Were Your Parents Too Severe?

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Luke Ford

Were your parents too severe? I’m curious what you thought in your teens and what you think now. I don’t think my parents were too severe. I got annoyed with them at times as a child, but never thought overall that they were too severe. I was the youngest and was treated more gently. And I was more gentle to them than my older siblings.

I think as we age, we judge our parents more generously, particularly when we struggle with our own children.

The biggest difference in child-parent relations, I think, since the 1960s, is that it is much more common now for adult children to be friends with their parents.

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Doping Rather Than Smoking

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Luke Ford

On his radio show today, Dennis Prager said: “We have lost our minds on the tobacco issue. We have demonized [tobacco] that which should be a health issue and we have sanitized what [marijuana] should be a moral issue.

“The have confused health with morality. Tobacco has become the lead health issue. So we have more kids smoking marijuana than cigarettes.”

“Would you rather your kids smoked marijuana or cigarettes? I bet that over 50% would say marijuana is better. It isn’t even close for me. I would rather they smoke tobacco. I think marijuana says something about the larger child than tobacco does.”

“The purpose of marijuana is to effect the brain.”

Prager’s engineer plays bumper music taken from pop songs about marijuana. I grew up being told that drug music was evil.

Dennis: “Why do folks selling foreign cars know so much more about cars than folks selling American cars?”

From DennisPrager.com:

Thursday, December 16, 2010 Radio Show
H1: Teens Doping More than Smoking
Prager H1: As cigarette smoking goes down among teens, smoking marijuana goes up. Would you rather your child smoke a cigarette or smoke a joint?

Thursday, December 16, 2010 Radio Show
H2: Hasta la Vista, Arnold
Prager H2: Dennis talks to Joel Kotkin, professor of urban studies at Chapman University about the Arnold Schwarzenegger administration. Kotkin calls it a near complete failure… New York State contains massive amounts of natural gas buried in shale rock, but liberal politicians won’t let energy companies get to it… Dennis talks to Pia Orrenius, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank and Madeline Zavodny, professor of economics at Agnes Scott College. Their new book is Beside the Golden Door: U.S. Immigration Reform in a New Era of Globalization.

Thursday, December 16, 2010 Radio Show
H3: Shopping Apps
Prager H3: Shoppers are using bar code apps on their smart phones to a get a better price of an item on the Internet or at another store. Is there an ethical problem here? How will brick and mortar stores survive?

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How Does A Yeshiva Boy Miss Christmas?

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Luke Ford

Dennis Prager writes for the Jewish Journal:

When I was 20, I spent my junior year in college in England. When classes let out for the last two weeks of December, I traveled to Morocco, where something life-changing occurred.

What happened was that I felt a longing, even an emptiness, I had never before experienced. Something was missing from my life, but I could not at first identify it. I knew it was not about being without friends or family — after all, I hadn’t been with family or friends in England for the previous three months. And it wasn’t about being alone — I had gotten used to traveling by myself.

This sense of missing something kept gnawing at me, until one day I realized what it was: I missed the Christmas season. I missed that time of year in America.

At first I denied it. Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish home and in yeshivas, I had obviously never celebrated Christmas. How could I miss something that I never had? And being so Jewish, how could I miss the quintessential Christian holiday? It seemed religiously wrong, maybe even sinful.

But I could not conjure up any other explanation: I was in a non-Christian country, and therefore I heard no Christmas songs, saw no Christmas decorations, and Dec. 25 was just another day.

I subsequently spent a lot of time reflecting on this. It made little sense to me: Why would a yeshiva boy miss the Christmas season?

I came to two life-changing realizations. First, though my yeshiva world did everything possible to deny the existence of Christmas — for example, we had school on Christmas Day, and “midwinter vacation,” as it was called, was at the end of January, not at the end of December — this yeshiva boy really liked the Christmas season.

