akuperma

1. The busing of the somewhat illegal immigrants is a (very successful publicity stunt).

2. One should note that many people on the “blue” side are not supportive of increased immigration, and many on the red side are. The complication is that the “illegals” tend to be hard working and upwardly mobile (meaning they may take away jobs from less industrious American workers), and that they tend to be economic conservatives (most are from socialist-leaning governments, which is why they tend to be pro-capitalism) and social conservatives (anti-abortion, anti-gay and pro-religion).

3. If the government were run by rational people, and given that the US has a serious labor shortage, the federal government would place them in jobs which are otherwise going unfilled, with the federal government bearing the costs (rather than state and local government located by the border). However rationality seems to have gone out of style (it was so 20th century).

One option is to have the secular curriculum run by a separate corporation and in effect the Torah portion would have the same status as the goyim’s “Sunday schools”, except ours would be running 20-40 hours a week. That would free the yeshiva from government interference, but whatever alternative schools we set up (and homeschooling is just a type of alternative school) would still have to deal with a hostile government. We need to remember that the hostility is against the yeshivos per se, but is actually directed against all religious and ideological community who reject the “woke” religion or militant secularism, and as long as the Democrats have solid control of the state and local government, Yidden (and many others) will have reason to fear persecution. If the litigation fails, and the electorate continues to support the “freedom from religion” regime, the only option is migration to a jurisdiction that support freedom of religion (and if you are a home owner in New York State, the forced migration of Yidden will have a devastating effect on your investment).

1. The Soviet Union played a major role in winning World War II. Russia and Ukraine were provinces, not countries. The Soviet Union was much larger than Germany, and Germany was fighting a two-front war against enemies that were larger in terms of population and resources. Note the Russia is half the size of the USSR in terms of population, and has an economy the smaller than several NATO members (US, UK, France, Germany). By threatening the EU and NATO, Russia is in over its head,

2. Had the Allies reached a separate peace, something Stalin was terrified of (those into alternative history would probably focus on acceptance of the very generous terms Hitler offered Britain in 1940, or perhaps if D-Day had failed),the war probably would have ended with the the Third Reich intact but the Soviet Union probably including little more than they had when the war started.

3. Russia is using tactics that worked very well in the 1940s, but the Ukrainians have been trained by NATO in modern warfare (think of major armies launching infantry charges against machine guns in the 20th century – just because the tactic worked in the 19th century when charging muskets). Also, if as reported in the free world, Russian has led its people to believe they are fighting neo-nazis and fascists, and they might expect a problem if they send a large conscript army that realizes it has been lied to. Also, if Russia does general mobilization, the countries on its borders that were formerly under Russian rule (Poland, Finland, Moldova and the Baltic countries) would panic and that panic would spread – and if the “big boys” in NATO start calling up reserves, the Russian situation starts looking very bad. USSR vs. NATO would have been close. Russia vs. NATO/EU would be a disaster for Russia (and perhaps the world).

We need to think about the economic impact of Mashiach. There are probably millions of politicians, journalist, bloggers, and people who spend their life in chat rooms. What will they do? Massive dislocation?

Big deal, Xi and Putin manage to keep almost all opposition leaders in jail. It’s just American exceptionalism to think the US should be any different – and starting with Obama, the Democrats are clearly opposed to America being exceptional. Things like “Rule of Law” and “Dur Process” are as old fashioned as all the other archaic concepts in the Bill of Rights that the WOKE elites want cancelled.

I don’t think that under American law a father can order his daughter to divorce her husband. The Romans allowed that, but that aspect of law never survived the medieval period.

Assuming you are not a hermit living (and raising a family) in a remote area “off the grid”, you would teach them about the internet the same way you teach them about everything in the real world. Olam ha-zeh is the problem.

A tablet can be used for reading ebooks. A smartphone is too small, and a laptop (or pc) is overkill for reading a text. Especially for non-commercial materials (including many sefarim), there is tremendous potential there since an ebook is much cheaper than a printed book. A large amount of book publishing is being done electronically, and a great many genre (e.g. reference books, technical manuals, newspapers) are clearly moving towards being entire electronic.

We should be dan le kaf zechus, and assume that the person (the bird feeder) about whom the complaint pertain, was throwing out newly killed and/or partially buchered animals to feed the neighborhood vultures. In that case one would need ask Beis Din for permission to either sue or file a criminal or health law complaint.

Biden, like Trump, believes in appealing to his base. That is a risky proposition in any event, since rallying your supporters may backfire if at the same time you rally everyone else to vote against you. Consider Hillary Clinton who denounced the “deplorables” – it encouraged them to turn out and elect Trump.

