I Love This

It appears that the denizens of Silicon Valley are experiencing some butt hurt because a popular pastor in the area has described their world as an, "Elitist den of hate."

Truth hurts, don't it?

These are people who make their money from regulatory arbitrage and government subsidies (patent, copyright, not having to pay sales tax, etc), collude to hold down worker wages, bust unions, etc.

No sympathy from me:

A Silicon Valley pastor has resigned from his church after calling the city of Palo Alto an “elitist sh%$t den of hate” and criticizing the hypocrisy of “social justice” activism in the region.

Gregory Stevens confirmed on Monday that he had stepped down from the First Baptist church of Palo Alto, an LGBT-inclusive congregation, after his personal tweets calling out the contradictions of wealthy liberals in northern California surfaced at a recent council hearing.

In emails to the Guardian, the 28-year-old minister detailed his “exasperation” with Palo Alto, a city in the heart of the technology industry, surrounded by severe income inequality and poverty.

“I believe Palo Alto is a ghetto of wealth, power, and elitist liberalism by proxy, meaning that many community members claim to want to fight for social justice issues, but that desire doesn’t translate into action,” Stevens wrote, lamenting that it was impossible for low-income people to live in the city. “The insane wealth inequality and the ignorance toward actual social justice is absolutely terrifying.” He later added: “The tech industry is motivated by endless profit, elite status, rampant greed, and the myth that their technologies are somehow always improving the world.”

………

The underlying messages to Stevens’ tweets, however, touched on continuing tension in Silicon Valley, where some of the world’s wealthiest companies and entrepreneurs have pledged to better the world through innovations, yet working-class families and poor residents struggle to afford the most basic necessities. The region has one of the worst homelessness crises in the country and a huge shortage of affordable housing, forcing tens of thousands of low-income workers to commute more than 50 miles to work.

………

He argued that the church’s rich neighbors could afford to “feed and house” all the homeless people in Palo Alto and surrounding cities, but instead focused on passing laws that further criminalized this population, encouraging police to harass those sleeping outside or in cars. The city had also made it hard for the church to provide meals for the homeless by requiring costly permits, he said.

………

But Palo Alto, he said, “wanted nothing to do with actual justice and was more interested in guarding their enclave of power and wealth”, adding: “If the wealth inequalities are not addressed, any talk about climate change, homelessness, and migrant rights is in vain.”

I agree with him completely, and I would apply it more generally to the hyper-wealthy throughout the west, particularly the US.

The world has become an increasingly brutal and hypocritical place.

You Should Have Thought about That before You Sold Your Soul to the Devil, You Contemptible Tools

As Jon Stewart Said, Go F%$# Yourself

It appears that white Evangelical leaders are having major butt-hurt because the general public is realizing that they sold their souls to Donald Trump to feed their need to hate Muslims, Jews, Brown People, the LGBT, and Unitarians.

If you don't want to be called a hypocrite, it starts with not actually being a hypocrite:

About 50 top leaders of major evangelical institutions will attend an invitation-only gathering this week to discuss the future and the “soul” of evangelicalism at a time when many of them are concerned their faith group has become tainted by its association with divisive politics under President Trump. It runs Monday and Tuesday.

The diverse group, which includes nationally known pastors such as Tim Keller and A.R. Bernard, is expected to include leaders of major ministries, denominations, colleges and seminaries. The gathering will take place at Wheaton College, an evangelical college outside of Chicago, according to organizer Doug Birdsall, honorary chair of Lausanne, an international movement of evangelicals.

The gathering, which has been in the works for several months and was discussed at evangelist Billy Graham’s funeral last month, will take place before the expected meeting of a separate group of evangelicals who advise, defend and praise Trump. Those leaders, which include members of Trump’s informal advisory council, are considering convening at Trump International Hotel in Washington in June.

………

“When you Google evangelicals, you get Trump,” Birdsall said. “When people say what does it mean to be an evangelical, people don’t say evangelism or the gospel. There’s a grotesque caricature of what it means to be an evangelical.”

