Title: Wanda Sykes at WH Correspondent Dinner - I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker, but he was so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight. Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:May 10, 2009 Author:. Post Date:2009-05-10 11:54:53 by christine Keywords:None Views:178 Comments:12
I personally think it's best just to let GOP National Chairman Limbaugh slay himself day after day, but it would take a long time for comedians to dish out as many insults about him as he has about all the "lib'ruls" over the years.
He benefits from a double standard, also, being a right-wing "shock jock." Don Imus was fired a few years ago for "racist" comments that were arguably no worse than what "Half-Brain" says on a regular basis without repercussions.
Heard a rebroadcast of one of his shows yesterday explaining the recent Republican re-branding and what it means to be a conservative.....I must agree with Wanda ... he is strung out on Oxycontin
I can't think of anyone who has been more destructive to America than the NeoCon/globalist/Zionist group that has exerted control over the conservative movement. None. Wanda and Obama are pikers compared to Rush Limbaugh.
In the run up to the Republican convention during every Republican debate Ron Paul told all who would listen that the party had lost its way...only to be told by the likes of Rush and Hannity that he was being anti-American....why any body still listens to these morons leaves me to conclude the Republican party might as well fold up its "big tent"
The DEMS should thank the right wing pundits for their unswerving support for lil Bush while he committed numerous (treasonous) criminal acts, destroyed any notion that the Bill of Rights applies to anyone in the U.S., waterboarded, renditioned, pre-emptively attacked and generally shit all over the conservative members of his party ... to such a degree that many voted for the new tyrant in charge.
Anyone that holds out hope for the current system to correct itself is brain dead.
Abraham Issac Kook, 1865 - 1935 Chief Rabbi of Palestine,
Thirsting for God
Expanses divine my soul craves.
Confine me not in cages,
Or substance or of spirit.
I am love-sick --
I thirst, I thirst for God,
as a deer for water brooks.
Alas, who can describe my pain,
Who will be a violin to express the songs of my grief,
I am bound to the world,
All creatures, all people are my friends,
Many parts of my soul
Are intertwined with them,
But how can I share with them my Light?
Europe
Rabbi Abraham Issac Kook was born to a deeply pious and learned Jewish family in 1865, in Grieve, Latvia, which was part of the then restricted world of the Jewish ghetto in Eastern Europe. He was a prolific writer, but he was also a man of action. In 1886 he married the daughter of R. Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim, rabbi of Ponevez. In 1888 he launched a monthly rabbinic journal, "Iturie Sofrim". He served as rabbi in the Lithuanian towns of Zoimel (1888-1895) and Boisk (1895-1904) and as chief rabbi of Jaffa, Palestine (1904- 1919). He was stranded by the First World War during a visit to Europe. In 1914 he went to Europe for Agudat Yisrael convention in Berlin. Caught by World War I, Rav Kook spent 2 years in St. Gallen, Switzerland. In 1916 he became rabbi of Machzikei HaDat congregation in London (1917-1918). In 1919 He returned to Israel, became rabbi of Jerusalem In 1921 He became Chief Rabbi of Israel, together with Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yaakov Meir. This was the most august rabbinic office in world Jewry, the chief rabbinate of Jerusalem, and of the whole Jewish community in Palestine. He served in this post during sixteen stormy years till his death in 1935.
Author
Rabbi Kook wrote voluminiously. His books include The Lights of Penitence, The Lights of Holiness, The Moral Principles, along with other letters, essays and poems. Rabbi Kook was not writing to defend Judaism against other religions, nor to eradicate threats and heresy. Rabbi Kook's writings are almost wholly devoid of religious polemics. He was essentially an existentialist thinker to whom theological issues as such were of secondary importance. The essence of religion for him was in its existential implications, its concern to bring all life under the discipline of divine ideals. The test of religion at its highest was in the passion it inspires to bend life toward ethical and moral perfection.
The Lights of Penitence - Orot Hateshuvah - is Rabbi Kook's most popular work. The first edition appeared in 1925 and there have been several editions. Only the first three chapters were written by Rabbi Kook, the remainder having been culled from his writings by his son, who edited the work.
The conventional view of penitence sees it as an effort to redress a particular transgression in the area of man's relatoinship with God or to his fellow man. For Rabbi Kook, penitence is the surge of the soul for perfection, to rise above the limitations imposed by the finitude of existence. It is a reach for reunion with God from whom all creation has been separated by the descent to a particular incarnation of earthly existence. Penitence, in other words, is only one aspect of the drama of human life on its eternal return to the Divine, from whom it has descended.
