ARCHIVES – RABBI SOL SOLOMON – Page 58

Dave’s Gone By Skit: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #27 (10/30/2011): BLACKOUT

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #27 (10/30/2011): Blackout

Aired Oct. 29, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91jvDZjIAOc

Shalom Dammit, this is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of October 30th, 2011.

Well, winter has come to Greeley, USA. It’s only the end of October, but this is Colorado, so of course, we get snow before Halloween. Who knows? Maybe by Lincoln’s Birthday we’ll have beach weather.

But this being the first snowstorm of the season, all gehenna breaks loose. You’d think Northern Colorado had never seen snow before. It’s one thing when Florida gets a dusting, and cars go sliding across the road – mostly Jews leaving the dinner buffet to get home before noon.

And in the northeast, the TV weatherpeople go berserk. “First winter blast! Mothers ambushing the supermarket! Buy rocksalt, find your candles, don’t park your car on alternate sides of the street Tuesdays, Thursdays and every fifth Sunday when there’s a full moon and Jupiter is rising in the guest house of Saturn!” Two inches of snow, and you’d think polar bears were threatening to galumph down Fifth Avenue.

But Colorado? Without snow, the only thing Vail would be known for is Walgreens and syphilis. You don’t need Nostradamus to predict that an early season storm will dump white stuff on trees, roads, backyards, powerlines. Snow and Colorado go together like borscht and sour cream. Like David and Bathsheba. Like Pakistan and duplicity.

So why does it take two and a half days for Xcel Energy to get the lights back on? Did they not glance at a weathermap a week before the storm? Monks in Bangladesh knew there would be blizzard in Colorado before the local energy company did. Honest to God, Swami Poopoopadoola in Rangpur was on the Weather Channel a week ago saying, “Ganesh advises you should hire extra tree-removal crews – and I don’t even know what snow is.”

And so, for the past three days of my visit to Greeley, I have lived without light, heat and hot water. Which is why I smell like a giraffe in a sweat lodge. If I want to get warm, I have to crawl into the refrigerator. There’s no television, so I have to engage with these big, unwieldy black-and-white things our ancestors once called “books.” And there is no internet, so I can’t spend my usual afternoons downloading doctored nude photos of Mayim Bialik.

Now the more rugged among us would hail this return to an older way of life. How good it is, they would say, to be disconnected from intolerable inboxes, cacophonous commercials and the twaddle of Twitter tweets. Enjoy the silence, reflect and recharge. Breathe.

I can’t breathe, I’m Jewish! I’m lucky if I can groan and wheeze. I want my MTV! I miss my spam! I can’t build a cozy fire without getting splinters in my groin.

It may be sad, but technology is here to stay, so when it is taken from us, however briefly, the loss feels like a phantom limb. From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, we have been blessed by people who have made our lives so convenient, we can no longer endure inconvenience. If that means we’re spoiled, so be it.

And now, speaking of spoiled, there’s a kosher flank steak in my freezer that needs to be handled with rubber gloves and a gas mask.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. (sings) “Walking in a winter wonderland…dammit.”

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #26 (10/22/2011): Occupied

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #28 (10/22/2011): Occupied

Aired Oct. 22, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: Occupied

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of October 23rd, 2011.

So all these people without an occupation are busy occupying. They’re occupying Wall Street, they’re inhabiting Zuccotti Park, they’re occupying cities and colleges across America because the have-nots are getting a bissel sick and tired of the haves.

It was ever thus, people. Before we all were born, a handful of upper-class hoity-toities looked down on the rest of us. If they were in a generous and tax-deductible mood, they donated a library or slipped a few bucks to charity.

Everyone hates the rich because…they’re rich. And we’re not. Life sucks, then you die.

But now we have a growing segment of the population who are fed up with the status quo and think they can change it by…showing up somewhere and not leaving. Hey, it beats violence, and protests certainly did have an impact on the Vietnam War, racial segregation and the roll-out of New Coke.

