Chit Chat

By Ted Belman

From now on comments on every post must relate to the content of the post.

Comments that don’t relate to the post must go here.

Any person who contravenes this demand will be put on moderation. Also their offending comment will be trashed.

The reason for this demand is so that people who want to read comments which pertain to the post, don’t have to wade through the chatter.

Everyone will be happier.

April 16, 2020 | 7,781 Comments »

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50 Comments / 7781 Comments

  1. Israel Says it’s in Visa Waiver Program, but US Issues Denial

    So, from the Soup Nazi to Visa Denial, seriously? Which, of course, opened the door to Holocaust minimization – they can’t really say it didn’t happen with a straight face, anymore – by our enemies and people who just want to piggyback on the outrage, which actually has the opposite effect in the long run of simply taking away the outrage. It’s like grade inflation. Employers aren’t stupid. A college diploma isn’t worth any more than a high school diploma used to be. Reality will always win in the end.

    Actually, the earliest example of this I’ve encountered was when during the war of independence in 1948, Albert Einstein one-sidely denounced Jewish violence and called Begin a Jewish Nazi as he called for a bi-national state. And they wanted to make this “Cultural Zionist” (like Herbert Samuels) President!

    https://www.jewishpress.com/news/travel-news/israel-says-its-in-visa-waiver-program-but-us-issues-denial/2023/09/26/

    We’ve had covid denial, election denial,

    Well, it’s 7:23am. I’m running late. Time for me to go swimming. Gosh, I don’t want to be guilty of exercise denial!

  2. SEB–

    I know he opposed the Iran deal but he was not the only one. I surmise that they can’t forgive him for having been so blatantly caught involving others also…..

  3. @Edgar Menendez is hardly the sole corrupt Democrat in Washington. I think they can’t forgive him for having opposed the Iran Deal. Schumer they found a use for. Maybe they didn’t have anything on him though they have shown no reluctance to manufacture evidence. After both caved. It was just the two of them.

  4. a NEW Novavax COVID vaccine is being put on the market in Canada and likely the safest and best of them all.
    I wonder why they go to all this trouble when Ivermectin is freely available -if allowed.

    I wonder if PHARMA could be behind this…./

  5. I see that Senator Menendez of New Jersey has been indicted on charges of corruption, bribery and much more. Particularly he is associated with Egypt, but his “talents” go further afield also.

    Anything advantageous to Egypt_( as per Menendez) Is likely to be disadvantageous to Israel. He was in trouble before and jailed for 17 years , pardoned by Trump after 4 years,

    Perhaps never did jail time at all. since the US political system is like a dozen intertwined corkscrews, who knows…….? AND 2/3rd of the Senate seats are to be voted on next year………….???? a couple of extra wins here with Trump in the hot seat, would change the US like butter suddenly becoming steel.

    And naturally, Menendez is a DemocRAT.. His wife is also indicted being a willing “colleague”

  6. https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1703568361626685647/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1703568361626685647&currentTweetUser=KanekoaTheGreat&mode=profile
    Guess what!? All vaxx were mfg by military contractors managed by NSA and NIH (Fauci), and own 50% of the patents, doesn’t matter Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, and that begs the question, what do they have on Netanyahu to make him go first and sacrifice Israel to roll out the genocidal bioweapon ? Remember his blathering about “My friend, Bourla,I called at 3am to make sure we were getting it first!” Remember that? Bourla, the veterinarian…
    Oh, the Corona “virus” is the COMMON COLD. But there are no viruses. Never has a virus, or c*vd been isolated.

  7. EMAIL RECEIVED.

    You are doing fantastic work, and I am sure that all your readers appreciate it. You are amazingly thorough, and you select items of merit on the most important issues. I don’t think anyone in the world can match you.