These folks, even if they did not explicitly support Trump, they have been willfully blind to the fact that their most prominent compatriots alibiing for a man with the moral ugliness of Dorian Gray.

This is not a PR issue.  This is an issue of your own moral failings.

You have laid down with dogs, and woken up with fleas.

Do Not Make the Torah into a Crown with Which to Aggrandize Yourself or a Spade with Which to Dig*

The state of affairs in New York Yeshivas is scandalous, with many children not receiving even the most basic secular education.

In a New York Times OP/ED Shulem Deen talks about the real world consequences of this:

Last Friday, as observant Jews hurried with last-minute preparations for Passover, one Orthodox Jew was in Albany, holding up the New York State budget. He was insisting that this roughly $168 billion package include a special provision that would allow religious schools to meet the state’s educational requirements by using their long hours of religious instruction.

In recent years, education activists, among them former Hasidic yeshiva graduates, have pushed aggressively to bring the yeshivas into compliance with the state’s education laws. Simcha Felder, the state senator from Brooklyn who represents the heavily ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Borough Park and Midwood, was on a mission to get legal permission for the state to turn a blind eye to the near-absence of secular instruction in many yeshivas. The upshot? Tens of thousands of children would continue to graduate without the most basic skills.

I know about the cost. I was one of those kids.

………

During my senior year of high school, a common sight in our study hall was of students learning to sign their names in English, practicing for their marriage license. For many, it was the first time writing their names in anything but Yiddish or Hebrew.

When I was in my 20s, already a father of three, I had no marketable skills, despite 18 years of schooling. I could rely only on an ill-paid position as a teacher of religious studies at the local boys’ yeshiva, which required no special training or certification. As our family grew steadily — birth control, or even basic sexual education, wasn’t part of the curriculum — my then-wife and I struggled, even with food stamps, Medicaid and Section 8 housing vouchers, which are officially factored into the budgets of many of New York’s Hasidic families.

I remember feeling both shame and anger. Shame for being unable to provide for those who relied on me. Anger at those responsible for educating me who had failed me so colossally.

A woman I know works as a physician at Maimonides Medical Center, in heavily Hasidic Borough Park in Brooklyn, and often sees adult male patients who can barely communicate to her what ails them. “It’s not just that they’re like immigrants, barely able to speak the language,” she told me. “It’s also a lack of knowledge of basic physiology. They can barely name their own body parts.”

………

According to New York State law, nonpublic schools are required to offer a curriculum that is “substantially equivalent” to that of public schools. But when it comes to Hasidic yeshivas, this law has gone unenforced for decades. The result is a community crippled by poverty and a systemic reliance on government funding for virtually all aspects of life.

………

According to a report by Yaffed, or Young Advocates for Fair Education, an organization that advocates for improved general studies in Hasidic yeshivas, an estimated 59 percent of Hasidic households are poor or near-poor. According to United States Census figures, the all-Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel, an hour north of New York City, is the poorest in the country, with median family income less than $18,000.

………

Knowing all of this, it takes a special kind of audacity on Mr. Felder’s part to successfully strong-arm the state’s highest legislative body to legally deprive his own constituents’ children of an education and a future. Some might call this chutzpah. In Borough Park, it would be more properly called a Chillul Hashem: a desecration of God’s name.

I think that Deen does a fantastic job of describing the real world consequences that salutary neglect has had on the Orthodox Jewish community, but, unsurprisingly given that it is an editorial in the
Times, he does not go into the deeper theological issues beyond calling this state of affairs a Chillul Hashem.

I would argue that the current state of affairs in places like Kiryas Joel is more than a disservice to the members of the community and the taxpayers of New York, I would argue that it is in direct opposition to the basic tenets of Judaism.

The scriptural quote in the title of this post, is just one such example, and the behavior of these leaders constitutes both self-aggrandizement and an attempt to make the study of Torah remunerative, largely by gaming the state welfare system, which is clearly prohibited.

