Carly For Senate

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Luke Ford

The New York Times headline yesterday was: “Paladino Attacks Gays In Brooklyn Speech”

The NYT has since changed it to: “Paladino Laces Speech With Antigay Remarks”

On his radio show today, Dennis Prager says: “I would be happy to address a gay convention about why they are being unfair and cruel to people who think that marriage should be male-female.

“This NYT headline is so irresponsible. He never attacked gays. He’s a religious Catholic. He spoke to Orthodox Jews on homosexuality. He said he wants kids to believe that the ideal is male-female love and marriage. Why is that an attack on gays?

“If I said, the ideal is marriage, is that an attack on singles?”

“Not everybody is single by choice.”

“If I were gay and had my values, I would stick up for gays. I would fight for their dignity, but I would not deny that male-female marriage is the ideal. I would say to the heterosexual majority that some of us can’t do that.”

“I’m not going to drop an ideal because some people can’t do it.”

Sam, a caller: “If a man is a bigot or a racist and it comes out in his notes…”

Dennis: “It is none of my business to know what you wrote as notes to yourself.”

“I don’t judge people by their thoughts. I judge people by their actions. If a person has the most racist thoughts on earth, but acts beautifully towards people of every race that person is not a racist. In your view, that person is a racist.”

Sam: “That person is inhuman because it is impossible…”

Dennis: “No. You’re wrong. That is not true. Then it is inhuman for every man to stay faithful because every man wants to have an extra-marital affair.”

Sam: “Do you want to have extra-marital affairs? I don’t.”

Dennis: “Yes. You don’t? Then you are lying to me and you are lying to yourself. You are the only man I’ve met who has actually said that with a straight face.

“You have no desire for any woman then your wife?”

Sam: “I do not.”

Dennis: “OK. You are amazing. Then you are a phenomenon.”

“Sam represented something that I have noted since graduate school — a profound amount of fooling oneself because of unpleasant reality.”

“Sam’s call will be the subject of a male-female hour. I’m going to play it. Men who lie about their own nature to themselves and why would they do that. One huge thing that gay and heterosexual men have in common is a desire for variety and immediate stimulation through the visual. For a man to deny that he has any desire for another woman sexually is to lie to himself in a way that frightens me.”

“Obviously it is a statement about my wife that I can be so open about this on the radio and have zero thought about how would she react.”

“I knew as a bachelor in my twenties that I couldn’t live with someone from whom I had to hide my nature. And that’s what he has to do apparently. It shook me up. Truth is the most important value.”

Next topic. “The president has decided along with the other Democratic candidates not to defend their policies. They changed America in two years more than any president since Delano Roosevelt and don’t defend it. Why doesn’t the president go around the country talking about Obamacare and his trillion dollar stimulus? Not a word. Why not? The president knows how spectacularly unpopular what he did was. He couldn’t care less. I don’t think he cares about who wins in November. He’s a committed leftist.”

“Those of you who spend your time trying to decipher his religion is making a mistake. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care where he is religiously. I care about his values. He’s a left-winger. That is what animates him. It is ineffective and counter-productive to say he is Muslim.”

D. emails: “Listen good and listen well, Sunny Jim! Your continuous bleating about what brain-dead, idiotic conservative radio host Dennis Prager has to say just shows me that you’re the primate equivalent of a fair-dinkum ovine. These pommies, featuring a long-haired Eric Clapton — who would later bring us a fair-dinkum toe-tapper of a tune with “Lay Down Sally” — knew the real question: “Anyone for Tennis?” Anyone’s who for Dennis — as in Dennis Prager — better jolly-well acknowledge he’s following a typical radio boor with no agenda other than furthering his own misguided delusions of grandeur. What a disappointment you are, lad. I should have jammed a garden trowel into your chest when you were a lad. You don’t see your brother Paul — as a fine a boy as any dad could hope to have sired — making a public spectacle of his own intellectual shortcomings, do you? I advise you to rock out, you little ponce … before I grab a roadside stone and bash your skull into mush.”

From DennisPrager.com:

Monday, October 11, 2010 Radio Show
H1: Carly for Senate
Prager H1: Dennis talks to Carly Fiorina, Republican candidate for Senator of California. Dennis admires and trusts this woman… Republicans are fielding great candidates this year. Carly Fiorina is an obvious example, and so is Tim Scott, a black conservative Congressional candidate in South Carolina… The dollar is falling like a stone. Why is the Fed debasing our currency?

