So Let’s Kill the Supply With History’s Greatest Boondoggle

When are we going to give up the ethanol insanity?

We’ve known for a long time that ethanol doesn’t work. We don’t have enough land to grow enough corn to replace oil. Unlike gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, ethanol is a highly temperamental fuel which causes problems because it absorbs water from the air. And even Time Magazine–the famous right-wing rag–tells us ethanol causes more pollution than oil. Ethanol gave the left a stick with which to beat the right, and it depressed our economy, which is good for Democrats in the upcoming election, and it generated profitable contracts for fat cats who could not care less about their country or the food supply. We know all this, yet we continue to grow excessive amounts of corn for ethanol, driving up the price of other grains, meat, and oddly, corn.

Some scientists are now telling us that ethanol threatens to exacerbate famine in deprived areas of the world. Isn’t that wonderful? At least we get a warm, fuzzy feeling. Too bad if people starve.

Here’s a story from Worldnetdaily. Dairy prices rose 80 percent last year. Farmers in Thailand are sleeping in their fields to prevent their rice from being stolen. In six of the last seven years, the human race has used more grain than it produced. Even warm, fuzzy environmentalists are starting to get upset.

I am thinking about this today because I just read an article in The Jewish Week News, which I found via the blog of the International Federation of Christians and Jews, about the cost of Passover food. Observant Jews have always paid more for food, and Passover food is even more expensive, and this year, it’s worse than ever because of ethanol. Matzoh costs twenty dollars per pound now. Crackers cost more than prime beef! Because they’re made from wheat, and corn is growing on land where wheat used to grow.

We have lots of oil; we just won’t drill for it or refine it in the US. We have gigantic reserves of nuclear power, but ignorant and misguided people shut down that magnificent industry–which was a gift straight from God–years ago. We have a tremendous amount of coal, which can be burned more cleanly than ever, but just try building a plant. And what was the sop they threw us to offset all this? Wind farms, or as I like to call them, “bird-grinding low-output generators.”

It seems to me that the consequences are not hard to guess. The US grows a huge percentage of the grain, so we’ll decide what happens to it. We’ll export less. We’ll pay more for food, but we won’t have shortages. Other countries will have to grow more or do without. Charities will suffer. People will starve. But it’s okay, as long as you have a “Flex Fuel” sticker on your car when you drive to Obama rallies.

Somehow, the left will find a way to blame the famine on America and the right. They’re already working on it, I promise you. “We created this situation by refusing to live in huts and walk to work, like sane people.” “Ethanol, like socialism, will work. If we just spend another hundred years fine-tuning it.”

There is a word that describes the truly green lifestyle. Here it is. “Poverty.”

You can’t have prosperity and good food and good shelter and fine medical care without consumption. If we live in huts and eat what we grow in our yards and stop buying and driving and consuming, industry will shrivel, the economy will tank, and in twenty years, we’ll be living in huts because there is no choice, not because it’s cute and trendy. Consumption pays bills. For everyone, not just Dick Cheney and Halliburton. Who builds SUVs? Unskilled union workers with no education. Who delivers big-screen TVs? Unskilled union workers with no education. You can’t stop spending without causing someone else to stop earning. Historically, the green people in huts have been kept alive by donations from the earth-exploiting people who drive big gas-guzzling cars. Doesn’t that tell you something? Who is on the right track here? Isn’t it obvious?

We need more domestic refining capacity. We need more domestic drilling. We need more nuclear reactors. We need to put serious money into developing realistic new power sources, and I’m not referring to fantasies like solar panels. Retreating and cutting consumption and production will screw up our economy, and what hurts the US a little hurts the rest of the world a lot. The answer isn’t to go backward. The answer is to make realistic choices while going forward.

Efficiency is wonderful. Doing more with less is great. Doing less with less is bad.

Ethanol, to get back to the original subject, would be a fine idea. If it did not wreak havoc on the balance of the grain market and every market the grain market affects. If we could create ethanol in big vats in urban settings, from readily available raw materials, it would be a wonderful fuel for some purposes. But right now, we have to get it from corn. And corn is just too important to use for fuel.

Another Jewish Week News article discusses the growing acceptance Pastor John Hagee is getting in Israel. It’s a crazy read. Hagee’s chief problem, it seems, is that in addition to wanting Israel to prosper financially, he wants Israel’s territory to grow to include the nation’s historic possessions. In other words, he’s in trouble because he’s advancing the cause of Israel, more than many Jews can stand. And failing to advance the interests of their enemies.

Do we live in a nutty world, or what?

Hagee has other troubles. If you haven’t seen him at work, I’ll save you the research and tell you that he’s a fire and brimstone sort of guy. Much more like Elisha than Paul. He has criticized Catholicism and modern morality, and I doubt he’s a friend of Islam. I’m a fairly kooky Protestant, and he even gets on my nerves. But I gather that his support for the reestablishment of Eretz Israel is what really puts off secular Jews and their very close relatives, Reform Jews.

