Hurricane Katrina: The Battle of New Orleans Refought?
Published January 13, 2008
In Troy, New York, the elderly man who handed out muskets and ammunition to the soldiers got the nickname Uncle. His name was Sam. "Uncle Sam" became the symbol of the United States, a country that decimated the enemies who attacked it, and could not be defeated on the battlefield.
This was what came of the victory at New Orleans. It was so effective at wiping away the stink of failure from Mr. Madison's War, that it developed a sense of national pride and spirit that carried the Americans all the way across the continent, bringing American soldiers to Mexico City in 1848. Americans carried in them a sense of "Manifest Destiny", a sense that G-d had graced the brow of America with His blessings and that it was Americans' job to bring those blessings to the world.
The day came that Americans came to liberate Europe from its oppressors. American soldiers had bases in Britain, the nation that had attacked New Orleans, and the British were grateful for them. By the time I was a child 50 years ago, the War of 1812 was lauded in schoolbooks as "A Second War of Independence". This was the effect of the Battle of New Orleans fought in January of 1815.
The belief that G-d had blessed America, so eloquently expressed in the song "America the Beautiful", was real. Not since 1815, has a foreign force occupied American soil, with the exception of the Japanese occupation of a number of islands off Alaska, and some American territories in the Pacific. The tragedies that seemed to hit the world with alarming frequency seemed not to hit America. America was the land of opportunity where tempest tossed millions poured in and sought refuge. And by and large, they prospered.
As a child, I grew up in the richest nation on earth, the richest nation that had ever existed in the history of Man. It seemed to all go wrong during the years that the American army was sent to Vietnam. A sense of purpose had been lost or misplaced, and the American military, the vaunted mighty force that had defeated all before it, was itself defeated.
The years of my young adulthood were years during which basic ideals and national purposes were debated and argued, and a different path was chosen from the one that had previously guided Americans, both in morals and in their view of the world. For a short time in 1991, Americans reclaimed their pride, defeating an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and for a shorter time after that, in 2003, Americans proved themselves again, this time ending the regime of a former ally, Saddam Hussein.
However, tragedies of historic proportions have now struck the United States. Half of American marriages end in divorce, leaving a trail of bitterness, uncertainty, and emotionally wounded parents and children. Parents now fear for the safety of their offspring, lest someone, often an estranged spouse, kidnap them and just drive off into the sunset - and into a photograph on a milk carton.
The writer was born in Brooklyn and lived in Minnesota for a number of years. There he managed restaurants and wrote stories. He moved with his family to Israel where they now reside. He is published by Jewish Indy, as well as by Desicritics.org.
- Hurricane Katrina: The Battle of New Orleans Refought?
- Published: January 13, 2008
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Politics
- Filed Under: Culture: History, Culture: Religion, Music: Country and Americana, Politics: Law and Rights, Politics: Policy, Politics: War and Terrorism
- Writer: Ruvy
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"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." Luke 19
The US certainly does have a lot to answer for, but God's ways are inscrutable. There were those listening for God who didn't hear Him telling them anything through Katrina except, "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in...inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." So, as best they could, they tried to provide relief to the victims of the storm.
Of course, "the least of my brethren" could mean Israel, and there are Christians who follow AIPAC's lead in support of the nation of Israel (alas, as you will agree, Ruvy, "not wisely, but too well") citing, among others, the passage from Matthew 25.
(If you're really into coinky-dinks, that's from Matthew 25, the same chapter that contains a retelling of the parable from Luke 19 that so interested you a few weeks back.)
Dave,
So long as you refuse to admit to forces other than you think you can quantify in the universe, you will be blind to the the way it works.
I'll not argue with you; I'd be wasting my time. Reality will kick your door in with a force you cannot deal with, and Truth will surround you with so much empirical evidence that you'll go insane trying to deal with it all.
Irene, with whom I respectfully disagree on a number of details, has a far better chance of surviving this than you. Her mind is far more attuned to the Divine Forces at work in the universe, even if she views them differently than I do.
Ruvy, I don't pretend to think that I can quantify the forces of the universe or pretend that there is a revealed truth which answers all questions. I'm satisfied understanding that which can be understood and avoiding the fallacy of thinking that I understand things for which there is no basis for understanding because there is no evidence to work from.
BTW, your second paragraph sounds strangely like what will occur when the Great God Cthulhu rises from his sunken city of R'lyeh. Now I have to admit that would be a hoot.
Ia Cthulhu R'lyeh Ftagn!
Dave
"....your second paragraph sounds strangely like what will occur when the great god Cthulhu rises....
Seriously, Dave, how far do you think a writer like Lovecraft could get from the Christian culture he was raised in?
I'll remind you that what got me started in the line of thinking that you refer to as "barking mad" was a poem by a good Catholic, Yeats; The Second Coming. I learned it in high school and it sent shivers down my arrogant agnostic spine. I began to suspect that there was more to the universe than the neat theorems and axioms of mathematicians and the lab coat boys.
As the years have passed and as events have transpired, I realized that Yeats had been granted a vision by the Almighty - for the world is truly behaving as Yeats predicted it would:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Look at the world around you, Dave. It is as Yeats predicted it would be ninety years ago. Is it barking madness to see this and acknowledge it - or just plain good sense?
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Look at what war broke out here in 2000. Look at the rough beast that slouched towards Bethlehem to be born - and like a rough beast, seized the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and treated it like a pile of shit - and the Christians, who once represented the "Church Militant" did not squeak even like mice.
I'm barking mad to recognize the truth of the vision? Think again, Mr. Nalle. Think again.
Irene,
Just a few thoughts for you.
The vast majority of what appears to be Christian prophecy is just not occurring. This is not to say that all of Revelation is worthless. That requires an immense amount of hubris and arrogance to assert, and that much arrogance and hubris just is not in me. Nevertheless there is a cycle of events predicted there that are just not happening. And I do not need to tell you that we are already 18 years into the period known as the "End of Days" - what Christians call End-Times.
Prophecy is shared by the Holy One amongst all peoples according to their understanding and their ability to understand - see the poem The Second Coming referred to above for an illustration. One item in Revelation, a mark on the hand or the head, may well likely occur; it is a technological device to trace people and is already in use in animals. In addition, believers in G-d will find themselves persecuted. This is not happening just yet, but appears to be on the way, with ever more hostile campaigns against the celebration of Christian holidays in the United States (their reduction to meaninglessness in Rurope), and a growing media hostility to Jewish holidays here in Israel.
In addition, the number 666, the "mark of the beast" appears already to have occurred. On 18 June 1666, a false Jewish messiah, Shabtai Tzvi, declared from his Turkish prison cell that his powers would begin to assert themselves. You find in this date seven sixes (or six sevens), which according to one Pentecostal fellow I know means "evil masquerading as holiness". The Dönmeh in Turkey, the descendants of Shabtai Tzvi and his fellow converts to Islam, have been very influential in running Turkey. In addition, one of Shabtai Tzvi's followers, Jakob Frank, converted to Christianity after persuading a Polish bishop to order the burning of all the Talmuds in his bishopric. Frank fled to Germany, where he became a strong influence on such people as the Rothchilds, the Mendelssohns (the elder Mendelssohn founded "reform" Judaism) and other rich Jews in Germany. During his life, Frank ran a cult of evil that centered around negating of the Ten Commandments. When you hear or read the term Sabbateanism, you are seeing references to the influence of Jakob Frank and those who were under his sway.
By contrast, Jewish prophecy has been occurring. One immediate example that comes to mind is Isaiah 60:5:
Then you will see and be radiant, your heart will be startled and broadened for the affluence of the West will be turned over to you, and the wealth of nations will come to you.
This once poor nation is prospering, in spite of the security burdens on it, and in spite of the probability of destruction from missile attacks in the near future. And check the value of the dollar against our joke of a currency, the New Israeli Shekel. The shekel has been going up.
