Monthly Archives: November 2010

Isaiah 54: 5-7—“For your husband is your Maker, whose name is Yahweh Sabaoth; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, who is called the God of all the earth. For Yahweh has called you, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even like a wife of one’s youth when she is rejected,” says your God. “For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you.”

Old Posts

“On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen; all day and all night they will never keep silent.  You who remind Yahweh, take no rest for yourselves; and give Him no rest until He establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.” (Isaiah 62: 6-7)

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“For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” (Thomas Jefferson)

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  • Read SnyderTalk the way you would a newspaper.
  • Scan the headlines and read the articles that interest you.
  • Be sure to check out the pages in the column on the right.

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Isaiah 54: 5-7—“For your husband is your Maker, whose name is Yahweh Sabaoth; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, who is called the God of all the earth.  For Yahweh has called you, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even like a wife of one’s youth when she is rejected,” says your God.  “For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you.”

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“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Hosea 4: 6)

News Items of Interest:

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Israeli Uncensored News

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“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” (Thomas Jefferson)

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The secular nature of France’s public education system is being increasingly undermined by religious demands from Muslim pupils and parents, according to a new report drafted by the French government. The report, which describes the failure of French efforts to promote multicultural values, says that teachers in schools with a high proportion of Muslim children are being threatened on an almost daily basis by Muslims who object to courses about the Holocaust, the Crusades or evolution, and who demand halal meals and “reject French culture and its values.”

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What will the United States and the world going to do about an act of aggression by North Korea on South Korea, the deliberate unprovoked firing of mortars at civilians? And what are the lessons of this situation for other world problems?

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President Barack Obama met with his NATO counterparts in Lisbon last week.  According to the November 21 New York Times, they agreed “to the goal of a phased transfer of security responsibility to the Afghan government by the end of 2014, but NATO officials acknowledged that allied forces would remain in Afghanistan at least in a support role well beyond that date.”

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Japanese culture is non-confrontational. In negotiations, for example, the Japanese always give their negotiating partner an exit strategy; they might make a ridiculous offer that has to be refused. That way, neither side feels defeated.

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Exactly two years ago today, an Associated Press headline read: “World economy shaky despite massive bank rescues.” The story was about the U.S. government’s decision to rescue banking giant Citigroup.

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An eminent Harvard law professor, James Thayer (1831-1902), argued that although the judicial function is “merely that of fixing the outside border of reasonable legislative action,” this still gives courts “a great and stately jurisdiction.” While patrolling that jurisdiction today, Supreme Court justices may be playing the video game “Postal 2,” whose rich menu of simulated mayhem provoked California’s legislature to pass a problematic law.

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If you shelled out $10 a pound for a “heritage turkey” this Thanksgiving, tea-brined it and stuffed it with rosemary bread (that you made), speck (from the local charcuterie guy), fennel (from the farmers market) and lemon (okay, there are limits to this), you might assume that everyone, if given the opportunity, would support such a makeover of a meal that not long ago was dominated by frozen Butterballs and jellied cranberry sauce.

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The conventional wisdom has already settled like a blanket over Washington. Allegedly, Hispanics flocked to the polls to punish Republicans for the Arizona immigration law. They “saved” the Senate for Democrats. And on and on. The conventional wisdom, however, is wrong. The 2010 election actually paints a very bright picture of the Republican Party’s relations with this country’s growing Hispanic population.

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EGYPT’S PARLIAMENTARY election is on Sunday, but already the principal result is known: a step away from political liberalization and genuine democracy. In the weeks before the vote, more than 1,000 political activists have been rounded up by security forces, and many have been abused. Opposition media commentators have been forced off the air, television channels closed and restrictions placed on text messaging. Meanwhile, the government has issued strident statements rejecting the Obama administration’s calls for international observers and severely limited the access of domestic monitoring groups.

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Anyone who opposes ethanol subsidies, as these columns have for decades, comes to appreciate the wisdom of St. Jude. But now that a modern-day patron saint—St. Al of Green—has come out against the fuel made from corn and your tax dollars, maybe this isn’t such a lost cause.

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‘We should cure cancer,” James Watson declares in a huff, and “we should have the courage to say that we can really do it.” He adds a warning: “If we say we can’t do it, we will create an atmosphere where we just let the FDA keep testing going so pitifully.”

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The immigration debate continues to fester in the absence of any White House leadership. But it’s in the interests of the country that Republicans in the next Congress find some room for compromise, and pending legislation aimed at undocumented youths is a good place to start.

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She made it all the way to the finals — further than anyone expected — with the help of votes pouring in from her vast, underestimated fan base, only to lose the final vote tally to more experienced professionals.

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Following two years of poor economic performance and electoral repudiation, liberalism is casting around for narratives to explain its failure – narratives that don’t involve the admission of inadequacies in liberalism itself.