There is more to it than that though:  A Jew is REQUIRED to engage the world in order to make it a better place, to be, "A light unto the nations."^† (Or LaGoyim)

More generally, we as Jews are placed on this broken world to mend it. This is frequently called Tikkun Olam.

In order to fix this world, one has to understand it on some level beyond that of signing one's name on a wedding license or application for food stamps.

One needs to do more that take from society, one has to give back to society.

This is more than a Chillul Hashem, is is a Shanda fur di Goyim.  Their behavior shames the whole Jewish community.


^*Perkei Avote, Ch. 4:3.
^†"I the LORD have called unto you in righteousness, and have taken hold of your hand, and submitted you as the people's covenant, as a light unto the nations" Isaiah 42:6, among others.

Having Pasta and Garlic Bread

Passover is over, and I am having garlic bread and pasta.

Bliss!!!!!

A Mulligan? Seriously?

Tony Perkins, Christofascist President of the Family Research Council, an SPLC designated hate group, has announced that he is giving Donald Trump a "Mulligan’ on cheating on his pregnant wife with a porn star:

Donald Trump is still the answer to many conservative evangelical leaders’ prayers. Or at least to their continuing grievances.

They embrace Trump the policymaker, despite being uneasy about Trump as a man, says Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a prominent evangelical activist group.

Perkins knows about Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who claimed, in a 2011 interview, that in 2006 she had sex with Trump four months after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron. He knows of the reports that Daniels (real name: Stephanie Clifford) was paid off to keep the affair quiet in the waning weeks of the 2016 election. He knows about the cursing, the lewdness and the litany of questionable behavior over the past year of Trump’s life or the 70 that came before it.

“We kind of gave him—‘All right, you get a mulligan. You get a do-over here,’” Perkins told me in an interview for the latest episode of POLITICO’s Off Message podcast.

Weigh a paid-off porn star against being the first president to address the March for Life live via video feed, and a lot of evangelical leaders insist they can still walk away happy

Hypocrisy much?

Quote of the Day

We might get rid of Trump, eventually, and we’re lucky that he’s an incompetent boob…but we’re still going to have to do something about the christofascist churches and the right-wing thugs who cloak themselves in the new holy trinity of God, guns, and capitalism.

—PZ Myers

I agree, though I think that "Christofascist" should be capitalized.

What a Surprise

That Jewish lawyer that Kayla Moore invoked to defend her husband, Roy Moore from accusations of anti Semitism is not Jewish:

Kayla Moore, the wife of failed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, has revealed the identity of the Jewish attorney she cited to defend her husband from anti-Semitism charges — and that attorney is a Christian.

The identity of the lawyer was the subject of intense curiosity in the Jewish community ever since Kayla Moore proclaimed at a campaign rally last month, “One of our attorneys is a Jew.”

Moore told local news website AL.com on Thursday that she was referring to Martin Wishnatsky, a staff lawyer at the Foundation for Moral Law, which she runs.

………

Wishnatsky, who got a doctorate in political science from Harvard University in 1975, says that he accepted Jesus Christ as the son of God two years later. He first started exploring Mormonism, but later distanced himself from it; he went on to write a book called “Mormonism: A Latter Day Deception.” He now identifies as a Messianic Jew.

………

After two decades in North Dakota, Wishnatsky went on to graduate from law school at Liberty University before clerking for Roy Moore in the Alabama Supreme Court, then working for the Moores’ foundation, where he writes friend-of-the-court briefs.

Wishnatsky’s personal website includes links to poetry, books and legal briefs he has written, as well as coverage of his exploits in church musical performances, talent show competitions and community theater.

………

Kayla Moore had also said last month that she and her husband “have very close friends that are Jewish and rabbis and we also fellowship with them.” According to Southern Jewish Life magazine, she was referring to leaders at Beth Hallel, a Messianic Jewish congregation in Birmingham.

What a surprise. 

