Hey Little Sister

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Luke Ford

A friend (Jane*) asked me to take her little sister (Rose*, a recent college graduate) around today.

I felt pretty proud. That was quite a vote of confidence.

I like it when people entrust me with their little sisters.

As Elvis Presley sang (hat tip to Yisroel Pensack for finding the lyrics):

Well, I dated your big sister
And took her to a show
I went for some candy
Along came jim dandy
And they snuck right out of the door

Every time I see your sister
Well shes got somebody new
Shes mean and shes evil
Like that old boll weevil
Guess I’ll try my luck with you

Well, I used to pull your pigtails
And pinch your turned-up nose
But you been a growin
And baby, its been showin
From your head down to your toes

Little sister, dont you
Little sister, dont you
Little sister, dont you kiss me once or twice
Then say its very nice
And then you run

Little sister, dont you
Do what your big sister done

It all started as a joke. When Jane told me Rose was coming to town, I offered to take her around in my serial killer van, figuring she wouldn’t even consider my offer.

Now Jane has taken me up on it.

It helps that I’m about her only friend who doesn’t have a day job.

She says I can take her car.

Last week I made an acupuncture appointment for today at 10 a.m.

I figured I should reschedule so I could devote my whole day to Rose, but heck, I need my acupuncture. I got a lot of aches and little energy.

So I worry all night that I’m being disrespectful to Jane and Rose by keeping my appointment.

I’m gonna say that Jane can drive off on her own for an hour or she can walk around Culver City and get a Starbucks.

But I don’t want Jane to say, "Levi, you said you’d take my sister around. You didn’t say anything about previous appointments."

Our friend Jessica* decides to come along.

I don’t sleep well because I fear I’m going to sleep in and miss Jane’s 8 a.m. call to drive her to work.

My feet splints annoy me.

I toss and turn.

I rinse my mouth with water.

I listen to Dennis Prager.

I try to sleep.

I listen to Mozart’s Mass in C minor.

I fall asleep after 3 a.m.

I’m awake at 6:30 a.m.

8:06 a.m. Jane finally calls.

She’s always late.

"I want to see you drive," she says.

It’s been more than a decade since I’ve driven a shift.

I turn the key in the ignition.

The car won’t start.

Oy ve.

I depress the clutch and the new model starts.

"I introduced you last night to Rose by showing her the Jewish Journal story," says Jane.

Great.

I jerk us over to Jessica’s place. She comes out wearing five-inch heels.

After I drop off Jane at her work, I try reverse for the first time.

I bang into Jane.

I didn’t see her crossing behind me.

Oy ve.

This is not the way God wants me to start this journey.

Oy, what must Jane be thinking?

That I’m not responsible enough to drive her car? To look after her little sister? To be in her life?

Jane’s not hurt.

She’s laughing.

She’s chill.

Rose is chill.

Jessica is chill.

After a couple of minutes of bewailing my mistake, I chill out.

I drive south of Wilshire Blvd looking for black people.

Jane asked me last night where I was taking her little sister.

I said to Martin Luther King Blvd.

Then to the second floor of UCLA’s Rieber Hall dormitory where I lost my innocence the week of Valentine’s Day 1989.

"She likes history," said Jane.

Then to a couple of —- shoots.

I bring Rose and Jessica into the hovel. I show them my LA Weekly cover. They act impressed. I show them my Jewish Journal cover. They’ve already seen it.

I show them my Jerusalem Report profile but keep it short so they don’t have the opportunity to read any of the article.

I think about showing them my 60 Minutes appearance but figure that would be egocentric.

I can’t remember the last time I had two women in my hovel.

Gosh, I hope the whole ‘hood is looking when we come out.

That would rock.

Maybe I’d get maftir.

We have 50 minutes to kill before my acupuncture appointment.

Thank G-d Jessica knows how to drive a stick.

I drive slowly through Culver City.

I point out Sony Studios.

That’s boring.

Culver City is boring.

All too quickly, I’m at the acupuncture clinic.

I can think of no way to delay our parting.

"Be back at 11:15 a.m." I instruct. "Go straight down Washington Blvd and you should hit the Venice boardwalk."

