Hashem gave the land of Israel to Jews. The US and EU have been conducting a nonstop campaign to take our land away from us and give it to Islamic terrorists. Hashem is having his say and teaching them a lesson. Will they learn?

When times are good there is no incentive to innovate or be efficient. PS you think that China or African nations are super-efficient?

unfortunately, a lot of people, including myself from time to time, are motivated by a "I must have more" gathering of resources mentality, and I mean resources in the broadest sense of the word, to make themselves feel satisfied and secure. Not happy But satisfied And safe, financially I mean. What is financially ok differs from individual to individual. Middle way? Not sure there is one buddy. When you figure out how the mechanics of the thing would work then let me know. You're essentially asking and requiring that ordinary everyday sort of people change the way that they think. Not an easy task mate.

Does this mean that during the economic boom a few years back the US and Europe were persuing a different policy? Re US, the US supports us constantly. It would be far easier for the US to turn its back on us but it hasn't.

Leftist ideas are a symptom of the cultural crisis Mr London speaks of. Defeatism, lack of confidence in the superiority of Western values, multi-cultural hogwash, pacifism in the face of threats, the dumbing-down of the educational system, the even greater dumbing-down of the media, & the triumph of political correctness are the real symptoms of cultural decline. Nostalgia for ideas which failed long ago is another symptom. I'm no great fan of consumerism as the basis of one's life. I would agree that it is mindless & meaningless. But that's not exactly what Mr London is saying. Actually, I'm not even sure what Mr London is saying ....... I doubt if he knows what he's saying either.

with little to back it up. I think Mr. London's opening lines says it all.

Just a little psycho-babble on my part. Like many liberals, Mr London feels guilty. He's guilty about the incredible success of the West, guilty about the enormous increase in the material well-being of capitalist, Western societies. And, also like many liberals, he feels that we should be punished for success. Liberals don't like winning - to them, winning is somehow immoral. They don't believe this as it applies to themselves - they like money too. I doubt if Mr London will be giving up his standard of living & go live in a cave. That's only what he recommends for the rest of us. In case Mr London reads these talkbacks, I have a message for him. The West did not cause poverty in the under-developed world. I come from a Third-World country & let me tell you, we did it all by ourselves. And as for poverty in Western countries, much of it is caused by life-style choices. While I believe in helping the unfortunate, I believe in helping only the DESERVING unfortunate, not those who made lousy life-style choices. Modern capitalism certainly has it's bad side but generally speaking, it has delivered the greatest good to the largest number of people in history.

DEMOCRAT You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You push for higher taxes so the government can provide cows for everyone. REPUBLICAN You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So? SOCIALIST You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow. COMMUNIST You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get 2 Qts. It is expensive and sour. CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows. BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE You have two cows. Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain. AMERICAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself , and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up. FRENCH CORPORATION You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. You go to lunch and drink wine. Life is good. JAPANESE CORPORATION You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school. GERMAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blue-eyed and blond, drink lots of beer, and give excellent quality milk. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year and nobody likes them. Secretly you’d like to kill all cows that are different, but that didn’t work the last time, either. ITALIAN CORPORATION You have two cows but you don't know where they are. You break for a nice pasta lunch. Who needs cows? Life is bellissimo. RUSSIAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You have some vodka. You count them and now you see four cows. You have some more vodka. You count them again and learn you have 40 cows. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have. TALIBAN CORPORATION You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two. You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts. You get a $40 billion grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but you use the money to buy weapons and poppy seeds. BIN LADEN CORPORATION You have two cows. They go into hiding. Occasionally they send audio tapes of their mooing. POLISH CORPORATION You have two bulls. Employees are regularly maimed and killed trying to milk them. BELGIAN CORPORATION You have one cow. The cow is schizophrenic. Sometimes the cow thinks that she's French, other times that she's Flemish. The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow. The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk The cow asks permission to be cut in half. The cow dies happy. CALIFORNIA CORPORATION You have millions of cows. They make real California cheese. Only five speak English. Most are illegal. Arnold likes the ones with the big udders IRAQI Corporation You have two cows. They’re conjoined at the hind quarters like Siamese Twins. Although surrounded by lush meadows, they’re so busy fighting each other about which side of the road to graze on and in which barn to sleep, they don’t notice who’s trying to steal their milk.

