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“Some argue that Trump’s policies and achievements without his personality would have more votes, but it is not clear whether many voters would show up without his personality. Mitt had a pleasant personality but it did not get him enough votes.”
I don’t think you got that right. Trump without the personality would not have the Mitt Romney problem. If Trump was Trump without the Trump personality (if you can imagine), his lack of policies and achievements would be obvious for all the world to see. No one would vote for him, not because he was too bland or unpopular, but because he was too incompetent. The zombies see the bombast as policies and achievements. The rest of us see a bombastic incompetent loser.
The fact that one candidate was ahead and then the other candidate won does not raise an inference of fraud, especially when the explanation is reasonable and was predictable. So predictable in fact that trump fought strenuously to cast doubt on mail in ballots before the election. In the meantime, unsupported claims of widespread fraud are corrosive and destroy any remaining trust people have in the democratic process. Come 2024, the few remaining die hard trump zombies are liable to commit fraud themselves to rectify the unproven fraud they saw on the you-tube.
You claimed bedford’s law was used worldwide to detect election fraud and your source is an old youtube video? And you complain that the house oversight committee is an unnamed source?
Why bother with courts and prison. Bring back the guillotine.
What’s wishful thinking is that the trump campaign has even remotely begun to meet their enormous burden of proof to show widespread fraud. Not to worry. Project veritas is on it. Two ballots in Erie county and the fate of the nation hang in the balance.
“ Which states dragged out the process”
Trick question! When the state law prohibits opening ballots until Election Day, is the process really dragged out?
And let’s take a moment to call out the nonsense about benfords law. You can use it to detect accounting fraud, it is not widely used to detect election fraud. Nice try though.
The house oversight committee is not an unnamed source.
Health, the entire facility processed exactly TWO late arriving ballots that were postmarked on election day.
The story that he recanted came from government investigators, so sure they could be lying, but so could he. Let’s see what he says in court, not on YouTube. He’s working with project veritas which is not at all suspicious.
Still, it’s two ballots.
I know many are heartbroken over trumps loss, but facts still matter. There’s always 2024.
Trump has a long history of accusing others of precisely what he is doing or planning. Predicting his next move based on his psychological tell was an amusing game before the pattern became too obvious. He accuses democrats of trying to steal an election because he is trying to steal an election.
מום שבך אל תאמר לחברך
“Put up or shut up” is right. Trump talks a big game but so far his actual legal claims are unimpressive. His biggest in court claim is not widespread fraud, but that Pennsylvania should invalidate all mail in ballots because it violates equal protection. Honestly, his lawyers should be sanctioned for making frivolous claims.
Speaking of furthering ends by any means because you have the power to do so, I wonder what your thoughts were a week ago on court packing when it looked like Democrats would win the senate. I didn’t hear a single conservative say well, they’d have the power to do so, so why not.
You quoted me so I dont see how you missed what I said. The us constitution does not authorize state legislatures to vote for president. It authorizes them to create a process for the state to appoint electors who vote. Redoing the process at will a second time (or third or tenth) until you get electors that will vote exactly as the legislature wishes is for all intents and purposes the same as direct vote albeit more time consuming and convoluted.
Ujm- “If fraud is found and the courts nevertheless cannot rectify it, the legislatures have standing to act.”
That was a nice 180. You previously argued that they can ignore the election without any constraints, which as I said undermines trumps entire legal argument which presupposes that an accurate election is a meaningful process. Now you’re saying your anti democratic scheme should be available if there’s an actual finding of fraud (before confusingly going back to your first position). I guess your first order of business is to find the actual fraud sufficient to invalidate an election. Not a WhatsApp message or a Facebook post or a press conference in a random parking lot. Trumpies are making a lot of claims out of court, but their court filings are relatively modest. In fact, reports yesterday suggested that law firms that represent the trump campaign are not entirely comfortable with their role in all this.
