President Trump faces his hardest truth: The FBI has confirmed that he is a liar

Washington Post

On the 60th day of his presidency came the hardest truth for Donald Trump.

He was wrong.

James B. Comey — the FBI director whom Trump celebrated on the campaign trail as a gutsy and honorable “Crooked Hillary” truth-teller — testified under oath Monday what many Americans had already assumed: Trump had falsely accused his predecessor of wiretapping his headquarters during last year’s campaign.

Trump did not merely allege that former president Barack Obama ordered surveillance on Trump Tower, of course. He asserted it as fact, and then reasserted it, and then insisted that forthcoming evidence would prove him right.

But in Monday’s remarkable, marathon hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Comey said there was no such evidence. Trump’s claim, first made in a series of tweets on March 4 at a moment when associates said he was feeling under siege and stewing over the struggles of his young presidency, remains unfounded.

Comey did not stop there. He confirmed publicly that the FBI was investigating possible collusion between Trump campaign officials and associates with Russia, part of an extraordinary effort by an adversary to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election in Trump’s favor.

Questions about Russia have hung over Trump for months, but the president always has dismissed them as “fake news.” That became much harder Monday after the FBI director proclaimed the Russia probe to be anything but fake.

“There’s a smell of treason in the air,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said. “Imagine if J. Edgar Hoover or any other FBI director would have testified against a sitting president? It would have been a mind-
boggling event.”

For Trump, Comey’s testimony punctuates what has been a troubling first two months as president. His approval ratings, which were historically low at his inauguration, have fallen even further. Gallup’s tracking poll as of Sunday showed that just 39 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance, with 55 percent disapproving.

The Comey episode threatens to damage Trump’s credibility not only with voters, but also with lawmakers of his own party whose support he needs to pass the health-care bill this week in the House, the first legislative project of his presidency.

Furthermore, the FBI’s far-reaching Russia investigation shows no sign of concluding soon and is all but certain to remain a distraction for the White House, spurring moments of presidential fury and rash tweets and possibly inhibiting the administration’s ability to govern.[...]

Spicer’s defense strategy was in part to distance Trump from the figures under investigation by the FBI for their ties to Russia. In Spicer’s telling, Paul Manafort was a virtual nobody, someone who “played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.”

Manafort was actually Trump’s campaign chairman and de facto manager for five months last year, from the end of the primaries through the summer convention and the start of the general election season.

Watching Sean Spicer twist himself into a pretzel yet again to try to pretend that Paul Manafort isn’t an influential figure is ludicrous,” Wehner said. “It’s like saying Aaron Rodgers isn’t a central figure for the Green Bay Packers.”

Brinkley, who has published biographies of such presidents as Gerald Ford, Franklin Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt, said of Trump’s start, “This is the most failed first 100 days of any president.”

“To be as low as he is in the polls, in the 30s, while the FBI director is on television saying they launched an investigation into your ties with Russia, I don’t know how it can get much worse,” Brinkley said.[...]

Trump’s biggest Obamacare lies

Washington Post   President Trump is like a broken record of Pinocchios, incessantly repeating false and misleading claims that have been debunked. As Congress debates the Republican replacement bill for the Affordable Care Act, Trump has been on a greatest-hits tour of his favorite, and questionable, claims about Obamacare. We compiled a round-up of his most notable claims from the past week.

“This is the worst year of all … 2017 is going to be the worst because he’s [former president Barack Obama] gone. He knew that was the year. Let him be out before it implodes.”
— March 15
“It’s a catastrophic situation, and there’s nothing to compare anything to because Obamacare won’t be around for a year or two. It’s gone.”
— March 15
“They also want people to know that Obamacare is dead; it’s a dead health-care plan. It’s not even a healthcare plan, frankly.”
— March 17
“I have to tell you that Obamacare is a disaster. It’s failing. … Obamacare will fail. It will fold. It will close up very, very soon if something isn’t done.”
— March 17

Trump’s claims that Obamacare “is failing,” “is dead,” “will close up very, very soon” and “is not even a health-care plan [?]” are simply false.

Credible estimates suggest the health-care law boosted the number of people with health insurance by 20 million. The Congressional Budget Office, in its report on the GOP replacement bill, said that the individual market would be stable in most markets at least for the next 10 years under the Affordable Care Act.[...]

Our friends at FactCheck.org looked into this claim in depth and found “it is possible that some parts of the state will be without marketplace coverage next year.” But that’s not the same as Trump claiming half the state has no insurance company.

“I watched Bill Clinton saying, this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
— March 17
“The Governor of Minnesota said that Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — no longer affordable. That’s what he said.”
— March 17

Trump takes both comments out of context and twists their meaning.

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) on Oct. 12, 2016, faulted Republicans in Congress for refusing to adjust the law, which he said was the reason individual health insurance was “no longer affordable to increasing numbers of people.”

Dayton added that “the Affordable Care Act has many good features to it, it’s achieved great success in terms of insuring more people – 20 million people across the country – and providing access for people who have preexisting conditions and the like. But it’s got some serious blemishes and serious deficiencies. And we’re going to need both state and federal governments to step in and do what they need to do to remedy these problems.”

