September 23, 2008
Mr. Ploni Almoni
Brooklyn, NY
Dear Mr. Almoni:
After receiving your invitation to participate in Yeshiva Torah Temimah’s Sefer Torah writing campaign, I felt a strong sense of Achrayus to share my feelings with you regarding this campaign and the reasons I am refusing to participate.
As you know, Yeshiva Torah Temimah has been at the forefront of the child abuse scandal that has been rocking the frum community for the last several years. The recent conviction of one of the school’s Rebbeim only serves to underscore the darkest realities about this scandal: the decades-long cover-up which occurred at the hands of the school’s administration. Even more troubling, additional high-ranking individuals in the frum community – referred to by many as “gedolim” – have also been implicated in the cover-up, the intimidation of victims and witnesses, and the maintenance of the status quo.
As both a frum Jew and a member of the law enforcement community, I must tell you how repulsed and outraged I am at the sheer magnitude of the crimes now coming to light. While the actual abuse itself – a criminal act, as well as an obvious manifestation of psychological disturbance – clearly deserves both speedy prosecution and wholesale condemnation, what is to be said for the individuals in authority who clearly knew of the abuse, and allowed it to continue? Which words could we use to describe the evil of the so-called “rabbis” – not abusers themselves – who so completely disregarded the welfare of the untold numbers of children for whom they were responsible? To know of the abuse of even one child, and to disregard it – or worse, to cover it up…..is an unthinkable violation of law, halacha, and simple humanity.
In the eyes of our religion, many comparisons are made between a Jew and a Sefer Torah. Your audacity at heading a drive to write a Sefer Torah to be put into the hands of an individual who covered-up the physical and spiritual abuse of so many precious Jewish children – Sifrei Torah all – is beyond my comprehension. Given the magnitude of the crimes that have been perpetrated, I find such a project to be a Zi’uf Hatorah, and I condemn it wholeheartedly.
Sadly, this topic has generated a great deal of intimidation against many in the frum community, resulting in an eerie silence on this most troubling issue, even from those in leadership positions. In these remaining days before the יום הדין, I refuse to acquiesce to the silence. Please ensure that you never send me any solicitations for support of Yeshiva Torah Temimah again.
Sincerely,
Daniel E. Sosnowik
The writer, an Orthodox Jew, has been a member of the New York City Police Department for 25 years.
100 comments:
Link to letter from Rav Eliashiv shlita regarding calling police in child abuse situations
http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2008/09/child-abuse-calling-police-rav-eliashiv.html
Not good!
Let the chips fall wherever they may. The FBI announced investigations of Freddie, Fannie, AIG, Lehman and their CEOs. This stinks so bad - for all I know Paulson is trying to ram the bailout through Congress because he knows what goes on in these institutions and may be involved himself. The chutzpah - he goes to Congress and says this bailout must happen this week or else! Like a used car salesman - buy this car today ($700 Billion) or no deal tomorrow!
------------------------
McCain Aide’s Firm Was Paid by Freddie Mac
By JACKIE CALMES and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK - THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: September 23, 2008
WASHINGTON-- One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager from the end of 2005 through last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement. The disclosure contradicts a statement Sunday night by Mr. McCain that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had no involvement with the company for the last several years. Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the people said.
Excellently written letter! As equally distasteful are the works of Moshe Eisemann which continue to be published by Artscroll Publications. This is a direct slap in the face of his numerous victims and a desecration of our holy Torah. These books (including his commentary on Nach) need to be put away in genizah immediately. They must be recalled and Artscroll must cease and desist from further publication. I would like everyone to write a letter to Rabbi Nosson Sherman and express their outrage. Eisemann must also be moved off the campus of Ner Israel immediately.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/21/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast1
Yoel Kreus is known locally in the Mea Shearim area of the city as the 'manager of operations'. He describes himself as a 'shmira', a Hebrew word that translates as 'watcher of Israel'. 'I make sure the rabbis' decisions happen ... I help you to be a moral person,' he said.
Much of Kreus's time is spent checking out reports of illicit use of new technologies by members of the Haredi community. 'If we discover someone has a computer at home we throw the children out of school,' he said. Enforcing dictates on women's behaviour is another vital part of his brief.
He runs a library housing copies of the enormous notices pasted on the walls of Mea Shearim and other religious neighbourhoods berating women for wearing wigs instead of scarves and advertising appropriate dress on buses.
Signs warning women not to enter if they are wearing trousers, short sleeves or a skirt above the knees, hang in the neighbourhood. One is affixed outside Kreus's two-room house where he lives with his wife and 11 children. 'Every week there's a complaint about the way women dress,' said Kreus.
Extraordinarily, he admitted to slashing the tyres of women who have driven into the neighbourhood who, he said, were indecently dressed. 'There was a mess with the police,' he said. 'Now I'm trying new creative methods, not using violence. Now I make a small hole in their tyres and the air deflates slowly. I'm not destroying their car.'
Kreus said that in a few weeks, when religious Jews will dance to celebrate the receiving of the Torah, men and women would rejoice separately, breaking a 50- year tradition of the sexes mingling in this neighbourhood during this event.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2008/09/_in_the_age_of.html
Guy James is the owner of that homicidal hound known as Congo that was in the news earlier in the year after it attacked and nearly killed a temporary employee of James who was preparing his house in Princeton for a party.
James then began a campaign to save the dog from a well-deserved trip to the execution chamber. The Jersey Guys of NJ 101.5 radio actually fell for this guy's absurd plea that his dog should be spared the death sentence after chewing for three minutes on a worker that James had hired to power-wash his 10-acre estate.
And then Assemblyman Neil Cohen, a Democrat from Union County, sponsored "Congo's Law," perhaps the first and hopefully the last bill that will ever be named in honor of a dog that did its best to kill an innocent man.
Where are they now?
Well Neil Cohen resigned in disgrace after kiddie porn was found on his legislative office computer. Granted, that had nothing to do with the Congo case, but it gives some insight into the judgment of a politician who would take the side of a dog that attacked an innocent man.
Check this article from the Trenton Times:
"Police charge Congo's owner"
LAWRENCE -- Guy James, the Princeton Township father who passionately pleaded in public for the life of his family's German shepherd Congo after it attacked a landscaper last year, has been charged with shoplifting more than $500 worth of food from a supermarket here, police confirmed.
James, 47, of Stuart Road West, was arrested Friday evening after allegedly trying to leave the ShopRite at Mercer Mall off of Route 1 with $587.71 in food.
Police, and the store, allege James collected $850.52 worth of items from the kosher aisle, but scanned only $262.71 of the items at a self-checkout register.
A store loss prevention officer watched the transaction on store security cameras and stopped James as he was leaving the store, detaining him in the store's security office until police arrived, a police spokesman said.
The store called police at about 5:15 p.m. and township police later charged James with shoplifting. He was released from police headquarters with a complaint summons a short time later, police said.
Reached last night on his cell phone, James, who listed his occupation with police as a market trader, said he had no comment.
Congo was one of five pet dogs that mauled Trenton landscaper Giovanni Rivera on the morning of June 5, 2007, as he arrived to work on Guy and Elizabeth James' 10-acre property.
Princeton Township's municipal court Judge Russell Annich Jr. ruled four months later that Congo, but not the other four dogs, was "vicious" and ordered the dog destroyed.
The James family disputed Annich's conclusion that the attack was unprovoked and started a public relations campaign to save Congo, quickly winning huge public support and national attention from animal lovers.
Hundreds of protesters showed up at the municipal building in defense of Congo. Supporters in favor of sparing the dog's life sent a record number of calls, letters and e-mails to Gov. Jon Corzine's office, which reported at the time that Congo's fate was the biggest public response on any issue in his tenure.
In April, the Jameses won Congo's life through an agreement with the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office. The Jameses agreed to pay a $250 fine and abide by a list of rules and limitations on Congo and the four other pets.
In exchange, the prosecutor's office agreed it would not seek to put Congo to death or label the other dogs "potentially dangerous."
But two months later, in June, Congo was voluntarily euthanized by the Jameses when the dog and three others jumped on Elizabeth James' mother, Constance Ladd, 75, of Branchburg, at their Stuart Road West home.
Ladd suffered four apparent bite wounds and was hospitalized, officials said.
Guy James said in June the incident was not an attack and that his mother-in-law's wounds did not include any bites.
But he said he and his wife thought they didn't have much choice except to have all four dogs euthanized and did not want another protracted legal fight with Princeton Township officials.
Hey Shafran, get the Novominsker on the phone. I'm wondering how that would go over if we honored the owner of a vicious hundt at the Agudah dinner. It's mistomme ok as long as it's not a kelev hachozer al keeyo like people who expose molesters.
come on folks lets all go to the event and as they sing we should sing kolko kolko kolko
that way they will know we dont approve of hiding molesters
GENEVA (Reuters) - The huge particle collider built to simulate the conditions of the "Big Bang" will not restart until Kolko returns as a rebbe to Torah Temimah, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said Tuesday.
I thought she was a friend of the Klal. This disgrace of a YU professor is joining the anti-Semitic movement to stop eruvin.
Judges in several jurisdictions have put a stop to this nonsense, ruling that an eruv does nothing to interfere with anyone else's lives.
http://www.27east.com/story_detail.cfm?id=169065
The Southampton Press
Group opposed to religious boundary files opinion
By Jessica DiNapoli
A group that objects to an invisible religious boundary proposed for Westhampton Beach has submitted a preliminary opinion, drafted by a constitutional law expert, outlining why the village should reject the application filed by the Hampton Synagogue.
On September 17, the Alliance for the Separation of Church and State in the Greater Westhampton Area submitted the unsolicited letter written by Marci Hamilton, who holds the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at the Cardozo School of Law in New York City, to the village for its consideration in ongoing deliberations on the proposed boundary, called an eruv. Attorney Bruce Rosen of the New Jersey-based firm McCusker, Anselmi, Rosen & Carvelli, also helped author the letter.