Monday, October 11, 2010 Radio Show
H2: Paladino
Prager H2: Carl Paladino committed the ultimate sin; he defended traditional marriage. For this he has been attacked as anti-gay… Dennis returns to Congressional candidate Tim Scott and why he is the future of the Republican Party and a nightmare for Democrats.

Monday, October 11, 2010 Radio Show
H3: Indian Givers
Prager H3: All high schools in Wisconsin must give up their Indian team names… Dennis talks to Desmond Lachman, Professor of Economics at Georgetown University, about the falling dollar and the rising debt… The President and his political advisors are trying to make a big deal out of the Chamber of Commerce spending “foreign money” to support Republican candidates. But it’s not true.

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Building My Blogging Kingdom

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Luke Ford

Dr. Spielvogel, in the fall of 1995, I decided I needed to publish a book. And then in July of 1997, I developed my first website. I went after these goals with complete intensity. I gave my life up for them. I will never have that single-minded intensity again. I built and sold and built and sold my blogging kingdom. In the words of Alison Armstrong, I moved from a prince to a king. I am more sure about who I am now.

What becomes of me if I decide I don’t want to blog anymore? I can’t see that ever happening. Not that cleanly. I’ve been blogging less since January 2009 when I started studying to become a teacher of Alexander Technique.

We have room for only so many professional identities before they get muddied up.

I was talking to a bloke the other day who was an Alexander Technique teacher, but who made his living as a massage therapist. His clients saw him as a massage therapist, not an Alexander Technique teacher, and he’s had a difficult time getting Alexander students.

I don’t think of you, Dr. Spielvogel, as anything but my psychiatrist. I don’t think of you as a son or a brother or a lover. We don’t have enough room in our brains to give most people in our lives more than one identity.

My identity as a blogger has steadily diminished over the past 21 months as my concentration, time and energy has gone instead to learning how to teach Alexander Technique.

My blogging is now largely in harmony with my Orthodox community. I’m not blogging about p*** anymore, so my blogging is not as viscerally compelling to me and to my readers.

There are a lot of highs and lows in blogging. When I broke a big story, I felt important. Grandiose. I walked around muttering to myself, “There’s a new sheriff in town and his name is Luke Ford.”

There were also crashing lows as I dealt with the isolation that comes from offending so many people.

Alexander Technique does not come with these crashing lows. You feel great as you develop your competency and you carry this newfound ease and poise into every new day. The great feelings may go away but the good use remains. There’s no grandiosity. There’s just tranquility.

Even when I do good as a blogger, people are getting hurt. When I break an important story, there are usually winners and losers and the losers have an incentive to hurt you. There are no losers when you teach someone Alexander Technique.

Failing to make a living as a writer, I have reinvented myself as an Alexandroid. As I make more of my income from Alexander than blogging, I will become more of an Alexandroid than a blogger.

I remember how I often walked around thinking about how powerful my hands were. I could create worlds with my writing. Now I walk around thinking about how powerful my hands are because I can use them to help people with their use. I have warm hands. They are well-suited to working hands-on. When I touch people, they feel like they are slipping into a warm bath.

I like immediate benefits. I’m not someone who can work years without a return. I can make immediate changes with people with my hands.

As a blogger, I’d hunch and collapse in as I felt like the world was beating up on me. As an Alexander Technique teacher, I only do good. There’s no downside. Nobody gets mad.

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Where’s The Self-Criticism In The Muslim World?

Posted on October 10, 2010 by Luke Ford

Dennis Prager writes:

Ibn Warraq makes another point that is critically significant in understanding the world today: that self-criticism is essentially absent in Islam. It is not in the Quran, and it has not been present in Islam in the past, let alone today. Whereas committed Jews routinely argue with God — and even criticize Him — and still remain in good stead as Jews, questioning Allah or criticizing Islam has no basis within Islam. Both Islam and Allah are regarded as perfect and unquestionable. To paraphrase a Christian who often participates in interfaith dialogue with Muslims around the world: At these interfaith meetings, “We (non-Muslims) praise Islam and then the Muslims praise Islam.”

Rather than engage in the soul-searching that the state of the Muslim world would demand of any moral Muslim, every major Muslim spokesman blames all of the Muslim world’s defects on outsiders. From late Columbia University professor and Palestinian activist Edward Said, to CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), moral failings in the Arab and Muslim worlds are the fault of the West.

