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 | 7,968 Comments »

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  3. Arutz Sheva Jerusalem Prize awarded to Nikki Haley

    Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley awarded Arutz Sheva Jerusalem Prize for her steadfast support for Israel and dedication to the truth. ‘What Israel is doing is right. It’s always been doing the right thing.’

    Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was today (Tuesday) awarded the Arutz Sheva Jerusalem Prize ahead of the Autz Sheva and Besheva conference that will be held in New York on Sunday.

    “Part of me feels like it’s not necessary,” Ambassador Haley said upon receiving the award. “Because when I speak truth, you don’t want to get an award for speaking truth, and I just wish more people would do it.”

    “You look at what’s happening now, even with October 7 everyone needs to know [that] you should always stand up for what’s right. What Israel is doing is right. It’s always been doing the right thing,” she said.

    “The only thing I know to do is call out those that are wrong, because I know Israel’s right. I’ve known that from the beginning. I see it, I see how they conduct themselves and what they do, but we have to keep telling the truth, we have to keep getting the word out,” she added.

    “I’ve seen this so many times at the United Nations, everybody runs to Israel when she’s been hit,” Haley noted. “But everybody’s quick to criticize her when she hits back. If this were any other country, if this had happened to any other country, that country would be up in arms, screaming, yelling, everything, and saying everyone should help them. And we should. Israel is no different.”

    You have to acknowledge that this was Iran, who gave all the training to Hamas and the funding to Hamas,” she said. “They used Russian intelligence. And here China’s been buying oil from Iran. We have to start calling out who is helping make these bad things happen.”

    Haley blamed the rise in antisemitism on American college campuses on the universities’ taking of money from Arab and Muslim nations. “We shouldn’t be taking any foreign money into our universities. That’s the first thing that needs to stop.”

    “The second thing is, if there is a college campus where they are not protecting Jewish students, then their tax-exempt status should be pulled from them, because that is their number one job,” she said.

    “I want the people of Israel to know, Americans are with you. We love you. We want to stand beside you. We want to make sure everything is ok,” she said, noting that the anti-Israel crowd in America is a vocal minority that does not represent the views of the majority.

    Full Article at: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/390706

  4. Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: the Union Army – by Adam D. Mendelsohn
    By Sheldon Goldberg, PhD

    Ten years ago, when I became a Docent and Historian at the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, I was honored to follow in the footsteps of those who had come before me. I gathered the materials they used, read the histories written about Jews in the military, and did research on the internet to update them, especially about the Jewish Medal of Honor recipients. I also found the museum’s exhibit books invaluable as I wrote my lectures and prepared scripts to memorize for tour groups. And so it went until the arrival of “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army” by Adam Mendelsohn.

    Mendelsohn’s book is the result of ten years of research sponsored by the Shapell Manuscript Foundation, using Simon Wolfe’s “The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen,” from 1895, as a starting point. Wolfe claimed as many as 10,000 Jews served in the Civil War. “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War” is an attempt to correctly identify every Jew who served in the Union Army, something Wolfe’s error-prone book attempted. While Mendelsohn’s book has been published, it is, in fact, unfinished. Shapell researchers continue to attempt to identify Jews who fought on both sides, delving into archives across the country, finding personal letters, photographs, memoirs, and of course, official documents, thus adding names on an almost daily basis. That said, it tells a story – one I had been telling, but which now requires some key changes.

    “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War” is presented in six chapters that describe where those identified Jews who served came from, what their occupations were, how and why they enlisted, many, but not all, just for the bonus, and for how long. It is important to note that not every Jew who served was an abolitionist. Many feared that freed slaves would take their jobs.

    Mendelsohn writes that the dearth of Jewish compatriots, as opposed to some majority German or Irish regiments, led some to deny their faith, even to other Jews, or to change their names. Among those who served were brave heroes and cowardly deserters, upstanding members of society, and lowly crooks. He also points out that while antisemitism existed, Jewish soldiers often changed their units to avoid the slurs and attempts to proselytize them. That said, the exigencies of combat and the conditions under which all soldiers lived also created friendships between Jews and non-Jews, many of which lasted beyond the end of the war. Mendelsohn also clarifies the roles played by the Board of Delegates of American Israelites in Washington and Rabbi Arnold Fischel, by debunking the existing myth of how three Rabbis came to serve as Jewish Chaplains in the Union Army.

