Author: Richard

Malkin goes overboard attacking Jimmy Fallon for having guests she doesn’t like

Conservative author/pundit/blogger Michelle Malkin says that Jimmy Fallon is “a celebrity frauds best friend” in a syndicated column that really is nothing more than just an indictment of the Tonight Show host for having NBC News anchor Brian Williams and this Dunham woman whom I keep getting told in blogs and news items is a celebrity. The entire column has a “geez. take it easy, man” vibe to it for me in it’s tone but the larger reason i’m highlighting it is that it’s an example of how conservative pundits will often go overboard in their expectations of the media to hold Leftists and Democrats accountable – especially in entertainment settings.

I would understand her beef and curt tone if Fallon had a history of mixing it up politically (he doesn’t) or if he was guilty of a John Stewart style duplicity in where he

In this case, Fallons only crime is merely having guests on his show… Chill out, girl.

I’ve heard a lot of the same criticisms about Dunhams false rape claims and other allegedly distasteful actions and while she doesn’t sound like someone I would necessarily want to hang out with, Jimmy Freakin fallon is a bizarre tool to use with which to club her.

From Malkins column on the “Fallon-ization” of celebrity honesty…

If you’re lucky enough to sit by his late-night throne and join his cool-kid games, all your troubles will melt away. Funnyman Jimmy is not just a bread-and-circuses buffoon. He’s the keeper of the pop culture immunity necklace.
A few weeks ago, “The Tonight Show” host bestowed his boob-tube shield upon grotesque actress Lena Dunham — a favorite repeat guest who famously declared an “obsessive crush” on Fallon. This time, they played “perverted Pictionary.” The main gag involved foot-long hot dogs.

Entertainment reporters and women’s magazines dutifully gushed about Dunham’s “fierce” doodling skills and “perfectly blended smoky eyes,” but not a peep from any of them about Dunham’s real-world lying game.

Behind the canned laughter and caked-on makeup lies the ugly truth: Dunham is a freaky-deaky fabulist and Hollywood deviant. After signing a hefty $3.5 million book deal with Random House, the hipster creator of HBO’s “Girls” and her publisher were forced late last year to walk back bogus allegations about a “rape” attack by an “Oberlin College Republican” that she neglected to disclose for nearly a decade … until she needed to generate book publicity.

Random House is now paying the falsely accused non-rapist college Republican’s legal fees. Instead of making amends, Dunham continues to make a martyr of herself, publishing a self-pitying diatribe on Buzzfeed and posting a prominent Twitter selfie with runny mascara mimicking two black eyes.

How twisted is she? Her bestselling memoir also contained disturbing accounts of Dunham forcing her younger sister to kiss her, masturbating in bed next to her, joking about acting like a “sexual predator,” and examining her genitals. When bona fide sexual abuse victims started expressing their disgust with Dunham’s cavalier attitude, she naturally blamed “conservative white men.” Dunham also bitterly attacked conservatives after critics questioned her soft-porn photo shoot with skeevy fashion photographer and accused serial sexual harasser Terry Richardson.

Whatevah. Dunham’s smoky eyes were “A+!” And did you see her Saint Laurent polka-dot dress?

Also – what the hell does “freaky deaky” mean? I’ve heard it and used it before but I thought it just meant “weird”. Malkin seems to be using it as a synonym for things like “sexually depraved” and “abhorrently dishonest”.

This whole thing is weird and conservatives should avoid a Malkin-ization in their media commentary.

Republicans Remind Everyone How Stupid They Are by shunning a 2016 Romney Run

In 2012, Republicans had an opportunity to gain a Nixon landslide without the possibility of Nixon corruption or scandal by running a near-perfect man for the job of president and shunned it for petty stupid reasons. That man eventually became their nominee anyway but even his expert handling of the hand he was dealt was no match for an incumbent president who had 4 more years to organize as well as enjoy the comfort of positive press as his opposition party did his job of weakening theirs. The Obama Administrations mobilized base achieved a decisive victory to reelection.

Republicans could rectify this error and re-nominate their still-best-candidate again who has already been vetted and tried and come up clean and instead, powerful voices in the party are destroying their best chance at 2016 yet again.

