Hard to Believe but....

[Catholic Relief Services helicopter bringing emergency supplies to Goncaives, Haiti. Catholics don't actually care about the Haitians, they are just sending aid to make themselves look good.]

There has been a lot of criticism of Israeli aid to Haiti coming from exactly those from whom one would expect it to come. The argument is made that Israeli aid is merely done to be seen to be doing good, not to aid the Haitians.

This is a good example of the intellectual dishonesty of Israel's enemies. I do not say "critics" because being a critic implies good faith.

Does one imagine that these soi-disant "critics" would have been kind to Israel if she had sent no aid? I don't think so. Yet they are silent about the glaring omission of the wealthy Arab states to send a dime or a box of bread. At the same time the Arabs are sending nothing at all, Israel is sending more, proportional to her population, than any other country.

The United States and Canada are sending aid. Every country in Europe is sending aid. Mexico and Turkey which both have experience of devastating earthquakes, are sending aid. Cuba and Venezuela are sending aid. China and Japan are sending aid. The UN is sending aid. Yet only Israel's motives are questioned.

A hundred countries send aid, yet the pseudo-Leftist enemies single out Israel's program, generally agreed to be among the fastest and most effective in delivering emergency aid, to deny the decency of their motives.

Nothing explains this enmity to the Jewish state except hostility to Jews. It is customary to close our eyes and pretend that "criticism of Israel is not necessarily anti-semitism". But neither is it necessarily not anti-semitism.

This is an example of Israel's enemies on the pseudo-Left inadvertently showing their true racist faces by omitting to connect their hostility to Israel to even a putative issue.

Observations from Real Life

If you have persistent problems with your underwear, it is possible you have them on backwards.

Ross claims this is true

Ross' mother-in-law is a lady of a certain age who regards Ross and Faith's home in the El Cerrito hills to be on the benighted frontier as compared to the more settled parts with which she is familiar. Such as Brooklyn. Consistent with her attitudes about El Cerrito and California generally are her attitudes about Ross whom she considers to be little better than a savage.

Ross spends his days rectifying torts the polyglot denizens of Fremont inflict on each other by recovering damages for them from their respective insurance companies. He also wears a large fedora which he never takes off unless he is in the shower or in bed. For the usual reason. He prays as fervently as the others in the schule and as sincerely partakes of the iced vodka shots at the oneg shabbat afterwards (one of the perks of Orthodoxy) and the occasional surreptitious toke.

Ross would be the first to admit that his mother-in-law may have a point that there more than a few places about him where the veneer of civilization runs thin. But withal he is an attentive family man unto uxorious.

Anyway, his kids have a pet bunny, an enormous Belgian Giant the size of a cocker spaniel. In the usual laissez faire manner of the Meltzer family, the bunny is not restricted to his cage but wanders the house freely, usually behind the furniture. In summer the doors are left open for the bunny to nibble the outdoor foliage at his leisure.

Ross' mother-in-law, unexpectedly seeing the bunny emerging from behind a sofa was heard to remark disapprovingly, "See, if you leave the doors open, eventually you get rabbits."

The Connecticut Compromise in Action

[Strom Thurmond filibustering the 1957 Civil Rights bill]

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which at the time was only a constitutional convention, the small states feared a federal government dominated by the big states. The big states thought it only fair that representation be by population.

After much wrangling, now called Debate, they settled on the Connecticut Compromise. The House of Representatives was to be elected by the people and apportioned by population. The Senate was to be elected by the state legislatures, two by each state. This arrangement now appears in Article 1 of the Constitution.

In 1911, during the Progressive Era, the 17th Amendment changed this to election of senators by the people of each state, but affirmed that each state would continue to have two senators regardless of population.

The results of the Connecticut Compromise today are that the ten largest states have half the US population but only 20 senators out of 100. The twenty largest states have 70% of the population and 40 senators, not even enough to break a filibuster. 77% of the population have half the votes, 23% the other half. California, the largest state, has as many people as the 20 smallest states combined. They have 40 senators; we have 2.

