Dr. Pepper

jackk-

If I don’t hear from you before שבת- have a גוט שבת and a גוטין חודש.

Avi

jackk-

1) It’s up to the House to decide if what he was accused of is an impeachable offense and whether you like it or not they decided that it is and impeached him. It’s up to the Senate to decide if there is enough evidence to prove that he’s guilty- not to decide if he should have been impeached in the first place. Like I mentioned earlier on about the Supreme Court nominee- she seems to have had many of her rulings overruled by higher courts- she either isn’t familiar with the Constitution or she rules the way she wants the law to be.

2) I’m not sure what you’re getting at over here. Can you just explain how you can stand up for a political party that wants to redefine the word “marriage” to include relationships that the Torah call an abomination?

3) There’s plenty of videos all over the Internet showing people walking in to drug stores and walking out with hundreds of Dollars worth of merchandise right in front eyes of the security guards. There are plenty of stories in the news of people getting arrested (even multiple times in a single day) yet they get let out without even having to post bail. Are you unfamiliar with these videos and stories or do you consider it a consequence that they were inconvenienced by being captured before being immediately released?

4) You seem to be going on a tangent over here to promote the Democrats but stop short of saying what the policies were that created all these jobs. Let’s get back to the main topic.

If so many jobs were created- has the cost of Government handouts gone down?

5) You seem to have gone on another tangent over here to bring in health care. This is a complicated topic which is beyond the scope of this thread. As an actuary who briefly worked in the ACA, I have a much deeper understanding of the internal details than what’s been discussed here. I’ve seen the numbers first hand and can tell you that it had no chance of sustaining itself the way it was designed. (One of the most common comments I recall from my colleagues is “How did anyone think this would work?”)

But back to the main point- you had originally asked who would take care of people who no matter what will never be able to stand up on their own (e.g. people with disabilities). I answered that you know good and well that no matter how right wing a government is they will never abandon them.

6) I’m not sure what you’re getting at over here either- and you seemed to have gone on another tangent by brining up assault weapons. Instead of answering my question about how you can stand up for a party that wants to permit the killing of unborn babies you turn it around to say that Republicans are hypocritical for calling it murder. Can you answer the question without turning it around?

The topic of guns is very complicated. If there was some way to get dangerous weapons out of the hands of criminals and convicted felons then maybe you’d have a complaint against them. As of now- the criminals seem to be getting them illegally from somewhere and innocent civilians need to protect themselves somehow. Imagine how much worse the crime would be if the criminals would know that the innocent people they are attacking are not armed.

Jackk-

“The issue was that he was lying under oath about a personal relationship. They did not feel that deserved impeachment.”

Are you saying that it’s OK to lie under oath if it’s about a personal relationship? Also- the senators should have been voting to uphold the law- not based on their feelings. If they want to change the law there’s a process for that but they were elected to uphold the law. That’s one of the issues I have with the supreme court nominee- she’s had too many rulings overruled by higher courts. Either she doesn’t know the Constitution or she’s been ruling based on her feelings. Something really scary for someone on the highest court (that can not be overruled).

Next point- There’s a big difference between redefining the word “marriage” to include unions that are not between one male and one female and to go ahead and execute people that are in those kinds of relationships. If what they do is behind closed doors and it affects no one else- let them do what they want. When it comes to redefining what marriage is- that’s when it becomes everyone’s business and any G-d fearing Yid should not stand behind that party.

“Sorry, Democrats don’t encourage stealing or lawlessness.
FYI – Americans that vote republican are very good at stealing and lawlessness also. The jails are full of them.”

The very fact that these people are in jail shows that it’s not lawlessness. Whenever there are laws there are going to be people that break them. The point is to throw the violators in jail, that is a sign of lawfulness. The lawlessness that I was referring to is the laws that allow people to steal (in full view of security guards and police) and not face any consequences. (E.g. Not prosecuting for thefts under $950 and no cash bail…) This encourages (or at least does nothing to discourage) theft and violent crime.

“That is a good idea. Bring up to the next republican candidate that you vote for.”