Bill Clinton’s remark on Oct. 3 about “the craziest thing I’ve ever seen” did not refer to the Affordable Care Act. Instead, he was talking about the fact that people who did not qualify for insurance subsidies did not have a way to buy into Medicare or Medicaid.

“The people that are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies. Why? Because they’re not organized, they don’t have any bargaining power with insurance companies, and they’re getting whacked,” Clinton said while campaigning in Flint, Mich. “So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden, 25 million more people have health care and then the people that are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world.”

Clinton noted that his wife, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, had a proposal to deal with the problem by allowing affordable access into Medicare and Medicaid.

“Many of our best and brightest are leaving the medical profession entirely because of Obamacare.”
— March 20

There are anecdotes of some doctors, especially older ones, who are frustrated about adopting electronic health records under Obamacare. But physicians leave the industry for many reasons, mainly aging and burning out. As the baby boomer patient population gets older and has more complex conditions, there is greater demand on physicians and their services.

A 2016 survey of more than 17,000 physicians by Merritt Hawkins for the Physicians Foundation, a nonprofit for professional physicians, found low morale and burnout as key reasons physicians were leaving the industry. Less than one-quarter of physicians gave the Affordable Care Act a positive grade of A or B.

Recent data from the Association of American Medical Colleges shows physicians are actually retiring two years later, said Atul Grover, the group’s executive vice president. Grover said the group has not seen a significant number of physicians leaving the industry because of the law: “There is also no evidence of a declining interest in medicine since the ACA took effect. Applications to medical school are at an all-time high. The real challenge the physician workforce faces is the cap on federal support for graduate medical education established by Congress 20 years ago. As a result, there are not enough residency positions to fill demand.”

“People have been kicked off their plans, and their premiums have increased by double and triple digits. Arizona, up 116 percent.”
— March 20

Premiums increased overall in 2017 — but Trump cherry-picks data from Arizona, the state hit hardest by premium increases. The average increase for the second-lowest-cost silver plan (which is used as the benchmark to calculate government subsidies) is 25 percent. A few states, such as Indiana, will actually see a decrease.

But the majority of enrollees in the marketplace receive government premium subsidies and, in theory, are protected from such premium increases. So who is affected? The people who do not qualify for the tax subsidy. The GOP replacement plan would provide tax subsidies to a broader group of people but often provide less money per person to pay for insurance, so premiums may rise for many, especially the elderly, compared to current law, the CBO said.[...]

2 Months In, Trump May Already Own A First: Most Corrupt POTUS. Ever.

Huffington Post

Imagine a foreign potentate who uses his official position to promote his private businesses. Who makes face time with visiting dignitaries a perk for his paying customers. Whose top aide urges the citizenry to embrace products sold by the sovereign’s daughter.

For two months now, Americans have not had to imagine any of this. They have been living it.

As President Donald Trump enters his third month in office, he has already established at least one record, however dubious: the president most open and willing to use the prestige of the White House to enrich himself and his family.

“I’m at a loss,” said Robert Maguire, an investigator with the Center for Responsive Politics, a group that advocates for more transparency in government and campaigns. “This idea that the presidency is something to enrich your private interest to the extent he’s doing, not by going on the speaking tour or getting a big book deal after he leaves office, but while he’s in office, sort of milking the office for all it’s worth ― it’s tacky.”

For years, Trump made sure to feature one of his properties and his name-emblazoned jetliner in each episode of his reality TV show “The Apprentice.” Just so, over the past seven weekends, Trump has visited his hotel in Washington, D.C., his golf courses in Palm Beach County and, most frequently, his Mar-a-Lago resort there. The weekend of March 11 – only the second in a month and a half that he did not travel to Florida – he had lunch with top aides at his golf course across the Potomac River from the White House. He did not play golf. He did not stay overnight. All he did was have lunch.

And with each of these visits have come the attendant media coverage, with photos and videos of his for-profit enterprises.

“He should not use his official position to promote his businesses. That doesn’t make him a good businessman. That makes him a bad president,” said Richard Painter, the former top ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush’s White House.[...]

rump’s behavior has no precedent, going back to at least the turn of the last century, ethics experts say. Even in the presidency most often associated with open corruption, it was Warren Harding’s Interior secretary, not Harding himself, who had taken bribes in the Teapot Dome oil lease scandal.

Presidents in recent years have taken care to place their assets in blind trusts, to eliminate possible perceptions of conflicts between their personal interests and those of the United States.

“I don’t think any president in modern history has had a serious conflict,” Painter said.[...]

Meanwhile, the family of his brother-in-law and top White House aide, Jared Kushner, is reportedly negotiating a deal with a Chinese firm that analysts are calling unusually favorable to the Kushners. It would allow them to dramatically reduce their liability on a nine-figure loan on a Manhattan high-rise. At the same time, Kushner has emerged as Trump’s informal but possibly most influential foreign policy negotiator and has already met with Chinese leaders among others.

Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, has been the beneficiary of a different top Trump aide. Kellyanne Conway, reacting to news that department store chain Nordstrom was dropping Ivanka Trump’s clothing line because of poor sales, in a TV interview from the White House briefing room urged viewers to take action.

“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff,” Conway told Fox News on Feb. 9. “I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”[...]

And during the visit of Japan’s prime minister to Mar-a-Lago last month, Trump introduced Shinzo Abe to club members hosting a wedding reception. “They’ve been members of this club for a long time,” Trump explained. “They’ve paid me a fortune.”

“This pay-to-play game has got to stop. He’s president of the United States. It’s corruption of government,” said Painter, now a law professor at the University of Minnesota and part of the legal team suing Trump over the payments his hotels are receiving from foreign entities, possibly in violation of the Constitution.

The Center for Responsive Politics’ Maguire said Trump’s behavior has disproven predictions by those who believed he would evolve to meet the decorum expected of the presidency. “The expectation was, once he gets into office, of course he won’t be like this,” Maguire said. “And, of course, he has.”

So far, Trump has been mercifully incompetent

Washington Post

“The world is laughing at us. They’re laughing at the stupidity of our president.”

— Donald Trump, October 2016

Stupid is as stupid does. 

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump remarked often on the stupidity of our leaders. He was under the impression that the rest of the planet was indulging in some sort of global guffaw at our expense. “How stupid are we? The world is laughing.” If so, what must the mirthful world think of our current state of affairs? This past week alone:

The House and Senate intelligence committees said they saw no evidence for President Trump’s wild claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, and Britain protested that the White House falsely alleged that British intelligence was involved. White House press secretary Sean Spicer has been arguing that Trump didn’t mean wiretapping when he said Obama had Trump’s “wires tapped.” Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway suggested that eavesdropping could have been accomplished using microwave ovens. 

Trump’s fellow Republicans pronounced his budget dead on arrival in Congress — “draconian, careless and counterproductive” were the words used by Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), former House Appropriations Committee chairman — because it recklessly cuts (slashing the State Department by nearly a third and targeting Meals on Wheels for the elderly) yet still adds to the debt Trump promised to eliminate.

Legislation to replace Obamacare stalled in Congress and had to be rewritten because of a rebellion within Trump’s own party.

A judge halted Trump’s second attempt at a ban on travel from several Muslim countries.

And Republican lawmakers probing Trump’s ties to Russia threatened subpoenas over the executive branch’s stonewalling.

In one of the presidential debates, CNBC’s John Harwood asked Trump if he was running “a comic book version of a presidential campaign.” Now Trump seems to be running a cartoon version of a presidency, and he’s Elmer Fudd. His proposals could, if successfully implemented, be ruinous. But so far, at least, Trump has been mercifully incompetent. [...]

Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, lasted just 24 days on the job after misrepresenting his contacts with Russia. Attorney General Jeff Sessions falsely testified that he’d had no contacts with the Russians, forcing his recusal from Russia investigations once the truth came out.

Trump’s nominee to be labor secretary withdrew in the face of broad opposition. His education secretary, who suggested that schools need guns to defend against grizzlies, was confirmed only when the vice president broke a tie vote. 

Trump blamed a “so-called” judge for striking down his first travel ban and proposed blaming the court system if there was a terrorist attack; his own Supreme Court nominee called such remarks disheartening.

Trump conducted sensitive diplomacy over a North Korean missile launch with the Japanese prime minister surrounded by diners at his Mar-a-Lago country club, one of whom posted online a photo of the man carrying the nuclear football.

Trump, after inflating the crowd size at his inauguration and embracing a conspiracy theory that 3 million to 5 million Americans voted illegally, falsely accused the media of not covering terrorist attacks. The White House then produced a badly spelled list of attacks, most of which had been covered. Conway invented one attack, the “Bowling Green massacre.”

Conway pitched Ivanka Trump’s fashion line on Fox News. Taxpayers have subsidized millions of dollars’ worth of expenses related to Mar-a-Lago and the Trump sons’ foreign travel.

Trump marked Black History Month with remarks suggesting he thought abolitionist Frederick Douglass was still alive.

Trump opened a rift with Australia in an angry phone call with that ally’s prime minister. He provoked the Mexican president to cancel a trip to Washington, and he baffled the Swedes by alluding to fictitious refugee-related violence “last night in Sweden.” Britain postponed a visit from Trump in hopes that anti-Trump protests would cool.[...]

This tragicomedy adds irony when you consider that the main character is the same one who campaigned by saying “they laugh at our stupidity” and “we are led by very, very stupid people” and “I have the best words, but there’s no better word than ‘stupid.’ ”

Now the world has reason to laugh at us — because we’re with stupid.

Elad Zadikov dismissed from coalition and Torah culture portfolio for opposition to anti-family value dissemination ​​in kindergartens

Arutz7

Herzliya city council member Elad Zadikov was dismissed from the coalition and the Torah culture portfolio due to his opposition to the dissemination of anti-family values ​​in kindergartens.

Zadikov wrote a strongly worded letter to the mayor, Moshe Fadlon following articles on Arutz Sheva revealing the Hoshen organization's infiltration into kindergarten activities in various places, including Herzliya.