In the year 2008, the Lord once again came unto Noah, who was now living in the United States, and said: "As once before, the earth has become wicked and I will put an end to all flesh. Build another Ark and save 2 of every living thing along with a few good humans." He gave Noah the blueprints, saying: "You have 6 months to build the Ark before I will start unending rain for 40 days and 40 nights." Six months later, the Lord looked down and saw Noah sitting in his yard weeping - but no Ark. "Noah!" He roared, "I'm about to start the rain! Where is the Ark?" "Forgive me, Lord," begged Noah, "but things have changed. 1. I needed a building permit. 2. I've been arguing with the inspectors about the need for a sprinkler system for the Ark. 3. My neighbors claim that I've violated the neighborhood zoning laws by building the Ark in my yard and exceeding the height limitations. 4. We had to go to the Development Appeal Board for a decision. 5. Then the Department of Transportation demanded that I post a bond for future costs of moving power lines and other overhead obstructions, to clear the passage for the Ark's move to the sea. I told them that the sea would be coming to the Ark, but they wouldn’t hear of it. 6. Getting the wood was another problem. There's a ban on cutting local trees in order to save the spotted owl. I tried in vain to convince the environmentalists that I needed the wood to save the owls. 7. When I started gathering the animals, an animal rights group sued me. They insisted that I was confining wild animals against their will. They argued the accommodations were too restrictive, and it was cruel and inhumane to put so many animals into such a confined space. 8. Then the EPA ruled that I couldn't build the Ark until they'd conducted an environmental impact study on your proposed flood. 9. I'm still trying to resolve a complaint with the Human Rights Commission on how many minorities I'm supposed to hire for my building crew. 10. Immigration and Naturalization is checking the green-card status of most of the people who want to work. 11. The Trade Unions say I can't use my sons. They insist I have to hire only Union workers with Ark-building experience. 12. To make matters worse, the IRS seized all my assets, claiming I'm trying to leave the country illegally with endangered species. So, forgive me, Lord, but it would take at least 10 years for me to finish this Ark.’ Suddenly the skies cleared, the sun began to shine, and a rainbow stretched across the sky. Noah looked up in wonder and asked, 'You mean you're not going to destroy the world?' 'No,' said the Lord. 'The government which you elected beat me to it.'

Are you sure you never lived in Israel? Sounds like you know how our bureaucracy works. Or rather, doesn't work.

Great comment. Made me smile. Anyway, there is a belief in Judaism that a happy person is one who is satisfied with his lot. If we all applied this to our lives, we would stop chasing materialistic values, pehaps consume a bit less and maybe give a little more charity.

Dear M. Hartley, certainly you do not consider yourself a racist (or person filled with ethnic hatred) – so you would not write anything racist (or full of ethnic hatred). Certainly you consider yourself an intelligent person – so you control what you write. If I am right then please, explain me why your sick Polish joke IS NOT racist (or filled with ethnic hatred). Or maybe I am not right? Have a nice day.

Your racist comment about Poland is sick.And the rest of that post is infantile. You are either very young,or very old. Either way, definitely dopey.

By the time you were to finish digging through my background, you'd pretty much run out of "ethnicities" of which to make sport which is why I've learned to laugh at myself more than at anyone else. Maybe you didn't read or understand the rest of the "megillah," but my own and "adopted" nationality got more than its share of little jabs. Since you didn't complain about digs at other nationalities, those must be acceptable, whereas those directed at Polish folks are "ethnic hatred." Isn't that just a bit convenient if not outright hypocritical? Also, I can state unequivocally that nothing and nobody can induce me to hate and screw up how I feel. On the other hand, it seems that people who look for "hate" have an uncanny knack for finding it. What I don't understand is your admission that a dumb joke offended you. A sense of humor, I'm sure, would be much better for your disposition. Some day, when the world is all is peaches and cream, you may want to try it. By then, of course, you won't need it.

