January 19, 2011 Gordon Brown to warn against global youth unemployment epidemic Luke Ford No sacred cows.

Gordon Brown is a British socialist. All of his political life, he’s pushed for increased regulation of business. He’s made it harder for businesses to fire people. He’s a tool of labor unions, who come between the employer and the customers and make companies more inefficient. Gordon Brown’s ilk require minimum wage laws that discourage business from hiring the unskilled. They push for confiscatory levels of taxation, further discouraging hiring.

And now what is their solution to the unemployment these policies cause? More government intervention.

This reminds me of the housing crisis. It was created by the government requiring banks to lend to people who were bad credit risks. Then all the cards came crashing down and those on the left want to further regulate business.

Home prices in coastal areas of California skyrocketed after the left pushed through restrictive land use policies. Then the left claimed there was a lack of affordable housing and demanded more government intervention.

Never let a crisis go to waste.

Posted in Politics | Tagged Barack Obama, former prime minister, global youth, labor unions, minimum wage laws, youth unemployment | Comments Off

Separated At Birth?

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Luke Ford

Posted in Glenn Beck | Comments Off

The Most Interesting Man In The World Is A Lubavitcher

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Luke Ford

Jordan Schultz writes a long article about the man in the Dos Equis commercials and never mentions that he is a Chabad Jew. That’s right. He’s a Hasid.

The Jewish Journal profile.

From Fanhouse:

Jonathan Goldsmith is not a household name. His Dos Equis beer commercials, however, have made him a familiar face. Spend a little time with the man behind the ads, and you learn there is a common bond between the character and the man himself.

The following is a list of some of his more memorable life experiences:

* Hand fed a 750 lb. tiger.

* Met Jackie Robinson.

* Changed his name and then changed it back (Goldsmith is his given name).

* Been shot by John Wayne.

Does this sound like the most interesting man in the world?

Posted in Chabad | Tagged beer commercials, dos equis beer, fanhouse, hasid, household name, memorable life | Comments Off

Psychologist Roy Baumeister’s New Book: ‘Is There Anything Good About Men? How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men’

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Luke Ford

Roy Baumeister was on Dennis Prager’s radio show yesterday talking about his new book.

Roy: “There’s a lot of opinion that men would be best if they just ended up more like women. I’m advancing the different but equal thesis. They’re interested in different things. The differences between men and women are more about what they want than what they are capable of.”

“All over the world, it’s been a fact that men have superior status to women.”

“Explanation? We can look past oppression and see other reasons for inequality. Men are more oriented in their social impulses towards large groups and large networks of shallower relationships while women specialize more in the close intimate pair-bond. Culture tends to grow out of these large network of shallow relationships. Culture depends on economic trade, information, competition.”

“Men didn’t band together and push women down but progress emerged from the men’s sphere because of the social organization. The larger network of shallow relationships enabled literature and religion and science and politics to develop. Women stayed where they were while wealth, knowledge and power developed in the men’s sphere.”

“Why aren’t there more women scientists and mathematicians? Women can do these things just fine, but they just don’t like to. Women’s interests go more towards people and living things and relationships.”

Dennis: “Women want more intimacy. How then do you explain this generation of women? So many of whom are sexual predators? They act out masculine sexual play as it were.”

Roy: “The reports of the sexual activity tend to change more than the sexual activity itself.

“It’s clear that plasticity in a biological sense, being open to change, is higher for the female sexual drive than for the male. Female sex drive changes more across culture, age, circumstance, than men’s.

“Going back over the past century, women’s sexuality has changed in a variety of interesting ways while men’s desires have remained more constant.

“Young women in the mating phase, this is a period of high sexual interest in both genders. There is a period when they get close.

“What happens over and over again if you track couples, when they fall in love, and their sexual interests match closely and they both think I’ve found someone who’s close to me and we’ll go on having sex every day. A year or two later, after the commitment’s made and they’re married, they revert back to their separate baselines.

“If married people have conflicts over sex, more than 90% of the time the men want more sex than the women. The women seem to lose sexual interest in their partner after a couple of years and the man, and the woman, often don’t understand what’s different.

“Women are not catching up to men in the illegal stuff. Men have a higher sex drive and are more likely to do illegal or immoral things to get sex.”

Dennis: “Your point that culture has a bigger impact on female sex behavior than male sex behavior because men have a more fixed sex drive.”

Roy: “I have a friend and colleague who wanted to study gay women. She built up a sample of people to track over years, of lesbians in Salt Lake City. She said, ‘Ehh? The women will break up with their female partner and the next month she’ll date a man. It drives her crazy as a sex researcher.’

