Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume IV: Sex

"Every generation," the saying goes, "thinks it invented sex." Wrong. The Jews invented sex -- at least, the dirty, perverted, sexy sex whose kinky hotness is erotically destroying civilization as we know it. From "The Secret Sex Life of the Jews" [http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/10/19/secret-sex-life-of-the-jews/]:

No class of men appears to be quite as sex-obsessed as the Orthodox Jews and the rabbinate. If you compare the religious texts of the various world religions, you will find that all of them—with the single exception of Judaism—maintain a high moral tone throughout. They don’t keep harping on about breasts and penises, prostitutes and semen. Judaism does.
[...]
Jews certainly have sex on the brain. And they have transmitted their obsession to the rest of society. We have all become infected, to a certain degree, with the sex virus.
[...]
Of one thing we can be reasonably certain: any society that attracts large numbers of Jews can expect within a few years to enter a spiral of decadence. Moral anarchy sets in. Sexual promiscuity throws open its Pandora’s box of evils. We saw it in Weimar Germany.

We see it gathering pace in America today. We see it above all in Israel, a society of fanatical settlers and rabid right-wing rabbis: a country surely doomed to implode from within, sooner or later, under the pressure of its own moral and military excesses.

I cannot help feeling that a great storm is brewing and that only a military coup or revolution can now save America. Save it from what? From the spiritual cancer that is consuming it from within, and from the iniquitous wars into which it is being lured— Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and soon perhaps Iran—on behalf of a foreign nation and its disinfo agents in America.

Unless a miracle soon occurs and some charismatic leader comes to our rescue, an unimaginably bleak future surely awaits us: a future in which the only consolations left to us will be mindless entertainment, drugs, alcohol, sexual intoxication — and suicide.

This is ridiculous of course -- anyone who thinks suicide will save them from the endless march of Jewish sexy sex obviously has never heard of autoerotic asphyxiation (thanks Hebrew school!).

That being said, you can't deny that she has a point. Jews are overwhelmingly liberal on issues of sex and sexuality. Seventy percent support gay marriage. Ninety percent support legalized abortion in most cases. Ninety four percent of Jews reported having premarital sex. Shameful, I know. And as this exclusive behind the scenes footage of a typical Bar Mitzvah demonstrates, dirty, filthy sex lies at the very center of what it means to be a Jew:

Citicare

Citibank just emailed me to let me know that I have some rewards points expiring at the end of the year. Since I am mandated to use them or lose them, I dutifully logged onto the Citibank "Thank You" website to see what my ~6000 points could buy me.

The website is a disaster. Every page has failed to load at least once if not multiple times that I've clicked on it, making it virtually impossible to browse for items (let alone filter my searches). Once it spontaneously logged me out of my account, causing me to have to start everything over. I finally found a product that I wanted (a cast iron skillet), but I had to enter a new shipping address, and I can't do that because each time I click "submit" the page times out and I have to reinput the information.

In conclusion, clearly Citibank is a failure and must be repealed, and the entire project of private capitalist enterprise has been discredited.

Project Runway All-Stars 3: Initial Thoughts

They don't give us any time to relax, do they? The week after Season 11 of Project Runway ends (and immediately following the reunion special), we begin a new season of all-stars! Some first thoughts:

* When they started to announce the designers' mentor, Jill and I squealed with excitement in anticipation of Joanna Coles. And then it was Zanna Roberts Rassi. Such a quick mutual high-to-low is a rare thing.

* I can't believe there's already been three seasons of all-stars (and that doesn't include the special one episode all-stars challenge they did when the show moved to Lifetime. Everyone forgets about that).

* Andy South changes gender and becomes Ari South, and she still isn't the designer whose look has altered the most. That honor goes to Jeffrey Sebelia, who now looks like an extra from a Jeff Foxworthy routine. Elena doesn't count because Elena looks like a completely new person every single episode, thanks to an infinite array of hairstyles.

* I'm glad Viktor didn't go home. I liked his look and generally like his aesthetic, and think he has more to show. I think Melissa was the clear loser of the challenge though (Korto was a bit lucky to be safe, I thought, and Daniel's usual insanity coin-flipped the wrong way).

* I'm not Seth Aaron fan, but that outfit rocked. Also, his vibe is now more "L'oreal executive vice president" than his previous "hyperactive clown." It's an improvement.

* Elena wins her first ever challenge! No complaints by me -- the look was very cool and very her. I have no doubt, however, that she will still bring the crazy this season.