One promising thing about the article: it reflects a growing realization that “mainline” American churches are hostile to Israel. Look:

A top Jewish leader said there is a different communal calculus in the face of mounting attacks on Israel by “mainline” Protestant churches. “Frankly, we’d rather be standing up with the Presbyterians than with people who speak in tongues, but we can’t because they are more and more biased against Israel. So Hagee looks more attractive to many.”

Yes, I suppose a sincere but odd friend looks more attractive than an outright enemy. I can see how that makes sense.

Notice the bizarre prejudice against pentecostals. Where did that come from? What did pentecostals do to deserve that? As far as I know, their record on Israel is virtually pure. No inquisitions. No pogroms. The Catholics can’t compare. Neither can the Orthodox churches or the Anglican Church. Not even the Baptists. I’m not trying to rub salt in old wounds, but things have happened, and they can’t be denied. What’s the deal with fearing one of the few groups of Christians that have not caused problems?

I have been involved with the pentecostals in one way or another since the early 1980s, and while they have many faults, I can tell you that I have consistently heard one message about the Jews and Israel: SUPPORT. Regardless of the nature of the reaction. Support, support, support. Not to gain influence in Israel, but to please God. Pentecostals would continue to support Israel even if Elijah appeared on a cloud and informed them that there was no possibility that any Jew would ever convert again. And they do not see themselves as “the real Jews,” and they do not want to move to Israel and take over.

I know pentecostals wish Jews would convert, and from time to time they proselytize. And some (some) have been known to say that Jews can’t enter heaven, because they haven’t accepted Christ. I can’t think of any other potential sore spots.

I have to wonder. Is it the bold and consuming faith of the newer Protestants that puts off Jews? Some people like God best when He is kept at arm’s length, and they’re freaked out by people who want Him closer. Is it our conservative streak? It’s completely unrealistic, at this time in history, to expect liberalism and support for Israel to exist in the same body of individuals. Maybe Jews are disturbed by the thing that makes pentecostals pentecostal. This guy mentioned tongues. Most Jews believe things like prophecy are dead. Maybe it offends them to see modern people who are not Jews, asserting that the Holy Spirit communicates with them.

Should any of those things make mainline churches preferable? To the Jews, we’re all heretics. What difference does degree make?

It’s confusing.

Check out this quotation from a recent website post by the IFCJ’s Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein:

I’ve spoken before about anti-Israel sentiment in “mainline” Protestant denominations like the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), the United Church of Christ (UCC), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), and others. In recent years these groups have considered, and in some cases approved, measures that seek to punish Israel economically through divestment and condemn Israel’s attempts to defend itself through construction of a security fence.

Maybe the Jews are coming around. I know Rabbi Eckstein has. I hate to say this, but maybe appeasement is a concept that applies to watered-down Christian churches as well as Islamists. Israel can’t make the UCC happy. Why try? Rabbi Eckstein has said, “The Bible Belt is Israel’s safety belt.” I say, take your friends where you find them. Cyrus and Darius were primitive, warlike Gentiles, yet the Jews allowed them to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Surely John Hagee is easier to stomach than they were.

If I could be present, even at a distance, at the building of the next temple, and if I could see one stone I paid for put into place, I would fall on my face and weep at the honor. And so would millions of other American Christians.

It’s going to turn out, in the years to come, that most Christians are enemies of Israel. We’re already headed that way. The Jews need to discern the sheep from the goats and figure out which churches truly want to help. Urging appeasement and land concessions is not help.

Christians, who readily accept Jesus’s pronouncement that the church of his time was “the synagogue of Satan,” tend to feel that their enlightened churches are immune to corruption, and that they can’t be used by the enemy. But it’s not true. As churches age, they tend to conform to the world. And the very things that make them effective and sincere–their “saltness”–are the things that are discarded first. God becomes a myth. Jesus becomes a well-meaning eccentric who was mistaken when he said he was the only path to salvation. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit–the power supply of the body of Christ–is completely dropped as a doctrine. First thing you know, the church is inviting Oprah to stand at the pulpit and explain that every individual creates his own god, and that they’re all valid. That’s what she’s doing right now, if you didn’t know. She has hooked up with a false messiah who basically says anything goes, and she’s financing his sick, evil ministry. People seem to think one or two billion dollars automatically make you worth listening to. But the super-rich are just like you and I. Ordinary. Human. Mortal.

It’s only natural that mainline churches would be corrupted by the enemy and used to persecute Jews and, as Rabbi Eckstein calls them, “Christians who take the Bible seriously.” It’s happening. It’s going to get worse. Satan does much of his best work using the church, because he passes it off as God’s work, making it unassailable. Christians aren’t naturally smarter or better than Jews, and when we operate purely under our own strength, we are just as susceptible to misdirection. Churches that stick to old-fashioned, scriptural morality and rely on the Holy Spirit will be okay. Churches that are accepted by the godless world and by bizarre multifaith bodies will not. And a church’s treatment of Israel will be one way to tell the difference. No church that opposes Israel is led by God.

Jews and Bible-believing Christians make up one faction, and the rest of the world makes up the other. The spirit of anti-Semitism is the spirit that drives persecution of Bible-believe Christians. We may not be Jews, but we wear the same target on our backs. The world hates us for the same reason. So it’s wonderful to see bonds like those formed by Pastor Hagee and Rabbi Eckstein. In the future, they will be much more important than they are now.