I didn’t have to bring it up to the last Republican candidate that I voted for. Former President Donald Trump knew it very well and had great policies to bring jobs back the U.S. thereby decreasing the dependencies on Government handouts for many able bodied people.

“Agreed. But in our capitalistic society, if the government doesn’t take care of them, then nobody will.”

I think we both know good and well that no matter how right wing a Republican government is- they will still take care of those that simply can not take care of themselves.

“You did not answer on how you support a party that does not care for the widows , poor, orphans, immigrants etc ..? All the social programs have been done by the democratic party.”

I sure did- read my post again. “The majority of Republicans would have no issues helping out in a productive way.”

Also- the Democratic party that started these programs is not the same Democratic party we have nowadays- except it’s name. The social programs were started by the Democratic party that Frum Yidden were able to vote for. There was a slow transition from the Democratic party of yesteryear to the Democratic Party we have nowadays. I don’t condone the personal behavior of Former President Bill Clinton but I think his policies were acceptable. In my personal opinion Former President Obama brought the party way too far to the left and anti the Torah values we as Yidden are proud of.

I noticed that you neglected to refute my point about G-d fearing Yidden not being able to stand behind a party that fights for the right to kill unborn babies for no reason other than it being an inconvenience for the person who is carrying them. Does that mean that you agree with me or did it just slip your mind?

jackk-

The Democratic Party does NOT have the same values it did when I was growing up. I’m going to assume that the Torah you say is yours is the same one that I hold so dearly as well. This is the same Torah that stands for Emes. I realized that the Democratic Party was headed in the wrong direction during the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. I’m not agreeing with what he did but I definitely sympathized with him when he lied under oath and saw where he was coming from. My issue was that not a single one of the Democratic Senators had an issue with him lying under oath and voted against removing him from office.

This same Torah that I hold so dearly mentions numerous relationships that are strictly forbidden. By one of them, yes- the same one your party is fighting so hard to force conservatives to recognize, the Torah calls it an abomination. How anyone calling themselves a G-d fearing Yid can stand behind a party like that is beyond me.

The Torah that I hold so dearly is also against murder, yet the Democratic Party has no issue with killing unborn babies- the most innocent and defenseless among us. Again- how anyone calling themselves a G-d fearing Yid can stand behind a party like that is beyond me.

The Torah that I hold so dearly is also very against stealing, yet the policies (and consequences) in place in Democratic run cities seems to encourage stealing and other lawlessness kinds of behavior.

You also mentioned that Hashem tells you to care for the underprivileged. The majority of Republicans would have no issues helping out in a productive way. The system in place now just continues the cycle of poverty. The poor people- how about instead of just giving them money for an infinite amount of time- how about spending a fraction of the money for a limited amount of time and getting them the training that they need to be on their own feet?

Yes, there will be times that widows or others with physical or mental handicaps will needs to receive government assistance on a permanent basis but that should be the extreme minority.

@CTLAWYER

I don’t think we’ll ever agree politically but I do respect your opinion and like reading your posts. They’re well thought out, non-confrontational and it gives me insight as to how others on the other side feel.

With that being said, I read your post on the previous page and I’m happy that the ACA worked for your family. I hope that Hashem gives you and your family the health and strength needed to live life to the fullest.

On the other side of the equation though are families that the ACA did not work for. Take a real family formerly from NY, we’ll call them the NYLAWYER family. Mr. NYLAWYER works for a company that has a generous health insurance plan with a negligible $250 family deductible and a $10 copay after that. For their insurance plan the employer pays $1,200 per month and Mr. NYLAWYER pays $200 per month. When the ACA came out the cost of their insurance plan was raised from $1,400 per month to $1,800 per month of which the company increased their share to $1,400 and the employees pay $400. Also going up is the deductible to $6,500 per person / $13,000 per family as well as the copay from $10 to $50.

After a few years of this the family’s savings are wiped out, their credit cards are maxed out and they’re very close to defaulting on their mortgage. With no end in sight they’re forced to move out of the city that the family, their parents and grandparents grew up in.