Still, I am bothered by two aspects of this “Occupy Somewhere” movement. The first is the “and then what?” factor. Okay, so you shout at the rich, you rail at the corporations, you run the CEOs out of town on a rail – well, more likely a Lear Jet. And then what? What do you replace them with?

If the protesters are saying, “make college affordable, or at least make it so I’m not paying off my student loan with my Medicare and reverse mortgage.” Okay.

If the protesters are saying, “change the tax code,” fine, I’m all for it. Tax the rich until they’re poor, tax the poor until they’re dead, and give the middle class a break for once.

If the protesters are saying, “don’t let stockbrokers, bankers and corporate bigwigs get away with rampant fraud,” I’m for that, too. Let them get away with just enough fraud so that they keep jobs in America instead of farming them out to Uttar Pradesh.

The problem is we don’t know WHAT the protesters are saying except, “we can’t get jobs, the jobs we get don’t pay anything, and the pay we get goes to buy imported crap because we don’t make anything.” Republicans and social conservatives keep wanting to liken the occupiers to Soviet Communists. Well, guess what? Those old Russians were rebelling against the gentry and landowners who controlled everything and gave nothing back. Sound familiar? Communism didn’t happen because the poor wanted to give Fox News talking points, it happened because the peasants found it unpleasant watching the czars eat pheasant.

These hippies and democrats and college kids and ukelele players, they don’t care about words like Marxism or capitalism. They just want their piece of the pie, and they’re not blind; they know that out of ten slices, nine have been gobbled up before the pizza even gets delivered.

So if you ask where my sympathy lies, it is with these demonstrators, even if the only thing they’re demonstrating is how easy it is to get really grimy after three days sleeping in a park.

What I do take issue with is the whole theme of the protest – “occupying.” The organizers took their motif from the so-called Arab spring. You know, where young Arabs got tired of their corrupt, totalitarian leaders so they staged relatively peaceful rebellions that will ultimately bring in corrupt, fundamentalist Muslim leaders? Anytime you look to the Arabs for a moral compass, you’re pretty much gonna float into an iceberg.

The anti-Semitic undertones of this movement are very minor, but they’re there. From the usual grievance that Jews comprise the evil one percent oppressing the other 99 to the idea of that loaded word: “occupation.” Even though the protesters are, themselves, the occupiers, you can bet many of them are weeping for the Palestinians supposedly displaced from the sliver of Israeli land they absolutely have to live on.

And yet, and yet. There is a positive impulse here, and I hope President Obama – and whatever clown the Republicans pull out of their sidecar – I hope they listen to these rebels and take to heart the idea that American wealth, enterprise and future security have been stolen by a handful of families and corporations.

When everybody gets to eat, but some people eat a lot better – so it goes, that’s the world. When people are starving and Marie Antoinette is still eating cake, that’s when the knives come out. Or worse, in this case – the bongs and bongos.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=29993

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #25 (10/2/2011): Days of Awe

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #25 (10/2/2011): Days of Awe

Aired Oct. 1, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkNjq0IwyUU

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of October 2nd, 2011.

He’s making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty and nice – not Santa Claus; I’m talkin’ about God. This is the time of year when HaShem opens his great big book. And I don’t mean “Harry Potter and the Cauldron of Borscht.” I mean the book of life and death, the book where God inscribes your name for the year. If he writes your name in bold calligraphy, you’re gonna have a fabulous year ahead. If he scribbles your name in pencil and deliberately spells it wrong, you better get health insurance. And if he erases it or just puts your initials in the margin, you might want to go shopping for a good mausoleum.

