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Friday, May 9, 2014

prettylady

6 comments:

  1. Liking the Eagles' draft so far.

    Vanderbilt WR Jordan Matthews (Jerry Rice's cousin!) was completely off my radar (I wanted Oregon State's Brandin Cooks to help make up for Desean Jackson), but I love that pick now. How can you not look forward to having a 6'3", 210-something wideout who runs a 4.4 40? This guy's gonna be kicking ass right out the gate.

    Lousiville's Marcus Smith can definitely be the good outside fit we need for Chip's 3-4 defense.

    Keep picking up values like this, and the quiet, trading-down strategy seems to be working well.

    As the only clearly improving team in a weak-ish NFC East, I think we're once again the big favorites to repeat as division champs. Now let's take it at least to the NFC Championship Game this year!

    I see your Giants lead the NL, Mike. We'll see you here in Philly for four in July, and three out your way in August. I'd like to think we'll still be in it by then, and that the week-long Toronto shitfest was the flukiest fluke of all-time flukes. Tonight's extra-innings win at the Mets was a good start for coming back...

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  2. This book seems very relevant to our interests. ;)

    Nora Gold, Fields of Exile.

    "Judith is a young woman who lived in Israel for a decade, was a peace activist there, and defines herself as "left-wing," yet in graduate school back in Canada, she discovers that vilification of Israel is the expected norm. When the keynote speaker for Anti-Oppression Day turns out to be a supporter of terrorist attacks not only against Israeli military targets, but also against Israeli civilians and Jews around the world, Judith protests. As a result, she is marginalized by the faculty and her peers, and her life begins to unravel. This is a moving novel about love, betrayal, and the courage to stand up for what one believes, as well as a searing indictment of the hypocrisy and intellectual sloth that threaten the integrity of our society."

    I'm gonna hop the El downtown in a bit and see if I can find a copy...

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    1. Yup.

      Sounds like a good story and it is one that many of us can tell.

      As you know, I looked up one day in Civic Center, SF, at a rally against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and saw a Swastika entwined into a Shield of David and I knew at that moment that I was done with the Left.

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    2. Yeah, I'd imagine that would be quite a shock.

      I never suffered that myself, fortunately.

      In the early aughts, I did oppose our second Iraq war (though I agreed that the goal of getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a good thing), but I was busy enough with a young child, a still barely-held-together family, and working 60 hours a week, that I never got to attend such 'protests.'

      (As a one-time far leftist, but now a much more moderate leftist, I actually never had a problem with our kicking the Taliban's ass; and suspect I still wouldn't have, even if my father wasn't supposed to be at a meeting in the WTC that Tuesday, which we thought he was at during the attacks, which you could imagine caused some consternation, to say the least; and which only later did we find out ended up being cancelled the day before on Monday 09.10).

      My awakening came slowly, later, and much more 'gently,' if such an adverb can indeed be used to describe what one feels upon learning that a significant portion of their 'allies' wish them ill...

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    3. For me it developed incrementally over time.

      The general background of the movement became more and more tainted for me personally as I came to be more aware of the welcome presence of anti-Semitic anti-Zionists in various progressive-left venues, both on-line and in the real world.

      The Swastika entwined in a Shield of David was one example of what I think of as "landmarks" which highlight my departure from supporting the progressive-left.

      These represented sharp points of reorientation concerning how I thought about my place in American and Jewish politics.

      Another one was the Mavi Marmara episode in which actual Turkish Muslim jihadis, who are on film craving martyrdom in the G-dly service of killing Jews, were referred to by American leftists as "peace activists."

      What slays me, by the way, is that on the domestic front I am still essentially with a left-liberal agenda, but I will never support any political movement that also supports the enemies of the Jewish people.

      It is simply out of the question.

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