[Bret L]

Norman Podhoretz’s Why Are Jews Liberal? Not Good Enough

By Steve Sailer

"After 40 years as a leading spokesman for the Neoconservative takeover of the conservative movement, former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz admits in his new book Why Are Jews Liberals? that Neoconservatism has failed utterly at what would seem its most basic task: persuading Jews to vote Republican.

While Podhoretz recounts his role in key steps in the Neocon
ascendancy over the GOP, such as helping drive former National Review
stalwart Joe Sobran into penury ("to encourage the others") and
organizing denunciations of then-National Review editor John
O’Sullivan, he confesses that the Neocons’ growing power over the
Republican Party has proven useless at converting Jews to the GOP.

According to Podhoretz’s numbers, in the 1928 Presidential election,
Al Smith received 78 percent of the Jewish vote. Eighty years later,
Barack Obama’s share of the Jewish vote was … 78 percent. I’ve graphed
the data he



If this trend continues, by 2088 the Democrats will be down to 78
percent!

In recent elections, the Neocons have moved beyond claiming a veto
over who gets to make a living as a conservative writer to furnishing
the Republican Presidential candidates with a readymade grand
strategy: Invade the World / Invite the World / In Hock to the World.

Yet American Jews have remained dubious.

Neocons did perform some service to the U.S. and to the GOP in the
1970s. Unfortunately, in this decade their policies and politics have
failed the country and the Republican Party very badly. Isn’t it about
time to put the Neocons—first and second generation—out to pasture?

Podhoretz’s Why Are Jews Liberals? is a combination of history of the
last 2,000 years of Jewish victimization, voting analysis of 20th
Century Presidential elections, and latest rendition of Podhoretz’s
autobiography, all from a single, relentless perspective: Is it good
for the Jews?

Podhoretz scoffs at Jews’ rationalizations for their liberalism, such
as the claim, popular among Reform rabbis, that what the Old Testament
and the Talmud are really all about is "social justice". As Podhoretz
trenchantly replies, "If the theory were valid, the Orthodox would be
the most liberal sector of the Jewish community". He goes on to point
out:

"… the egalitarianism behind the liberal conception of social justice
is altogether foreign to the Torah. Unlike the New Testament, which
consistently favors the poor over the rich and sees money as the root
of all evil, in the Hebrew Bible riches are just as consistently
considered a blessing. Furthermore, as Steven H. Cohen and Charles S.
Liebman take pains to point out, the poor to whom Jews are commanded
to do justice "are primarily other Jews [American Jewish Liberalism:
Unraveling the Strands Steven M. Cohen; Charles S. Liebman The Public
Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 3. (Autumn, 1997), pp. 405-430.]".

Podhoretz more or less implies that Judaism is, in essence, a faith
focused upon one lineage, a religion of race. In his concluding
chapter, he argues that liberalism threatens racial suicide for the
Jews: "fashionable conceptions of what constitutes progress and how to
define justice … could be tantamount to committing suicide".

With prophetic fury, Podhoretz thunders:

"The Torah of liberalism puts itself radically at odds with the very
commandment that comes closer than any other (certainly than tikkun
olam [‘perfecting the world’]) to encapsulating the essence of the
Torah of Judaism, and the observance of which for more than three
thousand years is probably the single best explanation of the mystery
of Jewish survival:

‘I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore
choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.’ [Deuteronomy
30:19]"

Podhoretz certainly avoids New Testament universalism. For
unapologetic ethnocentrism, it’s hard to beat Why Are Jews Liberals?
Podhoretz’s book addresses itself solely to Jews, and assumes that,
morally, Jews should care only about Jewish ethnic interests.

Thus, Podhoretz finds the persistent Jewish alignment with the
Democrats irrational. First Jews tend to be wealthy, and the GOP tries
to be even nicer than the Democrats to the rich. Second, Republicans
tend to be even more gung-ho on Israel. Third, Republicans are, at
least theoretically, more skeptical about racial quotas, which Jews
aren’t eligible for. And fourth, the left has for the last four
decades been more anti-Semitic than the right.

Podhoretz’s arguments for why Jews ought to be Republican are
sensible, yet unimaginative. For example, Podhoretz suggest that the
Republicans are good for the Jews on pocketbook issues. Still, are the
Democrats really all that bad for the Jews economically?

Imagine that that one party was running upon a "national capitalist"
platform modeled upon the policies of the industrial powerhouses of
East Asia: retention of our industrial base through tariffs and import
quotas, restrictions on outsourcing jobs and insourcing immigrants,
and a cooling of financial speculation.

Then, sure, it might make sense to vote on economics. Yet, in the real
world, neither party offers this Buchananite platform—as Podhoretz has
labored to ensure (he details his machinations against Pat Buchanan on
pp. 224-232). Since both parties are for globalism, how much
difference does Republican v. Democrat make economically?

Consider Goldman Sachs, a firm which, as Podhoretz informs us on p.
84, was founded by Marcus Goldman after his arrival in America from
Bavaria in 1848. Goldman Sachs is far from an all-Jewish company
today, but it would be fair to describe it as a firm at which numerous
Jewish-Americans find gainful employment.

How was business for Goldman Sachs under the Democratic Clinton
Administration?

On the whole, not too shabby. Having former Goldman CEO Robert Rubin
as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary didn’t hurt.

How was business for Goldman Sachs under the Republican Bush
Administration?

Not bad, but a little dicey in the late going. Fortuitously, former
Goldman CEO Hank Paulson (who was raised as a Christian Scientist)
happened to be Bush’s Treasury Secretary, so all’s well that ends
well.

How has business been for Goldman Sachs under the Democratic Obama
Administration?

So far, Goldman is forced to make do with merely having a Goldman
alumnus as chief of staff to the Treasury Secretary, rather than as
the Treasury Secretary himself. But in these hard times we’ve all got
to make sacrifices, and Goldman will likely get by okay. Joe Nocera of
the New York Times reported on October 23 that Goldman "had put aside
$16 billion so far this year for employee bonuses", so the children of
Goldman workers probably won’t go hungry this winter. (Goldman was
excluded from the pay cuts recently announced by the Obama Pay Czar.)

To put it in the terms Podhoretz like to think in: Is Republican power
good for Goldman Sachs?

Yes.

Is Democratic power good for Goldman Sachs?

Yes.

Overall, it’s hard to see that Goldman Sachs does much worse under
Democrats than under Republicans, or vice-versa.

I have to imagine that a lot of Jewish-Americans feel that they’ll do
all right with either party in power—so why get greedy and vote
Republican just to shave a few points off their marginal tax rates?

After all, back in 1987, Jews made up 92 of the Forbes 400 richest
people in America, according to Nathaniel Weyl’s 1989 book, The
Geography of American Achievement. This month, however, after 22 years
in which power at the federal level has been fairly evenly split
between the two parties, Jacob Berkman, who covers Jewish
philanthropists for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, estimated that in
the newly released 2009 Forbes 400:

“At least 139 of the Forbes 400 are Jewish”

That’s an increase of about one-half over 22 years.

