Obama's New America

Barack Hussein Obama relaxing at home.

The situation on many of America's college campuses is dire. Not only are we learning that students are brainless sheep who would literally jump off the Brooklyn Bridge if one of their TikTok influencers suggested it, or buy the bridge for a good price, but that many of them hate the Jewish people. The current demonstrations are taking place at schools including NYU, Columbia and Harvard, the latter boasting an on-campus glamping site where expensive foods are being delivered directly to their brand new tents so the naughty children won't go hungry while shouting "Death to America!" and "Free Palestine," and of course "We are Hamas!"

My husband and I being all caught up in the HULU series "We Were the Lucky Ones," about a Jewish family in the clutches of the Holocaust, it's hard to not see parallels. In Warsaw, Jews are being slaughtered in the streets, whereas in New York City, Jewish students and professors at Columbia are being told to "stay home." Why? Is street-slaughtering a growing possibility?

Here in our little town in Maine, where hating Jews comes with the territory, it won't be long before this latest wave of antisemitism hits. I am actually worried that a hostile band of youngsters sporting those black and white Palestinian scarves will come crashing through our door and hold us hostage, forcing us to get tattoos, tongue piercings, nose rings and ear gauges while eating Velveeta cheese sandwiches on white bread with Miracle Whip. (What, no Hellman's?)

Surely someone should stop all this nonsense, but with a Muslim president at Columbia it won't happen there. As for Joe Biden, well, he's just Obama's puppet, and everyone knows that Obama is loving all of this. It's exactly what he promised us back when he was in office.

 

Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz

It's hard to believe that what began in 2004 as an innocent tool intended for Harvard college boys to meet attractive coeds on campus has morphed into a quasi-porn cesspool rife with commercial advertising and a bombardment of homemade videos, called Reels, shoving sometimes real, mostly fake, always nauseating big-bosomed women and vitriolic streams of political sputum into our faces. 

Sadly, Facebook has become this totally repugnant yet addictive waste of time. To me it represents the coming Fall of Man, which by the way I see as a good thing; if humans stick around much longer, things can only continue to go downhill.

So what am I doing here? I would love to quit Facebook, but then my blog (which you are currently reading) would reach nobody. And I really like it when I reach somebody, even just one person. Still, supporting Facebook sort of makes me sick to my stomach, which is why I go through so much Alka-Seltzer.

Bring On the Tear Gas

On October 12, 1969, knowing next to nothing about the situation, I accompanied three college friends to a demonstration. It was the first one I had ever attended and they convinced me it was about time, since I was after all a pot-smoking hippie with a navy blue pea coat, blue jeans, long straight hair and granny glasses who had been to Woodstock just two months earlier. 

I didn't want to go, being a hard-core pacifist and a coward, but my friends assured me that it wouldn't take too long and that afterwards we'd go get pizza. That sealed the deal since New Jersey pizza back then was astoundingly good, and as NYC residents we rarely crossed the river for anything.

The cause was named "Free the Fort Dix 38." Apparently some 38 soldiers stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey were being held in horrendous conditions on the army base there, and the demonstration was to make a scene and get them justice. Of course I had no idea what they had done in the first place to land them in army jail, but still it sounded unfair. 

"The Fort's information officer, Colonel A. J. Nealon said "it was the first time in his knowledge that demonstrators had entered Federal military property anywhere in the country." They were repelled by some of the 1,000 MPs on guard who moved into position with tear gas and fixed bayonets The demonstration ended peacefully and there were no arrests." --Wikipedia

So we got there, parked the car in a grassy field and walked onto the Army base. After standing around for awhile staring at a line of armed soldiers dressed for combat, suddenly there was tear gas everywhere. Specifically, in my eyes. It was bad. Really bad. It was a nightmare. I decided that no pizza, even one with anchovies and black olives as had been promised, was worth this horror.

Somehow we ran fast enough to escape the toxic clouds and got back to the car. I never joined another demonstration. Now I'm wondering -- why don't they simply unload some tear gas on all those anti-Israeli protesters on college campuses and be done with it?

A Dark Day At the Symphony

Yesterday I saw first-hand the blind ignorance of Mainers. Sure, there are smart Mainers, notably my dermatologist, my hip surgeon, my dentist and a few of my friends, so I'm not trying to imply that all people born and bred in Maine are dummies. Just a lot of them.

My husband and I had gone to downtown's Merrill Auditorium to attend a performance by the Portland Symphony Orchestra. Arriving early, we stayed outside for a while to enjoy the afternoon sunshine before entering the darkened concert hall. On a street corner nearby, a young man was hawking something. Curious, we approached to see what he was pitching. It turned out he was collecting signatures to assure Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a spot on the November presidential ballot. Naturally we signed, thinking that A, it didn't mean we had to vote for the man and B, the more the merrier. How could it hurt for voters to have other choices besides a senile old coot and a much-maligned bigmouth?

To our surprise, amazement and finally disgust, not one other person would sign. We watched as the young man politely approached the parade of dignified-looking, well-dressed, white-haired, mostly elderly concert-goers on their way to an afternoon of delightful music. Each one in turn pulled away in literal horror and all but spit at him: "No, no, no, no, no, never, absolutely not, no, no, no!" Following are some of their responses:

"He's an anti-vaxxer!"

"I would sign to keep him off the ballot!"

"He's a kook!"

"No, never, anyone but him!"

"Even his own family doesn't support him!"

"He's a total nut!"

"I would rather sign to put Trump in jail!"

"No, oh my God, you should be ashamed!"