In the Zohar was a prediction that during the latter half of the sixth millenium (by the Hebrew calendar) a sovereign Jewish state would arise - and so it has, in the year 5708, though its sovereignty is weak and we await Redemption to complete the process. Our exiles are coming home - you are reading the words of one of them. Forty-five percent of the world's Jews live in Israel. When my father was born in 1908, 2% of our people lived here.[Jeremiah 31:9-16], [Ezekiel 34:7-16]
Finally, though this takes vision to see, the prophecy of Ezekiel:
say to them, "Thus said the L-rd HASHEM/ELOHI-M: Behold, I am taking the wood of Joseph which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel, his comrades, and I am placing them and him together with the wood of Judah; and I will make them into one piece of wood, and the will become one in My Hand".[Ezekiel 37:19]
Our lost tribes are not as lost as they appeared to have been twenty years ago. Right now they look like enemies, but they will drop the garbage cloak of the Taliban and the Pashtun will again bear the cloak of many colors of Joseph. In time, we will be reunited as one people.
The process is already beginning, and if G-d gives me strength to hasten it, I will.
Ruvy, it's the certainty with which you ascribe one particular interpretation of a poem that marks you as barking.
You aren't looking for evidence, you're just clutching at hypothetical straws to justify the belief you want to espouse. It's intellectual dishonesty of the most craven kind.
Ruvy, the vast majority of Christian prophecy is not occurring because it is a load of mystical nonsense.
Similarly, you are being entirely subjective in your determined clinging to your equally shoddy mysticism.
"On 18 June 1666, a false Jewish messiah, Shabtai Tzvi, declared from his Turkish prison cell that his powers would begin to assert themselves. You find in this date seven sixes (or six sevens), which according to one Pentecostal fellow I know means "evil masquerading as holiness"."
It is the height of fantasy wish fulfilment - and a little dodgy arithmetic - to interpret this date as being seven 6s, never mind the baffling interpretation you assign it with such dazzling certainty.
I'm sure you are so firmly in the grip of these delusions that nothing - except possibly the passing of enough time - will ever prove the falseness, but you are at least providing some great entertainment, albeit of a particularly tragic kind.
Chris, you are blinder than Dave Nalle. First of all, you cannot even read English - should I adjust my spelling to the Queen's version to aid you?
what got me started in the line of thinking that you refer to as "barking mad" was a poem by a good Catholic, Yeats; The Second Coming. I learned it in high school and it sent shivers down my arrogant agnostic spine. I began to suspect that there was more to the universe than the neat theorems and axioms of mathematicians and the lab coat boys.
As the years have passed and as events have transpired, I realized that Yeats had been granted a vision by the Almighty - for the world is truly behaving as Yeats predicted it would:
I didn't have an interpretation of this poem when I learned it. All I could see was that it was more than a man reflecting on the nightmare of the Great War (which is the standard interpretation of the poem).
Only after seeing that:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
did it dawn on me that this poem had been a vision for the future. What clinched it was the seizure of the Holy Sepulchre Church in Bethlehem in 2002 by Arab terrorists and the milquetoast reaction of Christians to that seizure.
You have to be blinder than a mole not to see the symbolism inherent in that event, Chris. Your dafter then a rake in Bedlam!!
In talking to a believing Christian about Shabtai Tzvi and the date he declared his power to be beginning, I was citing a historical fact. If you care to read Turkish history, you'll see the light but ever-present hand of the Dönmeh in the running of Ottoman Turkey and the Turkish Republic in its early years. If you check out the history of Jakob Frank, you'll see that all that I have written is truth.
But "big picture" people like you don't want to do that, so I don't expect it of you. Facts are a bit too small to fit into the big picture, eh?.
In relating to a believing Christian like Irene, I told her the words of another believing Christian in interpreting the date. It's not my dodgy arithmetic, it's his. But, as a believing Christian, she may well understand and relate - note the audience, Chris. It weren't addressed to you.
"You aren't looking for evidence, you're just clutching at hypothetical straws to justify the belief you want to espouse. It's intellectual dishonesty of the most craven kind."
This behavior is characteristic of zealotry; it is what most distinguishes the zealot from the rational world.
And it is practiced by religious and secular zealots alike.
One last point, Chris.
Let's give you a little math test. Here is a date for you to examine: 18/6/1666. If you play cribbage, or know how to factor numbers, you'll be able to see seven sixes in this date. If you don't play cribbage, you really ought to learn. It's a great game where cheating is part of the rules.....
"You aren't looking for evidence, you're just clutching at hypothetical straws to justify the belief you want to espouse. It's intellectual dishonesty of the most craven kind."
This behavior is characteristic of zealotry; it is what most distinguishes the zealot from the rational world.
And it is practiced by religious and secular zealots alike.
Ruvy, you really are the most determined of mad little muppets. It would be impressive if it wasn't so tragically pointless.
Firstly, there's no such thing as a "good" catholic, so your first line if what we'll generously call a defence is irrelevant.
Your second "point" was that you didn't have an interpretation when you learned it. ??? Nobody said you did, so once again, your keyboard is flapping but there's nobody picking the keys.
When you finally did come up with your own subjective explanation, you for no apparent r4eason decided that a poem about WW1 was actually talking about future events in a country far removed from the poem's focus. Talk about clutching at straws.
There is one line that seems relevant in the context of our difference of understanding though, as it describes you perfectly - "the worst are full of passionate intensity".
I have no idea how you came up with the classic piece of specious nonsense "facts are a bit too small to fit into the big picture" but as usual with you, it's gibberish you cling to in a futile attempt to justify your madness, in addition to being untrue.
In supporting dodgy arithmetic, you adopt it as your own. It's simply laughable to find seven sixes in that date, particularly as it requires the division of 18 and the interpretation of June as a six, when the writing of dates that way is a modern custom.
As you seem to like this kind of latent symbolism, you might enjoy reading this site, where you can also ponder upon the even more spooky significance of 06/06/06 and the scary facts that "If we combine the two important dates of June 5th and June 6th, together with recent world events, we obtain the following extremely significant occult triplications:
* 222 days from the Muslim riots in Paris;
* 333 days from the London Train Bombings;
* 444 days from the second anniversary of the Iraq Invasion;
* 555 days from November 28, 2004 (the 333rd day of the year, with 33 remaining);
* 666 in the date pattern and in the pattern until the end of the Mayan calendar;
* 777 days from the foiled Sears Tower Attack.
Woooooh!
If you can justify your continued participation in debating US politics on the basis that you once were one, I can justify my joining in a comment aimed at a Christian on the basis that I was once one too, so you can once again stuff your objection to my derision of your mystical mumblings back in the dark age you properly belong to.
We should play cribbage some time, with your kind of idiot thinking, I'd play you for money too.
There is one line that seems relevant in the context of our difference of understanding though, as it describes you perfectly - "the worst are full of passionate intensity".
Chris, I was going to say the same about you. I guess that is the point of Clavos' post about zealots, my good island dweller. Now where is that knife I was saving for use to prove my zealotry??
If the day comes that you can make it out to Samaria, do stop by for a coffee and a few games of cribbage. I haven't taken candy from a baby in a long time.....
Finally, the latent occult stuff is interesting, but it's more a Christian kind of thing. Having been one once, I'm sure you can see that. Irene might enjoy it, or maybe Stan. I have other puzzles to solve with gematria - a Jewish kind of thing....
What can I say, Ruvy? You know where you can find common ground with these people in BC--Dave Nalle has indicated that you know where it is.
There is philosophical ground that we share Ruvy, and there are things about God that I don't know and things about God that you don't know and things about God that Dave Nalle and Christopher Rose don't know.
The fact that Hebrew is still a living language surprises many people who are, at the moment for one reason or another, incapable of being downright amazed.
PS Christopher Rose, I'm not a Catholic, but I've known some good ones. However, none of the ones I know live in Continental Europe. Maybe there's a scarcity there.
Irene, I've been treading water here, waiting for your response - my most important comments are for your eyes precisely because we share a basic philosophic outlook on the world, even though we have disagreements.
My big problem here is not Chris Rose's comments, which are more of a nuisance than anything else. My problem is that the only people who take a Biblical view of history seriously appear to be Christians. It truly saddens and hurts me that my own brethren have sunken so low as not to seem to give a damn about the Book that gives them their identity, or the G-d that made them a separate family amongst the peoples of the earth, or about the Redemption that will remove the yétzer ha'rá, the evil inclination, from all of us, or about the kind of world that the Redemption will bring us to.