“The women will switch back and forth over time without much difficulty.”

Posted in Dennis Prager, Sex | Tagged Dennis Prager, female sex drive, religion and science, roy baumeister, sexual predators, women scientists | Comments Off

Who Is Obama?

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Luke Ford

On his radio show today, Dennis Prager said: “President Obama is the most left-wing president in U.S. history.”

“Who is Obama as a person? I don’t think Americans know him today one whit better than they knew him when he was a candidate. They put on to him all their hopes for the country.

“I think people felt they knew Reagan and George W. Bush.”

Chaim Amalek emails:

If he really said that and meant it, then your Dennis Prager is wildly ignorant of U.S. history. Nobody even remotely familiar with FDR’s radical legislative agenda (e.g., the National Recovery Act) would call Obama “the most left-wing president in U.S. history.” Obama, let us not forget, has repeatedly gone to bat for Wall Street interests in a way that would have sent FDR to the barricades, has supported NAFTA because that’s what big business wants, and, generally speaking, has given the money interests most of what they want. Contrast his conduct to that of FDR, who sought to regulate even the price of poultry. That he did not do more was due to a few votes on the Supreme Court (see the Schecter Poultry case), which he tried to counter by proposing to pack the court. And he was followed by other presidents, e.g. Truman and Johnson, who were well to the left of Obama in their legislative programs.
Obama is no great leftist. Obama is simply weak.

Dennis played a clip from John King on CNN apologizing for his guest’s use of the word “crosshairs.”

Dennis said: “This is as scary as anything happening in the United States today.”

“The totalitarian temptation is part of the left and has always been and will always be. It makes itself obvious on some occasions. This is one of those occasions. The control of language is the beginning or is a profound manifestation of this totalitarian temptation.

“We now have the C-word. Crusade. You can’t say a crusade against lung cancer.

“We have the N-word. You play with totalitarian fire if you use it.”

“Any metaphor that uses anything to do with guns or violence is out. They made war on violent cartoons.”

“It’s in the name of goodness, of a more beautiful society, in the name of social justice.”

“Totalitarianism is always built on lies. It’s a big lie that Jared Loughner had anything to do with right-wing ideology or right-wing politics.

“There is nothing wrong with the word ‘crosshairs.’ It’s a totalitarian attempt to suppress speech. I am on a crusade for liberty.”

From DennisPrager.com:

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 Radio Show
H1: When the Cop Leaves the Beat
Prager H1: The Obama Administration has treated thugs like Syria with kid gloves. The neighborhood of the Middle East has only gotten the worse as a result… George Will catalogs the list of liberal plans that have failed over the last two years. The reason: the American people distrust big government.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 Radio Show
H2: Male/Female Hour: Career v. Family
Prager H2: Women are taught from grammar school on up that personal fulfillment is found in career, not in family. Steep prices have been paid.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 Radio Show
H3: In the Crosshairs
Prager H3: CNN host, John King, apologizes for a guest who used the phrase “in the crosshairs” in a political discussion. This is typical of how the Left throws common sense out the window in pursuit of their utopian visions… A large majority of doctors think that ObamaCare will make healthcare worse.

Posted in Dennis Prager | Tagged cnn host, Dennis Prager, dennisprager, grammar school, kid gloves, national recovery act, personal fulfillment, utopian visions, wall street interests | Comments Off

Are You A Liberal?

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Luke Ford

Posted in Dennis Prager | Comments Off

Yisroel Pensack: Why Indications of Past Drug Use Did Not Prevent Jared Loughner From Buying Guns

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Yisroel Pensack

James V. Grimaldi of The Washington Post reports:

An old policy memo from the Clinton administration paved the way for accused Arizona gunman Jared Loughner to buy his first firearm.
Put in place by then-Attorney General Janet Reno, the policy prohibited the military from reporting certain drug abusers to the FBI, which manages the national list of prohibited gun-buyers, federal officials said.
Loughner attempted to enlist in the Army in December 2008 but was rejected because he failed a drug-screening process, Army officials said. Within a year, Loughner bought a Harrington & Richardson shotgun from Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson.
In November, he went back to the same store and purchased a Glock 19 – the one he is accused of using in the Jan. 8 rampage that killed six and wounded 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D).
Federal law since 1968 has prohibited gun sales to anyone who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance. Licensed dealers have been required to check the backgrounds of gun-buyers since 1994. But the Reno policy told federal agencies not to report people who had voluntarily given drug tests for fear it would deter them from seeking treatment, federal officials said…
The Reno policy remained in place despite a 2007 law designed to improve the NICS [National Instant Criminal Background Check System]. That law ordered all federal agencies to forward to the FBI the names of those ineligible under federal law to buy a gun from a licensed dealer. The law states that the names are to be sent at least quarterly, “notwithstanding any other law.”
…If Loughner had been put on the prohibited list in 2008, he would have remained there for one year under the rules of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which enforces federal gun law. It will never be known if he would have tried to buy a second gun after being denied the first.