    Lastly, although it is not made clear in the book, this project is a work in progress. Based on the research conducted when the book was published, there were only 1,235 Union soldiers positively identified as Jewish out of what is believed to be just over seven thousand. Of those identified are six generals, five of whom were breveted, i.e., temporarily promoted to a rank higher than what they normally held. One appendix shows that of those 1,235, only a few regiments had as many as twenty Jews while most had but one or two. Furthermore, the research has confirmed a fifth Jewish Medal of Honor recipient, Eugene P. Jacobson. That said, this is an outstanding work, easy to read, that sheds a whole new light on the Jewish contribution to the Civil War.

    Volume 77. Number 1. 2023

    https://www.jwv.org/jewish-soldiers-in-the-civil-war-the-union-army-by-adam-d-mendelsohn/

  5. Putin Wants Ceasefire

    “It’s good to want things.”
    – “Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael” (1990)

  8. The Left has gone a bridge too far this time. Shikma Bressler, one of the main organizers of the anti-Bibi, anti-govt, anti-war protests, has shared a post indicating that
    “Powerful international factors are helping the struggle, including: the President of the United States, heads of government in the West and the Middle East, and the Hague Tribunal>.”

    After significant backlash, she deleted the post and issued an apology. This single statement will have further diminish the already flagging support for the pro-US, pro-West, and pro-Hague protests calling for the govt to surrender its war on Hamas.

  9. When I took acting and playwrighting classes at HB studios in the West Village many years ago, everybody would go out for drinks afterward to the White Horse Tavern which is where Dylan Thomas used to hang out and where he died.

    “The Man on the White Horse” I seem to recall is a common metapho for the strongman leader who people think will save the day, kind of a human deus ex machina or political messiah figure. I think De Gaulle was referred to that way. I was googleing it and found even a reference to Cromwell. Certainly it applies to Julius Caesar and possibly to Trump by his enemies as I think it’s usually used as a pejoraive. I wonder what the origin is.

  10. From all those posts i selected only the phrase “The White Horse”
    I was reminded by it that General Boulanger of France was regarded by his many supporters as “The Man on The White Horse” who would lead France to defeat and destroy Prussia /Germany in
    revenge for the defeat of 1870.

    He was actually also called “General Revenge”. It was thought that he would take over the govt. But he proved to be only a damp squib in the end.
    I recall reading about him many years ago. It was just around that time that my maternal grandparents arrived in Ireland from the shtetl in Lithuania and settled in Cork City.

  11. There was also a classic Star Trek episode, the original series like that in which they land on a planet for rest and recreation but every passing thought any of them has gets translated into reality creating a scary situation. The original series was very philosophical which made it a very different kind of show. The cliff hangers were generally not of the “Perils of Pauline type” though those situations were there, where it was a question of whether the protagonists will survive some imminent threat, but rather, it would go to commercial where they were faced with some kind of desperate often ethical choice between two seemingly impossible alternatives.

    Found it googling, Star trek episode called “Shore Leave” , 1st season, episode 15 (1966.)

  12. There was also a classic Star Trek episode, the original series like that in which they land on a planet for rest and recreation but every passing thought any of them has gets translated into reality creating a scary situation. The original series was very philosophical which made it a very different kind of show. The cliff hangers were generally not where not of the “Perils of Pauline type” though those situations were there, where it was a question of whether the protagonists will survive some imminent threat, but rather, it would go to commercial where they were faced with some kind of desperate often ethical choice between two seemingly impossible alternatives.

    found it:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shore_Leave_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)#:~:text=%22Shore%20Leave%22%20is%20the%20fifteenth,aired%20on%20December%2029%2C%201966.

  13. I liked Beau Geste.I’ve seen it many times. Another favorite also starring Stewart Granger is “The Magic Bow” co-starring Phyllis Calvert (1946), a made up love story about Paganini with the actual violin solos by the late great Michael Rabin.

    If course, the Google translate passage is nonsensical. It is literal but language is often colloquial. If you really want me to understand, you should provide English translations, as well, as I, like probably most Americans, am only fluent in English, and at most, have a smattering of words and phrases in other languages, though both of my parents were fluent in several languages.