This Sabbath we read in the Book of Exodus what we call Parshát Bo which begins with Exodus 10:1. G-d makes it clear to Moses that he is setting up the Egyptian Pharaoh for a fall so that He can make a mockery of him. [Exodus 10:1-2]. In this same portion, we read about the Plague of Darkness[Exodus 10:21-23], during which (according to our sages) four fifths of the Hebrew population died because after eight Divine "hits" on Egypt, they still did not believe in G-d and His redemptive power. We are told by our sages that the Redemption will mirror the Exodus from Egypt - this means that there will be a similar incidence where a huge number of the world's Jews (or perhaps Children of Israel, including the Pashtun and others who are indeed Children of Israel) will die because of lack of faith in the Redemptive power of the Holy One.
I look at American Jews and fear for them. I have a large family in America, and I have the nasty feeling that when this is all over, that family will not be that large at all. I haven't seen many of my cousins in decades, but I still love them. And they are still family.
What would the Redemption be like for you?
Because you are a woman of faith, your issues will be what you have done wrong to others: you will learn how they felt when you hurt them. All the ugliest facets of your personality will rise to distress you and pain you. These are all aspects of the yétzer ha'rá, the evil inclination, which is what the Redemption will be there to destroy. But before it is destroyed, you will have to confront it. If G-d allows me to see His Redemption, this is what I can expect also. The big difference between you and I is that you will be dealing with the issues that Christianity causes you. How G-d chooses to deal with these issues is something I cannot know.
Ruvy, your talent for misunderstanding is breathtaking. You seem to take the rejection of your hysterically bloated and unsupported assertions as some kind of extremism, but it is nothing of the sort.
I could make the journey to Israel at any time but have no intention of doing so, just as I have no desire to visit Burma or Zimbabwe, but feel free to step out of the land of illusion some time.
Irene, you seem to be developing the same talent for (wilful?) misunderstanding as Ruvy. I didn't refer to you as a catholic. I can't respond to the rest of your comment as I understood not a word, a result in common with Ruvy's follow up which three readings of produced nothing but a puzzled huh?
"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Catholics believe in purgatory. Though I'm more of a "general Christian" rather than a denominational one (as Catholics are), I believe in purgatory, too, but I believe that's where we live now. Sometimes this purgatory is VERY painful, the process of submitting to the Holy Spirit's gentle (and sometimes NOT so gentle) exposure of ways in which I am grieving God and hurting people who hurt already. Facing the evil in oneself is as much as a good work as confronting it on the outside is.
The Christian idea of Redemption is that you can't do good deeds to be accepted by a holy God, for what series of good deeds could possibly bridge the gap between the Highest of the High and ourselves? You come to God humbly and accept his forgiveness. You understand blood sacrifices, Ruvy. That was what Jesus' death on the Cross was, a perfect Blood sacrifice to God, and any "Christian" who has it in for Jews because of the Cross fails to understand that it was for that reason Jesus came to earth.
After that, a Christian turns his moral and spiritual development over to God, cooperating with Him in it. "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and not that of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, that any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." That's the fastest way I know to tell you how I believe I will be redeemed.
What about people who've never heard about Jesus, or people like yourself, who have had things happen to your family at the hands of "Christians" that make the very name Jesus odious to you? I trust God's mercy and grace, as well as his righteous judgments.
I believe that through Jesus, God is calling every one of us to Himself. The sacrifice is good for EVERYONE before and after the Cross who comes to God for mercy. I believe there is only one way to God: Jesus. But I also believe there are many ways to Jesus, and some have been tailor-made for those who, for reasons they can't help, have nearly impossible hurdles to overcome before they could approach Jesus in a "Sunday best coming to church with all the happy anglos" fashion. Do some googling on Muslims living under sharia law having dreams and visions about Jesus. You'll see what I mean.
About the relatives, Ruvy. Don't underestimate the power of prayer. I heard some "fundamentalist preacher" (ironically probably a tool of AIPAC) say that God doesn't hear the prayers of a Jew. I don't believe that.
I have to go to church now. Sorry to keep you treading so long, but I was asleep. Clavos, Chris, Dave Nalle et al....maybe Lee Richards etc. I know you will disagree with me vehemently, but I will be in church praying that you will be blessed.
Ruvy, I don't take a biblical view of history because that makes no sense at all, most of history having happened long after the Bible was written. But I do take a historical view of the Bible, which is a fascinating document about past cultures and human nature and the destructive delusion which is organized religion.
I have to go to church now.
Let me know if God drops in and puts on a medicine show for you guys. I'll be out doing good for my fellow man instead. If that doesn't count more with god than singing his praises and fawning on him then he's not a god I want to be associated with anyway.
Dave
Irene,
You'll read this at some later time, I guess.
I read the novel Left Behind, so I have a reasonably clear idea of what you are talking about. You're definitely not a Catholic, that's for sure. Your recitation above is a Protestant view.
But that is also why I described Jewish concept of Redemption for you. I want you to see the difference in our outlooks, and why they differ. Do notice the small role the messiah plays in all of this. Each of us deals with his own failings and his own evil. We are not "saved," for there is nothing to be saved from, except our own evil. And Redemption is there to destroy that evil. But we are still bound to confront that evil first. There are no shortcuts.
The non-believer has a much rougher time, not because he is more evil, but because he has to deal with what he refuses to believe in, in addition to the normal burden of his yétzer ha'rá. That is enough to drive some people insane.
or people like yourself, who have had things happen to your family at the hands of "Christians" that make the very name Jesus odious to you?
Blood sacrifices of humans are odious to us, Irene. Assertions of any equality with G-d by any entity in any fashion are odious to us. In other words, the very concepts at the base of Christianity - blood sacrifice of a human and assertions of an entity being the "son" of the Almighty are odious to us. This is besides whatever Christians may have done to us over 1,700 years. Even without all that, the very basis of your faith is odious. This is not said to offend, nor to be impolite, but to be brutally honest. The name, Jesus, is not odious to me - it is merely the Greek version of Yeshu (Aramaic) or Yehoshua (Hebrew).
Jews who are believers have a very specific view of the universe, and these two ideas at the center of Christianity run smack into them as just plain wrong. There is no room for a tri-furcated "G-d" and there is definitely no room for a human sacrifice, no matter how nicely it is dressed up. Perhaps it is for this reason that some fundies think G-d will not hear our prayers....
It is here that we disagree. Having noted the points of disagreement, there is no point to pursue the disagreement further, because the world out there needs faith more than it needs Christians and Jews cursing at each other.
You will not see me attempting to change your mind about your faith. You have to come to our way of seeing things yourself, if that is what is to occur, and I have enough faith in the power of the Almighty to be a very persuasive Salesman when He has to be. He certainly has enough Tools at His disposal.
Have a blessed Sunday,
Reuven
PS
Thank you for reminding me of prayer for my family....
I don't take a biblical view of history because that makes no sense at all, most of history having happened long after the Bible was written. But I do take a historical view of the Bible, which is a fascinating document about past cultures and human nature and the destructive delusion which is organized religion.
This article is not written to convince, but if it does, then you were on the verge of being a believer anyway.
If you're an atheist, it is unreasonable to expect you to take a Biblical view of history. This article is not about convincing you to take that view. That is unreasonable. This article is about raising the issue of a blessing from G-d, how we realize we have received one, and how we realize we've lost one. If you don't believe in G-d, this article is pointless to you.
Ruvy - I'm only here for a second, then I have to go. I understand that God's request to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is hard for Jews to even look at, even though it is in the Torah. God didn't require Abraham to follow through. Abraham knew all along that "God will provide himself a Lamb." Yes, keep praying. I'll pray they learn whatever they need to know, and I'll pray that I learn whatever I need to know, too.
Ruvy,
I lived most of my life in NOLA prior to the storm. I know a lot of Christian and Jewish people who lost everything during Katrina. I found your comments very offensive.