Fifty minutes into my session, I press the help button (for my first time ever). I’m dying to use the restroom. I’ve been so nervous all morning I’ve been drinking buckets of water.

"I thought you overheard us," says my acupuncturist. "We were all sitting in the room directly outside recounting the various times in our lives when we had involuntarily s— ourselves."

Lovely.

I wonder if this remark is an example of inappropriate boundaries?

I want to be free. I want to drive by the beach. I want to drive and drive but with somebody else’s car and with somebody else’s gas.

I take us on to Highway 1 and north up through Malibu.

I pull over to the side of the road, park, and lead us across four lanes to the beach.

Jessica can’t make it down the cliffs in her high heels.

I take her hand and ease her down.

We sit on the rocks and remark on how swell it all is.

I have a peaceful easy feeling.

"What’s that bird?" I ask.

"A seagull," says Rose.

"Did you know that Jane and I got matching tattoos?" I ask.

"NO?" says Jessica.

"Just kidding."

I point to some massive equipment by the road.

"Do you have a thing for men who can operate heavy machinery?" I ask Rose.

"No," she says.

I drive us north of Pepperdine University. Our windows are down and so are our inhibitions.

"I’m gonna call Jane and tell her to get a taxi home, we’re going all the way to San Francisco," I say.

I can’t remember the last time I got out of town.

I think it was last May.

I want to get out of town. I want to be free. I want to take a long roadtrip with someone I love.

I want to fly like a kite. I want to drift in the breeze. I want no responsibilities, no deadlines, and no appointments.

I want to hit the open road and discover new things.

Oh well, I better be responsible.

I turn us around.

Jessica has offered to pay for lunch at a nice restaurant.

Cheese blintzes for me.

I reverse park.

"Have you ever been parked so well in your life girls?" I ask.

After lunch, we hit Beverly Hills. I used to always park on Rexford north of Wilshire but now it is permit-parking only.

I let the girls out and drive up the library.

When I reappear 10 minutes later, they say they’d feared I’d ditched them.

We walk the streets. We go into Anthropologie, a clothing store.

But this is a cool clothing store because it has lots of books.

I engross myself in "1001 Books To Read Before You Die" until the girls tire of shopping.

Jessica says her feet are covered with blisters.

I take them into the cool of the Beverly Hills Public Library and offer to check out a book for each of them.

They turn me down.

("Nothing turns Levi on more than a woman who reads books," says Jane later. "That’s why we’re just friends," I respond.)

We’ve got more than two hours to kill before picking up Jane from work and Jessica seems to be out of commission from any further walking.

I burn Jane’s gas down Hollywood Blvd then take the 101 south to the downturn.

"Everybody seems so chill today," says Jessica from the back seat. "Is it because it is a Tuesday?"

"It’s because we’ve taken the day off," I say.

"That’s right," Jess says. "Normally I’m fighting my way through traffic to my next appointment."

I drive by the Los Angeles Times building and head south. I see signs for the fashion district and turn left. I park. The meter gives only ten minutes for a quarter. I put in 50c and we walk down the street.

It feels like we are in Tijuana. There are bargains galore. This is the place I’m going to buy my next suit. Maybe I’ll get a pimp suit and white shoes and a white hat and walk into shul with my tzitzit out and say, "Hey mofos, this is the way I roll."

The shopping bargains make Jessica forget her sore feet.

I bring us back to Jane’s workplace with 20 minutes to spare. I read to the girls excerpts from the Neil Strauss book "The Rules of the Game."

"Don’t say anything to Jane," I warn. "I’m going to try some of these techniques on her on the way home."

Jane gets in. I make a feeble attempt to game her and then give up all resistance to being human for a few minutes.

I get home feeling full of energy.

* = not a real name.

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‘Praying In Her Own Voice’

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Luke Ford

It’s a testament to my growing spiritual sensitivity that I’m able to enjoy a movie about such ugly women.

People will either love or hate the protagonists of this documentary from Yael Katzir.

The hour-long production makes no pretense about whose side it is on.