Hence, Jews, who comprise about 1/50th of the population, are 1/3rd or
more of the Forbes 400. On a per capita basis, Jewish-Americans are
roughly 25 times more likely than other Americans to be billionaires.

Even if the Republicans had won all the intervening elections, how
much better could it be for the Jews?

Perhaps the typical Jewish-American feels it would be churlish to
complain.

Similarly, many American Jews aren’t quite as obsessive about Israel’s
security as Podhoretz (who, for instance, devotes pp. 191-194 to
rehashing the Neocons’ 1981 dispute with the Reagan Administration
over Caspar Weinberger’s decision to sell AWACS planes to Saudi
Arabia).

Strikingly, Podhoretz himself showed little interest in Israel up
until its security was assured by its successful 1967 attack on its
menacing Arab neighbors.

Noam Chomsky, a Jewish disputationist of opposing ideology but
comparable tenacity, notes:

"And you can date the beginning of the enthusiastic support for Israel
in the culture pretty well, since 1967. Before 1967, the intellectual
community was skeptical about Israel or uninterested in it. That
changed. If you look at Norman Podhoretz's book Making It, a kind of
self-advertisement that came out in 1967, there is barely a mention of
Israel. ..."

I haven’t read Making It, but I have read Breaking Ranks, Podhoretz’s
next autobiography (like Philip Roth and Barack Obama, his preferred
mode is semi-autobiographical). According to Breaking Ranks’ index,
the word "Israel" doesn’t come up until over halfway through … in
1967.

Why? As General Patton liked to say, "Americans love a winner". Who
wants to invest your ego in something likely to fail? After the Six
Days War, Israel became for many American Jews what the Notre Dame
football team had been for American Catholics.

Also, Podhoretz has, last I checked, four grandchildren living in
Israel, so his worries are, for understandable reasons, more intense
than the average American Jew’s.

Nevertheless, the fact is that many American Jews now see Israel’s
security as less parlous than Podhoretz does. After all, Israelis have
not only American Neocons looking out for their welfare, but their own
government as well!

Earlier in this decade, for instance, Israel was subjected to a
horrific campaign of suicide bombings by Palestinians crossing into
Israel proper from the West Bank.

So the government of Israel quickly put up a highly effective border
fence that solved the problem.

In contrast, the American government recently pushed back the
projected date of completion of its "virtual fence"—cameras on poles—
from 2009 until 2016.

Rather than complain about how the Neocons view Israel as America’s
51st State, I would like to ask if America can please be Israel’s 7th
Province for the two or three years it would take the Israeli
government to construct an effective fence along our southern border?

Granted, Podhoretz wouldn’t be happy if America followed Israel’s
example by building a working border fence. He sneers at American
immigration restrictionists in this book as "nativists"—although, for
some unknown reason, he has no criticism of Israel’s highly "nativist"
immigration policy.

But I would be happy.

Similarly, while the Neocons demand America bomb Iran to prevent it
from someday brandishing a few nuclear weapons in Israel’s direction,
the government of Israel created for its people the ultimate strategic
deterrent. Israel acquired five submarines from the Germans and
equipped them with cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads from
its sizable arsenal.

Hard as it is to imagine—it’s almost as if Israel’s government sees
its chief duty as looking out for the interests of Israel’s majority!

What about Podhoretz’s third reason why Jews should vote Republican,
affirmative action?

To his credit, the 79-year-old Podhoretz is keeping the faith by still
denouncing after all these years the racial quotas that threatened his
generation of Jewish government employees. Yet it’s increasingly a non-
issue for younger Jews, who have better things to do than to compete
with Non-Asian Minorities for jobs like Fire Lieutenant. (Plus, of
course, there’s no sign that quotas will be imposed to keep Jewish
representation in, say, Ivy League colleges down to their proportion
in the population, although quotas are a zero-sum game and this
unquestionably means that, for example, white Catholics are crowded
out.)

Likewise, American Jews are right to worry about anti-Semitic
terrorists. But the most sensible response—make sure you don’t let
them into the U.S.—conflicts with the open borders ideology inculcated
in both liberal and Neocon Jews by generations of ethnocentric Ellis
Island nostalgia. The Neocons reason that since we can’t not Invite
the World (we just can’t), we must therefore Invade the World and bomb
them until they stop hating us.

After six years in Iraq, the liberal Jews now believe that’s dumb. But
with border control unthinkable, the best plan they’ve come up with so
far for persuading Muslims hotheads to not come over here and kill us
is to elect President a black guy with the middle name of "Hussein".

(You gotta admit, though, it makes more sense than invading Iraq.)

Thus we can see why most Jews don’t find Podhoretz’s reasons for
voting Republican persuasive.

Still, Jewish liberalism goes much deeper than that.

Why, then, are Jews liberals?

Podhoretz contends, plausibly, that liberalism is a substitute
religion for Jews. He quotes Dennis Prager: "Despite their secularism,
Jews may be the most religious ethnic group in the world". When Jews
stopped believing in Jehovah, according to Podhoretz, they didn’t
start believing in nothing; they believed in Marxism.

UC Berkeley historian Yuri Slezkine spelled out the appeal of
Communism to Jews in The Jewish Century, his history of enthusiastic
Jewish complicity in the Bolshevik regime from 1917-1947. Secularizing
Jews believed they were discriminated against in 19th Century Europe
because of religion, nationalism, and their talent for capitalism.
Marxism promised to abolish all three.

Podhoretz contends that when harsh history finally persuaded Jews to
stop believing in Marxism, they believed in socialism. When they
stopped believing in socialism, they believed in the Democratic Party.

And that’s where their theological evolution has ground to a halt,
because "beyond the liberal faith there was nowhere to go but into the
outright apostasy of conservatism. To them this was as deeply
repugnant, and even horrifying, as conversion to Christianity had been
to their grandparents …"

In a symposium on Podhoretz’s book in the September issue of
Commentary, Michael Medved sharpens this analysis, pointing out that
hostility toward Christians—anti-Christianism, you might say—is what
keeps Jewish identity going:

"For most American Jews, the core of their Jewish identity isn’t
solidarity with Israel; it’s rejection of Christianity. … Jewish
voters don’t embrace candidates based on their support for the state
of Israel as much as they passionately oppose candidates based on
their identification with Christianity … This political pattern
reflects the fact that opposition to Christianity—not love for
Judaism, Jews, or Israel—remains the sole unifying element in an
increasingly fractious and secularized community. …"

Medved offers a test of his hypothesis:

"What is the one political or religious position that makes a Jew
utterly unwelcome in the organized community [e.g., in synagogues]? We
accept atheist Jews, Buddhist Jews, pro-Palestinian Jews, Communist
Jews, homosexual Jews, and even sanction Hindu-Jewish meditation
societies. ‘Jews for Jesus’, however, or 'Messianic Jews' face
resistance and exclusion everywhere."'

Many Jews therefore view enthusiastic Christian believers—no matter
how reliably they support Israel and American Jews—as enemies by
definition.