    I made a joke about that – a true story, actually – which I’ve posted here, the punchline of which was, ” It’s at times like this I’m filled with a sense of deep gratitude I don’t speak a word of Ukrainian” … and that the reason Americans are so welcoming, open, generous and warm hearted to the whole world is that if we understood even a fraction of what people were saying about us in their own languages, we’d be in a pretty bad mood. 😀

    —
    My latest wisecrack – since people are always asking me where I’m from.

    “I’m a fourth generation New Yorker, a second-generation Upper West Sider, and a life long Manhattanite though both of my parents were foreigners, my father from Hungary and my mother from Brooklyn.” 😀

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Avenue”

    Daniel Greenfield writes in his new book – about early Manhattan – “New Yorkers, ever that curious mix of the parochial and the gregarious, had not ventured very far beyond the boundaries of a Lower Manhattan whose Wall Street had been an actual wall built a century before by Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam” p. 17. I also remember an episode of the ’60s TV series, “Ben Casey” about that. Apropos of nothing, my favorite Japanese drama, “Doctor X” which ran for 7 or 8 seasons, is a medical satire obviously partly inspired by Ben Casey. The cat’s name is Ben Casey. The heroine’s catchphrase is “I never fail.”

    There’s another passage that I read – just this morning while eating breakfast – that was so close to a passage from the fairy tale I quoted the other day, it was eery, bringing to mind “Indra’s Net” and also Jung’s theory of synchronicity which he stole from his Jewish lover and patient who also probably got it from ancient Indian mysticsm just as philosophers like Hegel stole dialectics from Indian Buddhism of 2500 years ago.
    —
    “On a White Horse.”

    “On Election Day, Alexander Hamilton rode a horse through the streets of New York.
    This was not the grey horse, its saddle empty and boots reversed in the stirrups, which would follow his coffin a short four years later after this day of his greatest defeat. Nor was it the bay horse that he had bought the year before the election. The white horse had been chosen for its effect. ” – “Domestic Enemies” by Daniel Greenfield (2024) p. 29.

    —
    And here’s the passage from a few days ago. This has been happening to me all the time for as far back as I can remember. That’s one of the reasons I would describe myself as a spiritual person though not a religious one, aside from the fact that I was brought up that way by both my mother and sister. I don’t believe in anything I haven’t witnessed, experienced, or reasoned though as the saying goes, “there’s more things in heaven and earth…”

    —

    “We passed by an orchard on our way, and it was filled with all sorts of nice ripe fruit. I halted the gray horse, dismounted the brown horse and tied the white horse to the hedge. I tried to jump over the fence but I couldn’t, so I grabbed hold of my hair and hoisted myself over. In the orchard I shook the plum-tree, and when walnuts began to fall all about me, I picked up as many hazelnuts as would go into my jacket.

    It was terribly hot and I was terribly thirsty. I saw some reapers not far off and asked them to tell me where there was some water. They told me of a spring not far off. But when I got there, it was frozen over! I tried to break the ice with my heel and then with a rock, but it was thick as could be. So I took my head and broke the ice easily with it, drank my fill, and that was that.

    I went back to the fence and to the hedge, hoisted myself over by my hair again, untied the gray horse, mounted the brown one and rode off on the white one at such a speed that my hair hung down in the wind.

    There were two men standing on the path; when we came up to them, they called out to me:

    “Hey there, what happened to your head?”

    I felt my back, and sure enough, my head was missing! Back I raced to the spring, and what did I see? My head had got bored without me, and when it saw that I had left it there it made hands, neck, back and legs for itself out of mud and was skating along merrily on the ice. I was pretty good myself at gliding on ice, and I tried to catch my head, but it was an even better skater and I was completely unsuccessful.