These are the Days of Awe, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We call them the Days of Awe because we look at all the crappy things we’ve done and go, “awwwww.” This is a time of reflection, expiation and making amends. If you’ve cheated somebody, or told a hurtful falsehood, or threatened to kick somebody’s tuchas because they won’t let your nine year old be in the school play (even though she’s perfect for it, and she can act rings around that little blonde whore they got for the part because her parents donate ten thousand dollars a year to the school’s PTA fund… bastards!), you need to take a breath, acknowledge that you may have overreacted (even if you haven’t) and apologize to those you have disparaged, and to HaShem for your prideful behavior.

Unlike the Catholics, who do so much sinning they have to confess every week, Jews save up all their misdeeds to talk about them one day a year: Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day, we say, “I’m sorry” to God and to everyone we have offended. Granted, there’s some absurdity there, because you’re not allowed to bathe, put on deodorant or use mouthwash, which means if you go to synagogue on Yom Kippur, you’re offending everybody.

In the shul, the cantor sings “Kol Nidre,” a prayer in which we ask God not to take us seriously. Seriously! We tell HaShem, “Look, over the course of the year, we’re gonna make some pretty stupid promises. At a traffic stop, we’ll say, `God, if this patrolman lets me off with a warning, I’ll donate what the ticket would have cost to charity.’ Or we’ll think, `If this dentist would just stop giving me pain, I’ll stop wishing to see him thrown from a tall building onto a steal spike.’ Or we’ll say, `If I could only get this raise, I’ll stop stealing office supplies.’” We won’t. And God knows we won’t. And we know God knows we won’t. So we sing “Kol Nidre” to him to let ourselves off the hook: “God, anything we vow to do over the next 12 months, ehhhh..not gonna happen. So please don’t listen. Put on your iPod. Just nod and wink and realize we’re gonna be back here in a year apologizing for shit we did that we said we wouldn’t, and stuff we didn’t do that we promised we would. And when you write my name in big block letters, remember it’s Solomon with one `L’ and three `O’s.’”

I hope, dear listeners, that we are all inscribed in the book of life and that we don’t do anything to jeopardize that status. After all, these days I’m sure God is using an e-book, so if we’re bad, all he has to do is backspace. At least the Days of Awe allow us to…re-Kindle.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=30001

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #24 (9/24/2011): Statehood?

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #24 (9/24/2011): Statehood?

aired Sept. 24, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube Clip: https://youtu.be/TLOkZL4hvOY

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of September 25th, 2011.

So the Palestinians want a state. Whoopdeefreakin’-doo. All these years of fighting Israel, blowing up restaurants in Israel, sabotaging peace talks with Israel – and all they wanted all along was to BE Israel. Of course, they have to have THEIR Israel inside the current Israel, which is why Obama and Bibi Netanyahu are telling them where they can stick their kebabs.

I have nothing against the Palestinians having a state of their own. Besides their usual state of confusion. They can have a homeland in Jordan, they can have one in Saudi Arabia. Even Turkey can throw `em a few kilometers. Why does it have to be in Israel? Israel is 10,000 square miles; the rest of the middle east is 8.6 million square miles. It’s like Walmart coming to town and saying, “We could build our superstore in that huge abandoned parking lot, but we’d rather squeeze it into your kitchen.”

What people forget is that in the 1920s, when England was controlling Palestine, the Arabs were offered half of it. They turned it down because they didn’t want to share it with Jews. In 1947, they turned down a two-state solution for the same reason. A year later, Israel became a nation, the Arabs attacked, and their turbans have been soaked in blood ever since.

So suddenly, they turn to the United Nations – which has been sucking the shmeckel of the Arabs for six decades – and the Palestinians say, “Declare us a state.” They don’t say where, they don’t say how. If there’s Jews on it, that’s where they want to be.

In the 63 years since Israel came to be, what have the Arabs done to prove that they can co-exist side by side with Jews? Or any living thing, for that matter? 9/11, Lockerbie, bombings in Gaza, the Yom Kippur War, the Munich Olympics, the London subways. What a record of accomplishment!