Biden has multiple risks. Most serious, Trump might not run, or might run and not be nominated (the recent Democratic victories in House races suggest that a Trump endorsement, while helping in a primary, undermines a candidate in an election – if neither Trump nor the rest of the Republicans want to support a “loser”). Polling suggests that most Americans are moderates, or as some might say, either independents, DINOs or RINOs – so while being a fanatic helps in the primaries it won’t help in the election.

The case is being litigated.

One should consider whether any private university that received direct and indirect (e.g. student loans, tax exemptions, etc.) is allowed to ban an organization whose advocacy it disapproves of. Could YU ban a “friends of cheeseburgers” club? What about a “Hebrew Christians” club? What about banning a student “Friends of Neturei Karta” or a student group calling for “removal” of Palestinians from Eretz Yisrael.

Could private university ban a group advocating political incorrectness? Could a private, and WOKE, university ban “MAGA” club or a Chabad house? Could a private university ban a student organization that advocates genocide against Jews or the re-enslavement of African Americans? If a faith-sponsored university can ban students for religious reasons, do they risk losing their government funding? What if a university bans certain viewpoints that if done by a public university would raise 1st amendment issues (remember that the first amendment only applies to the government), should the university give up its students’ eligibility for subsidized student loans as well as its tax exemptions (not subject to real property tax, contributions are tax deductible from income tax, etc.).

The Democrats have always been the party of patronage and handing out goodies to supporters. The Republicans (and the Whigs before) them have always been the party that preferred a government that respects merit more than identity and supports creating a pro-business climate. Both parties have a history of tolerating larceny. This all goes back at least to the period of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, and has been amazingly consistent (even while views on race or foreign affairs have shifted).

When being politically incorrect is a crime, people like Trump will be cancelled, and either thrown in jail or “reeducated”. He has a legitimate dispute over ownership of personal papers, and instead of litigating it in the courts, the Democrats just sent in the FBI to seize the paper by making a false claim they were stolen government property (which needs to be determined in a civil proceeding).
The real crime is political incorrectness, and Trump is clearly guilty. In Britain they could pass a bill of attainder, but in America they need to fake criminal charges.

Since most of us are also politically incorrect (be realistic, being frum is offensive to the WOKE, our necks are on the line as well), we should worry. The solution is to make sure the Democrats do not get solid control of the Congress, since a solidly blue Congress and a Democratic president means their WOKE base will define the agenda.

If Trump takes control of the Republican party (and it appears he has done so, and his endorsement tilts primaries), there is a serious threat of a massive blue wave in the 2022 and 2024 elections. Note how Trump made the Senate “blue” by turning two Republican seats in Georgia into Democratic seats – and it appears he is doing the same thing nationally.

To distinguish between dress up like you think people dressed up in the distant past (what the moderns say the hareidim to), or whether just is this fashion evolving in a natural way, albeit along different principals than affect the hiloni world (e.g who felt obliged to stop wearing hats since President Kennedy did, or to stop wearing kapotas since King George did) – consider radical change in hareidi fashion that have taken place over the last 120 years. If the changes didn’t result in outpourings of outrage, it supports my argument that this is just a matter of fashion evolving in a natural way. Consider: non-leather dress shoes (other than on Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av); the use of fake light-weight fabrics especially in warm weather; the adoption of the bra; the discontinuance of fur hats on a daily basis (though some continue to wear them on Shabbos or if it is very cold); the adoption by men of long pants (200+ years ago men wore short pants with high socks, and 500 years ago men usually did not wear pants at all). Hareidim are not reinactors or affecting a perceived archaic style of dress; their fashions change like everyone else, but they have their own fashion sense so it sometimes evolves in different directions (unlike “moderns” who think it is cool to ape the goyim).

Fashion change constantly. You can usually date photograph by looking at the clothing worn and how being groom themselves. Factors affecting Yidden include what the local goyim wear, what are rabbanim wear (the equivalent for for goyim are what their leading political figures and movie stars wear), and various halachic factors (modesty, looking better on Shabbos than the rest of the week). Fashions even among Yidden constantly change, and while it is interesting from a sociological perspective, from a halachic perspective “there is nothing to look at”).

Among fashion changes in the 20th century including the switch to manufactured fabrics (rather than linen, wool and cotton). Women switching to a “bra”. Most people giving up formal wearing of hats (a trend we ignored). Men switch to “short” dress coats (something rejected in part by many hareidim especially on Shabbos, the goyim switched when private cars became popular). Footwear has changed radically. People like President John Kennedy (who misplaced his top hat during his inauguration) and King/Emperor George V influence the world at large (when he stopped wearing a kapote as his standard normal daily work clothes), but Yidden not so much.