    My God, now what would become of me? I was afraid that I would have to stay without a head, but then I thought of something and told myself not to lose my head! I made a grey-hound out of mud and told him to go get my head, which he did in a flash. I quickly put it back on my neck, went to the hedge, pulled myself over by my hair, untied the gray horse, mounted the brown one and rode off as fast as a bird on the white horse.”
    excerpt from:
    ” – “The Truest Adventures of the Truthful Mountain Boy”
    (from “Once Upon a Time, Forty Hungarian Folk Tales” edited by Gyula Ilyes, Corvina Press. Hungary 1964, 1970. Typed from the book for Israpundit by SZ. I left out the accents and the umlauts because, well, it’s just too much trouble. Sebastien has an accent, too. It’s French.)
    Sebastien Zorn Chit Chat
    https://www.israpundit.org/chit-chat/comment-page-140/#comments
    MAY 20, 2024 AT 7:34 AM
    —
    “Indra’s Net”
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra%27s_net

  14. On another subject, I’m just re-reading Beau Geste, and will go on to read the other two of the series.

    I’ve seen both film versions several times each, and , along with Oida’s “Under two Flags” Is the most poignant and totally riveting story I’ve ever read, or seen.
    My only criticisms (not of the excellent acting) of the second (Hollywood) version is that Gary Cooper was not a suitable “Beau” being neither extraordinarily handsome (far from it) and the caste was so very American.

  15. Seb-

    I’ve never come across “a squirt” and I’d say that the translation is wrong. It has no conceivable relevance. It has always been as I have posted.

    I just recalled that since history was an absorbing subject for me, that Swabia went out of existence some time in the 13th century although the name of the area lingered for a couple of centuries. I believe it was a part of Bavaria.

    So that song is very ancient indeed.

    What words did you give Google to translate?????? You have to have given it something, to get your result???

  16. Haaretz reports:

    “The ICJ ruling on Rafah was not a definitive order to halt all operations, but the court made it crystal clear that Israel must make civilian safety the number one concern. Israel’s leaders should listen to the court instead of working so hard to delegitimize it.” – Mordechai Kremnitzer

    s\

    This is so even thought the ratio of terrorists killed to cifvilians killed is by far the lowest in history. The norm is 1 to 9 whereas in Gaza its 1 to 1.5

  17. EDGAR-

    I am a musician and I come from Swabilandt,
    I give you a squirt, with Vos you give a squirt,
    With Mei.n Viola………

    That’s Google Translate’s translation. What’s it mean in English?

  18. SEB-

    I just recalled an old ditty we used to sing after we’d won an important cricket match.

    It went like this ;

    Ich bin a Musikan , und Ich Kom fun Scwabilandt,
    Ich ken schpillen, Mit Vos ken dir schpillen,
    Mit Mei.n Viola……………

    Ch;
    Vi-o Vi-o Viola, Vi-o Vi-o Viola
    ” ” ” Viiiii-O- Viola.

    Ich bin a Musikan, und Ich kom fun Schabilandt…and so on it repeats the first verse except that it substitutes a series of instruments. My recollection is that the second one was a “Terr-0m0 Bone”.

    Nonone knew where it came from nor how old, it had been taught to a few by their grandparents.

    This dates it back to the early 1800s. and it must have been far older than that, such a simple ditty.

    But note…the pride of FIRST place went to the Vi-O-La.

  19. @Edgar I read De las Casas in High School and I couldn’t get through the Twain or the Cooper, for that matter, they just didn’t hold my interest. but I’ll look at the others. Thanks

    It’s funny. I love Twain’s witty aphorisms but aside from “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” and the, relevant excerpts from his journeys to Eretz Israel, I have found Twain’s writing tedious and boring. I’ve tried repeatedly to read him, and I have his complete works in ebook form, but I just kept giving up after a while. It just didn’t hold my interest.

    And I read Broken Spears in College. Do you know it? And Black Elk Speaks when and Makcolm X’s memoirs as a teenager.

    I assure you, if it made America look bad, it was assigned. In my neck of the woods, the 1619 project began in the 60s and began in 1492.

  20. Seb-

    A different kind of book. sure to be in Gutenberg is the Memoirs od Bartolemeo De Las Cases, an account of the way the Spaniards wiped out hundreds of thousands of South American Indians by working them to dissolution.

    Deeply touching after a start in the opposite direection.

  21. Would not plain reading glasses that just magnify be more suitable. I am not an ophthalmologist but it seems to me that simple magnification for reading only, works well. At least, I use a magnifying glass on occasion for shadowy or tiny print.

    Could never stand the touch of glasses on my nose and behind my ears. I had a friend many years ago, an optician, and tried on a couple of times. I was about 18, and right there I decided I’d never wear any. y eyesight has always been excellent, helping my eye hand sports co-ordination immensely.