I was stunned at the lack of intelligence prevalent in such a supposedly intelligent crowd. After all, they liked Classical music, usually a sign of good breeding. Yet every last one of them parroted the same worn-out platitudes they had been fed by the liberal media. (What a coincidence!) Doubtless every one of them would have signed a petition to allow transgenders to use whatever bathrooms they choose in the public schools, or to allow women to abort their babies right up until their due dates. 

The thought that someone who is against government-mandated vaccinations is considered insane but someone who takes puberty blockers and surgically removes their breasts or penis and then declares themselves a member of the opposite sex is seen as perfectly sane just blows my mind.

Eventually we went inside to hear the concert but the whole time I was disturbed to be sitting among a crowd of such unthinking, uncaring, illogical lemmings who had no grasp of how our political system is supposed to work.

How to Live Longer (If You Want To)

Fernando Botero painted fat people.

It's common knowledge that exercise leads to better health and ultimately a longer life. Yeah, yeah, famous runner and author Jim Fixx died of a heart attack while out jogging at the age of 52. Okay, there are exceptions (more about those later). But that's not the norm, and according to a Washington, DC privately-funded organization called Trust for America's Health, obesity is on the rise here. They published the following report last September: 

" Over the past two decades obesity rates have climbed for all population groups with certain populations of color experiencing the highest rates, often due to structural barriers to healthy eating and a lack of opportunities and places to be physically active. Nationally, 41.9 percent of adults have obesity. Black and Latino adults have the highest obesity rates at 49.9 percent and 45.6 percent respectively.  People living in rural communities have higher rates of obesity than people living in urban and suburban areas."

I am scratching my head wondering what could possibly be a "structural barrier to healthy eating" that causes certain populations of color to have the highest rates of obesity, a.k.a. to be big fatties. Are there steel fences, possibly electrified, erected in front of the produce departments of grocery stores in black and Latino neighborhoods? What constitutes a "lack of opportunity and places to be physically active" in these same communities? And why are people living in rural areas fatter than those in the suburbs and cities?

"Physical activity reduces many major mortality risk factors including arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus type 2, dyslipidemia, coronary heart disease, stroke, and cancer. All-cause mortality is decreased by about 30% to 35% in physically active as compared to inactive subjects." --National Institute of Health

About those exceptions: If you are confined to a wheelchair or a bed, first off let me say how sorry I am that you have to bear such a burden in life. My heart breaks for you, literally, I can hardly stand to think about it. Naturally, you people will likely not get any exercise, or not much. But beyond that, if you can walk you can exercise. In fact, walking in rural areas has often been cited as the best way to exercise, especially in the woods which the Japanese call "forest bathing' and which offers other benefits to both the body and spirit. Many motivated urbanites get in their cars and drive to rural areas specifically for that purpose. 

And unless you live in a cage like a baby calf that will someday become some carnivorous meathead's veal piccata entree in an Italian restaurant, you can even exercise inside your home. All you need is a floor and a chair, and if you don't have those then exercise is not your biggest problem. So get off your big fat butt and get moving. No excuses.

Some People Did Something

This morning being Sunday, and we being Jews, my husband and I splurged and had bagels with lox and cream cheese (and onions, tomatoes and capers) for breakfast. I say "splurged" because lox is pretty damn expensive so it's a once-in-a-while thing. Anyway, you can thank the Jews in Krakow, Poland for inventing bagels in 1610, which have since become a diet staple enjoyed by people the world over, maybe even people who wear hijabs.

Besides bagels, Jews have invented or are responsible for the existence of so many things we all need, love and/or use. As Ilhan Omar might put it, "Some people did something." A few of the somethings are listed below:

Blue Jeans, Lipstick, Ballpoint Pens, Contraceptives, Instant Coffee, the TV Remote Control, Traffic Lights, Scotchguard, Flexistraws, Genetic Engineering, Virtual Reality, Hollywood movies, the Sit-Com, Comic Books, the Long-Playing Record, Woodstock Music Festival, Videotape, Color TV, Instant Photography, Holography, Psychoanalysis, Cheesecake, Cafeterias, Discount Stores, Pawn Shops, Shopping Carts, Prozac, Valium, the Polio Vaccine, Radiation, Chemotherapy, the Artificial Kidney Dialysis machine, the Defibrillator, the Cardiac Pacemaker, Vaccination against “Hepatitis B” virus, the Vaccinating Needle, Laser Technology, Google, FAX machines, the Microphone, the Gramophone, the Microprocessing Chip, Optical Fiber Cable, Cellular Technology, the Videotape Recorder, Facebook, Scale Model Electric Trains, the Pager, the Walkie-talkie, Refrigerated Railroad Cars (likely inspired by the stiflingly hot trains carrying Jews to death camps during the Holocaust), High-vacuum Electron Tubes, the Incandescent Lamp, Kodachrome Film, the Blimp, the Adding Machine and Stainless Steel, to name but a few. 

To be fair, the Arabs have also given us some good stuff: Where would we be without the harp, lyre, zither, drum, tambourine, flute, oboe and reed instruments? I hate to even think about it.

I Believe In Yesterday

This morning I spent some time reading my old blog posts. Much to my amazement, they were much funnier than the ones I have been writing recently, and by recently I mean since Biden and his pet monkey took office, and by "pet monkey" I mean Kamala because she's an idiot with not an idea in her head and not because she is "of color," so not disrespecting black people by comparing them to monkeys. 

In years past I wrote funny stories about personal experiences. Lately I write depressing stories about real life horror, including deadly pandemics and wars and political discord and illegal immigration and mass murderers and rampant crime in our major cities. 

This has got to stop. So starting today I will return to my roots and write about my nutty childhood and growing up kosher except for eating bacon and more stuff like that. Not today, just giving you a heads-up of what's coming. I promise, tomorrow's post will be hysterical.