Math Makes my Head Hurt

I just had an Oskar Schindler moment.

A while back I went to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews site, and I ordered one of their free DVDs. I always take anything that’s free. I watched most of it yesterday. Wonderful stuff, about the Jewish underpinnings of Christianity. And of course, during the breaks, they talked about what the IFCJ does. At one point, they showed Ethiopian Jews, walking off an airplane onto the tarmac at Ben Gurion. I think it was a mother and two small kids.

A thousand dollars. That’s about what they cost. It costs $350 per person for you to fly a Jew to Israel, via the IFCJ’s On the Wings of Eagles program, so those three people represent about a thousand dollars.

I was thinking about that a minute ago, and I thought of Eliot Spitzer, spending $5500 an hour on prostitutes. For the price of an hour you could bring about 16 people to Israel. Lives changed forever. Oppression, gone. Persecution, gone. Charitable operations that give people one-time gifts of food and clothing are wonderful, but those things are of fleeting value. Change a person’s nation of residence, and with one act, you’ve made a change that will bless that person every day for the rest of his life. What if Eliot Spitzer had decided, on ten occasions, to send Jews to Israel instead of hiring prostitutes? There would be 157 people in Israel now, who would owe him a debt they could never repay. So easy for him, so hard for them.

I know it’s a crazy way to think. Unless Spitzer is very unlike other wealthy Jews, he has given plenty to charity. And if he hadn’t spent the money on prostitutes, he probably would have spent it on some other selfish item, and we all do that. It’s part of life. But it’s fascinating to think of the very different ways in which the same sum of money can affect the world. An hour of stupidity and lust, or sixteen changed lives.

I guess this is why I like telling people about matching gifts. Just as money spent on prostitutes differs from money spent flying poor Jews to Israel, one charity dollar spent on one program can differ from money spent on another, if the second program has a matching gift. For a certain sum, you might buy ten pounds of rice for people in Africa, or you might buy a hundred and fifty pounds, because various corporations match your gift. Money is so strange. One sum can do so many different things.

The IFCJ’s program has something many charities lack. Measurable, substantial, final results. As I said earlier today, they say they’ve flown over 300,000 Jews to Israel. Think of that! One in twenty Israelis! It’s not like other efforts, like the one in Darfur. People give and give and give, and years pass, and it seems like nothing changes. The bucket has a hole in it. Obviously, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give to people with persistent, stubborn problems. But there is something wonderful and reinforcing about knowing you accomplished something that can’t be undone.

Other charities have opportunities that are equally quantifiable, if less lasting. You can use the Gift Catalog at World Vision and buy a certain number of named items for a given price. For example, Bibles at $18 each. If you were to spend $72, you would know that somewhere in the world, four people had Bibles you paid for. You wouldn’t wonder if your contribution ran out of a hole in a sack in a grain warehouse. You wouldn’t wonder if some local fat cat skimmed it off the top. You could make yourself a list, and whenever you got discouraged about giving, you could look at the list and see the things you put in the hands of individuals. You wouldn’t necessarily know who they were, but you’d know what they got. Charities often have a “where most needed” option, and that seems like the most logical way to direct your money, but maybe the reinforcement of knowing exactly what you gave outweighs the benefit of doing more good, because it might make you more likely to continue giving.

The Gift Catalog is very humbling. You look at the things World Vision’s beneficiaries are thrilled to receive, and it breaks your heart. A small fishing kit. A single blanket. A handful of seeds. Seriously. Go look.

I guess that when you decide you want to give, you have a responsibility to shop, the same way you would shop if you were buying a computer or a refrigerator. This is why I generally turn down people who solicit money on the street. I usually can’t make a sound decision in five seconds. And I guess that when you decide what luxuries you want to buy for yourself, you might be smart to think about how many blankets or fishing kits the money would buy. Maybe that’s the way to understand how blessed you are and how much you owe to God. I have a custom-made suit I have probably worn six times. Suddenly I’m ashamed of it.

Don’t start telling me I’m an angel. If you read this blog, you know better. God has done a lot of work on me over the last couple of years. God gives you the ability to be good, and then He gives you the pleasure, and then He gives you a reward for it. How wild is that? If I had had my way, I would have stayed the same or gotten worse.

Lately I feel better about being good. Isn’t that crazy? Why would anyone need to feel better about being good? I have absorbed a lot of garbage from my surroundings, and I have made it part of me. For many years, I tried to squelch the empathy and openness I was born with, because I was surrounded by aggressors. Maybe God is peeling that uncomfortable crust off of me.

I had an idea the other day. A way someone could do a tremendous amount of good with no exertion and no cash out of pocket. You could put up a blog–Blogspot would be adequate–and you could contact a few charities. You could ask them to email you when they had special opportunities or needs or matching gifts. Then you could post links every day or two. People could come by when they wanted to see what was available. And if they wanted, they could copy the code from the latest entry and repost it on their own sites. Pretty easy.

Turns out the domain “matchinggifts.com” is taken. But it’s not a very good site. I couldn’t get it to work.