I won't argue that the city was politically and spiritually corrupt. I pray and hope that things do evolve to take the city back to where it was 40-50 years ago.
I do take exception to two things you stated.
1. Jean Lafitte was Catholic, not Jewish. His contributions to the Battle of NOLA were romanticized over the years. He was a corrupt evil pirate that was placed in a position of siding with the US or being pursued by the British. Read your history.
2. To conclude that God destroyed NOLA because of sin is silly. It's like saying that Israel is tormented by your Arab neighors because God is angry with the Jewish people for not being true to his wishes or converting to Christianity.
Think about it.
SF, I think Ruvy actually believes something like your #2.
Dave
Ruvy,
How can you quote scripture when you refuse to aknowledge the Book Of Moe!!
And Moe said to the Stooges on the third day of the third month...
Ye Stooges go forth and poke thine eye with two fingers...
If thine refuse my words...ye shall be murderized...
An lo...Moe begat Shemp who begat Larry who begat Curly....and curseth thee who consirdereth Curly Joe...the lowest of low...a true Stooge for he is actually the devil...
JOM..
Dave Nalle. Dave Nalle. Dave Nalle.
I'll be out doing good for my fellow man instead. If that doesn't count more with god than singing his praises and fawning on him then he's not a god I want to be associated with anyway.
What makes you think that a god worth being associated with would expect anything more of you, or less of you, than the love and respect you'd require of your own beloved children?
Listen Dave Nalle, if God EVER should catching you fawning he'd probably wack you upside the head and tell you to cut it out.
...but not before He caught the whole improbable spectacle on videotape first so as to impress Chris Rose.
NOTHING impresses Chris Rose.
He'd probably call fraud when he saw it...
Actually, lots of things impress me, Clavos, but I certainly wouldn't be impressed if this god geezer was using videotape. Surely he'd be using a digital recorder at least, if not a direct to brain synaptic relay of some kind?
SF,
2. To conclude that God destroyed NOLA because of sin..... is like saying that Israel is tormented by your Arab neighbors because God is angry with the Jewish people for not being true to his wishes.....
Dave Nalle is right.
I do believe this. I wrote this essay to make a point. Your nation was blessed by G-d for a time, 190 years, and a sign of that blessing was the nature of the victory over the British in 1815. Not only was it nigh miraculous, but the effect the victory had changed how Americans viewed themselves.
Hurricane Katrina was the open sign of the cancellation of that blessing. The timing with which it struck was eerily coincidental with the way free, innocent people were driven from their homes by a tyrannical government of quislings serving foreign AMERICAN masters.
So America was made to pay. Americans were made to pay.
I visited your home city in 1978. I never forgot the great coffee I had there.
I hold no brief against you nor any other (former) residents of New Orleans. I do not judge you. I cannot. And I honestly feel bad that so many people died, and were made homeless and destitute. I speak from the heart, saying that. I know what it is to live on the street, not knowing where my next meal or shelter would come from. But, evidently, New Orleans was made a symbol - all I can do is record my impressions of how that occurred.
I do not believe that New Orleans will return to its former state fifty years back. Here, I speak as a student of public administration and political science. America has fallen from the pinnacle it reached fifty years ago and just as a rising tide lifts all boats, and ebbing tide mires all boats in the mud. Your nation is no longer rich enough to rebuild New Orleans. It is that simple.
And just so you understand. We in Israel are suffering and are being punished. We are being made to pay for the sins of our leaders, just as you are.
Ruvy,
That whole premise is arrant nonsense.
Katrina was not the first hurricane to strike the USA, nor even the worst.
Far worse ones (in terms of loss of life):
Galveston, 1900. Fatalities (estimated) 6,000-12,000
Lake Okeechobee, Fla., 1928. 1836 dead.
Katrina, 800+ dead.
Floods:
Johnstown, 1889. 2,200 deaths.
Mississippi River, Jan-Feb., 1937. 1,100 dead, 75,000 homes destroyed, 600,000 refugees.
Etc., etc.
You get the picture.
Were these all god smiting the USA for being bad boys and girls??
I think not.
For your premise to have any meaning, your (or the christian) god would have to be smiting the USA over and over again, just with hurricanes, never mind floods, fires (Chicago, San Francisco), tornadoes (everywhere).
Not to mention that, if God really wanted to send an unequivocal message that he was displeased, what would be the sense in doing so through a natural phenomenon that happens all the time?
Most hurricanes don't even make landfall. Is God angry at the fishes?
Clavos,
Let's go over some of your stats and add one that you missed to drive home a point.
The New Madrid Earthquake - Dec. 1811, Jan. 1812
3,000 dead.
If you just list storms, fires, hurricanes, and other disasters and deaths, you miss the point entirely.
The New Madrid earthquake changed the course of the Mississippi, in addition to destroying thousands of homes.
But the Louisiana Territory, and the other territories where the earthquake occurred developed almost as if it had not taken place. The Galveston hurricane 108 years ago took a huge toll of lives, but Galveston recovered. There are memorials to the storm victims, but aside from that, Galveston has gone on. The same is true for the Johnstown flood 119 years ago. You would know more about the Lake Okeechobee. Hell, Hurricane Andrew was worse, a far stronger storm. But the places struck all continued. As severe as the storms were, the USA continued onward and upwards.
New Orleans was effectively destroyed by this hurricane, and a sense of helplessness struck America in trying to deal with Katrina. There is not enough money to properly invest in New Orleans to rebuild it to the level that it functioned at in 2004. In addition, there has been a sense of foreboding in your country since that storm struck, and your economy has taken some nasty hits.
The effects of Katrina come as a package that slowly sink into the psyche across the board.
I know you don't necessarily agree, but the evidence indicates that your country is going down the hill, along with your dollar - now having gone down to NIS 3.705/S1.00. We're talking about a joke of a currency, not yen or sterling or the euro. Last year I told you that two shekels were worth 44¢. A day or two ago, I told you about the 2 shekel coin that has just been introduced here. It was worth 53¢. Now (as of 20:41) it is worth 54¢.
Hurricane Katrina is not causing the fall of your dollar against our pathetic little shekel - a person arguing that does belong on the (locked) 8th floor of St. Paul - Ramsey Hospital. But the sense of inability to cope, the sense that America is fading and unable to get itself, this is something that has come from a sinking sense that has come from Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina was a maká, a hit in a very Biblical sense.
The underlying concept of the article comes from a very good story by Isaac Asimov about a class A effect caused by a class E action. And that is what we've seen on both sides - the victory in 1815 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The Battle of New Orleans should not have even counted in recording the way the War of 1812 happened. But for most, it WAS the War of 1812.
Katrina destroyed a city that a rich nation could rebuild. But America is not a rich nation anymore, and it isn't going to recover its prosperity, and the knowledge of that resides in the guts of many Americans; the effect of a relatively minor storm is having ripples far beyond the storm itself.
As for you, Dr. Dreadful:
Do you sleep with the fishes that you know that G-d is angry at them?
Sorry, Ruvy, I still don't buy it.
I don't know where you got the idea that,
"New Orleans was effectively destroyed by this hurricane, and a sense of helplessness struck America in trying to deal with Katrina."
NOLA was severely damaged, yes. Whole sections of it were totally destroyed, and may never be rebuilt. The fact is, they shouldn't be, because they inevitably will be destroyed again, in another hurricane some day. I've argued this point before, right here on BC, but no one is listening, so NOLA IS being rebuilt and is already re-establishing itself as a port, and as a tourist destination.
As for the sense of "helplessness" of which you speak: outside of NOLA itself (and by no means everyone there), there is no such sense. I have many friends and business clients there, and in the interior of Louisiana, as well as in Mississippi (which actually was harder hit than NOLA), and the surrounding areas. They report no such feelings.
I have also traveled there twice since Katrina, (most recently in September 2007), and while I saw plenty of destruction still to be dealt with, the impressions I got from the people I dealt with and met while there were unanimously and fundamentally positive and optimistic.
In fact, terrible as it may sound, I'd say most Americans are by now pretty much unaware of the state of things in NOLA, and probably not even very interested in it any more. In other words, it's already a non-issue, except for those directly affected.