A longer, more fleshed-out opinion on the matter will be submitted later in the month, according to Ms. Hamilton.
In February, the Hampton Synagogue submitted an application to the village asking for a proclamation for the eruv, a religious boundary that permits Orthodox Jews to push and carry objects on Saturdays, their Sabbath. Controversy regarding the eruv swamped the village and, in late May, the synagogue temporarily withdrew the application in order to educate the village on the boundary. The eruv would be demarcated by black plastic piping mounted on telephone poles located within a one-square-mile area of the village.
Ms. Hamilton’s letter outlines the reasons why the village should not approve the eruv, as well as some of its potential ramifications. The letter states that it “provides an overview of the Alliance’s primary concerns regarding the constitutionality of the [eruv] petition.”
The letter, which cites a variety of different court cases, states that the “an eruv is not constitutionally mandated.” It also points out that the alliance is “concerned that [the eruv] would be constitutionally impermissible.”
The controversy created by the eruv application spawned the creation of the Alliance for the Separation of Church and State in Greater Westhampton Inc., an effort spearheaded in part by retired attorney and Westhampton Beach resident Mark Williams.
Mr. Williams said he had no comment on the letter, stating that the document should “speak for itself.” Ms. Hamilton also stated that she had no comment on the letter.
Mr. Rosen, who previously worked for the Borough of Tenafly in that municipality’s losing battle against the creation of an eruv, also declined to comment on the letter filed with Westhampton Beach officials.
Westhampton Beach Mayor Conrad Teller, who has been reticent to state his opinion on the eruv, said the letter is “informational.”
“Our attorney [Bo Bishop] recognizes some of the cases cited,” Mr. Teller said of the letter. “His report and our other attorney’s report, which we have not gotten yet, will be reviewed by the attorney and board prior to making any further comments on it.”
Mr. Teller and Mr. Bishop declined to elaborate further regarding the letters, which was not solicited by the village.
Synagogue officials have previously stated that they would re-submit the eruv application to the village in the fall. They have yet to re-file the application and, according to Mr. Teller, have given no indication when they would do so.
Marc Schneier, the founding rabbi of the Hampton Synagogue, did not return calls this week.
Meanwhile, the village has hired Maureen Liccione, an attorney at Garden City-based Jaspan Schlesinger Hoffman LLP, to review constitutional issues regarding the eruv.
Ms. Hamilton’s letter outlines three other concerns that the alliance has in regard to the eruv. The first concern notes that permitting the eruv goes against the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, an amendment that mandates the separation of church and state. Ms. Hamilton’s letter states that the proclamation the village would have to issue to allow the eruv would be “[carrying] out religious law,” which, she explains in the letter, is a violation of the constitution.
The second concern notes that with the application, “the government is being asked to publicly and officially recognize a boundary line drawn solely according to religious identity.” In the letter, Ms. Hamilton points out a case involving Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic community in Orange County, New York, to support her argument against the boundary.
The third concern notes that if it approves the eruv, the village would endorse “the religious meaning” of the boundary and support a “geographically identified enclave.” The letter states that a “reasonable observer who is not part of that religious community would reasonably believe that the government has endorsed encouraging a particular group to occupy a certain portion of the village.”
The letter goes on to state that this endorsement of a particular religious group—in this instance, Orthodox Jews—would cause the “departure of persons from other religious groups.”
Arnold Sheiffer, the president of the newly formed group called Jewish People Opposed to the Eruv, said Ms. Hamilton’s letter “upholds some of the many things we talked about” during his group’s inaugural meeting earlier this month. “There is a constitutional basis to turn [the eruv] down.”
Dear Member,
What an incredible year this has been for us, survivors of sexual abuse. It has been a year that has seen the issue affecting us; go from a blog issue to a public issue. Where every Jew now has knowledge of the existence of sexual abuse, and the efforts made to cover it up. It has been a year full of Daas Torah gaffes, where it was clear as day that something is dreadfully wrong with our leaders. We’ve witnessed everything, from banning concerts to sending teenagers to concentration camps. A year where politicians and grassroots activists have come out in support to eradicate for once the scourge of sexual abuse. The progress made this year is truly remarkable.
The period of the High Holidays is difficult for us survivors. Remember what David Hamelech said “For when my father and mother abandon me, Hashem picks me up”. Many of us have experienced rejection and abandonment by complaining about sexual abuse. Stay strong because Hashem will pick you up. You are in great hands, hands that won’t ever harm you. We wish you the strength to grow, recover, and be victorious in the new year.
Try to fill your High Holidays with meaning, and daven to Hashem for the strength to recover. Daven for the wellbeing of all those GOOD rabbis who look out for those in need. Particularly, Rabbis Blau, Finkel, and Horowitz whose timely and thoughtful advice and comments have helped pull many of us away from disaster. No words can possibly express our appreciation to them.
We wish you all a happy, healthy, and sweet new year! The year 5769 Tav Shin Samach Tes, should truly be Tehei Shenas Siman Tov!
Keep strong; you make the world a better place,
Chicago Survivors Network
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7622368.stm
They should have listened to UOJ & gotten real jobs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7632861.stm
A woman in New South Wales, Australia, has been talking about how she was trapped in her home by a large pig.
Caroline Hayes fed and watered the animal after it came into her garden, but it became aggressive when more food was not forthcoming.
Ms Hayes said she had to barricade herself inside her home
I expect the market to stage some sort of a rally.
Reasons (insanity):
1- Paulson permitted his previous company, Goldman Sachs, to become a bank (puke)...taking in taxpayers deposits insured by the FDIC.
2 - Convinced Warren Buffet to plunk in $5 billion dollars - guaranteed by the U.S. government.
In the real world - Paulson would be imprisoned!
http://www.wptz.com/news/17539127/detail.html
WATERBURY, Vt. -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., urging them to replace cow's milk they use in their ice cream products with human breast milk, according to a statement recently released by a PETA spokeswoman.
"PETA's request comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner will begin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milk for 75 percent of the cow's milk in the food he serves," the statement says.
PETA officials say a move to human breast milk would lessen the suffering of dairy cows and their babies on factory farms and benefit human health.
"The fact that human adults consume huge quantities of dairy products made from milk that was meant for a baby cow just doesn't make sense," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "Everyone knows that 'the breast is best,' so Ben & Jerry's could do consumers and cows a big favor by making the switch to breast milk."
Read PETA's letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield
September 23, 2008
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Cofounders
Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc.
Dear Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield,
On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters, I'd like to bring your attention to an innovative new idea from Switzerland that would bring a unique twist to Ben and Jerry's.
Storchen restaurant is set to unveil a menu that includes soups, stews, and sauces made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk. If Ben and Jerry's replaced the cow's milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers-and cows-would reap the benefits.
Using cow's milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer's health. Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America's leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow's milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease-America's number one cause of death.
Animals will also benefit from the switch to breast milk. Like all mammals, cows only produce milk during and after pregnancy, so to be able to constantly milk them, cows are forcefully impregnated every nine months. After several years of living in filthy conditions and being forced to produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally, their exhausted bodies are turned into hamburgers or ground up for soup.
And of course, the veal industry could not survive without the dairy industry. Because male calves can't produce milk, dairy farmers take them from their mothers immediately after birth and sell them to veal farms, where they endure 14 to17 weeks of torment chained inside a crate so small that they can't even turn around.
The breast is best! Won't you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching from cow's milk to breast milk in Ben and Jerry's ice cream? Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Tracy Reiman
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/koch/entry/my_presidential_endorsement_posted_by
US safer in Obama's hands
Posted by Ed Koch
As Capitalism Crumbles, U.S. Taxpayers Pick Up the Pieces
by Robert Kiyosaki
Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, 12:00AM
As we all know, the world changed drastically on Sept. 11, 2001, when the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell.
This year, on the eve of Sept. 11, the twin towers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crumbled. Then, on Sept. 15, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch disappeared. Actually, that was a triple-tower collapse if you count AIG.
In a few years, the biggest pair of towers will collapse: Social Security and Medicare. Even today, they're looking shaky. How many ground zeros can we as people, a nation, and a world withstand before we admit something is very wrong with our global financial systems? What will it take to wake us up?
Government Can't Fix It
Personally, I believe the biggest it's a problem that so many Americans are looking to this year's presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, to save our financial system. How did we become so financially weak that we surrender our economic independence to politicians? Where does it say in the Constitution that the government should solve our financial problems?
And why have so many people throughout the world come to expect financial life-support from their political leaders? It seems most people will vote for anyone who promises a chicken in every pot and a guaranteed mortgage payment.
We're in the midst of a problem neither candidate can solve: A lack of comprehensive financial education in our school systems. What else explains the economic blunders committed by our political and financial leaders? Or why so many consumers are in debt up to their eyeballs? Or why millions of people expect a quick government fix of some kind?
Under Water
A few months ago, a friend of mine from Hawaii asked me if I wanted to buy his new powerboat with twin motors. Apparently, in late 2007, he purchased it brand new for approximately $85,000. His plan was to refinance his house when it appreciated in value and use the difference to pay for the boat.
Failing to obtain new financing, he called to ask me if I would buy the boat from him -- just take over the payments and it was mine. I passed, and the bank eventually repossessed his boat. Later, his wife called to tell me he's now having problems making his mortgage payments. Apparently, my friend planned to pay for his house the same way he planned on paying for the boat, by refinancing his debt.
I mention this story because it illustrates the problem Obama or McCain face: Limited financial education and diminished financial common sense. Apparently, my and the nation's business leaders all went to same school of finance.
A Cynical Aside
If you want to know why the towers of American capitalism are crumbling, I recommend reading "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin. It's not an easy book to find, but once you start reading it's to put down. In fact, in many ways it's a murder mystery about the financial "murder" of the middle class.