Maybe someone more focused than I am will figure out a way to do it.

Who is Austin Bay?

Moxie links to a marvelous piece about Eretz Israel.

Warning: I may be pulling your leg.

Rimfire Scope Installed

I got me a new scope. Ordered it off Ebay. It’s a 3-9x40mm Bushnell rimfire scope, for the Nylon 66 rifle. Some say the receiver on this rifle is too flexible to work well with a scope. Others say it will work fine. I’ll find out on Thursday.

Seems like the .22 is the biggest bargain in shooting. It’s accurate at under a hundred yards. The ammunition is nearly free. The rifles are cheap. You can kill surprisingly large game with it. You barely need ear protection. And it’s easy to shoot.

Milsurps can be very cheap and accurate and useful. But the ammunition costs money, and the optics are three times as expensive as rimfire optics. I know milsurps are useful for game a .22 can’t reliably kill, and I’m sure they’re better for self-defense. But on the whole, I give the nod to the .22. What do you think? Kim du Toit described it as a tool everyone should have, if memory serves. Like a beer opener.

If I can’t get good accuracy with the Nylon 66 and a scope, I’m going to get a Savage. They’re very cheap, and they’re supposed to be like lasers. I can’t think of anything that would improve my rifle shooting as much as a gun that accurately shoots dirt-cheap ammunition, with no recoil.

I still have to fill out the forms for my C& R license. If you ever want to pee yourself with fear in the middle of the day, send a request to the DOJ, forget about it, and then reach into your mailbox and take out a thick DOJ envelope with your name on it. I started thinking about all the tax returns I’ve ever filed. I overpay, because I’m lazy. But you never know when you might misplace a decimal point.

I know the IRS does its own black ops. They don’t need the DOJ to send their horrifying emails. But I couldn’t think of anything else I might have done wrong.

Oh Yeah, This Will Work

The news from Israel could be better.

First off, Leah Friedman is off her ventilator, but it is not yet clear how much brain damage she suffered when she went into respiratory arrest. So keep those prayers coming.

The local representatives of the Religion of Peace are doing their part to provide comfort at this trying time. Leah, who supports the reestablishment of Eretz Israel, has received five death threats by email and some others by phone. You have to congratulate Muslim terrorists on their uncanny ability to demonstrate their umatched cowardice by finding the weakest, least threatening victims on the face of the planet. In that regard, it’s hard to top an eighteen-year-old girl in a coma. Although they did beat and hang the dead bodies of American contractors in Iraq; that was even less brave than what they’re doing to Leah. It’s odd how often the people who clamor most for respect are among the least deserving.

One of the peculiar characteristics of thugs is that they try to make themselves appear manly and intimidating by means of shameful attacks on people who have no chance of fighting back. The elderly, women, children, and so on. Somehow they don’t realize it makes them look weak and small and underdeveloped. Like little boys. Which is what they remain, until the day they die.

Leah’s parents took her photo and email address off her blog. The damage is already done, but maybe her story will serve as a warning to other people who blog and who may be inviting reprisals without knowing it. If you’re a woman, you should never reveal your entire name and location on a blog, unless you carry a gun and you’re willing to face the consequences of your openness. And children just shouldn’t blog. Not unless every bit of their personal information is kept out of it, and their parents approve everything they put on the web. In my opinion, no one under the age of eighteen has any business whatsoever using the Internet without an adult standing behind him at all times.

Second, via Sondra, left-wing bloggers are going to Israel on a fact-finding mission. That’s like sending a rabbi to certify a kosher pork-processing plant. And you don’t need to go to Israel to learn the facts. These lying creeps already know the facts. They just don’t care. According to Ynet news, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been working hard to arrange this. It’s distressing to learn that the government of Israel is that foolish and uninformed.

Here is a politic and understated quotation from the article:

While Israel enjoys relatively balanced coverage in American mainstream media, there are numerous blogs identifying with the liberal left who are unwaveringly critical of Israeli policies, often referring to Israel as an apartheid state which, among other things, is responsible for Washington’s decision to go to war in Iraq.

“Relatively balanced.” Like a car on two wheels, which hasn’t quite reached the tipping point.

This trip is a mistake. The Israelis clearly have no understanding of the American left. That’s probably because so many Israelis are leftists and suffer from the ridiculous, idealist notion that other leftists are their brothers. They ought to keep two famous Georges in mind. The first is George Santayana, who made the famous remark about repeating history. The second is George Bush, who reached across the aisle repeatedly and always retrieved a bloody stump for his efforts. These bloggers are going to continue to attack Israel unfairly and dishonestly, because they are not driven by facts. They are driven by fashion and a perverted secular faith. The only difference between their pre- and post-visit coverage will be that they will be able to claim more legitimacy after returning home, because they went and saw the elephant for themselves.

Israelis are downright stupid about America. In polls, they say they think the Democrats will be better to them than Republicans. They would generally prefer to see liberals elected in the United States. This is one of the few areas in which they are in complete agreement with Osama bin Laden and other Muslim terrorists. Maybe it’s something they can build on. Maybe if they gave away more land, the Islamists would come to the table and celebrate this common view with them.