I think everyone would agree that it would be great if free, excellent healthcare was readily available to everyone. I also think that everyone would agree that it’s not possible to provide it without many families being negatively affected.

It’s a long stretch to say that the crushing costs incurred by the NYLAWYER family went to directly cover the costs of any other family as there are many factors and variables used in balancing the equation.

So let’s discretize the equation as much as possible with a hypothetical situation and bring it down to two households- Family A and Family B.

The A Family have a good employer sponsored health insurance plan and spends money very frugally, they have $150,000 equity in their house. Their neighbors, the B Family, have a horrible health insurance plan, spends lavishly and rents their home as they have never been able to save towards a down payment.

One of the members of the B Family is horribly sick R”L, and needs a serious operation which their insurance won’t fully cover. Their out of pocket expenses are estimated to be $100,000 which they can not afford.

My question is this- does the government have a right to seize the A Family’s house, sell it and split the proceeds between Family A ($50,000), Family B ($100,000 to use towards the operation) and the bank (remainder of the mortgage)?

Why or why not?

Participant-

The coded message was meant for someone else (if I remember correctly he is the one whose post I was answering when I left the public key and assumed he would know how to extract the private key). It asked the person to please contact me once he decodes it. Squeak was pretending to be offended that I assumed the other person would figure it out and not him. He forgave me for that.

I honestly have no idea why they don’t want posters to contact each other in real life. It’s their website and their policy so they can enforce whatever they want. I needed to contact a poster once and they helped me with the process once I explained why and they asked the other party permission first.

There was a post about fixing an iPod on Chol Hamoed or something like that. Do a search on all my recent posts (I don’t come here that much anymore) and you should find it. If you get the reference- great!, if not, try reading through all the posts from pre 2011 and see if you can figure it out. (Hint- It was left by a moderator.)

Based on what the other poster commented on his commute, profession (we share the same one) and that he wasn’t able to notify me about the “wagons” anymore I was able to figure it out through LinkedIn. Once I saw his profile and noticed his picture I realized that I had met him at a conference and saw him around every once in a while. (He mentioned in a later post that he was the one who left the can there.)

I posted the whole story for Syag in a different thread (again- you can search by my posts). In short- I suspected that a poster on a different site was Joseph. I followed his posts until he slipped and embedded a Word (or possibly Excel) document with the metadata intact. I extracted the metadata to see his name and employer. Based on that I was able to get much more information about him and I think he was in Yeshiva with a different brother-in-law. I might be totally wrong though- If I were him and embedded documents in a post I would use phony metadata to throw people off.

Joseph originally contacted me through an email address he obtained through hacking (or social engineering) that was probably over 10 years ago. More recently he’s contacted me through the email that I left in the Limericks thread before it got removed. Sorry for the confusion.

Participant-

Joseph is a very clever person and while I believe that I know his name and who he is, as far as I know he does not know who I am.

If you quote the conflicting posts I can try to explain what’s going on.

If you read the thread about how I think I figured out who he is you’ll see that I came across a post on a professional secular site that had his fingerprints and took it from there. I needed some other posters to help me validate it but the moderators do not allow users to post personal information. To get around this I posted an encrypted message on “The Riddle Thread” back in 2013 (it’s still there, on the last page). To decode it you’ll either need some strong cryptography skills or the private key which I left hidden in a different thread some time before that for future use. Either method should work.

As you’ll see from the posts back in 2013 some people recalled the private key (or had a team of Polish cryptographers) and contacted me but I was only able to verify two of their identities (I suspect the others may have been Joseph).

The other posters and I are almost 100% positive that it’s him, but again- he’s very clever and he knows how to stay one step ahead so he may have taken us on a trip. Who knows?

Hope that makes sense.

Now you want to know about the wagon- There was another poster whose path I used to cross (in Downtown Manhattan) during my commute to work. He used to reference the “wagon” and let me know in advance when it’ll be along my commute route. It turns out that the “wagon” was the caravan of vehicles used when movies are being filmed and he knew in advance because “No Parking” signs went up a day or two earlier. One day I was walking by the “wagon” when I noticed that someone had left a can of Dr Pepper near the wagon with a yellow sticker after the Dr so it should look like Dr. and I couldn’t help but smirk. I was wondering if the poster was nearby looking to see if anyone noticed it. I later figured out that the poster was someone that I met before in real life and knew him by face but I didn’t know his name. Next time I saw him in Shul I approached him but he had no idea who I was. When I told him we both had a good laugh.