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Via the ‘Busters, here’s the first and last time that a Krauthammer critique of the left will end up irritating more conservatives than liberals. His basic point is unobjectionable — every movement is bigger than its most charismatic champions, as the endless number of lefties who are disappointed in Obama could tell you — but his obvious exasperation with Palin’s present status as de facto conservative spokesman-in-chief has commenters in Headlines buzzing. Kraut famously said in July 2009 that she wasn’t a serious candidate for president, which means there’s already a strike against him in the minds of those who are forever grumbling about “Beltway establishment” Republicans like Rove.

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Remember all the hand-wringing from those smart “conservative” pundits (you know who they are) who, after the 2008 election, argued that the GOP had to moderate or else risk extinction?

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It’s not just high-profile targets that are at-risk, folks.

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If you think the 2010 midterm election solved our problem, you need to think harder.

The pastor of an old country church delivered a sermon on vices one Sunday morning.  His goal was to hammer home the importance of eliminating them from our lives.

He started out talking about drinking “alkehol”.  The men in the church squirmed in their seats while an old woman in the front row nodded her head and said, “Amen.”

Next he attacked “gamblin’”.  The men were beginning to sweat, but the old woman nodded her head and said “amen” even louder.

Then the preacher turned his attention to runnin’ around with loose women.  The men started ducking for cover, and the old woman almost came up out of the pew with a resounding “amen preacher.  Let ‘em have it.”

Finally, the pastor mentioned chewing tobacco.  The men were hardly visible from the pulpit because they were almost under the pews by that time, and the old woman sat there silently.

Her friend sitting next to her said, “Ain’t you gonna say somethin’.”

“Nope,” she said.  “I’m fixin’ to pop him in the head cause he’s done stopped preachin’, and he’s started meddlin’.”

Have you ever noticed that liberal progressives are all about freedom – theirs.  For example, they demand the right to engage in unprotected sex (heterosexual and homosexual) without having to face the consequences.  AIDS and unwanted pregnancies are the result, but liberal progressives have solutions.  Abortion up to the moment of birth is the answer to unwanted pregnancies, and pouring tax dollars into AIDS research will solve the AIDS problem, or at least they think it will.  It may one day, but it hasn’t yet – after more than 30 years and hundreds of billions of dollars in research.

I’m old enough to remember when AIDS was an entirely homosexual phenomenon.  AIDS hit the scene in the late 1970s.  It hit hemophiliacs in the early 1980s and created quite a stir.  There was no cure for the dreaded disease so people were concerned.  There still isn’t a cure for AIDS.  I told my students back then that we need to isolate people who have AIDS because they will eventually infect the heterosexual population.  The liberal progressives didn’t agree.  They thought that was unfair discrimination based on sexual orientation.

My response was simple and direct.  I said, “It has nothing to do with sexual orientation.  It’s about stopping the spread of an incurable disease before it becomes an epidemic.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control, “More than 18,000 people with AIDS still die each year in the US. Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) are strongly affected and represent the majority of persons who have died. Through 2007, more than 576,000 people with AIDS in the US have died since the epidemic began.” (Click here for details.)  So much for the discrimination based on sexual orientation argument.

Even while liberal progressives scream from the rooftops about their rights, they would deny gun owners the right to keep and bear arms, for instance.  Ironically, the right to bear arms is included in the Constitution, but the rights they want to protect are made up out of thin air.

From where I sit, it looks as though liberal progressives suffer from moral depravity.  The list of things they fight to protect tells the tale.  But if you even criticize one of their agenda items, you’re attacked and made out to be a backwoods Neanderthal.  Liberal progressives dominate the mainstream media, so they get their perspective out to the masses easily.  Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert make jokes about us and everybody laughs – so do most of the late-night talk show hosts.

If you dare to mention the CDC statistics and the fact that babies are being murdered in this country every day up to the moment of birth, they laugh at that too.  It’s easy to amuse a liberal progressive.

There are preachers out there right now telling their congregations that one day “the LORD” is going to judge America.  Some of them have even come up with signature catch phrases to get that point across.  One of them that I like goes like this.  “If ‘the LORD’ doesn’t judge America, He’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”  Where have they been hiding?  If this isn’t judgment, it will do until the real thing gets here.

I bring this up to make a very simple point.  If you think the 2010 midterm election solved our problem, you need to think harder.

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Take on The TimesTM

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Even as millions of out-of-work and otherwise struggling Americans are tightening their belts for the holidays, the nation’s elite are lacing up their dancing shoes and partying like royalty as the millions and billions keep rolling in….Recessions are for the little people, not for the corporate chiefs and the titans of Wall Street who are at the heart of the American aristocracy. They have waged economic warfare against everybody else and are winning big time.

Take: It’s difficult for me to understand why people who read the NYT enjoy reading Bob Herbert’s pieces.  I think his content and style are more appropriate for an in-house union magazine than a leading newspaper.  His articles are loaded with hyperbole and invective, but they are woefully lacking in dispassionate analysis.