Zadikov - who is a council member from the Gesher faction, which represents mainly baalei teshuva - returnees to Torah observance - claimed to the mayor that he is turning the Herzliya education system "into the first in Israel to impart deviant tendency values ​​as a normal model, even to be emulated."

"On behalf of what public," he asked, "were you allowed to poison the minds of our kindergarten children and introduce a spirit of lasciviousness and confusion into the tender souls of Herzliya's 3,4,5-year-olds!? The fact that they are affiliated with the general public education system does not allow anyone to confuse basic concepts and the traditional values ​​of home and family unit."

Fadlon responded to Zadikov that "the education system in our city is among the most advanced and enlightened in the State of Israel. This is not the case with your letter which is full of inaccuracies, scientific and ethical ignorance, fear and lack of understanding of the age we live in. Perhaps if during your childhood, the education system was somewhat different, your letter would not represent so deep a confusion between superstition and fact."

He added:

"In 1920 women's suffrage was recognized in the United States, in 2001 the first female combat pilot finished the pilot's course in Israel, and ever since then the civilized world has realized that there is nothing to prevent women from also being in 'men's' trades, this does not hurt femininity in the family unit or in future education - the opposite is correct.

"In Israel, like in the entire world, the right is recognized to choose one's spouse, irrespective of sex, to establish a family unit, and live a dignified and equal life.

"Sexual orientation is not an incurable disease, is not contagious, and according to all the studies is not subject to education. What is given to education is accepting people as people, and the ability to look at difference, whether physical, emotional, or sexual, and this without making generalizations.

"Unfortunately, your approach is what has often brought harm to another in an attempt to expel him rather than to accept him, leading to physical injury.

"What you say in your letter, as well as in the committee you attended in the Israeli Knesset, carries libelous and offensive themes in their spoken parts, and constitutes incitement and is misleading in the written parts.

"In the old days special religious police were established who acted to harm non-virtuous girls and people with homosexual orientation, all under the shadow of a law which was canceled in 1988 (prohibiting homosexual relations in Israel).

"It would be proper for a Herzliya city council member to undergo broad educational training on individual rights, science, and human nature, accepting those who are different, and educational methods, so that a compilation of such nonsense will never again be written.

"The education system in Herzliya will continue to educate their children to love and accept one another, to mutual support and full equality, both among the religious public and different communities, and also on the subject of women.

"I do not see a place for a council member in the coalition who subscribes to dark medieval views against women and whole communities, to yet serve in a post responsible for Torah culture.

"In light of your words, and until you wise up and accept those different from you, on my authority, I am informing you that you are dismissed from your job in the coalition, and as holder of the Torah culture portfolio.

"Parenthetically I will note that I reserve for myself the right to take legal measures, if asked, for your words of slander and lies to the Israeli Knesset.

"Best regards,

Moshe Fadlon

Mayor"

White House Tries to Soothe British Officials Over Trump Wiretap Claim

NY Times

The White House has tried to soothe an angry Britain after suggesting that President Barack Obama used London’s spy agency to conduct secret surveillance on President Trump while he was a candidate last year but offered no public apology on Friday.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday that the White House had backed off the allegation. “We’ve made clear to the administration that these claims are ridiculous and should be ignored,” the spokesman said on condition of anonymity in keeping with British protocol. “We’ve received assurances these allegations won’t be repeated.”

The reassurances came after British officials complained to Trump administration officials. Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to Washington, spoke with Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, at a St. Patrick’s Day reception in Washington on Thursday night just hours after Mr. Spicer aired the assertion at his daily briefing. Mark Lyall Grant, the prime minister’s national security adviser, spoke separately with his American counterpart, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.

“Ambassador Kim Darroch and Sir Mark Lyall expressed their concerns to Sean Spicer and General McMaster,” a White House official said on condition of anonymity to confirm private conversations. “Mr. Spicer and General McMaster explained that Mr. Spicer was simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story.”

Other White House officials, who also would not be named, said Mr. Spicer offered no regret to the ambassador. “He didn’t apologize, no way, no how,” said a senior West Wing official. The officials said they did not know whether General McMaster had apologized.

The controversy over Mr. Trump’s two-week-old unsubstantiated accusation that Mr. Obama had wiretapped his telephones last year continued to unnerve even Mr. Trump’s fellow Republicans. Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, said Friday that Mr. Trump had not proven his case and should tell Mr. Obama he was sorry.

“Frankly, unless you can produce some pretty compelling truth, I think President Obama is owed an apology,” Mr. Cole told reporters. “If he didn’t do it, we shouldn’t be reckless in accusations that he did.”

The flap with Britain started when Mr. Spicer, in the course of defending Mr. Trump’s original accusation against Mr. Obama, on Thursday read from the White House lectern comments by a Fox News commentator asserting that the British spy agency was involved. Andrew Napolitano, the commentator, said on air that Mr. Obama had used Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, the signals agency known as the GCHQ, to spy on Mr. Trump.

