Daas Torah's voter recommendation: It has damaged the claim of Divine inspiration and truth. Please talk me off of a religious cliff

I received this letter before the elections and just obtained permission to post it. It is a further extension of the weakening of emunas chachomim that resulted from the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt Heter and is a genuine problem.

Hi
I've been a regular reader of your site for some time. One thing which is unique about your blog is your willingness to stake out unpopular opinions. I was further heartened to see you take a critical stance on Trump.

So, I'm turning to you. Perhaps you can talk me off of this ledge.

'Daas Torah' has been heavily involved in this election. I've heard at least 4 different versions.

1. R Yeruchem Olshin said to vote for Trump. He compared it to Dovid and Shaul. Shaul sinned in public and lost the melucha, Dovid sinned privately and retained the melucha. Hilary is publicly corrupt, so don't vote for her. Trump sinned privately so vote for him.

2. R' Shmuel Kamentsky. R' Edelstein called America 'asray d'mar' (mar indeed) and r' Kamenetsky' view should be followed.

3. R' Yitzchok Yehuda Blum, respected rov in cleveland. He said Hilary is a rotzayach (apparently there are some conspiracy theories that have her murdering up to 50 people). He also said that she will put Jewish lives in danger; therefore it's pikuch nefesh. 

4. Satmer rebbe. Trump is a supporter of Israel. Since Israel is bad, Trump is bad too.

 5. Skvere rebbe. Vote for Hillary.

None of these views reflect the Torah's outlook. They are riddled with logical inconsistencies and rooted in hate. How has Trump sinned privately? Everything the man does is l'fnai kol aam v'aydah. How is giving an irresponsible demagogue access to nuclear bombs not pikuch nefesh? Satmer and Skver are hoping to capitalize on their existing relationships with Hilary to keep the gravy train rolling. 

I'm left with this: The concept of Da'as Torah is a farce. It's a masquerade. It allows rabbanim to take their personal political views and package it a divine mandate. I used to think that we're a nation of smart people. Now I see that we're just like everyone else. We are just as susceptible to bias and hate as all the other nations. 

And so, how can I rely on anything I hear? How can I trust anything I hear from our Rabbanim? How can I be sure that every utterance is not influenced by personal beliefs? Where is the limit to blindness and bias? How can we claim the halachic process is pure? How can we claim to authentically transmit our heritage? How can we be sure it has been shaped and molded by personal opinion and prejudice? How can we be sure personal opinion hasn't infiltrated our halacha? 

And if the masses blindly follow the rabbinic dicta, how can we trust mesorah at all? Instead of critically evaluating issues, like sheep, the masses just followed along. I used to rely on the Kuzari to explain Sinaic revelation - no one would make such a claim etc. Now I see that the opposite is true. The bigger the claim, the more outlandish, the more exaggerated something is, the higher the chance of people accepting it. Instead of using reason and truth as guiding principles, people rely on bias and superstition and exaggerations that align with their deeply held prejudice. 

I'd like to somehow still believe. Please help me walk away from this cliff

In a recent post heading I mentioned Donald Trump as the Saviour of America - and I meant this literally

The following is a post regarding how to understand my post "I want to belief in the tooth fairy, killer clowns, Satanic abuse rings, the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt heter and that Donald Trump is the Saviour of America."

I meant the title to mean exactly what it says. A criticism of those who view Trump - not as potentially good and competent president but one who will literally save America in some mysterious manner. There was a similar attitude to Obama at the beginning of his presidency when he won the Nobel Peace Prize - even though he hadn't done anything to deserve it. It just was assumed he would get around to it because the expectations about him were so high. My correspondent disagrees and says that my readership understood it to be that I rejected the possibility of Trump being even a competent president. In short this is a question of reading comprehension. I had reiterated that I had meant this literally and was not rejecting Trump's potential to be a good president in a comment to the post. Nevertheless my correspondent asked that I explicitly bring up this issue.

============================================

Guest Post

I sent the following ‘warning’ in an email to Daas Torah regarding the Post, ‘I want to belief in the tooth fairy, killer clowns, Satanic abuse rings, the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt heter and that Donald Trump is the Saviour of America.’:

A Warning
Rabbi, conflating the hope people have for Donald Trump, the President Elect of the United States with belief in ‘killer clowns, the tooth fairy Satanic abuse rings, and the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt heter’, damages your credibly vis-à-vis the Heter. With the Heter issue, you have been careful to distinguish between opinion and fact. As certain as you are that Trump is ‘insane’, unfit for the Presidency; your certitude is just an opinion. On a subtextual level, the above mentioned conflation relegates a Halachic certainly, i.e., the worthlessness of the Heter, to the realm of speculation.