    Now I have had cataracts fior the past 10 or more years but they are slow and do not bother my reading. At my age tanyway, there isn’t much to see that I already haven’t.

  23. After that you may like the story by M/.M/.Mangasarian of faling asleep for thousands of years and waking up in modern times

  25. Edgar G. I posted it on my Facebook Page within quotes but without attribution. It’s great. Thanks. I’m enjoying the Zeitlin vol, 3 because I found it on internet archive so I can enlarge the print. Reading from paper is hard now even with prescription reading glasses though I still try. Thanks for the reference. It’s a gem.

  27. NEMOTODE-

    I didn’t post it as a joke, but as my recollection of something I read many years ago.

  28. @RASPUTIN That was actually funny. Violists love viola jokes. They’re the Polish jokes of the orchestra. Like Chelm jokes which I’m sure you’re familiar with, it being your home town and all. Did you actually make that up, yourself?

  29. NEMOTODE-

    I just recalled some years ago, seeing an ad in the music column of my newspaper

    As far as I can recall it went something like this

    “ESTABLISHED STRING QUARTETTE REQUIRES TWO EXPERIENCED VIOLINS AND A CELLO……

    I assume that must have been you……….!!

    1

  30. “Trump and Netanyahu are such tied at the hip dopplegangers even if they’re not so crazy about each other any more.”

    Milosevic must be included in here when talking about international law frameups.

    But the media had such a vice like grip of every aspect in that 90s period the truth could not get out.

    It is still the classic

    A barrage of lies against Serbs

    The website http://www.tenc.net is still the template for how to defend Israel today

  32. ZORNEMO-

    ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????.>…..!!!!!

  33. @Bottom Cha Ching! jThe King of the Ad hominem Attack is crowned. And, he’s a believer in collective punishment, to boot. Way to go, tvaritsch!

  34. Sorry and regretful I am to comment on a departed lady, but crudity and vulgarity seem to be family traits. So I know how you became what you are……….

  36. Victor Davis Hansen pointed out that part of the problem with the student rioters is that the universities let people in they wouldn’t have a few years ago, because they tossed objective tests like the S.A.T.’s. so the result is unprepared students and grade inflation as well as simplistic DEI courses for them to pass often ending in “-studies” and unhappy students demanding the university accommodate them rather than the other way around.

    Here’s a piece I wrote 7 years ago about that entitled, “Crime and Punishment.” on a blog I just found that I forgot I had created:

    —

    “Despite recent events, New York City was a lot more dangerous in the ‘80s and ‘90s of the last century (I’ve always wanted to be able to write that — soo cool!, move over Addison and Steele; Ho, Ho, Now, we’re cooking with gas!) Truly, it was like the Wild, Wild West. Drive-by shootings, firecrackers packed with dynamite that would make a whole block shake when a kid set one off, not to mention many other crimes far too unpleasant to mention. It was so dangerous that women often carried pepper spray in their purses, which, then, as now, or so I am told, was illegal. So, presumably, it was not at all uncommon for both victim and assailant to be arrested on a charge of “Assault and Pepper.”

    But, eventually, two disparate sets of factors came together to make the city a far far safer place: grade inflation and the dumbing-down of education combined with the increasing complexity of the economy, on the one hand, and the advent of smartphones and tablets, on the other.

    In an effort to leave no one behind, the increasingly centralized education system had gone to elaborate lengths to water down the curriculum so that it would be easier for students to pass and less for them to learn. However, prospective employers weren’t stupid and they knew how much education that piece of paper called a diploma represents. So, while the free part of education, through high school, was enough to get a decent job fifty years ago, today, it’s just enough to get one on the road to life-long debt, racking up the equivalent education in the form of college and post-graduate degrees. Meanwhile, the economy has become so complex and high-tech, that to get a decent job, i.e., one that will pay one’s rent and enable one to eat, without even considering family, medical, or retirement options, one must be able to devise elaborate, glossy web pages and navigate internet professional and social networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin, and Craig’s List. Your average cashier must have advanced computer engineering skills just to ring up a single sale.