It is billed:

The new documentary Praying in her own Voice is a thought provoking powerful piece about Feminism and Judaism . It depicts the struggle of the Women of the Wall in the last few years for the right to pray like men do at the Western Wall. It includes commentary from some of the top women rabbis in LA: Rabbi Laura Geller, Rabbi Naomi Levy , Rabbi Sharon Brous, Rabbi Denise Eger , Rabbi Lisa Edwards and Rabbi Lynn Brody. Rabbi Levy, Rabbi Edwards, and Executive Producers Dan Katzir and Ravit Markus will attend a panel discussion after the film, moderated by Rabbi Brody. The film was directed by award winning director Yael Katzir and is an hour long, Hebrew and English, with English sub-titles.

The leaders of this small group (they never seem to number more than two dozen, of which about a dozen are Israelis and the rest largely American visitors) want to do everything that men can do at the Western Wall — wear tefillin, blow a shofar, tallitot (prayer shawls), call women to the Torah and conduct a service (in Orthodox Judaism, only men do this). These are mad manly women. I said an involuntary "Oy vey!" when I saw some of them wearing tefillin (traditionally reserved for men, with a few exceptions such as Rashi’s daughters).

These women are fat and passionate and old and bizarre. They convey no sympathy for the Jewish tradition they want to overturn and no doubts about their own righteousness.

Their opponents are just as old and ugly, screaming epithets and starting fights.

I love watching this hour-long fight. To some it makes Jews look bad. I think it makes Jews look good that they care so much about Torah and prayer.

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Shmarya’s Rogue Gallery Of Haredi Rabbis

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Luke Ford

He writes on Jewcy:

Israel has no civil marriage or divorce, which means that every Jewish Israeli is at the mercy of the state’s rabbinic courts. During the past decade, ultra-Orthodox rabbis have wrested control of those state rabbinic courts from their more moderate Religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox peers. Now securely in control, they have begun to use this new power to de-legitimize those who came before them. What weapon are they using to do this? Conversion to Judaism. If a rabbi’s conversions are not recognized by the state, he is stripped of the authority needed to function and is essentially no longer a rabbi.

Last month, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox rabbinic judges voided hundreds, perhaps thousands of Religious Zionist conversions, creating a nightmare scenario where converts woke up one day—often years after their conversions—to find that they and their children had been ruled “goyyim.” The impact has not stopped at the Mediterranean. Converts in Europe, the Americas, and Australia now find their Jewishness under question. Even converts who have lived strictly Orthodox lives now must consider undergoing a second conversion procedure administered by ultra-Orthodox rabbis to clear up the “doubt”—“doubt” created by the ultra-Orthodox themselves. Many other converts, now less religious then at their conversion, or whose lives are not up to ultra-Orthodox standards, have nowhere to turn.

What follows is a brief list of the most involved ultra-Orthodox rabbis behind this mayhem—a rogues gallery, if you will, of ultra-Orthodox malfeasance.

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Why Do We Expect Presidential Candidates To Be Nice?

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Luke Ford

Anne Applebaum writes:

But in order to become the candidate, both also had to make a series of utterly ruthless decisions, decisions that most nice guys would find unpalatable. I don’t care what a helpful father Michelle says he is, there is absolutely no sense in which Obama’s presidential campaign—or, should it come to it, Obama’s presidency—is good for Obama’s children. Neither is there a scenario under which Cindy McCain, who always looks profoundly uncomfortable in the limelight, is ever going to relax and enjoy her husband’s golden retirement years. Anyone who was ever closely associated with either candidate is now at risk of unpleasant media exposure. No one who works for them right now has job security, and no one who knows them can expect any favors.

Think hard, as well, about what a presidential campaign truly demands of a candidate. To become president, you must love talking about yourself: Talk, talk, brag and talk, every day, every evening, on national television, in the company of newspaper reporters, in every spare moment, and not just for a few days or weeks but for years and years on end. If you don’t crave attention; if you don’t long for adulation; if you don’t, at some level, feel you are God’s gift to the American people, then you don’t run for president at all.

And yet despite the existence of this extraordinarily harsh, ruthless presidential selection system, Americans, possibly uniquely among democratic nations, do at some level expect their leaders to be nice. I’m convinced George W. Bush became president in part because he seemed nice—refreshingly inarticulate, just like the rest of us—even though his former associates often admit that he isn’t nice at all. It was once said of Ronald Reagan that his career proved the limitations of charm: If you turn it on for the public, you don’t have much left over in private.