And the situation is worse than that. The best-known critics of Islam are murdered or go into hiding. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the brilliant Somali woman who writes and lectures about the status of women in much of the Muslim world, travels with bodyguards and has no knowable address. Likewise the aforementioned ex-Muslim writer Ibn Warraq does all his work under that pseudonym in order to avoid being murdered. But there is no level of hate-filled rhetoric, let alone intelligent criticism, of Christians or Christianity, of America or Americans, or of Jews and Israel that makes the Western critic fear for his life.

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Question of the Day:

Posted on October 10, 2010 by Luke Ford

When is it appropriate for an NFL quarterback to send iPhone photos of his erection to a young lady?

Lumpy emails: “When she is his urologist.”

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NYT: ‘Calls for Healing After Bronx Antigay Attacks’

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Luke Ford

I’m reading this New York Times article.

How come there are only calls for healing after minorities are attacked?

If heterosexuals are beaten by homosexuals, are there any calls for healing?

If whites are attacked by blacks or hispanics, are there are any calls for healing?

If men are attacked by women, are there any calls for healing?

Is there any media coverage when people in the majority culture are attacked by minorities??

I think it is despicable to beat up homosexuals who aren’t hurting anyone just as it is equally despicable to beat up on anyone else who isn’t hurting anyone, but beaten blacks and gays get disproportionate media coverage for their sufferings.

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Don’t Enable The Unhappy

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Luke Ford

On his radio show Friday, Dennis Prager says: You out there who enable the chronically unhappy should feel awful because you are making your own lives miserable and you are enabling the miserable to stay miserable.

Everybody does this. You have to be very strong not to do this.

If we did not enable the chronically miserable, they would change.

I’m talking about unhappy people who take out their bad moods on others.

I don’t think we enable friends as much, because we simply drop them if they’re too drippy.

You can’t make the unhappy happy. We have to tell the chronically unhappy people in our lives — I can handle your depression, but I can’t handle you taking it out on me.

Nobody can make the chronically unhappy happy but the chronically unhappy people themselves. Anybody who tries to make such people happy will only reinforce their unhappiness. People don’t do things for which there is no reward.

The ability of other people to make us unhappy is infinitely greater than their ability to make us happy.

What does decent person does not feel sorry for the unhappy? But you can’t act only on feelings. If you act on feelings, all you will do is to try to cheer the person up, you will act fake, you will walk on eggshells, and all you will do is to reinforce the person’s belief that acting unhappy gets them attention.

A 25-year old woman calls: “I have a perspective from the other side. I’ve been the unhappy one in most of my relationships. You are right. I took it out on them. I made them responsible for making me happy and a lot of my relationships failed. But I’ve been dating a wonderful man named David who listens to your show regularly and he showed me the video you made on happiness. Throughout our relationship, he stood up to me and said, I’m sorry for your unhappiness but it is not my fault.

“That hurt me and made me angry at him but so much of that got through to me. I’ve taken responsibility for my unhappiness. I’ve been getting therapy…”

Dennis: “It is not easy to change, but we can help you change by not tolerating your bad moods. Tolerating bad moods is like bringing an alcoholic another drink. There is no difference.”

Janine calls. “When my two year old throws a tantrum, I send her to her room and tell her to come back out when she can be happy.”

Dennis: “The earlier you can teach a child that they may not inflict their bad mood on others, the easier it is for them and for you.”

Dennis advises a son: “Tell your parent you are obligated to honor her, but you will not enable her. You save your marriage and your life by saying that to your mother. You don’t have to be abused.”

A spouse has to handle his own moods. You can’t handle his moods. A vast number of people go to war and when they come back, they don’t take out their moods on others. He can get moody, but he can never mistreat you. I cannot control your moods, my darling, but you must control how you treat me.

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Six Questions that Bearded Luke Dares Not Address

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Luke Ford

Chaim Amalek emails: But first, a bit of commentary. Quoting from Menachem Schneerson:

“Science now declares—as categorically as it is permissible for contemporary science—that where two bodies in space are in relative motion, it is scientifically impossible to determine which is at rest and which in motion.”

This misstatement of physical law is fairly common among laymen who have never taken a course in physics, which, I believe, would include most litvish and hasidic gedolim. Schneerson’s comment regarding relative motion holds true ONLY with respect to inertial, that is to say, non-accelerating, frames of reference. It is NOT true with respect to non-inertial, i.e., accelerating frames of reference, which includes all rotation (i.e.. things that are going around something else). Once something starts to accelerate, one can measure, internally, that acceleration using things like accelerometers and calculate changes in velocity. Engineers build stuff like rockets around this principle. (You can check this for yourself. Sitting as a passenger with your eyes closed in a smoothly moving, non accelerating automobile traveling on a good road, you cannot tell how fast you are going. But once that car begins to accelerate, either along a straight line or by going around a curve, you feel it, and know it – even with your eyes closed. Hence, one can readily see that the notion that “all motion is relative” with respect to rotation is simply incorrect.

