Always_Ask_Questions

I don’t know people talking to the governor, so I don’t know whether their super-polite manner is appropriate. But you can also here that the speakers do not have a command of language, are not able to make a full sentence, make list of “first” and “second” that has several “first”s, and probably did not prepare for five minutes to make a list of points they plan to discuss. Other posters noticed that too. I don’t know whether these short extracts are representative of representatives of the communities involved.

se2015 – yeridat hadorot? The smiling Arkansas governor had an alternative both times – 2 WW2 veterans with long productive career , and one innovative CEO; they were all judged dull or eccentric compared with the cheerful and pretty smart governor. Now the alternative is a guy who spent 50 years in non-executive public service whose Brahmin co-runner accused him of throwing her under a bus because she is black.

Decency, it is ok to be concerned, but please start by telling the Jews around you who misbehave to stop it. And test those who might be sick in order to stop transmission instead of purposely testing healthy people to run up the numbers. If this testing is subsidized, this is also geneivah in addition to retziha,

Edited 

flowers. Repeating: you are concerned with forms and testing you are getting from school. You are also concerned about relationship between schools and government. I am suggesting a solution – take your kids from this toxic environment, where either or both school and government are doing something wrong and may hurt your kids. Keep them at home until situation resolves.

quality polls: we are talking here about prediction that matter – winning electoral college. Generic polls help clarify specific prediction elements. for example, there is consistent reporting these trends:
pro-Biden: that most people have fixed views (not like in 2016, when most undecided moved to Trump in last month, there is no significant 3rd party vote, elderly blame pandemic on Trump
pro-Trump: minimal enthusiasm among Biden voters, some Hispanic and even Black voters are for Trump

Gadol, I agree with your prediction. From the a different angle: If Hashem wanted Biden or Hillary or Trump to win, he could arrange a landslide. Maybe Hashem simply wants us to have competitive elections?

Why? Beyond the obvious effect on society, maybe he wants us to review our assumptions about society; to care about the whole country (like davening in the minyan v by yourself); learn to speak respectfully and truthfully instead of simply repeating propaganda; and above – to be humble as we can’t predict an outcome of an event in 2 weeks after probably 100K people were already asked and 95% of them are not changing their opinion ever.

@Torah, LMGTFY. 82% Hilary on election day, 75% several days before. This year, bets were 50-50 on Sep 1, then Biden grew to 68% a week ago – sharply in 2 weeks up to Oct 11 (from 54 to 68) and is now sliding down erasing half that last gain at same speed.

I recall model projections were about 70-30 for Hillary. Overall, it seems that Trump has 1 out of 3 chances to get elected. The question is, did he already the 1 (out of 3) already :).

I was thinking about posting a forecast in a statistics discussion group that showed that variance of the forecast is higher than reported and, thus, anything can happen. I stopped myself because I did post such forecast in 2012 – and I was both right (variance was underestimated) and wrong (the error went the other way – Obama’s numbers were higher than expected).

Trying to recall stock reaction – futures went down overnight and then up next day or in a day. The later explanation was that traders did not consider Trump’s victory at all, so they withdrew funds and took some time to do analysis that they were supposed to do earlier. Thus, if you want to analyze Trump’s effect on stock market, you need to count from 2016 election day.

@Decency, I have enough testimony both from this site, other sites, and from very reliable direct witnesses that there are a number of places that are not doing the right thing. you are right, compliance, as well as the virus, are very clustered. Obviously, people who are sitting at home are not visible. Maybe you should organize masked processions to both City Hall and yeshivos that do not comply.

akuperma >>Other statistics show that most infected people were wearing masks.

If most people wear masks, then most infected people would wear masks. Possibly from interaction with people not wearing mask.

To get an idea whether being careful works , look at plots of Rt transmission. Rt shows how many people one person infects. If Rt is less than 1, then pandemic is dying out. If it is higher than 1, it increases.

Rt was _4_ in NY state on March 1. This is what happens when nobody takes precautions. It fell to 1 on March 25, when shelter started, went down to 0.7 (significant decrease) until end of May when reopening started, and went back to 0.9-1.1 range until now. So, you can see the possible range is between 0.7 and 4.

Right now, Rt in NY State is at 0.99 (maybe even 0.9999999?!). So, you can see that Rt can be above (increasing pandemic) or below 1 (decreasing) just maybe on your actions below. This illustrates the Rambam that says that one should imagine himself as tipping the scales of the world.

in March-April

@Decency,
it is a reality for at least a couple of thousands of years that the world pays attention to what the Jews do. So, you need to behave accordingly. Start with doing minimally required by the government instead of pointing out that there is another place that does things wrong.