And, second, this Jew, whose yeshiva upbringing taught him to think of himself only as a Jew, was in fact an American as well.

Though it took more than a few years to fully realize just how deeply American I was and how much I appreciated American Christianity, it was Christmas in Morocco in 1968 that first opened my eyes. And I was never the same.

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Do You Want To Know The Identity Of The Anti-Christ?

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Luke Ford

Wanting to make some money, I’ve been browsing Clickbank.com’s array of information products to sell. I checked out “Politics & Current Events” and the following are the best selling items (most popular first):

* Do your customers want the truth on 2012, the Antichrist and his identity based on recent discoveries on the covert plans of the illuminati who are master minding his coming? Click Here!

* A complete guide to winning elections – 5 ebooks and sample documents, including a 178 page elections guide that shows Everything you need to know to win your next election! Click Here!

* How to Survive the Coming Food Crisis. Click Here!

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I see a strong post-apocalyptic trend ala the movies The Road and The Book of Eli. It reminds me of the dark days of 1980 and 1981 when there was a lot of talk at my evangelical Christian high school of Forest Lake about how to survive a nuclear war.

Here are the best selling products in the category of Fiction:

* 101 intriguing and funny Quotes and Conversations from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Click Here!

* Sales Lies and Naked Truths: This ain’t your Daddy’s sales manual. It bears little resemblance to Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich or the other extreme, Donald Trumps Book, Think Big and Kick ..This is geared toward you. The sales game has changed. Click Here!

* Atomsk and an ebook on sustainability: A World War Ii era spy novel by San Francisco writer Cordwainer Smith and reflections on sustainability by Kelly Hart. Click Here!

* Murder By Proxy: Write your mystery novel the Ezy-Links way -a complete resource for mystery writers with all the information and resources you need right at your fingertips. Click Here!

And now for the glamorous arts and entertainment genre:

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* Number 1 selling Guitar Course in CB! Click Here!

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* Singorama – Essential Guide To Singing Click Here!

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* Music Marketing Manifesto Click Here!

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* The Revelation Effect – Mentalism and Mind Reading:
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* Learn Digital Photography Now
Learn How To Quickly And Easily Start Taking Awesome Photos With Your Digital Camera, Even If You Are A Complete Newbie Click Here!

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A Resource For Posing A Model For The Camera. Never Be Stuck For A Pose Again. Click Here!

* Ballet Bible Dancing Instruction: Click Here!

* The Pure Pitch Method – Perfect Pitch Ear Training
Learn To Master Absolute Pitch and Relative Pitch With This Amazing Course. Perfect For Guitar, Piano, Bass, Drums, Violin, Singing, Vocals, and Music Appreciation. Click Here!

* Celebrity Dance Coaching With Louis van Amstel – Emmy Nominated Choreographer from the Hit Tv show Dancing With The Stars! Click Here!

* Karaoke software! Click Here!

Hmm. It seems that promoting the written word is not the best way to make money.

Here are the best selling products on Clickbank for business and investing:

* The Lotto Black Book: This is a radical approach to an online sales letter. Click Here!

* How to hack the stock market. Click Here!

* Forex Morning Trade system. Click Here!

* Secrets of Successful Traders Click Here!

* Penny Stock Prophet: Click Here!

* Auto affiliate income: Click Here!

* Forex BulletProof- Join the Revolution! Click Here!

* RichJanitor is The money-making program of 2010! Click Here!

* The Instant Money Maker! Click Here!

* Penny Stocks Psychic! Click Here!

* The Forex Signals! Click Here!

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* Top trader Vladimir Ribakov’s strategy for extracting profits from the Forex market, with a push of a button. Click Here!

Here are some related blog posts:

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Predicting A Person By His Choice Of Spouse

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Luke Ford

Instapundit says about CA Governor Arnold: “You could have predicted this [fiscal irresponsibility and shift left] just from knowing that Arnold was married to Maria Shriver. If you want to know whether a male Republican politician is likely to go squishy, it pays to know his wife’s politics.”

