The Vicious Babushka

1%'ers Have Problems Too

This dog costs $17,000 a year to groom, walk and feed.

Bloomberg business reports:

Andrew Schiff was sitting in a traffic jam in California this month after giving a speech at an investment conference about gold. He turned off the satellite radio, got out of the car and screamed a profanity.

"I'm not Zen at all, and when I'm freaking out about the situation, where I'm stuck like a rat in a trap on a highway with no way to get out, it's very hard," Schiff, director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc., said in an interview.

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country's top 1 percent by income, doesn't cover his family's private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.

"I feel stuck," Schiff said. "The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach."

The smaller bonus checks that hit accounts across the financial-services industry this month are making it difficult to maintain the lifestyles that Wall Street workers expect, according to interviews with bankers and their accountants, therapists, advisers and headhunters.

"People who don't have money don't understand the stress," said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. "Could you imagine what it's like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?"

Bonus Caps

Facing a slump in revenue from investment banking and trading, Wall Street firms have trimmed 2011 discretionary pay. At Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Barclays Capital, the cuts were at least 25 percent. Morgan Stanley (MS) capped cash bonuses at $125,000, and Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) increased the percentage of deferred pay.

"It's a disaster," said Ilana Weinstein, chief executive officer of New York-based search firm IDW Group LLC. "The entire construct of compensation has changed."

The suffering. The horror. The HORROR.

Is there a fund where people can contribute to help these desperate suffering souls? A loaf of artisan bread, a can of caviar?

MY BABY GIRL IS MARRIED!

Mazal tov Rivky & Shneur!

Last night Babushka's youngest daughter married the love of her life, Mr. Shneur Inglis of London, UK, in a beautiful wedding in Brooklyn, NY.

The bride was beautiful, the groom looked kind of dazed and everybody had a fabulous time!

Rivky & Shneur, may you be blessed with a beautiful family and a beautiful life together, and love each other forever!

CDC: All Adults Should be Re-Vaccinated for Whooping Cough

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal advisory panel wants all U.S. adults to get vaccinated against whooping cough.

The panel voted Wednesday to expand its recommendation to include all those 65 and older who haven't gotten a whooping cough shot as an adult.

Children have been vaccinated against whooping cough since the 1940s, but a vaccine for adolescents and adults was not licensed until 2005.

Since then, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has gradually added groups of adults to its recommendations, including 2010 advice that it be given to elderly people who spend a lot of time around infants.

Wednesday's recommendation means now all adults should get at least one dose.

"They've been moving up to this in baby steps," said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccines expert.

Whooping cough, or pertussis, is a highly contagious bacterial disease that in rare cases can be fatal. It leads to severe coughing that causes children to make a distinctive whooping sound as they gasp for breath.

Recommendations from the panel are usually adopted by the government, which sends the guidance out to doctors.

Contributing to the push to vaccinate more adults was a California whooping cough epidemic in 2010 that infected 9,000. Ten babies died after exposure to infected adults or older children.

There's little data on how many elderly people have gotten the vaccine. Only about 8 percent of adults under 65 have been vaccinated, but about 70 percent of adolescents have.

Read more at Associated Press.

CDC Advisory Panel Recommendations.

The Satmar Chainsaw Massacre, or, The Adventures of Liar McPantsonfire

Based on a fake story.

With allegations of communal cover-ups involving child sexual abuse dogging the haredi community over the past several years, it may not be much of a stretch for some readers to believe a gruesome story that appears in a new memoir about growing up in, and leaving, the Satmar community.

The story, recounted by Deborah Feldman in “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots” (Simon and Schuster), involves the alleged mutilation and murder of a boy by his own father — supposedly for masturbating — and the subsequent cover-up of the crime by Hatzolah, the community’s volunteer ambulance service.

The only problem, however, is that based on information obtained by The Jewish Week, the story seems not be true.

Feldman claims she first learned of the grisly crime from her husband who had, in turn, heard about it from his brother, allegedly a member of Hatzolah at the time, who had been called to the blood-soaked scene. Apparently, the boy’s “penis was cut off with a jig saw and his throat was slit too,” Feldman writes.

Feldman recounts that her husband told her his brother “said the neighbors told him they heard loud arguing coming from the house. When he called the [volunteer ambulance] dispatch, they told him to go home and keep quiet about it, that they would take care of it. He said they buried him in thirty minutes and they didn’t even issue a death certificate.”

Read more at The Jewish Week.