    I recall a silly reader who claimed that he stopped reading Israpundit
    because he disagreed on just one point. That’s an absurd attitude. If you
    read only things you agree with, you will never learn anything. Besides,
    you won’t even understand your own positions, because you won’t know the alternatives to them, the arguments against them, and how to answer them.”

  8. SEB-

    I still disagree. “greet the day WITH HOPE” makes perfect sense, and your version does not. Unless you declare that all the learned Philologists and English professors didn’t know their onions (an americanism).

    It crept into the language through first. laziness,- a common American syndrome- and secondly through ignorance of correct speech, even grammar. Damon Runyon and others had their schtik of using the present tense for everything. Others, lower case letters only.

    As I pointed out yesterday American have a language all their own, which resembles English, full of jargon, and American-isms. In fact each state almost had variations in pronunciations, and even meanings, often using words peculiar to that state only. .

    Consider the sentence… “I would have hoped to have a chance” . I find this is absolutely NOT correct but almost universally used even by known authors. And further, it makes NO sense grammatically.

    I feel THIS is correct “I hoped I would have had a chance”

    Of course English itself progresses and keeps changing, but at a much slower and leisurely pace, where one can see how a new word derives from the older version.

    Consider the English of Chaucer and Shakespeare to todays version..
    Even in England, there are local dialects which are almost gibberish to the outsider. I experienced it myself when in Yorkshire. Didn’t understand a single word of the two men sitting in the bus seat in front of me.

    I don’t care, it’s just a matter of chit-chat” as far as I’m concerned.

    My own language was fashioned in 19th Century English of Thackeray, Jerome, Hornung, Wilkie Collins, Conan Doyle, Wells, Harrison Ainsworth, Bennet, Bulwer Lytton, Du Maurier, Ouida W.W. Jacobs, Wren,, Orczy, Dumas, (elder and younger) Stevenson, and many others whose names I can’t recall eight now.

    Some of course, leaked into the early 20th cent. and others are still popular. My niece, the other month, a degree laden lady, decided that she wanted to read Vanity Fair, and was thrilled at its contents. She then went on to Esmond,

    These books were really “reads” nothing less than 600-700 pages..

  9. @Peloni Around here, if you say, “MSM” everybody will think you are referring to the Manhattan School of Music (I almost typed, Media”) and if you were to say, “legacy media” would they wonder, “is that as opposed to “cage free” or pasture-raised?”

    I sat at a bar next to a Columbia student whose major
    was, “Global Studies” which included studying cultures and “global governance.”

    I was thought of an appropriate title for a textbook” for such a course, “On The Care and Feeding of Journalists.”
    “in the belly of the beast” as we used to say when I was an “anti-imperialist “ leftist back in the day, I felt I was.

    Last night, I engaged in conversation with a young aspiring comic sitting next to me in a restaurant. Her
    Every other word was capitalism this and capitalism that but she clearly had no idea what it is or
    What she was talking about.

  10. @Edgar Actually, “hopefully” is an adverb which can be used correctly by saying for example, “he greeted the new day hopefully.”

    However, I have found it more practical because less cumbersome to say, “Hopefully such and such will happen” than to say, “It is to be hoped…”

    By the same token, sometimes, it is just more efficient to go with the flow and use “them” as a pronoun, incorrectly, in the singular, than to constantly have to insert “him or her”.

    Language evolves according to general usage over time.

    There is a funny line in the 1946 movie, “To Each his Own” starring Olivia de Havilland, for which she won an Oscar, though it’s been rarely shown here, for some reason, in which, in a scene in a nightclub in London during the Blitz, a crusty aristocrat played by Roland Culver and WWI veteran, as we find out, objects to young people’s language “today” and parodies sarcastically, ” and they thwim and they thwam”

    Eh, Daddyo? (or is that one ’50s youth lingo?)

    😀

    It doesn’t pay to be too literal-minded. After all, a civilization is not the culture of a city state, antisemitism is not opposition to “Semites,” but hatred of Jews, white chocolate isn’t actually chocolate, and an anti-pasto is not somebody who is against spaghett of the male persuasion (that last bit was actually funny when I made it up before the gender dysphoria madness took hold in the pubic square.)