I don’t know what the remedy is if an election is so tainted by fraud that it does not represent the will of the people. But absent such a finding, one can argue (correctly IMO) that article two says that electors shall be appointed in the manner directed by the state legislature. That’s been done. Allowing a legislature to direct the manner of appointment and then to ignore the results and redirect a new manner for no reason other than that they don’t like the first outcome, would be substantively the same as direct vote by state legislature which was deliberately not authorized by the constitution
UJM, aside from practical difficulties with your wonderful anti democratic idea — such as that no state legislature could even stomach it — it completely undermines trumps entire legal argument. If any state legislature is free to yank the duly appointed slate of electors under article two, then what difference does it make if any state had or didn’t have transparency, counted or didn’t count votes, kept vigilantes 20 feet vs 6 feet away, switched ballots, shredded ballots, handed out sharpies, depressed turnout or wants to count late arriving ballots. Why would any of this matter if the legislature in any state can after Election Day pick a new slate of electors. Of course the answer is that states have to follow their own election laws. So if Pennsylvania has already established the manner in which it appoints electors under article two, then it needs to follow through and cannot change the manner of appointment after Election Day. Mark levin gets paid to say dumb stuff. Very little of what he says is worth repeating.
Ted, that just proves that doing something for the wrong reasons merits reward. Where do we express hakaras hatov to Og? We owe more hakaras hatov to the egyptian dogs than to Og.
Originalism usually refers to a method of interpreting the constitution.
To be clear he was opposed to sheitels on tznius grounds. This is an additional reason.
Why stop at children? When a spouse or even a total stranger needs to be taught a lesson, a good old fashioned spanking is the way to go.
Seriously, if you’re at the spanking juncture, you took a wrong turn 3 or more steps earlier. Spanking is lazy, shows a lack of imagination, lack of foresight, lack of control. If done as a policy rather than in a moment of parental frustration and exasperation, then it also shows a lack of commitment to actually teaching the child in a constructive way.
The only serious farming he did was chop down a cherry tree. For everything else he had slaves.
Health, in the hypothetical scenario that a law like that was ever passed, you wouldn’t have to do a thing. A well funded Christian organization would do all of the heavy lifting.
“ The greatness of our gedolei Yisroel is in their Torah, not their politics.”
“ A real Godol doesn’t tell me for whom to vote.”
Considering that almost no gedolim have issued endorsements, I imagine they would agree with those statements. Even rav Shmuel kaminetsky’s “endorsement” if that’s what it was, was in response to a someone pushing him for his opinion.
Health, a law requiring clergy to officiate at same sex marriages would almost certainly not survive a first amendment challenge.
“Ever heard of Harav Shmuel Kamenetsky?”
I for one have never asked rav Shmuel kaminetsky a shayla in anything, not politics, not hilchos shabbos, not mussar. Yes, he is a gadol, but since when does a daas yachid by someone who isn’t your rav control everyone? My rav, who is a posek and also a gadol, has not to my knowledge endorsed anyone. I imagine he has his personal views and he might (or might not) discuss them with me if I asked, but he hasn’t seen fit to publicize them or try to instruct people who to vote for. I don’t know where we got this meshugas that one gadols political endorsement controls. GH is absolutely right. All the people who were pro trump were pro trump before rav Shmuel kaminetsky endorsed him. Had another gadol endorsed Biden, who would have switched their support? You aren’t pro trump because daas Torah said so. You picked your daas Torah because it fits your politics. Shkoyach. Krumkeit at its finest.
Coffee – Mondale knew he was toast during the second debate when Reagan was questioned about his age and said “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
Further to my previous post, Ami magazine claims their interviews “are performed by trained operators who have considerable experience with – and sensitivity towards – the various Orthodox Jewish communities, ensuring a near-perfect rate of respondent cooperation.” If my hypothesis is correct, then such sensitivity might skew the results. People might tell a heimish caller that of course they support trump because that is the socially acceptable answer, but in actuality they might be too appalled by trump’s behavior to ever actually vote for him.