Jewish liberalism is probably the single greatest threat to Israel’s existence. In this respect it has completely supplanted Baal, Tammuz, Ashtoreth, Dagon, and the golden calf. Who needs an idol made of wood or gold when you have Karl Marx? And who needs strong enemies without, to conquer you in battle and take your land, when you have stronger enemies within, willing to give it back no matter how many times you buy it with blood?

Jews seem willing to forgive leftism no matter how many times it fails or how much it costs them. It failed in the USSR, but that’s because they didn’t do it right. It is costing them the battle against their genocidal, land-grabbing enemies, but that’s okay, because eventually, the Muslims will see that the Jews are decent, reasonable people, and they’ll want to coexist in peace. The way you would expect followers of a murdering gangster to do. The way they’ve always coexisted peacefully with each other.

You know what they ought to call the conflict between Israelis and Muslims? The Warm War. It’s too friendly and loving to be a cold war. Israel and the Bush administration are cozying up to Islamism and cuddling it, spoon-feeding it concessions and ignoring its dirty diapers.

I hope Israel learns from this futile and unbelievably naive experiment. I hope they learn something from the vitriol that continues to spew after these bloggers go home. But they won’t. Not any time soon.

A famous anecdote–mentioned in a recent Hal Lindsey column–says that Frederick the Great once asked his cabinet for a proof of the existence of God. And one of them said, “Have you considered the Jew, your majesty?” He was referring to the fact that Jews survived in spite of persecution. You might as well say, “Have you considered Israel?” One dumb decision after another, yet still she survives.

I guess the blogger trip is not that big a deal. The Jews survived Hitler, and they can survive Markos Zuniga.

Here’s a question: when is Israel going to pay conservative bloggers to travel to Jerusalem and come back and write fairly about Israel’s problems?

Oh, that’s right. They don’t have to. We do that already.

Interesting fact, before I go. Yesterday I learned that On Wings of Eagles, a program implemented by the conservative-Christian-funded International Federation of Christians and Jews, has moved over 300,000 Jews to Israel. That’s 5% of the population. One in twenty Israelis.

Hope that means as much to Israelis as a nearly fair blurb on Atrios.

PLEASE

I keep seeing and hearing that Condi Rice is going to be McCain’s running mate. Just in case it turns out that McCain is really that stupid, let me suggest three alternative choices that would be more popular with black voters.

1. David Duke
2. Tom Metzger
3. Duane “Dog” Chapman

Surely McCain will not do something this dumb. Surely he learned something from McCain-Feingold. If there is a person in the United States who is more uniformly hated by black voters than Condi Rice, I am hard-pressed to guess who it is. Black voters who would not leave their homes to vote for Obama will crawl on their bellies through molten lava to vote against Rice.

Are we really this out of touch? I was just starting to feel good about this election.

Today’s Christopher Walken Dose

Walken, on the Imus flap.

The hook that pulled me into the Imus mess was my buddy Mickey Rourke. As you may know, Mick scrambled his brains trying to be a professional boxer. I remember telling him after his third bout, “Mick, sweetheart. I love what you’re doing. But if you like sleeping on canvas that much, quit boxing and have some sheets made from it.”

Mick is not doing well. His ADD is off the charts, he sometimes calls me “Aunt Susie,” and he claims my ferns laugh at him. But I love the guy, so I let him live in my shed. And when he has trouble sleeping, because the ferns are hurting his feelings, I have Benny or Seymour go out there and tune in a pirate Imus podcast on the laptop. It’s a soft droning sound that doesn’t mean very much, and it knocks Mick out faster than an obvious punch from a fifty-year-old club fighter who lives on food stamps.

That was before the ho thing. Up until then, Imus had been pretty consistent. “Muh muh muh muh weasel muh muh muh muh ranch muh muh pipsqueaks.” You know the sound. It worked so well I had Seymour go out to Mick’s shed and remove the baby monitor. But after? I never heard such shrill whining and pleading. Well, not since I told Tom Cruise he was no longer allowed to eat or mention placenta.

Eric the Half a Rabbi Explains

Top story today: Leah Friedman is doing better. She is awake and reacting to people, and she is regaining control of her body. Thanks, all who said a prayer for her. Don’t stop now.

More news from Israel, forwarded by Aaron: there are indications that Jews in Israel are coming to accept a couple of important truths. American “Christian Zionists”–a phrase that needed to be coined at this point in history–are their friends. And Jews should be armed.

Here’s a quote (when did we stop saying “quotation”?) from the first article, from Yesterday’s Jerusalem Post: “Israel has no better friends in the world than Christian Zionists, Likud opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.”

It turns out evangelist John Hagee has put together something called the Christian Aipac. This is an organization that enables American Christians to funnel money to Israel, and which does not proselytize. I can’t recommend this organization, because I don’t know if it has been investigated the way other pro-Israel charities have, and because there have been a lot of truly disgraceful charities operated by conservative Christians. But it sounds like a fantastic idea. The International Federation of Christians and Jews is safe, so there is no reason you can’t support Israel and help unite Jews and Christians right now.