  11. @Edgar, MIchael 😀

    P.S.
    Michael, what did you type to get that “OH, NO” emoji? was it complicated? Do you have a link to a list?

  12. Edgar, I’m happy to have razed your spirits with this subject! Hopefully we wont pour over it two much.

    to be knocked up at 7.30

    Oh know! 😮

  13. There are more meaningless words creeping into common use every day.\
    But, generally, readers can get their purported meanings.

    I recall the many learned debates over the non-word “hopefully”,.
    We have, yes,” irregardlelss”, a Vaudeville-style expression,
    “per say” instead of per se, “pour over” instead of pore over, and many more that are irksome to write.
    I notice some of these in Israpundit articles and posts -as recently as the other day. and I think to myself.. “he really should know better”..

    I’m reminded of the famous Lemmy Caution ordering coffee at a bistro in France. and showing off his command of the language… “toot sweet”- 2 lumps.

    Or was it R.B. Saxe’s character an English mangler par excellence.. Sammy Creed.??

    They all seem to originate in America, whose language, English, has a vocabulary in which many innocuous English terms have completely different meanings in the US, also in Canada which succumbed long ago.

    I recall the consternation when freshly arrived in Canada I asked the landlady to be knocked up at 7.30.

  14. @Peloni irregardless was a bete noir of my mother, the daughter of an English teacher, among other things, when I was growing up.

    But, I learned a long time ago, that what started as a joke caught on and a hundred years later, entered the dictionary, because we have common law language as well as law, as opposed to France, say, with it’s Academie Francaise.

  15. @Michael

    my wife informs me that “irregardless” is not a valid word.

    When I first read this, I was quite in agreement with your wife’s comment on this matter, but then I found the following which made me laugh:
    Regardless Of What You Think, ‘Irregardless’ Is A Word

    This reminds me of a 27 page paper I wrote many years back. It was for Advanced Literary Studies and the title of the paper which I chose was “The Tragicness of Hector in the Iliad”. The professor wanted to give me a ‘C’ for using ‘Tragicness’, a word “which doesn’t exist”, throughout the paper and in the title – for which she was making a full letter grade deduction for each of these criticisms, while noting her regrets because the paper otherwise met with her strong approval. Feeling quite silly, I told her I had thought the word did exist, and she told me to go look it up in the library. So I did, and the funny thing is that though I thought she was actually right, she wasn’t. To be fair, the word was not present in all dictionaries, and actually it was absent from most of them, but it was present in at least one of the older, unabridged dictionaries. I still recall the surprise look of disbelief on Prof. Foxman’s face when I told her what I had found.

    In any event, your wife will likely find many points of grammar which I violate routinely. My niece began writing me long emails long ago regarding my lack of regard for such guidelines, so like yourself, I am still being tutored in such matters, though I am probably a worse student than yourself, being quite fixed in my manner of writing, which means that you will likely see ‘irregardless’ written in my writings once again. 🙂

  16. @Michael S

    I am so sorry to hear of your pain. I can feel your heartbreak.

    May Ha Shem comfort you in your personal loss.

    It’s hard to believe, or accept, that we may soon see the downfall of this country. I try not to dwell on it. I hope that I die first.

    The loss of Joshua’s altar is tragic.

  17. Thanks for the condolences, friends. Actually, Peloni, my grief is tripled: first by personal loss, and some things I will go on to relate, second by my dismay at the awful things happening to America, which I will also detail if I have time and room, but most of all by what Sebastien posted about Joshua’s altar. I’ll post a photo of the altar here, while it still exists, as something of a memorial:

    https://www.jewishpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/The-archaeological-site-of-Joshua%E2%80%99s-altar.-696×461.jpg

    What a sad time we live in! I wish I could compel everyone, starting myself, to read the book of Lamentations, with weeping!