I know several people who as a matter of moral integrity cannot vote for trump even if they have serious questions about biden and democrats in general. I have no idea how prevalent their opinion is, but it comes from a place of sincere religious conviction, not politics, so I imagine there are others like them.
The trump camp believes that there are hidden trump voters who are too shy to tell pollsters that they support trump, but who will turn out to vote in droves.
I imagine the opposite is true of charedi jews. To be accepted in charedi society you have to love trump and hate the libs. But I still think enough of the moral integrity of charedi jews as a whole that I cannot accept that in the privacy of a voting booth, with just their own thoughts and their own conscience and moral grounding, that so many would decide to get in bed with a menuval, regardless of what they might tell an ami pollster.
Reb Eliezer,
If you are talking about the letter signed by 13 robbonim, the copy issued in charedi news (e.g. https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/featured/1913064/historic-letter-of-rabbonim-and-admorim-praising-president-trump-released-ahead-of-election.html) was undated, but the copy trump tweeted was dated June 10, 2020.
The letter lavished praise and thanked trump for calling religious institutions “essential” but it was not a political endorsement.
I think it’s fair to question why a four month old letter was released without a date 2 weeks before an election. It would seem that someone wanted it to feel like an endorsement even though it wasn’t.
Rabbi Moshe Margaretten who according to theyeshivaworld spearheaded the effort tweeted that “We worked months to gather signatures (wanted to gather even more).” Not to minimize the signatures of 13 rabbonim, but you if spend months gathering signatures and get only 13, how many robbonim declined to sign the letter.
ONE (1): THANK YOU FOR EXPOSING THE HIDDEN DEM AGENDA AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS. WE HAD IT ON THE Q.T. UNTIL YOUR CAPS LOCK BROKE.
“let’s say that candidate B is not really a libertarian, and would potentially curtail religious freedoms to promote liberal values”
I don’t claim to be an expert in this, but I still think you’re describing a libertarian (even if leaning slightly towards liberalism or moderation) and my answer is the same. I’d prefer a libertarian’s incompetence to a populist’s corruption.
“A social liberal may not necessarily be libertarian.”
True, but the category was a social liberal who believes in tax cuts and deregulation.
sifsei chachmim: I know several people voting for Biden for these reasons (if not necessarily sharing your political forecast).
Back in the 90’s many in the frum world stood with evangelicals who proclaimed that a president’s personal morality mattered. Now many in the frum world stand with evangelicals who say it doesn’t matter. Some in the frum world still agree with the 90’s version.
You’re repeating why you think the medical establishment is wrong about hcq (or more precisely, why some experts believe other experts are wrong about hcq) but none of that is proof of a conspiracy. If you have proof, please share it.
Since you’ve been mentioning Dr Harvey risch’s, you must know that a number of his colleagues signed a letter opposing his views on hcq on scientific grounds.
Values, you’re the one making this about politics. If you have evidence to support your wild conspiracy theories, please share it. The fact that most in the scientific community do not believe hcq is a miracle drug is not proof of a conspiracy.
“Defending trumps honor? Who cares about his “honor”, some of us are just marveling at how far people can stretch and twist to make even Gds hand come from the white house.”
Amen.
Shocking how this comes back to defending trump’s honor.
Decency – it seems silly to disagree about facts, but I have to say again that from what I observed in numerous places, compliance in the orthodox community, including parts of Midwood, through the summer and most of September, was mostly non-existent.
To be clear, Cuomo has been very heavy handed about this. I’m also a little suspicious about improving numbers so quickly after drawing zone maps — I don’t see how clusters fade in less than a week. You would think that with effective measures infection rates to continue to rise for a bit before falling. In any event, none of that excuses the lack of compliance and lack of derech eretz.
torahvalues – There have been a many single minded hcq+zinc posts by people who clearly are not scientists, but have a political agenda, and they tend to push crazy conspiracy theories and misinformation. Your post was not the most egregious, so my apologies if my post went too far, although I still think that advocating for drug on a non-medical forum against medical consensus is inappropriate, even if you append a disclaimer.