>> I personally hope we will pack the court. However as it would scare some people away, I dont want him to lose votes over it.

So, you are not above manipulating voters if needed, and you are not really outraged by R- senate, you just using it as a good talking point. I don’t think this is a great place to get extra votes for your candidate, I would prefer an intellectual discussion instead. So, to turn there, here are some thoughts. Not knowing much about the topic, I would appreciate corrections:

what is it about R- and D- judges? beyond political preferences, this seems to be an argument between “originalists” and “live constitution”. We have, l’havdil, similar attitudes. One seems to be, ironically, between teacher and student: R’ Eliezer saying that he only taught what he heard from his teachers, and R’ Akiva – the only one who ask R “Eliezer everything about magical cucumbers – who claimed that if he were in the time of death penalty, he found find all kind of excuses to exempt everyone.

Of course, this connection is not a proof of anything, as it matters what you are interpreting. Discussing why we should or should not expand on Hashem’s work is different from reasons to update a document written by a committee.

Back to the US. Originalists are treated currently as stubborn outliers who try to reach out back to outdated time, but of course they were there first, before the mahloket started. It seems that “living” idea corresponds to progressive era when it looked like new scientific methods can drastically improve society, even before population realizes “what is good for them”. This looks like a milder version of socialism that took over Eurasia. There is here somewhat primitive (from current point of view) idea that founders knew static science, like mechanics, and now we (progressives) learned wonderful new things like biology, evolution, etc and this analogy can be applied to social sphere.

I think Jews would more naturally agree with strict contractual view (we do often even interpret Brit with Hashem as a binding contract) – Constitution is a binding document that states signed, and you are welcome to update it via amendment process, allowing original signers, states, to exercise their rights as originally agreed upon. you are also welcome to change the whole process, again, via a new Constitution. With this line of thinking, it is unclear why we need “living” constitution. I am not treating fairly here (1) how expansive to treat certain terms and (2) what to do when there seems to be an intolerable injustice. Both of these issues need to be addressed, but I think they are overshadowed by liberal overreach, trying to pass anything they can through the courts when Courts were liberal.

@Syag, not going to shul is a private matter. Endangering other people is different. You may have explanations, but mixing these things up is disingenuous. Note all the unfortunate news on the YWN front page: these are consequences of behaviors 2-3 weeks ago.

Charlie >> not made available to the public because of privacy restrictions

Not picking a fight here, just an observation. US culture became so full of rules that we do not respond well to real time threats. With such an emergency, is the data still behind firewalls? There are ways to anonymize data, release some aggregated version, etc. I am not claiming that there is no sharing, maybe this is happening somewhere, but I see such attitude in other places where safety (of my job) is more important than the mission.

Again, hoping not to pick a fight, but current administration did a number of emergency steps breaking the rules – authorizing tele-medicine, emergency use, pro-active funding of vaccine manufacturing … I imagine there was a lot of resistance.

Syag, >> when you see people are lax in halacha and Torah laws as well

Can’t answer for GH, but I did point out to the kids that it is hillul Hashem when we saw Jewishly-dressed drivers driving dangerously and in disregard to other drivers. And at this point, when Rabbis from multiple groups paskening to be careful, I think such behavior is becoming CLEARLY against halakha [it was against halakha from day 1, but we can say that people were not warned].

Incidently (?), Eruvin daf yomi discusses how to consider a Jew who openly violates just one area of halakha. We currently consider most un-observant Jews stolen children, but maybe we are now seeing a new generation of apikoirsem emerging, who are fully versed in Shulhan Oruch.

akuperma. If yo get infected, you have considerable chance to be a cause of someone dying down the chain coming from you. Currently at about 80%. How do you feel about this?

I understand their position – Senate can hold hearings if they want to. I think this is your (C).
As they did not vote before 2016, the voters were free to object to that and elect (even) more Democrats. This is what Senate 6 year terms are for – they are subject to pressure, but not fully so.

what is your view on the updated Biden’s position on packing – he will tell us some time before election. That is, he can’t say he will not to lose one group of voters, he cannot tell us he won’t not to lose another group and, well, he apparently cannot say nothing as he is losing a third group …
maybe we can find his positions on Hunter’s Mac?