Even "The Forward," which is a loud cheerleader of anything which is unfriendly to the Hasidic community, finds this "memoir" too much to swallow.

While everyone has the right to choose the lifestyle and faith they wish to lead, Ms. Feldman's silly antics are embarrassing to those with more compelling, and more truthful stories to tell. There is much resentment against her, not only from the community that she so cheerfully maligns with sensational, made-up gossip, but from others who have more legitimate complaints, who feel that she has discredited them all.

There are people who have left the community after being molested, after suffering from bullying attacks, who have even lost dear friends to suicide due to doubts about sexual identity and anti-gay bullying. These are serious issues that need to be addressed, but this sensationally stupid fake "memoir" is making a mockery out of other people's genuine pain as well as fueling genuine anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile Debbie is spending money like a drunken sailor, and probably has big plans to become a movie star, a contestant on "American Idol" and maybe star in her own reality show, even sing and dance at the Super Bowl Half Time. (OK I made that last one up)

Get real, Debbie. So you're not a Satmar any more, welcome to real life. You're just a shlump like the rest of us.

EPIC FAIL: Cheap Vodka Returns With Cheaper Stereotype

Great for washing down a roofie.

Remember that vodka ad on a New York billboard that was removed late last year after residents and Jewish groups complained its message ("CHRISTMAS QUALITY. HANNUKAH PRICING") was anti-Semitic?

Well, the folks behind it are at it again.

A new billboard advertising Wodka has surfaced on Seventh Avenue near New York's Penn Station with a similarly offensive message--this one referencing prostitutes:

ESCORT QUALITY
HOOKER PRICING

"Our intent was not to be offensive toward women," Brian Gordon, president of MMG, the firm that created the campaign, told Yahoo News.

"We're a bit of a lightning rod after the last one," Gordon continued. "There was justified sensitivity, which is why we took it down.

"People are going to be offended for different reasons, but there's nothing derogatory about this campaign," he added. "These are words people use, and one denotes a higher quality. We're creating a juxtaposition, that's all."

Read more at Yahoo.com.

These idiots must be using the same advertising agency as PETA. Maybe their advertising agency IS PETA.

VOGUE and GLAMOUR Deliver Free Magazines, Even Feature a Non-Anorexic Cover Girl

Vogue cover of award-winning vocalist Adele. She looks like she eats well.

Lately I have been receiving issues of Vogue and Glamour magazine in the mail, even though I never ordered a subscription to these magazines and not really interested in what rich, thin anorexics are wearing this season.

The Zedushka (Babushka's dear partner) look at the photo of Adele on Vogue cover and said, "that young lady looks very healthy, she doesn't look anorexic at all!"

Adele said about herself, after a comment from a fashion designer that she was "too fat," saying, "I've never wanted to look like models on the cover of magazines," the 23-year-old told People. "I represent the majority of women and I'm very proud of that."

So it appears that Vogue and Glamour magazine have decided to feature a celebrity that the overwhelming majority of women can identify with from the way she looks. She's a beautiful woman but not super tall or super thin, and she is a very talented singer.

I don't understand why Vogue and Glamour have decided to send me a subscription since I am so not the type to want to read their magazine. Maybe they are in trouble, and the skinny sticks they think women want to look like are not appealing, and have decided to feature an artist with a more normal body type.

If this is a trend, it's a good trend. Maybe young women will want to all look like Adele instead of Kate Moss. That would be something to see.

Meanwhile I won't throw away the issues that Vogue and Glamour send me for free, I can donate them to the salon where I get my nails done.

EPIC FAIL: Religious Magazine Features Naughty Artworks

The crochet artist, Olek, surrounded by G-rated creations.

The editors of an ultra-Orthodox magazine were embarrassed to realize that they have published photographs featuring smutty language recently.

The popular gossip weekly, whose content centers on the who's who of the haredi world, often publishes several pages of photographs from around the globe. In one recent edition this section focused on Olek, an artist who makes crocheted sculptures.

One of the pictures that the magazine published shows one of Olek's installations – an entire room covered in her knitted creations. But what the editors failed to notice were the inappropriate English-language sayings crocheted onto the walls. WARNING: Link is NSFW.

EPIC FAIL II: The naughty phrases are spelled incorrectly.

The publication's management only realized the mistake when the edition reached religious readers in the United States and the United Kingdom, who were shocked at the sexual content. A London rabbi even published a letter admonishing the magazine.

Read more at YNet.

