@syag-lchochma @coffee-addict Then let me ask you two fine folk something. Given the fact that the Trump team tried to discredit the Georgian results in the way in which I’ve stated. And given the issues with that, that multiple statisticians and mathematicians have agreed with. Why are you still so certain that there was evidence of Democrats pretending to “find” votes to flip the election?

(Oh, and I have learned statistics and currently work in a job that uses a ton of statistics and analytics)

I can’t speak for the Torah since I’m not a Talmid Chacham, but I do know that Rav Shach ZT”L, the Steipler ZT”L, and many many other gedolei Yisroel told people to vote in the elections. So clearly Dayan Fischer ZT”L and the Rebbe ZT”L were not the be all and end all opinions on the matter.

@Always_Ask_Questions I haven’t done an in depth analysis of how often they go from “Dems will win” to “Republicans will win”. But I do know that when I check their predictions a week or two before elections, they are almost always spot on.

@emes-nisht-sheker If I won the national lottery four weeks in a row, it doesn’t mean that the statistics are wrong, it means I somehow cheated.

@coffee-addict Trumps legal time tried to use statistics to prove that Biden’s team “found” votes at the last minute. Their statistics were wrong which is what I’ve been trying to explain.

@Always_Ask_Questions I don’t disagree. Nate Silve of FiveThirtyEight is still very much a progressive intellectual which means he leans heavily liberal Dem. Still, they’ve been consistently very accurate. And yes, they change their numbers as it gets closer to the polls. I wouldn’t trust a pollster who doesn’t. I mean, three months ago John Fetterman was a shoe-in against Mohammed Oz. But once he was forced to have non-scripted public appearances, people realized the truth about his health.

@coffee addict Actually I was quoting those numbers from a lawsuit filed by Charles Chiccetti, a GOP donor involved in the 2020 GOP election fiasco, which was cited by Giuliani and Trumps legal team. So I’m not sure what you mean by “quantity over quality”, but they were very much disputing that Biden won Georgia using bad statistics to make their case.

@ujm FiveThirtyEight predicted a 30% chance of a Trump win in 2016 which was far higher than any other media outlet. It was based on predictions of which counties will vote for him. Every single county fell well within the margin of error. They were the only major polling analyst that got it right. They never clopped chotosi, they had to write multiple articles explaining to people that there’s a difference between 70% and 100%.

@philosopher That is factually incorrect. What actually happened was that in several states, Trump had a narrow lead, but when the votes for Blue counties and mail in ballots came in overwhelmingly in Bidens favor, Trumps lead dropped.

I go busur the shittois of FiveThirtyEight which always gives extremely accurate predictions of election results. They are predicting that it’s very likely that Republicans win the House and somewhat likely they will win the Senate. Not a huge upset, but still most probably a big win for Republicans.

People that are still claiming that Trump lost in 2020 because of election fraud are either getting their news from unreliable sources, have ulterior motives for fooling people, or have a tenuous grasp on reality.

I would like to say this story b’sheim omro but I can’t recall the Rosh Yeshiva’s name. It was either in 1950s America, or 1930s Europe a Yeshiva put a new building up. Some of the boys found pieces of rebar sticking out of one of the walls and would have fun climbing up and down. A couple bachurim came complaining to the Rosh Yeshiva, derech Yivonim, etc. etc. The RY smiled and thanked the boys for telling him and said it was a good thing they are thinking this way. He then said that he is not going to cover it up because he intentionally asked the builders to leave it like that so that the boys can get some exercise and fun.

YU is literally Modern Orthodox since Modern Orthodox, unlike Yeshivish, has an actual organization with YU taking up a massive percentage of its head. Whether or not they are frum is a different discussion.

The Yeshivish community has written them off decades ago, I’m not sure what sort of association you expect from them.

As for their “Chaveirim Kol Yisroel” club, I don’t see this as any different than the club that existed in Cordoza for the last several decades.

The language they used in setting it up basically states that it’s a support group for men that don’t have tayvas nashim, or women that don’t have tayvas anashim, and how to live a frum lifestyle with that. Which is fine, I guess, assuming they stick to the charter. Obviously, I’m not stupid and I know that they will be hosting talks, publishing media, and holding events that go against halacha. But until that point, and until RIETS officially endorses such activities, we have to be dan l’kaf zechus.