So here’s my idea for the Palestinians – they should all go to the zoo. No, really. Bring them to the biggest zoo in Lebanon with lots of land and food and vegetation. Then partition the zoo so that the Arabs have half of it and the lions and tigers and bears have the other half. Just make sure to put up signs around the zoo that say: “Caution! Wild and Vicious Animals.” It’s only fair to warn the lions, tigers and bears.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. Shana Tovah!

—> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=30007

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #23 (9/17/2011): Ten Years

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #23 (9/17/2011): Ten Years

aired Sept. 17, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koxCrkPZuM8

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of September 11th, 2011.

Boy, just hearing that date gets you in the kishkes, doesn’t it? September 11th 2011. Somehow that just sounds more meaningful than September 11th 2009 or September 11th 2003 – even though more time has passed. I suppose a ten-year anniversary makes you realize that, no matter what, life goes on, years pass; while at the same time, you recall how much younger you were a decade ago, and what an impact the event had on your life.

Ten years ago, Wall Street was destroyed, not by corruption from within – that came later – but by evil from without. Arabs, in airplanes, with box-cutters. How these scumpuppets were able to circumvent the FAA, the Air Force, the civil defense and any air-traffic controller with eyes remains a mystery greater than how Drakes gets that crème filling into Yodels. I mean, it’s all rolled up; how the hell do they do that?

Anyway, this week we’re hearing a lot of talk about closure. Ten years – it’s almost another generation. The world moves forward, the dead are not coming back, and, of course, we got Bin Laden. When the bullet sailed through his forehead, it made a satisfying parallel to those planes pushing through the buildings. As I mentioned in a previous Reflection, Osama’s death was a wonderful thing, but killing him kills him, not Jihad, not terrorism, not the memories.

As we all know, grief does not follow a time-table. Time heals wounds, but you never know when a scab will come off and start bleeding again. Looking at downtown Manhattan, remembering the 3000 victims, watching any movie that opens with a shot of that old New York City skyline – it all kicks up a sandstorm of memories.

And much as we all want mental therapy and ways to feel better about 9/11, let’s not go overboard making believe something good came out of the attacks. Nothing good came out of that. It was a nightmare; we suffered emotionally, financially, physically. Don’t be looking for feel-good post-mortems because how could there be a silver lining from such a thing? Well, maybe if one of those airplanes had the Kardashian family on it, but it would have to be the whole family, including Bruce Jenner, you know what I’m saying?

Seriously, though, at least there has finally been some progress rebuilding Ground Zero, and it is already possible to foresee a time when our children will think of 9/11 as “mom and dad’s Pearl Harbor Day,” rather than that day. Whether or not we fudged the endgame in Afghanistan, I’m glad we killed a lot of people there. Iraq may have been a blunder, but I’m glad we killed a lot of people there, too. God, I sound like a homicidal Andy Rooney.

On the other hand, they’re saying pretty soon we can once again go through airports keeping the shoes on our feet. Why? Because those feet kicked some ass.

Somewhere, in hell, there’s a dozen Arabs being mocked and brutalized by 72 appallingly ugly virgins, all of them holding box cutters in one hand and Moslem shmeckels in the other. Happy goddamn anniversary.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=30015

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #22 (8/28/2011): Reb Levin

click above to listen (audio file)

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #22 (8/28/2011): REB LEVIN

Aired Aug. 27, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By.
watch on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItywotfPBcg

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of August 28th, 2011.

My friends, there are so many wonderful Jews who have contributed so much to the world: Jonas Salk, Albert Einstein, Irving Berlin, me… And yet, every once in awhile, we’re confronted with a yiddle, who doesn’t know his tush from his middle. Jews who are evil or ignorant or who merely seem to deny the existence of soap and deodorant.