A very important lesson in the book is how political leaders use financial spin to deceive the public. The very, very rich use the system to legally steal from the rest of us by appealing to our sense of patriotism. When our leaders say, "We're bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because we want to protect the American people," they really mean "We're saving our rich friends."
All the bankers and politicians have to do is wave the red, white, and blue, play a few bars of "Yankee Doodle," and the masses get teary-eyed and pledge greater allegiance to legalized robbery. Yes, it's true that ignorance is bliss -- but ignorance is also expensive, and it cost us our freedom.
Freedom at Peril
A bailout can be different things. First, printing more money is a kind of bailout that leads to higher inflation. Rather than protecting people, it makes life for the poor and middle class more expensive. The other kind of bailout is protection for our rich and incompetent friends. If you or I fail at business, we fail. If we cheat and fail, we go to jail. But if you're rich and politically connected, your incompetence may be protected by a government bailout.
As a former Marine and a Vietnam War veteran, it saddens me to see some of the freedoms I thought I went to war to protect being stolen from us by bankers and politicians. Unfortunately, few Americans know the difference between the words "nationalize" and "socialize." Socialize means we turn more of our personal powers over to Big Brother, not free enterprise. It means we as a people grow weaker and need a higher power -- the same power that got us into this mess -- to protect us.
In short, when the towers of Fannie, Freddie, Merrill, Lehman, and AIG came crashing down, more came down than just money. What we're losing is the very freedom this country was founded on, and what most of the world yearns for.
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/110517.html
Twelve Jewish members of Congress expressed concern over the practices of a leading kosher meat producer.
In a letter Tuesday to Aaron Rubashkin, owner of the embattled kosher meat producer Agriprocessors, the lawmakers said they were “stunned” and “disgusted” by allegations against the company and its apparent flouting of Jewish and American law.
The letter noted the company's hiring of hundreds of illegal immigrants, opposition to a unionization effort at its New York distributorship, and its numerous citations by federal regulators. It also expressed concern over allegations that it had knowingly employed child laborers, housed a methamphetamine laboratory at its Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse, and participated in a Social Security card-forgery ring.
“If these many and varied allegations prove to be true, aside from personal criminal liability, such conduct would be a blot on the reputation of the kosher food industry,” the letter said.
Agriprocessors has denied most of the allegations against it and has said it is looking forward to its day in court.
Among the signatories are U.S. Reps. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), Howard Berman (D-Calif.), Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), and Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.).
The lawmakers requested “a detailed explanation” of measures the company intends to implement to address its “systemic problems and to ensure the humane and ethical treatment of both workers and animals in accordance with both U.S. laws and Jewish standards.”
http://www.jewishjournal.com/bloggish/item/sarah_palin_kosher_sausage_20080922/
That was what the menu board read at Jeff’s Gourmet Kosher Sausage on Pico Blvd. last week—and here’s the evidence as photographed by The Journal’s Dan Kacvinski.
Attention Employees of Catapult, Lakewood, NJ
We are a committee that was formed over the last few weeks to deal with the massive layoff of members of our community from Catapult, through no fault of their own. This is causing a massive loss of Parnassah for many families, as well as many children not receiving the servioes they require. We have a few options available. Our long term goal is to organize as a union and to eventually work as a tzibbur to fight for higher wages and better working conditions.
We are currently working with rabbonim. However, the details cannot be disclosed as of yet due to the sensitivity of the issues involved.
One of our bargaining chips in negotiations will be a threat to report to the authorities the massive fraud that has been rampant in Catapult over the past few years to the tune of millions of dollars. We believe that Pete will not ignore our request to reinstate all employees immediately at full pay retroactive to September 1, 2008.
However, due to this threat, we will need to have the option of following through. Therefore, it is imperative that all Catapult employees immediately desist from all fraudelent activities. Read everything before you sign, and only sign the absolute truth. If you are threatened with loss of job because of your refusal to go along with their fraud, go immediately to the police. Our attorneys will hit them with massive lawsuits.
Stay tuned for future information.
Askonim
The pig became aggressive when more food was not forthcoming? Are they sure that wasn't at Chaim Kaminetzky's Chevrah Chazerim by the meat carving station?
Arizona has a similar climate & geography to Australia.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080923/hl_time/whathappenswhenwedie
A fellow at New York City's Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Sam Parnia is one of the world's leading experts on the scientific study of death. Last week Parnia and his colleagues at the Human Consciousness Project announced their first major undertaking: a 3-year exploration of the biology behind "out-of-body" experiences. The study, known as AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation), involves the collaboration of 25 major medical centers through Europe, Canada and the U.S. and will examine some 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrest. TIME spoke with Parnia about the project's origins, its skeptics and the difference between the mind and the brain.
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What sort of methods will this project use to try and verify people's claims of "near-death" experience?
When your heart stops beating, there is no blood getting to your brain. And so what happens is that within about 10 sec., brain activity ceases - as you would imagine. Yet paradoxically, 10% or 20% of people who are then brought back to life from that period, which may be a few minutes or over an hour, will report having consciousness. So the key thing here is, Are these real, or is it some sort of illusion? So the only way to tell is to have pictures only visible from the ceiling and nowhere else, because they claim they can see everything from the ceiling. So if we then get a series of 200 or 300 people who all were clinically dead, and yet they're able to come back and tell us what we were doing and were able see those pictures, that confirms consciousness really was continuing even though the brain wasn't functioning.
How does this project relate to society's perception of death?
People commonly perceive death as being a moment - you're either dead or you're alive. And that's a social definition we have. But the clinical definition we use is when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working, and as a consequence the brain itself stops working. When doctors shine a light into someone's pupil, it's to demonstrate that there is no reflex present. The eye reflex is mediated by the brain stem, and that's the area that keeps us alive; if that doesn't work, then that means that the brain itself isn't working. At that point, I'll call a nurse into the room so I can certify that this patient is dead. Fifty years ago, people couldn't survive after that.
How is technology challenging the perception that death is a moment?
Nowadays, we have technology that's improved so that we can bring people back to life. In fact, there are drugs being developed right now - who knows if they'll ever make it to the market - that may actually slow down the process of brain-cell injury and death. Imagine you fast-forward to 10 years down the line; and you've given a patient, whose heart has just stopped, this amazing drug; and actually what it does is, it slows everything down so that the things that would've happened over an hour, now happen over two days. As medicine progresses, we will end up with lots and lots of ethical questions.
But what is happening to the individual at that time? What's really going on? Because there is a lack of blood flow, the cells go into a kind of a frenzy to keep themselves alive. And within about 5 min. or so they start to damage or change. After an hour or so the damage is so great that even if we restart the heart again and pump blood, the person can no longer be viable, because the cells have just been changed too much. And then the cells continue to change so that within a couple of days the body actually decomposes. So it's not a moment; it's a process that actually begins when the heart stops and culminates in the complete loss of the body, the decompositions of all the cells. However, ultimately what matters is, What's going on to a person's mind? What happens to the human mind and consciousness during death? Does that cease immediately as soon as the heart stops? Does it cease activity within the first 2 sec., the first 2 min.? Because we know that cells are continuously changing at that time. Does it stop after 10 min., after half an hour, after an hour? And at this point we don't know.
What was your first interview like with someone who had reported an out-of-body experience?
Eye-opening and very humbling. Because what you see is that, first of all, they are completely genuine people who are not looking for any kind of fame or attention. In many cases they haven't even told anybody else about it because they're afraid of what people will think of them. I have about 500 or so cases of people that I've interviewed since I first started out more than 10 years ago. It's the consistency of the experiences, the reality of what they were describing. I managed to speak to doctors and nurses who had been present who said these patients had told them exactly what had happened, and they couldn't explain it. I actually documented a few of those in my book What Happens When We Die because I wanted people to get both angles - not just the patients' side but also the doctors' side - and see how it feels for the doctors to have a patient come back and tell them what was going on. There was a cardiologist that I spoke with who said he hasn't told anyone else about it because he has no explanation for how this patient could have been able to describe in detail what he had said and done. He was so freaked out by it that he just decided not to think about it anymore.
Why do you think there is such resistance to studies like yours?
Because we're pushing through the boundaries of science, working against assumptions and perceptions that have been fixed. A lot of people hold this idea that, well, when you die, you die; that's it. Death is a moment - you know you're either dead or alive. All these things are not scientifically valid, but they're social perceptions. If you look back at the end of the 19th century, physicists at that time had been working with Newtonian laws of motion, and they really felt they had all the answers to everything that was out there in the universe. When we look at the world around us, Newtonian physics is perfectly sufficient. It explains most things that we deal with. But then it was discovered that actually when you look at motion at really small levels - beyond the level of the atoms - Newton's laws no longer apply. A new physics was needed, hence, we eventually ended up with quantum physics. It caused a lot of controversy - even Einstein himself didn't believe in it.
Now, if you look at the mind, consciousness, and the brain, the assumption that the mind and brain are the same thing is fine for most circumstances, because in 99% of circumstances we can't separate the mind and brain; they work at the exactly the same time. But then there are certain extreme examples, like when the brain shuts down, that we see that this assumption may no longer seem to hold true. So a new science is needed in the same way that we had to have a new quantum physics. The CERN particle accelerator may take us back to our roots. It may take us back to the first moments after the Big Bang, the very beginning. With our study, for the first time, we have the technology and the means to be able to investigate this. To see what happens at the end for us. Does something continue?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080923/hl_time/whathappenswhenwedie
UOJ and friends,
The feinds at the Hamodia Carpet Sweeper's published the Hamodia Magazine of September 24 with a fuulpage cover picture of a Torah Temima school bus and titled 'Trusted With Sifrei Torah'.
You can't make up the coincidence with the lead poster here on UOJ. I see in this Yad Hashem and His sense of destinational humor. He is litteraly mocking the establishment and having them trip over themselves.