As has been mentioned a million times on this subject, Rav JB Soleveitchik ZT”L himself criticized YU for putting themselves into a position where the government can decide what their morals and ethics should be.

@AviraDeArah Having lived in a very Chassidishe place for a long time, (and being intimately familiar with some of the current narisch trend amongst Litvaks to ignore secular studies) I’m going to strongly disagree with you on that one. From personal experience, only the most successful of Yidden who had no secular education make it in the business world. It takes a huge amount of Hatzlacha to even get to the point that your average desk sitting businessman gets to in a year or two. And the vast majority never reach it and are literally fighting over scraps as to who gets the Meishiv Second Seder job, or answering phones at a frum mortgage broker for $15 an hour.

Mind you, these are not the people I referred to that put the money into the communities. A בִּיג קאָנטרְבְּיוּטַר is generally someone who grew up outside the community and becomes infatuated with their lifestyle. Walk around any overtly massive shul and tell me how many of the names on the plaques did not go to high school.

I’m going to start with four strong opinions and base the rest of what I’m saying on those.

• A proper frum education is necessary
• A secular education is necessary in this American golus
• A school can be very successful at both of these
• The secular education given by very many frum schools is very inadequate or non-existent

The main sensible argument I’ve heard against this is “Parents have a right to teach their kids how they want and it seems to work”. I would say no! As frum Yidden we absolutely do not believe in “rights” and “personal choice”. Parents have a responsibility to educate their children properly and that includes also in secular studies. And no, it doesn’t seem to work either. Many people who graduate from theses Yeshivos are forced to fight for a small number of jobs in the frum community and rely on their wives and government aid to just barely survive poverty. It’s not even a choice for people anymore. Many feel pressured by friends, family, neighbors, and the looming prospect of shidduchim leaving only the “just Limudei Kodesh” schools as the only available options.

Now it doesn’t matter what the NY Slimes or the moisers said. There is a huge problem with Yeshivos in New York and New Jersey that are under the mistaken impression that the only way to have a proper frum education is to forgoe a proper secular one. The fact that this has been going on for so long means that they were hanging by a thread and just waiting for something to trigger repercussions. And here those repercussions are.

In my opinion, the frum oilom should have worked with the government better on this. They could have taken say, Chaim Berlin, for example, which is probably scores near the top on most standardized secular metrics and said that this is the baseline secular education that Yeshivos would follow. What this would have resulted in would be perceived as the Litvish and Yeshiva working crowd using the government to put pressure on certain institutions which would be potentially bad. But the alternative is (with all due respect to the Agudah, Rabbi Hoffman, and legions of other talmidei chachamim who have weighed in on this topic) a united front towards suicide. Right now, Rabbonim and askanim are in vain trying to convince the world that since Chaim Berlin does well on the Regents, therefore the government should back off from the Yeshivos that don’t even teach the kids to speak English. Which no one accepts, so now we have to deal with a government that wants to force all Yeshivos to not only study reading, riting, and rithmatic, but also gender studies, heretical philosophy, and comparative religion.

Baruch Hashem for the Zionist State which calls itself Israel! They are the largest marbitz Torah in the entire history of galus! How many Yungerleit are sitting and learning for years, YEARS!, just because Hashem commanded the State of Israel to provide them with money and food? How many Kollelim, Yeshivos, Seminaries, Bais Yaakovs, Chedarim, and shuls exist just because Israel also exists? Imagine what a world we would live in if Chas v’Shalom Eretz Yisroel was still under the Turks, or the Palestinians, or the British!

No Jewish state, no torah.

Then according to all of this logic, the Israeli government should offer citizenship to Arabs living in all of the areas captured from Jordan in 1967, not just Yerushalayim. They should further cease to recognize the PA as any sort of authority, since the West Bank is part of Israel. Why aren’t they?

Wouldn’t JIYO be more accurate? “Jewish In Yichus Only”?