She's either lying through her teeth, or has no conception as to what Judaism is.

Facebook, Twitter, and Jewish Passover Songs

Someone on Facebook post complained about a Tweet calling Obama a Neoliberal tool.

I observed that many of his behaviors served the neoliberal playbook, and they replied, "You’re wildly wrong on the powers of POTUS if you think Obama was able to singlehandedly do quite a lot of that list," and I replied:

He had a literal blank check or mortgage relief, and he "Foamed the Runways" (Geithner said that) for insolvent banks, it's on him.

His decisions on target assassinations and his embrace of torturers and torture enablers were his decisions as CinC, it's on him.

His decision not prosecute banksters was his AG's decision, and he supported it, it's on him.

He tried to push through TPP, it's on him.

He did not lift a finger to support card check, it's on him.

Sing to the tune of "Chad Gadya."

I am feeling very smug about my bon mot right now.

Well, This is a Fine Kettle of Fish

In Australia, a royal commission charged with reviewing child abuse has released a damning report on child sexual abuse:

A royal commission investigating the sexual abuse of children in Australia found Friday that the nation was gripped by an epidemic dating back decades, with tens of thousands of children sexually abused in schools, religious organizations and other institutions.

The commission, the highest form of investigation in Australia, urged government action on its 189 recommendations, including the establishment of a new National Office for Child Safety and penalties for those who suspect abuse and fail to alert the police, including priests who hear about abuse in confessionals. It also urged Australia’s Roman Catholic leadership to press Rome to end mandatory celibacy for priests.

“Tens of thousands of children have been sexually abused in many Australian institutions,” said the report, which was particularly critical of Catholic organizations. “We will never know the true number. Whatever the number, it is a national tragedy, perpetrated over generations within many of our most trusted institutions.”

The bomb shell is that they are recommending that the church end priestly celibacy, and to report to law enforcement child abuse admitted in confession:

Delving into sensitive territory for the Catholic Church, the report recommended that clergy be required to report suspected abuse that they hear in the confessional booth. Church officials, however, argue that confidentiality is integral to the ritual, and Archbishop Hart took issue with the proposal.

I rather imagine that there are a whole bunch of folks at the Vatican reading this report, and its recommendations, and they are banging their heads against their monitors.

Notwithstanding Pope Francis's moves toward greater inclusion and economic activism, these two recommendations will clearly a bridge too far for him.

Midvale School for the Gifted

I was going to Maariv^* at the local Kollel^†, so that I could say Kaddish^‡ for her.

Charlie came with me, because we studied some Gemara^€ before services.

Charlie walked into the study area, and pushed the door open (it swings both ways) despite the large signs taped to it marked "Pull."

I said, "Midvale School for the Gifted," and Charlie gave me a blank look.

I had to remind him that it was a Gary Larson cartoon.

^*Evening services.
^†Community religious study center.
^‡A memorial prayer, it is the 41st anniversary of her death.
^€A companion work of the Mishna, together they constitute the Talmud.

Best Animal Crackers Ever!

Today was Yom Kippur, the day off atonement.

So I just finished a 25 hour fast.

My synagogue has a little break the fast with juice, pretzels, and, you guessed it, Animal Crackers.

Yum.

As Cervantes said, " “Hunger is the best sauce in the world."

For All Your Craft and Hobby Needs, Now with Grave Robbing

I am referring, of course to Hobby Lobby, which has been caught smuggling antiquities to provide exhibits for their "Museum":

The packages that made their way from Israel and the United Arab Emirates to retail outlets owned by Hobby Lobby, the seller of arts and craft supplies, were clearly marked as tile samples.

But according to a civil complaint filed on Wednesday by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, they held something far rarer and more valuable: ancient clay cuneiform tablets that had been smuggled into the United States from Iraq.

Prosecutors said in the complaint that Hobby Lobby, whose evangelical Christian owners have long maintained an interest in the biblical Middle East, began in 2009 to assemble a collection of cultural artifacts from the Fertile Crescent. The company went so far as to send its president and an antiquities consultant to the United Arab Emirates to inspect a large number of rare cuneiform tablets — traditional clay slabs with wedge-shaped writing that originated in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago.