Joel Kotkin writes:

In his headier and hunkier days, Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke boldly about how “failure is not an option.” This kind of bravado worked well in the gym–and in a remarkable career that saw an inarticulate Austrian body-builder rise to the apex of Hollywood and California politics.

But Schwarzenegger’s soon-to-be-ended seven-year reign as California’s governor can be best described in just that one simple world: failure. It has been so bad that one even looks forward to having a pro, the eccentric Machiavellian master, Jerry Brown, replace him.

Schwarzenegger never grew beyond the role of a clueless political narcissist. As the state sank into an ever deeper fiscal crisis, he continued to expend his energy on the grandiose and beyond the point: establishing a Californian policy for combating climate change, boosting an unaffordable High-Speed Rail system, and even eliminating plastic bags. These may be great issues of import, but they are far less pressing than a state’s descent into insolvency.

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How Does A Man Become Admirable?

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Luke Ford

On his radio show today, Dennis Prager noted: “There are women who are afflicted with the need to tear down whoever is in their lives, including a good man.”

Damn, I’ve dated a few of those!

Dennis: “A man needs strength and integrity to get his woman’s admiration.”

“A hard-working man is admirable. That’s why many women complain, he spends all day watching sports. That’s why it bothers a woman. It is very unsexy for a man to just sit on the couch. Whether it is hard-working fixing the house or hard-working at the office.”

“Just as a man will complain about a woman who has let herself go, so too women will complain about a man who has let go of his ambition.”

“The news from Russia is so despairing that I don’t report it much to you. There is only darkness to report.”

“My graduate work was done in Soviet studies. I read Pravda almost every day. There was an interesting debate at the time and I may have been wrong.

“The debate was — was the Soviet Union a continuation of Russian civilization or was it a communist abrupt change of course? I argued that it was overwhelmingly an abrupt change of course brought about by the communists. When I see Russia today once again moving towards dictatorship, where journalists are murdered if they report things that disturb the government, when you see what is controlled by Putin’s party United Russia, which effectively controls regional governments, prosecutors’ offices, courts, police departments, and election commissions. They control the media.

“There were those who said that the Soviet Union, Stalin, Lenin, these were not aberrations thrust upon a Russian civilization but rather a continuum, obviously worse than anything that preceded it.

“I said no. This was just communism shoved into the face of the Russian people and I may have been wrong. The love of liberty does not appear to beat strongly in the Russian soul.”

“So too the question about China. Was Chinese communism and Mao part of the continuum from Confucianism. Under Confucianism, law and order and the state, the state is essentially a god under Confucianism… What Confucianism feared most was chaos. We want order and if that involves the suppression of the individual, so be it.”

Referring to Hugo Chavez: “Any leader who interrupts a speech to sing is by definition a dictator. No democrat has ever interrupted a public speech to sing.”

From DennisPrager.com:

Wednesday, December 15, 2010 Radio Show
H1: Why We Love Texas
Prager H1: Here’s another reason — real legal reform, “Loser Pays.” Compare to California. Don’t miss the last few paragraphs about the dramatic increase in doctors in the Lone Star state since liability limits were put in place… British is hot bed of radical Islam. That’s bad enough, but they are exporting these radicals to the rest of the world. The Iraqi-Swede who tried murder Stockholm shoppers is the latest example… Dennis talks to iconic Hollywood pop singer, Pat Boone…

Wednesday, December 15, 2010 Radio Show
H2: Male/Female Hour: Becoming Admirable
Prager H2: Dennis poses the question: how does a man earn admiration from his spouse? This concludes a three part series of Male/Female hours dealing with the issue of what men and women most want from their spouse.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010 Radio Show
H3: The Land of Opportunity
Prager H3: Dennis reflects on Alexis de Tocqueville and his early recognition that America was the land of opportunity, in contrast to ossified Europe… Russia after a period of liberty is now essentially an autocracy under Vladimir Putin… Do human beings prefer liberty or security?

