Replacing the Jew

A nice night at the ballpark yesterday as the Somerset Patriots took on Mrs. Stroock's Reading Phillies. The game was tied 4-4 in the 7th when the Phillies loaded the bases. The Patriot's pitcher walked in two runs, then the Phillies hit a double. We watched the ball shoot into the gap and thought, 'Oh man, that's gonna' clear the bases. Brutal.' 

'You mean, yeah!' Mrs. Stroock said.

Phillies 10, Patriots 4. Mrs. Stroock was pleased. 

For all the talk of so called 'replacement theory' the Jerusalem Post notes the demographic crisis in Diaspora Reform Judaism: 'In a panel on the plenary session of the conference, [Professor Aryeh] Eldad said: “There is no future for the Jewish people in the Diaspora unless they are ultra-Orthodox. There is 70% intermarriage,” he said, quoting data from the PEW survey giving the percentage of non-orthodox Jews that intermarry.'

I myself am the product of intermarriage and was only 'half Jewish' until converting before marrying a Conservative Jewish girl whose mother spent her summers in an Orthodox Yeshiva in the South Bronx.* We come from respectable central European Reform Judaism, the Yankee Protestants of the Jewish world. These folks mostly view Judaism as an ethnicity. We reject this formulation. Despite not being very religious ourselves (we tried, it didn't take) we have gone to great effort to make sure the Stroocklettes are raised religious. We're planning Middle Daughter's bat mitzvah right now.

Way back during the 2003-2004 school year we taught at a second rate, craphole Orthodox Yeshiva in Passaic, New Jersey. Our students all had many, many siblings, like 6, 7, 8, 9, 10...and counting. Reform Jews have one or two kids. The future of Diaspora Judaism is Orthodox with a minority Conservative Jewish population. 

Everything about this is horrifying:

Former President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/UMwNMwMnmX

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 19, 2022

Jeez, W, you look old an awful, just a tweak or two away from Joe. Don't make me hate you. Handling 9/11, winning the war in Iraq, five years of a great economy, handling the 2008 financial meltdown. That ain't a bad record. 

As we read this article from Hot Air about the Dems' various bad alternatives to Biden in 2024, we came to the same conclusion the author did. Biden has to run for reelection because the Dems have no other choice. Or do they? Say it with me reader(s), Hillary! Oh yes, Hillary!.

Then again, Hot Air reports: 'Joe Biden is sending his wife to do what he can’t get done. Jill Biden boarded a plane on Wednesday headed to Latin America. She is on a six-day tour through the capital cities of Central and northwestern South America. Her mission is to charm foreign leaders into accepting invitations to the upcoming Summit of the Americas in June.' Jill** is being groomed for the top slot in the corporation. Think about it. 

The Georgia GOP gubernatorial primary is so over it's unbelievable: 'Incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp leads former Sen. David Perdue by a 32-point margin in the Georgia Republican gubernatorial primary race, tripling his advantage from March, according to a new Fox News Poll of Georgia Republican primary voters released Wednesday.' Good. Purdue is a loser. Kemp won his last election. Starfleet President Stacey Abrams has gotten her ass kissed for the last four years while Kemp comes out of a primary ready to fight. On to victory in November. 

*Wanna see the ceremonial nick?

**EdS, not a real doctor, not a real degree.

Will's Combined Baseball Recap and Good Idea for May Day, Comrades

This is Stroock's Books post 4918. According to our niece, who majors in physics, we are 82 posts away from post number 5000. You people know what happens then. 

It's May Day and I can't find my Soviet flag, damn it. 

Vamos Zorros!

For five games this season our own minor league baseball team, the Somerset Patriots, will change its name to the Zorros, or foxes for you mono linguists out there, in an effort to reach out to Somerset County's considerable Spanish speaking community. Last night was the first of those games.

The team donned orange Zorros jerseys. During the pregame intro the Zorros' Latin players came out with their national flags (Colombian and Dominican). Management hung piñatas above the walkways. Much of the PA was conducted in Espanol.  Several local Latin food vendors set up shop; we got the chicken tacos. During the post-game fireworks the PA played Latin music. Note to Patriots' PA guy, Shakira speaks Portuguese. 

Oh, with the score tied 2-2 in the bottom of the 9th with two out and the bases loaded the Zorros won when batter Saul Torres was hit by a pitch. 

The walk-off HBP for the W #VamosZorros🦊 pic.twitter.com/XtHoZHcAWX

— Somerset Patriots (@SOMPatriots) May 1, 2022

The Stroock family had a great time. If you haven't given minor league baseball a try, we strongly urge you to so. 

Moving on to Will's Good Idea for May Day...The Weser and Great Salvation are in end draft stage. We are plugging away at The New American Order, mostly because that's where the ju-ju is to be found. You know, we're Ludendorffing. That leaves summer and Autumn plans. The Final Storm is 70,000 words and we haven't even looked at the thing for two months. [You didn't really say an idea, you just listed what was hanging out there-Ed]. Fuck all if I know what I want to do...

Baseball and Passover Prep, also 33 Percent...33 Percent!

 The Stroock family went on a little outing last night:

A great time at the Somerset Patriots. The staff is impossibly friendly and professional. The ballpark immaculate and perfectly safe. We have no worries sending the girls off to get ice cream by themselves. This is the Patriots' second season as the Yankees AAA affiliate, and we have to say the play is certainly better then when they were an independent team. Also, like the rest of MLB affiliated minor league baseball, the Patriots were using a pitch clock. The game definitely moved along a bit quicker. The first of several games we'll attend this year.

Ace has a long discussion on 2022 and 2024. Nut graph: the Dems are totally effed. As we've noted countless times, winning elections needs circumstances, ideas, candidates. 