According to The New York Times:

One spring morning in 2006, a student showed up at Mountain View High School so intoxicated that he had to be taken to Northwest Hospital, five miles away. A sheriff’s deputy went to the hospital’s emergency room to question the inebriated 17-year-old student, whose eyes were red from crying.
According to a police report, the teenager explained that he had taken a bottle of vodka from his father’s liquor cabinet around 1:30 that morning and, for the next several hours, drank much of its contents. Why? Because I was upset that my father had yelled at me, said the student, Jared Loughner…
Several of Jared’s friends said he used marijuana, mushrooms and, especially, the hallucinogenic herb called Salvia divinorum. When smoked or chewed, the plant can cause brief but intense highs…
Not long after showing up intoxicated at school, Jared dropped out…Then, in September 2007, he and a friend were caught with drug paraphernalia in a white van…
After dropping out of high school, Jared Loughner had tried to straighten up, friends say. He shed his unkempt image, cut drugs from his life and indulged only in the occasional 24-ounce can of Miller High Life. He began wearing crisp clothes and got a job at Eddie Bauer…
He tried to enlist in the Army in 2008 but failed its drug test. He held a series of jobs, often briefly: Peter Piper Pizza, but not long enough to make it past the three-month probationary period, an executive said; the Mandarin Grill, where the owner recalled that after less than a month of employment, the teenager simply stopped showing up.
After leaving his job at Eddie Bauer, he became a volunteer at an animal-care center in Tucson. On his application, he came across as a normal and ambitious teenager, expressing interest in “community service, fun, reference and experience.” But within two months he was told not to come back until he could follow rules…
In September, Mr. Loughner filled out paperwork to have his record expunged on the 2007 drug paraphernalia charge. Although he did not need to bother — he completed a diversion program, so the charge was never actually on his record — Judge Jose Luis Castillo, who handled the case in Pima County Consolidated Justice Court, said after the shooting that, in retrospect, it definitely “crossed my mind” that Mr. Loughner was worried that the charge would prevent him from buying a weapon…

Posted in FBI, New York Times, Yisroel Pensack | Tagged Arizona, army, Attorney General Janet Reno, buying a weapon, buying guns, Clinton administration, drug paraphernalia charge, Glock 19, Harrington & Richardson shotgun, indications of past drug use, Jared Loughner, Jeremy V. Grimaldi, Judge Jose Luis Castillo, National Instant Criminal Background Check System, NICS, Pima County Consolidated Justice Court, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Sportsman's Warehouse, The Washington Post, Tucson | Comments Off

Yisroel Pensack: Video Shows Gunman Shooting Rep. Giffords and Others, Sheriff’s Investigator Says

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Yisroel Pensack

Richard A. Oppel Jr. reports in The New York Times:

TUCSON — The chief investigator for the sheriff’s department here has for the first time publicly described the brief and gory video clip from a store security camera that shows a gunman not only shooting Representative Gabrielle Giffords just above the eyebrow at a range of three feet, but then using his 9-millimeter pistol to gun down others near her at a similarly close range.
The video, according to Richard Kastigar, the investigative and operational bureau chief of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, also reveals that Judge John M. Roll appears to have died while helping to save the life of Ronald Barber, a Giffords employees [sic]. Mr. Barber, who was near Ms. Giffords when he was shot twice, has left the hospital.
Mr. Kastigar said Tuesday that the video shows Ms. Giffords standing with her back a few inches from a wall when she was shot by the gunman, who approached in “a hurried fashion” with the gun at his side and then raised it and fired a single bullet above her eye at a range of no more than two or three feet.
Jared L. Loughner, 22, has been arrested in the shootings. In the video, the pistol “is down near his right side, but it is visibly out from where he was keeping it, presumably under his clothing, and then he raises it and fires,” Mr. Kastigar said. “It happens in a matter of seconds.”…The video, he said, is now in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Investigation…
More than a dozen video clips, from cameras at the scene and the hard drive of a security system at the Safeway supermarket at the mall where the shootings occurred on Jan. 8, provide other new information about the minutes before the shootings, which left 6 dead and 13 wounded. Some were described in an article on The Washington Post’s Web site on Tuesday.
When a deputy sheriff arrived minutes after the shooting and took control of Mr. Loughner, who was being held down by two people, the deputy removed a set of earplugs from Mr. Loughner. Minutes earlier, a surveillance photo also shows Mr. Loughner inside the Safeway talking to a clerk and “pointing to his ears because he’s telling the individual that he can’t hear what she’s saying because he’s got earplugs in,” Mr. Kastigar said.