Regrettably, hidebound throwbacks want to sabotage Christian support for Israel, and with it, God’s promise to the chosen people. Here’s a bit from another article:

“What [Hagee and his allies] mean by ‘support of Israel’ and what we mean by ‘support of Israel’ are two very different things,” Yoffie said. “Their vision of Israel rejects a two-state solution, rejects the possibility of a democratic Israel, and supports the permanent occupation of all Arab lands now controlled by Israel.”

“If implemented, in fact, these views would mean disaster for Israel, and would lead to diplomatic isolation, increased violence, and the loss of Israel’s Jewish majority,” Yoffie said.

That’s leftist rabbi–what a concept–Eric Yoffie, the leader of reformed Judaism in America. In Israel, he’s considered a layman. His brand of Judaism is so far-out, it isn’t recognized there. He’s a gun-grabber and a gay rights crusader, who somehow feels qualified to teach people about the Mosaic laws. I think I’ve said all I need to.

Why call him a throwback, then? Because his views are rooted in the reflexive, self-hating, God-opposing, Christian-fearing Jewish leftism of the 20th century.

His remarks are absurd. What Hagee means by “support for Israel” is 1. sending money, and 2. praying a lot. That’s the bulk of it. American Christians can direct their money toward people in Israel who will do things of which American Christians approve. But we can’t give marching orders. Hagee’s willingness to remove proselytizing from the package reflects the fact that Christian Zionists will work to find ways to support the Jews, even if it means compromising the overall agenda of Christianity.

It appears that what Yoffie wants is to choke off funds to people in Israel with whom he disagrees. He wants to limit foreign support to money aimed at leftist-approved efforts. My bet? American leftists donate about as much money to Israel as they do to Bob Jones University. I’d be willing to bet that Christian donations to Israel far outweigh those from American liberals. Liberals are generally stingy when it comes to charity, in comparison to conservatives. And given the increasing anti-Semitism of the left, I would be shocked to learn that this imbalance does not apply to money for Israel. I wasn’t even aware that charities for poor Jews existed until I came across the IFCJ.

On top of that, leftists never donate money without attaching strings. Money is the fuel of social engineering.

Choking off donations from the God-fearing would probably mean a gigantic reduction in Israel’s foreign support. I just can’t see Moveon stepping in to fill the void. If leftists were supporting Israel to any significant degree, why would Israel need Christian money so badly?

How can a man call himself “rabbi” and support the destruction of Eretz Israel? Is God real or not? Is His promise a joke? Is Yoffie saying, “I believe God made the promise, but I’m smarter than God, so I’m repealing it”? Is he saying, “The promise is a myth”? “By the authority of God’s equal, Eric Yoffie, Jewry is turning the promise down”? I don’t get it.

I’m thrilled to see Netanyahu supporting the acceptance of Christian Zionism. Take the money. Just take it. Manufacture weapons. Guard your borders. Feed your poor. Pay lobbyists all over the world. Take it. Take it. Take it. Once in a while, a Christian may mention Jesus to you. You’ll get over it.

Hagee can be annoying; no doubt about it. So what? Take the damn money. John Hagee is not going to run for mayor of Jerusalem. He is not going to be an MK. Christians do not think of themselves as the real Jews, and we are not going to move to Israel and boot you out. Take the money, grow crops, move Jews to Israel, and don’t worry about John Hagee. He would probably keep sending the money even if you put billboards up all over Israel, calling him a jerk.

The second article is about the way many Jews in Israel are accepting the fact that they need to be armed so they can defend themselves. It turns out the armed Jews who subdued the terrorist morons at Kibbutz Kfar Etzion were trained by an organization called Mishmeret Yesha, founded by Brooklyn-born Jew Israel Dantziger. Mishmeret Yesha trains Jews in rapid response tactics. They ought to put an Amazon tip jar on their website.

Here’s a great QUOTATION:

“It takes at least 10 minutes for the IDF to respond when an infiltration incident occurs. An armed terrorist can kill a whole lot of people in 10 minutes,” says Rabbi Moshe Hager-Lau, a reserve colonel who serves as assistant division commander for reserve forces in Judea and Samaria. He is also head of the Yatir pre-military yeshiva in the southern Hebron Hills, and goes everywhere with an M-16 slung over his shoulder.

Hmm…something about that sounds familiar. I guess the authorities in Israel are just as human as the ones right here. They are somehow unable to materialize instantly at the scenes of crimes, put down their doughnuts (or hamantaschen), and prevent killings.

It looks like they have an uncomfortable relationship with the IDF. They cooperate, but every so often the IDF confiscates weapons. Which is completely justified, because Jews commit so many acts of terrorism.

Sorry, did that sound sarcastic?

I think what Israel really needs is for Eric Yoffie to walk unarmed through the Gaza Strip, helping Palestinian terrorists to understand that Jews are their warm, fuzzy liberal friends. That would help a lot. Sheryl Crow once said the United States should solve its problems by not having enemies. Maybe she’d volunteer to go with him and explain how to do that.