It is very well established, both through observation and as a consequence of modern physical theory, that the earth revolves around a point located deep within the sun called the bary center. Because the bary center of the sun-earth system is not exactly coincident with the sun’s center of mass, the sun wobbles a tiny bit about this internal point as well, but this simply is not the same as saying the sun revolves around the earth — it just does not. The literal reading of the Torah that… a rising fraction of Torah Judaism take is contrary to centuries of careful observation and experiment and theory. It is contrary to the basic science that enables NASA to calculate the orbits and trajectories by which it sends space probes into orbit around the sun, the earth, and to distant planets. (That’s one of the nifty things about science: you can use it to build things that simply would not work if your basic science were false. Try calculating the orbital mechanics of a space probe using Torah – it can’t be done.)

Perhaps a Litvish Jew should not be getting his science from a Lubavitcher rabbi.

Now, as for you, Luke Ford, what do you believe?

1. Is the earth about 6,000 years old as Torah teaches, or is it billions of years old?
2. Did dinosaurs ever walk the earth?
3. Was there ever a flood in human times that covered even Mt. Everest in water? (If so, where did all this water go afterwards? Presumably even Torah Jews must acknowledge that it could not have drained into the ocean.)
4. Was the universe created in six days, each of which was as long as one of our current 24 hour days, or did it take place across billions of years from the big-bang forward?
5. Does the sun revolve around the earth, as the Torah teaches, or does the earth revolve around some point in space inside the sun?
6. If the Torah can be shown to be literally incorrect with respect to any one thing, can it nevertheless be trusted to be correct about everything else?

Luke says:

1. I believe the earth is as old as the scientific experts say it is, which I think is around five billion years.
2. If scientific experts believe in the existence of dinosaurs, so do I.
3. I don’t believe there was ever a flood that covered the entire world. I do not take the first eleven chapters of Genesis literally.
4. I suspect the universe took billions of years to reach its current state. I accept whatever astronomers say. The sun was not created until the fourth day, so “day” in Genesis does not only mean 24 hours. The Hebrew word for day, “Yom”, in the Tanakh does not only mean 24 hours hours. It means a time or an age in places.
5. I believe the earth revolves around the sun.
6. Torah means teacher. It teaches about life. It never purports to teach science.

Chaim Amalek emails: Oh, I had a pretty good idea of what you believe, I just wanted to see it up in lights on Lukeford.net. Hence the baiting.

How widespread among the Jewish orthodox is this notion that the torah is to be read literally? That certainly is not what I was taught — not even by orthodox jews, mind you, way back when — it seems that this heavy biblical literalism is a recent development and of a piece with the rise of similar anti-science literalism among Christian fundamentalists (although even they do not think the sun revolves around the earth).

Regarding Menachem Schneerson’s scientific training, the Failedmessiah web site links to material that seriously disputes that he ever was an engineering student in France at the Sorbourne.

Given the ill-informed writings on science of this would-be messiah, I suspect he never took a university or gymnasium level course in physics.

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Jewish New Media

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Luke Ford

John emails: Hey Luke,

As an online provocateur, I wanted to make sure you heard the announcement about an innovative grant program for Jewish new media projects.

We just launched the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund, a collaborative program offering a total of $500,000 in grants for digital media projects to promote vibrant and meaningful Jewish life in the 21st century.

The Fund seeks proposals for projects that leverage new media
tools—including video, digital communications, social networks, and
more—to empower Jews to interact with, share, build, and explore Jewish life.

I’m guessing you, someone you know, or the folks who read your blog has a great idea for using new media to engage Jews in Jewish life that is just waiting to be funded.

