charliehall

For over two centuries the main agenda of different ethnic groups in NYC has been to get governmental favors from politicians. Jews have been as effective at that as any group.

However, now that we are loudly blasting De Blasio, who has kowtowed to charedi leadership more than any non Jewish politician ever, it is unlikely that we will have that influence in the future.

Because the Republicans who ran against him were far worse.

“To be technical, it had been part of the City of Washington but not part of the District of Columbia.”

No, the opposite was true. It was part of “Alexandria County” in the District of Columbia. It included much of what is now the independent City of Alexandria, which became independent of the County in 1870. It had been returned to Virginia in 1846. The County was renamed Arlington County in 1920. I used to live there.

“exactly like what Im looking for”

Exactly what ARE you looking for? My amazing wife was not exactly what I was looking for but she turned out to be perfect for me.

No clout? The frum world put Bill De Blasio in the Mayor’s office and he has been totally responsive. For example, he prevented the Health Department from stopping metzitzah be peh, prevented the education department from investigating secular studies in yeshivot, funneled tax money to frum schools for universal pre-K, and allowed a frum funeral when no other religious group was allowed to have one.

” tuition relief which Agudas Yisroel has been pushing for 20 years”

That requires amending the NY State Constitution, and then raising taxes. The former was tried in 1967 and it lost all 62 counties. And at least the charedi part of the frum world supports Republicans who want to cut taxes, not raise them. Significantly, the 1967 effort was spearheaded by liberal Democrats allied with Sen. Robert Kennedy.

“we can’t even get our Shuls to be legally open, our sleepaway camps”

That isn’t limited to shuls and frum camps. Churches and other camps face the same restrictions. We aren’t being discriminated against here.

“I can’t issue you a passport”

I have a US passport. My wife has a US passport and a Mexican passport. I think we exist.

Julius Caesar was a genocidal mass murderer. But he was good to Jews.

“he had no choice”

And that is the lie. Among the Virginians who served the Union were Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, Commanding General of the Union Army; Rear Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee, who was Robert E. Lee’s third cousin; Major General George H. Thomas, who had survived the Nat Turner slave rebellion as a child and became one of the best Union generals; and Brigadier General William Terrill, who would die in service to the Union at the Battle of Perryville. Lee was offered the #2 position in the entire Union Army by Gen. Scott even though he was only a Colonel at the time, and both Scott and his cousin Samuel Phillips Lee tried to talk Robert E. Lee out of committing treason. Lee’s plantation was within sight of the US capitol, was within walking distance to Washington DC, and it had been part of DC until the 1840s!

It isn’t my business what my employees are doing when they are off the clock, just as it isn’t my employer’s business that I won’t eat at work functions with non-kosher food.

Absolutely. Alito, dissenting today, made up law from nothing in the Hobby Lobby case, when he gave religious rights to corporations based on the religion of their owners. This overturned hundreds of years of established precedent that a corporation’s identity has nothing to do with that of the owners. This is a far bigger deal than today’s decision which was a narrow one based on the meaning of a statute.

Your point about the Second Amendment is also well taken. The people who improperly claim that it was originally about individual rights to gun ownership are ignorant about 18th century US history. Colonial governors repeatedly interfered with militias in the colonies, as had the British monarchs in Britain itself — in fact the very last time in history that a British monarch vetoed a law passed by parliament was Queen Anne’s veto of the law allowing Scotland to set up a militia in 1708! No less a figure than the late Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote in the 1980s that the Constitution provided no right to own firearms.

But conservatives actually love this kind of judicial activism as long as it suits their own political ends. The trouble it, they get burned when they lose, like today, and get exposed as hypocrites.

” The Democrats want to split the frum vote into multiple districts, in order to dilute it, since they know we vote conservative and frequently Republican.”

Most modern orthodox areas vote for liberal Democrats, although not for leftists.

Speaking of liberal Democrats, please help support Congressman Eliot Engel, who is facing a primary challenge from an anti-Israel leftist who has a humongous amount of campaign cash.