Please let me know if you have any further questions- it’s probably frustrating when there’s things going on in the background and you feel like you’re missing out on something.

jackk-

Iran is an established country that was just given access to $150,000,000,000. While it’s no surprise that it’s been taking longer than two years for it to buckle, it can not go on like this indefinitely. Additionally, Israel’s northern neighbor, Iran’s proxy, has been relatively quiet recently- a sign that Iran has cut some of their funding and that the sanctions are working.

If they do have the ability to obtain nuclear weapons now- with all the sanctions- imagine what they would have been able to obtain after the treaty expired and there were no sanctions in place. Does anyone believe that they wouldn’t have tried? What would the treaty have accomplished besides for kicking the can down the road for 15 years and leaving it for another president to deal with.

Also, another issue that keeps getting ignored here is that even according to those who believe that Iran was adhering to their terms of the treaty and not pursuing nuclear weapons, they were pursuing other dangerous and threatening weapons allowed under the deal. That had to be stopped.

Dr. Hall-

Even according to those who believe that Iran was in compliance with their part of the treaty they were still developing destructive weapons which was fully legal under the terms of the deal- with access to billions of Dollars that they didn’t have access to beforehand.

Furthermore, the deal was only for 15 years- even if you believe that they weren’t violating the terms of the agreement do you think that they wouldn’t have LEGALLY pursued nuclear weapons once the 15 years is over?

By reneging on the deal and reinstating the sanctions President Trump has brought the Iranian leadership to the brink of financial collapse. Once the regime collapses the nuclear threat should be neutralized permanently.

Reb Eliezer-

I posted this on a different thread but you didn’t respond. Would you be able to answer this for me?

I hear the argument that a significant amount of the frozen assets released was payments (plus interest) for weapons that Iran was purchasing from the U.S. while the Shah was in power and President Carter blocked the shipments and froze the accounts after the revolution. So in essence the money belonged to Iran in the first place.

In 1995 an American, Alisa Flatow, was one of the victims of the Kfar Darom Bus Attack. In 1998 her father won a judgement against the Government of Iran for $247.5 Million.

My question is why didn’t President Obama withhold the $247.5 Million (plus interest) that a Federal Judge ordered the Government of Iran pay the family before releasing the funds?

Dr. Hall-

As a statistician I’m sure that you’re very aware of the famous saying attributed to Benjamin Disraeli regarding the three types of lies- each one more severe than the previous one.

By stating that the United States currently has the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression- and purposely leaving out that the United States had the lowest unemployment rate in decades up until the rapid spread of the virus- you are perpetuating the third type of lie. While what you stated may technically be correct you’re purposely misleading others who read it. Even if you feel that the president is 100% responsible for all the damage caused by the virus and purposely caused it- you should not only mention the statistics that fit your agenda and skip the ones that don’t.

Back in the 90’s the Reader’s Digest had an article titled “ This Man Wants You Dead”. The article was about Osama Bin Laden and it was the first time I heard about him or his terrorist organization. If the Reader’s Digest heard of him and understood his threat I’m going to assume that the president was aware of that threat as well.

After the 1998 US Embassy Bombings in East Africa, Bin Ladin and Al Qaeda became household names. He should have been even more aware of the threat and done something to stop him. Had the US eliminated Bin Laden back then they probably would have prevented the September 11th attacks.

By the time Former President Bush came into office it was probably too late to do anything to Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership that would have stopped the attacks. There were less than 8 months left until the attacks and the actual hijackers probably had all the funding and resources needed to carry out the attacks regardless of how their leadership was doing.