"But the sense of inability to cope, the sense that America is fading and unable to get itself, this is something that has come from a sinking sense that has come from Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina was a maká, a hit in a very Biblical sense."
Sorry, Ruvy, but this just isn't true. On the contrary, the state of Mississippi, which was much more destroyed than NOLA, and suffered much more devastation (But involving fewer people), has not only coped, and coped well, but is already almost totally back to normal; to the point that their Governor and senior state officials are making frequent TV appearances and traveling the country with a PP presentation to show the recovery, helping to restore their tourism market, as well as attract new businesses to the area.
Are some people still suffering and/or homeless? Yes. Will it take some time to finish the already considerable restorations? Of course. But, the work IS being done and done well and optimistically; with an overall sense of rebirth, of new beginnings, not despair or helplessness.
As for you, Dr. Dreadful:
Do you sleep with the fishes that you know that G-d is angry at them?
No. Do you?
Let me try again. Why would God, a supernatural being, use a natural event to make a point? Why not just tell the folks in New Orleans or whoever the hell it was supposed to be that he's pissed off with them?
Because the vast majority of thinking people did not read any message from God into Katrina. They read a natural weather phenomenon that went where atmospheric forces dictated it was going to go, and unfortunately a major city got in the way.
I guarantee you that if Katrina had missed New Orleans and leveled the bayou, neither you nor anyone else would be claiming that God was unhappy with the alligators.
I'm sorry, Clavos,
You don't understand what I'm getting at. Perhaps, I wasn't being clear. In talking about a sense of helplessness and despair, I'm not talking about the attempt to rebuild New Orleans, though I agree with you that there are certain parts of the city that ought not be rebuilt as they will surely be destroyed in a storm. I'm also not talking about the efforts to rebuild Mississippi.
Consider, though that the previous two seasons, 2006, and 2007 were light on the hurricanes. From my own point of view, G-d is watching to see if anybody has picked up the lesson at all - which is that He is in control.
Also, I need to make clear - the issue is not New Orleans itself. The issue is that America's leaders are doing something very wrong, and this is G-d's way of giving a message.
So, I'm talking about a sense of despair that has gradually overcome your nation regarding its own future, particularly its economy, and a sense of foreboding regarding the nation's future. This is why I recited the figures for the falling dollar.
The issues go far beyond New Orleans, or New York or Oklahoma City. They involve your nation as a whole and a leadership that is leading you all in the wrong direction - down a path of certain disaster - and a Biblical principle that the people are held responsible for the acts of the leadership.
DD,
Pick u your Bible and read the first few chapters of Genesis. It says that G-d destroyed the world with a flood.
The story as related in the Torah is problematic, so let's look for a moment at a minority view in the Talmud that says that G-d did not destroy the entire world, but just the Middle East. Either way, He was using a natural phenomenon to get a Message across.
The same thing is true with the events surrounding the Exodus from Egypt. Most of the makót - "hits" is a more accurate term than "plagues" - were natural phenomena - like swarms of locusts. Even the crossing of the Red Sea was in its essence a natural phenomenon - a Hamsin that lasted all night, which drove the waters apart to leave dry land.
In the Hebrew Bible, what you usually see are natural phenomena used to accomplish the delivery of a Divine message.
IMHO, in this instance, the Message is this:
"You were once blessed and I have canceled the blessing. You understood that I blessed you: now ask yourselves why the blessing is canceled."
Ruvy, a flood involving enough water to cover every mountain on Earth is hardly a natural event. There simply isn't that much water on the planet.
DD,
Actually, there is enough water to flood the planet and to cover all the mountains; but as I said, the story (as related in the Torah) is problematic, so for the purposes of discussion, I'm willing to use a minority Talmudic view.
Ruvy,
I understood exactly what you're getting at. I focused on NOLA because YOU did, using it as an example, so I responded in kind.
However, I couldn't disagree with you more; I don't know where you get the idea we're all mired in despair and helplessness, I find nothing of the sort and I'm living here.
You've been reading too much anti-American press, Ruvy, and twisting what you read to fit into the "prophecies" in the ancient texts.
In actuality, the reality is nothing like that; people are leading their lives just as they always have here, Ruvy.
Ruvy
How come GOD hasnt sent a message to the asshole leaders of your country...the great welfare state in the desert? Your leaders are doing something very wrong -taking American money, free cheese, buying American politicians, turning their back on genocide in Africa, sustaining a perpetual guilt propaganda machine where is GODs message against their crimes against the American people and humanity?
Hmmmmmm...
JOM
From the Book Of Moe - And Moe said unto Larry, "I'll squeeze the cider out of your adam's apple." and so it shall be till the end of time!
Actually, there is enough water to flood the planet and to cover all the mountains
Wrong.
There would be enough water to cover the entire planet... if you leveled all the continents and raised all the ocean basins until the Earth's solid surface was at a uniform elevation (i.e., no mountains). Admittedly, not something that would be too much of a challenge for an omnipotent being, but (a) it would hardly be a natural event and (b) there's no evidence that such a thing has ever happened.
The movie Waterworld notwithstanding, even if all the planet's ice sheets, caps and fields were to melt, mean sea level would only rise by about 200 feet.
Even allowing for the interpretation of some Talmudic scholars, as you suggest, that it was a localized event: bearing in mind the natural behavior of water - which we're expected to believe somehow accumulated to a sufficient depth to cover Mount Ararat - such a tumultous flood, occurring only in the Middle East, would again, requiring drastic intervention by 'Im Upstairs to pull it off, not be a natural phenomenon.
Clavos,
Interesting,
From what I have read on other lists, things have changed considerably in America. For the worse.
For example, I wrote an article praising a late friend of mine and criticizing Reagan, one which never made it to BC (Well it did - as a comment). A Reagan Republican, a Jew who "buries his heart in the Bronx", castigated me for being a liberal (Perish the thought!! I'm a socialist!) and we got into a discussion.
After a few posts he admitted his own despair for the future of America and told me to listen to Michael (Weiner) Savage, whom he viewed as a sort of latter day messiah. I went to the man's site, and it's thin gruel at best, but I digress.
I have seen a great deal of despair coming from your shores, and not just from the typical doom and gloom writers from whom one expects such things.
Of course, there are lots of folks living in America - there are hundreds of millions of you, after all - and I suppose one can pick up what one tunes into, like fiddling with a radio dial.
But the "sad songs" stations are playing along with the "happy tunes" ones, Clavos.... Your own writing and outlook appear to reflect the "happy tunes". But the economic news seems more in key with the "sad songs" than the "happy tunes".
Just a side thought. This house I live in was not built to hold in heat, and it's damned cold in here. I need to get a good heater....brrrr....
I see you're still awake, DD. Good morning from Samaria.
As I said, you need to read Genesis carefully to comprehend the Flood story as it is related there. In the end, you also need to know how the Sumerians viewed the universe to comprehend some of the things you read in the Torah. The rabbis did not know the Sumerian view of things, which makes it difficult for them to interpret some of what one sees there.
But this is neither here nor there.
"bearing in mind the natural behavior of water - which we're expected to believe somehow accumulated to a sufficient depth to cover Mount Ararat - such a tumultuous flood, occurring only in the Middle East, would again, requiring drastic intervention by 'Im Upstairs to pull it off, not be a natural phenomenon."
You've hit the nail on the head with Dreadful accuracy. Now work backwards a bit to understand the point. But I'm directing you not along the road you came.
All "natural phenomena" are the result of either the laws of "'Im Upstairs" in operation (i.e. physics), OR a more direct Intervention to accomplish something more quickly. That is how the Universe works.
Rain occurring "naturally" falls because of Divine laws in operation. And we are blessed with the intelligence to discern some of them and to have a vague understanding of how they work. Rational thought begins with realizing the nature of our imperfect understanding, and the recognition of scientists that our understanding is at best imperfect, and thus dictates the tentative nature of all scientific concepts - why theory must needs to change to fit fact, rather than the opposite.