    I just got up from trying to sleep for the night. I was looking back in my mind, at a satellite view of Milwaukee, WI — the place I was raised, the place that was “COCIDed out” of hosting the 2020 Democratic convention; the place where the upcoming Republican convention may or may not take place.

    The last five times I went to “Brew City”, of course, was for funerals. Over the years since we moved out of there for the last time in the 1990s, whole neighborhoods had become vacant lots, empty hulks of factories lie rusting. and old shopping centers had either long ago been deserted or were fast emptying of shops. Our last remaining friends in the city were dying off, one every visit — first, in the old factory district I grew up in. That death was 2004. My wife’s friend then, a few years ago, west of Jackson Park. Then, around the time of the BLM riots in Wauwatosa, the riot in Kenosha and the Waukesha massacre, the angel of death started slaying my family — making its way, as it were, out of the Kinnickinnic Basin and the Menominee Valley, up the railroad tracks that used to serve our booming industry, and out into the suburbs: a creeping Miasma, reminiscent of the “Angel of Death” scene in the Heston and Robinson version of “The Ten Commandments”.

    Just before our last funeral visit, I was hoping to see an old pastor friend released from prison to a place near where we used to live on the West Side. He died suddenly in prison, last October.

    Still, the deadly Death Smog rolls on. It starts in Washington, DC, in the great swamp there:

    Survey: Washington D.C. Ranked Least Desirable Place to Live
    “…The survey comes after a Giant grocery store in Southeast Washington, DC, announced it will be removing name brands like Advil, Colgate, and Tide from its shelves to better prevent a spike in theft. The store also stated that shoppers will be required to show their receipts to security guards before exiting the store. Ira Kress, president of the chain, told the Washington Post that the store can no longer serve the community by keeping its stores at high risk.”
    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/09/04/washington-d-c-ranked-least-desirable-place-live-survey/

    Obama has already fled the place, escaping to the White Privilege fortress of Martha’s Vineyard. Biden quits the place every weekend, fleeing to beaches in Delaware and Lake Tahoe. Only President Trump wants to live there, for our sakes; and they are trying to kill him.

    Yes, it’s all pretty geievous; but the most awful scene in these Days of Awe, is seeing Joshua’s altar slated for destruction by God’s enemies.

  18. @Edgar Splash means fun surprise, paranoid pops. I learned it from my mother b. 1924 and her father b. 1887. It’s not an attack. But maybe it’s from before your time.

  19. MICHAEL-

    I looked everywhere but did not see that you had ANOTHER family tragedy, except now through Peloni’s post. I did not know even of the past ones.

    Be assured that I deeply sympathise with you and your family. I know exactly how you must feel as it has happened to me also as recently as last March. Just as it happens to all who have families/friends.

    But there’s nothing we can do except to accept it as a fact of life, and you are bolstered by your religious belief as a consolation.

    I give you the Jewish response on such an occasion. “I wish you LONG LIFE”. (and I can add, “happiness”)

  20. @Michael
    Please accept my condolences on your brother-in-law’s passing. I can not relate to the number of losses which you and your family have suffered over the past few years in such tight succession, and can only imagine the difficulty with which you having to manage. I know your faith will help lead you thru it all with poise and resolve, but please know that you have my every sympathy and that you and your family will be in my prayers. Be well.

  21. SEB-

    In really don’t understand the modern lingo of you kids. When I see “splash” I think of “brandy and splash-a dash of soda water”, or a jump from a diving board into a pool or lake.

    The meaning of the grinning cartoon character is beyond me. Either you’re laughing at me or WITH me….I think they’re childish and for the simpleminded.

    But I stopped laughing, atfer all it was funny -but not THAT much.

