Is Santa's Tefillin Rashi or Rabbeinu Tam?

(Original picture can be found at http://muqata.blogspot.com/)

USA Today reports that this statement was made on Tuesday, September 13th at a meeting with Christian Science Monitor reporters by ambassador Maen Areikat.   Ambasssador Areikat called for a Palestinian state that is free not just of Jews but of minorities of all other faiths as well!  So, who would be the apartheid state then?  The Palestinians want a state based on apartheid and ethnic cleansing – they apparently need this separation to “work on their own national identity.”   Where is the indignation and the outcry from the NGOs and the other organizations who repeatedly slander Israel?  They’re pretty quite about this idea…their silence is pretty deafening and damning.

Restoration efforts will first address public health and safety issues, then focus on repairs that can restore large groups of customers, followed by restoration of circuit servings neighborhoods and streets.

Our area-based approach means that crews will stay in an area until all customers are restored.

Clearly, if everyone around my street has had power restored and we haven’t then PEPCO is not following this approach.  And what is more frustrating is when I try calling their outage line (1-877-737-2662) it either gives me a busy signal or it just drops the connection.   According to PEPCO – as of this morning, 7:09 AM EDT the status of the outage on my street is as follows:

• Customers Affected: 98
• Cause: Unknown
• Crew Staus: No Crew Assigned – Outage being evaluated.
• Estimated Restoration:

Unbelievable!  This was reported yesterday and they’re still claiming that the outage is “being evaluated” with no estimated restoration time.   You’d think that the crews that were working on Kemp Mill Road or Springbrook Forest could have made a modicum of effort to take a look at my road and say “Hey…they don’t have power!”  But apparently they didn’t.  According to PEPCO they don’t know what the cause of the power outage is – probably because their crew didn’t bother to look!  At the very least PEPCO, show that you’re paying attention!  How about I do this – I will evaluate my next bill payment to you.  My estimated time to pay it is: __.  The cause?  I think you should be able to guess that for yourselves – it should be fairly self-evident.

The best part of the op-ed is actually the first comment that was posted by Doug Terry of the Terry Report (Doug, like me, is a resident of the Washington D.C. metro area).  His comment is very apropos:

One of the best ideas need not come from the Germans. It is simply this: let’s not go overboard with the doom and gloom. The UK, and Europe, have surely gotten themselves in a pickle, but let’s not jump in the barrel with them.

There is a terrible dislocation going on in the US in regard to jobs moving overseas, chasing lower wages, longer working hours and a compliant, no benefits workforce. What can we do about it?

1. Find a way to decouple the paydays of CEOs and other top management from the performance of their stock. Require a 50 or even 70% tax rate on stock gains made in a public corporation while an executive is serving and for five years afterward. Compensating people to ruin companies and cash out with hundreds of millions of dollars must stop.

2. Demand that all American founded corporations declare whether they are, or are not, still American companies. If, like GE, they take in over 50% of their revenues from overseas and if they no longer wish to be American companies, then decouple the benefits, tax breaks and protections they get.

3. End “special purpose corporations”, which are little more the sly means of doing secret and/or dirty deals by their large corporate creators.

4. Monitor corporations for compensation relative to total profits and profits as a percentage of revenue. Make the information public, so that citizens know when a corporation is basically getting rich, as Wal-Mart does, by keeping employees on low wage scales.

5. Change the pro-corporate slant of court rulings by changing laws and, if necessary, Constitutional amendment. Balance must be restored between citizen and corporate power.

6. No more free lunch for broadcast companies which pay nothing for television and radio licenses and keep those licenses for generations, unless they sell them for many millions.

7. Develop comprehensive policies to encourage job creation and new business development. Reward companies for creating jobs here.

The above says a lot – and could go further if we mix in the concept of term limits for politicians (no more “careers”), campaign finance reform (to eliminate the power of SuperPACs, PACs, and corporations), and tax code reform (and I mean REAL tax code reform – no more of this band-aid on top of band-aid nonsense).  If we could do what Mr. Terry suggests above from a corporate governance perspective and what we need to do in terms of term limits, campaign finance and tax code reform, we may go a long way to righting the ship that is the United States and to steer it back to a more prosperous future for everyone.