This is why the Ramba"m, known to you as Maimonides, strongly recommended the study of cosmology, mathematics and science, and insisted that all religious ideas be tested against science as we understand it. He wanted, among other things, for his students to see the sharp difference between Revealed Truth on the one hand, and imperfect understanding of humans on the other.
Generally, the atheist desires to shut out Revealed Truth, insisting that only tentative scientific conclusions can be the basis of Knowledge. Such an outlook fails to see that the Universe is more Mind than Matter, so it misses the point entirely - the point being not "42" but rather that Matter is a reflection of the Divine Mind.
"I have seen a great deal of despair coming from your shores, and not just from the typical doom and gloom writers from whom one expects such things."
Did you consider that this might be because that's what you're looking for?
Ruvy, you've been on BC and other sites long enough and often enough to know that any given blog is never representative of anything but a relatively narrow slice of the society from which it emanates.
Even BC, which I personally enjoy precisely because it's not as narrow as say, the DailyKos or Powerline, is not, IMO, representative (at least not in the Politics section) of the whole spectrum of the country (or the world) and its people and moods. Not even close.
As you say, we are a nation of over 300 million, that's a hell of a lot of people, most of whom are far better off than a substantial portion of the rest of the world, and as a group, their attitudes tend to reflect that.
Most Americans are not wandering around rending our hair and gnashing our teeth, wearing sackcloth and ashes, Ruvy. We're just living our lives, working, playing, loving, laughing, (and sometimes crying), and ultimately, dying.
Despite what you may think you're hearing, most people's lives aren't much directly affected to any great degree by events like war in the ME, or even the cyclical ups and downs of economies, much as they like to bitch about inflation and the price of gas.
It's nothing like the Four Horsemen, Ruvy. Not here.
As for your acquaintance who listens to Michael Savage, in fact anyone who listens and believes anything any of those rabble rouser types of whatever political stripes has to say, is a few bricks shy of a load.
Before you jump all over my ass, Ruvy, stop and consider that I have said, all the way through this comment "MOST" Americans, not "ALL."
I'm sure you can come up with any number of anecdotal examples that are the exact opposite of everything I've said.
In general, however, I don't see widespread despair and feelings of helplessness in the USA at this time.
Clavos,
To repeat:
I have seen a great deal of despair coming from your shores, and not just from the typical doom and gloom writers from whom one expects such things.
Of course, there are lots of folks living in America - there are hundreds of millions of you, after all - and I suppose one can pick up what one tunes into, like fiddling with a radio dial.
But the "sad songs" stations are playing along with the "happy tunes" ones, Clavos.... Your own writing and outlook appear to reflect the "happy tunes". But the economic news seems more in key with the "sad songs" than the "happy tunes".
This is why I refer to other lists as well as BC. Yet, no matter how much one scans lists, or reads the papers, one cannot get an accurate reading of things without being there and sensing things, or at least talking to people who are there.
So, I talk to Israelis who visit the States to see relatives, usually ex-pats like me who have a bit more money. For the most part, most people in America get on with their lives - after all, most of them do not have an alternative to consider. I did. In the end, when dealing with what people sense, all evidence is anecdotal. And unasked for conclusions seem to creep out in conversations - and this is where I find a lot of information.
Actually Doc, there is enough water to flood MUCH of the planet, since a fair percentage of it is ice - and a lot of it is above sea level. If it all melted, there'd be floods of epic (well, biblical :) proportions.
However, I don't think it would cover everything, and certainly not the mountains.
Like I said, Stan - about a 200-foot rise, if all of it melted, which it ain't going to do any time soon. That hypothetical would suffice to wipe out most of the world's major cities, so it would be a disaster on, for want of a better phrase, a biblical scale.
You also have to bear in mind that much of this ice is over water (the Arctic and West Antarctic sea ice) and as such is already displacing its own mass.
And the total volume of Earth's permanent ice is minuscule compared to the total volume of liquid ocean water.
Doc's figure of 200 ft elevation is a pretty good one.
To see how much of any area would be flooded, check out a topo map at the 200 ft. contour line.
Florida's highest natural elevation is 345' at Britton Hill, in the Panhandle, near the Alabama border. That part of Florida is commonly referred to as LA, Lower Alabama, or the Redneck Riviera, because it's popular with tourists from Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.
Most of the peninsular part of the state is at an elevation of less than 100'.
Florida's mean altitude is 100'.
A ways back, someone using the screen name "savoire faire" asserted that Jean LaFitte was not Jewish but a Catholic. I decided to look up the question on Google, and found an interesting article from a blog on the Jerusalem Post.
The relevant points:
"... I always begin a cruise with a lecture on pirates. The kids love it, and the old folks like it, too."
"Are you are going talk about Jean Lafitte?"
"No," and I repeated what my sister had told me.
He pulled out his wallet and handed me a business card. It had "Melvyn J. Lafitte" written on it. Then he said, "I could tell you that as we were chatting I printed this card on a nano-sized printing press hidden in my pocket. And of course, you wouldn't believe me. But the truth is that I am a direct descendant of Jean Lafitte. Your sister, Phyllis, is absolutely right.
"Our family, originally named Lefitto, lived in the Iberian Peninsula for centuries. When Ferdinand and Isabella reconquered Spain and expelled the Muslims and the Jews in 1492, most of the Jews fled to North Africa. Others went to the Balkans or to Greece and Turkey. But some Sephardi Jews, my ancestors among them, crossed the Pyrenees and settled in France, where Jean was born in about 1780. He moved to French Santo Domingo during the Napoleonic period. However, a slave rebellion forced him to flee to New Orleans. Eventually, he became a pirate, but he always called himself a privateer because that label has a more legal ring to it.
"In 1814, the British sought his aid in their pending attack on New Orleans," he continued. "However, he passed their plans to the Americans and helped General Andrew Jackson beat them in 1815. A grateful Jackson, not yet president, saw to it that Lafitte and his family became American citizens. And by the way, did you know that there is a town of Jean Lafitte, as well as a Jean Lafitte National Historical Park in Southwestern Louisiana?"
I was flabbergasted ... by the fact that the two of us had met so coincidentally in the skies over Georgia....
I don't see how that makes Lafitte Jewish, Ruvy. It may mean he has a Jewish ancestor on the male side, accounting for the name, but since Judaism descends through the female line and Catholics are required by the church to raise kids as catholics, all it would take is one catholic wife in 300 some years for the family to go from Jewish to Catholic. Living in France in a predominantly non-Jewish region that seems like a pretty likely scenario.
Dave
I don't see how that makes Lafitte Jewish, Ruvy. It may mean he has a Jewish ancestor on the male side, accounting for the name, but since Judaism descends through the female line...
Read the link, Dave, the whole link....
Clavos @ #50:
So, can we expect to see you and a U-Haul rolling into Fresno (elevation 296') some time soon?
;-)
I dunno, Doc. What if the 200' figure is just a little conservative?
I think I'll head for the Rockies.
You should be buying a life raft - just in case...
While you guys joke about a flood that will not happen, your fellow Americans appear worried about the future. This is from a newspaper that I generally consider to be toilet paper....
This is from a newspaper that I generally consider to be toilet paper...
Yet you'll sit up and listen to it when it says something you're expecting to hear. People are always worried about the future, Ruvy. It usually still happens.
Back to your #45, which I didn't address earlier due to being sidetracked by this unprecedented tidal surge that's suddenly sweeping down the San Joaquin Valley...
You seem to have deftly shifted the working definition of what would be considered a 'natural phenomenon', as well as the topic under debate. Here is not the place to argue whether Noah's Flood actually occurred. My point is that for such an event to occur, mechanisms so spectacularly extraordinary and contrary to the laws of nature would have to be brought into play that it would be unmistakeably the work of a supernatural Power.
Katrina, on the other hand, was just a hurricane - such as occur in their dozens every year. To argue that it represented the wrath of God just because it happened to affect millions of humans rather than millions of fish or alligators is anthropocentric hubris.
BTW, Ruvy and Dave:
His name is spelled Laffite, two "F"s, one "T". Not the other way around
I was skeptical at first too, Dave (and still am, to some degree).