Sosnowick -
You have some nerve. Isn't it true that YOU were investigated for abusing a 16 year old child becuase he said that you were not fit to be the President of your Shul ? That you pushed him and picked him up against the wall and threatened him ? Isn't that true ? It is, because I SAW IT.
Also, don't pretend to be in Law enforcement. You are a Captain, but one that has never seen the streets - because you work at the POLICE ACADEMY. The only person you have ever arrested are the fake dummies that the Academy uses for practice.
Please stop being such a loser and look into your own closet before you castigate your fellow community members for trying to make a difference. SHAME ON YOU !!!
CHECK OUT THIS CHILUL HASHEM IN QUEENS BY AN ORTHODOX JEW.
http://www.vosizneias.com/20735/2008/09/24/queens-ny-fake-parking-placard-guy-caught-red-handed-by-fox-news-video/
So when is Nat Lewin going to come out with more blather about Congress jumping to conclusions about his Rubashkin clients? Heck, some of them may even be Harvard grads who contributed to the Review.
Someone please send UOJ the cover picture from Hamodia-Diarrhea
YES! VICTORY! finally, i have successfully proven to a severely "yeshivish" yid that indeed there is a problem, and that maybe, just maybe, there are a few corrupt and sick individuals who call themselves "rabbis" or "holy rebbeim". this guy was tough to crack considering how greasy his fore-head is. i am not done, however, and will not stop until clarity is spread to the unclear. till enlightenment touches the confused. im crazy about this, but sane at the same time, bec i know the difference between right and wrong. in today's world , that's sometimes muddled. long live the truth.
http://www.davidseastsidedeli.com/
My favorite song is the one playing on this website. It sounds just like me.
NOchum rosenberg was in florida and told people that in a few weeks he has a story that will prove the ger and satmar groups knew all allong from the top down it seems one person close to the rebbes of both camps is now working with an attorney who will be suing the groups
he said it might be bigger than the catholic churches and all their finances will be an open book
fyi dont shoot the messenger for the right message
go sosnowick the words written were powerful
torah temimia and its defenders must be closed and punished for what they have done to jewish children
Rabbi Stone Shul Member - you're a huge part of the terror network inflicted on us Jews by the gedolim. Stay the hell off my blog!
Which Rabbi Stone?
I know of 4. The OU honcho in New Jersey, the Lubavitcher in Connecticut, the rov of the Eldridge St shul on the Lower East Side and the baal teshuva who used to play drums for The Grateful Dead.
Paulson bowed to demands --- The man is a basket case thief - his friends should be tossed in prison never mind benefit from the bailout. I can't wrap my brain around this concept - that CEOs of failed companies - with your money - should be rewarded. WORLD GONE NUTS!
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican officials said that Paulson had bowed to demands from critics in both parties to limit the pay packages of executives whose companies benefit from the proposed bailout. They spoke on condition of anonymity because Paulson's decision had not been formally announced.
what can said for the names on that invitation. shea rubensten lipa geldwerth et al. do these guys read the news or are they just plain retarded?
it is actually not politically correct to call someone "yeshivish" . the proper term would be developmentally disabled.
Yawn....
"Rabbi Stone shul member", huh?
My, how courageous! Anonymous stone throwing....what a principled approach! Sling some mud, all the while you're hiding in the shadows.
My record and reputation speak for themselves. The reason you must remain anonymous is because you couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole, assuming you had the courage to come out of the shadows.
Loser, indeed. You seem to be intimately acquainted with the term.
DES
To annon who said:
"what can said for the names on that invitation. shea rubensten lipa geldwerth et al. do these guys read the news or are they just plain retarded?"
Dont go insulting retarded people by associating them with lipa geldwerth
Goldman's shares get suspicious boost pre-Buffett By Kristina Cooke
NEW YORK (Reuters) - An unusual surge in Goldman Sachs' share price in the last 10 minutes of trading on Tuesday raised eyebrows on Wall Street, as it came two hours before news of Warren Buffett's big investment in the bank.
Goldman Sachs (GS.N) shares rose more than $5 heading into the close of trading even as the rest of the market tumbled, leaving traders suspicious that inside information was used to make a profit.
"Obviously someone knew the Buffett news that was coming out. I noticed it yesterday and I was telling my colleagues something is going on with Goldman," said Dave Rovelli, managing director of US Equity Trading at Canaccord Adams in New York.
It is very sad that we are in this position at this time (that is to say how close to being a third world country which I talked about in my last address). It is my opinion that we do not give one dime to bail out the GREEDY and CROOKED companies. Where were our leaders while this was happening? Our President and both Presidential candidates keep telling America that the backbone of our country and economy is the everyday worker and small business owner. As a small business owner I am tired of them breaking my back. While the speculators drove up the price of oil we paid and are still paying the price at the pumps while those same speculators made BILLIONS with no risk involved. Ask any small business owner if Wall Street and/or the Government will bail them out if they make bad decisions in business. These people on Wall Street make VERY VERY good money (which they still have in the bank or in their possession unlike the stockholder that they wiped out). Wall Street, AIG, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac etc employees are all still working, their fortunes and futures were not wiped out. If the President, Congress and both Presidential candidates pass this 700 BILLION bail out they are telling me Washington business as usual (PORK SPENDING JUST SUPER SIZED and under the term BAILOUT). I believe if no bailout is given the everyday worker and small business will not perish as they lead you to believe. After all we survive every other hurdle Government and big business throw our way. It is time they learn how to survive the way we do, by sucking it up and getting through with no guarantees like the rest of the real world survives. I would rather endure a few bumps in the road than have the Government sell the future of my children and grand children. If the big companies pay and suffer for their mistakes, we (as well as them) will evolve a better and stronger country for it.
Thank You,
Dear UOJ,
John suggests that you post this important message.
John Walsh: Congress Must Act - Again - To Keep Our Kids Safe
Congress has always been instrumental in helping to keep America’s children safe. I’m proud to say that I’ve seen members of Congress work in a bipartisan way on child-protection legislation.
Right now the Senate is working on two bills that will significantly improve the tools that law enforcement has to fight child predators on the Internet. One is the PROTECT Our Children/Combating Child Exploitation Act (Senate Bill 1738), which will increase the funding to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies that investigate these crimes. The other is the Securing Our Adolescents from online Exploitation Act (the S.A.F.E. Act). This law will increase the reporting of crimes against children to the CyberTipline, the congressionally-mandated reporting mechanism operated by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
These bills are necessary to the fight against child predators and I know they can be passed in a bipartisan way. The Senate is deciding whether to pass these bills now. I urge the Senate to do the right thing to help America’s children and pass Senate Bill 1738 and the S.A.F.E. Act.
-John
go Rush Limbaugh, go!
The White House snuck in this announcement after trading when almost no one was listening.
They just gave the Detroit Auto Industry the $25 billion bailout they (and Ronnie Schreiber) were shnorring for!
There may be change coming soon, and I don't mean that nauseating chant from Barack Hussein Islamobama.
According to my well placed source, the Agudah Fresser policy until now, one dictated by the "secretary" baal habatim as Rav Chaim Brisker once put it, was set by Shmuel Bloom. I actually had no idea he was so powerful but his "'Executive' VP" title is apparently the highest ranking at 42 Broadway.
Chaim Dovid Zweibel Esquire, was only taking orders until now, but he is being promoted to be the big man on campus.
Let's see what happens with Zweibel calling the shots. If he has any common sense, his first act in office should be to pull the plug on Avi Shafran's obnoxious newspaper columns.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A day after being accused of making anti-Semitic comments at the United Nations, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met a fringe group of ultra-religious Jews who seek the dismantling of the state of Israel.
"Zionism has greatly weakened and, God willing, it will be destroyed soon and then all Jews, Muslims and Christians can live peacefully with one another," Ahmadinejad told nearly a dozen rabbis from Neturei Karta International on Wednesday.
The group is a small anti-Zionist organization that says it adheres strictly to the Torah, the Jewish holy book, which it says forbids the establishment of a Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah. It supports Palestinian sovereignty over the Holy Land and financial restitution for past losses.
Its views are considered marginal by mainstream Jews who condemned Ahmadinejad's speech on Tuesday as anti-Semitic, as did several world leaders, human rights groups and U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Marty Irom, spokesman for the non-profit group the Israel Project, which promotes security and peace in Israel, said Neturei Karta was a "very tiny fringe group that represents only themselves." He said such meetings gave Ahmadinejad an "air of legitimacy which he should not have."
Ahmadinejad railed against "Zionist murderers" in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly, dwelling on what he described as Zionist control of international finance, echoing the libel that blamed a world Jewish conspiracy for all the world's troubles.
At Wednesday's meeting with the group, which also goes by the English name "Jews United Against Zionism," Ahmadinejad said Zionism was a political movement "that seeks wealth and power" and was "corrupting the earth."
Nearly a dozen rabbis dressed in the black garb of ultra-Orthodox Jews sat around a table with Ahmadinejad and his delegation and posed for photographs after the meeting in a Manhattan hotel.
"That we have the honor and privilege to meet with such a distinguished person who understands the difference between Zionism and Judaism is for us a tremendously happy occasion," the group's senior Rabbi, Moshe Ber Beck, told Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad has said Israel should be wiped off the map. He has referred to the Holocaust as a myth and his government held a conference in 2006 questioning the fact that Nazis used gas chambers to kill 6 million Jews in World War Two.
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, spokesman for the group, said Ahmadinejad was no enemy of the Jewish people, that many thousands of Jews lived in Iran without persecution and that the Iranian president was not a Holocaust denier.
Ahmadinejad spoke about World War Two in general terms as "one of the most abhorrent acts" in history. "Numerous crimes occurred against everyone," he said, through an interpreter.
Ahmadinejad ended by praying with the rabbis, saying: "God, please nullify the propaganda waged by the Zionists, and let them lose hope, and make victorious your deserved people."