Despite anti-Christianism being at least as crucial in explaining
modern American politics as its notorious counterpart, anti-Semitism,
Microsoft Word’s spellchecker informs me that there is no such words
as "anti-Christianism"—or Christophobia, VDARE.COM’s choice (And as
you may recall, in George Orwell’s 1984, the appendix on The
Principles of Newspeak offers some helpful observations on the
importance of who gets to decide what is and what isn’t a word.)

My belief is that criticism is good for you. (I’ve personally
experienced a lot of it.) In contrast, people who are treated as being
above criticism tend to behave more badly over time.

For example, criticism by Jews of Christian anti-Semitism has no doubt
greatly improved Christian attitudes and behavior. If our culture were
to permit it, criticism by Christians of Jewish anti-Christianism
would likely have a similar socially salutary effect.

I’d like to offer three additional explanations for why Jews tend to
vote Democratic.

*

First, the Democrats are even more enthusiastic about political
correctness than are the Republicans.

Although political correctness is usually marketed on the grounds that
we must protect Non-Asian Minorities from learning facts about
themselves, the media figures actually doing most of the enforcing of
political correctness tend to be members of a high average IQ group
that seems to believe that the peasant majority will come for them
with pitchforks if anybody smart ever clues them in on the facts about
IQ. For example, only one of the Atlantic 50 ranking of most
influential pundits is NAM, while half are Jewish.

Jewish organizations have striven tirelessly to make Americans more
poorly informed and more naive. Thus LA Times columnist Joel Stein
laughed last year about an Anti-Defamation League survey:

"I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22% of
Americans now believe ‘the movie and television industries are pretty
much run by Jews,’ down from nearly 50% in 1964. The Anti-Defamation
League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these
numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how
dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood." [How Jewish is
Hollywood?, December 19, 2008]

*

Second, the Democrats are more the party of "minoritarianism",
which appeals to America’s most powerful minority.

"Minoritarianism" is another one of those non-words (although John
Derbyshire used it in 2002). "Majoritarianism" was a great enthusiasm
of the left from, say, Tom Paine onward—think of all those Marxists
ranting about "the masses". Yet, since the 1960s, minorities have been
portrayed as much more glamorous and deserving than the majority.

*

Third, the Democrats are the party of victimism, and ethnic self-
pity is the default mode of 21st Century Jewish thought, including
Podhoretz’s.

Jews are the great storytellers and mythmakers of our time, and they
make up their own most credulous audience. Thus the first 117 pages of
Podhoretz’s book are devoted to Jewish history over the last 2000
years. In Podhoretz’s retelling, Jews are, overwhelmingly, the passive
victims of two millennia of gentile prejudice. Jews seem to be a
people almost without qualities of their own, soft clay molded solely
by gentile bigotry.

When he was editor of Commentary, Podhoretz would have laughed if
anyone dared submit a manuscript that portrayed African-Americans so
one-sidedly. (Here’s Podhoretz’s controversial 1963 article about
black violence against Jews, such as the young Norman Podhoretz: "My
Negro Problem—and Ours").

In Podhoretz’s history, Jewish victims are everywhere, while Jewish
villains and Jewish victors are not. Podhoretz’s index lists poor
Captain Dreyfus on seven pages, while murderous Comrade Trotsky and
triumphant Prime Minister Disraeli appear on none.

Indeed, Disraeli, Queen Victoria’s favorite, had much to say on
Podhoretz’s topic of why Jews should be conservatives. Disraeli
constantly argued that Jews should be conservative traditionalists
because they have such a rich tradition to conserve. (Disraeli
famously, if intemperately, replied to Daniel O’Connell, "Yes, I am a
Jew, and when the ancestors of the Right Honorable gentleman were
brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple
of Solomon.")

But Podhoretz can’t be bothered with Jewish historical figures who
would make for a more three-dimensional version of their history.

A fact almost unknown in the U.S. is that, for most years in the last
millennium, the median Ashkenazi Jew in Central and Eastern Europe was
much richer than the median gentile. While writing their
groundbreaking 2005 paper "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence",
Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending would frequently encounter academics
who had never heard anything like this, whose awareness of the Jewish
experience seemed largely limited to Fiddler on the Roof. (The poverty
that many Eastern European Jews faced by 1900 was due to their
ancestors’ tremendous Malthusian success at growing their numbers
beyond that which could be employed in traditional finance-related
occupations.)

As I noted in my VDARE.COM article The Cuban Compromise, Jews, like
Cubans, have earned the right to special privileges due to their
political power. Just as Cuban exiles have controlled American foreign
policy toward Cuba and won their relatives unique status as refugees
rather than immigrants, America can afford to let Israel push around
the Palestinians because it pleases a domestic bloc.

And, in the unlikely event of something terrible happening to the
Jewish state, we would no doubt grant refugee status to Israeli Jews.

But what America can’t continue to afford is the pervasive unrealism
imposed by the current code of silence about Jewish power and
interests.

Thus Jewish demonization of immigration reform patriots appears to
have two motivations:

*

An reasonable concern about Israelis, which can be assuaged by
special accommodations
*

An unreasonable form of ancestor worship, which couldn’t survive
satire, but is protected by the current taboos

And this demonization is the single most important reason that
America’s immigration disaster is still above criticism, long after it
has become obvious that it is a disaster, and despite the fact that an
overwhelming number of Americans are strongly opposed to it.

Jews will do fine when they compete openly in the marketplace of
ideas. They don’t have to rig the market as well."

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/091025_podhoretz.htm

[hoser1605]

On Oct 26, 12:22*am, Bret L wrote:
Norman Podhoretz’s Why Are Jews Liberal? Not Good Enough

By Steve Sailer

"After 40 years as a leading spokesman for the Neoconservative takeover of the conservative movement, former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz admits in his new book Why Are Jews Liberals? that Neoconservatism has failed utterly at what would seem its most basic task: persuading Jews to vote Republican.

While Podhoretz recounts his role in key steps in the Neocon
ascendancy over the GOP, such as helping drive former National Review
stalwart Joe Sobran into penury ("to encourage the others") and
organizing denunciations of then-National Review editor John
O’Sullivan, he confesses that the Neocons’ growing power over the
Republican Party has proven useless at converting Jews to the GOP.

According to Podhoretz’s numbers, in the 1928 Presidential election,
Al Smith received 78 percent of the Jewish vote. Eighty years later,
Barack Obama’s share of the Jewish vote was … 78 percent. I’ve graphed
the data he

If this trend continues, by 2088 the Democrats will be down to 78
percent!

In recent elections, the Neocons have moved beyond claiming a veto
over who gets to make a living as a conservative writer to furnishing
the Republican Presidential candidates with a readymade grand
strategy: Invade the World / Invite the World / In Hock to the World.

Yet American Jews have remained dubious.

Neocons did perform some service to the U.S. and to the GOP in the
1970s. Unfortunately, in this decade their policies and politics have
failed the country and the Republican Party very badly. Isn’t it about
time to put the Neocons—first and second generation—out to pasture?