Destitute?
On a Friday, the 28th day of Iyar, May 10, 1904, the Rav finally fulfilled his lifelong dream and made aliyah. He was greeted with much fervor and fanfare by his many followers. The Rav took a position as Rav of Jaffa. For a long time, the Rav did not seem to be bringing home any money. His Rebbetzin [wife] was having a hard time making ends meet and so she went to the directors of community service and complained that it had been so long since the Rav had received his salary. The directors became baffled by the Rebbetzin's complaint, as he knew that the Rav had been paid on schedule, with no delay at all. After much investigation, it was discovered that the Rav had been giving away all his money to the poor. After that, the money was always given directly to the Rebbetzin.
Chief Rabbi
On the 3rd of Elul 5679, August 29, 1919, Rav Kook became the Rav of Yerushalyim where he established his yeshiva, Merkaz HaRav. He also later instituted the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, which at the time consisted of himself and Rabbi Yaakov Meir Charlop.
As a halakhic authority charged with respsonsibility for rendering decisions that were to become the norm of law in the Jewish Community, Rav Kook revealed a flexibility that made him anathema to the zealots of the older type of traditionalism. Thus he sponsored a takkana that exemped Jewish agriculture from the restrictions of the sabbatical year. The zealots of the old order continue to ignore this takkana to this day, and are careful not to purchase from Jewish growers during periods their calculations tell them fall within the sabbatical year.
Each religion is a path
Rabbi Kook sought to rediscover how the Jewish peoples could serve the world. He did not expect that Judaism would supplant the religions of mankind. Rabbi Kook believed that the diversity of religion is a legitimate and a permanent expression of the human spirit, the the different religions are not meant to compete but to collaborate. "Conventional theology, he declared, assumes that the different religions must necessarily oppose each other .... But on reaching full maturiry the human spirit aspires to rise above every manner of conflict and opposition, and a person then recognizes all expression of the spiritual life as an organic whole". "This does not erase the difference of levels between religions, between higher and lower, between the more holy and the less holy, and between the holy and the common. But each has its place in the life of the whole. Each is a path through which God is seeking to raise man to himself".
The Inner Torah
Rabbi Kook's published writings include four volumes in rabbinic law; a collection of poetry, a treatise on the mysticism of the Hebrew Alphabet, a treatise on penitence, a treatise on morals, two volumes of commentary on the Prayer Book, three volumes of correspondence and three volumes of reflections on God and man. Rabbi Kook's teachings were more than a conceptual system rationally arrived at. He shows startling glimpses of transcendence and points of connections to the values contained in the major religions of humanity. He was a true mystic writing in the Talmudic manner and style, always in touch with the lights of the inner Torah, the inner divine presence. In one of his most revealing testimonials about himself, he declared:
"I love everybody. It is impossible for me not to love all people, all nations. With all the depth of my being, I desire to see them grow toward beauty, toward perfection. My love for the Jewish people is with more ardor, more depth. But my inner desire reaches out with a mighty love toward all. There is veritably no need for me to force this feeling of love. It flows directly from the holy depth of wisdom, from the divine soul. "It is no accident, but of the very essence of my being, that I find delight in the pursuit of the divine mysteries in unrestrained freedom. This is my primary purpose. All my other goals, the practical and the rational, are only peripheral to my real self. I must find my happiness within my inner self, unconcerned whether people agree with me, or by what is happening to my own career. The more I shall recognize my own identity, and the more I will permit my self to be original, and to stand on my own feet with an inner conviction which is based on knowledge, perception, feeling and song, the more will the light of God shine on me, and the more will my potentialities develop to serve as a blessing to myself and to the world. "The refinements to which I subject myself, my thoughts, my imagination, my morals, and my emotions, will also serve as general refinements for the whole world. A person must say, 'The whole world was created for my sake"' (Arple Tobar, p. 22).
The Culture of the Jewish Peoples
"We began to say something of the immense inportance among ourselves but we have not finisehd it. We re inthe midst of our discourse, and we do not wish, an dwe are not able, to stop. We shall not abandon our distinctive way of life nor our universal aspirations. The truth is so right that we stammer; our speech is still in exile. In the course of time we shall be able to express what we seek with our total being. Only a people that hs completed what it started can leave the scene of history. To begin and not to finish - this is not in accordance with the pattern of existence."