@se2015 Pence/kissing men – clever! this was mention by R Meir Twersky early on: politicians have their own considerations. We have to be stricter than them. Several communities and RA and Agudah has this as a rule of thumb in May – start opening up 2 weeks after local authorities say it is OK.

Azoiy,
let’s get to basics: Bava Basra praises R Yehoshua b’ Gamla for opening schools that were able to compensate for parents, not all of whom were able to teach children. Some read this Gemora to mean that parents teaching kids is still preferable where possible.

So, could now at least some parents teach kids at home? I think amount of time that last couple of generations were able to spend learning is way much than farmers during 2nd Temple had. We have more texts and videos than ever. Of course, challenges are different also, But, still – could some parents fulfill the mitzva of teaching their kids themselves? Did some try? what are results?

ubiquitin, thanks for the reference. I looked up that OpEd of Feb 18, 2016. Mcconell and Grasley make several arguments. First, legal argument that Art 2 Sec 2 grants the Senate power to provide or withhold consent.

Then, they give a political argument why they should wait, and a significant part of that argument is that Pres Obama’s being a lame duck whose policies were already rejected by voters in 2014. Wiki on 2014 elections uses the word “largest” 4 times for R- gains …. Part of that rejection means – in plain language – Senate is in R- hands and they have power to withhold consent. Then, they go with arguments similar to yours, quoting D-s, including Obama, Biden, Hillary, saying the opposite to what they say now – ein ledavar sof, of course.

I think their argument is not inconsistent with what they have now – R-s had losses in the House, but not in the Senate and, in practical terms, kept ability to grant their consent. And Trump is at the end of his first term, so even the “lame duck” part of the political argument does not apply.

I don’t see that this rises above general self-serving arguments in Congress on both sides. I think the future court packing part of the argument is more interesting.

@ubiquitin >> Republicans didnt hold any hearings because they said “no nominations in an election year”
Dec 2016 letter from 11 Senators (R) to the Majority leader says simply that Constitution gives Senate their powers of consent and does not require them to schedule a vote. Thta is, Consitution let’s them do that and they will use their powers. They do say that such nomination before election did not happen from 1930s and did not happen with divided government from 1880s.

So, this position is NOT inconsistent with voting when they want to. This is also NOT inconsistent with Ds planning to increase number of Justices. At the same time, declining to answer what they want do and declining to explain who will pay for several hundred Justices that we will have after a couple of rounds, is not smart strategy and may be the factor that costs Dems an election. They way cloth-wiped servers were to Hillary.

@OrechDin. I am also an idealist, we are just framing is differently. Your ideal seems to be that everyone has a vote. My ideal is that only knowledgeable people with good character make important decisions. I appreciate that both ideas are important.

Practically speaking, a politician can either morph/present his ideas to appeal to more people, or to motivate more people who like his ideas to vote. I think currently the first path is easy to abuse – politicians can compute which marginal voters they can appeal to with bribes (I’ll pay for your college or social security, Southern Strategy) or with falsehoods. I think it is healthy when politicians have to motivate masses of voters. We should not use government money to help them mailing ballot applications. Parties can work on that on their own. We are also giving party operatives two months to go knock on the doors and “help” people fill out ballots.
‘
PS Theoretically speaking, we can establish a system that achieves both – you vote and pass an unbiased test, mixture of IQ, math, and civics. Only computer knows whether you passed the test and your vote counted. Maybe, you can have a quote – each state gets one smart senator from top 10% of the vote and one stupid from the rest. Senators were supposed to be that layer elected by elite – elected by the educated legislature. We can surely use technology now to achieve the same goal.

@Pashut >> People should not be calling out Rabbonim for not condemning these things

So, we collected several rulings in this thread that call for listening to medical authorities. This is sufficient reason to ask whether others agree, or why they disagree. Given the medical effect on all of us (my local schools were closed based on someone who traveled to NY area) and Hillul Hashem that affects us all, I think it is reasonable to ask for information.

@RebEliezer, you are not being fair. Trump is advocating for trying anything possible while dealing with nameless civil servants that want to follow established rules. Half of the things that Trump proposed end up being useful. This is good risk taking statistically, but maybe not politically, where he can be easily blamed for everything. Mike-Kamala debate had a revealing example of such risk-taking that become easy political target: Pence reminded of foreign policy achievements – ISIS, embassy, Suleimani, that everyone said will lead to grave consequences. Kamala replied that Iranian “retaliated” by shooting missiles near US soldiers and Trump panned resulting health effects as “headache”.