Dass Torah wrote a new Post challenging my ‘warning’. DT posted my warning and responded:

An example of concerns which motivated my publishing of this post is an email I just received in response to this post. My unwillingness to accept that Donald Trump is the Saviour of America - is viewed as undermining my credibility that has been established by what I have published here - most of which is carefully documented. I find it unsettling that belief in Donald Trump as Saviour is the litmus test of a person's integrity and intellectual achievement. We are not talking about Donald Trump as a possibly competent president but as Saviour!

I responded with the following email:

I realize that I should have been more explicit in the ‘warning’ I sent you regarding your Post, ‘I want to belief in the tooth fairy, killer clowns, Satanic abuse rings, the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt heter and that Donald Trump is the Saviour of America.’. Please give this a fair reading. You are blogging, not submitting a treatise on Eschatology; thus, your readership understands your use of ‘Saviour’ in a colloquial sense, in an informal, conversational manner. This would lead to the logical conclusion that you were referring to Trump supporters in general, and would assume that you are conflating, comparing those who have hope and faith in Trump (like me) with those who believe in the ‘tooth fairy' and the legitimacy of the 'Heter’. This explains the push back you experienced. 

Obviously, you used the term in its explicit, formal sense, meaning “…those who in fact think he is the Saviour…”, as you posted in a reply. That is your opinion. However, Trumps negatives are so high, that this group of ‘meshiachists’, if it exists at all, are a miut of a miut. Thus, those who respect your ‘integrity and intellectual achievement’, as I certainly do, took it as a dvar pshut that you meant ‘Saviour’ to be understood implicitly, colloquially.

In the last sentence in the ‘warning’, I used the term ‘subtextual’ with great care. Subtext refers to the implicit meaning of a text. Thus, I repeat, “On a subtextual level, the above mentioned conflation relegates a Halachic certainly, i.e., the worthlessness of the Heter, to the realm of speculation.”

My Daf Yomi shiur is a bit behind. We learned the other day, on daf 30 or 31 the source that one is permitted to give tochacha to his Rebbi. I feel that unfortunately I am in that position here. I submit with great respect and fondness, that you damaged your credibility with the Post in question. You are a very tenacious man. However, tenacity can be confused with obsessiveness. In my humble opinion, continuing to issue Posts regarding Trump is not in your best interests.

Dass Torah response:

I understand what you are saying - but I disagree with your ready assumption that Saviour wasn't meant literally. After all the same thing happened with Obama. He wasn't viewed as just a positive person and I think that Trump is viewed by many in the same way. I didn't think that you meant it literally either but it provided a basis to illustrate the issue.

My response:

Rabbi you misunderstood my email. Your readership is sophisticated enough to think that if one truly believes that Trump is the Savior in a literal manner, that such a deranged individual would also belief in the 'tooth fairy', etc. Thus, if they assumed you meant Saviour in a colloquial way, there would have been no disagreement. However, your readership pushed back, taking issue with you, Why?, Because they assumed you meant Saviour in the literal sense. . I think you should reread the email I sent earlier in this new light.

DT’s response which led to my Guest Post is as follows: 

The only way this will be resolved is if you post a response on the blog and ask the question as to how my heading was understood. Now let’s hear from Daas Torah’s readership.

Donald Trump keeps up media attacks with lies about New York Times

Washington Post

President-elect Donald Trump sounded very much like presidential candidate Donald Trump on Sunday morning in a pair of misleading tweets about the New York Times.

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the "Trump phenomena"

4:16 PM - 13 Nov 2016

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

The @nytimes sent a letter to their subscribers apologizing for their BAD coverage of me. I wonder if it will change - doubt it?

4:43 PM - 13 Nov 2016

According to the New York Times Co.'s latest earnings report, the number of print copies it sold in the third quarter was down from the same period in 2015, but the decline was more than offset by 116,000 new digital-only subscriptions. Overall, third-quarter circulation revenue rose 3 percent; through the first nine months of the year, circulation revenue was up 2.8 percent.

Since Trump launched his White House campaign in June 2015, digital-only news subscriptions to the Times have increased 35 percent, to more than 1.3 million.