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I Interview David Klinghoffer About His New Book – ‘How Would God Vote? Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative’

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Luke Ford

Ever since I switched my phone service to Time-Warner, I’ve had horrible audio quality.

Any phone call is a headache inducing collection of snaps, crackles and pops.

Today is no exception.

Luke: "Why did you write this book?"

David: "To ingratiate myself with fellow Jews."

I laugh.

David: "One of the things that excited me about Judaism early on was the idea that Judaism was relevant to everything. Not just your private life but public life as well."

"I remember being struck in 1991 by a comment made by my rabbi of the time, Barry Freundel. I was going to the Georgetown synagogue in Washington D.C., Joe Lieberman’s shul.

"He gave a great sermon about this idea. He said with disappointment that people often come to him with questions about cutlery. I dropped my meat spoon in my milk pot. That’s fine but he wished that people would come to him with questions about philosophy or business ethics, the whole gamut of Jewish halakhic (legal) and hashgafic (outlook) concerns. That’s an aspect of Judaism that often gets overlooked and I wanted to correct that by looking at what the Bible has to say about 20 contemporary issues."

Luke: "What surprised you in researching and writing this book?"

David: "There are a few points where Judaism departs from a conventional understanding of political conservatism. Gun control. That is one chapter that has not ingratiated me with other conservatives. I’ve extrapolated from the Bible and the Talmud that there are grounds not to be a gun rights extremist. That there’s a limited right, not an unlimited right, to self-defense in your own home. The Talmud is very discouraging of selling weapons to idolaters. There are grounds for some kind of a gun control regime."

Luke: "You puzzle me on this. Are you saying that good people should not be able to defend themselves?"

David: "No, no. Exodus 22:1-2. There’s not an unqualified right to kill someone who [intrudes into your home to rob]. Even though the personalities of the Bible are for the most part well-armed… Even Abraham famously armed his disciples and went to war, in the end he’s criticized for that. There’s an ambivalence about weapons [in the Jewish tradition] and an ambivalence about selling weapons in a culture that’s not ready for them."

Luke: "Do you believe that good people should be allowed to defend themselves?"

David: "It depends. No one is for unlimited access to firearms. Even for good people. A good person can’t buy a firearm without training. I’m not sure I understand the question."

Luke: "Do you believe that good people should be allowed to own a gun to defend themselves?"

David: "Depending on how you define a good person, yes. If the premise is that a person is a solid citizen and grounded, sure. If I could know for sure my neighbor was absolutely a good person and responsible and had trained himself in the use of a firearm, then of course I’m comfortable with him having a weapon. But we’re talking about a big country with a lot of people in it, and there are no perfect ways for vetting applications for gun ownership and for carrying. In a situation like that, where it’s not so easy to determine who’s a good person and who’s an appropriate owner for a firearm.

"I’m not saying that no one should own a fire arm but you’ll find among conservatives an absolutism about this and a resistance to any kind of control.

"I’m not saying that neighborhoods or universities should be gun free.

"The Bible does not prescribe for us precise policy prescriptions. It inculcates proper prejudices. One of those would be a skepticism… Virginia Tech was the context in which I changed my mind about this. You had conservatives saying wildly silly things along the line of, ‘The university boasts it is a gun free zone. What if people on campus had guns?’ It’s unrealistic. Imagine a professor going into class armed. It’s not the real world. Imagine college students with guns in the dorm. Imagine rowdy drunk college freshman in a dorm with guns. Nobody with common sense is in favor of arming everybody. The question is, where do you want to draw the line? Sometimes conservatives are not realistic about where they want to draw the line."

Luke: "Has your religion affected your politics more than your politics has affected your religion?"

David: "I was a political conservative before I was Jewishly committed. Hmm, looking back on it, they developed hand in hand. It might be a little of a chicken and an egg question. I didn’t always perceive the connection. I was already a Jew and a conservative without perceiving the connection, so I would say they were independent."

"There are people who become a conservative overnight. I know people who that happened to after 9/11. Mature people don’t have overnight conversions to Judaism."

Luke: "But they do to Christianity."