The GCHQ quickly and vehemently denied the contention on Thursday in a rare statement issued by the spy agency, calling the assertions “nonsense” and “utterly ridiculous.” By Friday morning, Mr. Spicer’s briefing had turned into a full-blown international incident. British politicians expressed outrage and demanded apologies and retractions from the American government.

Mr. Trump’s critics assailed the White House for alienating America’s friend. “The cost of falsely blaming our closest ally for something this consequential cannot be overstated,” Susan E. Rice, who was Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, wrote on Twitter. “And from the PODIUM.”

Mr. Trump has continued to stick by his claim about Mr. Obama even after it has been refuted by a host of current and former officials, including leaders of his own party. Mr. Obama denied it, as did the former director of national intelligence. The F.B.I. director has privately told other officials that it is false. After being briefed by intelligence officials, the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have in the last few days said they have seen no indication that Mr. Trump’s claim is true.[...]

Ki Sisa; Why Did Moshe Rabbeinu Suddenly Bow by Rabbi Shlomo Pollak

Guest post by Rabbi Shlomo Pollak

In Parshas Ki Sisa , after the י''ג מדות של רחמים the Torah says [34;8] וימהר משה ויקד ארצה וישתחו - and Moshe Rabbeinu quickly bowed to Hashem... But, what was the rush?

Many different approaches are taken, one of which the Even Ezra says only ריקי מוח("Empty minds") can believe... The only problem is that many prominent Rishonom and even The Medrosh explain it that way?!?....

For questions and comments please email us at salmahshleima@gmail.com .

https://youtu.be/jS1dQfswSyM

Truth, Trust and Honesty:How to react to problematic leadership - religious or political by Joe Orlow

Guest post by Joe Orlow

Truth. Trust. Honesty. These are the oxygen for stable communities. The Torah brings this out numerous times. For example, cheating on weights is juxtaposed with the rise of our enemies.

So when Rabbinical leaders issue rulings that are out of whack, Rabbi Eidensohn steps to the plate and rebalances things.

And personal experience demonstrates just how unpleasant a community can be when some of its would-be leaders are out of order. The rank-and-file either consciously, or in a more subtle manner, end up mimicking the traits -- whether good or bad -- of its leaders. Sneaky leader: sneaky populace.

I'm writing this post in response to n invitation from Rabbi Eidensohn. My audience is the Z'kanim who follow this blog. Z'kanim: the Torah scholars who follow this blog and care what is written here, but don't care to take the extra step of commenting publicly here. So we have been told via the grapevine. I am reminded of the Z'kanim who start out escorting Moshe and Aharon on the way to confront Pharaoh. A funny thing happened on the way to the palace. At each corner a man was lost here, a man was lost there. Till it was just Moshe and Aharon to present the message of G-d to the earthly king.

These Z'kanim wonder why Rabbi Eidensohn has veered into the realm of politics. Is it not obvious? What is true of the Torah leaders holds true of civil leaders.

A Torah community with a fraudulent leadership is like a bridge that is rusting and corroded; like a highway with signs that misdirects drivers. Would you get in a road where the traffic lights routinely malfunction? Why in the world would anyone follow in the Derech of Gadokim who are off the Derech?!

A President that acts callously to protocol, precedent, and procedure can easily upend what a quarter of a millennia of statecraft has established. The cumulative effect of millions of citizens over centuries to build a more perfect form of government through blood, sweat and tears can come tumbling down like a majestic skyscraper shot through with passenger jet arrows.

I think that would be a good outcome. From the political ashes and rhetorical rubble we will build a moral foundation for the future. To me, Mr. Trump is like Noach, his ascendancy to the White House buoyed by my vote and the votes of sixty million of my friends.

I respect those who feel the flood of populism is really washing away the good, not the bad. So, the fact that I may disagree with Rabbi Eidensohn doesn't diminish my regard for him. Just the opposite, I've gained a new admiration for his courage in running this blog.

But for those who snip and snipe from the sidelines, they gather my disdain. Why haven't they started their own blogs? Where are their bold hearted Drashas calling out the misdeeds of a lazy leadership? Oh. I know. They don't want to lose their jobs. Or affect the marriage potential of their offspring. Risk averse cowards. Pulling back as we turn the corner of a momentous moment in history.

Donald Trump’s Big Health-Care Lie Puts Barack Obama’s Weak One to Shame

Daily Beast   Let’s first travel back in time to 2013, when Barack Obama was pilloried for saying “if you like your health-care plan, you can keep it.” Remember the furor over that?

Because he said it a lot, and it turned out to be untrue. And the right went absolutely ballistic—not only was Obama a bald-faced liar, but it showed what a shell game the whole health-care overhaul law was. It turned out that only 4 million people out of a total of more than 250 million insured lost their health-care plans, but still, 4 million is 4 million flesh-and-blood Americans. Obama’s lie was, as you might recall, named the “Lie of the Year” for 2013 by Politifact, which counted 37 separate times Obama had said with no caveats that everyone would be able to keep their coverage.

Well, I don’t know exactly how many times candidate and President Donald Trump has said things like everyone will have coverage under his Obamacare replacement. But it was a lot. His plan would be “something terrific.” “I am going to take care of everybody.” “Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.” It must be dozens. And that’s on top of the dozens of denunciations of Obamacare as a “disaster” that wasn’t helping people.