Items one and two are aligning perfectly for the GOP. But for the last six months there's been a lot of talk about subpar GOP candidates in Pennsylvania (where the frontrunner had to drop out leading to the Dr. Oz fiasco) and Kansas (where a GOP with legal trouble might win the nomination). But the candidate issue seems to be shaking out. 

Let's go back four years. In 2018 this blog spent a lot of time talking about the Tennessee senate race, featuring GOP congresswoman Marsha Blackburn against former Dem governor Phil Bredesen. Bredesen was well known and had been popular around the state. For much of the year polls showed both candidates in the 40s with Bredesen ahead. But when election season really started in the autumn, Blackburn pulled away in the polls and crushed Bredesen in November. We expect the polls to behave similarly this year in numerous races. 

Here's an example. earlier this year Herschel Walker was tied with incumbent Jew hating Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia. This morning Walker's up 5%. Speaking of Georgia, this blog endorses Brian Kemp in the GOP governor primary. Kemp won his last race. Kemp's going to go into the general election prepared and sharp against imaginary governor and real Federation president Stacey Abrams. Sure, Trump's endorsed Purdue. Let us ask ourselves, Truth Social, Dr. Oz... what exactly has Trump done right lately?

Anway, Quinnipiac has Joe at 33% this morning. Holy mearde.

Tomorrow begins Passover. You know what that means. [Yes, lame Charleton Heston jokes. -Ed]. I have returned Masalla...sorry long Charleton Heston flick...Pharoh, let my people go!'

Saturday Updates

 As I write this, burley garbage men are picking up washed out book cases and soggy carpet and manfully tossing them into a garbage truck. It's glorious. [Does Mrs. Stroock know about this?-Ed] Those are union jobs. That's time and a half at least.

What a week. We hauled our entire basement out to the curb. We are tired and sore and sleeping so deeply no amount of nudging from Mrs. Stroock stops our snoring. Our throat is dry and crackly. The dust and mold in the basement doesn't help. To put it another way, we're exhausted. And there's still work to do. 

These are not complaints. There are people in New Jersey who lost everything, including 27 dead, two from Bridgewater. From the moment we came home we felt we dodged a bullet. 

A contractor is coming on Tuesday to remediate flood damage. This entails removing drywall and insulation, drying out and bombing the basement with a disinfectant. From there we can talk drywall repair. 

Next step, carpet. Interesting question. Do we buy new bookcases or hire a carpenter to put new shelves in? 

We're not worried about further floods. In 16 years this was the first time we flooded.

Reader(s) will recall that we posted a photo of our Somerset Patriots' stadium under water after Ida. Last night:

It was a cool, crisp, beautiful night. Before the Fauci Flu the Fami de Stroock would catch half a dozen games a year. This was our first game back since the Beijing Bat Bug. Goddamn, but if we didn't get emotional sitting there thinking about it.

This season the Patriots became the Yankees AA affiliate. The quality of play was significantly better. We saw a lot of future major leaguers out there. 

World War 1990: The Weser is 60,000 words. Is it done? No. But it's almost done. We're declaring the summer sneak in project a success and moving on.

We did the last thing we had to do with The Great Nuclear War of 1975. This week we'll print out a physical copy and read it. Remember 75 and 76 come out back to back simultaneous like. We have no idea what we must needs do with 76.

This week we'll begin anew World War 1990: The Final Storm. The first step is reading everything we've written so far. Not the Roki Tunnel opener though. At the same time we'll begin work on the air strike scenes. We think we'll start with the Brits. Remember Darling and his Tornado squadron? Target: Yedrovo. And we'll let the Aussie F-111 strike percolate.

New Year's Day in New Jersey

Via NJ.Com:

On Saturday, The Battle of Trenton went as planned. The Continental Army defeated the Hessians, starting at the base of Trenton's Battle Monument, forcing the enemy down Warren Street and finishing the fight by the Assunpink Creek in Mill Hill Park. Spectators lined the streets along the path of the battle referred to by many as the turning point of the American Revolution, because before this dramatic victory for George Washington and his troops, the revolution seemed to be floundering.

The Stroock family has seen these reenactors one town over in Bound Brook and they do a presentation every 4th of July with our minor league baseball team, the Somerset Patriots. It's great fun. Click over, there's lots of great picks.

Of course the largest battle of the war was fought at Monmouth, about half an hour from here. We've walked that battlefield, which just happens to be a working farm.

Below is a pic we took from the reenactment of the Battle of Bound Brook.

Notes on Father's Day

Our dad spent Father's Day weekend with us. Among other things we and the Stroocklettes saw a Somerset Patriots game, our local minor league team.

In our youth Dad and I used to go to a lot of Yankees games, it was one of our things. Giants too, during  the Parcells-LT era. So this was nice. I don't think we'd been to a ballgame together since 2003.

In 1993 we saw the Yankees play the Milwaukee Brewers. Early in the game Yankees catcher Mike Stanley hit a home run that landed right at our feet. We still have the ball somewhere.

Last night, after our online thingy with Cindy Sheehan, we attended a neighborhood block party. The girls had a great time, as always.

Things like that put us in mind of our grandfather, our second father's day without the old bastard.

He was a powerful man, a dominant man, a patriarchal man. In his final years Mark Stroock the II was simply an old man who liked hearing about what his great grandchildren were up to and he loved knowing that the family was enjoying the lake house he bought in 1973. Nothing made him happier. 

In a relationship that was often difficult, and filled with stress for me, we enjoyed those evening phone calls from Massachusetts and simply stating when we got off the phone, 'He is pleased.'

He would have loved hearing about the ballgame and block party and I wish I could tell him about it.