David: "Judaism is an incredibly complicated, deep, confusing… To call it a religion undersells it. To commit yourself to all of that in a minute is not true to Judaism."

Luke: "How has your conservatism been changed by your Judaism?"

David: "The answer to that is contained in this book."

David outlines the various ways the Bible differs from conservative political philosophy.

David: "Conservatism without God is incoherent. It’s long been recognized that belief in a moral reality that is transcendent is a fundamental aspect of being conservative."

Luke: "How much did you wrestle with the in-your-face nature of this book?"

David: "Tell me what you mean."

Luke: "When I brought it to shul and showed various people the cover, they got angry. They were saying, ‘You can be religious and a liberal or a conservative. You can be of any political stripe."

David: "I think that’s nonsense. I’ve been doing a debate on BeliefNet with Jim Wallis who seems disingenuous about where he falls politically. He’s clearly a man of the Left. That’s fine. If someone like Barack Obama wants to make an argument that his favorite policy prescriptions are grounded in the Bible, that’s fine. My premise is that the Bible means something. It doesn’t mean whatever you want it to mean. It has a singular meaning. To limit that meaning to your private life is not Jewish. The Hebrew Bible is incredibly political. Why would a Jew want to limit the Bible’s relevance and exclude politics? It doesn’t make sense. Can you give me an answer?"

Luke: "Because most of Jewish sacred text revolves around a Jewish state or a Jewish community, and it has much less to say about how Jews should act as part of a nation where they are a minority."

David: "That’s true, but does it mean that God doesn’t care what a Jew does as a citizen? It’s not like poskening (ruling) about kashrut where there’s not a lot of ambiguity. Yes, there’s ambiguity. That’s why one can discuss it. But if you say that being an Orthodox Jew tells me nothing about whether one should be a liberal or a conservative, meaning that God doesn’t care how I vote, how can you say that? That’s nonsense. Why this Maginot line around politics? It’s totally unsupportable from Jewish tradition."

Luke: "Do you believe that each generation is in spiritual decline from the one before?"

David: "Yes. Just look around. Look at how decayed and decrepit our moral culture is. I can’t believe that previous generations were in as bad a shape as we are."

Luke: "Can one be authentic to Torah and be a liberal?"

David: "You can be an observant Orthodox Jew and believe in the tooth fairy but that doesn’t mean that your belief in the tooth fairy is grounded in Judaism."

Luke: "Right. That’s why I asked if you can be authentic to Torah and be a liberal?"

David: "I guess there would have to be a gap in your understanding of what authentic Judaism is."

Luke: "In other words, you can’t be authentic to Torah and be liberal?"

David: "Depends on what you mean by authentic to Torah. You can be mistaken. Does that mean you are not authentic to Judaism? Almost everyone’s Judaism is imperfect."

Luke: "What role does skin color play in the Bible?"

David: "It seems to have an eternal spiritual significance. Same with nationality… People are made different. No two people are made identical. That’s because every person has something unique to contribute. Why would the same not be true of races?"

Luke: "I asked my friend Larry Yudelson if he had any questions for you. He replied: ‘In the chapter on War, David praises Pope Urban (I think the word "farsighted" was used) and the Crusades as an example of Biblical war. What does he say to those who claim that the Crusades decimated the Jewish communities of Europe, and that the blood that filled Jerusalem
was in large measure Jewish blood?’"

David: "The crusades were a defensive measure on the part of Christians against Muslims. The Holy Land was originally in Jewish hands, then Christian hands. It was taken by Muslims and Christians legitimately felt threatened by increasing Muslim strength in the Holy Land and subsequently in Europe. To take defensive measures against that Muslim threat was legitimate. To slaughter Jews on the way was obviously not legitimate. It’s a foolish question. That American soldiers abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib and that that is indefensible, does that mean, as some foolish people have said, that the whole war in Iraq is illegitimate? How ridiculous is that?"

Luke: "How does a society make good people and consequently a good society?"

David: "The responsibility is first and foremost upon parents. It’s a great struggle. We’ve got five kids. It’s something my wife and I deal with every day — the worry that we’re not doing the best job we can to form good people out of our children. Even if you do your best, there are no guarantees. Abraham raised Ishmael. Even though he was a good parent, he didn’t make a good person."