Podhoretz’s Why Are Jews Liberals? is a combination of history of the
last 2,000 years of Jewish victimization, voting analysis of 20th
Century Presidential elections, and latest rendition of Podhoretz’s
autobiography, all from a single, relentless perspective: Is it good
for the Jews?

Podhoretz scoffs at Jews’ rationalizations for their liberalism, such
as the claim, popular among Reform rabbis, that what the Old Testament
and the Talmud are really all about is "social justice". As Podhoretz
trenchantly replies, "If the theory were valid, the Orthodox would be
the most liberal sector of the Jewish community". He goes on to point
out:

"… the egalitarianism behind the liberal conception of social justice
is altogether foreign to the Torah. Unlike the New Testament, which
consistently favors the poor over the rich and sees money as the root
of all evil, in the Hebrew Bible riches are just as consistently
considered a blessing. Furthermore, as Steven H. Cohen and Charles S.
Liebman take pains to point out, the poor to whom Jews are commanded
to do justice "are primarily other Jews [American Jewish Liberalism:
Unraveling the Strands Steven M. Cohen; Charles S. Liebman The Public
Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 3. (Autumn, 1997), pp. 405-430.]".

Podhoretz more or less implies that Judaism is, in essence, a faith
focused upon one lineage, a religion of race. In his concluding
chapter, he argues that liberalism threatens racial suicide for the
Jews: "fashionable conceptions of what constitutes progress and how to
define justice … could be tantamount to committing suicide".

With prophetic fury, Podhoretz thunders:

"The Torah of liberalism puts itself radically at odds with the very
commandment that comes closer than any other (certainly than tikkun
olam *[‘perfecting the world’]) to encapsulating the essence of the
Torah of Judaism, and the observance of which for more than three
thousand years is probably the single best explanation of the mystery
of Jewish survival:

‘I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore
choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.’ [Deuteronomy
30:19]"

Podhoretz certainly avoids New Testament universalism. For
unapologetic ethnocentrism, it’s hard to beat Why Are Jews Liberals?
Podhoretz’s book addresses itself solely to Jews, and assumes that,
morally, Jews should care only about Jewish ethnic interests.

Thus, Podhoretz finds the persistent Jewish alignment with the
Democrats irrational. First Jews tend to be wealthy, and the GOP tries
to be even nicer than the Democrats to the rich. Second, Republicans
tend to be even more gung-ho on Israel. Third, Republicans are, at
least theoretically, more skeptical about racial quotas, which Jews
aren’t eligible for. And fourth, the left has for the last four
decades been more anti-Semitic than the right.

Podhoretz’s arguments for why Jews ought to be Republican are
sensible, yet unimaginative. For example, Podhoretz suggest that the
Republicans are good for the Jews on pocketbook issues. Still, are the
Democrats really all that bad for the Jews economically?

Imagine that that one party was running upon a "national capitalist"
platform modeled upon the policies of the industrial powerhouses of
East Asia: retention of our industrial base through tariffs and import
quotas, restrictions on outsourcing jobs and insourcing immigrants,
and a cooling of financial speculation.

Then, sure, it might make sense to vote on economics. Yet, in the real
world, neither party offers this Buchananite platform—as Podhoretz has
labored to ensure (he details his machinations against Pat Buchanan on
pp. 224-232). Since both parties are for globalism, how much
difference does Republican v. Democrat make economically?

Consider Goldman Sachs, a firm which, as Podhoretz informs us on p.
84, was founded by Marcus Goldman after his arrival in America from
Bavaria in 1848. Goldman Sachs is far from an all-Jewish company
today, but it would be fair to describe it as a firm at which numerous
Jewish-Americans find gainful employment.

How was business for Goldman Sachs under the Democratic Clinton
Administration?

On the whole, not too shabby. Having former Goldman CEO Robert Rubin
as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary didn’t hurt.

How was business for Goldman Sachs under the Republican Bush
Administration?

Not bad, but a little dicey in the late going. Fortuitously, former
Goldman CEO Hank Paulson (who was raised as a Christian Scientist)
happened to be Bush’s Treasury Secretary, so all’s well that ends
well.

How has business been for Goldman Sachs under the Democratic Obama
Administration?

So far, Goldman is forced to make do with merely having a Goldman
alumnus as chief of staff to the Treasury Secretary, rather than as
the Treasury Secretary himself. But in these hard times we’ve all got
to make sacrifices, and Goldman will likely get by okay. Joe Nocera of
the New York Times reported on October 23 that Goldman "had put aside
$16 billion so far this year for employee bonuses", so the children of
Goldman workers probably won’t go hungry this winter. (Goldman was
excluded from the pay cuts recently announced by the Obama Pay Czar.)

To put it in the terms Podhoretz like to think in: Is Republican power
good for Goldman Sachs?

Yes.

Is Democratic power good for Goldman Sachs?

Yes.

Overall, it’s hard to see that Goldman Sachs does much worse under
Democrats than under Republicans, or vice-versa.

I have to imagine that a lot of Jewish-Americans feel that they’ll do
all right with either party in power—so why get greedy and vote
Republican just to shave a few points off their marginal tax rates?

After all, back in 1987, Jews made up 92 of the Forbes 400 richest
people in America, according to Nathaniel Weyl’s 1989 book, The
Geography of American Achievement. This month, however, after 22 years
in which power at the federal level has been fairly evenly split
between the two parties, Jacob Berkman, who covers Jewish
philanthropists for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, estimated that in
the newly released 2009 Forbes 400:

“At least 139 of the Forbes 400 are Jewish”

That’s an increase of about one-half over 22 years.

Hence, Jews, who comprise about 1/50th of the population, are 1/3rd or
more of the Forbes 400. On a per capita basis, Jewish-Americans are
roughly 25 times more likely than other Americans to be billionaires.

Even if the Republicans had won all the intervening elections, how
much better could it be for the Jews?

Perhaps the typical Jewish-American feels it would be churlish to
complain.

Similarly, many American Jews aren’t quite as obsessive about Israel’s
security as Podhoretz (who, for instance, devotes pp. 191-194 to
rehashing the Neocons’ 1981 dispute with the Reagan Administration
over Caspar Weinberger’s decision to sell AWACS planes to Saudi
Arabia).

Strikingly, Podhoretz himself showed little interest in Israel up
until its security was assured by its successful 1967 attack on its
menacing Arab neighbors.

Noam Chomsky, a Jewish disputationist of opposing ideology but
comparable tenacity, notes:

"And you can date the beginning of the enthusiastic support for Israel
in the culture pretty well, since 1967. Before 1967, the intellectual
community was skeptical about Israel or uninterested in it. That
changed. If you look at Norman Podhoretz's book Making It, a kind of
self-advertisement that came out in 1967, there is barely a mention of
Israel. ..."

I haven’t read Making It, but I have read Breaking Ranks, Podhoretz’s
next autobiography (like Philip Roth and Barack Obama, his preferred
mode is semi-autobiographical). According to Breaking Ranks’ index,
the word "Israel" doesn’t come up until over halfway through … in
1967.