Populations of small states tend to be more rural, more conservative, more religious, less educated, more Republican, and more white than big state urban populations.

The Senate has a rule that a supermajority of 60 votes are needed to end debate on a measure though only 51 are needed to pass it. "End debate" is a euphemism for breaking a filibuster(defeating a measure by preventing it from coming to a vote). Until 1975 a two thirds supermajority was required to end debate.

Thus the Senate, in which a majority of the senators are elected by a minority of the people, can be obstructed by a minority of the senators. Such a minority within a minority is what, a superminority?

I read this remarkable paragraph in Wikipedia,

Current U.S. practice

Budget bills are governed under special rules called "reconciliation" which do not allow filibusters. Reconciliation once only applied to bills that would reduce the budget deficit, but since 1996 it has been used for all matters related to budget issues.

A filibuster can be defeated by the majority party if they leave the debated issue on the agenda indefinitely, without adding anything else. Indeed, Strom Thurmond's own attempt to filibuster the Civil Rights Act was defeated when Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield refused to refer any further business to the Senate, which required the filibuster to be kept up indefinitely. Instead, the opponents were all given a chance to speak, and the matter eventually was forced to a vote. Thurmond's afore-mentioned stall holds the record for the longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history at 24 hours, 37 minutes.

Even if a filibuster attempt is unsuccessful, the process takes valuable floor time. In recent years the majority has preferred to avoid filibusters by moving to other business when a filibuster is threatened and attempts to achieve cloture have failed.

In the modern filibuster, the senators trying to block a vote do not have to hold the floor and continue to speak as long as there is a quorum. In the past, when one senator became exhausted, another would need to take over to continue the filibuster. Ultimately, the filibuster could be exhausted by a majority who would even sleep in cots outside the Senate Chamber to exhaust the filibusterers. Today, the minority just advises the majority leader that the filibuster is on. All debate on the bill is stopped until either cloture is voted by three-fifths (now 60 votes) of the Senate. Some modern Senate critics have called for a return to the old dramatic endurance contest but that would inconvenience all senators who would have to stay in session 24/7 until the filibuster is broken.^[27]

It would inconvenience them? That is why we don't have a medical insurance reform bill? Because it would inconvenience the senators? Wikipedia articles,including this one, generally seem pretty level-headed and reasonable. But I cannot believe that that is all there is to it. But that is what the current practice seems to be. There is no C-Span footage of senators making fools of themselves reading endless nonsense into the Congressional Record so as to stay at the podium indefinitely, as there was during civil rights era filibusters. Just bloodless vote-counting without the filibusterers being forced to filibuster.

With this week's election in Massachusetts, the issue has come sharply into focus. With the election of a Republican to fill the late Ted Kennedy's senate seat, the Democrats now have 59 senators, one short of the number needed to vote cloture.

In the civil rights era when a two-thirds majority was required to break a filibuster, filibusters were eventually broken and the Civil Rights bills of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights bill of 1969 were all passed over bitter Southern opposition.

The ability of the majority of the people of the United States to express their will and, one might say, to govern themselves, has come down to the nicety of whether filibusterers must literally filibuster or can do it by senatorial courtesy.

For once not a laughing matter

[High winds in northern California have blown down many trees]

If hazardous tree failure for once is not a laughing matter, then why are we laughing?

Hi-tech incomprehensibility edging closer; actually intruding

My house is rented for the week to a software company that does not have a brick-and-mortar office. They all work out of their houses and do everything they do online. On the rare occasion they get together for facetime they rent a house like mine. I looked at their website and it said they do cloud computing for medium size companies. WTF is cloud computing?