Well, now we have the Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of the Republican replacement plan (which technically burst from the womb as Ryancare rather than Trumpcare, thought the White House pledged late last week to move heaven and earth to pass it even as it remains the one thing that Trump emphatically doesn’t want to smack his name on). And what does the CBO have to say about this terrific plan that’s going to take care of everybody and rescue America from the disaster?

It has to say: 14 million more uninsured by 2018. That’s a year and change! Fourteen million people thrown back to the wolves. And more—another 7 million by 2020, and another 3 million by 2024, making for a grand total of 24 million people who currently have health coverage thrown off the rolls as a direct result of this bill, the Republican “replacement” bill.

If Obama got Lie of the Year over 4 million, what does Trump get over 24 million? True, the competition for lies is a lot more robust than it was in that now innocent-seeming year of 2013. But surely this deserves some kind of prize.

Oh, there’s more. Remember all those times you heard Trump trash the premium increases under Obamacare? Not, I will note, without justification. Premium increases and high deductibles have been a bane of Obamacare for many consumers.

But what does the CBO say TRyancare will accomplish on the premium front? It projects increases in 2018 and 2019 of about 15 or 20 percent higher than under Obamacare.

Also, the CBO says that the Republican plan really socks it to a group that it’s never politically very wise to sock it to. I refer you to Table Four on page 34 of this .pdf, listing the CBO’s estimated premium increases for 21-, 40-, and 64-year-olds at different income levels under the GOP plan. The most striking thing is this: Under current law (Obamacare), a 64-year-old earning $26,500 a year pays a net premium (after the tax credit) of $1,700. RyanTrumpCare whacks away at that earner’s tax credit such that he is left paying a whopping $14,600.[....]

Because there are two styles of duplicity afoot in Washington right now. There’s Trumpian dishonesty, which consists of his plain-faced lies about his behavior and his evidence-free outbursts like the one he directed at Obama two weekends ago.

Then there’s your more standard Republican duplicity, like promises that health care would be easy to bring to everyone if we just got government out of the way and let the market work its wondrous magic. That may be how it works in Ayn Rand novels, but that isn’t how it works in the actual world. In the actual world, anyone who’s given the matter five minutes of honest thought (emphasis on honest thought) comes to the obvious realization that the only thing that can bring premiums and deductibles down is for more healthy people to have to buy insurance.[...]

And from there, if you’re being honest, you then realize that the only entity that can make people buy insurance is the federal government; and that you have to give them an incentive to do so, which means subsidies. And all that spells Obamacare. It’s complicated and flawed, sure. But any attempt to do it any other way will wind up where the CBO just tossed RyanTrumpCare: in the garbage, where it belongs.

Paul Ryan must know this deep down. Or no—lately we’ve begun to realize that maybe he doesn’t, right? That jaw-dropping line of his about it being the “fatal conceit” of Obamacare that the healthy pay for the sick revealed, as many have by now observed, that he doesn’t seem to understand what insurance even is.

And Donald Trump clearly doesn’t know it. That line of his a couple weeks ago, equally jaw-dropping, that “nobody knew that health care could be so complicated” was a howler. No, Donald. We all knew. It’s just that you didn’t, because while you were out there on the stump lying repeatedly about giving people the best possible coverage, you weren’t bothering to actually learn anything about the topic. Now you have to.[...]

Using Air Quotes, White House Walks Back ‘Wiretap’ Talk

NY Times

Two senior White House officials suggested on Monday that President Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that President Barack Obama had tapped his telephone was not meant to be taken literally, arguing that Mr. Trump had been referring more broadly to a variety of surveillance efforts during the 2016 campaign when he made the incendiary accusation.

“He doesn’t really think that President Obama went up and tapped his phone personally,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary.

In fact, Mr. Spicer said, when Mr. Trump charged in a Twitter post last weekend that Mr. Obama “had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower,” he was referring generally to surveillance activities during the 2016 race — not to an actual telephone wiretap.

“The president was very clear in his tweet that it was, you know, ‘wiretapping,’” Mr. Spicer said, using his fingers to make a gesture suggesting quotation marks. “That spans a whole host of surveillance types of options.”

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Mr. Spicer said there have been “numerous reports from a variety of outlets over the last couple months that seemed to indicate that there has been different types of surveillance that occurred during the 2016 election.”

The remarks were the first time the White House sought to explain the accusation Mr. Trump made in a series of posts on Twitter saying Mr. Obama “was tapping my phones” and calling the former president a “bad (or sick) guy.”

The explanations came as the Justice Department asked the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, who had given a Monday deadline to produce proof of Mr. Trump’s claim, for more time “to determine what if any responsive documents exist.”

Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s senior adviser, said in an interview on Sunday that Mr. Obama could have employed any number of devices other than a traditional telephone wiretap, even including a microwave oven.

Ms. Conway clarified on Monday that she was not accusing the former president of snooping via a kitchen appliance, arguing that her comments had been taken out of context.