But a quick google turned up this.
And this.
It should be noted that the question of his Jewishness is based on his "diary," which was discovered about forty years ago, and the authenticity of which is questioned, particularly by serious scholars, such as that of my second link above.
Clavos, the second site you link to uses the Lafitte spelling as does Wikipedia. I think it's right.
And his Jewish ancestry does seem to be well documented. Even if you discount the journal, other records confirm that his paternal ancestors were jewish down the line.
My wife will be interested to hear all this, since family history suggests that she's a lafitte descendent.
Dave
Dave,
Here's one source (of several I found) for the spelling:
"However, confusing the issue more so is the fact that Jean habitually signed his name spelled Laffite (two Fs, one T). Author Stanley Clisby Arthur in Old New Orleans points to several bills of sale extant today that support this. This particular version is novel and, therefore, almost his own invention probably employed to protect his real familial name. But, because the spelling he chose was overlooked by historians, and he is known in the books by the more orthodox Lafitte, this report will not break the tradition."
He does seem to have used Laffite in his own writing, and that's how he spells his name. But his descendants largely use the Lafitte spelling. Yet more mystery to add to his story.
Dave
Is this some sort of joke? You guys take the ramblings of an obviously disturbed person who believes that everything - from the color of the sky to the US Constitution- is about the jews and israel...and now he try's to disrespect America while he attempts to recreate history to justify his twisted religious beliefs...
Let's not forget some other American historical figures he has created...
Shlomo Washington - George's Dad
Shmendrick Jefferson - the son of Thomas
Ruven S. Grant - Ulysses cowardly brother
General Ira Custard -
Irving Lewis & Myron Clark
Abraham Ben-Lincoln
Willie Menachem Mays
JOM
JOM, you just set some kind of record. You actually had me up until your second paragraph, when you embarked once again on your idiotic Jew-bashing.
The point is that it's not just Ruvy but many other fevered souls who take this sort of nonsense seriously - including one or two who are sailing uncomfortably close to the White House right now.
Dread..you are right...on one hand we have Obama -a combination Christian cultists and radical islamist and Hillary - a devout socialist
Very Scary!!
JOM
Thanks for the catch Dredge...gee I guess I wont be getting that $12 Million Dollars promised me in a email from that foreign ambassador!!
Wow....you really set me straight! Truth or Fiction is just as credible as CNN or the NYT...so it MUST be true!!!
JOM
Dumbocrats - the Party of Rich White Racists!
"In actuality, the reality is nothing like that; people are leading their lives just as they always have here, Ruvy."
- Clavos
until the other shoe drops on that $500 billion we've wasted in Iraq...
Truth or Fiction is just as credible as CNN or the NYT...so it MUST be true!!!
Sure, JOM... if you say so, it must be true. At least they do their research, which is more than you ever do.
I would have pointed you to s n o p e s as well, except that for some reason it's a banned word on CoComment.
Ruvy,
Here's a quote from an opinion piece written by Robert Samuelson and published today on Real Clear Politics that is apropos to what you and I have been discussing on this thread:
" The truth is that there's a touch of hysteria to much current economic commentary that is, as yet, unjustified by what's actually happened to the economy. Yes, the housing slump is vicious, but at its peak, housing was only 5.5 percent of the economy, and the present slump is still only the fourth worst since World War II.
Whether a recession occurs -- a determination made by academic economists, usually after the fact -- probably won't affect most people. Economist Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley expects a "mild and short" recession, with peak unemployment of 5.6 percent or 5.7 percent in early 2009. According to economist David Wyss of Standard & Poor's, the average unemployment rate of the past 50 years is 5.6 percent. This would be a setback, but not a disaster."
Samuelson correctly points out that the effects of the much-vaunted (by the MSM) recession are not so far being felt by the vast majority of Americans, but that the potential for inflation is and should be a concern; unless, ironically, there IS a strong recession, in which case inflation will likely be dampened by it.
Let's return this thread to what it is really about. Does G-d intervene in affairs like the weather or battles to send a message? Note, please this story from Arutz Sheva is about a tornado that struck Jerusalem, Arkansas at about 08:40 CST, or 16:40 IST, 4:40 in the afternoon here. Now listen to this report from Ha'aretz.com, made in cooperation with Israel Channel 10. If you listen closely you'll note that the American president landed just before noon our time - just before four in the morning Arkansas time. Now, guess what your president was doing about four and a half hours after he landed here?
Coincidence, right?
Remember the shuttle that exploded over Texas carrying an Israeli astronaut? It exploded over Palestine, Texas. What problem does Israel face that could make it explode into war? P-A-L-E-S-T-I-N-E.
The coincidences get wierder as they pile up, but unlike some editors here, I cannot cheat and load in five links per comment....
Ruvy...please put down the bible for once and read a few macro and micro economy books! Unlike the welfare state that you live in where the economy must be proped up by us poor working stiffs over here...the US has cycles - no one starves - people cut back amd make ends meet - new businesses, tachnology and innovation eventually turn things around...
Ruvy...stop praying for the end of the world and death to America! Remember if we go under where will you get your monthly, welfare check, subsidized housing and free surplus cheese!! In addition, you wont have the skirt of the US Military to hide behind....
JOM....
Ruvy, Columbia didn't explode, it disintegrated. Although the town of Palestine received some of the debris, eyewitness accounts revealed that the shuttle actually began to break up over California, and wreckage was recovered from over 2,000 locations in Texas and Louisiana. Bear in mind also that east Texas is part of the Bible Belt, a region which of course abounds in towns with biblical names. With these things in mind, the fact that one of the debris locations should happen to be called Palestine seems even more like exactly what it is - a coincidence.
Don't go confusing people with facts, Doc. ;-)
JOM: "and now he try's to disrespect America while he attempts to recreate history to justify his twisted religious beliefs".
Actually, Ruvy's right on the money with some of this stuff.
The US did lose the War of 1812. Someone just forgot to tell the history departments putting the American school curriculum together.
It WAS a disaster for the US, and the only saving grace was that it won the peace by not having any of its captured territory taken away by the British at the negotiating table. It was also the US that sought the peace, after starting the war in the first place, not the British.
While Americans make a song and dance about their vuictory at the battle of New Orleans (literally, as Ruve points out), there were plenty of other battles during the war where the British gave the US a similar drubbing. There were many more of those in fact, with the US on the wrong end of the stick, than the other way around.
Like I say, everwhere else in the world (except in Britain, believe it or not, where it's hardly mentioned because of the simultaneous war with France, which was on a vast scale compared to this), the history books paint the true version, and that is NOT that it was a US victory.
That's the accurate version that corresponds to Ruvy's opening few paragraphs (not sure about the rest of Ruve's version though :)
Americans have called it the second war of independence, but a better label would be the Canadian War of Independence, since the US failed miserably in its bid to push the British out of North America (Jefferson thought it would be just a "matter of marching"), the British absolutely whooped the US invaders and that was what really gave birth to Canada's sense of itself as a nation.
It's always good to know the full history of these things before making a comment. My tip: don't ever put money on this, especially if arguing with a Canadian (no, I;m not). And just for the record, as an Aussie I'm no great lover of the English, either.
Just a believer in truth.
And on that last note, I remember seeing a kids' TV show that was on the box here many, many years back, that was set on the frontier of Canada and the US around the time of the war of 1812. The actors seemed to have American accents.
But the heroes, from memory, were: an Indian, and a British Red Coat.
Since the baddies (and they did seem to be really, really bad, in the mold of Mel Gibson's bad-guy brits in The Patriot)were all wearing blue jackets and thus were obviously Americans, I realised pretty quickly that it was a Canadian-produced show.
Classic example of history being written by the victors - rather than being rewritten for whatever bizarre purpose by the losers.
Okay, DD,
The Columbia didn't explode, it disintegrated in flames (due to a fire in the lift wing)and its remnants were spread over thousands of towns in America with Palestine (pronounced palesteen if my friend the retired cop from Texas is right) getting a rather large share of the débris.
JOM, [Edited]
I happen to be right about the War of 1812. I know my history a whole lot better than you ever will.