(Editing by Doina Chiacu)
Rabbinic Molesters Issue Moving Agudah
by Larry Cohler-Esses
Editor At Large
The recent rash of cases in which rabbis have allegedly molested young children going back decades has moved one group that usually bristles at government involvement in Orthodox schools to envision shifting its stance.
“Our general sense is that we’re much better off when government leaves us alone,” said David Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America for government and public affairs. “But because of the sensitivity of this particular issue, I could see the possibility of our rabbis affirmatively encouraging schools to buy into the system, and even maybe affirmatively encouraging government to impose it on us.”
Zwiebel was speaking specifically about a new law that will, for the first time, allow non-public schools to voluntarily take part in a program to fingerprint school employees for use in criminal background checks.
But for Agudah, an umbrella organization of ultra-traditional Orthodox groups that seek a degree of insulation from the secular world, it was a striking statement.
To be sure, Agudah contemplates no welcome mat for a mandatory government fingerprint program just yet. That would be “quite premature,” said Zwiebel. Agudah, he said, wants first to see how the state implements the voluntary law.
But in an interview with The Jewish Week, Zwiebel, with whose organization many in Albany check first on legislation involving the Orthodox community, appeared to offer a wary road map to supporting greater oversight by the government on issues relating to sexual molestation of children.
The pressure for increased government involvement has been building for years. It began with the shocking emergence earlier this decade of Catholic priests who, it turned out, had molested children under their care for decades, and had often been protected by their Church superiors.
More recently, credible allegations have emerged here in New York against a small number of yeshiva rabbis said to have also sexually abused their students over several decades. The alleged victims — often now adults — have also charged that the yeshivas and rabbinic supervisors were informed about their teachers’ conduct but did nothing, or even protected them.
Now, state Assembly Member Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn), who has become deeply involved in this issue, speaks of hearing “hundreds” of reports of rabbinic sexual abuse — reports that appear to him to be credible.
This week, speaking at a conference on this controversy, Hikind for the first time numbered these reports in the “thousands.”
Slowly, and somewhat erratically, the state legislature has begun to take up the question of legal reforms to address this situation. The fingerprinting law passed last year will permit non-public schools to voluntarily take part in a program that is already mandatory for all public schools.
But some lawmakers hope to go further next year, with legislation to make non-public school participation mandatory. They also want to pass a bill that would make clergy and non-public school officials “mandated reporters” — individuals required by law to report to the authorities any information or evidence they receive that a child has been abused or molested in a school setting. Public school officials are already required to do so, thanks to an education law passed in 2000 that excluded the private school sector.
Another bill, now stalled by differences between the Assembly and Senate, would extend the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution of molesters and for civil suits to be filed against them. Presently, prosecutors cannot go after a child molester once the child in question reaches age 23. And a child victim of sexual molestation must sue his molester — or a school that fails in its duty to protect him — for civil damages by between one and six years after he turns 18, depending on the nature of the allegation. But experts say child victims can take many years, or even decades, after they reach adulthood to process what was done to them and act on it.
Agudath Israel does not oppose any of these measures in principle, Zwiebel said. But God is in the details. And one red flag for the group is disparate treatment.
“It’s never been our position that non-public schools should be treated differently than public schools,” when it comes to protecting children, he said. “But our position is that they should not be singled out.”
This led Agudath Israel to vigorously oppose a 2003 proposal that would have required members of the clergy and certain categories of religious educators and administrators to go to the authorities with any information they had received about child abuse by other clergy over the last 20 years. Inspired by the continuing revelations coming from the Catholic Church, the bill singled out the duty of these religious workers to report on their colleagues — but not on sexual abuse from other sources.
In a memo then to leaders of the state Assembly and Senate, Zwiebel denounced the legislation as “patently unconstitutional” for its “apparent assumption that religious functionaries, more than any other element of society, are inherently suspect — and should therefore be subject to special legal scrutiny and reporting requirements — regarding allegations of child abuse.”
Since then, critics have frequently denounced Agudath Israel’s stand as obstructionist and cited its opposition to this bill as evidence of an intent to shield rabbinic abusers.
Condemnations on the Internet against the group have been especially angry and intense.
But Zwiebel said that if the Legislature were to introduce a bill that simply included non-public school officials in the duty to report evidence of abuse of students in a school setting, as public school officials already must do, “At a minimum, I am pretty certain we’d advise our friends in the Legislature we don’t oppose this.”
As for efforts to expand the statute of limitations, whether criminally or civilly, “I don’t imagine we’ll oppose any of that” either, Zwiebel said. “Whether we would affirmatively push it, I can’t answer.”
Indeed, legislation on this appears to be stuck between the State Senate and the Assembly. And according to a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau County), it is opposition from the Catholic Church and the insurance industry that is playing a role.
The Assembly’s bill would significantly extend both the criminal and civil statute of limitations for child sex abuse going into the future. But the Democratic-dominated Assembly is determined to also give those now beyond the civil statute of limitations a key back into the courts. Its bill would establish a one-year “window” for adults with allegations of childhood abuse to file suit, regardless of when the abuse took place.
Skelos’ spokesperson voiced concern about this provision, citing the potential difficulties of obtaining evidence in very old cases. The Senate, he noted, has passed three different bills to eliminate or extend the criminal statute of limitation. But it has refused to pass the Assembly’s bill. The Assembly, in turn, has held fast against the Senate’s bill.
Meanwhile, the regulations have yet to be published for implementing the law passed last year that would allow non-public schools to opt in on fingerprinting and criminal background checks of its staff. Zwiebel made clear that Agudah’s willingness to accept a bill to make this mandatory for non-public schools will depend on how the voluntary program goes.
One regulation under consideration, he related, would institute a “roach motel” principle: Once a school chooses to opt in, it will not be allowed to opt out.
“I’m troubled by that,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like wise public policy.”
Another proposed rule would mandate that a school opting into the system must require every employee to be fingerprinted, without exception.
“I don’t understand that part of it,” he said. “It would allow us no discretion to [exempt], say, certain veterans about whom there have never been any questions from a criminal background check.”
Still, he said, “I’m not necessarily implying those two rules would push us away. I’d like to know exactly what the details are.”
In many cases, Zwiebel said, Agudah’s views have been misrepresented. He pointed, among other things, to an error in a recent Jewish Week story — since acknowledged — that stated the group opposed a mandatory fingerprinting law and another to make yeshiva officials mandated reporters.
But referring to disturbing exposes that have appeared in this paper and elsewhere, he said, “Some of the anguish and pain that has come in the last few years, though uncomfortable, promotes consciousness of a problem that’s been in the shadows. So, though our views have been misrepresented, I can’t [the critics] are bad people. They obviously care a lot about this issue.”
Hella Winston contributed to this story.
Neturai karta seeks the absolute truth. The truth is that zionism is corrupt. If we need to ally ourselves with antisemites (Ahmadenejad), so be it.
UOJ seeks the the absolute truth. The truth is that our system of Judaism is totally corrupt. If we must ally ourselves with antisemites (police), so be it.
NK Rocks - Hey...relax - comparing me to the NK? No compliment - No more of this OK?
THEY obviously care a lot about this issue.” C.D. Zweibel
-------------------
It's obvious he DOES NOT!
UOJ had better not start taking credit again for "forced retirement" like he did when Shea Fishman split TU and Aron Twerski from Hofstra.
I have to step down from the Agudah because I fressed so many Rubashkin steaks and my shirt buttons are popping. I can't sit around the office like a katchka anymore. I need to get a routine at a gym.
Chaim Duvid Tzibel Said: "I could see the possibility of our rabbis affirmatively encouraging schools to buy into the system"
Buy into the system? Now they openly admit they exist only for the money. UOJ, perhaps we can bribe Aguda and the rabbi enablers to stop covering up. Or is the monies flowing from Kolko and Ger too big for us to compete against?
Archie, why just the op-ed columns? Pull the plug on Shafran in gantzen!
"critics have frequently denounced Agudath Israel’s stand as obstructionist and cited its opposition to this bill as evidence of an intent to shield rabbinic abusers. Condemnations on the Internet against the group have been especially angry and intense."
Attention Jewish Week and Forward
You read this blog
send a female reporter to Ohel have her pose as a victim of domestic violence and write an expose on Ohel.
Key people at Ohel
David Mandel
DM@ohelfamily.org
Ohel Phone numbers
718 851 6300
718 851 6331
718 851 0160
Joan Hertz
JH@ohelfamily.org
Esther Rand
ER@ohelfamily.org
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html
Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.
The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.
The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago
In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.
Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.
The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.
In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.
The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.
Obama's "dialog" may be interrupted by a mushroom cloud.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-09-24-voa73.cfm
The European Union said Wednesday that Iran was close to being able to develop a nuclear weapon.
U.S. jobless claims
Weekly initial claims highest in seven years
By Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch
Last update: 8:47 a.m. EDT Sept. 25, 2008
Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Orders for U.S. durable goods fell more than twice as much as forecast in August, a sign that slower sales and tighter credit conditions prompted companies to cut spending.
(MarketWatch) -- Troubled mortgage lender Washington Mutual has approached several private-equity firms about a potential takeover, according to a published report Thursday. Carlyle Group LLC, and Blackstone Group LP are among the firms considering a deal, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources. Interest among banks considering a deal for Washington Mutual, including J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo, has diminished in recent days over reluctance to absorb problem loans on Washington Mutual's books, according to the report.
Hi Bill. WaMu can stop laughing at everyone else because you can get in line behind us now sans your shirt too.
Thank you archie bunker for listening 3 hours a day. its people like you that make my show so great, so "let not your heart be troubled".
Perhaps Zwiebel's grandkids should be home-schooled by the all-stars --- Kolko, Eisemann, Nussbaum, Reichmann, Colmer, Mondrowitz, Lanner, Eisgrau, Tendlers, Leizerowitz ---- for a year.