Trump's suggestion that the Times is bleeding readers because of “very poor and highly inaccurate coverage” does not square with the numbers.

The president-elect's interpretation of a letter to subscribers as an apology for bad coverage is a stretch. Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. wrote Friday that one of the “inevitable questions” in the aftermath of the campaign is: “Did Donald Trump's sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?”

“As we reflect on this week's momentous result, and the months of reporting and polling that preceded it, we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism,” Sulzberger added.[...]

Yet Sulzberger's full letter makes clear that he was simply renewing a promise that he believes the Times fulfilled during the campaign.

“We believe we reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign,” he wrote. “You can rely on the New York Times to bring the same level of fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team.”

We’ve seen two Donald Trumps. Who will show up at the White House?

LA Times

We’ve seen two Donald Trumps in the past week. Which one will arrive at the White House on Inauguration Day?

The combative Trump who called President Obama “a disaster” and Hillary Clinton “a criminal,” or the gracious Trump who praised them after he won?

The vengeful Trump who vowed that Paul Ryan would pay if he didn’t support him fully, or the party-unifying Trump who met cordially with Ryan last week?

The prickly Trump who tweeted on Thursday about “professional protesters, incited by the media,” or the statesmanlike Trump who tweeted on Friday that he loved the demonstrators’ passion?

We won’t know for a while. It’s possible that Trump hasn’t decided yet.

More than most presidents-elect, Trump is still something of a blank slate — despite the millions of words he has spoken over the last year. He’s never held public office. He’s still an outsider in his own party. His attachment to his purported policies is unclear and subject to constant revision.

Almost the only thing we know for certain about Trump is that he is driven by a boundless will to win whatever competition he’s in. “My life has been about winning,” he told an interviewer last year.

But “winning” was easy to define in the heat of a presidential campaign, with an election as its goal.

The test Trump faces now is an essay question, not a zero-sum contest: What will his definition of “winning” be once he’s president?

We’ll get an early clue from one of his first decisions: whom he names as White House chief of staff.

Trump aides last week said two of the leading candidates were Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist for his presidential campaign, and Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee.

They represent a clear choice between two versions of Republicanism in the new Trump era. Bannon, head of the Breitbart News organization, is an apostle of the downmarket, blue-collar populism that helped Trump win millions of votes in the Rust Belt — and a defender of the “alt-right” camp that attracted white nationalists to the campaign. Priebus, by contrast, is a more conventional conservative, a Wisconsin party operative who built an effective organization at the RNC. Bannon has suggested that Ryan should be ousted as speaker of the House; Priebus is a Ryan fan.

The divide is more than ideological. Bannon and Priebus represent competing definitions of what a Trump presidency would be about and how it would govern.[...]

Trump was remarkably flexible during the campaign, even on issues at the core of his candidacy. His proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States turned into a milder suggestion for “extreme vetting.” His vow to deport millions of undocumented immigrants became a decision for “a later date.” His threat to withdraw U.S. troops from Europe, he said, was mostly a negotiating chip.

But in the weeks before his inauguration, he has to make real decisions that aren’t so easily undone: the appointments to his White House staff and other top jobs. An ancient rule in Washington holds that personnel is policy. Through his choices, we will soon discover what kind of president this chimerical man may turn out to be.

Is it legal for the Chareidi paper "HaPeles" to lie and slander others to promote its ideological agenda?

BHOL

בית המשפט יכריע: האם ל'הפלס' מותר לשקר בשביל 'השקפה'