“I’m not Inspector Gadget,” she said Monday on CNN. “I don’t believe people are using the microwave to spy on the Trump campaign.”

But in an interview with a columnist for The Record of Bergen County, N.J., the day before, she said Mr. Obama’s alleged spying efforts against Mr. Trump could have been far more extensive than a telephone wiretap.

“What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other,” Ms. Conway told the paper. “You can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets — any number of ways.”

Surveillance can even be carried out with “microwaves that turn into cameras,” she added. “We know this is a fact of modern life.”

The unusual and shifting explanations from Mr. Spicer and Ms. Conway reflected the contortions that members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle have employed to explain the president’s explosive accusation, which he has yet to address personally. Neither Mr. Trump nor anyone at the White House has presented any evidence for the claim, instead asking Congress to investigate it as part of its inquiry into Russia’s interference in the presidential election.[...]

Understanding the true meaning of Purim - Trump as Achashverous and Rav Shmuel as Mordechai

Purim is always a special time of year in terms of simcha – but trying to understand it is mind bending. In fact we have a mitzva to get drunk to clear our minds of the rational categories which interfere with proper understanding.

This year I realized there is a rather obvious way of presenting the complexities of Purim to the modern mind.

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Once upon a time there was a king – we will call him Trump because I like the sound of the name. He was filthy rich and obsessed not only with money and power – but also women. In fact King Trump was married to his third wife when this story opens. Due to his third wife getting a bit uppity – because she was taking the problem of women’s issues too seriously – he got rid of her. He felt it was important not only that his wife but all women realize that they are inferior and subordinate to their husbands. So he sacrified her for the common good.

However after she was disposed of – he realized he needed a new wife.

He was advised that this time he should only take the best wife in his kingdom and therefore he encouraged all the unmarried women in the kingdom to apply. He was to interview all of them – sort of like trying out an apprentice – and pick the finalist as his wife.

At that time there was a problem for the Jews of “left wingers”. Mamash Satan incarnated. Satan had a number of manifestations – sometimes he was known as Obama while other times he was known as the Clintons! They planned the Final Solution of the Jews in the Kingdom with the help of Deep Government forces.

The Gadol HaDor at that time was a tzadik by the name of Rav Shmuel. He had the assistance (some say he was manipulated) of his son Shalom. When they realized the danger the Jews were in they devised a plan that was not only pure genius but also was truly inspired by ruach hakodesh. Rav Shmuel told his wife to apply to the contest to be Achashverous wife. She initially resisted – after all it was violently against the Torah and her Beis Yakov education – and it was clearly against her inherent feelings and sensitivities of modesty. Besides she had a very good marriage to the gadol hador – why would anyone trade that to be the wife of that buffon and lecher – Achashverous?

However her husband told her that it was Daas Torah that she had to commit adultery to save the Jewish people and of course she eventually accepted her fate – as any true Baas Yisroel would do. He told her that this was true hishtadlus. She tried to convince him that segulos such as magnets and crystals would works better - but he put his foot down and told her this was what G-d wanted! [To be continued - feel free to submit your own version]

The Dangerous Safety of College

NY Times

The moral of the recent melee at Middlebury College, where students shouted down and chased away a controversial social scientist, isn’t just about free speech, though that’s the rubric under which the ugly incident has been tucked. It’s about emotional coddling. It’s about intellectual impoverishment.

Somewhere along the way, those young men and women — our future leaders, perhaps — got the idea that they should be able to purge their world of perspectives offensive to them. They came to believe that it’s morally dignified and politically constructive to scream rather than to reason, to hurl slurs in place of arguments.

They have been done a terrible disservice. All of us have, and we need to reacquaint ourselves with what education really means and what colleges do and don’t owe their charges.

Physical safety? Absolutely. A smooth, validating passage across the ocean of ideas? No. If anything, colleges owe students turbulence, because it’s from a contest of perspectives and an assault on presumptions that truth emerges — and, with it, true confidence.

What happened at Middlebury was this: A group of conservative students invited Charles Murray to speak, and administrators rightly consented to it. Although his latest writings about class divisions in America have been perceptive, even prescient, his 1994 book “The Bell Curve” trafficked in race-based theories of intelligence and was broadly (and, in my opinion, correctly) denounced. The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled him a white nationalist.

He arrived on campus wearing that tag, to encounter hundreds of protesters intent on registering their disgust. Many jammed the auditorium where he was supposed to be interviewed — by, mind you, a liberal professor — and stood with their backs to him. That much was fine, even commendable, but the protest didn’t stop there.

Chanting that Murray was “racist, sexist, anti-gay,” the students wouldn’t let him talk. And when he and the professor moved their planned interchange to a private room where it could be recorded on camera, protesters disrupted that, too, by pulling fire alarms and banging on windows. A subsequent confrontation between some of them and Murray grew physical enough that the professor with him sought medical treatment for a wrenched neck.

Middlebury isn’t every school, and only a small fraction of Middlebury students were involved. But we’d be foolish not to treat this as a wake-up call, because it’s of a piece with some of the extraordinary demands that students at other campuses have made, and it’s the fruit of a dangerous ideological conformity in too much of higher education.