Why? As General Patton liked to say, "Americans love a winner". Who
wants to invest your ego in something likely to fail? After the Six
Days War, Israel became for many American Jews what the Notre Dame
football team had been for American Catholics.

Also, Podhoretz has, last I checked, four grandchildren living in
Israel, so his worries are, for understandable reasons, more intense
than the average American Jew’s.

Nevertheless, the fact is that many American Jews now see Israel’s
security as less parlous than Podhoretz does. After all, Israelis have
not only American Neocons looking out for their welfare, but their own
government as well!

Earlier in this decade, for instance, Israel was subjected to a
horrific campaign of suicide bombings by Palestinians crossing into
Israel proper from the West Bank.

So the government of Israel quickly put up a highly effective border
fence that solved the problem.

In contrast, the American government recently pushed back the
projected date of completion of its "virtual fence"—cameras on poles—
from 2009 until 2016.

Rather than complain about how the Neocons view Israel as America’s
51st State, I would like to ask if America can please be Israel’s 7th
Province for the two or three years it would take the Israeli
government to construct an effective fence along our southern border?

Granted, Podhoretz wouldn’t be happy if America followed Israel’s
example by building a working border fence. He sneers at American
immigration restrictionists in this book as "nativists"—although, for
some unknown reason, he has no criticism of Israel’s highly "nativist"
immigration policy.

But I would be happy.

Similarly, while the Neocons demand America bomb Iran to prevent it
from someday brandishing a few nuclear weapons in Israel’s direction,
the government of Israel created for its people the ultimate strategic
deterrent. Israel acquired five submarines from the Germans and
equipped them with cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads from
its sizable arsenal.

Hard as it is to imagine—it’s almost as if Israel’s government sees
its chief duty as looking out for the interests of Israel’s majority!

What about Podhoretz’s third reason why Jews should vote Republican,
affirmative action?

To his credit, the 79-year-old Podhoretz is keeping the faith by still
denouncing after all these years the racial quotas that threatened his
generation of Jewish government employees. Yet it’s increasingly a non-
issue for younger Jews, who have better things to do than to compete
with Non-Asian Minorities for jobs like Fire Lieutenant. (Plus, of
course, there’s no sign that quotas will be imposed to keep Jewish
representation in, say, Ivy League colleges down to their proportion
in the population, although quotas are a zero-sum game and this
unquestionably means that, for example, white Catholics are crowded
out.)

Likewise, American Jews are right to worry about anti-Semitic
terrorists. But the most sensible response—make sure you don’t let
them into the U.S.—conflicts with the open borders ideology inculcated
in both liberal and Neocon Jews by generations of ethnocentric Ellis
Island nostalgia. The Neocons reason that since we can’t not Invite
the World (we just can’t), we must therefore Invade the World and bomb
them until they stop hating us.

After six years in Iraq, the liberal Jews now believe that’s dumb. But
with border control unthinkable, the best plan they’ve come up with so
far for persuading Muslims hotheads to not come over here and kill us
is to elect President a black guy with the middle name of "Hussein".

(You gotta admit, though, it makes more sense than invading Iraq.)

Thus we can see why most Jews don’t find Podhoretz’s reasons for
voting Republican persuasive.

Still, Jewish liberalism goes much deeper than that.

Why, then, are Jews liberals?

Podhoretz contends, plausibly, that liberalism is a substitute
religion for Jews. He quotes Dennis Prager: "Despite their secularism,
Jews may be the most religious ethnic group in the world". When Jews
stopped believing in Jehovah, according to Podhoretz, they didn’t
start believing in nothing; they believed in Marxism.

UC Berkeley historian Yuri Slezkine spelled out the appeal of
Communism to Jews in The Jewish Century, his history of enthusiastic
Jewish complicity in the Bolshevik regime from 1917-1947. Secularizing
Jews believed they were discriminated against in 19th Century Europe
because of religion, nationalism, and their talent for capitalism.
Marxism promised to abolish all three.

Podhoretz contends that when harsh history finally persuaded Jews to
stop believing in Marxism, they believed in socialism. When they
stopped believing in socialism, they believed in the Democratic Party.

And that’s where their theological evolution has ground to a halt,
because "beyond the liberal faith there was nowhere to go but into the
outright apostasy of conservatism. To them this was as deeply
repugnant, and even horrifying, as conversion to Christianity had been
to their grandparents …"

In a symposium on Podhoretz’s book in the September issue of
Commentary, Michael Medved sharpens this analysis, pointing out that
hostility toward Christians—anti-Christianism, you might say—is what
keeps Jewish identity going:

"For most American Jews, the core of their Jewish identity isn’t
solidarity with Israel; it’s rejection of Christianity. … Jewish
voters don’t embrace candidates based on their support for the state
of Israel as much as they passionately oppose candidates based on
their identification with Christianity … This political pattern
reflects the fact that opposition to Christianity—not love for
Judaism, Jews, or Israel—remains the sole unifying element in an
increasingly fractious and secularized community. …"

Medved offers a test of his hypothesis:

"What is the one political or religious position that makes a Jew
utterly unwelcome in the organized community [e.g., in synagogues]? We
accept atheist Jews, Buddhist Jews, pro-Palestinian Jews, Communist
Jews, homosexual Jews, and even sanction Hindu-Jewish meditation
societies. ‘Jews for Jesus’, however, or 'Messianic Jews' face
resistance and exclusion everywhere."'

Many Jews therefore view enthusiastic Christian believers—no matter
how reliably they support Israel and American Jews—as enemies by
definition.

Despite anti-Christianism being at least as crucial in explaining
modern American politics as its notorious counterpart, anti-Semitism,
Microsoft Word’s spellchecker informs me that there is no such words
as "anti-Christianism"—or Christophobia, VDARE.COM’s choice (And as
you may recall, in George Orwell’s 1984, the appendix on The
Principles of Newspeak offers some helpful observations on the
importance of who gets to decide what is and what isn’t a word.)

My belief is that criticism is good for you. (I’ve personally
experienced a lot of it.) In contrast, people who are treated as being
above criticism tend to behave more badly over time.

For example, criticism by Jews of Christian anti-Semitism has no doubt
greatly improved Christian attitudes and behavior. If our culture were
to permit it, criticism by Christians of Jewish anti-Christianism
would likely have a similar socially salutary effect.

I’d like to offer three additional explanations for why Jews tend to
vote Democratic.

* * *

* * * First, the Democrats are even more enthusiastic about political
correctness than are the Republicans.

Although political correctness is usually marketed on the grounds that
we must protect Non-Asian Minorities from learning facts about
themselves, the media figures actually doing most of the enforcing of
political correctness tend to be members of a high average IQ group
that seems to believe that the peasant majority will come for them
with pitchforks if anybody smart ever clues them in on the facts about
IQ. For example, only one of the Atlantic 50 ranking of most
influential pundits is NAM, while half are Jewish.