In 2010, as a deal for the tablets was being struck, an expert on cultural property law who had been hired by Hobby Lobby warned company executives that the artifacts might have been looted from historical sites in Iraq, and that failing to determine their heritage could break the law.

Despite these words of caution, the prosecutors said, Hobby Lobby bought more than 5,500 artifacts — the tablets and clay talismans and so-called cylinder seals — from an unnamed dealer for $1.6

million in December 2010.

In addition to the complaint, the prosecutors on Wednesday filed a stipulation of settlement with Hobby Lobby that requires the company to return all of the pieces, and to forfeit to the government an additional $3 million, resolving the civil action.

………

Hobby Lobby’s purchase of the artifacts in December 2010 was fraught with “red flags,” according to the prosecutors. Not only did the company get conflicting information about the origin of the pieces, its representatives never met or spoke with the dealer who supposedly owned them, according to the complaint.

Instead, on the instructions of a second dealer, Hobby Lobby wired payments to seven separate personal bank accounts, the prosecutors said. The first dealer then shipped the items marked as clay or ceramic tiles to three Hobby Lobby sites in Oklahoma. All of the packages had labels falsely identifying their country of origin as Turkey, prosecutors said.

Multiple transfers to accounts, deliberate and varied mislabeling of their country of origin, and the CEO of Hobby Lobby is claiming that they should have been better at dotting their "I"s and crossing their "T"s.

This is bullsh%$.  This was an organized effort by Hobby Lobby boss Steve Green to smuggle artifacts into the United States: He went to the UAE to inspect the artifacts, ignored conflicting data regarding provenance, and was scrupulous in using an intermediary to avoided dealing directly with the dealer of the artifacts.

Prosecutors should be pursuing him personally over this.  The federal conspiracy statutes should cover this nicely.

Speaking of Terrorist Threats………

Christofascist Dave Daubenmire is calling for Christian Dominionist violence against their opponents:

Religious Right activist “Coach” Dave Daubenmire declared on his “Pass The Salt Live” webcast this morning that America needs “a more violent Christianity.” He cited President Trump and Greg Gianforte as examples of violent men who are properly “walking in authority.”

“The only thing that is going to save Western civilization is a more aggressive, a more violent Christianity,” he said.

That's what Timothy McVey said.

Seriously,  the most successful terrorists in the United States have been anti-abortion activists, who have used a campaign of violence and murder against abortion providers while law enforcement is taking off a hands off approach.

This policy of forbearance will bear bitter fruit.

Welcome to Trumpistan

A man on a light rail train in Portland, Oregon, was berating two "Muslim appearing" women, one in a hijab.

When some bystanders attempted to intervene, he slashed three people, killing 2:

Two men were killed in a stabbing on a MAX train Friday when they tried to intervene as another man yelled racial slurs at two young women who appeared to be Muslim, including one wearing a hijab, police said.

A third passenger who tried to help was also stabbed, but is expected to survive, said Portland police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson.

Officers arrested the suspect as he ran from the Hollywood transit station into the neighborhood near Providence Portland Medical Center in Northeast Portland, Simpson said. Police are still working to identify him and the three men stabbed.

The suspect was ranting about many things, using "hate speech or biased language," and at one point focused on the young women, Simpson said.

The suspect then turned on the passengers who tried to help, Simpson said.

"In the midst of his ranting and raving, some people approached him and appeared to try to intervene with his behavior and some of the people that he was yelling at," Simpson said. "They were attacked viciously."

One good Samaritan died at the scene and another at the hospital, he said. The third victim was undergoing evaluation, but didn't suffer life-threatening wounds, he said.