It put me in mind of important remarks that the commentator Van Jones, a prominent Democrat, made just six days beforehand at the University of Chicago, where he upbraided students for insisting on being swaddled in Bubble Wrap.

“I don’t want you to be safe, ideologically,” he told them. “I don’t want you to be safe, emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots, and learn how to deal with adversity.”

“You are creating a kind of liberalism that the minute it crosses the street into the real world is not just useless, but obnoxious and dangerous,” he added. “I want you to be offended every single day on this campus. I want you to be deeply aggrieved and offended and upset, and then to learn how to speak back. Because that is what we need from you.”[...]

Protests aren’t the problem, not in and of themselves. They’re vital, and so is work to end racism, sexism, homophobia and other bigotry. But much of the policing of imperfect language, silencing of dissent and shaming of dissenters runs counter to that goal, alienating the very onlookers who need illumination.

It’s an approach less practical than passionate, less strategic than cathartic, and partly for that reason, both McWhorter and the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt have likened it to a religion.

“When something becomes a religion, we don’t choose the actions that are most likely to solve the problem,” said Haidt, the author of the 2012 best seller “The Righteous Mind” and a professor at New York University. “We do the things that are the most ritually satisfying.”

He added that what he saw in footage of the confrontation at Middlebury “was a modern-day auto-da-fé: the celebration of a religious rite by burning the blasphemer.”

The protesters didn’t use Murray’s presence as an occasion to hone the most eloquent, irrefutable retort to him. They swarmed and swore.

McWhorter recalled that back when “The Bell Curve” was published, there was disagreement about whether journalists should give it currency by paying it heed. But he said that it was because they engaged the material in detail, rather than just branding it sacrilegious, that he learned enough to conclude on his own that its assertions were wrong — and why.

Both he and Haidt belong to Heterodox Academy, a group of hundreds of professors who, in joining, have pledged to support a diversity of viewpoints at colleges and universities. It was founded in 2015. It’s distressing that there was — and is — even a need for it.

But according to an essay in Bloomberg View last week by Stephen Carter, a professor of law at Yale, the impulse to squelch upsetting words with “odious behavior” is so common “that it’s tempting to greet it with a shrug.”

“The downshouters will go on behaving deplorably,” Carter wrote, “and reminding the rest of us that the true harbinger of an authoritarian future lives not in the White House but in the groves of academe.”[...]

IDF lowers standards after realizing women can't keep up, provides benches to help climbing. Will Hamas do the same?

Arutz 7

An IDF officers' training base added benches to help female soldiers climb over walls during fitness tests. The "unfair" fitness test was videotaped and shown on Channel 10 during the summer of 2016.

The Forum for IDF Fortitude explained, "The IDF discovered that women in combat units suffered many physiological injuries, failed the entrance tests and fitness routines, and fell behind during any strenuous physical activities.

"Therefore, the IDF have adapted the training and courses, and lowered the bar to enable more women to participate.

"For example, during officer training, the military reduced the entrance exam in navigation from 10-12 kilometers to six kilometers for women. Distance in a later exam was reduced from 18 kilometers to 10 kilometers for women. The way effort is measured in the course takes physical and navigational abilities into account, and adapts them according to gender.

"In one of the fitness tests in the IDF Officers' School, the women run with one canteen and two magazines, and they climb over a wall using a bench. Men run with two canteens, five magazines, and must climb the wall without help. The maximum time given to men is seven minutes; the women have nine minutes.

"In the tests before they enter Officers' School, men's and women's abilities are measured differently. As a result, men who have higher abilities are not accepted to the course, and women take their places."

'Corruption entered the rabbinical establishment

Arutz 7

The Supreme Court submitted its ruling on the "Rabbis Affair" in which the Chief Rabbinate issued fictitious certificates of higher Torah scholarship to security personnel from the IDF, police and the Prison Authority.

In 1999-2003, the Chief Rabbinate issued thousands of certificates of Higher Torah Scholarship to security personnel from the IDF, police and the Prison Authority. The students studied halachic topics in special frameworks set up for them in various places in the country in order to obtain the Higher Torah Scholarship certificates which gave them a significant addition to their publicly funded wages.

The Jerusalem District Court, headed by judge Amnon Cohen, ruled that the study frameworks opened around the country had not been officially authorized by the Chief Rabbinate, the Education Ministry and the security establishment and did not meet the base standard required for receiving wage benefits. In order to meet the requirements and obtain the benefits, certain documents were forged and false reports were issued to present a facade of a study program which meets requirements.

The certificates were issued despite the fact that those who received them did not even meet the minimal requirements of the authoritative bodies and were not eligible for wage benefits. This caused significant losses to the public. The accused in this case were party to acts of deception in issuing these fictitious certificates.

Judges Neil Hendel, Yitzhak Amit and Dafna Barak-Erez all rejected the appeal against the conviction of senior members of the Rabbinate, stating that " public corruption has entered places we would never have dreamt of. In this case it entered the rabbinical establishment, the IDF and the police."