Luke: "I think about that question a lot. There are so many necessary ingredients to making good people. While the exceptional individual does not need God and religion to be good, generally speaking, most people need God and religion to morally educate themselves."

David: "To ground their sense of right and wrong."

Luke: "One way I approach this question is to look inside myself and ask what has the most influence on how I believe, which is the way people I love react to me. When I am close to good people, I don’t want to disappoint them. When I am not close, I am much more free to do what I want."

David: "That’s a good point, but why are the people you don’t want to disappoint, why are they good? Why would they be disappointed in your actions if they don’t materially hurt them? I would argue that they, like you, are formed by a moral culture which determines their responses to you."

Luke: "Did you have much concern that the title of your book would close off much of your potential audience?"

David: "No, because most of the potential audience is conservative. I’m speaking to conservatives. My primary intention in writing this book is not to convince liberals to become conservatives, but to give courage to conservatives to use Biblical language and to make use of Biblical wisdom to argue for beliefs we already hold."

"The title the book got was facetious."

Luke: "I had a hard time at first taking it seriously because of the title, but once I got ten pages in, I found subtle insights I had not thought of. Throughout the book, I found insights I had not thought of."

"It’s exhausting to live for God. I couldn’t kick back and enjoy ‘The Sopranos’ if everything I did was for God. It’s a great TV show but I can’t claim God would be thrilled with me watching it."

David: "In theory, you would say that God does belong in every part of your life."

Luke: "Right, but on an experiential level, I get tired."

"A statement can be wise and profound, but after you’ve heard it a certain number of times, you don’t want to hear it anymore."

David: "Like what?"

Luke: "Davening."

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George Carlin – Anti-Semite?

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Luke Ford

He made this video "They Own You."

"They say we need more money for education. That’s the big answer to everything, education. They say we need more money for books, more teachers, more classrooms, more schools, and more testing for the kids, and they’ll say, well we tried all of that, and the kids still can’t pass the tests. Don’t worry about that, because we’re going to lower the passing grades, and that’s what they do in a lot of these schools. They lower the passing grades so more kids can pass – more kids pass, the school looks goods, and the IQ of the country slips another 2 or 3 points. And pretty soon all you’ll need to get into college is a pencil. Got a pencil? Then get in there, it’s physics!

Then people wonder why 17 other countries graduate more scientist than we do. Education – politicians use that word, they use it on you. Politicians have traditionally hidden behind 3 things: the flag, the bible, and children – no child left behind, no child left behind. Oh, really it wasn’t too long ago you were talking about giving children a head start. Head start – left behind, someone’s losing ground here, but there’s a reason. There’s a reason for this. There’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason it’ll never ever be fixed – it’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you got, because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now. The wealthy big business interests that controls things, and makes all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians, they’re irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice – you don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and payed for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media, so they control just about all the information you get. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying – lobbying, to get what they want.

Well we know what they want. They want more for themselves, and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want – they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that – that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people that are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table, and think about how badly they’re getting screwed by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? Obedient workers – Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines, and do that paper work. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and vanishing pension that disappear the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your social security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it – they’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this place. It’s a big club, and you aint in it. You, and I are not in The Big Club.

By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think, and what to buy.

The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard working people: white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard working people continue (these are people of modest being) – continue to elect these rich douchebags who don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you – they don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you at all – at all – at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.

That’s what the owners counted on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white, and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it."

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Lara Logan’s Phantom Interview

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Luke Ford

ERSNews reports:

ERSNews recently read the following headline on the CBS news site and it caught our attention. 

Exclusive: Afghan Warlord Talks Resistance Notorious Terrorist Tells CBS News’ Lara Logan About Evading Capture and What He Thinks Of George Bush

The TV report did not ring true, an exclusive interview, but no reporter conducting it?  In the web version of the story the line “talked with” Lara Logan jumped out as well. The interview was with Afghan warlord Gulbeddin Hekmatyar.  Since 2001 he’s been killing American soldiers and many others in Afghanistan for decades.