My questions re your financial interest in hcq were obviously sarcastic. I’m sure politics not money is behind various people’s incessant hcq infomercials, but that just means hcq promoters are politicizing medicine. Granted they claim that hcq deniers are motivated by anti trump animus, but at the end of the day the vast majority of medical professionals don’t practice partisan medicine, so it is actually hcq promoters who are injecting politics and conspiracy theories into what under most other circumstances are things sorted out by doctors not pundits.
torahvalues:
When a lay person tries to convince you of of something by getting into the statistics and academic literature, it’s kind of like a Jews4J nut on the subway trying to educate you by showing you passages in Isaiah.
I’m more likely to get a handle on this by knowing your financial interest in promoting hydroxychloroquine. Do you get paid by the post, the word, or are you on commission? If none, and your posts are acts of pure altruism, please explain why you (and other hydroxychloroquine promoters should feel free to chime in) believe that it is appropriate to direct your PSAs to non-expert consumers who routinely rely on medical professionals for advice. I like to understand what my doctor says, and it’s important to be an informed, but I don’t read medical journals and I don’t take drugs based on the recommendations from random strangers just as I don’t get my interpretations of Isaiah from brainwashed strangers on midtown train platforms. I have no idea what any of the gibberish you post means. I have no idea if you know what your gibberish means, although when considering the totality of circumstances I suspect not.
As an ethical matter, if you want to proselytize for a specific drug, you should take it to the experts, not YWN.
Thank you for you time.
“Hydroxychloroquine…With zinc…”
…and there it is.
…wait for it…
From NYTimes:
Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox umbrella group, said Mr. Tischler was a fringe figure who had “made an idiot of himself.”
“I don’t think anybody really knew him or had heard of him until he decided to turn himself into the wonderful spokesman he thinks he is,” Rabbi Zwiebel said. “This guy is supposed to be a community leader? Please. It is an embarrassment.”
“Trump recovered”
Trump is walking around promising (or threatening) to kiss all of the men and the beautiful women at his rallies (evidently no beauty standard for the men). I’ll reserve judgment on how much he has recovered. Mike pence has resisted invoking the 25th amendment but kissing men may be the tipping point.
Decency, I don’t know where you live, but here in the red zone, from around a week after shavuous until just before Yom Kippur, the majority of frum Jews acted like they were only dimly aware that a pandemic was happening somewhere else. If it wasn’t exactly back to normal, that was only because it was harder to book a hall for a 600 person wedding.
If you’re going to claim that the frum community has in fact complied with the law all along then you must be saying that there has been an resurgence of infections in spite of such compliance. If that is true, then how does it makes sense for the governor to anything but order further restrictions. That in a nutshell was the self defeating argument submitted to a federal judge last week. But of course none of it was true. There are a few shuls that comply, including at least one of the plaintiff shuls, but those are exceptions and we all know it. Despite that, we’ll attack the governor for becoming an overnight anti semite instead of following health guidelines.
Perhaps if the approach had been to acknowledge lax compliance with existing laws and presented a plan going forward, the state would have given it a shot. For all I know, agudah tried it. But the kicker is that so many of us are so sold on ridiculous conspiracy theories, on the notion of our personal rights obliterating any moral responsibility, that we can’t even commit to following laws. From what I observed, compliance ticked up just before Yom Kippur but had already waned just after first days of yom tov, even before the governor announced plans about zones.
The fact that yeshivas are closed and tinokos shel beis rabbah are sitting at home or struggling to learn on zoom, is a direct result of our community’s misplaced priorities and our willingness to embrace politics and conspiracy theories over derech eretz and common sense.