פרסום ראשון ב'בחדרי חרדים': תביעה שהגישה עמותת ידידות טורונטו נגד עיתון 'הפלס' מגיעה לשלב הסיום, לאחר שהעיתון סירב להצעת השופטת לפרסם התנצלות וטען כי מתקפות ארסיות הן טון מקובל לקהילה הרואה את עצמה מיעוט נרדף פרסום ראשון ב'בחדרי חרדים': תביעת הדיבה שהגישה עמותת ידידות טורונטו נגד עיתון הפלס על הפרסומים נגדה הגיעה לשלב הסיום. הדיון האחרון בעניין התקיים לפני כשבוע ב-3.11.2016 בבית משפט השלום בהשתתפות הצוות המשפטי ונציג של כל צד.  בדיון מחוץ לפרוטוקול, השופטת תמר בר-אשר צבן, דנה בתביעה על בסיס תצהירי ההוכחות שהוצגו עד כה. היא ציינה כי הפלס לא סיפק כל ראיה כדי לסתור את טענתה של ידידות טורונטו שהכתבה הכילה מספר אי דיוקים עובדתיים וכן כמה השמצות בלתי מבוססות בעליל.  כתוצאה מכך, השופטת ציינה בפני הנתבעים (עיתון הפלס ובכירי צוות העריכה שלו) שלמרות שעיתון אינו נדרש בדרך כלל לחשוף את המקורות שלו, במקרה הנידון העיתון לא יוכל ליהנות מההגנה כי הטענות בכתבה הן נכונות.  עורכי הדין של הפלס העלו את הטענה כי מקורותיהם חוששים להיחשף כיון שידידות טורונטו הינה ארגון חזק ורב עוצמה. בהמשך, ניסו לטעון כי ההתקפות הארסיות הינן הטון המקובל בקרב קהילה הרואה את עצמה כמיעוט נרדף.  הצוות המשפטי של ידידות טורונטו השיב כי ידידות טורונטו הינו ארגון צדקה פילנתרופי, שנועד לסייע לאנשים במצוקה. הצוות אף הדגיש כי החוק אינו מחריג מיעוטים מציות לו, וכי טענות הפלס חסרות בסיס משפטי ומעודדות אלימות.  [...] השופטת הציעה לעיתון הפלס הזדמנות אחרונה לפרסם התנצלות מקיפה ובכך להגיע להסכם פשרה עם ידידות טורונטו. העיתון דחה את ההצעה וכתוצאה מכך, המשפט עובר לשלב הסופי והמכריע של חקירה נגדית, שתתקיים בדיון הבא בעוד כשלושה חודשים.

Donald Trump and the end of history

Washington Post

The last time we blew up the international system, it took two World Wars, a Cold War, and a Great Depression before we were able to get it back to where it'd been in 1913. With any luck, it won't require quite as much this time around.

That, make no mistake, is what Donald Trump's election might mean. I say "might," because we really don't know what he'll do in office. He's gone back and forth and back again on almost every issue. But if he's serious about jailing his political rivals, about cracking down on the free press, about potentially abandoning our allies, about encouraging them to get nuclear weapons of their own, and about ripping up free trade agreements, then the liberal international order that has bequeathed us a relative Pax Americana the past 70 years will be no more. It'll be the end of the end of history.

That's become a familiar theme the past year. From Europe's anti-immigrant parties edging closer to power to Britain's all-but-winning it with the country's vote to leave the European Union to Trump's ascension to the White House, Francis Fukuyama's famous idea that free-market liberal democracy had vanquished all its ideological foes and was the "final form of human government" seems to be, well, a little more temporary. Just as he could have told you himself. Fukuyama, you see, believed that just because we'd reached the end of history didn't mean we'd stay in the end of history. That peace and prosperity might not be enough for some people who would, "struggle for the sake of struggle" simply "out of a certain boredom" from living in a world that doesn't seem to have meaning or identity any more. And so we might see a 227 year-old republic succumb to someone who evinced only the slightest respect for constitutional norms and even less for minority groups.

How has it come to this? Well, the white working class is letting out a wail across the Western world against a political system they don't think recognizes them, and a society they don't recognize themselves. Add in the monotony of day-to-day life—why not smash it up just to see what happens?—and you've got a global revolt against the global order. Really, though, it's white men who are the ones rebelling against an economy that they feel like devalues their work, against a culture that they fear is devaluing their once-preeminent place in it, and against a mundane existence that devalues any kind of meaning. In other words, it's about economic anxiety, it's about racial resentment, it's about misogyny, but it's also about a general ennui.

Now, by a happy coincidence, the first 25 years of the postwar liberal order had maybe the best and most broadly-shared growth in all of human history. We built the UN to keep the peace, NATO to defend Europe, the IMF to help countries out of economic trouble, and a middle class that, if you were white, got the help it needed to own a home and go to college. And then it was over. Productivity growth stalled in the 1970s, and, at least in the United States, what economic growth there was overwhelmingly accrued to the top 1 percent in the 1980s and beyond. Part of this was due to Western workers having to compete with billions of Chinese, Indian, and Indonesian ones after the Berlin Wall came down. An even bigger part was good-paying jobs being automated into obsolescence. And the rest was policy—tax cuts for the rich, deunionization for the rest, and deregulation for Wall Street—which is why inflation-adjusted median incomes stagnated even more in the U.S. than in Europe.