Here are some Southerners who deserve to have US military bases named after them:

Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, from Virginia. He had served in the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War. He is the longest serving US general officer in history, and was the commanding officer at the beginning of the Civil War. He clashed with Lincoln on many issues but it was his “Anaconda” plan that ended up winning the war for the US and defeating the rebellion. He also tried to talk then Col. Robert E. Lee out of committing treason.

Rear Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee, also from Virginia. He was third cousin to Robert E. Lee and also tried to talk Col. Lee out of committing treason. He led blockades of the South during the Civil War. His father in law, Francis Preston Blair, was a major advisor to President Lincoln. His son Blair Lee would be the first person elected to the US Senate by popular vote after the 17th Amendment, his grandson E. Brooke Lee would be Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, and his great grandson Blair Lee III would serve as Lt. Governor of Maryland.

Major General Montgomery C. Meigs, from Georgia. He was Quartermaster General for the entire Civil War and his ability to supply and to transport the huge Union Army huge distances via rail, water, and land was essential to the successful victory of the Union. It is an accomplishment that has gone unnoticed by too many supposed Civil War buffs but not by people who understand war. As the saying goes, amateur generals talk strategy while real generals talk logistics.

Major General George H. Thomas, from Virginia. As a child, he and his family had survived Nat Turner’s famous unsuccessful slave revolt and he became an opponent of slavery for the rest of his life. He was one of the Union’s best generals, winning the Battle of Nashville which totally destroyed what remained of the Confederate Army in the West. He never got a major command because he refused to play politics and he died a few years after the war before getting a chance to write memoirs.

Admiral David Farragut, born in Tennessee and grew up in Louisiana. One of the few loyal southerners to receive some recognition, including a now closed naval facility and a postage stamp. The town closest to his place of birth is now named for him; that part of eastern Tennessee remained loyal to the Union. He had served in the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War. He played a major role in the Union capture of New Orleans, Port Hudson, and led the Union forces at Mobile Bay, famously shouting “Damn the torpedoes.” He was the foster brother of Admiral David Dixon Porter.

Major General Robert Anderson, from Kentucky. He had served in the Black Hawk War, where one of the people he mustered into militia service as Abraham Lincoln, and in the Mexican-American War. He is best known for having been the leader of the Union garrison at Fort Sumter when it was attacked. There had been little sentiment in favor of fighting a war against the South until the South attacked Fort Sumter without provocation; then Major Anderson’s refusal to surrender at the point of a gun made him a national hero and electrified support for fighting to preserve the Union by force. While he was promoted to be a general officer he played little further role in the Civil War because of poor health, although he did return to Charleston to raise the US flag over Fort Sumter in April 1865.

Brigadier General William Terrill, from Virginia. He was killed at the Battle of Perryville. He had two brothers who fought for the Confederacy and were killed in action.

Rear Admiral John Ancrum Winslow, from North Carolina. However, he was from an old New England family and had ancestors on the Mayflower. He is most famous for having been the Captain of the USS Kearsarge when it sank the “commerce raider” CSS Alabama off the coast of France as both French and British vessels stood by. The wreck of the Alabama was discovered in 1984. There have been several USS Winslow ships in the US Navy named in his honor.

Finally, as we are about to read Parshat Shelach this coming week, one Southern Spy deserves mention: Elizabeth Van Lew, who despite being from Richmond VA was an abolitionist prior to secession. She cared for Union POWs and helped them escape, and she had contacts in the Confederate government that fed her information about the confederate military that she conveyed, partly through escaped prisoners, to the Union leaders. She was rewarded by President Grant by being named Postmaster of Richmond for eight years and she lived to the age of 81, dying in 1900, just before Virginia took voting rights away from blacks and poor whites.

Some of my direct ancestors fought for the South under General Lee’s command. I grew up listening to the stories about the Civil War. It is my family mesorah. I have other direct ancestors who fought for the North.

Gen. Lee waged war against the United States. That makes him guilty of treason. He had previously taken an oath to support the United States. That makes him a traitor. The only difference between Robert E. Lee and Benedict Arnold is that Arnold was a better general.