Instead, the party of idiots will go through a year and a half of bloodying their bodies and creating more ill-will amongst the various factions that comprise it in another completely stupid Primary that will hurt far more than it helps. The reason it won’t help is that the differences between the ideology of the contenders that have an actual shot at the nomination is miniscule. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush administrations would differ little in policy. The question here is electability and marketing. But Republicans are too stupid and petty to see that.

The reason running the guy who lost the last go-around remains their best strategy is simply due to the fact that Mitt Romney remains their best figure in the 3 key categories that matter:

Electability: Might sound odd to say about the guy who lost last time around, but the fact remains that his balance of ideology, background, and approach to issues is the most electable option for the 2nd straight national election cycle.

Purity: The dude is so scandal-free that it is almost inhuman. Which ironically serves as a downside because then he is resented for how impossibly perfect he is and demonized by the other side for exactly that reason.

Representation: If Republicans could make a perfect candidate they would all vote to Frankenstein together a sterling family man with successful business experience who has served in a legislative position but didn’t engrain himself in Washington bureaucracy or corruption.The Republican Party stands for individual liberty outweighing government power, the reduction of government power over individuals lives from laws to regulations to taxes, core founding document principal preservation, American cultural conservation, and a strong national defense. Maybe the party will get a better figure to represent these values in the future, but as of now, there is no more perfect individual for the GOP than the family man who spent a life in the private sector both enriching himself and others as well as charitably improving the lives of his neighbors yet became interested in the direction of the country’s leadership enough to serve in an executive position and remain involved in the national dialog.

Ideological Sensibility: He follows the 3 legs of the Reagan-Conservatism stool while remaining sensible and adaptable. He doesn’t have any extreme positions or baggage to make him legitimately unpalatable, so when the inevitable attacks claiming as such happen, they are much easily dispatched than with less moderate candidates.

 

Republicans are tools.

 

The Protestors Who Brought Down Boston Interstate Are Predictably, Hippie Losers

Earlier this month a bunch of dumb hippies who have been both ingesting and perpetuating the brainwash that pushes victimhood mentality on dark skinned racial minorities decided that it was about time they did something about race relations between white police officers and people with dark skin so of course they chained themselves to barrels to block traffic on the interstate.

The sarcasm in the “of course” part in that sentence speaks both to the illogic bizarreness of the act and the completely routine and cliche predictableness of hippie protest, which is not so much to argue a point or raise awareness in any kind of constructive manner but rather is to throw a tantrum for attention so the participants feel good about themselves. Tools.

Protesters who said they were trying to call attention to racial oppression blocked traffic on Interstate 93 north and south of Boston Thursday morning. The actions surprised police, snarled the commute for thousands, and forced the diversion of an ambulance rushing a car crash victim to a Boston hospital, State Police said.

The narcissistic tantrum accomplished nothing but the addition of more negativity to people in the areas days but as is the case with all stunts like this, could have gone much worse as it blocked the path of not only innocent civilians commuting and generally trying to just go about their day but also an ambulance trying to save a mans life.

An ambulance carrying a car crash victim with life-threatening injuries had to be diverted Thursday morning because of protests that shut down parts of Interstate 93, officials said.

Self absorbed, non-productive, annoying, destructive, and accomplishes nothing. 

Could these people be any more cliche? Turns out the answer is yes… They could be dirty looking dreaded white dudes who still live with their enabler parents…

To cleanse the palate, via Joel Pollak, nothing says “blocking ambulances for social justice” like white-guy dreads. This makes twice in the span of four days that our worst stereotypes about liberals were magically vindicated, the other being John Kerry rolling out his favorite hippie troubadour to serenade France with an apology on Friday. As with celebrity deaths, these things tend to happen in threes, which makes me wonder what sort of show Obama might be preparing to put on for us tomorrow night during the SOTU. Maybe he’ll use the speech to dump on “American Sniper”? That’s the bleeding edge of left-wing hot takes at this particular moment.