Customs often migrate between cultures. The is human nature.

The major similarity is the belief that the world was created by a Creator, rather than having occurred as a random processes of uncontrolled events, that we are here “on purpose”, and not “by accident”. Presumably we all got that idea from Adam ha-Rishon, who is the closest to having first hand knowledge of the events in question.

If the fourth amendment (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated …”) doesn’t apply to the rich and powerful, what rights exist for the rest of us. If a politician can use the legal system to punish their political enemies, what chance do the rest of us have? Are we all rightless “deplorables” at the mercy of the ruling elites?

In many ways, the same issue arose during America’s (pre-Independence, when we were part of England) early history. Those in control of the government (small “r” Republicans), with army support, executed King Charles after a “kangaroo court” (albeit that term would be an anachronism in the 17th century). Public opinion (which mattered even though democracy with a small “d” was still in the future) realized that if the king has no right to due process (something that England, and its colonies, had begun to value starting in the middle ages), than no one has.

As head of the executive branch, Trump had a arguable right to declassify and take home any papers (other presidents tend to donate them to libraries or archives). If there is a dispute over the extent of those powers, it is a civil dispute, not a criminal dispute. Those who object so go into a court and request an injunction against Trump, allowing Trump to argue back that he was authorized to take those papers. Finding a Democratic (large “D”) judge to sign a search warrant, rather than seeking a subpoena in a civil proceeding (with Trump having the right to a lawyer and to participate in the proceeding) is a grievous breach of due process typical of a third world country. It is not the American way (though Obama did say that he opposed American “exceptionalism”) and a big part of what makes America “special” is due process and rule of law, which is lacking in most countries).

Whether you embrace “Trump derangement syndrome” or consider Trump to be as close to a messiah as you are likely ever to encounter, consider how you wouyld feel if someone who hates you can arrange to have the cops break into your house and seize your stuff without giving you legal recourse (other than suing to get your stuff back). That was an issue that was supposedly settled in 1791, and apparently it still is an issue.

Unfair, there are many countries where the police routinely harass leaders of the opposition. Indeed that is the norm in most countries. It is just American exceptionalism to believe in things such as fair play and free speech and due process. Next think you know, you’ll be objecting to canceling teachers and media people who don’t hold correct views.

Not likely. A good deal of Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Reagan still exists under a Republican label. If Trump and his supporters can’t reconcile themselves, they’ll have to form their own party. While Romney couldn’t win without the “deplorables”, Trump couldn’t win without the support of the established Republicans.

The Democrats have moved so far to the left, that they no longer the party of Roosevelt, Kennedy, etc. A more likely scenario is there will be three parties in the future, a “Progressive” (non-democratic, socialist, woke, authoritarian, elitist), a MAGA (populist, “deplorables”), and one (or perhaps two) moderate parties in the middle. In fact, that’s already happened, and what is left to see is how they organize themselves.

Even when they were farmers, Jews did not live in isolated homesteads (the way Americans do), but would live in a village from which everyone would walk to their fields (as is probably the case in most of the world), and would go to a regional center for market days. That would have especially been true of Jews living in northern Europe during the last 1000 years (and remember the topic under discussion is keeping warm in winter, which is an issue in places where you can go several months with temperatures being clearly above freezing – but never was an issue in Eretz Yisrael).

There is no indication he or his ancestors kept Shabbos or kashrus, so kis conversion would have been as valid as those arranged by the zionist government for secular non-Jewish immigrants of Jewish descent. Note there were several “kings” (more or less Roman vassals than monarchs) with that name, and some were definitely halachicly Jewish based on maternal descent from women who were definitely Jewish.

There is no prohibition of women signing. The prohibition is on men listening to them. On YouTube, no one makes you listen or watch anything – you have to click on something to make it play.

Republicans are too disunited and don’t have clear ideas on policy (at least ones they all agree one). Many of them are too busy claiming vote fraud in 2020 to deal with new issues. Also they are divided between Neocons (who want to vigorously oppose the Russians and Chinese), and “America First” types who want to avoid foreign wars. Even if the Republicans get control of either house, they won’t have a strong enough majority to do anything.

Jackk : The way the Democrats (going WOKE), and the Republicans (going MAGA) are going, in 2025 the two parties won’t be the “Democrats and the Republicans” (at least in fact, one should note that the post-civil war Democrats while keeping the name with substantially different than the antebellum version).