You seem to be pretty harsh on Former President Bill Clinton by calling him a female and a rasha. I usually reserve the term “rasha” to someone who is actually wicked. While he may not have been a role model in his personal life I think it’s extreme to refer to him as a “rasha”. I think “immoral” would be a better description unless you know more about his personal life than what’s publicly out there. I also prefer to call someone by the gender they were born as, regardless of what they (or someone else) decides to refer to them as.

What he did in his personal life is something that’s legal and (unfortunately) generally accepted nowadays, although at times it’s frowned upon. When he lied under oath- I actually felt bad for him. He was pushed into a tight corner and was forced to answer a question about his personal life- under oath- in front of the entire country. His choice was either perjury or to admit what he did.

While he was wrong for committing perjury I saw where he was coming from and would not have ruled out voting for a Democratic candidate in the future based on that alone. (While I personally didn’t vote for him in the first place- I wasn’t registered to vote- I wouldn’t have had an issue voting for him.)

My problem wasn’t with him but was with the leadership of the Democratic Party during the Senate Trial. Of the 45 Democratic Senators in the Senate at the time not a single one found him guilty for lying under oath. I found that pretty shocking.

Looking at how the Democratic Senators treated Justice Kavanaugh during his nomination I see that they haven’t gotten any better.

I once posted something cryptic and it got through the moderators but a few milliseconds later Moderator-80 came around, figured out the underlying message and heavily edited it. Over the years I’ve dropped hints in seemingly innocent posts but they either went right over his head, he chose to ignore them, this isn’t the same Joseph it used to be or I’m way off.

Either way- I pretty much spelled the entire thing out over here so let’s see what happens.

achmad_the_arab-

For the most part I don’t know who these profiles are in real life. Every so often I figure out who someone is and so I let them know (just so that they don’t think they’re anonymous) but they usually deny it.

In one case a poster called me a name in a different thread (I’m not sure if it was meant to be complimentary or derogatory) but I never heard the term before. I then overheard a coworker referring to an old colleague with the same terminology and put two and two together. I informed him that his covers been blown (I didn’t tell him how I figured it out) and he denied it but the profile was immediately retired.

Joseph is a different story altogether. Given that the Frum, Yeshivish community is very small most posters who want to remain anonymous are careful not to let their guard down.

On a different forum I noticed that a poster had some close similarities to Jospeh and started monitoring the posts from both of them. After I was totally convinced I ran it by another poster who I was in contact with in real life and he thought it was solid. At one point he slipped and let his guard down and gave away enough information for me to figure out what his real name is. Of course this may have been intentional to throw people off- I’ll probably never know.

Also, I can’t even be sure that the Joseph that I tracked down is the same Jospeh who’s posting nowadays.

Jospeh-

I just saw your question from last year. I don’t recall seeing the story anywhere except when I first posted it back in 2009.

Reply To: Funny Shidduch Stories

When I went back to that part of the thread there were some comments missing- including the one where you admitted that you were the guy she was dating. You can tell by the lack of continuity.

My brother-in-law found out about it and still teases her. When they recently went food shopping and the grocery store said they needed to wear gloves he took two out of the box, stared at them, and said “look, they gave me two right handed gloves”!

He doesn’t tease her about dating you though so he must not have found out about it by reading it here.

Dr. Hall-

The United States was the first country to obtain nuclear weapons and it took the United States 3-4 years to develop nuclear weapons- and that was over 75 years ago (tomorrow will be 75 years since the first Atom Bomb was used in conflict).

The technology to create nuclear weapons is out there and readily available to any country that has the desire and money. Iran has stated that they have the desire and they definitely have the money now. I don’t think anyone will disagree with that.

When Prime Minister Netanyahu stated that Iran was six months away from obtaining the bomb he was probably correct. If not through covert operations to derail the process they probably would have had nuclear weapons long ago. There’s no reason why with all the advancements in science and technology over the past 75 years that it should take more than a few years.

The IAEA inspectors may have confirmed multiple times that Iran was in compliance with the deal but they can only check the sites that they know about. The trove of information that the Mossad stole from an Iranian warehouse proves that there were locations unknown to the IAEA.