“best way to achieve that goal is to be extra careful in both medical and political aspects”
Right. If we really thought yeshivas were the most important thing, we would have been doing it all along instead of foolishly insisting on the our rights to go maskless during a global pandemic or blithely ignoring our responsibility to everyone else.
Azoiy, that other comment was by me, and I was being satirical.
Yes, Dora the explorer is a kids cartoon about an illegal immigrant who gets separated from her parents at the border. She is trying to get to her grandmothers house before ICE catches her and puts her in a detention center. Sad actually.
Good luck. 83% of the frum world gets its clues from fox news hosts and presidential twitter rants — fight to the death for personal freedom and have zero regard for social responsibility. We cry about tinokos shel beis rabban until we have to wear a mask so tinokos shel beis rabban can continue going to cheder. Draw the line right there. My kids will stay home and watch dora the explorer until their eyes fall out if need be but I will not wear a mask or skip simchas torah shul kiddush just because cuomo said so.
If the Sikh doctors get an exemption, then the policy is not absolute. Find out how you can qualify for an exemption. If your beard is a minhag not a grooming choice, then perhaps your rav can say that in a letter. I would probably avoid using the word “customary” because it sounds more wishy washy to me than most minhagim actually are. Tradition is probably a better word (imagine if Tevye sang about “Customs! Customs!”) but also be clear that there are different strains within Orthodox Judaism, or otherwise you’ll have to explain why some other orthodox men are clean shaven. I know nothing about why Sikhs don’t shave, but I can’t imagine it’s anything more compelling than a minhag or tradition.
“So is number of infected per 100,000.”
I’m not saying that number isn’t important and you often see tracked in the media. But you’re only reporting results of people actually tested, so it’s less useful in trying to get an idea of how widespread the virus is if the number of tests vary.
Take extreme examples where testing rates are more useful than positives per population:
Area A: 100,000 random tests with 1,000 positives
Area B: 1,000 random tests with 1,000 positivesOr the following:
Day one: 10,000 random tests with 100 positive.
Day two: 5,000 random tests with 50 positive.In these examples, if you looked only at positive tests per population, you’d get a very distorted view of what’s actually happening.
A populist vs a libertarian. I’ll take the libertarian (aka B) because the country can bounce back from incompetence but corruption sticks around. Wake me up when it’s 2024.
rationally – I was trying to show you the absurdity of focusing on test positivity results in a vacuum, but I think you went down the slippery slope and stayed there. If only 229 people had been tested and 229 had been positive, then test positivity is 100%, but obviously that doesn’t mean all 8 million people have covid. That means we aren’t testing enough. That’s exactly where we were in March. We were able to test people in hospitals, but we had very little data on what was happening outside the hospitals. If you remember, it was a stressful time. I don’t know why anyone would voluntarily go back there.
As regards the morality of your scheme – if you did succeed in kicking sand in the eyes of health officials trying to monitor outbreaks, then they can’t update guidelines and people won’t know when to be vigilant, so you will be responsible for illness and possibly deaths. You argued that that doesn’t make you a rodef. I disagree. I’m not sure what Sweden has to do with anything. If you deliberately frustrate efforts to put out fires in NY, it doesn’t matter what the fire department in Stockholm does.
It’s not hypocrisy when everyone knows you’re exercising raw political power with a flimsy excuse. It’s disingenuous, but not really hypocritical. If Democrats controlled the senate right now, does anyone really think they would hold hearings, regardless of what happened in 2016. If Republicans had said then that they are not holding hearings on garland because they didn’t have to, and said now they were confirming Barrett because they could, they wouldn’t be hypocritical, they’d just be more honest.
As an aside, I seriously wonder if republicans will be happy with Barrett in 10 yrs, or even 6 weeks.
Rationally realistic: morality aside, if the only people who get tested are those taken to the hospital with covid, then the positivity rate will be 100%. Brilliant strategy. Obviously no one will think every person in 11219 has covid, but what exactly has been accomplished.