EPIC FAIL: Rick Santorum Hanukkah Card

FAIL

Source: Slate.com.

This might be a Photoshop spoof, but he really is THAT clueless.

Prayer for a New Baby Girl

Welcome!

My son's prayer for his new baby girl:

We are overjoyed to welcome our newborn baby girl to the beautiful world.

Our son and daughters are celebrating the arrival of their new baby sister.

We thank G-d for the miracle of birth, and the blessing of a healthy, alert and hungry infant.

To our newborn daughter:

We pledge to raise you with boundless love. Give you a purposeful education to live a meaningful life. Show you by example the warmth and relevance of Yiddishkeit and Chassidishkeit. Instill in you faith in Hashem and the Torah. Teach you values, tolerance, and an appreciation for all of G-ds children.

Love,
Tatti and Mommy

The Scary Jew Shadow Causing Global Warming!

An Ultra-orthodox Jewish man walks on the beach in Ashdod, Israel, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012. Temperatures in central Israel rose up to 19 degrees Celsius (66 Fahrenheit) during the day.
 AP Photo.

"Are Your Eggs American?" U.S. Embassy Demands Proof of Eligibility for IVF Babies Born in Israel

It's getting tougher to obtain one of these.

Jerusalem - American embassy and consular officials in Israel are requiring applicants seeking U.S. citizenship for their children to prove parentage in cases where they received fertility treatments, causing them consternation and bureaucratic hassles.

While Americans contacted for this article say the phenomenon of inquiring about fertility tretments is new, the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem stated that there has been no change in policy.

“The interviewing officer asked me over a microphone, ‘Are these your eggs?’” said Ellie Lavi of Tel Aviv, a Chicago native in her 40s who applied for U.S. citizenship for her newborn twins two years ago at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. “I was absolutely stunned, humiliated.”

Lavi is one of several mothers interviewed by Haaretz who expressed extreme discomfort at being asked such personal questions by an official stationed on the other side of a glass window, within hearing distance of other applicants.

Kelli Brown of Modi’in, a 33-year-old mother of three from La Crosse, Wisconsin, says she was shocked when she was asked about her baby’s origins when she visited the Embassy in Tel Aviv to register her three-week-old son.

“The interviewing official asked me if I had used ART to conceive the baby,” recalls Brown, referring to Assisted Reproductive Technology, which is used to help women become pregnant when they are unable to conceive naturally or carry a fetus to term. ART includes such techniques as in vitro fertilization (IVF ), sperm or egg donation, surrogacy, and other methods, each with its own implications for citizenship under U.S. law.

Read more at Haaretz.

Preacher Wrapped in Torah Scroll in Bizarre "Coronation" Ceremony

 

DeKalb County News 7:10 p.m. Thursday, February 2, 2012 Text size:
Decrease Increase New Birth ceremony with Torah disrespectful, Jewish leaders say

By Christian Boone and Shelia M. Poole

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A ceremony held Sunday at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, in which Bishop Eddie Long was wrapped in a sacred Torah scroll and carried upon a throne, has the Internet abuzz and Jewish religious leaders offended and questioning its appropriateness.

"He's a king. God has blessed him," said "Rabbi" Ralph Messer before covering Long in a scroll "[that] may still have the dust of Auschwitz and Birkenau." Messer referred to the Nazi extermination camps in Poland where millions of Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.

A Torah's use in a ceremony ordaining Long as "a king" is offensive to many Jews, said Bill Nigut, Southeast Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League.

The ceremony at Long's Lithonia church, viewed more than 139,000 times on YouTube, "in no way represents any Jewish ritual that I'm familiar with," Nigut said. "We do not proclaim individuals to be kings."

Messer said his parchment, a handwritten copy of the holiest book within Judaism, was 312 years old. His mention of Auschwitz-Birkenau implied the scroll was one of those recovered from the death camps when they were liberated by the Allies toward the end of World War II.

It's impossible to authenticate Messer's claim without examining the texts up close, said Rabbi Joshua Heller of Congregation B'nai Torah in Sandy Springs. While rare, Torahs can be easily purchased, even on eBay, he said.

"There are a fair number of Torah scrolls that survived the war," said Heller, adding roughly 1,500 were rescued from Czechoslovakia alone.

More disturbing was the use of this particular Torah in an inappropriate setting, experts on religion say.

“The connection of the Torah scroll to the Holocaust and then to Eddie Long is incomprehensible to me,” said David P. Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. Gushee is a scholar of the Holocaust and has visited Auschwitz several times.