But it's not as if Trump only won the people who have been hit hard by technology and globalization. Sure, exit polls show that he did 16 percentage points better with people making $30,o00 or less than Romney did in 2012. But in general, Gallup economist Jonathan Rothwell has found, Trump supporters aren't any more likely to have come from places that have lost a lot of manufacturing jobs or have a lot of immigrants. The opposite, actually. Nor are they just people who are barely getting by. They tend to be a rung or two above that—decently middle class or more—who nonetheless might feel economically insecure because they haven't gotten a raise in a long time, and see everyone else around them doing even worse. Indeed, their towns are the ones where white people are dying younger than they used to due to the ongoing epidemic of suicides and drug overdoses.

It's no surprise that these kind of economic grievances can ratchet up racial ones. After all, as Harvard economist Ben Friedman found in The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, "a rising standard of living for the clear majority of citizens more often than not fosters greater opportunity, tolerance of diversity, social mobility, commitment to fairness, and dedication to democracy." So a stagnant one can make people meaner, less generous, and more suspicious of people who don't sound, look, or worship like they do. But it's important to point out that a weak economy isn't necessary for this kind of backlash. Any time white people—and really white men—feel like their position in society is being challenged in any way, this has happened. Like it did, for example, even when the economy was booming during the civil rights movement.

Or, it turns out, when the country's share of immigrants got close to an all-time high this year. The fact is that a lot of white people don't like being around minorities who haven't assimilated, and they don't want to assimilate to a culture where they'll soon be a minority themselves. Harvard political scientist Ryan Enos, for one, found that even white liberals who aren't used to hearing Spanish in public became much more opposed to increased immigration and much less in favor of letting kids who were born here stay here if their parents were undocumented once they were exposed to Spanish-speakers during their morning commutes. Which seems to explain why, as the Wall Street Journal found, the counties that experienced the fastest minority growth between 2000 and today voted so heavily for Trump. His promises to keep Muslims out, kick Mexicans out, and, as his crowds will tell you, build the wall, are what a white majority that's scared of no longer being one want. As researchers Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson found, all you have to do is remind them that the country is on track to being majority-minority to make them endorse these kind of racially conservative policies.

But it's not just minorities who white men are worried about. It's women too—or one woman in particular. That was clear enough if you listened to Trump's supporters. They weren't chanting that they wanted to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but rather that they wanted to "Lock Her Up." And in case you didn't get the message, they were wearing shirts emblazoned with "Trump That Bitch," "Hillary Sucks But Not Like Monica," and "Don't Be A Pu**y, Vote For Trump." Now, this isn't the only reason they hated Hillary Clinton so much—far from it—but it is part of the reason. There's still a socially-accepted hostility to women being in charge, a fear that this would make a man not a man, and a feeling that women shouldn't even try to act like men. Researchers Tyler Okimoto and Victoria Brescall found that people experienced "moral outrage" when they were told that a hypothetical female politician was ambitious, but nothing when they were told a male was.

The last part is harder to quantify. It's that life at the end of history can get, well, kind of tedious. You get up, you go to work, you come home, you watch TV, you go to sleep, and then you repeat 20,000 times. For a lot of people, there is no great cause, no great conflict, no great meaning to it all. The big battles have already been won, and now there are just bills to pay and weekends to look forward to. The problem with this, Fukuyama wrote, is that "if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because the just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause." There are hints of this reality TV-ification of our politics in the Trump supporter who admits he "could be as bad as Hitler" or the one who thinks Trump is actually "a blend of Hitler and Hirohito." What, they wonder, is the worst that could happen? Tune in tomorrow to find out!

The answer, of course, is that the world as we've known it might cease to exist. From Turkey to Poland to Hungary, democratically-elected leaders who don't believe in liberal democracy have already consolidated power by curtailing the freedom of the press, the courts, and the opposition. Now that might happen here. Trump's threats to "open up" the libel laws, his attacks on a judge because of that judge's ethnic background, and his praise for Putin even when it's been pointed out to him that Putin has almost certainly been behind the murder of journalists and political opponents are something dark and new in our politics. And it's something that his supporters don't seem to mind. Earlier this the year, 84 percent of them said that "what we need is a leader who will say or do anything to solve America's problems." Constitutional conservatism this is not.[...]