The REAL Reason Alison Rosen was Fired from the Adam Carolla Show

After Adam Carolla announced that he had decided to delete his co-host Alison Rosen from the Adam Carolla Show podcast, I have been monitoring the reaction to it and been annoyed by the haters jumping to conclusions that make no sense and show a total misreading of Adam Carolla as a person. Especially when my top assistant expressed these same symptoms, I took a harder line on the matter to clear the air by shining a light on the known facts of the situation and what logical conclusions they point towards. I have viewed what is out there and I am alleging in this post to have proof beyond a reasonable doubt of why Alison Rosen was deemed to be not a good sidekick and by extension team player for the Carolla Digital network and thus be fired from that sidekick position as well as had her stand-alone podcast untied from Carolla Digital distribution.

She just wasn’t a fan…

Only because I have such a passionate love affair with truth and justice does it irk me like a pair of cactus slippers to see these people on the Twitterz chiding Adam for “turning his back on family” as several similar tweets to him have said. It’s annoying because if you are an astute observer of character then you have enough data on Carolla (if you’re enough of a fan of the show to call the hosts part of a “family”) to know that this would be wildly out of place. So I immediately dont respect people who baselessly jump towards an out of character illustration of a character deficit (which an unwarranted firing would have been).

My theory is that Rosen was prickly towards Carolla (I was artfully foreshadowing that with my slippers imagery but now that it’s over with I think its stupid). While she is a skilled improv comedian, knowing well the art of yes-and, I would often notice that she would remain silent or awkwardly stifle in non-comedic ways a premise Adam was going with.

Alison likes Carolla and all. It’s just that she is on the show for her own gains and promotion, and not Adams. In my previous post I referred to her as an Andy Richter type and that is no insult to her or Andy – both of whom are funny and talented people – but rather, it is an illustration of incongruent motives of a person with higher ambitions and that of a shows sidekick. Alison just was never a fan of Adam Carolla or his work. She worked well with him because they are both comedic pro’s but that is the role of a performance partner where as the role of a sidekick is a different one. In the role of supporting player, she was on-point always. But in the role of sidekick, she just did not have her head in the game and just wasn’t that into it.

Consider the following:

-Item: Her own podcast “Alison Rosen is Your New Best Friend” is run on Adams network Carolla Digital, yet in the shows icon there contains a url for AlisonRosen.com, Alisons personal non-Carolla-Affiliated website. I always saw that as a message sent that the two were distinct. Which they shouldn’t be. Alison should have her personal page on a Carolla Digital owned website, not link to her independent venture.

-Item: Whenever Rosen tells a story involving the group (as in: recalling a time they all spent together), she focuses exclusively on her aspect of it, giving little yes-anding to the other two people who were there.

-Item: I’ve never heard of her ever doing anything social with Adam. Ever. I know that Adam went to his co-host Bald Bryans wedding, but Alison, whom just recently got married… no mention of Adam attending the wedding. Normally I would say this is Carolla disliking events like weddings and not wanting to be bothered, but his attendance of Bryans and comments on it not being something he didn’t want to go to outrule the possibility in my mind that Rosen thought she was doing Carolla any kind of favor by not inviting him. Rosen didn’t invite Carolla because she’s not all that fond of him.

-Item: Rosen is never excited about a Carolla-only project. While Rosen is an excellent “yes and…” adder to every other topic on the show, she never has much by way of boosting things when they are talking about Adams books, or television appearances, or upcoming movie – unless it’s about Rosens role in it. Which, btw:

-Item: It was revealed on both Rosen and Carolla’s separate podcasts that Rosen asked for a role in Adams upcoming movie Road Hard. By my listening of the dynamics of the telling, it seems clear to me that Rosen ambitiously and unorthodoxly asked for a role she was otherwise not being considered for. -Which is fine if you are a huge Adam Carolla fan, but… Rosen just isn’t. She wasn’t excited to “work with Adam” or anything like that including any mention of praise for the writing, the story, or any aspect to it. She was excited to be in a movie and thats it. Which is fine on its own – its just not fine for a sidekick.