Jewish organizations have striven tirelessly to make Americans more
poorly informed and more naive. Thus LA Times columnist Joel Stein
laughed last year about an Anti-Defamation League survey:

"I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22% of
Americans now believe ‘the movie and television industries are pretty
much run by Jews,’ down from nearly 50% in 1964. The Anti-Defamation
League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these
numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how
dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood." [How Jewish is
Hollywood?, December 19, 2008]

* * *

* * * Second, the Democrats are more the party of "minoritarianism",
which appeals to America’s most powerful minority.

"Minoritarianism" is another one of those non-words (although John
Derbyshire used it in 2002). "Majoritarianism" was a great enthusiasm
of the left from, say, Tom Paine onward—think of all those Marxists
ranting about "the masses". Yet, since the 1960s, minorities have been
portrayed as much more glamorous and deserving than the majority.

* * *

* * * Third, the Democrats are the party of victimism, and ethnic self-
pity is the default mode of 21st Century Jewish thought, including
Podhoretz’s.

Jews are the great storytellers and mythmakers of our time, and they
make up their own most credulous audience. Thus the first 117 pages of
Podhoretz’s book are devoted to Jewish history over the last 2000
years. In Podhoretz’s retelling, Jews are, overwhelmingly, the passive
victims of two millennia of gentile prejudice. Jews seem to be a
people almost without qualities of their own, soft clay molded solely
by gentile bigotry.

When he was editor of Commentary, Podhoretz would have laughed if
anyone dared submit a manuscript that portrayed African-Americans so
one-sidedly. (Here’s Podhoretz’s controversial 1963 article about
black violence against Jews, such as the young Norman Podhoretz: "My
Negro Problem—and Ours").

In Podhoretz’s history, Jewish victims are everywhere, while Jewish
villains and Jewish victors are not. Podhoretz’s index lists poor
Captain Dreyfus on seven pages, while murderous Comrade Trotsky and
triumphant Prime Minister Disraeli appear on none.

Indeed, Disraeli, Queen Victoria’s favorite, had much to say on
Podhoretz’s topic of why Jews should be conservatives. Disraeli
constantly argued that Jews should be conservative traditionalists
because they have such a rich tradition to conserve. (Disraeli
famously, if intemperately, replied to Daniel O’Connell, "Yes, I am a
Jew, and when the ancestors of the Right Honorable gentleman were
brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple
of Solomon.")

But Podhoretz can’t be bothered with Jewish historical figures who
would make for a more three-dimensional version of their history.

A fact almost unknown in the U.S. is that, for most years in the last
millennium, the median Ashkenazi Jew in Central and Eastern Europe was
much richer than the median gentile. While writing their
groundbreaking 2005 paper "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence",
Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending would frequently encounter academics
who had never heard anything like this, whose awareness of the Jewish
experience seemed largely limited to Fiddler on the Roof. (The poverty
that many Eastern European Jews faced by 1900 was due to their
ancestors’ tremendous Malthusian success at growing their numbers
beyond that which could be employed in traditional finance-related
occupations.)

As I noted in my VDARE.COM article The Cuban Compromise, Jews, like
Cubans, have earned the right to special privileges due to their
political power. Just as Cuban exiles have controlled American foreign
policy toward Cuba and won their relatives unique status as refugees
rather than immigrants, America can afford to let Israel push around
the Palestinians because it pleases a domestic bloc.

And, in the unlikely event of something terrible happening to the
Jewish state, we would no doubt grant refugee status to Israeli Jews.

But what America can’t continue to afford is the pervasive unrealism
imposed by the current code of silence about Jewish power and
interests.

Thus Jewish demonization of immigration reform patriots appears to
have two motivations:

* * *

* * * An reasonable concern about Israelis, which can be assuaged by
special accommodations
* * *

* * * An unreasonable form of ancestor worship, which couldn’t survive
satire, but is protected by the current taboos

And this demonization is the single most important reason that
America’s immigration disaster is still above criticism, long after it
has become obvious that it is a disaster, and despite the fact that an
overwhelming number of Americans are strongly opposed to it.

Jews will do fine when they compete openly in the marketplace of
ideas. They don’t have to rig the market as well."

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/091025_podhoretz.htm

Too long to read.

[George M. Middius[_4_]]

Witless sniffs duh-Mikey's leavings.

Too long to read.

This must be irony Monday.

Still estranged from human language, I see. Too bad.

woof!

[Boon[_2_]]

On Oct 26, 2:27*pm, ScottW wrote:
On Oct 26, 12:21*pm, hoser1605 wrote:



http://www.vdare.com/sailer/091025_podhoretz.htm

Too long to read.

*This must be irony Monday.

How is that ironic, dip****?

There are plenty of online dictionaries that can help you with this
affliction.

[Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!]

On Oct 26, 5:13*pm, Boon wrote:

How is that ironic, dip****?

How do you know what definition of the word "irony" 2pid is using?

There are plenty of online dictionaries that can help you with this
affliction.

Online dictionaries don't increase IQ so I think that you're making a
useless Internet claim. ;-)

[George M. Middius[_4_]]

Shhhh! said:

There are plenty of online dictionaries that can help you with this
affliction.

Online dictionaries don't increase IQ so I think that you're making a
useless Internet claim. ;-)

There are more dummies than smart people in the general population. Nothing
would pain Scottie more than being part of an elite group.

[GeoSynch]

Pudge the Gimp minced:

There are more dummies than smart people in the general population.

God has a sense of humor.

[Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!]

On Oct 26, 9:53*pm, "GeoSynch" wrote:
Pudge the Gimp minced:

There are more dummies than smart people in the general population.

God has a sense of humor.

Too bad you weren't made in his image. LoL.

[Boon[_2_]]

On Oct 27, 12:54*am, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote:
On Oct 26, 9:53*pm, "GeoSynch" wrote:

Pudge the Gimp minced:

There are more dummies than smart people in the general population.

God has a sense of humor.

Too bad you weren't made in his image. LoL.

I don't know...God is imaginary, and PLF does all of his work in an IT
closet in the middle of the night. That's about as close to imaginary
as it gets in this world.

[GeoSynch]

Marc Phillips, failed journalist, wrote:

There are more dummies than smart people in the general population.

God has a sense of humor.

Too bad you weren't made in his image. LoL.

I don't know...God is imaginary, and PLF does all of his work in an IT closet
in the middle of the night. That's about as close to imaginary as it gets in
this world.

What a complete and utter failure your miserable, pathetic life has turned out
to be. :-)

Ah, schadenfreude. LoL!

[Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!]

On Oct 27, 8:59*pm, "GeoSynch" wrote:

LoL!

See this, 2pid?

Even Sugar is mocking you now.

[Boon[_2_]]

On Oct 27, 9:12*pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote:
On Oct 27, 8:59*pm, "GeoSynch" wrote:

LoL!

See this, 2pid?

Even Sugar is mocking you now.

PLF mocks everyone. PLF hates everyone. PLF doesn't understand why he
has to wake up in the middle of the night just to make sure he didn't
screw up the "automated" processes again. PLF doesn't understand why
he works in an IT closet and rarely gets to see daylight. PLF doesn't
understand why he needs 4 1/2 cups of coffee just so he can get out of
bed (in the afternoon) and try to be productive and face another
****ty day.