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What immediately caught our attention was the headline.  Lara Logan, CBS’s Chief  Foreign Correspondent, a former swimsuit model, turned journalist years ago, has made a name for herself in recent years with her derring-do overseas in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

On its face it seemed she had landed an exclusive sit down interview with this wanted terrorist, right?  Well not quite…not even close. 

 

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Lara Logan was nowhere in the story, not in the interview and not in the story itself, either in the TV version, broadcast on the CBS Evening News or the web version posted on the networks CBSNews.com.  What was uncommon is that two times in the web version it say’s Logan talked with the terrorist and implied she conducted or had some kind of direct hand in interviewing Hekmatyar herself.

ERSNews contacted CBS News in New York and spoke with Evening News spokesman Jennifer Farley.  ERSNews: "Did Logan conduct this interview?  Was she in the country at the time?  If she didn’t conduct the interview, who did?  How was the videotape obtained?" Farley really didn’t know the answers and promised to get back to us by email.   Later her reply was that Logan was not in Afghanistan at the time and that a she was not involved in the interview in any way.  She emailed a written response to the questions

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ERSNews followed up with several other questions about exactly how CBS News had obtained this tape and how the story was put together as an exclusive interview with Lara Logan. We are still waiting for the answers.

CBS News should have disclosed the fact their Chief Foreign Correspondent was not involved in the actual interview in any way, shape, or form.  Logan was simply fronting the story.

The headline and picture caption, which suggests Logan had a sit-down with this Afghan warlord who is on the run and being hunted by the U.S. Military, is not just misleading, it’s false.  That’s not journalism, even if you were one of Glamour Magazine’s Women of the Year in 2007!  

 

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‘Rubashkin Meat Scandal is much worse than you think’

Posted on June 21, 2008 by Luke Ford

From projectusa.org:

Agriprocessors, you see, has two lucrative and pernicious schemes going. One scheme involves driving wages down to bare subsistence by hiring desperately poor illegal immigrants to work in its slaughterhouse—the criminal enterprise that made the news last week. The other involves fraudently claiming that the United States has run out of native-born meat-cutters and then, with the help of American Immigration Lawyers Association member Christopher Teras, securing work visas for foreigners worth $30,000 each on the street in Guangzhou.

If it is the pattern and practice of Mr. Rubashkin, the sponsoring employer, Mr. Teras, the immigration lawyer, and Mr. Hu Shu Bin, almost certainly the agent of the sponsoring employer, to sponsor employees who consistently leave after two weeks, or who never show up in Postville at all, it militates against a finding that there ever was any intent to employ the alien for a reasonable period of time. The employer’s defense of employment intent is removed. He is indictable. He and all parties are amenable to being charged with conspiracy, racketeering, labor certification fraud, money laundering, making false statements, and, perhaps, tax evasion. [ US Code ]

Unquestionably profitable

The Department of Homeland Security severely restricts the public’s access to information it possesses about, for example, the number of visa applications a particular attorney has executed (why?). Therefore, it is difficult to say how much profit the Teras-Postville scheme generated.

However, Mr. Timmerman, Ms. Kim, and Mr. Hu all claimed, according to the charging document in the Hu case, that the Teras-Postville scheme generated "hundreds" of such cases.

Let’s say the Teras-Postville scheme collaborated on 200 such visas. At $30,000 per person, 200 such entries would have generated $6 million.

But hundreds of such cases? Isn’t it a little hard to believe such a large scale fraud involving so many people could go undetected for years?

The famous case against an immigration lawyer named Samuel Kooritzky is instructive. While in that case labor certifications were being filed for nonexistent businesses, or for business that actually existed, but without the business’s knowledge that the certifications were being filed, the Kooritzky case shows how the scheme operates, and on what potential scale. A DOL special agent testified at Kooritzky’s trial in December, 2002, that the immigration lawyer "filed 2,200 phony labor applications last year alone." Kooritzky v. Herman DC U.S. Court of Appeals, 1999

From an article by Tom Jackman, who covered the Kooritzky case for the Washington Post:

"There’s every reason to believe this is going on all over the country," said Ben Ferro, a former INS district director in Baltimore. Ferro said the INS doesn’t have enough agents to track internal visa schemes, particularly with increased border scrutiny and other changes in priorities since Sept. 11. "There are many, many areas of immigration law that, because INS doesn’t have the ability or willingness to monitor and stamp them out, it goes unchecked," he said. "And when these things are found, they’re usually only prosecuted when they reach the kinds of numbers you’re talking about here."