Perhaps he may "buy into it" then.
I've got to believe that brain death - is truly the time when a person dies!
GE cuts 3Q forecast, citing financial market woes
Thursday September 25, 11:19 am ET
By Stephen Singer, AP Business Writer
General Electric lowers profit forecast, plans to boost reserves on financial market woes
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- General Electric Co., whose shares have been battered by anxiety over the health of its big loan and lease business, lowered its earnings forecast on Thursday, saying the unit's profits were falling and that it was taking action to bolster its reserves.
The moves, which GE said were prompted by "unprecedented" weakness and volatility in the markets, come as Wall Street grapples with the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, the government takeover of insurer AIG, and the fierce debate over a $700 billion plan for Washington to bail out banks weakened by risky mortgage-backed securities.
Here we have 2 guys, Hoffman who pulls an Engelmayer with fake names to attack people against Rubashkin and Belsky who attacks people trying to stop child molesters.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4048/is_200601/ai_n17178165/print?tag=artBody;col1
Jewish law also forbids a person from misleading another.49 Therefore, you must be careful with your advertisements.50 You may not defame someone, so you may not unduly disparage someone else's products.51 You may not enable other people to commit sins, so you may not bribe someone to breach fiduciary duties owed to others.52 You may not provide support to people who do evil and you may not encourage them.
50. RABBI YAIR HOFFMAN, MISGUIDING THE PERPLEXED: THE LAWS OF LIFNEI IVER 212 (2004) (citing the ruling of Rabbi Yisroel Belksy on Tammuz 8, 5764).
Editorial - NEW YORK TIMES
Absence of Leadership
It took President Bush until Wednesday night to address the American people about the nation’s financial crisis, and pretty much all he had to offer was fear itself.....
Dear esteemed parents of Torah Temimah,
I wish to address the facts surrounding a vicious rumor being circulated by the usual troublemakers.
Rabbi Margulies was reported seen this week at a church grounds in downtown Manhattan near the New York Stock Exchange, davening by the kever of Alexander Hamilton, the Treasury Secretary from 250 years ago, that his stock portfolio should come back from the dead.
This is what actually happened. Rabbi Margulies was booked on a flight to Hungary to make a pilgrimage to the kever of the Yismach Moishe in Uhel. Unknown to him as he fell asleep, the flight from JFK actually made an emergency landing at Laguardia. He hailed a cab that happened to be driven by a Hungarian speaking driver. When Rabbi Margulies asked to be taken to the kever, he was dropped off at the Church.
As soon as the mistake was realized, Yehuda Eckstein from YeshivaWorld immediately arranged a helicopter for Rabbi Applegrad to be dispatched from the Lakewood airport to the Wall Street heliport to extricate Rabbi Margulies from the situation.
The yeshiva does not and never has had a policy in support of doresh el hamesim and you can rest assured that your children are receiving the finest chinuch.
Timothy Egan got it exactly right - guess what - he's not even a gadol!
September 24, 2008, 9:30 pm
CRASH! by Timothy Egan
The big guy with the crew cut and a hand that lost three fingers to a meat grinder looked out at the most powerful men in global capitalism Tuesday, and asked a pointed question:
“I’m a dirt farmer,” said Senator Jon Tester, the Montana Democrat who still lives on his family homestead. “Why do we have one week to determine that $700 billion has to be appropriated or this country’s financial system goes down the pipes?”
Good question, one that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have yet to adequately answer. If they seemed flummoxed, perhaps it’s because they still can’t explain what will be accomplished by nearly nationalizing the banking system and giving the treasury secretary more power than a king.
Another question — since we now own a big part of the world’s largest insurance company, A.I.G., does that mean I can save a load of money on my car insurance? — might be easier to answer.
This bailout, in present form, is toast. Now, with John McCain offering to suspend his campaign and delay Friday’s debate, it looks like the drainage of years past is pulling him down. He wants to back out of facing Barack Obama at the height of the campaign. Why not change the topic, from foreign affairs to the economy?
Some have already tried to protect the true villains of the crash of 2008. Witness Neil Cavuto of Fox News, he of the sycophantic questions to Enron executives and other thieves just before they were exposed, blaming the mortgage crisis on banks lending to “minorities and risky folks,” as he said last week.
There is certainly a food chain of greed, from the lowliest house-flipper in the Southern California exurbs to the Hamptons hedge fund manager. We all put reason in a box and buried it for a time. But before $700 billion is committed to a secretary whose decisions “may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency,” as the original draft of the bailout states, it’s worth remembering where the biggest heist took place, and how Wall Street dragged down the rest of the country once before. You could hear the echoes of history in Tester’s question, riding the fierce urgency of now at a time when the Great Depression and all its gloomy atmospherics are in the air again.
When the stock market crashed in 1929, losing 40 percent of its value over a brutal autumn, barely 2 percent of Americans owned stocks. People asked, sensibly: how could this affect me? Who cared about those swells on Wall Street when cars were rolling off factory lines and the big open expanse of middle America was flush with wheat and corn?
Today, with more than 90 percent of all homeowners paying their mortgages on time and on budget, the parallel question arises: how could this minority of bad loans drag down Western capitalism? It may be news to Joe Biden — with three gaffes this week, he’s approaching a record, even for him – but Franklin Roosevelt was not yet president during the crash. Herbert Hoover was, and there we have the reason why so many people cringed when John McCain said last week that the fundamentals of the economy were sound.
In his first days in office, Hoover said, “Americans are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of the land.” Oops. And just before he was swept to the dunce corner of history, Hoover said, “No one has yet starved.” At the time, people in rural America were eating brined tumbleweed and road-kill rabbits; the unemployment rate was 25 percent.
But the larger lesson is how Wall Street brought down Main Street. Banks were largely unregulated then, free to gamble people’s savings on stock market long-shots. When the market collapsed, the uninsured deposits went with it. By the end of 1932, one fourth of all banks were shuttered, and 9 million people lost their savings.
In this century, thanks to the deregulatory demons released by former McCain adviser Phil Gramm and embraced by just enough lobbyist-greased Democrats, Wall Street was greenlighted again to act like a casino. Banks in the heartland passed on their mortgages to Wall Street, where they were sliced and diced in hundreds of largely incomprehensible ways. And while few people understand how those investment giants made money, this much is clear: it was a killing. In 2006 alone, Wall Street firms paid out $62 billion in bonuses.
With all the urgency of that famous National Lampoon magazine cover that showed a cute pooch with a gun to its head, and the line “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog,” President Bush says the biggest bailout in American history must be passed now or the world will crumble. He said a similar thing in the run-up to war.
Just once, it might be worthwhile to listen to a dirt farmer like Jon Tester, who wonders why the same breathless attention is not given to the concerns of average Americans. Ah, but he’s only been in the Senate two years. Give him another term and he may start quoting Phil Gramm with approval.
I don't know about Timothy, but Cardinal Edward Egan is my pal from the Catholic Church who helps me obstruct anti-molester legislation.
“Our general sense is that we’re much better off when government leaves us alone,” said David Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America for government and public affairs.
Zweibel clearly states that he feels that we are better off without government legislation, meaning that we can police ourselves. This has been the Agudah position from day one. Publicly he states that the Agudah will not fight passage of legislation, but do we know what really goes on behind the closed doors of Albany? Let's not be naive and think that they suddenly will stop fighting for the right to continue covering up. There is too much at stake for them to submit to mandatory reporting and a lifting of the statute of limitations. The best I could hope for is for public pressure to be so great so that they will back off and allow the legislation to be passed without a fight(which is what he's implying in the article, but I don't believe him). I've given up hope in trying to convince them to see the light and seriously work on fixing the problem. They ARE the problem. I'll be happy seeing them move off to the side and allow us deal with this plague in the proper way.
The great charade by Moshe Sherer - left to Bloom and Zweibel - was that the Agudah represents all Orthodox Jews.
When the politicians see through this farce - that the Agudath Israel represents a few hundred families that come together on Thanksgiving to show off their new cars, clothing and Jewelry ---that's when we will get past the BS - word twistings- and outright lies bordering on criminal obstruction of justice -
Let this day come soon - That's where Hikind could make a difference!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757 – July 12, 1804) was the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, a Founding Father, economist, and political philosopher. He led calls for the Philadelphia Convention, was one of America's first Constitutional lawyers, and cowrote the Federalist Papers, a primary source for Constitutional interpretation.
Born on the British West Indian island of Nevis, Hamilton was educated in the Thirteen Colonies. During the American Revolutionary War, he joined the American militia and was chosen artillery captain. Hamilton became senior[1] aide-de-camp and confidant to General George Washington, and led three battalions at the Siege of Yorktown. He was elected to the Continental Congress, but resigned to practice law and to found the Bank of New York. He served in the New York Legislature, and was the only New Yorker who signed the Constitution. As Washington's Treasury Secretary, he influenced formative government policy widely. An admirer of British political systems, Hamilton emphasized strong central government and implied powers, under which the new U.S. Congress funded the national debt, assumed state debts, created a national bank, and established an import tariff and whiskey tax.
In 1801, Hamilton founded the New York Post as the Federalist broadsheet New-York Evening Post.
During the war Hamilton became close friends with several fellow officers, including John Laurens and the Marquis de Lafayette. Jonathan Katz argues that Hamilton's letters to Laurens reveal at least a homosocial attachment and perhaps, in coded allusions to Greek history and mythology, a relationship modern readers would label homosexual.
In the Report on Public Credit, the Secretary made a controversial proposal that would have the federal government assume state debts incurred during the Revolution. This would, in effect, give the federal government much more power by placing the country's most serious financial obligation in the hands of the federal, rather than the state governments.