NASA thinks this is cool; I do too

Click on the arrow

Welcome home

As I rolled my suitcase up the BART path, having taken the last train from the airport, under the salmon lamplight I heard the sweet high-pitched chorus of the thousand little frogs who during wet weather live in a muddy weed patch between the path and a high concrete retaining wall. There was something so merry and joyful in the chorus that I was even more glad to be home. Given the unexplained worldwide die-off of frogs this was a happier chorus still.

Though it was after one am there was warm light from an upstairs bedroom where one of the software engineers/programmers who have rented the house for a week was keeping late hours. The welcome became problematic when I discovered that the windstorm had broken off a huge branch from Gus the Redwood Tree. It missed smashing the car but is blocking the driveway, giving me something to do first thing in the morning. Welcome home.

Dead Pool 2010 - Harvey's Picks

Here they are, read 'em and weep. 1. Stephen Hawking 2. Annette Funicello 3. Steve Jobs 4. Billy Graham 5. Kim Jung il 6. Ariel Sharon 7. Kirk Douglas 8. Elizabeth Edwards 9. Amy Winehouse 10. Rush Limbaugh (wishful thinking) Harvey

Jack's picks -

1. Pope Benedict XVI
2. Elizabeth II
3. George H. W. Bush
4. Nelson Mandela
5. Jacques Chirac
6. Robert Downey, Jr.
7. Hugh Hefner
8. Henry Kissinger
9. Tony Bennett
10. Mir Hussein Mousavi

Harvey and I have both been conservative and picked mainly dying hulks. Sharon and Hawking literaly. But his pick of Steven Jobs and mine of Robert Downey, Jr. are daring stabs at middle-aged people. I narrowly escaped making a fool of myself by picking Andy Warhol. Warhol died in 1987.

The Sixties

It is said that if you remember the Sixties you weren't there. Too late we realize they weren't talking about the Nineteen Sixties.....

Yet Another Amazing Coincidence

[Delta flight 253 - Amsterdam ==> Detroit]

We all know that it is Islamophobic racism to imagine a connection between Islam and terrorism. So it came as a great surprise to all that the man who attempted to kill himself and 283 other people aboard an Airbus-300 jetliner, just happened to be a Muslim.

A 23 year old Nigerian, Abdul Mudallad set off an incendiary device strapped to his leg. during the flight. Apparently a devout practicing idiot, Mudallad succeeded only in setting fire to his trousers and leg before flight attendants put him out by throwing water on him.

Is there something odd about Muslims getting upset about Islamophobia and demanding full and generous tolerance of themselves and their religion, yet themselves tolerating no one? Until Jews and Christians have equal rights and status with Muslims in Muslim countries, I see no reason why Muslims are entitled to ask for equal rights and status in western countries.

We may want to extend equal rights to all for reasons of our constitution and our own notions of equal treatment. It does not follow that Muslims have any right or moral standing to ask for equal treatment, let alone demand it. The correct answer to charges of Islamophobia is to laugh in the hypocrites' faces.

RTFM

Click on the cartoon to enlarge.

Consumer Product Information

Water stains on plaster are a common annoyance of old houses. They have to be primered before they can be painted over.

I bought the most widely used primer paint, which is also the cheapest, Kilz II. I tried it and it didn't work. The stain went through it like prunes through a baby. So I went back and got the Glidden primer. It is a few dollars more but one can see right away that it is much better paint.

It doesn't work either but you feel much better about yourself after you use it. The stain went through it like the government through money. When it is dry I will go back and get oil-based primer.

Wafa Sultan

Can a religious culture with 1.3 billion adherents be defeated? Can it be radically transformed? Perhaps, if it has 650 million internal opponents. Doctor Sultan shows how.

Sad News

[Oral Roberts]

Long-time evangelist Oral Roberts has died at 91. He is survived by his brother Anal and his sister Vaginal.

In Yet Another Amazing Coincidence....