Let me get this straight – I paid for these physical objects and the agreement (whether it stands up in court or not apparently has not been determined yet) says that they don’t belong to me but in fact belong to the companies that made them and that I – as a private individual – am being given right to have them in my house.  What next?  Perhaps Dell will change their license to say that I have the right to use the computer I bought from them but that it really doesn’t belong to me and that I cannot put it up on eBay when I decide to get rid of it?  Perhaps Sony will want to charge me every time I turn on my TV to watch a DVD or Blu-Ray? At what point does ownership of a product ultimately transfer to the end user and becomes their property without some inane, asinine, and ridiculous attempt by the manufacturer to limit how their product is being used or control how the end consumer can dispose of it.  What next?  Perhaps publishing houses will tell you that the physical books you buy through Amazon or through a bookstore are not really your property but rather you’re being given a license to read the material and that they may revoke that license at any time – whereupon you must return the book (apparently Amazon already does something similar with their ebooks on the Kindle – remember the 1984 fiasco?).   It’s getting to the point that it feels like nothing really belongs to you – it’s all just provided under license – and it can all be taken away at any time…in some ways I guess you can think of life like that (assuming you believe in God or some other deity of your choice) – your life is not really your own – you’re only provided a “right to use” license and that may be revoked by the manufacturer at any time for any cause.  Sucks to be you.

What we need is a total reform of the Congress and here is a good place to start. Bring them up to speed with the population as a whole – what is good enough for us is good enough for them.

Congressional Reform Measures for the out-of-touch in the Congress.

1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote itself a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12.

The American people did not make any contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

The greatest welfare system in the country is that enjoyed by the Congress itself. The time has come to raise their taxes and to impose term limits upon their jobs – especially in view of the fact that they spend the greater part of their time working for nothing more than their own re-election.
Welcome to a new world order, congressional persons. Do join us all.

It would be lovely if this actually happened as I (and I’m sure many other Americans) feel that Congress is so out of touch with the American public – especially the middle class – and they have become a new breed of individuals – Homo Politicus – that some measure of reset is necessary.  I’m not some radical left-wing activist, nor am I a right-wing Tea Party supporter, I tend to be more middle-of-the-road…but I certainly feel that Congress no longer works for the American people…Congress works for the those who can enrich their lives…and that is not good for the rest of us.  Just my .02.

 In assessing the condition of the 1.6 million people who live in Gaza, there are issues of where to draw the baseline and — often — what motivates the discussion. It has never been among the world’s poorest places. There is near universal literacy and relatively low infant mortality, and health conditions remain better than across much of the developing world.

“We have 100 percent vaccination; no polio, measles, diphtheria or AIDS,” said Mahmoud Daher, a World Health Organization official here. “We’ve never had a cholera outbreak.”

So what is the truth?  The truth is that the flotilla organizers as well as Palestinian sympathizers would have the world believe that Gaza is a squalid refugee camp where life hangs precariously by thin threads and that Israel is responsible.  The truth is that Hamas is the true source of the Gazans situation.  Hamas refuses to accept Israel’s right to exist; Hamas refuses to stop the rockets and the shelling coming from Gaza; and Hamas refuses to provide any information regarding the status of Gilad Shalit and refuses to allow the International Red Cross to meet with him to assess his condition – a clear violation of International law!

Israel has no obligation in throwing open it’s borders to an organization that is dead set on destroying it.  If the Arabs are so concerned about allowing free movement for the Palestinians in Gaza let them pressure Egypt to fully open the Rafah crossing.  It is beyond ludicrous that the bleeding liberal left of the world expect Israel to expose itself to more risk of attack.  Israel has a right to exist!  The Jews have a right to their ancestral homeland!  The Arabs in Israel enjoy a higher standard of living and rights that are denied to many of their brethren in their own countries – the right of free speech and the right to vote among them.

Well, Dorrea definitely provided excellent service and wonderful charm. The days went quickly and because I was staying for two weeks (my co-workers from the office were leaving earlier than I was – one on the Friday after I got there and the other on the following Monday) she moved me to the largest room she had – what is most commonly termed the Honeymoon Suite (if only my wife could have come with me on the trip!).