“What was the point? Was it to signal that Eddie Long was suffering persecution like the Jews at Auschwitz?” Gushee asked.

Messer's son, Minister Russell Messer of Simchat Torah Beit Midrash [Christian messianic church] in Parker, Colo., said his father purchased the parchment and relied on the word of its seller regarding its provenance. "It came through that generation of Europe," the younger Messer said.

read more at Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The Greatest Threat to Israel's Survival: Not the Palestinians, Not Iran, It's...

OH NOES!

One of the givens within Israel is that it is and must be a Jewish state. This “Jewishness” is defined by the fact that the majority of its citizens are members of the Jewish people, and that Jewish tradition, culture, values, and even in some cases, law, are at times integrated into the state’s public space and political and legal structures. So long as the rights of minorities are protected and freedom of religion is preserved, these principles can coincide with Israel’s other defining aspiration - to be a democratic state.

The recent events within the ultra-Orthodox community, coupled with doomsday predictions of their rapid demographic growth, have caused many to question whether Israel’s Jewish and democratic synthesis is being threatened. How is it that a small segment of society can threaten to undermine the country’s identity and cause many Israelis and Jews worldwide to believe their country is being stolen from them?

We make a fundamental error when we place all the blame on the haredim, portraying them as a group manipulating a flawed political system to bring Israel to its knees. The source of haredi power and influence lies not in their actual or future size but in the failure of mainstream Israeli society to define for itself the meaning and boundaries of the Jewishness of the Jewish state.

[...]

The second defining foundation of haredi influence results from there being treated almost as if they were a separate ethnic minority within. Zionism wanted to create a “new Jew” and a new Judaism, and the haredim had no part in this. Haredim were allowed and even encouraged to create their own ghettoes under the hope that one day they would disappear.

A system of allowances was put into place to allow them to preserve their distinct identity, so long as “they” left “us” alone. Lip service was and is still offered advocating for full military service and integration into the job market on the part of the haredim. But the truth is non-Orthodox Israelis neither want haredim in their workplace nor in integrated military units.

The fundamental fault of the haredim was that they did not disappear but grew, and “their” space, in which Israel let them do as they willed, is now in all of our backyards. Israel finds itself in a Catch-22 of its own creation: We don’t want “them” in our workforce but can no longer support their unemployment. Their size now dictates that they more fully integrate into Israeli society, but most Israelis want them to change either before their integration or as a result of it.

Read more at YNet.

Also, take a look at some of the hysterical comments in the "Talkback" section:

They have never existed comfortably anywhere in the world and never will because no society around them will accept their claim to being "chosen." This history teaches us that there is no solution to the problem of Haredim. The best Israel can do within its democracy principles is to isolate them and accept those Haredim who abandon their old way of living.
 
Michael ,   California, USA   (02.02.12)

[...]

They WILL take over eventually if they are not removed. It is only self-defense to remove them from high official posts and government. Do it before it is too late or you will lose your country and your freedom to them. You are fools to try for ''understanding'' them . They don't want to understand you. They want to rule you like cattle

[...]

Changes to the UK welfare system are about to have a serious adverse impact on Haredim living in London. Benefits are being changed to drastically cut amounts received by large families. I read an article recently saying Haredim communities are being broken up as large families are forced by benefit cuts to look foir cheaper housing outside their ttraditional neighbourhood. In typical British press style the article portrayed the situation as a grave injustice to the poor persecuted haredim. Fools!

[...]

You can have eventual Haredim rule over seculars or assimilation. If seculars act now and force haredim to assimilate into the culture around them there is still hope. If you look at successful harmonious colonial societies they have all involved intermarriage between colonialists and natives. If the haredim are allowed to segregate themselves from everyone else then there is no hope. They will outbreed and outwit the seculars and eventually rule them as a second-class group of citizens.

[...]

they are a closed group with two different moral codes...honest when dealing with each but not so honest when dealing with outsiders like seculars .Israel cannot survive with a small group which regards outsiders as enemies to be exploited If its not their religion which makes them like this maybe its in their DNA. Someone needs to stand up and tell the plain thruth about them, Enough is enough.

[...]

Let them live in their ghettos without allowing new exclusive territories to them. Take away most of the unique welfare and family support. Absorb when some of them decide to de-haredi themselves (hozrim b'sheela). In other words, treat them the same way secular population is treated. They can pray INSIDE their homes and synagogues as much as they want, but not when secular population is disturbed by their presence.