* Also, I understand she meant well, but greeting the guest judge/theme with "my dad will be so psyched" is probably not the preferred reaction.

* Irena's dress! Va-va-voom! Definitely could have seen that on top.

Currency Manipulation

The Washington Post issues its endorsements for local Virginia House of Delegate seats. All four are currently occupied by Republicans, and there discussion of each race begins by observing that, in essence, the incumbent is a lunatic. There's the one who was one "of a handful of lawmakers to speak out against an otherwise highly qualified judicial nominee who happened to be gay." There's the one who "voted to study whether Virginia should develop its own currency as a hedge against financial chaos." There's the one whose "contempt for homosexuals is surpassed only by his disregard for women who have abortions; he suggested that God exacts vengeance on women who abort their fetuses by assuring that their next pregnancy will produce a disabled child." And finally there's the one "who has tormented gays, immigrants and women with his right-wing views."

Well, that makes life easy doesn't it? Not so fast! Two of these four somehow managed to get the Post's endorsement anyway. That's because it appears that the Post's only criteria for its endorsement was a vote for a transportation bill the paper thought was important. Two of the incumbents voted for the bill and garnered an endorsement, two opposed it and saw the nod go to their challenger. Simple as that.

In case you're curious, the lucky duo who got the endorsement were Mr. Won't Vote for the Gay and Mr. Create our own Currency (incredibly, the Post managed to call both "pragmatists" for their transportation vote in the same paragraph that they opened by detailing their extremism).

And They Never Saw a Latte Again

Some folks are buzzing about the fact that Conde Nast is ending its internship program after being sued for not paying its workers. This has led to some gloating from libertarian sorts, who are elated to inform us that when government forbids for-profit employees from working for free (or for pennies), sometimes the opportunity to work at starvation wages goes away!

Color me unconvinced. I'm truly unconvinced that nobody at Conde Nast will now be doing ... whatever it is that the interns did that allegedly kept them in the office 12 hours at day at $12 a day. The difference is now the person (a) won't be called an "intern" and (b) will get something approximating an entry-level worker's salary. This is not a bad thing. Indeed, it is kind of the point. Whatever wonderful experiences one gets by being one's own Devil Wears Prada extra is now available to people who actually need their jobs to pay money.

The 47%, Redux

Maine Governor Paul LePage (R) takes a page out of Mitt Romney's book (via):

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) took a page from the Mitt Romney playbook when he told a conservative audience at an event last week that 47 percent of able-bodied people in the state don't work, the Bangor Daily News reported Tuesday.

[...]

"Number two, when you talk about workforce development, it really means that the people that -- about 47 percent of able-bodied people in the state of Maine don't work," LePage said. A woman can then be heard on the recording reacting to that figure, to which LePage reiterated "About 47 percent. It's really bad."

Politifact rates this statement "mostly true" because the real figure undoubtedly contains two digits followed by a percent symbol.

Sweet Home Alabamacare

One of the interesting points about Obamacare's supposed unpopularity is that it combines the people who don't like it because it's liberal socialist communist overreach, and the people who don't like it because they're holding out for single-payer. The GOP, naturally, really represents only the latter constituency. And while such persons do represent the majority of the loyal Obamacare opposition, breaking the numbers out is rather revealing. 41% of Americans support Obamacare, and another 12% oppose it because they wish it was more liberal. Only 38% of Americans oppose it on conservative grounds. To put that in perspective, 38% is roughly the vote share President Obama managed to win in Alabama in 2012.

Now this does raise the question of who exactly these 12% not-liberal-enoughers are. I, for example, might wish Obamacare was more liberal than it is, but I still won't say I oppose it. There are some Americans who really are left-wing enough so they oppose, on substance, mainstream liberal policy objectives, but I don't think they total 12%. There's probably some remnants of the firebagger wing of the party mixed in here. And there are probably some people who, unlike me, will vote "opposed" in a poll question of this sort of they can conceive of any policy they'd prefer to Obamacare, even if they don't find the law itself to be particularly objectionable.

In all cases, to say such people won't vote Republican is not to say they will vote Democratic, but obviously to the extent that 12% has a lean, it will lean in favor of the Democratic Party.

Quote of the Weekend

Talk radio host and far-right extremist Alex Jones hosted a gun rights rally at The Alamo, which concluded by raffling off various high powered firearms. Scott Eric Kauffman remarks:

Because nothing says “America is a meritocracy!” more than a game of chance in which the winner obtains enough firepower to take out the losers.