I remember the passage in the book of Joshua, where God told Joshua to go to Jericho and offer the inhabitants cookies and apologize for being Jewish. Oh, wait. Is that not in the Bible? Well, it will be soon. Because as some liberals tell us, the Bible is “an open book.” You can just get out the Liquid Paper, white out the stuff you don’t like, and write things in which are much groovier. I wonder how much Liquid Paper Eric Yoffie’s followers go through in a month.

Christian money for Israel, yes. Guns for Jews, yes. Eretz Israel, yes. Appeasement, no. That sums it up for me.

One Fine Tomato

I decided to slice the one and only reasonably mature non-grape-size tomato I’ve managed to grow. It was a Cherokee chocolate. A bit undersized, but bright red with green on the stem end.

Man, what a tomato. Super sweet, like a piece of fruit. And sour. And full of flavor. The odd thing is, it’s not like any tomato I’ve had. I think if you put it in a BLT, it would be too frou-frou. But out of hand or in a salad, it would be hard to beat. I just wish I could grow more of the damned things. There are a few tiny ones on the plant. They may survive.

This tomato was deep green inside, with red flesh around the bottom and sides. But it was definitely ripe. Not as ripe as I would have liked, but way past the crap I get at the store.

It would be worth it to buy a light and grow tomatoes indoors, if they were all this good.

For a Second I Almost Felt Significant

I can’t believe it. I can now say I’ve known two Pulitzer winners. And I’m not including perennial winner Jonah Goldberg, who had to rent a storage unit to hold his statuettes or whatever it is they give you.

I sort of knew Dave Barry back when I freelanced for The Miami Herald. He knew me well enough to shake my hand and back away slowly when we ran into each other at the elevators. And now my old editor, Gene Weingarten, has won a prize for writing about some fiddle player in the subway. He probably deserved it. He wrote very well when he ran Tropic, the Herald Sunday magazine. Tropic had a lot of good contributors, but I always thought he and Barry were the class of the operation.

Am I jealous? Not at all. Let’s see those losers make Quote of the Day at Kim du Toit’s blog.

I truly suck at name-dropping. I barely know anybody.

Blogger Down

I just got a shocking email.

I have a reader named Leah Friedman. She has a blog. She’s 18, and she lives in Israel. I didn’t know anything but her name and that she was very pretty, until I received this message:

Sorry for the “send all” but we are exhausted. I would like nothing more than to send a personal note to each and everyone of you and will do that as time permits.
Today is a good day, the doctors are encouraged and have put Leah on an as needed ventilator.
She is frustrated and hates the machine, good! She cries but is not in pain.
She can squeeze your hands and will follow you with her eyes. I asked her to wiggle her toes and she moved her legs.
We read to her, sing to her, she has her ipod, and her favorite CD’s. I even told her that I ate her entire stash of chocolate!

It may be weeks before we know how much if any brain damage she has suffered.The doctors said ‘this is not an illness one gets over”
not knowing how long she was not breathing is difficult. One day at a time.

Thank you everyone As I said in my blog post I truly believe it was ya’lls prayers and G-ds grace.

B’Avahav, Mish

I don’t know how I ended up on the email list. I used Google to find her blog, and I located this post. It says she has a heart condition, and evidently something went wrong, and she has been in the hospital since April 3rd.

Do me a favor and say a prayer for her. And maybe you could leave a comment on her blog, so she’ll be able to see it when she feels better.

Call me Drudgebart

Sondra K. says I have been neglecting her, so here is a link to a fine post she put up. I hope it will change your life the way it did mine.

Elisson says he’s dieting! Less red meat and MORE FISH!

All around me, feet of clay.

Oh no! Amanda is dieting too! Has the world gone crazy?

I may be partly responsible for their situations.

Joe Tobacco calls Joe Gandelsman out, challenging his…moderate…ness. I wouldn’t be too angry with Gandelsman. A liberal who calls himself moderate is infinitely preferable to the Moveon nuts who have a policy of calling talk shows, claiming to be “lifelong Republicans,” and then announcing that the medical marijuana industry should be nationalized and the entire Bush family should be sent to a taxidermist.

Cap’n Bob has a personal Charlton Heston anecdote. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Carl From Chicago at Chicagboyz says England is running out of electricity. Seems logical. They ran out of common sense decades ago, so it’s natural that other precious assets are now drying up. Carl says we’re headed the same way. My response: use all the power you can, while it’s still available! This is like coming up on a yellow light. You have to HIT THE GAS.

Henry Gomez at Cuban-American Pundits is pulling the plug. From now on, content you might otherwise have seen at CAP will be found at Babalu. Funny, in Miami, CAP means “Cuban-American Princess.” Anyway, now you know where to find Henry.

Two seemingly incompatible bits of news from Double Tapper: 1. Israel’s gun laws require people who are physically unfit to give up their guns. So if you get old or sick, the government makes things worse by disarming you. 2. The rabbi and off-duty soldier (describes a huge number of Israelis) who killed the Merkaz Harav terrorist were given awards for their heroism. In Israel. Good thing they were both young and healthy, or else a lot more children would be dead.

That’s all I got for now.

Oh, wait. Here’s Christopher Walken, with his take on Chanukkah.

