07 Oct Speak Your Vues
THREE DINNER GUESTS
Dear Editor:
I enjoyed your 3 dinner guest question very much. My entire family
went around the Shabbos table this past Friday night & everyone said
their 3 guests that they would invite. I think the answer is obvious.
I would invite the biggest Reshaim in history. Like Amalek, Haman &
Hitler & poison their food. Do you think that’s a good answer?
Mutty from Ave M Bagels
Editor’s Note: That would be a big risk as we know what ended up
happening to Besueil.
HASAGAS GEVUL
Dear Editor:
I don’t know if you noticed but recently there was a new pizza store
that opened up on Ave K and Nostrand Avenue. I hear that there is
going to be another pizza store opening in the old location of That
Sushi Spot on Nostrand Avenue. There are 6 milchig /pizza stores
already in the area. What ever happened to hasagas gevul? The old
answer in Brooklyn was that there was enough business for everybody. I
don’t think the high 20s and 30s can afford 8 pizza/milchig stores in
a 5 block radius. Do you think that this is fair? Shouldn’t the local
rabbis get involved and say it’s hasagas gevul?
A local, worried Pizza store owner
Editor’s Note: It is interesting that people scream hasagas gevul only
when they were first, but if they did it years ago to someone else
that is OK. I believe that since we have an open, competitive system
the ones that are open the longest can withstand any competition.
GREAT ARTICLES IN THE JEWISH VUES
Dear Editor:
I LOVED Ari Hirsch’s article about Sandy Koufax, Abie Rotenberg & Benny
Friedman. When my family read last week’s fun question answers, we
thought that there was a mistake, the fact that both Benny Friedman &
Abie Rotenberg had the same answers. When we read the article and read
what Reb Dovid Feinstein shlita said, we were blown away. We love The
Jewish Vues. Keep up the good work!
Shlomie Newhouse from Flatbush
Editor’s Note: Thanks for your kind words. It is always refreshing
when people comment on our articles.
USING LIVE ANIMALS
Dear Editor:
I don’t know how heimishe people can complain about using live chickens
for Kaparos. Do they know anything about the Avodah on Yom Kippur &
Rosh Hashana? When the Beis Hamikdash was around we would schecht all
different types of animals all day long. What was karbanos?
Bracha Ciment from Boro Park
Editor’s Note: You are right! A Peta Activist will never understand a Korban.
LIBERALS PROGRESSIVES AND SOCIALISTS
Dear Editor:
With all due respect to my fellow Americans, most of us simply don’t
seem to know that a “liberal/progressive” is not the same thing as a
“socialist.”
This includes the Democratic Party presidential candidates (such as
Bernie Sanders) as well as the members of “The Squad” such as
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.
A true “socialist” is someone who wants all of the businesses and
workplaces to be owned and controlled by “the state” or “the
government” or “the workers” or “the people” and not by individuals
and groups of people who run them for profit as we have here in the
USA.
Democrats who want our federal government to spend more on social
programs to help the lower and middle classes as they struggle to
survive and pay their bills are not “socialists.” They are
“liberals/progessives” who want our market-based capitalist economic
system to become MORE HUMANE (and not replaced) by having our federal
government spend more to help the lower and middle classes.
Let’s use a little common sense here. How can someone (including
Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar) be a true
“socialist” when they do not advocate for and fight for replacing our
market-based capitalist economic system with a socialist economic
system?
Sincerely,
Stewart B. Epstein
P.S. By way of background, I am a retired college professor of
Sociology, Social Work, and Psychology who very much still enjoys
helping people as well as informing, teaching, and educating others
when I believe that I have something to offer to them. That’s why I
write these letters.
I am very proud to have taught at West Virginia University and
Slippery Rock University.
NOTE: A “community organizer” challenged my definition of “Democratic
Socialism”. I simply referred her to Wilkipedia’s definition of it.
That was the end of the challenge. This just validates what I say in
the first sentence of this letter.
Editor’s Note: Who says either are good?
CONTINUOUS FEAR MONGERING
Dear Editor:
A small forest of pulpwood has been clear-cut and thousands of
keystrokes have been exhausted by the indispensable media heralds
warning us about the looming catastrophe from man-made CO2. While in
fact the global warming science is rather dubious and legitimate
skeptics appear to be thinning (according to MIT professor Richard
Lindzen WSJ Opinion Journal 4/12/06) — intimidated, muzzled and
shunned if they dare speak up– how can serious debunkers of this new
junk science get an audience? Well, don’t bother. It doesn’t really
matter.
Unlike some previous hysterical screeds, such as Rachel Carson’s
Silent Spring, long on deceptive compelling rhetoric but short on
facts, which actually tolled millions of lives lost to malaria over 35
years as DDT was banned around the globe, this latest science fiction
isn’t likely to create such a tragic legacy. Curbing our appetite for
burning fossil fuels may be a “good thing”. No doubt Martha Stewart
agrees.
As hoaxes, deceptions and hyperbole go, this one may be the biggest
and hardest to shake. Following a pattern from other panics, clever
entrepreneurs and global corporations alike will make a handsome
profit, some even obscene, employing the 16th century idiom “a fool
and his money are soon parted.” Of course government bureaucrats,
never actually in danger of a recession or natural devastation
affecting their lifetime employment, will have found another
justification for tenure.
Piltdown Man, a spectacular anthropological fossil remains hoax dating
to 1912, debunked after 40 years of painstaking research, produced a
generation of amateur archeologists who took up digging anywhere and
everywhere. Shovel, pickaxe and brush companies had a bonanza. Land
surveying became the hot new profession while geological surveys
couldn’t be reprinted fast enough.