It has since been revealed that the assailant was a well known white supremecist:

Memorial Day weekend started with a horrific attack on a MAX light rail train at rush hour Friday night. Here is what you need to know about the latest developments:

Police identified the victims who died as two local men. Rick Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche died and a third, 21-year-old Micah David-Cole Fletcher, was injured. Authorities have said his injuries were not believed to be life-threatening.

Police Chief Mike Marshman said the three men were stabbed in the neck.

Best died at the scene, and Namkai-Meche died at a hospital. Family and friends say the fact they both intervened was in keeping with their personalities and values.

Namkai-Meche, a 23-year-old Reed College graduate from Ashland, was remembered as the sort of person who would stand up for what he believed was right, even if it meant putting himself at risk.

Best, 53, had retired from the Army in 2012 after 23 years in the military. He lived in Happy Valley and had worked for the city for the past few years. He had three teenage sons and a 12-year-old daughter.

The accused was a convicted robber who spewed hatred. Jeremy Joseph Christian, 35, remained in jail on accusations of aggravated murder and attempted murder, as well as lesser crimes.

He had filled his Facebook posts with threats to kill people and Nazi sympathies. He came to wider attention in Portland during a march in April. The march occurred after a larger planned parade along 82nd Avenue was canceled over fear of disruptions.

A video of the event shows Christian, wrapped in a Revolutionary War-era American flag, casting Nazi salutes while shouting, "Die Muslims!"

He described himself as a sociopath. His only criminal record appears to stem from a hapless 2002 robbery. When he was 20, he stole cash and cigarettes from a North Portland market. The owner said the robber walked in wearing a black ski mask, with openings cut out for the eyes, nose and mouth, but he knew all his customers and immediately recognized Christian. During the ensuing police chase, Christian was shot in the face.

BTW, the Tweeter in Chief has been studiously silent on this.

My guess is that he lacks the courage to offend his base by condemning what is clearly an act of domestic terrorism.

And in the Further Adventures of Florida Man………

This Picture Positively Screams "Florida Man"

A man in Florida, Devon Arthurs, shot his Neo-Nazi roommates because they mocked his recent conversion to Islam.

Before converting,he was also a Neo-Nazi, so I really don't understand how how Mr. Arthurs did not anticipate the reaction of his wannabee Aryan roommates:

A man in Florida who shot two of his roommates dead gave an unusual defense, the authorities say: they were neo-Nazis who had disrespected his recent conversion to Islam.

The arrest of the gunman, who said he had also been a neo-Nazi before becoming Muslim, led to the discovery that a fourth roommate had been stockpiling materials that could be used to create a bomb, according to a federal criminal complaint. That roommate, a member of the Florida National Guard, kept a picture of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, on his dresser, the authorities said.

Both men are now in custody. The accused gunman, Devon Arthurs, 18, has been charged with two counts of murder, and his surviving roommate, Brandon Russell, 21, has been charged with two counts related to the explosive material and devices.

Only in Florida, or maybe Montana.

I Like Frank

I mean of course the Pontiff.

In his latest acknowledgement of reality, he has recognizes that the Big Bang Theory is real and throws a shindig:

The Vatican has invited the world's leading scientists and cosmologists to try and understand the Big Bang.

Astrophysicists and other experts will attend the Vatican Observatory to discuss black holes, gravitational waves and space-time singularities as it honors the late Jesuit cosmologist considered one of the fathers of the idea that the universe began with a gigantic explosion.

The conference – which runs through the week – is part of an increasing admission by the church that scientific theories were real and not necessarily in contradiction with theological doctrine.

Pope Francis declared in 2014 for instance that God is not "a magician with a magic wand" and that evolution and Big Bang theory are real. 

Considering that the Vatican Observatory had a significant role in the genesis^* of the Big Bang theory, this is very apropos.

^*Pun not intended.

Headline of the Day

Stephen Fry Blasphemy Probe Dropped after Gardaí Fail to Find 'Substantial Number of Outraged People'

—Irish Independent

There is something profoundly amusing about the phrase, "Substantial number of outraged people."