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Despite the very dire consequences of the latest financial crisis that Wall Street perpetrated on the world, America cannot seem to shake its infatuation with Wall Street bankers and traders.

Take: The opening sentence in Cohan’s piece really turns me off – particularly this phrase: “the latest financial crisis that Wall Street perpetrated on the world”.  It bothers me because it’s less than honest.  While it’s true that people on Wall Street are guilty of being greedy, those most responsible for this crisis are our esteemed elected officials in Congress – specifically, people like Democrats Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

Let’s be clear.  There are many differences between Wall Street and Congress, first among them being that Wall Street is about making money and Congress is about honest, fair, and even-handed lawmaking.  It’s deceitful at best to place all of the blame on Wall Street while ignoring the culpability of Congress.  When people on Wall Street break the law, we should take their money, or a big chunk of it, and send them to jail.  That’s what usually happens.  When members of Congress abuse their sacred trust, they generally get re-elected and continue their larceny unabated.  That’s a much higher crime in my book.

Cohan didn’t even mention Congress in his article.  He said nothing about local banks and mortgage companies that originated the bad loans or real estate agents and real estate appraisers who contributed to the debacle.  He completely left out greedy borrowers who thought they could make a fast buck gambling on real estate.  Like a true dilettante, he simply slammed an easy target.  That’s disgraceful.  Cohan’s gross “oversight” smacks of deceit and tells me a lot about the editorial screeners at The Times.

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Unexpected wireless charges are a chronic affliction of life on the grid. The industry triggers more complaints from consumers than any other. AT&T Mobility, by consumer rankings, is the worst. Its performance in a case the Supreme Court heard recently has done nothing to improve that reputation.

Take: Kudos for taking on the telephone giants.  They rob unsuspecting people every day, and they deserve close scrutiny.

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Gov. David Paterson has called legislators back to Albany on Monday to tidy up a few matters before Andrew Cuomo, the governor-elect, takes office in January. So far, the prospects look bad …. Ideally, New York’s lawmakers should return to Albany to do the voters’ bidding — by passing ethics reform or a nonpartisan redistricting commission, for example.  If they can’t manage that, the lawmakers should still hand Mr. Cuomo a clean slate in January.

Take: The NYT’s editors are right about NY state government.  Why can’t they see the lack of professional ethics on the part of their own columnists?

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Turnabout is fair play. That’s as true in Afghanistan, where “fair play” is a rather flexible concept, as it is anywhere. “In any place where they fight, a man who knows how to drill men can always be a king” insisted Dravot, one of the two Europeans in Kipling’s “Man Who Would Be King” who manage to hoodwink an Afghan tribe into believing in their royal status, at least for a while. Indeed, historically, Westerners of dubious character have had a knack for bluffing their ways to positions of prominence during times of strife. Consider Dravot’s real-life inspiration: Josiah Harlan, an American charlatan who in 1848 declared himself the prince of Ghor in central Afghanistan. (One of Harlan’s descendants, a horror-movie actor, is convinced that the royal title remains in the family.)

Take: Good piece.

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When I was in Mexico City last month doing research on the Antenas program – the subject of my Fixes column earlier this week — I had the opportunity to sit in Antenas’ room and have a conversation with the animated character used by psychotherapists to communicate with children. I found the effect surprising. Antenas, guided by a therapist named Elsa Molina in the next room, began by asking me simple questions, as he does with all children. Antenas asked: “Why did you come to Mexico City?” I replied, “I’m a writer and I’m doing research.” Antenas asked: ‘What is a writer?’

Take: Good piece.

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Natural Healthcare Store, Live the Natural Life!TM

If you haven’t been there already, you should take the opportunity to visit Natural Healthcare Store.  Each product selected for sale at Natural Healthcare Store undergoes rigorous research to make sure that it is the highest quality at an affordable price.

Natural Healthcare Store carries skin care, hair care, and oral care products.  Be sure to check out the Dead Sea products imported from Israel and support the Israeli economy with your purchases.  Natural Healthcare Store carries makeup, deodorant, and detoxification products.  It also carries supplements, weight loss products, and loose leaf tea.  Rounding out its product mix, Natural Healthcare Store carries natural household cleaning products.

Katie and I believe strongly in healthy living, and we use the products.  We’re proud to say that our daughter Melanie owns the store.

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His Name is Yahweh:

There is a wealth of material available for free download on www.hisnameisyahweh.org including the book His Name is Yahweh.  His Name is Yahweh is also available at Amazon on Kindle for just $5.  If you haven’t read His Name is Yahweh, you should.  The importance of Yahweh’s Name is becoming more apparent with each passing day.

Available on Amazon Kindle and it can be downloaded at www.hisnameisyahweh.org