Remember the fears over nuclear annihilation in the 1950s? Fallout
shelters were the rage in new construction. Jobs for masons
skyrocketed and the makers of Portland cement and concrete blocks
couldn’t keep up with demand. Tin can manufacturers put on extra
shifts to meet the orders from tuna fish and Spam processors, all
needed for doomsday larders that were certain to come in handy, any
day now.
How many of the hundreds of thousands of computer programmers and IT
geeks would have been on the street if it hadn’t been for the fears of
a repeat of the Last Days of Pompeii from the dreaded Y2K millennium
virus? Meanwhile the hardware upgrades and new software firewalls
contributed several basis points to GDP in 1999. Predictably, as soon
as dawn broke on the new millennium, it was apparent that the world
was safe from invading alien bits and bites. Without missing a beat,
the Y2K consultants quickly retooled for the next end-of-the-world
scenario, the SARS epidemic, and two years ago, the bird flu pandemic.
A resurgence in building new nuclear generating capacity could sure
cure the global warming blues in a hurry and restore the good name to
an abandoned, disgraced profession. How many nuclear power engineers
have been in hibernation, living under assumed names, selling
insurance or working as greeters at WalMart since the last nuke plant
was built over 30 years ago? It’s time for nuclear power people to
come out of the closet, restore the luster to a formerly respected
line of work and rescue the planet.
Finally, let’s not forget the most important side benefit of the
global warming circus-keeping Al Gore from another wind mill-tilting
run at the Oval Office. Who could replace the pure entertainment value
of his vein-popping, electrified hair, neuro-psychotic ventilations
rivaling the 1935 hysterical shrieking of Elsa Manchester in the best
horror film ever, “The Bride of Frankenstein”? And to think we will be
treated by another one of his can’t-miss performances during the
upcoming US Senate hearings, Nobel prize acceptance ceremony and the
Oscars.
Where is the downside from reducing our dependence on oil from the
Middle East ? Besides, now’s the time to conserve and stockpile coal
and crude oil for when it will really be needed-the coming ice age-due
to reduced solar radiation. — which is actually more plausible than
any manmade climate shift. But that’s another story.
But what about having to endure the endless intellectual dishonesty
from the global warming doomsayers? Look, don’t let it ruin a good
martini. Get over it.
Yanky J
Editor’s Note: I say that there will always be a cause that liberals
will try to force down our throats.
BAD REVIEWS AND THEIR IMPACT
Dear Editor:
Many of the private sellers on Amazon are frum Yidden trying to make
parnossah, including many private label products. Before you leave a
negative review on a seller or product you should consider the
consequences of hurting a Yid’s livelihood.
Unfortunately, some frum sellers are using the review system on Amazon
not only to dishonestly boost their own sales but to also harm the
sales of other sellers. My relative sells a non-kosher snack on Amazon
as a private label product. His main competitor is a heimishe Yid from
Brooklyn who somehow has many 5 star reviews left by heimisher yidden
about how great his (non kosher) product tastes. That would be
dishonest but that’s his cheshbon, now he’s begun leaving 1 star
reviews on my relative’s non kosher product stating how bad it tastes
left by heimishe people. Obviously, these are all false reviews left
by a scam service or WhatsApp group run by frum Yidden that promote &
destroy Amazon listings by leaving false reviews. Chaim & Moishe
aren’t buying non kosher snacks on Amazon to snack on, they are buying
them to leave a bad review & then return the item.
I’m being dan l’kaf zechus that they don’t realize they are hurting a
fellow Yid, but even to an Aino Yehudi this is terrible behavior. I
hope the Yidden engaging in this behavior do Teshuvah & refrain from
this Hashchosah.
Noam K
Editor’s Note: Wow! Here we see the koach of lashon Hora and rechilus
and motzi shem ra.
SEAT MAPS
Dear Editor:
Japan Air Lines just announced that their seat-maps for most
international flights will show whether a seat had been reserved for
babies (under 2 yrs) so that other passengers would know in advance
and plan accordingly since some would prefer not to pay several
thousand dollars for a 14 hour flight with the possibility of sitting
next to a crying infant. Perhaps El Al might show the gender of those
with advanced seat assignments so that all the big tzadikim who delay
flights because they want their seats changed at the last minute to
avoid sitting next to a woman might be able to avoid such challenges.
Aside from possible legal questions for the El Al lawyers and likely
objections from womens’ rights group, might this type of seat-map
mitigate the problem? Given how many seats these days are held for
airport assignment or last minute changes, the idea may be impractical
and ineffective but the concept was my first thought after reading the
about the new JAL seat-map format.
Suri L
Editor’s Note: Why is what Japan is doing is not against the law? It
is discriminating against mothers and babies.
NEW TARIFF COMING SOON
Dear Editor:
How can we best protest this new tariff soon to go into effect? This
will impact a great many of us. Don’t dare suggest that we drink
bourbon or Israel “scotch”.
Yossi U
Editor’s Note: Stock up now.
POLIC OFFICER OFF DUTY
Dear Editor:
Guyger’s actions had nothing to do with her profession at the time.
She was employed by the Dallas Police Department when she killed
Botham Jean in his own apartment, but she was off-duty and not acting
as an officer. Saying that an “officer” was held accountable for the
killing is disingenuous. When a banker goes home after their workday,
is that person acting as a banker when he or she enters that home? Why
is this any different? Unfortunately, there is a bias against law
enforcement that is encouraged by sensationalist headlines.
Jim Drabos
Editor’s Note: Anything to besmirch law enforcement.
IMPEACHMENT
Dear Editor:
Remember when Clinton was being impeached and all the Democrats came
out saying impeachment is a waste of time and to let the voters decide
– don’t try to steal the election! Everyone old enough remembers it
except the Democrats themselves!
Democrats you look like fools now!
Yumi J
Editor’s Note: Do you think the Republicans will look bad next time?
Probably all politicians are the same.