The Washington Post story on videos of the shooting is here. That article, by David Nakamura, Dana Hedgpeth and Sari Horwitz, says:

TUCSON – Authorities have analyzed nearly two dozen surveillance videos in the massive investigation of accused Tucson killer Jared Lee Loughner, some of which clearly show a gunman shooting federal Judge John Roll in the back as he and an injured congressional aide try to scramble under a table, officials who have viewed the footage said Tuesday.
It also shows the gunman walking toward Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and firing his first bullet into her face from two to three feet away, the officials said; he then blasts 31 more shots in a span of no more than 15 seconds. Doctors initially said the bullet entered Giffords’s head from the back, but they have since said it struck her above the left eye, and the footage leaves little doubt of that…

Posted in New York Times, Yisroel Pensack | Tagged 9-millimeter pistol, Dana Hedgpeth, David Nakamura, earplugs, federal bureau of investigation, gunman, Jared L. Loughner, Judge John M. Roll, left eye, Pima County Sheriff's Department, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Richard A. Oppel Jr., Richard Kastigar, Ronald Barber, Safeway supermarket, Sari Horwitz, store security camera, surveillance videos, The Washington Post, Tucson, video clips | Comments Off

Ushpizin

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Luke Ford

Rabbi Rabbs recommends this blog post on internet safety for those interested in online blogs about Orthodox Judaism.

Rabbi Rabbs writes (and this is a partial excerpt from a discussion):

I thought the movie was only so-so. Am I the only person who couldnt help but be reminded of A Stranger Amongst Us ? Remember that G-d awful flick back in the early 90s starring melanie griffith? Both movies were about criminals who infiltrated chasidic camps and how the chasidim deal with frei people and BTs. Sorry, but the parallels kept gnawing at me the whole time, and if the writers did rip off from Stranger, that is lame, because that movie sucked paint remover.

Here is what I liked most: I have eaten in a sukkah in Meah Sharim on Yom Tov, and it was amazing. Just walking down Rechov Meah Sharim on Yom Tov night is a breath taking experience, and the mad rush to buy lulavs on the streets of Geulah is a scene, too. The movie brought back some memories for me, but could have done a bit more to capture the spirit, such as showing the huge crowds dressed up in colorful Yom Tov yerushalmi garb wlaking in the street.

I have visited the Breslov shul on Rechov Meah Sharim, too.

A lot of the movie hit home because I am dealing with insane financial problems myself and there is a lot of stress in that area in terms of getting married, etc. Hearing the guy didnt have a sukkah, etc, fell right out of “A single trapped in a religion for married people” for those who recall my essay. So, I could relate to the dude.

What I liked least: It bugged me to no end that the movie was in Hebrew with English sub-titles. Those people do not speak Hebrew! They speak Yiddish for crying out loud. Maybe the BTs speak only Hebrew, but when all the lifers spoke to each other in Hebrew, I wanted to scream.

next, are we really supposed to believe that the two of them pray and receive open miracles like that? Gimme a break! If it were that easy everyone would be frum and no one would be poor. I prayed and prayed and I am still flat broke with no wife and I am close to 156 years old already. Come on!

and what was the deal with harboring criminals? is that the lesson we are supposed to learn? frummies hide known felons from authorities? not good.

I have to laugh about how the couple cries about not having a son. I cant wait to be married five years without kids! sounds awesome to me! and then the two convicts show up and even they are giving the speech: “nu, when you having kids already? there is a mitzvah to be fruitful and multiply!” LOL!

ok, that is my review…. feel encouraged to add your own below

finally, one last thig…. what is the exchange rate between the dollar and the shekel these days? He had a $1000 and bought an esrog for 1000 shkalim and still had enough for earrings, she bought new clothes (I think) and they had $100 to give the poor guy and leftover gelt to feed the convicts.