So he hates. He hates perfect starngers on the Internet because they
think he is weird and homophobic and misogynistic and childish. He
hates them for not understanding that deep down he is smarter than
them, and that he deserves a life where he can be powerful and tell
everyone else what to do.

So let him mock Scott. It's the only thing keeping him from a date
with a .38. LoL!

[GeoSynch]

Marc Phillips, failed journalist, whined:

[GeoSynch the Greatest] doesn't understand why he works in an IT closet

You mean the one you supposedly got me fired from and then subsequently gloated
about it on rao?

Poor old Marc Phillips, a failed journalist, who has now degenerated into an
impoverished, bitter, old geezer, who has to move from one part of the country
to the next to stave off complete financial destitution. Sad, really.

[Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!]

On Oct 28, 6:16*pm, ScottW wrote:
On Oct 28, 9:32*am, "GeoSynch" wrote:

Marc Phillips, failed journalist, whined:

[GeoSynch the Greatest] doesn't understand why he works in an IT closet

You mean the one you supposedly got me fired from and then subsequently gloated
about it on rao?

Poor old Marc Phillips, a failed journalist, who has now degenerated into an
impoverished, bitter, old geezer, who has to move from one part of the country
to the next to stave off complete financial destitution. Sad, really.

Guess who wrote this?

*"I've been slowly selling off the more opulent pieces in my audio
system because, quite frankly, times are tough. It's difficult to put
off getting your kids braces when you have a $15,000 analog rig in
your living room where everyone can see."

It sounds like somebody who was willing to sell things to pay for
things their kids needed.

A revealing testament of failure and misplaced priorities.

I've always known that "family values" were simply a marketing slogan
for republicans. Thet've never meant a word of it. LoL.

Or were you refering to the "revealing testament" regarding the utter
failure of your 'brain'? LoL.

[Boon[_2_]]

On Oct 28, 6:16*pm, ScottW wrote:
On Oct 28, 9:32*am, "GeoSynch" wrote:

Marc Phillips, failed journalist, whined:

[GeoSynch the Greatest] doesn't understand why he works in an IT closet

You mean the one you supposedly got me fired from and then subsequently gloated
about it on rao?

Poor old Marc Phillips, a failed journalist, who has now degenerated into an
impoverished, bitter, old geezer, who has to move from one part of the country
to the next to stave off complete financial destitution. Sad, really.

Guess who wrote this?

*"I've been slowly selling off the more opulent pieces in my audio
system because, quite frankly, times are tough. It's difficult to put
off getting your kids braces when you have a $15,000 analog rig in
your living room where everyone can see."

A revealing testament of failure and misplaced priorities.

Then again, you have an old piece of **** Mitsubishi 'table, so it
sounds like your priorities are the same as mine. LoL.

[Boon[_2_]]

On Oct 28, 6:19*pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote:
On Oct 28, 6:16*pm, ScottW wrote:





On Oct 28, 9:32*am, "GeoSynch" wrote:

Marc Phillips, failed journalist, whined:

[GeoSynch the Greatest] doesn't understand why he works in an IT closet

You mean the one you supposedly got me fired from and then subsequently gloated
about it on rao?

Poor old Marc Phillips, a failed journalist, who has now degenerated into an
impoverished, bitter, old geezer, who has to move from one part of the country
to the next to stave off complete financial destitution. Sad, really.

Guess who wrote this?

*"I've been slowly selling off the more opulent pieces in my audio
system because, quite frankly, times are tough. It's difficult to put
off getting your kids braces when you have a $15,000 analog rig in
your living room where everyone can see."

It sounds like somebody who was willing to sell things to pay for
things their kids needed.

A revealing testament of failure and misplaced priorities.

I've always known that "family values" were simply a marketing slogan
for republicans. Thet've never meant a word of it. LoL.

Or were you refering to the "revealing testament" regarding the utter
failure of your 'brain'? LoL.

Then again, Scott hasn't told us why he no longer lives in his
"opulent" house in Vista. Perhaps he too is tightening his belt and
spending wisely, as I have?

[Boon[_2_]]

On Oct 28, 6:16*pm, ScottW wrote:
On Oct 28, 9:32*am, "GeoSynch" wrote:

Marc Phillips, failed journalist, whined:

[GeoSynch the Greatest] doesn't understand why he works in an IT closet

You mean the one you supposedly got me fired from and then subsequently gloated
about it on rao?

Poor old Marc Phillips, a failed journalist, who has now degenerated into an
impoverished, bitter, old geezer, who has to move from one part of the country
to the next to stave off complete financial destitution. Sad, really.

Guess who wrote this?

*"I've been slowly selling off the more opulent pieces in my audio
system because, quite frankly, times are tough. It's difficult to put
off getting your kids braces when you have a $15,000 analog rig in
your living room where everyone can see."

A revealing testament of failure and misplaced priorities.

By the way, I noticed how you left this part of the article out:

"I had to remind that particular person that I wasn't a salesperson
("Yeah, sure" was their reply), and that last year I had written about
a $60,000 turntable and concluded that while it was the nicest analog
sound I had ever heard, I would rather spend that kind of money on a
BMW M3 or a trip around the world or a college education for my kids.
I love music, and hi-fi is my chosen hobby, but I believe there's far
more beauty in the forest behind my house than in the fine burled
walnut veneer of a coffin-sized loudspeaker that costs more than my
Subaru did when it was new."

In other words, your poor reading comprehension has tripped you up
again. The point of the original quote was to say that there are more
important things in life than having a $15,000 turntable. But
considering you're a guy with a delinquent kid and a beautiful yet
neglected wife, I'm going to say that the failures and misplaced
priorities are yours.

And how stupid is it to comment on my alledged status as a "failed
journalist" by quoting a recent article of mine? Very stupid. You and
PLF have conveniently forgotten that I currently write for three
publications, and that a fourth just approached me this week. Funny
how the facts get in the way of your lies, eh dip****?

[GeoSynch]

Marc 'oh woe is me' Phillips moaned:

Perhaps he too is tightening his belt and spending wisely, as I have?

Jilly ain't the only one composing train wreck sentences.

[Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!]

On Oct 28, 10:07*pm, Boon wrote:
On Oct 28, 6:19*pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"





wrote:
On Oct 28, 6:16*pm, ScottW wrote:

On Oct 28, 9:32*am, "GeoSynch" wrote:

Marc Phillips, failed journalist, whined:

[GeoSynch the Greatest] doesn't understand why he works in an IT closet

You mean the one you supposedly got me fired from and then subsequently gloated
about it on rao?

Poor old Marc Phillips, a failed journalist, who has now degenerated into an
impoverished, bitter, old geezer, who has to move from one part of the country
to the next to stave off complete financial destitution. Sad, really.

Guess who wrote this?

*"I've been slowly selling off the more opulent pieces in my audio
system because, quite frankly, times are tough. It's difficult to put
off getting your kids braces when you have a $15,000 analog rig in
your living room where everyone can see."