-Item: How many times have you heard Bald Bryan bring up old episodes of Loveline or The Man Show with Adam (two shows he hosted for years) – or at least push forward with conversational additions when those topics were raised? Now how many times can you recall Rosen ever doing that? My memory is Bryan: Lots, Alison: Never. She chuckles and gives short acknowledging answers during those segments where she should be adding the most, fangirling out to realistic and genuine enthusiasm for the head of her shows brand. But she didn’t.

Rosen was a good personality but was just not a team player enough to a part of a team like Adams. Adams history is in sports and Rosen was a great runner, but not a great left field quarterback, or something (my background is the opposite-of-sports so I was unable to adequately finish my own metaphor but you get what I’m saying about being a team player).

This makes sense to me. It’s hard to work with someone on your personally unique product and have them not be a personal fan about that personally unique product.

I know exactly how this is. My closest assistant and Creative Manager of my work couldn’t give a damn less about my unique product. He doesn’t help with Richardland or any of it’s related sections and does little more than read it every once in awhile. He doesn’t ask questions about it, doesn’t respond to news or stories about it, doesn’t add input to it, doesn’t add or react to technical problems I bring up in it’s management and development – nothing. Half my videos were taken down by a video provider that shifted its business model and then 1 year later the other half went offline. Having not been able to make a new video in all of 2014, the archive was all there was left and between the time the first half went unavailable to right now as I type this (1 year and 3 months), he has not fulfilled the open task of transitioning that content to new hosting and reintroduction to distribution. He’s not trying to sabotage me. He just doesn’t care so its not a priority month after month.

When I think of him, I think of Alison Rosen. I see people who are perfectly pleasant individuals who are wildly talented and full of potential and whom are completely misplaced in their role in regards to the closest person they work with and are hurting that brand.

Adam did what I should have done: He fired someone in his life who was working against his goals *before* he started hating them. You simply cannot work closely on a product that is all about YOU with someone who is working in a manner focused on themselves primarily, the joint effort secondly, and you not at all.

I am more convinced than ever that he made the right choice.

Why Adam Carolla is right about Alison Rosen

(Note that this post probably requires reasonable knowledge and appreciation of the Adam Carolla Show podcast for it to be enjoyable. If that doesn’t apply to you, you have permission to skip this one and move on to another post where I comment on something you also have no idea about but actually require the education at least)….

Adam Carolla opened his first show of 2015 with the announcement that his news-girl cohost for the past 4 years would not be a part of the show anymore. He said it was nothing personal and there were no hard feelings but that he thought she was a great talent but not a very good sidekick. He is correct.

I loved Alisons addition to the show and thought the 3 hosts had an awesome dynamic and Alisons contributions were always funny and on point. But Adam is right. Rosen was a poor sidekick. She was a co-host. And in essence, the role of a sidekick is obviously part co-host – but not an equal one.

Alison Rosen is a slightly more attractive Andy Richter. Richter was Conan O’Briens sidekick who aspired to be more and was in the role as sidekick as a springboard to those aspirations, not because he was a team mate with Conan. Richter left to pursue an acting career that didn’t pan out and found himself offered a sidekick role again over what appears to be O’Briens pity and good nature (not because Richter isn’t talented, but because the role is unnecessary to O’Briens show), – which I heard him lament on Marc Marons podcast, stating that he never wanted to be a sidekick and essentially stated how he had got himself stuck in the role that he is now making the best of. Like Richter, Rosen is not in her dream job as sidekicking the Adam Carolla Show in the way that Robin Quivers is in her role sidekicking on The Howard Stern Show.

Rosen was fantastic comedically on her own and in the group and I would have never suggested she would ever need to go, but immediately when Adam used the word “sidekick” I didn’t hesitate for a second to stamp his description of her being “not a very good” one as being correct. As an entertainer with a brand bearing my name myself, I have immediate respect for this decision.

Carolla is the host of the show. It’s his vision of what it should be that is what it should be. While I as an audience member enjoyed Alisons equal-level co-host role in the show, the fact is that it was not a co-host role and therein not what the show should be.