Kooritzky was convicted of filing thousands of petitions and led away from the courtroom in handcuffs to serve time in prison. But there is more to the Kooritzky case.

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Leah Kleim Never Ceases To Shock

Posted on June 21, 2008 by Luke Ford

She posts:


My husband (the guy in the cowboy hat) got me real drunk one night.
He let his brother Tom Roe Fuck me.
I was all tequilad up, he force fed the tequila to me.

His brother fucked the shit outa me.
A goy is a goy is a goy, I guess this is my punishment
for marrying a shaigetz.

His brother is the fat ass in the picture with the goatee.
My husband, Dennis Roe also did some really sick shit to me
that night. I’m probably gonna get my ass kicked for posting
this, but such is life.

A friend emails Luke: "Her husband and his brother raped her one day after forcing alcohol on her.  Now she fears he’ll beat her after reading this post.  Doesn’t she have family or friends that can help her get away before it’s too late?"

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How Would God Vote?

Posted on June 21, 2008 by Luke Ford

Joseph Farrah writes:

In this presidential election year, many Americans are wondering how to vote – or even if they should vote.

Into this quandary enters a new book by David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute with the audacious title "How Would God Vote: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative."

My reaction? Color me skeptical.

After reviewing what the Bible says about some of the major issues of the day, Klinghoffer concludes:

  • abortion is OK before the 40th day of pregnancy;
  • paying reparations to African-Americans for the slavery experienced by some of their ancestors should not be ruled out;
  • there is no natural, God-given right to bear arms for the purpose of self-defense;
  • God would support President Bush’s attempts at "comprehensive immigration reform," including a form of amnesty for illegal aliens;

If that is a "conservative" agenda, I’m glad I am not a "conservative" but rather an independent-minded American faithful to the U.S. Constitution and guided by his own understanding of God’s Word.

…Arms and self-defense: The Bible couldn’t be much clearer on this issue. The Israelites were expected to have their own personal weapons. Every man would be summoned to arms when the nation confronted an enemy. They didn’t send in the Marines. The people defended themselves. In 1 Samuel 25:13, we read: "And David said unto his men, Gird ye on every man his sword. And they girded on every man his sword; and David also girded on his sword: and there went up after David about four hundred men; and two hundred abode by the stuff." Every man had a sword and every man picked it up when it was required.

 

  • Judges 5:8 reminds us of what happens to a foolish nation that chooses to disarm: "They chose new gods; then was war in the gates: was there a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel?" The answer to the rhetorical question is clear: No. The people had rebelled against God and put away their weapons of self-defense.

    "Blessed be the LORD my strength which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight," David writes in Psalms 144:1. Clearly, this is not a pacifist God we serve. It’s God who teaches our hands to war and our fingers to fight. Over and over again throughout the Old Testament, His people are commanded to fight with the best weapons available to them at that time. And what were those weapons? Swords. They didn’t have firearms, but they had sidearms. In fact, in the New Testament, Jesus commanded His disciples to buy them and strap them on. Luke 22:36: "Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one." Some skeptics will cite Matthew 26:52-54 – how Jesus responded when Peter used his sword to cut off the ear of a servant of the high priest: "Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" Read those verses in context and they support my position. Jesus told Peter he would be committing suicide to choose a fight in this situation – as well as undermining God’s plan to allow Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection. Jesus told Peter to put his sword in its place – at his side. He didn’t say throw it away. After all, He had just ordered the disciples to arm themselves. The reason for the arms was obviously to protect the lives of the disciples, not the life of the Son of God. What Jesus was saying was: "Peter, this is not the right time for a fight."

    WND published the best book on this subject, "Shooting Back: The Right and Duty of Self-Defense" as well as a DVD documentary on the topic of the same name. I highly recommend both if you want more clarification.

  • Illegal immigration and border security: I have put together a series of Bible studies on this issue. I would recommend you read them in their entirety. But, in short, God created the nations. And He doesn’t think much of people who try to obliterate borders and tamper with His creation.

     

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