The first Sunday I had available I went on a safari to a place called Inverdoorn. This was an amazing experience – both for the scenery while driving to the preserve, the beauty of the preserve itself (and the animals in it) as well as the amazing drive back. I booked my safari through Blue Monkey Tours. The guide (and proprietor of Blue Monkey Tours), Allan Koorsman, was a wealth of knowledge on the drive both up to as well as back from Inverdoorn. I will post my pictures as soon as I can…they are amazing.

For Shabbat I made arrangements with the Villa Rosa – another excellent guest house – in the Sea Point area of Cape Town. The benefit of the Villa Rosa is that it is literally just up the street from Ohr Somayach. Lynn, the proprietor of Villa Rosa, has an amazing gem on her hands. I stayed in the self-catering flatlet so that I could have my own little kitchen for food on Shabbat and the view was absolutely stunning – looking straight down Arthur’s Way all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean. The first Shabbat was windy and sunny and I enjoyed the long walk all the way down the sea wall and further down Victoria Rd. The community around Ohr Somayach is absolutely warm and wonderful! Rabbi Abramson is warm, intelligent, and genuinely inspiring. I felt at home and enjoyed my time with this community. I look forward to spending future Shabbat’s with them and hope to bring my family to enjoy the warmth of the Ohr Somayach family in Cape Town.

I spent my last day in Cape Town hoping for better weather – unfortunately most of the day the fog was pea-soup thick and made it very difficult to justify a trip up to Table Mountain (or to Cape Point for that matter). So, I took a chance and decided to go to Robben Island – the former prison where Nelson Mandela and many other black South African political prisoners were incarcerated. I was lucky, I walked up to the ticket booth and asked for a ticket to the 11AM ferry to the island and fortunately for me someone had canceled…otherwise I would have been stuck. The island itself is 5km long and 2km wide (about 3.1 miles long and 1.2 miles wide). The pictures I got were good (and I’ll post them and make them available when I get back home) and the place was very moving. I had no idea what a role that place played in the overall story of the struggle against apartheid. I left with a desire to learn more about Mandela and those who helped inspire him – notably Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Our tour guide, Yasin Mohammed, was both funny as well as a fountain of information about that time – as well he should be seeing that he spent time on the island as well and was the first General Secretary of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). I learned so much from Yasin about the struggle against apartheid – particularly that while Mandela was the most well-known outside of South Africa, there were many more inside that the world did not know about. Men such as Robert Sobukwe who was the a founding leader of the PAC and who spent time in Robben Island in isolation for so long that his vocal cords atrophied since he had no one to talk with. It is a sad chapter in South Africa’s history. For the actual tour around the Robben Island prison complex where Mandela and many others were held the guide was a former prisoner as well (unfortunately I did not catch his name…I do have a picture of him and will add it to this post when I can). I was enthralled just listening to him relate stories of his experiences at Robben Island.

On the way back I got pictures of Signal Hill, Lion’s Head and Table Mountain all in the distance behind the Victoria and Alfred (V&A) Waterfront. I can’t wait to come back here next time and find time to go up to the top of Table Mountain…preferably by hiking!

So, now, I cannot use the webcam and Skype crashes when I try to do a video test. This is utter BS on the part of Microsoft. I have tried looking up the help for this problem only to get some ridiculous crap about a) making sure that automatic updating is turned on (HELLO! This is a corporate system – they are only pushing patches that they approve!) or b) manually updating the drivers (tried that…no luck) or c) installing the software for the device from the manufacturer (uh…Microsoft…YOU ARE THE MANUFACTURERS OF THE FRIGGIN DEVICE AND THE OPERATING SYSTEM!!!!!). I’ve even done the usual uninstalling and reinstalling of the driver (Several times in fact – all to no avail). I’ve even done the sane thing of rebooting Windows. What I can’t understand is that Windows won’t provide for me any detailed information as to WHY the driver is failing (the only thing I can surmise is that the driver being used for the 1TB USB drive I got yesterday is the culprit…however, I’m not sure which one it is). This is beyond stupid and represents a truly, phenomenally crappy operating system. I’m starting to think that I will be looking to get a second laptop to travel with just so that I can stay in touch with my family with hardware that actually WORKS!)…perhaps a MacBook Pro…if only I can swallow the fact that I will be selling my soul to “The Steve”!