And so, for every hundred Baruch Spinozas, we get a Bernie Madoff. For every thousand Bob Dylans, we get a Kenny G. So now it pains me to say there’s a Jewish leader going viral on the internet with a homophobic rant. Rabbi Yehuda Levin – and I use the word “Rabbi” loosely, like the way I use the phrase, “I’ll pay you next week,” Rabbi Levin took to the web a few days ago, specifically the day an earthquake struck northern Virginia, and shockwaves were felt all the way up to Manhattan. Loony Levin took this as a sign that HaShem was punishing New York for legalizing gay marriage.

Don’t take my word for it – here’s the Flatbush flake himself:

(transcript of audio) “There’s a direct connection between earthquakes and homosexuality.”

Really? So the Japanese are all gay? The Chinese in 1976? San Francisco in 1906? All right, San Francisco I get, but Peru? India? Portugal – well, it happened in Lisbon, so maybe God got confused and thought they said “Lesbian.”

Rabbi Levin goes on to say:

(transcript of audio) “In New York City and State, where they opened especially on Sunday early after they passed the homosexual marriage law. They couldn’t wait until the regular Monday, but all the county clerks had to open early to service the homosexual couples who wanted to get married.”

Hey, you should be happy. At least they didn’t open Saturday. And that is an interesting choice of words. The clerks had to “service” these homosexual couples. That’s not marriage, that’s a threesome.

The Rabbi goes on to draw a spurious comparison between the new marriage laws and the story of Sodom, where strangers threatened to rape Lot’s family. To Reb Levin, the intruders weren’t wicked because they terrorized the family with sex and violence. No, the wicked part was that their targets were buttholes instead of mouths and twats.

We then get that old saw about natural disasters being God’s response to sinners. Usually, this claptrap comes out of the mouths of born-again goyim on Sunday morning TV. Shameful! Not so much for being delusional, but for pre-empting Matlock.

Still, Rabbi Levin saves his best line about homosexuality till near the end – no pun intended.

(transcript of audio) “You have your shaken your male member in a place where it does not belong.”

Learn this phrase now, because you will no doubt be hearing it on Jimmy Kimmel, Tosh O., The Soup, and, strangely enough, “Bob the Builder.”

(transcript of audio) “You have your shaken your male member in a place where it does not belong.”

Let me tell you something. If you ever had to take a pee in the Port Authority men’s room, you have shaken your male member in a place where it does not belong.

Look, I am not gay, but some of my best friends have acquaintances who know people who are gay. So why can’t people live and let live? The only good thing this Jewish jughead says in the whole video is, “We do not hate homosexuals.” He feels bad for them. Well, so do I. Now that they can get married, they’ll be as miserable as the rest of us.

As for Rabbi Levin, his greatest worry is that legalized homosexuality is just another rung on society’s downward spiral. Or, as he puts it:

(transcript of audio) “We want everyone to understand that if these kinds of activities, and continuing to legislate it, until the moral fiber of this country is forced down the throats of the religious people…”

Leaving aside that that sentence has the grammatical clarity of a Thomas Pynchon novel, what an interesting choice of words the Rabbi uses: “Moral fiber forced down the throats of religious people.” By any chance, Rabbi, would that moral fiber be pink, swollen, blue-veined and have hairy balls underneath it? And if it does, would that be your lucky day?

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. (transcript of audio) “You have your shaken your male member in a place where it does not belong.” Never gets old.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=30265

–> https://wp.me/p1ixhV-36

Dave’s Gone By Interview (8/20/2011): JOE SALZONE & Rabbi Sol Solomon

click above to listen (audio only)

Dave Lefkowitz and Rabbi Sol Solomon interview radio host Joe Salzone

Topics include: radio, WGBB.

Segment originally aired Aug. 20, 2011 on the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

Note: Interview segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast: Full Episode

All content (c)2011 TotalTheater Productions.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
More information on Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com

Dave’s Gone By Interview (8/20/2011): AARON BERG & Rabbi Sol Solomon

Click above to listen (audio only)

Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews comedian, former stripper and “Underbelly Diaries” monologist Aaron Berg

Topics include: theater, stripping, weight-lifting.

