7fatcow.com

From a comment by Zoroasteryid on Is Tanya to Blame for the Rubashkin Fiasco?

sometimes one gets the impression that the reason why certain people give so much tzedokoh is to cover up &/or excuse the method that they acquired their wealth. it is almost as if they feel so guilty knowing that they got rich illegally &/or immorally that they give it away lavishly to try to wash it away. or they genuinely feel that they are allowed to act illegally/immorally in order to great good. this, my friends, is called mitzvah haba’ah ba’aveirah, which is WORSE than just doing an aveyrah, because when you merely sin you know that you are doing something wrong. but when the sin is done through a mitzvah, you actually convince yourself that it is not a sin, so you are not even moved to do teshuvah - aderabo, he expects to be known as a tzadik & ba’al chesed. he has fooled himself. as the maharash said, “it is no trick to fool a fool.”

I am imagining her in a Red Sox uniform, pitching against the Yankees, being stormed in a bench clearing brawl.

Eri Yoshida was drafted for a new independent league that will launch in April, drawing attention for a side-armed knuckler that her future manager Yoshihiro Nakata said was a marvel.

"I never dreamed of getting drafted," Yoshida told reporters Monday, a day after she was selected to play for the Kobe 9 Cruise.

"I have only just been picked by the team and have not achieved anything," she said. "I want to play as a pro eventually in a higher league."

Yoshida, 155 centimetres (five feet) tall and weighing 52 kilograms (114 pounds), says she wants to follow in the footsteps of the great Boston Red Sox knuckleballer Tim Wakefield.

- from yahoo! news

I mean if I died, fuck. I would'nt have those fancy Litvaks crying. (BTW, to see Litvaks cry was takke a zach.)

hat tip to nanach.net

I'm moving to Boston. Anybody else coming along? (So those bastards are good for something!)

Boston Globe:  Voters approve marijuana law change

to witnes the throes of their defeat check out the comments at

Vosizneias

theAntiTzemach

Crownheights.info (which at least has some sane voices in the medieval wilderness)

I like these comments on theantitzemach's post,

צי דערלאזט תורה זיין א סאציאליסט

Seems we have more Charedi Socialists than we think

Schneur said

Many gedolim like Rav Yehuda Ashlag, Reb Itzekel Ponovieszer (Rabinowitz)were openly Soialists. Even a man like Rav Yolles was very close to the Communist party in the uS in the 1920's.
The Poale Agudas Israel in Poland and in Israel were also mild socialists seeking protection of Chassiidc workers (not all Chassidim in Poland were negidim , kezinim and alufim , most were aremeleit evyonim)
The Tore is certainly not against helping the have nots , not does the Tore sanction a society based on classes.
Perhaps the new Orthodox society has become so middle class in nature that the poor are looked upon as dregs.
In general we all ought to spend some time reading the Navi and thinking what the message of the Prophets was and its relevance to our day.

Joe in Australia said

.. everybody has an obligation to support the poor, and the Bais Din can even expropriate property to enforce this when necessary. The standard of living isn't a bare subsistence: rather it is "according to their needs". Sounds like socialism, or even communism to me….

Josh said

Both systems of thought are heavily indebted to Judaic sources and it is no surprise that some Jewish thinkers realized these affinities. It is not as if Europeans did not have the Bible, Zohar etc in front of them when they formulated the philosophies which would lead both to dialectical materialism and to classical liberalism.

It is not another vicious campaign trick by the McCain people. And the fact that the LA Times is covering it up… Kalidi is a supporter of terrorist actions against Israeli civilians. That Obama is his close friend and associate could still be excused if not for the fact that this was sponsored by the AAAN (Arab American Action Network), an organization which supports the killing of civilians as well.

from the National Review

The L.A. Times Suppresses Obama’s Khalidi Bash Tape

…[T]he warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.
One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."
Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than … his opponents for the White House….

At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.

The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.

Even after I repeatedly tell the same people I'm not interested, they come at you, like Jehovah Witnesses or Meshichists; they swarm you.

Is Facebook a cult?