DOVBEAR

The brilliance of Romney

Thursday, February 02, 2012

Top tier politicians aren't stupid and Mitt Romney didn't become a multimillionaire master of the universe for lack of brain power. Also, he's surrounded by the best strategists money can buy. So, let's take it for granted that his asinine-sounding remarks to Soledad O’Brien on CNN were not a gaffe, but a deliberate message to hard-working middle class people who --let's put it bluntly-- don't want their president to worry about poor people.

The shrewdness of Romney's approach seems to have been overlooked by the elite liberal media. After the jump you can see John Stewart, and Gail Collins ripping him to shreds, but missing the point entirely.

Romney knows that middle class people resent poor people. We say to ourselves, "We did everything right, like going to school and finding work, whereas they did everything wrong. So why do we have the same standard of living?"

True, poor people may have also done everything right, but been brought down by bad luck, but Mr. Middle Class Voter doesn't care. The way he sees it, the poor guy is a screw up surviving on hand-outs, and it makes Mr MCV furious to see that the poor guy does not seem to be worse off. They have TVs! And Xboxes! And air conditioning! How dare they!

Romney knows this, and in his remarks to O'Brien, he masterfully tapped into it.

Is that really the Jewish Press?

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

After the jump you will find a moderately impressive, Jewish Press editorial, in which the writer calls out the thugs and bullies who threatened Jewish Press advertisers after the Press ran an article about gay Jewish teenagers who attempt suicide.

In a word: Wow.

I confess to being doubly surprised. I can't believe there are Jews heartless enough to protest an attempt to prevent other Jews from killing themselves, and I can't believe the Jewish Press stood up for itself.

See it after the jump

In which I defend Charedim --- sort of

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

What follows is a paraphrased recreation of an actual conversation, joined in progress. As you can see we touch on many things essential to our understanding of Judaism, the world, and Judaism's place in it. The conversation, joined in progress, began as a discussion about the differences between Haredi and MO/DL psak

Him: I can only tell you what the religion says. I can't claim to speak for its followers' behavior.
Me: A religion doesn't say anything. It's always the adherents who do the talking.

Him: We've had this debate before. I'm sure we'll have it again.
Me: This is just a point of logic. A religion cant say anything. It's always interpreted by people. The issue is that not every one recognizes the authority of everyone else's interpreter

Him: That's fine. Mine is still right.
Me: There is no right. Just the arguments we do and do not find significant. You think x is right because x for some reason has significance to you or provides some kind of payoff. All comes down to significance/ payoff

Him: You are arguing that there is no right and wrong. I disagree.
Me: Right and wrong / true and false aren't categories that apply to this discussion.

Him: 13th Century Europeans thought the world was flat. That doesn't validate their interpretation.
Me: Interpreting a text is categorically different from empirical observations. You can say they were wrong about the world being flat. Can't say an interp. of text is wrong in the same way.

Him: Halakha and medrash are not the same. There are rules for psak. Hareidim break them.
Me: Of course they are the same. It's all interpretation. And the rules of psak get interpreted, too... So cards on the table: do you think the Haredim are wrong? And do they know they are wrong?

Him: Yes. And I believe the rabbanim/Askanim know they are wrong, the followers are too blind to care
Me: I'm certain they think they are right; they just interpret differently than you do.

Him: There have been individual misguided people throughout history. Mainstream haredism is an intentional distortion.
Me: Don't be silly. It's a good faith interpretation of the tradition that we find unappealing, or lacking in significance... but ok... you claim the Haredim KNOW they are wrong. So what's their purpose?

Him: Control
Me: So is the claim that your sect is pure as the driven snow, but no one else's is? Haredim are after control, or pursuing their own understanding of significance, or chasing some other payoff -- all while knowing that they are wrong -- but your sect alone has pure motives?

Him: You are making the atheist argument that 100% of religion is subjective not divine.
Me: Of course it's subjective! Everything humans touch is subjective. It's all filtered through our imperfect human minds. We interpret what God said. We interpret what He wants. Different people see things differently. That's what it means to be human! You're making the nonsense claim that the haredim are human beings, but your sect are angles.

Him: Actually we are parallelograms.
Me: hahaha. So my argument is accepted?

Him: No. But we're going in circles.
Me: No. We weren't

And so it ended. Your views?

Search for more information about TOIRAH at 4torah.com

Life Coaching in Boro Park, via the New York Times

Monday, January 30, 2012

The Times today had a piece on Life Coaching that seems to me to have been written with a bit of a sneer. The problem isn't with Coaching per se, but with the tender age of the current crop of Coaches. The title question asks "Should a Life Coach Have a Life First?" and indeed the author - 34 year old Spencer Morgan - seems astounded that anyone might take a young person's advice.

Oddly enough, the article also devotes three paragraphs to a Jewish coach from Boro Park:

Last February, Chanie Messinger, 20, a psychology major at Brooklyn College, decided to augment her workload by enrolling in an online Torah-based professional life coach degree program she discovered while flipping through The Jewish Press on the bus ride home to Borough Park, where she lives with her mother. She has since built a base of 10 clients, including a 48-year-old woman who, until recently, was living in denial of the fact that she has diabetes.

“It was a very difficult breakthrough for her, she was crying,” Ms. Messinger, who charges from $25 to $75 an hour, recalled of a recent session with the client. “I just made her aware of more options, like maybe you can try Splenda.”

Ms. Messinger said she had recently completed the 80 hours of live coaching required by the Refuah Institute, which is based in Israel, with an office in Brooklyn. She has also invested in a profile on Noomii.com (meant to conjure “new me”), a centralized online coach directory where coaches pay as little as $19 to advertise their services, in the hope that potential clients find their bios, fees and picture most suitable to their own needs

Search for more information about Life Coaching at 4torah.com

Shocking: Newt lied when he reprimanded that hapless moderator

Thursday, January 26, 2012

What follows was taken from Slate and written by Josh Voorhees

This story is false. Every personal friend I had in that period says the story was false. We offered several of them to ABC to prove it was false. They weren’t interested because they would like to attack any Republican. They’re attacking the governor, they’re attacking me, I’m sure they’ll get around to Sen. Santorum, and Congressman Paul. I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans."

That was Newt Gingrich's memorable response last week to moderator John King after he opened the CNN debate with a question about Gingrich's ex-wife's claims that the GOP hopeful sought an open marriage. The rant was a crowd pleaser and not only allowed Gingrich to shake off the rather explosive allegations, but even to gain a little more of the all-important political momentum.

There's only one problem: Gingrich's camp now admits that the candidate was less than truthful during the debate -- and in a follow-up interview with CNN -- about who, exactly, he offered to ABC to refute the story. CNN reports that after "persistent" questions on the topic, Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond now says that the only people the campaign offered to ABC were the former House speaker's two daughters, Jackie Cushman and Kathy Gingrich Lubbers, who regularly appear on the campaign trail and who wrote a letter to ABC News defending their father that was widely circulated in the media.

That admission backs up ABC's on-the-record denial of Gingrich's original claim, something that Gingrich deemed "just plain baloney" on Tuesday. "If they're saying that, then they're not being honest," Gingrich said then. "We had several people prepared to be very clear and very aggressive in their dispute about that, and (ABC News) wasn't interested."

So there you have it. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple put it best: "What CNN pried out of Gingrich &Co. was something akin to a correction. And like most corrections, it hits the public realm with a much smaller splash than the original erroneous accusation."