  22. SEB

    I saw only the heading in Chit-Chat and was preparing to refute and give the real causes for the chaos..until I read your rather humourous post. Maybe you expect your approaching birthday to be a real “humdinger”(1st time I’ve ever used this word)

  23. The original Antoinette, Marie, caused the French Revolution and the continual upheavals up through today because, since she was Viennese and therefore addicted to strudel, she gave the whole country systemic periodic hypoglycemia-induced bouts of temporary insanity because she advised everyone to eat cake. She was not always so unreserved in her un-licensed dispensing of nutritional advice, technically a crime in New York State if likewise unenforced, but then I guess she just lost her head.

    So, what’s Rania’s excuse? 😀

  24. TED-

    For a guy not an “insider” he’s doing a hell of a lot of “tweetnig”, now seemingly much of it dubious. I suspected that it was a piece of hyperbole. But insider or now, I do NOT see how he would ever come to include MBS and Al-Sisi.

    I don’t see how Al Sisi would be ready to fall, because he supported Jordan. He has ruled Egypt pretty well, according to whatever news we are allowed to get. A ruler of 100 mill people ………..???
    And NO FOOL nor vainglorious boaster, like previous rulers.

  25. @Edgar.
    Abed isn’t in the inner circle as Mudar is. Regarding that particular tweet, the only name I questioned was MBS. I asked Mudar about it and he said Abed doesn’t know what is going on.
    I knew al Sisi was on the outs. Al Sisi recently supported the Palestinian cause along with Abdullah.

  26. also, don’t miss:

    Meet M. Kaleo Manuel, the official who refused to release “sacred” water in Maui, contributing to up to 106 deaths…

    “It’s been widely reported that locals tried to hose down their homes with water to protect them by the fire, but their water was shut off. By time the water was finally released, it was way too late.”

    Honalulu Civil Beat:

    “According to the sources, Manuel wanted West Maui Land to get permission from a taro, or kalo, farm located downstream from the company’s property. Manuel eventually released water but not until after the fire had spread. It was not clear on Monday how much damage the fire did in the interim or whether homes were damaged.”

  27. Life in America: You’re on your own

    Maui Emergency Chief Defends Decision Not To Activate Warning Sirens

    The “largest single integrated outdoor siren warning system for public safety in the world.” was not activated, because

    “We just don’t use sirens for fires”

    In the end, many residents and visitors said they fled Lahaina after seeing or smelling smoke coming their way. But with traffic backups and multiple road closures caused by downed power lines, some died in their cars as they tried to escape. Others pushed through smoke and flames to jump over a sea wall and into the ocean. There, they endured hours of punishing winds and smoke and watched the town burn until the Coast Guard came to rescue them.

  28. MUDAR TWEETED JUST NOW:

    An international scandal for Rania Antoinette…the plane of treasures..
    Jordanian coalition sources: Western security agencies cooperated with the Zambian authorities in tracking down and stopping the treasure plane.
    The treasures plane, which was on hold in Zambia, left Amman airport with the knowledge of Rania Al-Sarsour, carrying the looted Jordanians’ money…Egypt announced that the plane was “not Egyptian and only stopped at Cairo Airport.”
    #?????? #?????_????_?????_??????
    Rania plunders Jordanian money in broad daylight
    The plane seized in Zambia took off from Oman with 127 kilos of gold and more than 5 million dollars on board!
    ? The Jordanian Coalition’s intelligence sources: One of Rania’s biggest aides in money smuggling operations was arrested on the plane and he is a Latvian.
    ? The plane was heading to hide the money in a European country after stopping in Zambia (we cannot disclose it due to the course of the investigation)

  29. TED-

    Did you overlook that Abedaleylah’s Aug 9th tweet below included, amongst the departing Arab leaders, Al-Sisi and MBS???

    This sounds like hyperbolic fervour to me, without much further clarification.

  30. Ted–where can I find Abeddaleylah Amaala’s tweet on the Web? If his information is accurate, this is a big deal.