Not to sound like a smolani, but there is very much an occupation. Israel does not recognize Sheba Farms, Gaza, Areas A, B, nor C as part of Israel. People who live there do not get Israeli citizenship, but Israel has troops and buildings on some of these places. The official term for it is “Israeli occupied territory” since it is nisht a hin, nisht a herr.

@rightwriter I don’t know if a virus that targets people and animals with specific DNA is even possible. I tried looking around on many academic sites and found nothing. I then resorted to Google, and then Yandex (Russian Google, which finds a lot of the more bizarre stuff that’s censored by Google). The only thing that had any credibility was a single Congressman claiming that such weapons were “possibly in development”, which is kind of a meaningless statement.

Anyhoo, what you’re saying about vaccines and birthrates is really scary! Israel has something like a 95% COVID vaccination rate, even in the frum and Chareidi communities! Have you been there lately? Are Bikur Cholim maternity wards really empty?

He should be referred to in third person by all members of his household. “Would The Father like a glass of water to drink?” “Can The Father learn with me later?” “I apologize to The Father for making him so angry before.” “Hello Father and welcome home.”

@Always_Ask_Questions I am far more scared of a bunch of yokels running around with murderous weapons than I am of our government turning on the people. And so should you.

One thing to add to all of this: gun ownership is very goyish. It’s about toughness, and hunting. The idea that you can protect yourself and don’t need the police. It’s not a Yiddishe mehalech.

As for all those people who are unwittingly repeating the NRA motto, “If you criminalize guns, only criminals will have guns” that’s wrong too. Guns are widely legally available in most states in the US. It’s extremely easy for a criminal to get one, even if they have a record. And if someone already owns a gun and decides to commit a crime, that crime just got a lot worse. Contrast that to a country such as Australia where gun ownership is extremely rare. Criminals simply have a very hard time finding guns so there aren’t a lot of gun crimes.

What the Constitutions talks about is irrelevant. It’s a document written with the express purpose of changing for every generation. In this generation, I think it’s clear that the 2nd amendment is causing far more harm than any good.

Ohr Sameach has many talmidim who were frum from birth and never went off.

The regent questions repeat year to year with different numbers. So the absolute best thing to do, is to get both Barron’s books, go through the old regents, and make sure you can do the problems no matter what the numbers or words are. If you keep getting tripped up on the same stuff, read those chapters a few times. Not everything in the Barrons books are in the regents, so don’t try to read them cover to cover.

@dr-pepper I’m honestly sorry to see you go, it’s been a lot of fun. I’m sorry you feel the way you do about your conversation. I cannot recall an instance in which I misquoted you. I keep bringing up the NRA not because you quoted them directly, but because a lot of your comments sounds a lot like NRA talking points. “Guns will be removed from the hands of those who obtained them legally and remain in the hands of those who obtained them illegally” (sorry if that isn’t exactly what you said) is very much an NRA talking point worded slightly differently. You have made numerous similar comments.

The statistics I quoted are publicly available and undisputed. They are compiled by Statistica, Pew Research, and Our World in Data. You can look them up yourself. If you want to contest these statistics, or counter my conclusion from them, please do so in a logical and rational fashion instead of just assuming that they are all biased without even reading them.

To summarize my position on automatic weapons, the likely hood of them being used for bad is far greater than the likelihood of being used for good. Therefore they should be banned. According to everything you’ve said so far, we seem to be in agreement with it all except the banning. Why is that?

Something new to this conversation: Do you think our views on guns and weapons come from a Torah perspective or are entirely from sociological influence? Personally, I do not own a gun. The only frum person I know who is a gun owner runs a security company. No Rebbe I respect ever talked about owning guns or its importance. We did not have a firing range in Yeshiva. So I would like to say that my views are my own based on the influence of my Torah upbringing. But I don’t know, maybe, like you said, it’s “liberal talking points” all the way through? What do you think? How about your own views?

@dr-pepper Sorry for taking so long to respond, I usually use the internet during downtime at work so weekends I’m pretty quiet online.

For the record, I did not concede to your argument. I simply gave up trying to argue whether a fantasy scenario that literally never happens fulfills my criteria of “civilian use of an automatic weapon”.

We seem to be in agreement that a huge overhaul of gun control is needed, like who can buy a gun, who can sell a gun. Similarly with mental health. Good.