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The Rabbi Rabbs 2011 Calendar

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Luke Ford

I’ve been having a hard time coming up with the perfect winter solstice gift for the cute little goyim in my life.

Then it hit me – the Rabbi Rabbs 2011 calendar. Many people — Jews and goyim — are morally elevated by having photos of tzaddikim on their walls.

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Limiting Healthcare Choice

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Luke Ford

I just got a letter from my health insurance, Kaiser Permanente, explaining that “you may be able to keep your plan after 2014, at which point the market will function differently and health care choices may be limited.”

Thank you Democrats! I love limitation on my choices, particularly when they can be matters of life and death. I’m not smart enough to handle a lot of choice, so it is very considerate of you to shrink my options.

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Three Hebrew Boys Go To Prison For Decades For Investment Scam

Posted on December 14, 2010 by Luke Ford

Way to make Jews look good! These clowns described themselves around town as “three Hebrew boys.”

Now they are three Hebrew boys who will probably get to spend a lot of time with white Aryans and other non-Jews in prison.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

Timothy McQueen, 52, and Joseph Brunson, 47, were each sentenced to 27 years in prison and Tony Pough, 48, was sentenced to 30 years Tuesday after a daylong hearing. The three, all from Columbia, were convicted in November 2009 of 58 counts each of mail fraud, money laundering and other charges.

Prosecutors said the three men traveled to churches and other gatherings across the Southeast several years ago and spoke to soldiers near military outposts, preaching how faith and an investment in what they said were foreign currencies would at least double their money, wipe out credit card debt and pay off mortgages in months.

Read On

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Dennis Prager Enjoys Life In La Cañada Flintridge

Posted on December 14, 2010 by Luke Ford

Here’s an awkwardly written interview with Dennis Prager by somebody on the left who obviously can’t stand the talkshow host’s views:

Prager’s gift with words goes back long before his embrace of La Cañada — “Norman Rockwell-ville” and “a beautiful slice of America,” he calls it — a city that is both the childhood home of his wife Susan (who as Susan Springett graduated from La Cañada High School, which her son from a previous marriage now attends) and a stone’s throw from the KRLA 870 AM studios in Glendale, where from 9 a.m. to noon on weekdays Prager goes on the air.

…Shortly after his arrival in La Cañada Flintridge, Prager initiated local celebrations of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in 2008 and 2009 at the La Cañada Flintridge Country Club. The event attracted hundreds, but very few of them locals, he said, and was moved west last year to Studio City.

Despite a small number of religiously and culturally active Jewish residents in this city, Prager says he is at home here.

“It has the very best small-town feel,” he says.

…Q: In one of your recent columns you advocate as fact notions that women are less inclined to excel at math and science and black men are more inclined to commit violent crime.

A: They are facts. The question is why.

Q: Many would say that’s sexist and racist.

A: That’s what, unfortunately, liberal education teaches people — not to ask, “Is it true?” They ask, “Is it sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic?” But they don’t ask, “Is it true?” The left does not pursue truth, it pursues racism and xenophobia. I don’t care if it sounds sexist. I care if it is true. You can’t make a good society based on lies.

Q: Can you explain why those things are true?

A: The male brain and female brain are observably different. There are areas wherein each has predilections. It’s not inferior or superior. That’s sexist, to say inferior or superior. But to say “distinct” is a fact, it’s not sexist. I have no mathematical or engineering ability. I don’t think I’m an inferior human being.

Q: The phrase ‘separate but equal’ comes to mind.

A: Separate can be equal. We have separate restrooms. I think that’s equal. … I’m a man but I’m not offended by the fact men are far more likely to commit violent crime. If any of your readers heard there was a shooting at a university, wouldn’t everyone assume it was a man and not a woman? Is it sexist, or is it reality?

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