More than likely I'd appreciate your comments, if I knew you. I start to worry about myself when people of a certain mentality compliment me :-) As for you having zeroed in on just one joke, some of my observations put forth in post # 15 apply to you, too.

i had only one . i do not know if it is stolen or lost or die or it is a dream i do not know if i can get it back or i would die before that .. but sure i know it is my cow and it is only one cow not two . so your problem is in the two cow but if it is only one how to devide it .you can give somemilk to the others that have no cows but the others do not like only to have cow with or without milk even if all the children are hungry but he wants the cows

Consumerism didn't cause it. To many loan sharks, with too much money caused the problem. Banks borrowed 30 to 1... to buy more and more mortgages, and anything else that would boost their profits. They were making money hand over fist.....which had to be lent out to some poor smuck, to keep the interest rolling into the banks coffers. This money has to be reinvested. It just can't sit their doing nothing. Therefore the banks loaned to anyone who had a pulse.....even some people that didn't have a pulse. To much money, chasing a smaller segment of reliable people, became the problem. Bad loans were placed because the banks didn't have any good creditors to pawn the money off on. They had to loan the money to someone to make interest on the money. How much money can be printed before it just becomes a warehouse full of worthless paper? Eventually the building is full of more paper than their are people to lend it too. Investors run a dot com scam....running up tech stocks with funny money. Investors run a housing scam running up housing prices with funny money. Investors run a commodities scam running up commodity prices with funny money. These banks and investors have to much money to invest. They have collapsed every industry that they can push the money into. The banks ran housing out of business....they ran tech companies out of business. They ran up gasoline and ran the car companies and airlines out of business. And the government props up these loan sharks, with to much money to invest....in the first place. Who will the loan shark banks, loan to, when all the companies go out of business? If anything....the government should be closing down the bankers......and bailing out the businesses that contribute jobs and products to the consumer.... that can be sold to the public at large. Without an engine.....you don't really need any gasoline to run it. Without any industries survivng.....you really don't need any money to buy anything. Retirement savings, and investments in a capitalist market, that is running so fast that the money can't find a reliable client to loan such money too......is an invitation to disaster. The allowance of banks to just keep borrowing at 30 to 1.........and all the other shinanigans of the finacial system, is what has brought the entire financial system to it's knees. Some controls have to be monitored and controlled like a carburator of an engine. The money chasing corpses is totally out of control. The loan shark investors and banks have flooded the building full of gasoline,(money), for a little beetle bug. The idiot outside realizes that the building is full of gasoline but just keeps pumping it in anyways. Explosion anyone? What is pathetic about this little experiment.....is that the guy figured out if he offered the gasoline to guys buying homes.....that they would store it for him and want some too. Gasoline can only go so high in price, before everyone starts to figure out that they are sitting on a bunch of worthless fuel. Then no one will buy the crap.....you owe a bunch of money that you borrowed for the stupid gas......and you figure out that its better to walk away from the whole financial mess. The house isn't worth the paper it was printed on. But the guy that sold it to you said that it was a bargain. As long as money keeps chasing investors uncontrolled......these waves of prosperity and decline will keep continueing. If you pump the accelerator to many times......you flood out the engine with gasoline. The car becomes a worthless heap of metal that just sits there for awhile.....until the excess fuel evaporates. Do we need more fuel at a time like this? Do we need to be pumping up the banks, who supply fuel, when it is killing the financial engine in the first place? The banks are the problem to begin with. Save the companies....

#9 WOW that was pretty good. Just goes to show you how messed up we are. You got us americans pegged down tho who wants to fess up how messed up we are.