It seems our main disagreement is on what guns people should be able to acquire. Even if I would agree with your arguments, that civilians need guns to protect against criminals who also have guns, I still fail to see why civilians would need anything more than a small pistol that can shoot a maximum of six bullets before reloading.

if there are X number of legal guns out there and Y number of illegal guns- how will reducing the number of X bring down the number of Y? It may stop Y from growing as fast as it’s been growing in the past but you haven’t explained how it’ll be reduced.

Stopping growth is also reduction. Guns decay and break down with age, and with illegal firearms they can’t exactly bring it to their local Walmart to get fixed. One you significantly stop the growth, it’s only a matter of time before the number in the hands of criminals goes down too.

Here’s a statistic for you: The total number of prisoners in the UK makes up 0.088% of the population. The average sentence for violence is 18.5 years. By contrast, 0.7% of the US population is in prison, and the average sentence for violence is 25 years. In the UK, there are about 40 violent crimes per 100,000 people compared to 300 in the US. So it clearly isn’t prison keeping violent crimes at a high.

I would love to quote you NRA funded studies, problem is that very few of their studies are relevant. They are all about how better armor leads to less death and nothing about how less guns lead to less death. In fact, just the opposite. The NRA has spent a ridiculous amount of time and energy both supressing gun control studies and making sure that studying gun control is illegal. I work in healthcare data. Until Trump changed the Dickey Amendment, we were not allowed to use healtcare data to research anything regarding gun violence. Because the NRA was clearly too scared to allow people to see how dangerous guns are. So to heck with your NRA studies. I’m looking at actual data and drawing my conclusions from that. If that’s too biased for you, then I guess reality has a bias.

I’ve pointed out several of your sentences and paragraphs that bear a striking similarity to NRA talking points. I’m not going to repeat myself on that, just re-read my old comments.

@dr-pepper If there is a common use case for automatic weapons, then what is it? Because you have failed to mention a single instance in recent history where a civilian used an automatic weapon for good where a regular small pistol wouldn’t have sufficed. However, there are loads of cases where automatic weapons were used to murder. The only possible conclusion from all of this is that automatic weapons in civilian hands are a net bad thing.

You say you want automatic owners to prove responsibility, background checks, regular checkups, etc. Great. I would like to add a few criteria to that: They need to prove that they need a gun each time they buy one and there needs to be at least a one week waiting period for any firearms purchase. If we can have those laws, we will be a long way to being a lot safer.

“THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE GUNS WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE HANDS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE THAT HAD THEM LEGALLY AND THE REMAINING GUNS WILL BE THE ONES OBTAINED ILLEGALLY.”

This previous statement of yours is a distillation of several NRA quotes and ideologies.

You don’t care about studies or statistics? Then I guess we can just end this right now. So all you’re saying is that you’re opinion is the only right one and there’s literally nothing in the world that can dissuade you from that. I question your methodology also. I mean, AOC never actually cited any study that smash and grab robbers are “just hungry”. She was merely stating a fact without anything backing it up (in English we call that “lying”).

So what we’re left at is this:

You say that people deserve and need weapons to protect themselves against other people who have weapons. That there’s sadly nothing to be done to prevent criminals from getting weapons, so the only proper response is to arm the population.

I counter with this. The more guns there are, the easier it is for criminals to get their hands on them. Most criminals will still commit crime with or without a gun. If we make it harder for them to get guns, only the really committed ones will have them. This will lead to less innocent people being shot and killed.

Now I can cite you numerous studies, research, statistics, articles, laws, and comparisons but that’s all pointless because no matter what I say you will dismiss it with the all powerful wave of your hand “Well I don’t believe in that”. Problem is, facts don’t care about your beliefs or feelings.

Gun control. It’s the only way.

I’m not a die hard Trumpist, but at this point I’m convinced the only purpose of the hearings is to detract from Biden’s failures and the horrific economy. What, exactly, are they hoping to accomplish? All the evidence has been viewed and reviewed a thousands times over. Yes, people attacked the Capitol with intent to overturn the election. Yes, Trump rallied with them and may have said some things that provoked them. But is it enough to put the guilt on Trump? No, we’ve already established that. So what is this all about already?