For more information, please see the attached press release and/or visit http://www.jewishnewmedia.org

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter @jewishnewmedia

Washington, D.C. – The Jim Joseph, Righteous Persons, and Charles
and Lynn Schusterman Family foundations announced today the
launch of the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund, a collaborative
program offering a total of $500,000 in grants for digital media
projects that promote vibrant and meaningful Jewish life in the 21st
century.
The Jewish New Media Innovation Fund (Fund) seeks proposals for
projects that leverage new media tools—including video, digital
communications, social networks, and more—to empower Jews to
interact with, share, build, and explore Jewish life.
“Each generation has the opportunity to use the tools of their day to
engage with what it means to be fully Jewish and fully human in the
world,” said Rachel Levin, Associate Director of the Righteous
Persons Foundation. “For our generation, that toolbox includes digital
media as a way to access information, culture, and connection. Our
hope is that this Fund will help accelerate and strengthen the
experimentation that is already happening in pockets around the
country.”
The Fund hopes to better understand how digital media can help
preserve Jewish history, renew Jewish traditions, and revitalize
Jewish institutions. The Fund was launched as a collaborative effort
among the three foundations to better share what they learn with the
broader Jewish community and philanthropic world.
“By partnering with these two highly accomplished and respected
foundations, we believe we can leverage the power of philanthropy,
technology, and social networking to engage young people in leading
richer, more meaningful Jewish lives,” said Sandy Cardin, president
of the Schusterman Family Foundation.
“The Jim Joseph Foundation is supporting entrepreneurial new media
tools focused on engaging young Jews in their identity and in Jewish
education in the broadest terms,” said Phyllis Cook, a member of the
Jim Joseph Foundation Board of Directors.
In this pilot year, the Fund is offering grants to individuals, non-profits,
social enterprises, and for-profit groups. Funding is available for both
start-ups and established projects, where the grant will ensure the
launch of an existing concept or take an established project to the
next level.
An Advisory Board, consisting of experts in the fields of digital media,
Jewish life, and youth engagement will select the winning proposals.
Interested parties must apply online. Proposals are due November
22, 2010. The announcement of awardees is expected in February
2011.
For more information on the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund visit
www.jewishnewmedia.org.

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What Are Some Right-Wing Hysterias?

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Luke Ford

On Dennis Prager’s radio show today, he asked what are the right-wing hysterias comparable to left-wing fears over secondary smoke, global warming, population growth, etc.

Well, here are the things the right-wing has been afraid of since 1980 (when I began paying close attention to politics):

* communism (until 1990)
* terrorism
* illegal immigration

I don’t think any of these fears are hysterical. They all strike me as valid.

Dennis: Why is there so much more hysteria on the left? You have no idea how much they praised Chairman Mao for China’s one-child policy. That we should emulate that.

Ted Turner has said over and over that while he loves his kids, he regrets having so many (six).

Second-hand smoke [danger] might be the most mendacious of all the claims.

If I am missing a hysteria on the right, the world will come to an end or vast numbers of humanity will die, and this hysteria turns out utterly false and those who followed it hurt society… Western Europe had to import people because they didn’t have kids.

Religious people have kids. The secular don’t. The religious will inherit the earth.

Left and right were equally hysterical about accusations of child abuse.

Caller: WMD. The Hollywood Blacklist.

Dennis: The number of you calling in to say that the right was hysterical about communism is depressing. Was the world hysterical about Nazism? Communism killed more people than all doctrines in all of history combined. How do you get hysterical about communism? It is frightening to me that anti-communism is regarded by anyone as hysteria. It means you don’t have a clue of the destruction it has done.

Dennis says that Y2K had no politics. “I will admit that that was the one time I fell for a hysteria. You know why? It made perfect sense.”

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Justice, Justice You Shall Pursue

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Luke Ford

Lulu emails: Yo! I gave you that term “Torah Hour of Power!” Where’s my credit? Dude. You so love to take credit from people, post without asking…etc. I don’t care where you get the stuff from. It’s your arrangement of the info and decision on what to put up that makes your shtick interesting. Just give credit to others who don’t happen to be female or your pet-devotee.

Justice, man! That’s what it’s all about.

You’d write a novel of an answer if I had tits and pussy! You’re so damn predictable. If Rabbi Ally or Monica weren’t women, they would not survive a moment in your world of ideas.

You’re no Vulcan driven by logic. You just react to your hormones. Spock would never adopt you as his son or wife!

Your ultimate wife would be Dennis Prager trans-gendered. She would meet your anatomic and intellectual requirements.

Yo! Levi, the hormone man. This is great comedy: making a point of declaring an ultra-orthodox rabbi is at heterosexual marriage. As opposed to what? This line of yours made my stomach hurt a lot because I laugh so much. Levi, this is what makes you the righteous Tzadik of Pico.

Rabbi Rabbs at a heterosexual marriage

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