Regardless of weather the deal was good for Israel or not most will agree that after the 15 years are over Iran would have continued their quest for nuclear weapons- with billions of Dollars more. Even if the deal would have worked like it was supposed to (and you don’t know for certain that it did) it only pushed the problem down the road and exacerbated it by giving them access to so much cash.

The prime minister of Israel has access to top secret reports that we don’t. He may choose to disclose some of them while keeping others under wraps. He may also decide against sharing it with Congress given that some of the members are rabid Anti-Semites.

If you’re going to publicly call him a liar can you bring some examples? Please provide some cases where he stated something as a fact that was later proven to be factually false.

Thanks for pushing it through. I’m not sure what was going on but this thread wasn’t being moved to the front page even though I posted this morning.

Thanks for taking care of it.

August 2nd 1970

50 years ago today was the first ever hijacking of a 747.

The plane took off a little after 1:00 a.m. from JFK and less than 2 hours later the 27 year old hijacker pulled out a gun and demanded to be flown to Cuba. When Fidel Castro heard that a jumbo airliner was coming to Cuba for the first time he jumped out of bed and rushed to the airport to greet it.

When the plane landed the pilot and hijacker were the only ones to disembark (many of the passengers slept through the entire ordeal). The tallest ladder truck in the airport was three feet too short for the plane and they had to climb down. The airport didn’t have the proper equipment to open the luggage compartment so the hijacker couldn’t retrieve luggage. The airport also didn’t have the proper equipment to start a 747 engine so the pilot had to leave one of them on the entire time.

Mr. Castro asked the pilot to give him a tour of the outside of the plane and the pilot also answered all his questions about the capabilities of the plane, including whether the runway there was long enough for the plane to take off- it was. (He declined the offer of a tour inside the cabin.) He then allowed the plane to leave and had the hijacker arrested.

After his release three years later he committed another crime shortly afterwards (I couldn’t find anywhere what he did) and went back to jail. When he got released for the second time he had enough in Cuba and returned to the US where he got sentenced to life in jail. (I tried researching his current whereabouts but couldn’t find anything definitive. The last news article I found said that he was still in jail but that was over 10 years ago. I checked the BOP inmate locator and couldn’t find anyone with his name currently incarcerated but there was someone with the same name released in 2011.)

The hijacked aircraft, registration number N736PA, was the first 747 in commercial service only a few months earlier, on January 22, 1970. On March 27,1977 this very same airliner was crashed into by another 747 on the runway on the Spanish island of Tenerife. Between the two planes there were 583 fatalities (and 61 injuries), it remains the deadliest aviation accident to this day.

Of the 1,588 747s built 61 were written off as hull loses. Of the 25 in the original Pan Am order that launched the entire program 4 (that I know of) suffered that fate, although none to design flaws or mechanical failure.

Aside from the one listed above, Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed in a bombing in 1988, Pan Am Flight 73 was destroyed after crashing into something during takeoff in 1983 and Pan Am Flight 93 which was hijacked as part of the Dawson Field hijackings and blown up in Cairo after all the passengers left.

I found it interesting that the two hijackers were originally on an El Al flight intending to hijack it with two other terrorists but the pilot kicked them off and they got on the Pan Am flight and hijacked that one instead. The El Al flight was almost hijacked but the pilot put the plane into a steep dive, forcing the hijackers to the ceiling and giving the sky marshal the opportunity to neutralize the situation.

Heard this from a former friend of mine who later on went OTD, became an ambulance chaser and is now a prominent lawyer.

While he was an ambulance chaser he was tasked with serving a summons to a Yungerman learning in Kollel for what he described was a “nuisance” lawsuit.

Armed with a picture of the defendant from when the defendant was in Yeshiva he went to the Kollel thinking that his Yeshiva background would help him pick out the correct person to issue the summons to.

When he walked into the Bais Medrash his mouth dropped open- the picture he had was of a clean shaven person- how’s he supposed to look around and pick out which bearded guy he’s supposed to hand the summons to without attracting too much attention that may cause the defendant to hide?