The primary criticism of the plan was spearheaded by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Representative James Madison. Some states, like Jefferson's Virginia, had paid almost half of their debts, and felt that their taxpayers should not be assessed again to bail out the less provident. They further argued that the plan passed beyond the scope of the new Constitutional government.
Madison objected to Hamilton's proposal to cut the rate of interest and postpone payments on federal debt, as not being payment in full; he also objected to the speculative profits being made. Much of the national debt had been bonds issued to Continental veterans, in place of wages which the Continental Congress did not have the money to pay; as these continued to go unpaid, many of these bonds had been pawned for a small fraction of their value. Madison proposed to pay in full, but to divide payment between the original recipient and the present possessor. Others, like Samuel Livermore of New Hampshire, wished to curb speculation, and save taxation, by paying only part of the bond. The disagreements between Madison and Hamilton extended to other proposals Hamilton made to Congress, and drew in Jefferson when he returned from France. Hamilton's supporters became known as Federalists and Jefferson's as Republicans.
In 1791, Hamilton became involved in an affair with Maria Reynolds that badly damaged his reputation. Reynolds' husband, James, blackmailed Hamilton for money, threatening to inform Hamilton's wife. When James Reynolds was arrested for counterfeiting, he contacted several prominent members of the Democratic-Republican Party, most notably James Monroe and Aaron Burr, touting that he could expose a top level official for corruption. When they interviewed Hamilton with their suspicions (presuming that James Reynolds could implicate Hamilton in an abuse of his position in Washington's Cabinet), Hamilton insisted he was innocent of any misconduct in public office and admitted to an affair with Maria Reynolds. Since this was not germane to Hamilton's conduct in office, Hamilton's interviewers did not publish about Reynolds. When rumors began spreading after his retirement, Hamilton published a confession of his affair, shocking his family and supporters by not merely confessing but also by narrating the affair in detail, thus injuring Hamilton's reputation for the rest of his life.
At first Hamilton accused Monroe of making his affair public, and challenged him to a duel. Aaron Burr stepped in and persuaded Hamilton that Monroe was innocent of the accusation. His well-known vitriolic temper led Hamilton to challenge several others to duels in his career.
Following an exchange of three testy letters, and despite the attempts of friends to avert a confrontation, a duel was nevertheless scheduled for July 11, 1804, along the west bank of the Hudson River on a rocky ledge in Weehawken, New Jersey, a common dueling site at which Hamilton's eldest son, Philip, had been killed three years earlier.
Hamilton's tomb in the graveyard of Trinity Church, New York.At dawn, the duel began, and Vice President Aaron Burr shot Hamilton.
Hamilton was buried in the Trinity Churchyard Cemetery in Manhattan.
UOJ,
The problem with Hikind is that he's still hoping to sit with the Agudah and the hasidic leaders and show them the hundreds of files of victims and molesters that he's amassed in only a few weeks. He thinks that this will sway them to join our side. I'm afraid that they will ask to look at those files and will instead intimidate the victims that went to Dov. This has been the standard operating procedure for decades and according to Zweibel, "we're better off" with the status quo.
http://www.faa.gov/
The copter ferrying Margo back to YTT almost crashed in New York Harbor because he exceeded the weight limit.
That's the last time we give clearance to Eckstein and his cockamamie schemes.
I've had entirely enough of people trying to say it was only loans to low-income or low-socioeconomic class people that caused this mess.
Here's what I wrote earlier today:
The second problem is deeper and more intrinsic to the current financial situation. Think about this: why did banks begin lowering their standards for mortgages in the first place? - before somebody figured out the greed angle, there had to be an underlying reason for the ball to start rolling.
The ugly truth was that since the "service economy" began being shoved down our throats along with "free trade" back in the 80s, and the Robber Barons moved all the living wage factory jobs out of this country, the vast majority of middle class people in this country simply can't qualify for a mortgage. That's why the standards were lowered in the first place - because average income, which has been flat or declining in real terms, is now inadequate to finance houses anymore.
Now, real estate had gone through the roof in many major metropolitan areas, with 800 sq. ft. bungalos going for over a million dollars in many areas. But let's say the median price for a reasonably sized single family home was only about $200,000 or so. I believe that is more or less the national average, so let's use that as our baseline.
In order to put a 20% down payment plus closing costs and realtor's fees on such a house, a person would need more than $50,000 in cash. There is no way on God's green earth that people working at wally-wort or mowers-r-us or laundry-heaven are going to be able to save $50,000 in cash to buy a house. That's a fact. So as living wage manufacturing jobs were taken away from these shores and replaced with sub-living wage "service economy" jobs, banks HAD to lower their standards or else they would not be able to issue mortgages at all for the vast majority of people.
The median income in this country for most wage-earners in America is now less than $50,000 a year - I believe it's about $30,000 in the state where I live. That means most people would have to save more than a year's salary in order to have the required cash to qualify for a mortgage and buy a house - and while they're saving that much, they still have to pay rent, pay utilities, buy groceries, raise their kids, and all the other stuff that normal people need to do to live - on less than $50,000 a year. Let's just be real here, class. If you put $100 a month into regular bank savings accounts, it would take nearly 500 months, that is, about 40 years, to save up $50,000 when you acknowledge that the "interest" you are supposed to be making on your passbook savings account is negated by inflation and currency devaluation (which it most certainly has been). Most people understood that quite well.
That left the stock market, which supposedly earned far more "interest" than regular savings, as the only place to "put" money that would "grow" it fast enough for a person to actually buy a house before retirement, presuming they started saving at about 20 years of age (though most people don't even graduate from college and get a decent job until their mid-20s, which of course makes things worse). This is why the stock market has grown at an unnaturally high rate in the last 20 or so years, after enjoying a slow, steady, sustainable climb previous to that. The true equilibrium value of the stock market is about $8000 right now, as we have discussed before. At $11,000ish it is nearly 50% overvalued itself. This can't end well - but that's a topic for another day.
Back in mortgage land, a 10% down payment would naturally take only about half the above amount of time, say, 15-20 years, meaning you'd be able to qualify for a mortgage just about the time your kids started college if you had to save that much cash out of the average American wage-base. Obviously, that wasn't going to work either, which is why they gave up, for the most part, the idea of down payments all together for couples buying their first home and simply let them get by with paying only the closing costs, because if they had to wait 10 or 20 years to save up for a down payment, in real life the money would simply never get saved.
This was something the Powers That Be did not want to admit - that the American Dream was wishful thinking for the vast majority of middle class people, and you may remember in the late 80s and early 90s that "homeownership for everyone" became a political topic as our government began pushing banks to qualify more people for home ownership, under the premise that it was a big step toward financial independence and toward upward mobility. And that's how the standards got lowered in the first place - government trying to cover up the fact that average wages in this country will no longer support a family since they allowed the Robber Barons to rape our economic infrastructure.
Now, one of two things has to happen - either banks put the old down payment and income-ration standards back into place to avoid making loans to people who can't really afford them, or they go back to making loans to people who can't really afford them.
If they refuse to re-implement the down payment and income-ratio standards, then we will be right back where we started again in a few years - a bigger mess needing a bigger bailout.
If they do re-implement sound mortgage loan standards, the vast majority of supposedly middle class people in this country will not be able to buy a house.
EITHER WAY, there is ZERO CHANCE that housing values are going to go back up and stay up to "repay" all that bailout money anytime in our lifetimes, class. It's NOT going to happen, it CAN'T happen. We simply don't have enough income anymore to make it happen. It's that simple.
This "plan" is based on a fantasy that can NEVER be real. It's just a means to get the rich fat-cats of wall street off the hook and interferes so much in the supposed "free market" that the problems will be perpetuated instead of solved. Every one of these businesses deserves to crash and burn, to disappear into the void from which they sprang. As I mentioned before, you were accused of being pinko commies for wanting your job and your livelihood protected and were laughed at by them (all the way to the bank) - now they're getting all that and a box of chocolates.
What they deserve is the firing squad.
A couple of years ago Agudas Yisroel placed adds in the Jewish media announcing their upcoming yearly banquet ,highlighted unabashedly by the following caption."Join the ELITE of Torah Jewery in celebrating this momentous occasion".The elite of Torah Jewry? Says who? A group of self appointed so called elitists? The machle of elitism effects the yeshiveshe velt as well with it's haughty ivory tower sense of smug superiority.It also affects almost all chassideshe kriezen,the MO to.
Zweibel has enough brains and is more smooth to avoid the fatal mistakes that Shafran made in denying everything like a petulant child.
But this is just more Agudah spin. Let's see what happens when Zweibel no longer gets his marching orders from Bloom.
Who are you calling a "corrupt putz"?
http://www.ntsb.gov/
If that chopper with Margo had gone down it would have been a huge fiasco. How do you get a crane out in open waters to hoist out someone that fat?
Moose Jews Can Use
Latest attack on Palin: She doesn't keep kosher!
By JAMES TARANTO - WSJ
CNN reports on the Obama campaign's latest effort to hold the Jewish vote:
Rep. Alcee Hastings told an audience of Jewish Democrats Wednesday that they should be wary of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin because "anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks."
"If Sarah Palin isn't enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention," Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday.
At first this was a bit of a head-scratcher, but we figured it out when an email debate erupted among our Jewish colleagues over whether moose is kosher. Then it seemed obvious: Hastings is trying to turn Jewish voters against Palin by implying that her meat is unclean. This would also explain Barack Obama's porcine allusions, although the laws of Kashrut do not apply to facial cosmetics.
There's a lot of misinformation out there, so we did some research, and here's what we found: Moose have cloven hoofs and are ruminants. Therefore as a species they do meet the necessary conditions to be kosher.
In order for a particular animal to be kosher, however, it must be ritually slaughtered in accordance with Jewish law. This requires that it be killed with a long, sharp blade to the neck. Shooting a wild moose and eating it, therefore, is forbidden; the only way to keep it kosher would be to trap it alive and have a shochet do the honors.
