Withdrawing From Afghanistan May Be The One Thing Biden And Trump Agree On

 https://www.npr.org/2021/08/18/1028607717/strange-bedfellows-indeed-the-trump-biden-consensus-on-afghanistan

 So intense was Trump's intention to withdraw that he persisted even after the 2020 election. According to a report published by Axios in May, Trump signed a memo in November that would have withdrawn all U.S. troops by mid-January (just five days before his term was to end). His top national security team, civilian and military, persuaded him not to issue the order but to leave the withdrawal date at May 1.

 Trump has since said none of the current mayhem in Kabul would be happening if he were still president. Researchers will need to ascertain how many exit visas for Afghans had already been arranged before Trump left office, or what sort of procedures he might have had in place for Americans and Afghans wishing to leave. But lacking such evidence, and given Trump's timetable and concessions made to the Taliban, it is easier to imagine the current situation happening that much sooner.

Trump in fact had complained at his June 26 rally in Ohio that the Biden administration was dragging its feet and ought to get out faster.

MAGA Cowed Trump on Afghanistan

 https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2021/08/maga-cowed-trump-on-afghanistan/619843/

 The about-face is a reminder that although Trump holds a few core values (racism, anti-immigration, protectionism), he is otherwise ideologically flexible. His insight in 2016 was to endorse views widely held by Republican voters but rejected by other GOP politicians as deplorable, politically unwise, or both. But Trump sometimes misreads his supporters—and when he does, he often moves quickly to get back in line.

Dovid was the father of Asmodai?

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmodeus

   According to the Kabbalah and the school of Shlomo ibn Aderet, Asmodeus is a cambion born as the result of a union between Agrat bat Mahlat, a succubus, and King David.^[44]

What I Learned While Eavesdropping on the Taliban

/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/what-i-learned-while-eavesdropping-on-the-taliban/619807/

 It didn’t matter that they were unarmored men, with 30-year-old guns, fighting against gunships, fighter jets, helicopters, and a far-better-equipped ground team. It also didn’t matter that 100 of them died that day. Through all that noise, the sounds of bombs and bullets exploding behind them, their fellow fighters being killed, the Taliban kept their spirits high, kept encouraging one another, kept insisting that not only were they winning, but that they’d get us again—even better—next time.

They told me how they planned to keep killing Americans. They told me the details of these plans: what weapons they would use, where they would do it, how many they hoped to murder. Often, they told me these things while doing the killing. They told me that, God willing, the world would be made in their image. And they told me what so many others refused to hear, but what I finally understood: Afghanistan is ours.

 

 

Israeli chief rabbi calls to exhume wife of missionary who pretended to be a Jew

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-chief-rabbi-calls-to-exhume-wife-of-missionary-who-pretended-to-be-a-jew/

 The man, who was not named, told Israeli media that he had been born Jewish and joined Jews for Jesus, a movement that Jews generally do not recognize as belonging to Judaism. But he had since returned to Orthodox Judaism, he said.

But his late wife was not Jewish and should not be buried at a Jewish cemetery, the chief rabbi’s office said, because that would be unfair to the Jews buried around her and their relatives, who believed they were buried along with their coreligionists, as is customary in traditional Judaism.

“All efforts must be done to move her to a non-Jewish plot,” Altman wrote in June. “If that’s impossible, a fence should be put around the grave.”

Timeline of U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan

 https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/

 And the Trump administration kept to the pact, reducing U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500, even though the Taliban continued to attack Afghan government forces and welcomed al-Qaeda terrorists into the Taliban leadership.

Trump Hopes No One Remembers He Pushed for a Full Afghanistan Withdrawal in June

 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/08/donald-trump-joe-biden-afghanistan

 Weirdly, Trump did not note in his statement that less than two months ago, he was bragging about how he started the Afghanistan-withdrawal process and claiming the Biden administration was powerless to stop it.

Why do conservatives view CNN as a very liberal biased news source?

 https://www.quora.com/Why-do-conservatives-view-CNN-as-a-very-liberal-biased-news-source

 But today, creating drama to foment a reaction is a good business plan. People who want similar things need to hate each other for no apparent reason other than the label of being right or left.

The media machine needs you divided. They understand the power of a united democracy that’s utterly uninterested in stupid articles disguising themselves as legitimate news stories.

This is funny and sad to me.

Because both sides are fairly equally barking only when they believe it serves the interests of their advertisers.

Nobody who works at CNN or Fox actually cares if you read their stuff. They care that you come back.

They care that you’re instigated. They care that they instigated something in you.

The thing with the internet is that if something becomes bad on either side, they can just delete their ‘news’ story. Say, a lot of people start to hate CNN for something they posted? It’s gone. Fox News posted something that got a massive negative reaction? Poof.

They lie. They both lie.

‘You’re crazy, a heretic’: Senior Haredi rabbi kicks out anti-vaxxer student

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/youre-crazy-senior-ultra-orthodox-rabbi-kicks-out-anti-vaxxer-student/

Leading ultra-Orthodox rabbi Ben Zion Mutzafi kicked out a man attending his lecture on Sunday evening due to the man’s opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine.

In video footage of the incident published Tuesday by Haredi news site Kikar HaShabbat, the rabbi can be seen repeatedly calling the man “crazy” and “evil.” He later said he stood behind those descriptions.

After the anti-vaxxer started loudly voicing his opinions against the vaccine, Mutzafi, who ordered all his followers to get the vaccine earlier this year, was seen shouting: “More than 6,500 people died, stop making things up. Go, get out of here, you’re crazy.”

The Soul of the Matter

 https://mishpacha.com/the-soul-of-the-matter/

 “In actuality,” says Rav Leuchter, “Nefesh HaChaim was only printed after Rav Chaim’s passing by his son, Reb Itzele, and he chose to omit those parts of his father’s manuscript that opposed chassidus, out of respect for the Tzemach Tzedek, with whom he worked in partnership for the benefit of Eastern European Jewry. That’s why, after Sha’ar Gimmel and before Sha’ar Daled, there are eight chapters that seem to be hanging in the middle and are not numbered. Apparently, these were originally part of a separate sha’ar, and Reb Itzele Volozhiner omitted parts of it.”

Ex-defense secretary: Trump's push to get US troops out of Afghanistan possibly 'undermined' deal with Taliban

 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/17/politics/mark-esper-donald-trump-taliban-afghanistan-cnntv/index.html

 But, Esper told CNN's Christiane Amanpour, "my concern was that President Trump, by continuing to want to withdraw American forces out of Afghanistan, undermined the agreement, which is why in the fall when he was calling for a return of US forces by Christmas, I objected and formally wrote a letter to him, a memo based on recommendations from the military chain of command and my senior civilian leadership that we not go further -- that we not reduce below 4,500 troops unless and until conditions were met by the Taliban."

Why are US troops pulling out of Afghanistan now?

As US Withdraws from Afghanistan, Refugees Must Be Evacuated Immediately: A Closer Look

Safed rabbi jailed for multiple counts of sexual assault to get early release

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/safed-rabbi-jailed-for-multiple-counts-of-sexual-assault-to-get-early-release/

 A prison release committee on Tuesday decided to allow the early release of a well-known rabbi and yeshiva head from the northern city of Safed, who was jailed for committing a slew of sexual crimes against eight women, including multiple counts of sexual assault.

Rabbi Ezra Sheinberg was convicted in 2018 as part of a plea deal over a series of crimes committed against women who came to him for advice and counseling. He was sentenced to 7.5 years.

Following a lengthy discussion on Tuesday, after he served two-thirds of his sentence, a release committee decided to shorten his prison term