[a short bald squat bespectacled man in a sweater-vest]

I was as astonished as anyone that, amazingly, the man who murdered a woman and shot five others at a Jewish Federation office in Seattle just happened to be a Muslim. Just as Major Hasan just happened to be a Muslim. And AbdulSalam Zahiri who murdered his professor at Binghampton who just happened to be a Muslim. And John Muhammad, the Viriginia overpass sniper, just happened to be a Muslim. And the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 massacres in New York and Washington just happened to be Muslims.

From today's Seattle Times-

Haq convicted on all counts in Jewish Federation shootings

A King County jury this morning found Naveed Haq guilty of eight counts, including aggravated first-degree murder, in the 2006 shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. The murder verdict carries an automatic life sentence for Haq.

The jury also found Haq, 34, guilty of five counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of unlawful imprisonment and one count of malicious harassment, the state's hate-crime law.

Haq showed no reaction as the verdicts were read, but several people in the courtroom tearfully hugged.

Several of the victims were seated in the courtroom this morning as the verdicts were read. They testified during both trials, reliving what happened when Haq walked into the federation offices on July 28, 2006, and started shooting indiscriminately at employees. Killed was Pamela Waechter, 58, and wounded were Cheryl Stumbo, Carol Goldman, Dayna Klein, Christina Rexroad and Layla Bush.

Prosecutors said he was driven by a hatred for Israel.

Prosecutors also introduced as evidence audio recordings from 10 phone calls Haq placed to his family after his arrest. In the calls, recorded by the King County Jail, Haq told his mother he was "a soldier of Islam."

Witnesses testified that Haq, who is of Pakistani heritage, railed against Jews and U.S.-Israeli policies as he opened fire in the Jewish Federation, an umbrella organization for the local Jewish community that raises money for social-welfare organizations, runs youth and adult educational programs, and engages in efforts in support of Israel.

On the 911 tape, which the prosecution played for jurors on Oct. 21, the opening day of the trial, Haq said he was tired of the world ignoring the Muslim point of view.

"I don't care if I die," Haq said to the dispatcher. "This is just to make a point."

Haq made a point, just not the one he intended. How many murders will it take before we take Naveed Haq's point to heart? His unwitting point is that no matter how seemingly harmless an individual Muslim might seem, murder is never far away.

It would be politically incorrect to say Haq's motive for murder and attempted murder was Islam. It would however be correct in every other way.

At what point do we drop the fig leaf of pretending away the obvious? This just has to stop. Immigration from Muslim countries to the US must be restricted.

Buddy Greene

Getting Naked

[In the beginning....]

Today I was in the shower thinking about the meaning of it all. I used to think about stuff like that more when I was younger but I gave it up because it always led to the same set of conclusions - that underneath appearances, things are really patterns and processes. But now I am starting to think about those kinds of things again.

It occurred to me once that the Big Bang means that everything has a common origin, that everything that happens is a common process. That the universe is all one big thing, not a bunch of smaller things. It means that only one big thing is happening, not a bunch of smaller things. Or at least that that is one legitimate way to look at it. In our tiny part of it, all life has common ancestors. All living things are cousins.

And our individual lives are not just patterns and processes, in modern parlance they are programs running on the matter of our bodies. Death is when the matter reboots and the program and data ones and zeroes are simultaneously set to all zeroes. Where we go after death is where that email message you worked on writing for an hour goes when your pc crashes. We don't go anywhere. Like your email message, we just aren't there any more.

And at last, in the shower I understood a passage in Spinoza that had gone over my head when I read it. I had thought that Hashem is the universe, the entirety of everything that is, and everything that has ever happened, and the entirely of everything that ever will happen. The short expression for that is the whole space-time continuum from the Big Bang until the end of time. In scientific terms, it is the synclastic infidibulum, or SI.

But I never much liked that formulation because it is both materialist and pantheist. Those are both deadend philosophies and unsatisfying because they don't help one understand things any better than one already does. They don't lead anywhere.