Although I could understand why you consider Ushpizin to be awesome, I am stunned that you thought Stranger was good. That flick was so typical of hollywoods misrepresentation of frumkeit. I forget the specifics now, but my friends and I back then compiled a long list of things that were incorrect according to Torah. And, you were ok with the son of the rebbe kissing a shigza? that made me want to puke. And, could they at least find Jews to play the parts? The fake payas on goyim doesnt cut it.

There are parallels.

In Stranger, Melanie Griffith is fascinated by it all and considers frumkeit just like how one of the two convicts seemed interested in it.

In stranger, the guest in their house is doing the BT thing, much like how the Moshe guy became BT.

In stranger, the BT was really a crook. In ush, the crook was thinking of being BT.

In stranger, the guest was scamming them. In ush, those two guests were scamming them.

In stranger, the guest pointed a gun at chasidim. In ush, the guests pointed a shish kabob at the chasidim.

In stranger, the cops were called and a chasid attacked the crook. In ush, the cops were called and a chasid pointed a shish kabob back at them.

In stranger, the crook had ties to the mob and was a serious criminal. In ush, the crooks had escaped from prison where they served some hard time and were dangerous criminals.

In both movies, the guests pretended to be friends in order to fascilitate their crimes.

3: It was not an open miracle that they recieved because of the prayer, it was pure luck in a situation in which it could happen. They pray EVERY day for such a miracle, and just because this is a day in which they recieved some money (which caused plenty of trouble) does not mean that it was an open miracle.

Pure luck? The guy is praying like a wild man and crescendoed just when the dude picked 35 and landed on his name. Come on! It was presented to us to believe it was an open miracle. The wife even said it herself that it was a miracle. Or maybe it was the husband, I forget.

4: They did speak yiddish in the beginning and not all citizens of places like that speak exclusively yiddish to each other.

I heard lots of Ivrit, and I am not sure which communities you hung around with, but the ones I did only spoke Yiddish.

5: He wasn’t hiding any old felons, they were old, less than reputable friends who turned out to be convicts on the run, and he wasn’t going to turn-in his old friends after he had already given them his hospitality for the holiday and since he found out later (I’m guessing their crimes weren’t especially violent or dangerous). I can’t say I blame him for that.

I personally think it was a chillul Hashem. I will illustrate my point with the following:

A couple of years ago, a member of the ding dong show who I was close with ran from the law when a warrant was issued for his arrest. He went on the lam for months into hiding. He even wound up on Americas Most Wanted. During his run from the law, he stopped off at one of the cast members homes — someone who was really good friends with him for a very long time. That person loved the guy to death, but did the right thing. Instead of letting him stay, that person kicked the dude out in the street and told them they had 10 minutes to get the f*k away before they call the cops.

That is what Moshe should have done.

6: At the time of the movie the exchange rate was >4.5 Sheks to the $. 1000$~4500 sheks.

Holy cripes! I had no idea. When I was there the rate was 1 dollar = 1.6 shekels, and I thought the gap narrowed to almost 1:1 since then, which is why I was confused by the movie. Boy was I ever wrong!

Thanks for providing that info. Now it makes sense, because the esrog only cost about $225, and that leaves a lot of money for food, clothes, etc. I just wish they made that knowledge known to the viewers.

Btw, how do you remember the rate at the time of the movie?

Those two guys were doing a long sentence. They didnt know moshe was married, and he was married 5 years already. I will assume he didnt get married the day he turned frum, either. They didnt know how frum he was. So, I will guess they were in prison close to 10 years. Now, I have no idea about sentencing in the state of israel or how inmates end up on the outside and just re-enter on their own, but I am betting they did something really bad.

Remember how they talked about the old days when they did hold-ups? These guys were armed robbers, and been in and out of jail.

They were taking Moshe for a ride. He even heard them from outside the sukkah saying they didnt care for him and his wife. This was a scam to steal food, money, a hiding place, and whatever they could steal form him.

I’ve gone through each of the “parallels” and I don’t think any of them qualify as significant parallels anymore than any given story.

Well, not only do we disagree on the specific parallels but you missed the whole point…

You got two chasidic movies. Why does either of them need criminals in them? Think about it. How often do you come into contact with criminals? Why does crime take a central theme in both? How often does violence enter into chasidic life? so why introduce it into both?

How about just a movie without any violence and without any criminals?

How about a movie about chasidim without any BTs? How about a movie about chasidim without anyone from the secular world paying a visit?

The fact that both movies involved insular communities being invaded by secular people, included criminals, violence, and BTs creates a profound set parallels that cannot be brushed away or ignored. There was no reason to have those things in those flicks, and they both did.