Segment originally aired Aug. 20, 2011 on the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

All content (c)2011 TotalTheater Productions.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #21 (8/20/2011): Downturn

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #21 (8/20/2011): Downturn

(aired Aug. 20, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. youtube: https://youtu.be/1pRydgeC0E8)

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of August 21st, 2011.

It’s 12pm – do you know where your money is? First it’s up, then it’s down, then it’s up, then it’s down. If you have your money in the stock market, your portfolio is bouncing up and down faster than a hooker on an epileptic.

I go away for a few weeks, take a little time off, and what do I miss? Oh, nothing. Just America going bankrupt.

How does that work anyway? If we’re supposed to pay three billion dollars to Brazil, and we don’t have it, what do they do? What can they do? Send some guy to the White House – “Hola. My name’s Jorge; I’m supposed to break the President’s legs. If you give me one billion now, I can just break his toes.”

I mean, what does going bankrupt really mean? China won’t loan us any more money? Why are we borrowing from them in the first place? I don’t even like Chinese money. You spend a hundred yen, an hour later you feel like shopping again.

But seriously, if the United States crashes to the floor, every other country crashes to the sub-basement. So maybe they can forgive a loan or two; give us another year to pay off. Let us get to that middle period between our current recession and our next corporate fraud.

You gotta love the arrogance of Wall Street. Last month, all the politicians get together, frantically making a deal to raise the debt ceiling. They’re borrowing from Peter to pay Paul – or, in my lingo, borrowing from Faivel to pay Moish – just so we’re spared embarrassment, shame and having to raise goats and churn our own butter.

America stays solvent, and what happens? Two days later, the stock market plummets a thousand points. We go from a triple-A credit rating to double A. What does that mean? What, we have to get our parents to co-sign a loan – fine, dig up George and Martha Washington, will that be enough?

All the topsy-turvy turbulence of the Dow Jones has nothing to do with jobs or debt or wages or social security. It’s all about rich people playing a game with money that doesn’t exist. That’s all Wall Street is – monopoly played by frat-boy pricks. Which is why, even when 90 percent of us are suffering, 10 percent are making money by the bucket and paying taxes by the thimble.

As for the double-dip… Remember what I said half a year ago about gas prices? Go look it up, I’ll wait. But I’ll also refresh your memory. I said that the country would be fine and recover from the George Bush years – unless gas prices went up. If they hit four dollars, we’re shtupped. So what happened weeks ago? Gas prices zipped past 3.50, people shut their wallets, businesses got scared, supermarkets jacked their prices – voila! economic downturn.

The only good news? Now that the market’s in a lull, oil prices are taking a hit. Sure enough, people will start to spend again – so long as they’re not spending it all on the brown crap the Arabians pump out of the ground.

You want houses to sell again? Make it so it doesn’t cost 500 bucks a month to heat them in the winter. You want folks to take vacations? Make it so the airlines don’t have to charge 50 bucks for luggage to offset gasoline they’re just gonna dump over the Atlantic Ocean anyway. You want Americans to have jobs? Make it so you’re not paying people a measly minimum wage to fry McNuggets and scrape canola from a fryer. Come to think of it, we don’t have to frack in Pennsylvania to strike oil; just hit the kitchen of a Denny’s.

Maybe the answer is: instead of borrowing money, we should just borrow oil. Borrow it, use it, refine the waste product back into petroleum, and then return it to OPEC with a few quarts of ethanol for interest. Of course, it still doesn’t pay the Arab world back for 9/11 but, like with everything else nowadays, we’ll write them an I.O.U.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches.

→ https://wp.me/p1ixhV-31

→ https://wp.me/pzvIo-2pF

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=30267

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #20 (7/3/2011): July 4th

click above to listen (audio only)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #20 (7/3/2011): July 4th

(aired July 2, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube: Jhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVfXgUoNdyQ)

Yankee Doodle Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of July 3rd, 2011.

