell how long the shooting lasted. By one estimate, police officers — eight of them — fired more than 100 rounds, and 30 of them missed the truck altogether.

Police yelled at the women to get out with their hands up. The terrified women emerged. The daughter told her mother to stand beside her, fearing they would now be executed.

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Conversations With Friends

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Luke Ford

* It’s uncanny how accurately and quickly my female therapists have been able to read my mood. I’ll walk in the door and sit down and bam, they can just tell how I am. There’s something comforting and reassuring when somebody is so tuned in to you. I’ve noticed in general that women are much sharper at detecting emotional states in others. They can tell when I’m lying and much of the time, they can tell what I’m thinking. The moment I am sick of her company, after six hours of enjoying it, she just picks it up and then she names it and she leaves.

* I just signed up for Covered California (Obamacare). It took me 20 minutes and there were no glitches.

* Old Guy: “How would you like to come to the Billy Joel concert with me?”
Luke: “What would your wife say?”
Old Guy: “You just talked your way out of a free ticket.”

* Rich buddy: “Stock-market is crashing through the floor.”
Luke: “I better call my broker.”
Rich buddy: “You retard.”

* I got my boss to take chocolate caramel clusters protein bars from his kid to give to me.
“Better me than him,” I said. “That’s my life motto.”
Boss: “Your life’s gonna be short so it is probably a good one.”

* Lubavitchers write letters to the rebbe. I’m writing a letter to Martin Luther King, letting him know about two things I’ve done that I’m proud of.

* What exactly is offensive or horrific about mocking the fake interpreter on stage during Mandela’s funeral? It’s racist to claim you can not mock him because then you are arguing that by virtue of skin color, this buffoon cannot be mocked.

It’s sweet seeing the PC crowd all torn between their sensitivities to the deaf and to blacks.

* Many American Jews get disappointed when they visit Israel because it is so grubby, trash-strewn and third-world in places (outside of the Ashkenazi strongholds) while many African-Americans get disappointed when they visit Africa because the continent is black-run and a mess. Reality can be such a let-down.

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Did Anti-Jewish Hate Crimes Really Drop Last Year, Or is Something Else Going On?

Posted on December 10, 2013 by TheJewishChannel

Latest hate crime stats show Jews as most victimized; details of former Israeli Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger’s alleged crimes revealed; Lihi Lapid, Israeli journalist and wife of Israel’s finance minister Lihi Lapid talks about her novel “Woman of Valor” and women’s issues in Israel; famous caricaturist Al Hirschfeld’s work is celebrated in a new exhibit; and more.

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