But Hastings ignores one important point: Her aversion to pork notwithstanding, Palin is not Jewish. If Joe Lieberman were eating meat from improperly slaughtered game animals, he would be in violation of religious law. (Whether it would be appropriate to raise that in a political attack is another question.) But Judaism makes no claim that its dietary laws are universal. Unless she decides to become a giyoret, Palin is free to devour all the treif she wants.
Rep. Stephen Cohen of Tennessee spoke at the same event:
Cohen, who recently remarked that Jesus Christ was a community organizer, took his comments about the founder of the Christian faith further Wednesday. "A lot of what Jesus talks about is wonderful," Cohen said. "Talks about helping people and lifting them up and caring about people who are sick and all those things. He's a great Democrat."
In fact, the modern Democratic Party dates only to 1828; its predecessor, Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, to 1792. Jesus was born within a few years of 1, so he could not have been a Democrat.
This might have been an honest mistake. But Cohen, who is not Christian, ought to be aware that those who are, regard Jesus as the Messiah. To disparage him as a mere "community organizer" or "Democrat" is a show of disrespect for other people's religion. Would Cohen describe the Prophet Muhammad as a "community organizer"?
FYI, Avi Shafran is an avid reader and sometimes contributor to James Taranto's column.
Taranto is a moyredik funny baal kishron who should have been a Brisker.
BTW, isn't that shvantz Alcee Hastings a convicted fraudster?
$29 billion to fund JPMorgan's purchase of Bear Stearns in March.
$85 billion to rescue AIG.
Up to $200 billion to nationalize Fannie/Freddie.
$700 billion (likely) for the mother of all bailouts.
Steve:
Agreed - Hikind will stumble his way around - ultimately he has a choice to make; deal with the problem in an aggressive manner through the police, the D.A. and the State Legislature - or he will fail!
He knows what we know - the problem is that he needs them to keep his job via endorsements - perhaps this is a cosmetic ploy - so we'll see what he's made up of.
He can go down in history as a person with serious accomplishments - or just another corrupt putz in the Jewish community.
I'm hoping that he gets it loud and clear.
I've got news for you. Shafran is also an avid reader of UOJ (to see where his next patch is coming from).
Taranto reminds me of some chevre who learned in my yeshiva. I don't know if his mother was Jewish but his father is a Sfardi.
Washington Mutual to Sell Deposits to J.P. Morgan
The federal government has arranged for Washington Mutual to
sell its deposits and some branches to J.P. Morgan Chase,
people briefed on the matter said Thursday night.
BEIJING - The Hong Kong government says it has found traces of melamine in baby cereals and crackers made in China in an expanding scandal over Chinese milk and other food products tainted with the industrial chemical.
In China, authorities said Friday that a Taiwanese mother and three young children with kidney stones may have been poisoned by Chinese milk products tainted with melamine, and two Japanese confectioners' products were also found to be contaminated.
Hong Kong's government said the contaminated baby vegetable formula cereal are made by Heinz.
It also says melamine was found in the steamed potato wasabi crackers produced by Silang House. Both were made in China, it said.
The European Union banned imports of baby food containing Chinese milk Thursday as a toxic chemical that was illegally added to China's dairy supplies turned up in candy and other Chinese-made goods that were quickly pulled from stores worldwide.
The 27-nation EU adds to the growing list of countries that have banned or recalled Chinese dairy products because of the contamination. In addition to the ban, the European Commission called for more checks on other Chinese food imports.
Four days before Rosh Hashana. Let us do Tshuva.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/your-furniture-could-radioactive/story.aspx?guid=%7B8E3AE5BF%2D122D%2D41D6%2D912E%2D0E1FC6C0053E%7D&dist=msr_1
Your furniture could be radioactive
Commentary: Chernobyl-tainted wood works its way to market
Fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 settled into the ground and on to the trees in major timber-exporting countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Germany, Finland and Sweden. Those countries export wood to furniture retailers around the world.
While logging in many areas affected by Chernobyl fallout is against the law, the region is prone to illegal logging. It is especially rampant in the Russian-Ukrainian region where fallout was heavy, the World Wildlife Fund said in a report released in July.
WWF says as much as 40% of global wood production comes from illegal timber operations, and Russia likely produces the largest quantity of illegal timber. Illegal timber, you can bet, is not held to high environmental testing standards, if any....
Bald head = Bald liar
Hey Paulson,
Dayne tseyn zoln zich tsebeyzern un aropshlingen dem kop!
(May your teeth get angry and chew off the rest of your head!)
Remember that lunatic rant from Pinny Lipschutz, equating Rubashkin critics with "Amalek"?
Here's how one blogger sums it up:
The following piece of bottom of the birdcage worthy reporting appeared in YESHIVA WORLD NEWS. That any educated person could write such pablum and believe his own logorhea is amazing.
http://www.forward.com/articles/14272/
We believe that the OU threat to terminate Rubashkin if guilty is genuine!
McCain's Brilliant Play: Bets Presidency on Blocking Bailout Deal
Posted Sep 26, 2008
John McCain roared into Washington yesterday and reportedly broke up an agreement on the bailout deal. In doing so, he went against not only Democrats but the Republican president, the panicked Republican Treasury Secretary and Fed Chairman, and Republican Congressional leaders.
Instead, he sided with a small band of outraged Republicans grousing about violation of free-market principles.
So was this idiotic McCain self-destruction, as most people are suggesting? Or was it a brilliant populist move?
We think the latter.
Americans hate the Hanke-Panke plan, which they accurately view as a bailout of the financial-services companies and executives that helped get us into this mess. Some Americans are so angry, in fact, that for now they'd rather see "this sucker go down" -- as Bush put yesterday, referring to the U.S. economy -- than support a financial-services bailout. By aligning himself with a small band of Republicans who are refusing to go along with the Hanke-Panke plan, McCain not only appears to be standing up for this outrage but is reinforcing his desired image as a maverick.
Given the ongoing crisis in the credit markets, a bailout plan will likely be struck today or Monday -- whether McCain plays ball or not. Assuming this happens, McCain will:
Take credit for brokering a compromise (assuming the final deal is palatable to Americans)
Crow that he was the candidate who tried to stand up against the bailout of Wall Street fat-cats
Note every five minutes in the next six weeks that the enormous sop to Wall Street hasn't saved anything (if the bailout works, it won't work until long after the election is over)
Blast President Bush, who everyone hates anyway, thus reinforcing his "change" message
Say he's the only guy with the balls and experience necessary to deal with this crisis.
And on the off chance that a deal doesn't go through in the next couple of days, McCain can just rail about the outrage of the Democrats' desire to bail out Wall Street at the expense of Main Street and say he's the only one standing up for the little guy.
In our opinion, this was a brilliant political play (and we're voting for Obama). If only it were likely to lead to a better bailout plan.
(What's a better bailout plan? One that injected equity into the banks -- or, better yet, converted debt to equity -- thus penalizing banks for their stupidity, not taxpayers, and actually accomplishing the desired recapitalization).
"It is the government that is best suited to uncover and prosecute legal impropriety. Rabbis are ill-prepared to ferret out malfeasance. Rabbis lack the power and authority to subpoena witnesses and punish perjury."
Yitzchok Adlerstein
------------------------
We will hold your feet to the fire when it comes to child-rape!
Washington Mutual paid former CEO Kerry Killinger $14.4 million in 2007 and over $54 million from 2002-07, Forbes reports. In return, the nearly 120-year-old firm was led into the biggest bank failure in U.S. history.
From - Ganavim.com
Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, took home $74 million in salary, bonuses and other awards last year. Richard Fuld, chief executive of the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers, received $71.9 million.
Over the past five years, Fuld made $354 million leading his company on a wild ride that ultimately ended in bankruptcy. He was Lehman's biggest individual shareholder.
Other failed executives like Avi Shafran at 42 Broadway earned $12/hour -- way above the minimum wage. Disgraceful!
James E. Cayne, former chief executive officer of Bear Stearns, made $49.31 million over the last two years. He famously fought the bailout of Long-Term Capital Management, the debt-heavy hedge fund in 1998, only to steer Bear Stearns into a fatal debt-heavy foray into mortgage securities. The avid bridge player was busy at a tournament this spring when Bear Stearns melted down.
Martin J Sullivan, former chief executive officer of American International Group, raked in $39.6 million in the last three years. Sullivan oversaw two quarters of record losses as the insurance giant's head. Shareholders pressured him to quit in June. Severance package plus bonus: $19 million.
The Fed took effective control of the company after bailing out its bad bets on credit default swaps. Price tag: $85 billion for 80% of the stock.
Don't forget that Shelly "I don't go to cops funerals" Silver is making well over 6 figures as a politician AND refuses to disclose how much more he makes at his ambulance chaser law firm Weitz & Luxemburg.
$12 an hour and Shafran is still pennywise as a pauper when it comes to buying a hat.
Who is he going to try to shnor a steaming from before Yomtov?
Anyone got some good MUSSAR for Rosh Hashana?
"Anyone got some good MUSSAR for Rosh Hashana?"
Report molesters to the police without delay!
Here’s some mussar:
The Torah says “If you see a donkey fallen over because of it’s load, you must surely help remove the burden, you must not turn away”. The gemarah doesn’t differentiate between a rabbi and a regular person, EVERYONE must assist in lightening the burden.
Every person knows of someone who is burdened with a heavy load of troubles. Everyone knows of defenseless people being abused. You must not turn away from other people’s troubles. You might not be popular to take a stand but do it anyway.
As the great mentor in Chicago, Rabbi Finkel said many times “I’m not running for public office, or a popularity contest. I don’t care if I’m popular or not, ya just gotta do what’s right”.
For those who prefer to watch innocent people suffer, as you live your merry lives. Don’t forget NO ONE STAYS IN POWER FOREVER. Hashem gave you success to see how you behave. You can figure out the rest.
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