Soon enough someone came over to him, handed him a Yarmulka, and asked him if he’s Jewish and interested in learning about his beautiful heritage. Not wanting to attract too much attention (and he needed an excuse to stay there to look around) he “admitted” that he was walking by and stopped in out of curiosity about his background and was definitely interested in learning some more.

After chatting about Judaism for a few minutes the visitor was getting impatient but his “Chavrusa” had one more request- he wanted to help him do the mitzvah of Teffilin. While having Tefillin put on him he glanced at the name on the tallis bag only to see that the guy putting Teffilin on him was the very person he was supposed to hand the summons to.

He left without handing him the summons.

Ok, I’m totally confused now.

I was under the impression (and I’m still pretty confident) that in a previous Gilgul you went by the screen name “mbachur”.

Anyway- “mbachur” once posted something that led me to believe that he was in Yeshiva together with me (and Nachman Seltzer) many years ago. (I now believe that I’m mistaken about this.) Unfortunately this post was from close to eight years ago and I can no longer find it. (I even did a Google search on the site for some of the words in the thread but the thread in question was nowhere to be found. It may have been deleted.)

To answer your question- I was never in Camp Dora Golding in any capacity and I was never a head counselor anywhere- I’m just not head counselor material.

Sorry for going off on a tangent.

Getting back to the main topic- did your friend ever figure out how to start up the iPhone?

Which thread, if you don’t mind me butting in?

Coffee addict-

Thanks for that line- you cracked me up.
Hope my advice was able to help your friend.
Feel free to pass my contact information to her if you think I can be of further assistance.

A Gutten Moed

Syag- I never went back to that old age home so unfortunately I don’t think I ever saw her again. I was in EY for the next couple of years by Sukkos and by the time I came back my family had switched to a different shul.

Coffee addict- Do you know Nachman Selzer- would you be able to pass the story along to him?

At The Home Depot late one night right before Sukkos…

It’s a little past closing time but there’s still one line open with all different types of Yidden buying their last minute Sukkah supplies.

At the front of the line is an elderly Chassidish Yid with a shopping cart full of stuff. Behind him are two Modern Orthodox Yidden buying some really long 2 x 4s. Behind them is a group of Yeshivish Yidden with some planks, lights and an industrial extension cord.

Behind them is a YWN Coffee Room contributor buying replacement parts for a wooden Sukkah.

Behind me is a Non- Yid who’s wondering what’s going on.

I explain to him the basics about eating in a Sukkah and we have a cordial conversation about it.

The cashier then points out to the Chassidish Yid that one of the items in his cart is broken and he should run and get a replacement.

When he comes back the guy behind me yells that he should get to the back of the line.

“You stepped out of the line, now you lost your place and have to go to the back.”

“I just went to exchange something that was broken”, he replied, “I already waited a long time in line and I don’t have time to wait again.”

“Well I also waited a long time in line”, the guy behind me yelled back, “and I don’t either have time for this- I’m very busy”.

This back and forth went on a little longer until he finished his transaction, paid and left.

After he left one of the Modern Orthodox Yidden announced that the guy in the back of the line is in a rush, doesn’t have time to wait in line and asked if everyone could please step aside and let him cut the line.

We all stepped aside and the guy was mortified. He said that he’s not really in a rush and has no problem waiting his turn.

“But you just publicly humiliated the person here because you’re in a rush”, the person at the front of the line said. “None of us mind letting you cut the line if you’re that busy. We insist that you come to the front.”

He sheepishly said that he’s going to wait his turn and kept his mouth shut after that.

We never did finish our conversation about Sukkos but I was impressed on how Yidden of all different types stand up for each other.

Joseph-

They ended up sending us a check for the full price of a new washer since he put in the notes that it was irreparable.

By that time we were already in a routine where once or twice a week my wife would bring the laundry to the laundromat after work, I’d move it to the drier before Mincha and bring it home 45 minutes later after Maariv.

I did remove the timer to show off how easy it would have been to fix it (or even replace it with a used one on eBay). By that time I had already used the motor for a homemade treadmill (only one speed) and my wife was using the tub to clean lettuce. (For those that don’t know me well enough the last sentence was sarcastic.)

It took some time but we did eventually get a new washer.