    Paradoxically, this has had the effect of creating a labor shortage in certain areas as more and more people are unable to keep up; and this phenomenon has even filtered down into the criminal underworld where contractors looking to train talented young potential recruits in the criminal arts are reduced to handing out fliers. I saw such a flier, just the other day, on the door of my building. It said: “Wanted — For Robbery.” Good help is so hard to find!”

    https://pinchinat.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/crime-and-punishment/

  37. @MR. ED As my late big sister used to say all the time when I was little, “Oh, sheis on rice.” 😀

  38. SENEMO-SHMO

    Not unexpected; you have a habit of crawling out of uncomfortable but true situations with your usual non sequitur. Fools nobody, shows your craven instinct to “run”…god forbid it must be a sight.

  39. “I can vouch for there being a type of Zionist who doesn’t care what kind of society our “state” will have; I’m that person. If I were to know that the only way to a state was via socialism, or even that this would hasten it by a generation, I’d welcome it. More than that: give me a religiously Orthodox state in which I would be forced to eat gefilte fish all day long (but only if there were no other way), and I’ll take it. More even than that: make it a Yiddish-speaking state, which for me would mean the loss of all the magic in the thing—and if there’s no alternative, I’ll take that, too.”

    https://www.cfr.org/blog/parallel-thinking-two-great-men-nationalism

  40. I can vouch for there being a type of Zionist who doesn’t care what kind of society our “state” will have; I’m that person. If I were to know that the only way to a state was via socialism, or even that this would hasten it by a generation, I’d welcome it. More than that: give me a religiously Orthodox state in which I would be forced to eat gefilte fish all day long (but only if there were no other way), and I’ll take it. More even than that: make it a Yiddish-speaking state, which for me would mean the loss of all the magic in the thing—and if there’s no alternative, I’ll take that, too.

  41. Gallows Humor even I can’t top:

    “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), for example, said the ICC was “right” to request arrest warrants, writing in a statement,

    “These arrest warrants may or may not be carried out, but it is imperative that the global community uphold international law.”

    😀 ‘Without these standards of decency and morality, this planet may rapidly descend into anarchy, never-ending wars, and barbarism,” he added.'” 😀
    https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4677792-johnson-gives-schumer-an-ultimatum-on-netanyahu/

    Wadddya call what we got now, bub? “At long last, Senator.”

    “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” – Joseph N. Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy (1954)

    “This trial is a travesty. It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.”

    – Woody Allen, “Bananas” (1971)

    Never truer words spoken, all humor aside.

    Trump and Netanyahu are such tied at the hip dopplegangers even if they’re not so crazy about each other any more.

  43. ZORNEMO-SHMO (and Michael if he’s collaborator but I thikk Zorro is just using him as a foil.I have no animosity towards Michael)_

    Many often think of the perfect answer too late. And your perfect answer is perfectly suited to your common, vulgar character.

    So enjoy, and again “fress deine baytzim ohne zaltz”

    Think of a perfect answer to THAT.

    Take your time.

    I notice that you have quit your “jokes” since I requested 2 specific ones….????? I wonder WHY?????????????

    I think that they are NO joke to you………………..
    One thing I will say for you. You have a liking for filling these pages with occasional relevant items, but mostly for taking up space with your ridiculous self praising (intended) mouthings full of verbiage believed by you (only) to be “clever”.

    “Shlog dein Kopf en Vant”

    “Ge schvollen Zulst du Veren” (I don’t think this will do since you’ve already posted that you are in that condition-if you can be believed??)

  45. @Michael

    “I heard the atheist “sh-t” joke before… Plenty of ranchers and farmers out here, who know the subject well. For instance, we know the major difference between feces on the sidewalks of San Francisco, and that on a dairy farm — the “grass” contents are different.

    Watch where you step. Shalom

    My comment: Another chestnut (joke so old it’s joints creak) for you:

    “Sshhh. Don’t say, “shit” in front of the c*h*I*l*d*r*e*n”

    dgar G.
    MAY 22, 2024 AT 6:47 AM
    It becomes more and more fact that there is a wide gap between myself and the Average American shmo-like Zorn for instance.

    I was brought up to eschew foul language in all it’s aspects and still adhere to it. The casual use of the term s**t, demonstrates once again the vulgarity displayed by certain people.

    And to have a little girl (undoubtedly a midget masquerading as a child) so freely use foulness and call it a “joke” is positively obscene.

    and

    Kush mir un tucchas arein…..!! Fress deine Baytzim un salz….!!

