By Andrew L. Jaffee

Tomorrow is an important day for the U.S. as we’ll be choosing our next president. Yes, the stakes are high, but we need to have faith in our wondrous democratic system, artfully and presciently crafted by our great Founders. No matter who wins, we must respect the will of the electorate. We must all keep cool heads. Therefore I offer some comic relief; a chill pill; a reminder that humor is one of the highest human attributes. Meet the real Joe the Plumber:

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A judge in India has summoned two Hindu gods, Ram and Hanuman, to help resolve a property dispute. …

Talk about appealing to a higher power:

… Judge Singh sent out two notices to the deities, but they were returned as the addresses were found to be “incomplete”.

This prompted him to put out adverts in local newspapers summoning the gods.

“You failed to appear in court despite notices sent by a peon and later through registered post. You are herby directed to appear before the court personally”, Judge Singh’s notice said. …

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By Phyllis Chesler

In the midst of my unshakable preoccupation with Hell, I suddenly found myself flung back into the Garden of Earthly Delights, where for six full hours I experienced holiness right here on earth. Time stood still, time no longer existed: a small, sure sign of eternity.

Ambassadors from many universes all came together to celebrate a peaceable, celestial, wedding. I felt as if we were participating in an episode of Star Wars—except we were not actors and the gathering was both real and yet beyond reality. So many different kinds of people were there. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, pagans, and atheists, feminists and traditionalists, leftists, and rightists, gay and straight, and people with no overriding view of the events of the day whatsoever.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Marxists of the world: you can get a lock of Che Guevara’s hair! Now you can wear your Che t-shirt AND attach a lock of his own hair to your dreadlock coif. Don’t be outdone by your Marxist comrades. Get out to organize and represent in style. Reframe the debate. Revisionize. Take it to the man. Raise class consciousness. Be the first to bid on a piece of communist, revolutionary history:

Strands of hair taken from the body of Ernesto Che Guevara by a former CIA officer involved in his death are being sold at an auction in the US.

They are part of a lot also including photos of Che Guevara’s dead body and fingerprints taken after he was killed in Bolivia 40 years ago. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

This is just precious:

The French magazine Paris Match touched up a photograph of President Nicolas Sarkozy on his US holiday, making his figure more svelte.

Leading news weekly L’Express printed before and after shots, showing a distinct tightening of the area it called poignees d’amour (love handles).

L’Express quotes Paris Match as saying the president’s seating position made the bulge look more prominent.

Paris Match said it had tried adjusting the lighting on the picture.

“The correction was exaggerated during the printing process,” the magazine told L’Express. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

I cannot for the life of me understand people who claim that humans are superior to flora and fauna, or that man has dominion over all creation. I prefer to see humankind as stewards, recognizing the right of the natural world to chart its own evolutionary course, and admitting that a healthy environment is good for humanity (as in Adam Smith’s enlightened self interest). For example, animals are obviously capable of the same emotions that some people covet (or do not have, e.g. the terrorists): emotions like empathy:

Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live. …

“Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one,” said [Dr. David] Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and other illnesses. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Princess Di. Fergie. And now Norway’s Martha Louise. You gotta wonder how taxpayers in these parliamentary monarchies continue to foot the bill for their royalty’s zany, crazy, exploits:

Norway’s Princess Martha Louise says she has psychic powers and can teach people to communicate with angels. …

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If the useful idiots only knew what they were doing… A short film from Jewlarious at Aish.com pokes fun at the PC crowd’s desire for boycotting Israel. It’ll have you splitting your sides:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Did the blind contractor’s bridge even make it across the river? If so, how would he have known — for sure, not second-hand? The blind leading the blind? Idiots leading the blind or vice versa? How could a blind man update a draftsman’s blueprint? I guess this is what you get when billionaire communist/capitalists bid work out to private contractors (would Marx even understand this sentence?). From Reuters:

A Chinese court has jailed two officials after they let a blind contractor build a bridge which collapsed during construction and injured 12 people, the official Xinhua news agency said Monday. …

“After the blind contractor changed the blueprint, he carried out the work only using a roughly drawn draft of the plan, which caused the bridge to collapse,” the report said.

Xinhua did not explain how the contractor was able to run the project considering his inability to see.

Ah… yeah…

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Are you part of the iPod phenomena? If so, then you can’t be without your iTunes when sitting on the can. Keep in mind that if you do purchase the Atech Flash iCarta Stereo Dock with Bath Tissue Holder, and use it a lot, my pseudo-diagnosis is that you may have digestive problems, or a touch of Freud’s anal retentiveness:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Please forget about politics for a few minutes, and take a look at the wonder which is springtime: From a walk with two dear friends yesterday: wildflowers, a snake, a swallowtail butterfly, verdant hillsides, ancient trees, a babbling brook, some strange, other-worldly plant… Click on any of the thumbnail images below to enlarge. I know the thumbnails are a little hard to see, but click and you’ll be surprised:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

When I asked Google Maps to “Get directions” from New York to London, step #23 advised me to “Swim across the Atlantic Ocean 3,462 mi,” get out of the water on the shores of northern France, drive 200 miles up the coast, and then cross the Channel to the UK. The map even shows me which pier I should jump off into the Atlantic to start my epic Leif Ericsson quest.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Where else in the Middle East would baseball be permitted, except Israel? Anywhere else in the region, the game would be decried as a Western cultural invasion and, of course, lots of heads would have to be chopped off. You know, baseball represents all those “evil” values like apple pie, hot dogs (kosher, of course), democracy, having a good time at the ballpark, etc. Be that as it may, the new league’s founders have found “challenges:”

Ken Holtzman, Ron Blomberg and Art Shamsky are among the former major leaguers who will manage teams in the new Israel Baseball League. …

Shamsky joked about having to learn a new language so he could argue with umpires, reading out the Hebrew translations of “Are you blind?” and “Open your eyes.” …

“Getting the chance to play baseball again, it’s like getting a second chance at something most people don’t get a first chance at,” he said. “If nothing else, this will make my mother extremely happy.”

Just wait for the left-wing Jews to object…

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The people have spoken in the U.S. The precious gift of democracy has been savored once again. Such unimaginable freedom we have, and yet, there are those who take liberty for granted, and live (talk) the illusion that the grass is greener “over there” — wherever “there” is. But think of those who lived through the Soviet years, or those who now live in the “People’s Republic” of China. Listen to this: Some poor Chinese shmuck had a truly brilliant marketing scheme for selling condoms. He put the images of Lei Feng and Mao Zedong on the wrappers. You’ve got to hand it to him: what a savvy way to get product recognition. The guy had balls; he had to know for sure that such a marketing ploy would insult the glorious memory of the revolution! Of course the “authorities” shut his business down and “accused [the vendor] of violating advertising and product quality laws.” From Reuters:

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by Bill Levinson
This is your brain

This is your brain on MoveOn.org’s Action Forum:

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