It sounds like somebody who was willing to sell things to pay for
things their kids needed.

A revealing testament of failure and misplaced priorities.

I've always known that "family values" were simply a marketing slogan
for republicans. Thet've never meant a word of it. LoL.

Or were you refering to the "revealing testament" regarding the utter
failure of your 'brain'? LoL.

Then again, Scott hasn't told us why he no longer lives in his
"opulent" house in Vista. Perhaps he too is tightening his belt and
spending wisely, as I have?

We mustn't forget that 2pid is only capable of measuring "success" in
terms of physical accomplishments like bank accounts, cars, the
appearance of their wives, etc.

These are the kind of guys who have beautiful trophy wives who run
around on them.

So to 2pid anybody in the military, for example, is a "failure"
because they could all make more money doing something else. 2pid has
unwittingly made a revealing testament the basis for his refusal to
serve to his country here.

[Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!]

On Oct 28, 11:12*pm, "GeoSynch" wrote:
Marc 'oh woe is me' Phillips moaned:

Perhaps he too is tightening his belt and spending wisely, as I have?

Jilly ain't the only one composing train wreck sentences.

Try being funny again. It worked for that one post.

Here's another clue: "Jilly" doesn't stick because I'm not effeminate.
"Sugar" sticks because you are.

"Shhhhtard" doesn't stick because I'm smart. "2pid" sticks because he
is.

You guys should try to use your 'brains'. LoL.

[Boon[_2_]]

On Oct 29, 12:20*am, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote:
On Oct 28, 11:12*pm, "GeoSynch" wrote:

Marc 'oh woe is me' Phillips moaned:

That's a train wreck of a sentence. LoL.

[Boon[_2_]]

On Oct 28, 10:20*pm, Boon wrote:
On Oct 28, 6:16*pm, ScottW wrote:





On Oct 28, 9:32*am, "GeoSynch" wrote:

Marc Phillips, failed journalist, whined:

[GeoSynch the Greatest] doesn't understand why he works in an IT closet

You mean the one you supposedly got me fired from and then subsequently gloated
about it on rao?

Poor old Marc Phillips, a failed journalist, who has now degenerated into an
impoverished, bitter, old geezer, who has to move from one part of the country
to the next to stave off complete financial destitution. Sad, really.

Guess who wrote this?

*"I've been slowly selling off the more opulent pieces in my audio
system because, quite frankly, times are tough. It's difficult to put
off getting your kids braces when you have a $15,000 analog rig in
your living room where everyone can see."

A revealing testament of failure and misplaced priorities.

By the way, I noticed how you left this part of the article out:

"I had to remind that particular person that I wasn't a salesperson
("Yeah, sure" was their reply), and that last year I had written about
a $60,000 turntable and concluded that while it was the nicest analog
sound I had ever heard, I would rather spend that kind of money on a
BMW M3 or a trip around the world or a college education for my kids.
I love music, and hi-fi is my chosen hobby, but I believe there's far
more beauty in the forest behind my house than in the fine burled
walnut veneer of a coffin-sized loudspeaker that costs more than my
Subaru did when it was new."

In other words, your poor reading comprehension has tripped you up
again. The point of the original quote was to say that there are more
important things in life than having a $15,000 turntable. But
considering you're a guy with a delinquent kid and a beautiful yet
neglected wife, I'm going to say that the failures and misplaced
priorities are yours.

And how stupid is it to comment on my alledged

I know...it's alleged.

[GeoSynch]

Jilly got stuck:

"Jilly" doesn't stick because I'm not effeminate.

G.I. Jill, the Blowjob Queen and all-around DADT advocate

[GeoSynch]

BaBoon read, BaBoon repeat:

Marc 'oh woe is me' Phillips moaned:

That's a train wreck of a sentence. LoL.

The old, ironic "it's not an IKYABWAI because I'm Marc Phillips and I say it
isn't" IKYABWAI ploy.

[Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!]

On Oct 29, 11:21*am, "GeoSynch" wrote:
Jilly got stuck:

"Jilly" doesn't stick because I'm not effeminate.

G.I. Jill, the Blowjob Queen and all-around DADT advocate

Uh, sure, Sugar.

Jism, smegma, etc. LoL.

[GeoSynch]

Jilly settled in:

"Jilly" doesn't stick because I'm not effeminate.

G.I. Jill, the Blowjob Queen and all-around DADT advocate

Uh, sure, Sugar.

Jilly resignedly accepted her lot in life ...

Jism, smegma, etc. LoL.

.... and forlornly licked her lips as she typed those words.

[Boon[_2_]]

On Oct 29, 12:49*pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote:
On Oct 29, 11:21*am, "GeoSynch" wrote:

Jilly got stuck:

"Jilly" doesn't stick because I'm not effeminate.

G.I. Jill, the Blowjob Queen and all-around DADT advocate

Uh, sure, Sugar.

Jism, smegma, etc. LoL.

That's just sour grapes. You know you envy PLF's lifestyle...the
lonely nights in the IT closet, the anonymous Internet attacks on
complete strangers, the frequent scolding from the uber-Christian
boss, the gently blossoming friendship with ScottW, the continual and
overpowering effects of caffeine and the feverish homophobic
nightmares. It's intoxicating, I know. LoL.

[Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!]

On Oct 29, 2:18*pm, Boon wrote:
On Oct 29, 12:49*pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"

wrote:
On Oct 29, 11:21*am, "GeoSynch" wrote:

Jilly got stuck:

"Jilly" doesn't stick because I'm not effeminate.

G.I. Jill, the Blowjob Queen and all-around DADT advocate

Uh, sure, Sugar.

Jism, smegma, etc. LoL.

That's just sour grapes. You know you envy PLF's lifestyle...the
lonely nights in the IT closet, the anonymous Internet attacks on
complete strangers, the frequent scolding from the uber-Christian
boss, the gently blossoming friendship with ScottW, the continual and
overpowering effects of caffeine and the feverish homophobic
nightmares. It's intoxicating, I know. LoL.

That plus a successful guy like him probably has a double-wide. LoL.

[Boon[_2_]]

On Oct 29, 5:18*pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote:
On Oct 29, 2:18*pm, Boon wrote:





On Oct 29, 12:49*pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"

wrote:
On Oct 29, 11:21*am, "GeoSynch" wrote:

Jilly got stuck:

"Jilly" doesn't stick because I'm not effeminate.

G.I. Jill, the Blowjob Queen and all-around DADT advocate

Uh, sure, Sugar.

Jism, smegma, etc. LoL.

That's just sour grapes. You know you envy PLF's lifestyle...the
lonely nights in the IT closet, the anonymous Internet attacks on
complete strangers, the frequent scolding from the uber-Christian
boss, the gently blossoming friendship with ScottW, the continual and
overpowering effects of caffeine and the feverish homophobic
nightmares. It's intoxicating, I know. LoL.

That plus a successful guy like him probably has a double-wide. LoL.

Too cumbersome. A man posting from that many different time zones
needs to stay light on his feet.