I got an accountant. Shlomo. A Jew. He tried to explain Hanukkah to me once. He’s like, “There were these lamps, and there was a limited supply of oil, but the oil burned for eight days, and it was a miracle, and then the Egyptians made us make bricks, and we had to cut off our foreskins…yada yada yada yada,” “Get to the POINT,” I kept telling him. “Okay, fine, your Christmas story is a little different from ours, but I know sooner or later we get to the part with the tree and the fat guy in the red suit. I mean, we have that much in common. You people aren’t SAVAGES, right? I know you were behind that crucifixion thing, but that was a simple beef over turf. You guys don’t live in huts and run around in jockstraps made from your enemies’ faces, right? So skip to the part where Saint Nick comes down the chimney and gives you a new bike, because I know that’s where we’re headed.”

I never got a straight answer out of that guy, but I cut him some slack, because I haven’t paid taxes since ‘73. Which reminds me, I need to send a ham to my previous accountant’s widow.

Today we are Disarmed

I guess by now all of you know Charlton Heston is gone. What a wonderful man. In a town where people celebrate themselves as rebels while doing exactly what everyone around them does, he stood out as a man driven solely by his own convictions. He married once and only once, he did not divorce, and he never had a scandal. He torpedoed his own career by being openly religious, and by working as a civil rights activist. Defending the only civil right that is in any way controversial. He also marched with Martin Luther King. Funny how no one seems to remember that.

Here is a quote from Wikipedia: “Heston died on Saturday, April 5, 2008 at his home in Beverly Hills, California with Lydia, his wife of 64 years, by his side.” I wonder if George Clooney has ever made it 64 weeks with one woman.

Greatness becomes rarer with each passing year. The loss of Charlton Heston makes it still rarer. They ought to bury him with a sidearm, so he could smile down from heaven at his enemies and say, “No, not even THEN.”

I may spend an hour at the gun range tomorrow, just to celebrate his life.

Even a Chicken Needs to Show Respect

Forgot today’s dose of Christopher Walken. I think these things are best presented out of context. One of these days I have to PG the Walken pieces up. Some are over the line.

This chicken was wandering around the compound, and I was sitting on the deck trying to enjoy a Bosco while Benny buried a midget under my poinciana tree, and I kept yelling. “HEY. CHICKEN. DON’T DISRESPECT MY YARD, MY FRIEND. DON’T TAKE US TO THAT PLACE THIS EARLY IN THE DAY, WHILE THE HOLE UNDER THE POINCIANA TREE IS STILL OPEN AND I HAVE YET TO FINISH MY BOSCO.”

And the chicken looks right at me and drops a giant load on my salvia divinorum. Which Mickey Rourke was planning to make into a refreshing salad.

Mick still lives with me. Out of necessity. You want some more Latin? “Dementia pugilistica.” Sounds like one of Caesar’s girlfriends or the name of a gaudy shrub, but it’s actually the sad, sad aftereffect of Mick’s tragic infatuation with the squared circle. He wanders around under the mango trees, in his rollerblades and bikini briefs, feinting and bobbing and occasionally pawing at the cobwebs, to remove them from the foliage. And of course, the cobwebs aren’t really there. Any more than the giant orange hamster named “Morris” that dances in the living room of the caretaker’s shack while Mick hangs from his gravity boots, trying to watch MTV Cribs.

Salvia divinorum is highly hallucinogenic, so it exacerbates Mick’s delusions, but Mick says it’s crunchy and delicious, and I figure, what’s the harm? Mick likes it, and Morris says he enjoys the company. The other day Mick said he was having a tea party for Morris, Abraham Lincoln, a guy in a diver’s suit, and a talking beaver. I don’t know whether they drank the tea or smoked it.

One more:

I am not an Imus fan. I want to admit that up front. If I want to listen to a mean old fart ramble for three hours, I’ll call my Uncle Sid and ask how he feels about childproof caps.

I’m not even sure if Imus talks. Have you ever seen his lips move? I have a theory that Imus went into a coma in about ‘89, and ever since then, the voice has been coming from a speaker in his cowboy hat, attached to a wire. At the other end? Wilford Brimley. And an empty bottle of Robitussin.

Someone help me. I can’t stop.

Anyway, when I realized April was going to be one of the coldest on record, I collected my perennial houseguest Mickey Rourke, and I told him to double up on the Ritalin and get the ’62 De Ville ready, because we were going to Punxsutawney again.

It took a little longer than I thought, because at one point a jamook in a uniform had the stones to ask me to pay a toll.

“Oh, no, my friend,” I told him, as Mick held his head in the door of the De Ville and applied the appropriate amount of pressure, “Christopher Walken does not PAY tolls. He COLLECTS them.” And I shook him down for a fin. Unfortunately he had no cash on him. So I went in the toll booth to see if he had anything to hold as, you know, collateral.

And now I have a very nice Thermos. All metal, baby. Old school. Keeps your coffee hot, and in a pinch it can be used to break an uncooperative jaw.

How Clean is Clean?

Reader MKL has a question. How often to you have to clean the primer pockets on the brass you reload? He says sometimes the crud accumulates until the primers won’t go all the way into the casings.