    😀

    I already knew the first bit meant, “kiss my ass” but google translate didn’t know the other one, either. Marvelous!

    Now, MIchael, Apologize to Edgar for being an American, RIGHT NOW! How dare you.

    “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” 😀
    https://youtu.be/O2hi1cdr4jY?si=UcJLUVBhYRPJTbmm

    “At long last sir, have you no sense of decency, sir. At long last, have you left no sense of decency.” 😀

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7x8RkdG6I0

    “[It’s] a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of two mockeries of a sham.”
    https://youtu.be/bphR-6Xi1_I?si=Fw3_LyEbmtx76Jv0

  46. Edgar has evolved into a master of Anarcho-Marxist dialectics, I see. To whit:

    Thesis:

    @Edgar G.
    MAY 20, 2024 AT 8:54 PM
    HONEYBEE-
    Normally, kidding aside I have some respect for your observations.

    But ONE thing I just can NOT stand from an adult, is pseudo baby talk, which you constant emit as a form of cumbersome raillery.

    Your on line “love affair” for all and sundry is as phony as your fake Texan
    “lingo”/ I have read many social texts which contain many quotes ,on Texas, and nowhere, except in the hilly country do they even approximate your scattered pseudo-talk.
    I even had a Texan girl friend for a couple of years and she spoke literate English, only rarely using “you-all”….”

    Antithesis:

    “Edgar G.
    MAY 21, 2024 AT 2:10 AM
    There there hunny-bunny……. sebbie-webbie is here…..use my sleeve, ………..Clik-clak cli- clak..”

    and the Piece de Resistance, Voila, Synthesis:

    ““A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
    ? Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series”

    Bravo. An absurdist after me own heart. 😀

  48. @Tanna Thank you, but none of you seem to have noticed that I only wrote the preamble in which I humorously suggested that this is the only way to make sense of the nonsensical proposals coming from the likes of Ganz, Gallant and Co. (that’s a bit of a humorous reference to Marx and Lenin who were always referring to political opponents Iike that, incidentally.) But the story was from a collection of TRADITIONAL Hungarian fairy tales edited by the very Same Gulya Ilyes, the famous Hungarian poet, himself, whose poem, One sentence about Tyranny, a link to which I posted somebody translated into English, had played a very important role in both the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the one in 1988 when Hungary transformed into a democratic republic.* The piece also talks about the parallels between him and Orwell.

    It was my favorite fairy tale as a kid and probably the first one anybody ever read to me sparking a life-long love of theater of the absurd.

    If you google the title, many used book sites have it:

    “Once Upon a Time” edited by Gyula Ilyes.

    and a Wikipedia article about him.

    This is the part I wrote:

    “Some of you may recall, a real-life joke/anecdote i told in which the punchline was that the thing that binds us Jews together as a people, the single most important principle is that we all desperately wannabe Asians.

    Well, that doesn’t seem to apply in Israel – pehaps because now they’re “Western Asians?” – I dunno – but who would have ever thought that Israeli liberals desperately wannabe Hungarians?

    Apparently the capitulationist Deep State folks took to heart Robert Fulghum’s “Everything I ever needed to know, I learned in kindergarden.” But, go figure they meant everything I learned in Kindergarden. to whit:

    “The Truest Adventures of the Truthful Mountain Boy”
    (from “Once Upon a Time, Forty Hungarian Folk Tales” edited by Gyula Ilyes, Corvina Press. Hungary 1964, 1970. Typed from the book for Israpundit by SZ. I left out the accents and the umlauts because, well, it’s just too much trouble. Sebastien has an accent, too. It’s French.)”
    —
    *One sentence about Tyranny by Gyula Ilyes (1950)
    https://debategraph.org/Details.aspx?nid=123391

    Gyula Ilyes
    https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gyula-Illyes
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyula_Illy%C3%A9s

    Once upon a Time: Forty Hungarian Folk Tales
    https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/3406898

  49. Seb, I like your story. it might be tommyrot, bit I could have gotten an A+ in 6 grade English with a story like that.:) Anywho, in my best French… may see, bu coo!

  50. Hi, Sebastien.

    Go figure.

    I think Donald Trump is keenly aware of loyalty (and disloyalty); and he tends to take people at their word until they lay down their hand. So, what’s with Javanka?