I don't pray for the destruction of your country. I have a lot of family there, and while I don't give a rat's ass whether you slither down into some methane swamp in Joizey or not, I do love my family.
Finally, I don't have to pray for the destruction of your country. Your dry drunk, dimbulb, dumbfuck, Wahhabi asshole licking fuckhead of a REPUBLICAN piece of shit from TEXAS is doing a good job of flushing you all down the toilet of penury. When you go, at least I won't have to read your stupid Jew-bashing comments any more.
Thank G-d for small favors....
Hummm.... Maybe I should speed things up and call up a couple of my friends who make the cement shoes....
And JOM,
We don't need your damned money or your fetid, stale cheese or any other of the shit your think yourselves so damned generous to provide. And we certainly do not need to hide behind your tattered skirt of defeat, betrayal and lies. Jews can outfight Americans any day of the week. We're defending our homes, not some damned SOP book.
The day your assholes get your chokehold off the throats of our people, we'll destroy the Arabs we need to, and kick the rest of you bastards out of OUR land. If that day never comes, then you'll see OUR BIBLE AND ITS PROPHECIES shovbed dpwn your lying throat. I sure hope you can swaller, JOM.
Mark may words, that day is coming.
We present Ruvy, the Victor Meldrew of Samaria. A most enjoyable and long overdue disembowelling of BC's stupidest commenter.
(Stan - and Colin if he drops by - may know what I'm talking about!)
Wait the Ruvy, the Jewish Nostradumbass, might be right! I have also started to witness Jewish Prophecy everywhere I turn! Why just this morning while watching the morning news...Sponge Bob Square Pants...I was witness to what Nostradumbass has been preaching about...it's all so clear...
It's a clear message from GOD himself..... Sponge Bog is actually John the Baptist (sponges hold water, water = baptism) and Patrick Star is Israle (star=star of David) and Squidward is the people of the jewish state -(always droning on and on and complaining about the non-squids (non-jews) and do nothing to change it). Furthermore, Mr. Crabs is the US ....a capitalist always keeping the employees down... Plankton is the Arabs.... always trying to destroy Western Civilization which is the Crusty Crab....
Gee its all so clear.......
JOM
EDITOR - Are personal threats of violence approved on this site??
Ruven...ironically the "toilet of penury" flushes right into your living room...yes...pretty ironic...
JOM
Can someone fix this thread?? We're all turning into Ruve.
Thread looks fine on my Mac, Stan. I wonder why.
When I looked at it earlier at work I could see that our man in Jerusalem had been up to his old tricks again, forgetting to close a tag.
He does this so often I humbly suggest that this sort of thing should generically be known on BC as 'pulling a Ruvy'.
Chris, any idea why people's HTML errors fuck up the page for some site users but not others?
My favourite BC quote so far, from JOM: "Disrespecting America".
STM..whats your fucking point???
JOM -
You work it out JOM ... why should the rest of us do all the hard work for ya.
Put that bloody brain cell to work mate
I saw a pack of comments in my inbox from this thread. When I saw it was just one man spouting off his steamed up self and getting bashed all over again, I got kind of disappointed. At least at Desicritics, I see some real intellect.
What's India got that the swamps of New Jersey don't have that folks who are writing English as a second, third or fourth language make some commenters whose native tongue is English sound like juveniles????
JOM, go try living in India for a few years - it may sharpen up that brain cell of yourn - maybe even make it multiply a bit.
Hear the man, Q'Un Homme. You could do worse. If China doesn't have the world by the balls over the next few decades, India will.
Bloody hell, Ruve. Don't even suggest to JOM that me and Doc are Indians.
He'll believe you. There's a HUGE difference between being WEST Indian and Indian.
'ey ... pass dat duchie, mon.
I dunno... if you listen to this guy, everything comes from India.
BTW, Doc, I had a look at your website. Very good ... I liked the one about the stuff that happens on TV. You should post it here. Great read.
The doc is so busy commenting here he has no time for his on blog no.
Why don't you join Blogcritics Doc? That way you'd have a bigger audience and still be able to re-post to your own site?
My fucking point is usually after 6 kisses, or 5 pints, or four lines, or three spliffs, or two hours dancing with one hot girl or, best yet, all the above!
What's yours?
yawwwnnnnnn....are you guys having fun in your circle jerk? Hey its time to change hands...
yawnnnnnn
Stan: Cheers, mate. Glad you could stop by. I think the TV one isn't really BC material. Well, maybe as a comment.
Chris: I've already joined, mate. Check it out. In fact, I believe you yourself may have actually commented on one or two of my articles...
I don't write nearly as much as I'd like, either on Blogcritics, my own blog or anywhere. For one thing it's finding the time, and for another I have pretty exacting standards, and if I start thinking about it too much I'll more often than not decide that the piece I'm writing isn't going anywhere, and abandon it. My best work tends to be the stuff I don't think about too much, like this piece about politics books. I rattled that one off in about half an hour.
JOM: You're starting to sound like Moonraven. But without the wit.
Where is MR, by the way? Is her month of Bambenexile up yet?
"Where is MR, by the way? Is her month of Bambenexile up yet?"
I think she's done, Doc.
"To infinity...And beyond!"
Despite her doggedly spirited, if a tad less than polite or reasoned, responses to some of our community, moonraven voluntarily chose to accede to a request to stop frequenting this site.
Doc, you can't have a battle of wits with JOM.
The poor bastard's got no ammo
JOM, we've all been edited old boy ... even the Doc. You ain't Robinson Crusoe.
I reckon MR should come back. At least she provided us all with many hours of fun, even on the reciving end of her acerbic wit.
Why was she asked to leave Chris?? She wasn't that bad. And wasn't it all just a bit of a hoot anyway ... a persona she'd dreamed up?
I think the final straw was that last, unacceptable (in anyone's book) comment she made about Clav's missus.
It may have been a bit of a hoot to some extent, but in the end the way she turned every thread on the bloody site into an insult match (which I'll grant you took no little skill) just made the whole site stop being fun for a whole bunch of people.
That said, I valued her insight and alternative viewpoint on subjects she did actually know something about - Latin America particularly.
"That said, I valued her insight and alternative viewpoint on subjects she did actually know something about - Latin America particularly."
As someone else who knows something about Latin America, I found her comments to be extremely one-sided; to the point of tunnel vision; and often, in the interests of axe-grinding, not truthful.
And not just about Chavez, either.
She's a propagandist; not at all balanced. I realize most (if not all) of us are to one extent or another, but she is far and away one of the most partisan commenters I've ever seen on the site.
That said, I did not ask for her to be censured at any time.
It was actually an apparent champion of free speech, who has attacked me many times for "censoring" comments, that wrote to the owners requesting that moonraven be banned.
Clavos never called for the banning of moonraven, not even in response to her ghastly remarks about his wife, which quite impressed me, as many Americans are far too sensitive about language and seem to lack the robustness found in Brits or Aussies. It was this over-sensitivity that led to her demise in my understanding.
Her comment was unacceptable but could have been dealt with by routine comment editing. On the other hand, by her determined refusal to avoid direct conflict, which was a response to the aggressive hostility with which her first comments on BC, made under her real name, were received, she was creating a pretty destructive atmosphere in the politics space. At least Dave Nalle has one less person undermining his exotic political perception, so not all was lost!
...asked to leave - ?
and here I thought that she had developed some common sense and had recognized a lose/lose situation...shit
Ruven - when you return - get out your bible and analog up an explanation for all this bad weather here in the US suppressing #s in our primaries...what is He up to - ?
You blokes need to get more robust ;-)
you bet...why when I was an innocent young believer I had to walk five miles barefoot through knee deep snow and coatless through howling icy winds to get to the polls
troll, unfortunately not!
STM, speak for yourself, Sheila!!
troll - you were never innocent!!!
Enough of the sheila business Rose.
We know where all the girly men live. Up your way
Ah Ruvy, sometimes you lull us into a false sense of security with your cogent comments, but ultimately we can always count on you to remind us that you're moon-barking mad with a piece like this. Nice recounting of the history, though.
Dave