Yes, we are approaching the 235th birthday of the United States of America, the worst, most corrupt country in the world – except for every other country in the world. Don’t listen to polls that show that country has a better standard of living, that country has better healthcare, that country takes care of its poor, that country has cleaner beaches – all these things may be true in dribs and drabs, but there is still no country greater than the good, not-so-old USA.

When my great grandparents had to get the hell out of Russia, this is where they came. When my grandparents had to get the hell out of Germany, this is where they came. When my parents had to get the hell out of Saint Croix – because they were on vacation and mom got a sunburn and the souvenir shop was out of aloe vera and the hospital there was a shack with an aspirin bottle – this is where they came – and couldn’t wait to come back to.

Are these ideal days for the American people? No, tough times. We are still suffering from a recession George Bush built and Barack Obama can’t tear down. We have crime and drugs and pollution and overcrowding and the Game Show network. We have young people dying and killing in a sandpile called Arabia.

We have cameras at every stoplight, and we have super-computers that know the size and shape of every poop we take before we even eat the food that’s gonna turn into poop.

Worst of all, we have the first – or maybe it’s already the second generation of Americans – that isn’t doing as well as the one before. Even in the darkest jungles of Africa, the son of a chief can tell his father, “Dad, thanks, but I don’t need your shrunken heads. With my new position, I should be getting five, six decapitations a month, and if I make my quota, the wives and I get a ceremonial drum. I know dad, I know. When you were my age you had to castrate a rhinoceros for fuel, but times have changed. And with that new medicine man and his herbal remedies, who knows? I might even outlive you and make it to 40!”

But seriously, so America is in a rough patch. Meanwhile, we have cars that can tell us directions so we don’t get lost. We have ipods that put more music on a chip than a man 100 years ago would have heard in a hundred years. Just a week ago, we passed a law in New York where two people of the same sex can finally marry each other – instead of getting stoned by a mob. And pretty soon in Colorado, it’ll be legal to get stoned in a mob.

Not everything gets better, but before you go all nostalgic for the America of yesteryear, answer me this: Which would you rather have? God forbid you need heart surgery, would you rather have it now, or 1950? It’s a heat wave, and you’re trying to get some sleep in your bedroom. Would you prefer 2011, or 1911? Maybe you work in a factory, or an assembly line. Now…then? Or maybe you came in late and missed your favorite show on TV. Instant gratification on your cable box…or 1970? You’re trying to sell your house – today…or last year?

So you see, even in the worst of times, we usually have the best of times. Think of that as we head into – God help us – election season. Out will come all sorts of garbage, back and forth, right and left, all of it boiling down to one side saying, “We’re doing our best and hope to do better,” and the other side saying, “Your best isn’t good enough, and it couldn’t be worse.” As the mud is being flung and the bull is being shoveled, just remember that two-and-a-half centuries ago we belonged to another country. We bowed to a king, and we paid taxes to a government building roads and schools 3000 miles away. Well, we’re doing that now in Iraq, but still…

On this Independence Day, let us honor this republic, this democracy, this place that still takes immigrants – legally or otherwise – and gives them a shot…that isn’t from firing squad.

On this July 4th, as I stand at my barbecue and press my Hebrew Nationals into the Happy Hot Dog Man, I look over one backyard fence, and there’s the O’Malleys, drunk; over the other fence, the Tortorellis, stupid; down the street, the Gonzalezes – cheap bastards, but friendly – and two blocks down, not on this block, thank God, the Roosevelts. All good people of different backgrounds just trying to get by. One nation, under you-know-who, indivisible, with at least an impossible dream of liberty and justice for all.

Oh say can you see… my Ketchup Critter? Because I put it down, and now I can’t find it, dammit.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches.

→ https://wp.me/p1ixhV-2Z

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=30270