{"id":181685,"date":"2016-04-14T18:43:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T23:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/04\/14\/this-is-the-best-that-they-have\/"},"modified":"2016-04-14T18:43:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-14T23:43:00","slug":"this-is-the-best-that-they-have","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/04\/14\/this-is-the-best-that-they-have\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is the Best That They Have?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am referring, of course, to John Kasich, who gave a speech at a Yeshiva (Jewish religious school), and <a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/daily\/intelligencer\/2016\/04\/kasich-meets-talmudic-scholars-explains-bible.html\">decided to tell them about an obscure bible story, the story of Joseph<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">John Kasich&#8217;s travels in New York brought him yesterday to a Jewish bookstore, where he met students of the Talmud. Having thus met people who spend their entire day scrutinizing religious texts, Kasich&#8217;s reaction was to ask them if they were aware of facts about those texts that they probably knew as very small children. &#8220;They sold [Joseph] into slavery, and that&#8217;s how the Jews got to Egypt. Right? Did you know that?&#8221; For those who never attended Sunday school, this is a bit like visiting MIT, wandering into a physics lab, and asking people if they ever heard of this guy named Isaac Newton.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But it gets even better:  He then went to a Jewish bakery, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/john-kasich-links-jesus-blood-to-passover-at-matzah-bakery\/\">drew an analogy between the blood of the Pascal lamb, and the blood of Jesus<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">If Ohio Gov. John Kasich\u2019s visit to Hasidic Brooklyn this week had yielded only one amusing moment, <i>Dayenu<\/i> \u2013 it would have been enough. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">But, thank God, there were many in the Republican presidential candidate\u2019s visit to a Jewish bookstore, shmura matzah bakery and Hasidic school in Borough Park on Tuesday.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful, wonderful holiday for our friends in the Jewish community \u2013 the Passover,\u201d Kasich told reporters after emerging from the matzah bakery, a box of the fresh-baked stuff in hand.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Yes, Jews are known to love The Passover, almost as much they love The Pre-Election Drop-By from vote-seeking politicians.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Flanked by Hasidic publicist Ezra Friedlander, Kasich then launched into a brief appraisal of the links between Passover and, um, the blood of Jesus Christ.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cThe great link between the blood that was put above the lampposts\u201d \u2013 er, you mean doorposts, governor \u2014 \u201cthe blood of the lamb, because Jesus Christ is known as the lamb of God. It\u2019s his blood, we believe \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kasich\u2019s only saving grace was that his remarks kept getting interrupted by the subway rumbling on the elevated tracks overhead.<\/p>\n<p>Talking about Christ\u2019s blood during a visit to Borough Park? Oy vey. Please, somebody, prep this guy. Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn want to hear about food stamps, affordable housing, Medicaid. Ix-nay on the Esus-jay.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is definitely the silly season in politics.<\/p>\n<p>Remember though, that according to all the &#8220;very serious people&#8221; Kasich is the only adult in the proverbial room.<\/p>\n<p>I would say, &#8220;The stupid, it burns!&#8221; but this wasn&#8217;t even the stupidest thing that a Republican said today.  <\/p>\n<p>Take a guess who it was who was even stupider.  No peeking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am referring, of course, to John Kasich, who gave a speech at a Yeshiva (Jewish religious school), and decided to tell them about an obscure bible story, the story of Joseph: John Kasich&#8217;s travels in New York brought him yesterday to a Jewish bookstore, where he met students of the Talmud. Having thus met &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[977,1021,982,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presidential-campaign","category-religion","category-stupid","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181685"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}