But that’s only why Adam is right about having the power to make the decision to fire Rosen. He was also correct to exercise that right from a branding and product-for-the-consumer standpoint. The brand of the Adam Carolla Show needs a better team player that is more than just independently good but rather is interactively boosting of the team. This also results in a better product for the consumer. I know because I’ve witnessed it before and so have any of you who have been listening to the show since before it was a podcast and it was the morning radio show that replaced Howard Stern on the west coast.

This was the original Adam Carolla Show:


Adam, Danny Bonaduce, & Teresa Strasser

This was a highly enjoyable show. Adam tied the show together, wrangling liberal jewish newsgirl Teresa Strasser and former child star from the Partridge Family, Danny Bonaduce. Bonaduce was my guilty pleasure of the show when I used to listen from 07-on. His stories were bizarre and he told them with an overacted tone that was just self-aware enough in its theatrics to be charming instead of douchie, and his moments from outbursts to opening monologues about his divorce that was ongoing at the time. He was a highlight of the show. But Adam, rightly didn’t like his presence as a sidekick and lobbied the station to have him moved off the show (not necessarily fired). Carolla eventually won, which pleasantly resulted in Bonaduce getting his own show on the same station later in the day, but he had to kick Bonaduce out.

As a viewer, I was initially annoyed that something I liked about the show was now missing, but stuck with it anyway. The ensuing episodes without Bonaduce were quickly the best I had ever heard. Not because Bonaduce wasn’t an entertaining addition – rather he was better off with his own show, which I enjoyed as well (until the station went off the air and he moved to the east coast to host a morning show there). But The Adam Carolla Show with Teresa Strasser and a now more prominent role of the sound effects guy, Bald Bryan, who previously would only chime in occasionally with his actual voice instead of playing sound clip drops in between the conversations going on. The show continued that way into podcasting after the station they were on got replaced with a music station and it got better and better, quickly becoming a favorite I would recommend to others. What made it so much better?

Adam replaced an entertaining and talented but non-team-playing sidekick with a team playing sidekick and it resulted in an inarguably better show that was uniquely an Adam Carolla styled production. Both from the audience standpoint, and the identity of the Adam Carolla Show brand, the switch of the brash anti-improving Bonaduce with the yes-anding Bald Bryan and the show was top notch.

When Teresa Strasser chose to leave the show in favor of a job opportunity in Phoenix, auditions for a new news girl were held and Alison Rosen was chosen. This in effect undid the Bonaduce swap, as it replaced a team player with a player aspiring to have their own team.

Carolla was right to “go in a different direction” from now on.

—

UPDATE: Rosen confirmed on Instagram that the decision was a surprise to her. Meaning she was shocked to find out she was fired. Also she said she will be “taking her show with her”, confirming that her own podcast will no longer be on Carolla Digital, which in turn confirms that she was fired with intent. Meaning, it was a clear decision to cut ties with Rosen and not simply replace her as her role of sidekick. Unless there was a major incident (which I doubt), this means that Carolla had major problems with Alisons execution of her role and despite efforts, they weren’t being fixed so much so to the point that he let her go.

No, Dogs Don’t Have Souls and No They Don’t Go to Heaven

Sorry the news reports about the Pope’s comment on dog-afterlife got your hopes up. Here I am to dash them: Dogs don’t have souls and when they die, they are gone forever.  As with all the bad news I am duty bound to deliver, I say this not to bum you out, but to make you better prepared for reality. Enjoy your pets while they’re alive. Because the series of algorithms from their genetics and outside stimuli that made them unique is going to be gone forever.

But before I get to the meat of this story, I have to get this piece of clipart out of the way:

There… I did it. The most easy, most obvious hack reference to make on this story: use of the 1989 Don Bluth animated feature All Dogs Go To Heaven.


DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE??????

Now that that obligatory nonsense is out of the way, I can go back to crushing your dreams. First the background:

Recently reports claimed that the current hippie Pope said otherwise. but only kindov. Kindov because Catholics believe the Pope is infallible because God talks directly to him so if he says something then its basically God saying it. But that only counts in official Popey Speeches, of which this was not. So…. this is more “the guy who is the Pope” said it than it is “the Pope said…” if you’re following me here. Then the reports clarified that it wasn’t even this hippie Pope who made the claim but rather the Pope from the Hippie 60s…

The original report claimed that a kid was sad about his deceased pet and the Pontiff made him feel better with something silly. From the New York Times:

Citing biblical passages that assert that animals not only go to heaven, but get along with one another when they get there, Francis was quoted by the Italian news media as saying: “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”

Theologians cautioned that Francis had spoken casually, not made a doctrinal statement.