All disagreements with the previous paragraph are attempts to rewrite history.

“You can argue that it was all rooted in evil. But they claim otherwise. ”

As I said in another comment, I have direct ancestors who fought for the Confederacy. They were supporting evil. And if you don’t get that, you really missed something in your yeshiva education. Woe to those who tried to teach you Torah!

If the racism that create the Confederate States is acceptable, so is the anti-Semitism that created Nazi Germany.

” I seriously doubt if anyone other than the confrontation seekers know for whom they were named.”

You obviously have not known very many US military officers. They typically have extraordinary knowledge of military history and know very well who Lee, Hood, Pickett, Beauregard, Bragg, and the other Confederate Generals were, and the fatal errors that each made.

I supported Trump giving permits for the oil and gas pipelines. I supported moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. I supported banning travel to North Korea.

But given his vile racism, his anti-Semitic memes, his corruption, his abuses of power, is running roughshod over the law, and his licentiousness, that is like praising Mussolini for getting Italy’s trains to run on time.

It is a Chilul Hashem that even a single Jew supports the rasha. Sadly we do not learn from history — Mussolini had a lot of Jewish support.

Sounds like third degree murder is the right charge.

I already mentioned that Trump tried to cut police department funding. Yesterday Joe Biden came out in strong opposition to defunding police. Today Bernie Sanders not only opposed defunding police, he called for big pay increases!

Trump is on the side of the nutty far left. Biden and Sanders are the sane ones.

Comparing Medinat Yisrael to Nazi Germany is the kind of nonsense I hear only from the most extreme nutjobs on the nutty far left. When did you join IfNotNow or JewishVoiceForPeace?

In fact, Trump himself proposed a fifty percent cut to the one federal program that helps local law enforcement agencies to hire additional officers. It is typical of Trump that he is falsely accusing Biden of wanting to do something that he himself proposed. And it is typical of Trump supporters that they are echoing the lie.

“And Biden’s “base” sees Israel has a pirate state”

That is a lie. Biden’s base is pro-Israel and one reason he defeated Bernie Sanders is that that anti-Israel crazies all jumped on the Bernie Sanders bandwagon. Interestingly, Sanders himself opposes BDS and has taken grief for supporting Israel’s right to defend itself when attacked. But Biden is the clear choice this year for any pro-Israel voter.

“It is NOT the goal of the pro-life movement, ANY of it, and it is NOT the Catholic Church’s position.”

Which Catholic Seminary did you attend? I just gave you the names of four overwhelmingly Catholic countries where the Church insisted on total bans on abortion and forced the politicians to enforce them. Interestingly, two of them have left wing governments today but they are just as supportive of the abortion ban. And in the US the pro-life movement wants to effectively eliminate all abortions as well. They claim that they want to allow abortions to save a mother’s life but their standards are so much more draconian than ours that it would result in Jewish women dying. And while the Pope has not taken an official position regarding methotrexate to treat ectopic pregnancies, Catholic ethicists (mostly celibate males) largely agree that it is forbidden as are all other abortions.

You don’t understand Judaism and you don’t understand Catholicism.

There should not be mass protests or any counterprotests. We are still in a pandemic.

The US Census has *never* counted Jews. There is no issue of concern here.

” there is NOBODY in politics who proposes banning abortion even when the mother’s life is in danger”

That is a false statement. There are a number of countries where that is in fact the law. Malta, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the Philippines have such a law, as do three states in Mexico where it is not a matter for national legislation. It is the official position of the Catholic Church. US politicians are so stupid as to openly promote that here, but that is the goal of most of the “pro-life” movement. The Catholic Church would also ban in vitro fertilization.

Get out of denial.

“That’s outright murder”

No it isn’t. If it were, it would be treated as such in halachah.

“what do you think – how they & their Families vote?”

Why would that matter? They are every bit as crooked as Trump.

No, actually not as much; his crimes are far worse, as is the amount that he has stolen over his career.