Spinoza described that Everything that ever was, is, or ever will be, as the face of G_d. But that face he said, was only a part of the whole, the way a surface is only an aspect of a solid object.

So what the hell is the rest? What is Hashem? In the shower it occurred to me that the entirety of all that ever was, is, or will be - the SI - is what is or can be known by human beings. And the rest, presumably vastly more, is the unknowable. The sum of the knowable and unknowable is Hashem.

What is peculiar about this definition is that it depends in part on human beings. The boundary between the two realms within Hashem is set by human intelligence and by human history. We can only know what we can understand with our intelligence. And we can only know what we have found out so far in our history.

The common scientific (a pretentious word for materialist) atheist explainer says that nothing is unknowable. In the end everything will yield to human intelligence and inquiry. This is a grand statement, coming from a ground ape. And flatly contradicted by quantum mechanics.

But Hashem in a sense is no different than people. At first all one knows of them is their surface, their face. As one gets to know them better one learns more about them, begins to see beneath the surface. When one develops an intimate relationship, comes to love them, one sees deeper still. One accepts them, and feels their nature more even than one understands it.

I remember one time actually listening to the Jewish liturgy rather than just stumbling through its seemingly endless pieties. And what struck me how emphatically and persistently it expresses the love of life and of the world. Much of our liturgy is ancient, written in times when brutal persecutions and the worst imaginable miseries were not history nor somewhere else but here and now and every day. And it was those very people who wrote that liturgy. How was that possible? Was it just fantasy and escapism? Were they crazy and in denial? No, they were the most reality-oriented people of their time - merchants, doctors, lawyers, scholars, advisers to princes.

I think they must have regarded the pogroms, inquisitions, expropriations, expulsions, plagues, and famines that befell them as we regard the tantrums of a beloved child. Their love of the world ran deeper than the current woe.

My Time in Life

Click on cartoon to enlarge it.

Once, after my father died, I had a powerfully disturbing dream about him. He was in some semi-other world and was becoming more remote because he was losing interest in this world, and in me. He was becoming detached. He was drifting away and would never return.

Lou Grant wearing a tuxedo, drinking heavily in a bar, to Mary Richards: "First came the separation. then the divorce. Now she's remarried. Mary, don't you see what it all means?"
Mary: "No. What?"
Lou: "It means Edie and I are drifting apart."

Only later did I realize that I felt that he left me because he didn't love me enough to stay. And that it was my fault for not having been a good enough son nor a success for him to want to stay. I woke up devastated.

That day Harvey and I were playing tennis and I told him about my dream.  Harvey said that learning how to die was our task in life as we got into (and now beyond) middle age.

The death of my friend Jay Trachman two weeks ago has brought mortality sharply to the front of my concerns. And I know what to do about it too. Harvey more than once has told me what to do about life, and thus how to get ready for death - "Get on with it"

from today's New York Times:

A 46-year-old Binghamton University graduate student from Saudi Arabia was charged on Saturday with killing a retired anthropology professor, a specialist in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, with whom he had worked, the authorities said. The student, Abdulsalam S. al-Zahrani, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of the professor, Richard T. Antoun, who was stabbed in his office in the university’s Science I building on Friday afternoon

Since we know from frequent reassurance that there is no connection between Islam and violence, this was yet another in a seemingly endless string of amazing coincidences reaching back to the time of Muhammad.

Here is a quote from SUNY-Binghamton's website:

Shaping Your Future

Binghamton University offers over 55 graduate programs within an exciting, culturally diverse community. The University’s suburban and urban campuses foster world-renowned research, scholarship and creative exploration, augmenting the already distinguished legacy and international reputation of the Graduate School and its world-class scholar-teachers.

Perhaps it is time to reconsider this conventional fantasy about multiculturalism and diversity in light of persistent Muslim violence. Diversity is good if it produces benefits to the community. Muslims are demonstrating that diversity is not a good in itself.