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large of America, the Catholic magazine, said he believed that Francis was at least asserting that “God loves and Christ redeems all of creation,” even though conservative theologians have said paradise is not for animals.

“He said paradise is open to all creatures,” Father Martin said. “That sounds pretty clear to me.”

This is nice to say to children, but not appropriate for adults to believe.

Also, not accurate. As the above text no longer appears on that NY Times link which has been correct-edited (corrected+edited). It now reads:

Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper, analyzing the pope’s remarks, concluded he believed animals have a place in the afterlife. It drew an analogy to comforting words that Pope Paul VI was said to have once told a distraught boy whose dog had died: “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”

This is PETA nonsense. If animals have souls then killing animals is murder. And Surprise: PETA of course feels validated. From the same NYTimes piece:

Sarah Withrow King, director of Christian outreach and engagement at PETA, one of the most activist anti-slaughterhouse groups, said the pope’s remarks vindicated the biblical portrayal of heaven as peaceful and loving, and could influence eating habits, moving Catholics away from consuming meat — which she asserted had already been happening anyway. “It’s a vegan world, life over death and peace between species,” she said. “I’m not a Catholic historian, but PETA’s motto is that animals aren’t ours, and Christians agree. Animals aren’t ours, they’re God’s.”

Whether the pope’s remarks will prove to be a persuasive new reason not to eat meat, a potentially worrisome development to the multibillion-dollar beef, pork, poultry and seafood industries, remains unclear at best. But they did cause discussion.

Gotta love the hippie bias of the Times rubbing its hands over how multibillion-dollar industries might be negatively affected by this non-news.

How did this fable spread across news sources and social media as fact? ReligionNews.com tracks its spread:

Part of the answer may be the topic of the pope’s talk to the crowd that day, which centered on the End Times and the transformation of all creation into a “new heaven” and a “new earth.” Citing St. Paul in the New Testament, Francis said that is not “the annihilation of the cosmos and of everything around us, but the bringing of all things into the fullness of being.”

The trail of digital bread crumbs then appears to lead to an Italian news report that extended Francis’ discussion of a renewed creation to the wider question of whether animals too will go to heaven, and what previous popes have said.

“One day we will see our pets in the eternity of Christ,” the report quoted Paul VI as telling a disconsolate boy years ago.

The story was titled, somewhat misleadingly: “Paradise for animals? The Pope doesn’t rule it out.” It wasn’t clear which pope the writer meant, however.

The next day, Nov. 27, a story in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera by veteran Vaticanista Gian Guido Vecchi pushed the headline further: “The Pope and pets: ‘Paradise is open to all creatures.’”

Their full following of the false story is worth reading for insight of how news and false news spreads across sources, alone. But the fact is that to our scientific and religious knowledge, animals don’t have souls.

If you think that only dogs have souls then you’re letting your personal attachment to something rewrite your religious doctrine (or dog-ma).

Don’t blame the messenger, kids….

Watch And Learn All 10 Commandments

As the biggest moral advancement in human civilization, the 10 Commandments are a historically big deal regardless of your belief as to whether they were actually written by a deity that created the universe or not.

In a special segment of his fantastic Prager University 5-minute-courses on important subjects, Dennis Prager has explained all 10 Commandments of the Bible to you in easy to understand videos that you all need to watch.

INTRODUCTION / Still the Best Moral Code

Humanity has everything it needs to create a good world. We’ve had it for 3,000 years. It’s the Ten Commandments; ten basic, yet profound instructions for how to lead a moral life. If everyone followed the Ten Commandments, we would not need armies or police; marriages and families would be stronger; truth would be a paramount value. Dennis Prager explains how the Ten Commandments led to the creation of Western Civilization and why they remain relevant to your life today. This video course introduces a ten-part series.

