Jewish Musings, Monday, 1/23/2017

[savtele]

What’s on your mind — how to make kugel? This week’s Torah reading? Life goals? Prayer? We are all engaged in weight loss/weight maintenance journeys and we are all Jewish or at least interested in Judaism. We like to eat, we like to discuss. It is our goal here to provide each other support on our journeys, to share experiences, to call on our rich cultural heritage and texts, and to help each other grow spiritually
Some of us take weekly turns starting the thread:

Angelika
Holly
Lee
Louise
Lynne
Peachy

And for those of you that stop by to read this thread without posting - you are welcome to do that but you are also welcome to chime in!

[savtele]

Boker Tov, All! Frieda - I left you a message last evening - I agree with you on so much of this. Personally, I don't think he will be able to do much of what he promised - and I really do believe that, at this time, most of our ire and frustration is directed at his vulgarity & crassness.

I cannot hope that he will be an unsuccessful president. It seems to me that is much like hoping that he burns the house down - while we are all still living here! However, one thing I am noticing - there seems to be an animosity toward the news media in this administration. Kellyanne Conway's comment about "alternative facts" that we should all be looking at (Meet the Press) made me laugh - where else in the world are we invited to look at "alternative facts?" (perhaps my taxes, or the next time I'm stopped for speeding?)

I think in many ways, we are in more danger from our Republican Congress than from our president. I believe we need to be very aware of what they are up to & let them know what we want them to do! And if, like Paul Ryan, they turn off their phones lines, we need to send them postcards.

Meanwhile:
I've been looking at the presidents that lost the popular, then won the electoral votes. The 1st one, John Quincy Adams, 6th president, in 1824, not only lost the popular, he was unable to win a majority in the electoral vote, and the vote was decided by the House of Representatives. Andrew Jackson (one of his opponents) raged against this "corrupt bargain", resigned the Senate, and ran for president again, successfully, in 1828. Adams became the 2nd president to fail to win a 2nd term (his father, John Adams, had been the 1st) - one of the main reasons being that he never quite was able to shake the corruption accusations.
In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes, then in 1888, Benjamin Harrison, both only served 1 term after not winning the popular vote. Only George W Bush (2000) won a 2nd, by then war-time, term.

[brgmsn]

I think it's unrealistic that this misogynist, racist, sexist bully will change. He has no interest in anything succeeding but himself. He showed that when he said terrible things before the election, he showed it standing at the CIA when all he could talk about was his numbers. I'm sorry, but I cannot support someone who has shown us over and over what he is. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. He has hired the most singularly unqualified people to run important areas of government, their only qualifications being how much they donated to his campaign.
I marched so he hears loud and clear that he cannot dictate what the press says and does not say. That's how Germany started decades ago, with press control.

[lee058]

Good morning everybody. Hope you are all well. Re Trump and his cronies/henchmen: The whole idea of "alternative facts" doesn't make me laugh. It makes me afraid. It brings strong thoughts of the book "1984" and how everything was controlled. Words have power; when truth is considered unimportant, that opens the door to manipulation. If manipulation becomes widespread, then reporters and reputable news sources can become threatened. I don't want to see this happen in the USA!!!

I'll be back later. Have a peaceful day, Lee

[savtele]

I just came across this on FB -thought I would share it here:

I didn't write this. I copied and pasted
THIS. This is why I'm afraid for the next four years... because it goes beyond "not transparent" and crosses into outright lies. On DAY ONE, over something as trivial as crowd numbers.
(The following words are not mine, sadly... they were copied and pasted in a friend's post without attribution, so I spread them further. Feel free to keep it going!)
If you are puzzled by the bizarre "press conference" put on by the White House press secretary this evening (angrily claiming that Trump's inauguration had the largest audience in history, accusing them of faking photos and lying about attendance), let me help explain it. This spectacle served three purposes:
1. Establishing a norm with the press: they will be told things that are obviously wrong and they will have no opportunity to ask questions. That way, they will be grateful if they get anything more at any press conference. This is the PR equivalent of "negging," the odious pick-up practice of a particular kind of horrible man (e.g., Donald Trump).
2. Increasing the separation between Trump's base (1/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong—that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong—they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here—likely to pay off—is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as "fake news" (because otherwise they'd be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.)
3. Creating a sense of uncertainty about whether facts are knowable, among a certain chunk of the population (which is a taking a page from the Kremlin, for whom this is their preferred disinformation tactic). A third of the population will say "clearly the White House is lying," a third will say "if Trump says it, it must be true," and the remaining third will say "gosh, I guess this is unknowable." The idea isn't to convince these people of untrue things, it's to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine.
This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump's White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as this, just imagine what else they'll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. It's going to get real bad.

[lee058]

Hi again everybody. DS and I played Scrabble with a neighbor today, and she had something interesting for a snack for us, which I wanted to tell you about. They are technically cookies but have pretty good nutritional value. The brand is "BelVita" and they come in lots of different flavors. I tried the mini mixed berry ones, and they had something like 45 mini-cookies (!) for about 200 calories, if I remember correctly. That's right, 45 mini-cookies in each individual bag. I checked the price online and they are $3 a box, with several bags per box. I think each bag had 3 grams of protein. Sorry, I don't remember how many carbs or sugars they had, but they probably have a website. Anyway, I thought you might like to learn about them.

BTW, I won both games of Scrabble, and in the first game, I made TWO seven-letter words (doggies and teeters).

Have a peaceful rest of the day, Lee

[hollygail]

I'm not sure when I'll make the transition from denial to acceptance. I still can't believe he won the election. I just can't believe it. I have the intellectual knowledge that he did, but I can't believe it's true...

I saw pictures (and sent a link to most of you; Lee I don't have your email so I couldn't send it to you too) from around the world of women's marches in solidarity with the one in Washington, DC. It was amazing! So many cities in the US and outside of the US! So many people in so many places!

Next steps, ladies?

[louise]

The thing Angelika was writing about with the numbers etc. On the one hand I couldn't believe the first press conference was spent on such immature stuff (I had a bigger sweet sixteen than you did)but on the more serious side what happens when the report is about body counts, dollars spent, or other critical information. The man will say anything with no regard for its veracity and then send someone else to jump and down and say it some more, louder. Very scary.