Ireland is a 3rd World Nation in Europe

Any country which has working blasphemy statutes on the books cannot be considered a modern nation state:

Police in the Republic of Ireland have launched an investigation after a viewer claimed comments made by Stephen Fry on a TV show were blasphemous.

Officers are understood to be examining whether the British comedian committed a criminal offence under the Defamation Act when he appeared on RTE [Ireland's National Television and Radio Broadcaster] in 2015.

Fry had asked why he should "respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world.... full of injustice".

………

Appearing on The Meaning of Life, hosted by Gay Byrne, in February 2015, Fry had been asked what he might say to God at the gates of heaven.

Fry said: "How dare you create a world in which there is such misery? It's not our fault? It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?"

He went on to say that Greek gods "didn't present themselves as being all seeing, all wise, all beneficent", adding "the god who created this universe, if it was created by god, is quite clearly a maniac, an utter maniac, totally selfish".

The Irish Independent reported a member of the public made a complaint to police in Ennis in the same month the programme was broadcast. He was recently contacted by a detective to say they were looking into his complaint.

The viewer was not said to be offended himself but believed Fry's comments qualified as blasphemy under the law, which carries a maximum penalty of a fine of 25,000 euros (£22,000).

The law prohibits people from publishing or uttering "matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion".

If you think that your  God has such a thin skin, I kind of think that either you do not understand your God, or you are worshiping a very small and petty being.

Why Do I Even Bother?

Yesterday, I wrote a lengthy post explaining the profoundly dysfunctional Presidential campaign in France.

Today, I came across John Oliver's summary of the campaign on his show, and I am feeling profoundly inadequate.

It covers the issue and entertains at the same time, though I think that there could be a little less focus on the laughs and more on the humor.

The only thing that I object to is his characterization of Le Pen's position on the wearing of religious regalia in public.

It's not outrageous by the standards of France:  French republics have been thoroughly and militantly secular since Charles de Gaulle was a teen,^* to the degree that religious wedding ceremonies are not recognized by the state, and couples have to be married in a civil ceremony to have their union recognized.

The policy is called Laïcité, and while Le Pen's absolutism regarding this policy is a minority position, it is well within the bounds of what is considered mainstream French political thought.

Still, I feel really inadequate right now.

^*Specifically, since the passage of the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, though secularism was a significant portion of French political discourse since at least the French revolution.

It's the Start of the Crazy Season

Spent most of today cleaning for Pesach (Passover).

It's a period of high anxiety for Sharon^*, and I am doing my level best to be as supportive as possible.

Light blogging for a while.

BTW, anyone know a good way to split the Red Sea?

Have a Pesach joke:

Once upon a time in a far away land there lived a king who had a Jewish advisor. The king relied so much on the wisdom of his Jewish advisor that one day he decided to elevate him to head advisor. After it was announced, the other advisors objected. After all, it was bad enough just to sit in counsel with a Jew, but to allow one to 'lord it over them,' was just too much to bear. Being a compassionate ruler, the King agreed with them, and ordered the Jew to convert. What could the Jew do? One had to obey the King, and so he did.

As soon as the act was done, the Jew felt great remorse for this terrible decision. As days became weeks, his remorse turned to despondency, and as months passed, his mental depression took its toll on his physical health. He became weaker and weaker. Finally he could stand it no longer. His mind was made up. He burst in on the king and cried, "I was born a Jew and a Jew I must die. Do what you want with me, but I can no longer deny my faith." The King was very surprised. He had no idea that the Jew felt so strongly about it. "Well, if that is how you feel," he said, "then the other advisors will just have to learn to live with it. Your counsel is much too important to me to do without. Go and be a Jew again" he said.

The Jew felt elated. He hurried back home to tell the good news to his family. He felt the strength surge back into his body as he ran. Finally, he burst into the house and called out to his wife. "Rifka, Rifka, we can be Jews again, we can be Jews again." His wife glared back at him angrily and said, "You couldn't wait until after Passover?"

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.