1- I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD / God Wants Us to Be Free

Although the First Commandment (“I am the Lord your God”) appears simple at first glance, it actually set into motion the most revolutionary idea in human history — ethical monotheism, the belief that there is one God whose main wish is that people treat each other decently. Dennis Prager explains that without this commandment, the following nine mean little. With it, the Ten Commandments becomes world-changing.

2- NO OTHER GODS / There Are More Idols than Ever

Today, the idea of idol worship feels ancient and remote to many people. Thus, the Second Commandment, “You shall have no other gods,” doesn’t seem applicable in modern society. But the opposite is true. We have more false gods than ever — art, education, fame, money, to name just a few. Over the past century the worship of false gods has led to massive evil; Communism and Nazism are just two examples. On a personal level, the worship of false gods leads to unhappiness.

3- DO NOT MISUSE GOD’S NAME / The Worst Sin You Can Commit

Not all sins are equal. Some are worse than others. The worst of one of all? Committing evil in the name of God. This commandment is often misunderstood because it’s mistranslated. It’s not concerned with saying God’s name “in vain” like “God, did I have a terrible day at the office.” It’s about using God’s name in the commission of evil. We see this today when Islamists invoke God’s name while they murder innocent people.

4- REMEMBER THE SABBATH / Don’t Be a Slave

Setting aside of day of rest each week was a revolutionary concept when it was first introduced as the Fourth Commandment. But this Commandment does more: it extends that day of rest to slaves and animals and thus set in motion the slow process of ending slavery and the compassionate treatment of animals. As Dennis Prager explains, the power of the Fourth Commandment to change your life is no less real today than it was for our ancient ancestors. Just ask the spouse of a workaholic how she would feel if her husband took off a day each week to spend with family and friends.

5- HONOR OUR FATHER AND MOTHER / Even if You Don’t Feel Like It

Children owe their parents one thing. And no, it’s not love. The Fifth Commandment understands that sometimes it’s difficult or even impossible to love your parents. But it’s almost always possible to honor them. Dennis Prager explains what that means and why it’s so important. And consider this: if your children see you honoring your parents they are much more likely to honor you.

6- DO NOT MURDER / You Can Kill, but You Can’t Murder

If asked to state this Commandment, most people would say “Do Not Kill.” This is understandable because the classic King James Bible translates it this way. But the English language has changed since 1610. Furthermore, Hebrew has two words for killing just as English does. The correct translation, as Dennis Prager explains, is “Do Not Murder.” Once you grasp this, the meaning of the commandment changes entirely.

7- DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY / The Best Way to Protect the Family

Why do the Ten Commandments single out adultery as particularly harmful? Because adultery can destroy the foundational unit of a society — the family. If exposed, adultery leads to sense of betrayal. If hidden, it forces the offending spouse to lie. Children are often the unintended victims. This may be one of the most difficult Biblical laws to follow, but it’s also one of the most important.

8- DO NOT STEAL / Keep This and You’ll Keep Them All

There is one commandment that, if followed by all of humanity, would instantly create a peaceful world: Do not steal. The Eighth Commandment implicitly prohibits murder (stealing a life), slavery (stealing a person’s freedom), adultery (stealing a spouse), humiliation (stealing dignity), and so many other sins laid out in the Bible. If there is one Commandment that summarizes the other nine, this one is it.

9- DO NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS / Lying is the Root of Evil

The most important ingredient to building a moral society is truth, both inside and outside a courtroom. The prohibition against “bearing false witness” does not only demand that truth reigns supreme in a trial, but that it is a societal value throughout the culture. Bad things happen when people believe lies. With truth, we can build a decent society. Without it, even the other nine commandments won’t help.

10- DO NOT COVET / The One Thought You Should Never Have

There is only one Commandment that prohibits a thought, and it is this: “Do not covet.” Why does the Bible, which is preoccupied with behavior, legislate a thought? Because to covet, to want what belongs to someone else, is the root of the preceding four commandments and often leads to evil. Before someone murders, steals, lies, or commits adultery, the desire to take what is rightly someone else’s usually comes first.