Donald Trump is about to face a rude awakening over Obamacare

Washington Post

After reiterating his promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, Donald Trump has indicated he may keep two of the law’s most popular provisions. One is straightforward enough — children up to the age of 26 being allowed to stay on their parents’ plan. The other — preventing insurance companies from denying covering because of pre-existing conditions — offers a perfect illustration of why Trump and most of the other Republicans critics of Obamacare don’t understand the health insurance market.

Let’s say that in the beautiful new world of “repeal and replace,” insurers are required to sell you insurance despite the fact that your kid has a brain tumor. Insurance companies know what to do with that. Their actuaries can calculate that kids with brain tumors typically require (I’m making this number up) about $200,000 a year in medical care. So they’ll offer to sell you a policy at an annual premium of $240,000.

At this point your response will probably be that such an outcome not fair. When the law says insurance companies can’t discriminate on the basis for pre-existing conditions, surely what it means is that they have to charge roughly the same price for health insurance, irrespective of your pre-existing condition. In the language of insurance, that’s called “guaranteed issue at community rates.”

Unfortunately, in the states that have tried guaranteed issues at community rates, the insurance markets have collapsed. That’s because if you guarantee everyone the right to buy health insurance at community rates, then some consumers will game the system. The young and healthy ones won’t buy any health insurance at all—they’ll go without until they are diagnosed with diabetes or a brain tumor or get hit by a truck crossing the street. And when that happens, they will immediately call up Aetna or Anthem and exercise their right to buy health insurance at the low community rate, irrespective of their medical condition. It won’t be long before insurance companies begin losing a ton of money and are forced either to raise premiums through the roof or stop writing policies altogether.

So how do you prevent that kind of gaming of the system by consumers? Well, that’s easy. You require that everyone buy at least some minimal level of insurance at the beginning of every year, so they can’t buy insurance only after they get sick. Let’s call that an” individual mandate.” But because you can’t expect poor people to pay $1,000 a month, they will require subsidies to keep their out-of-pocket costs to something like 10 percent of income. To pay for the subsidies, a new tax will be required.

So let’s review what just happened. To guarantee that people with pre-existing conditions can get affordable health insurance, you need to have rules requiring guaranteed issue and community rating. To keep insurance companies in business because of guaranteed issue and community rating, you need to have an individual mandate. And because poor people can’t afford health insurance, you need subsidies. Combine all three, and what you have, in a nutshell, is ... Obamacare.

Yes, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but not much. It’s possible to allow insurance companies charge twice or three times as much, to people who are older or sicker. You can let healthy people buy somewhat more barebones “catastrophic” policies to satisfying their obligation under the individual mandate. You could even avoid community rating by sending sick people into “high risk pools” where their premiums would be subsidized by a tax on everyone else’s health care premiums.

But at the end of the day, once you decide that everyone, regardless of age or medical condition, should be able to buy health insurance at an affordable price, you have essentially bought into the idea that young and healthy people have an obligation to subsidize the older and sicker people in some fashion. And once you do that, it’s sort of inevitable you end up where every health reform plan has ended up since the days of Richard Nixon. You end up with some variation on Obamacare.

Of course, if you want to scrap guaranteed issue, scrap community rating, scrap the individual mandate and scrap the subsidies, as Republicans, propose, then you end up where the country was in 2008—with a market system that inevitable gives way to an insurance spiral in which steadily rising premiums cause a steadily rising percentage of Americans without health insurance.

There are no easy solutions here, no free lunches. You can’t have all the good parts of an unregulated insurance market (freedom to buy what you want, when you want, with market pricing) without the bad parts (steadily rising premiums and insurance that is unaffordable for people who are old and sick).

At the same time, you can’t have all the good parts of a socialized system (universal coverage at affordable prices) without freedom-reducing mandates and regulations and large doses of subsidies from some people to other people. Anyone who says otherwise – anyone promising better quality health care at lower cost with fewer regulations and lower taxes—is peddling hokum.

Kaminetksy-Greenblatt Heter: Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky explains why Clinton lost to Trump: "Those people who do not act with integrity and with telling the truth will not be successful"

Kikar haShabbat

הרב קמינצקי מסביר: למה עולם התורה לא תמך בקלינטון?

חוסר ההתנהלות ביושר ואי אמירת האמת - של קלינטון, לעומת התנהלות טראמפ באמת וביושר - זו הסיבה שהביאה את ראש ישיבת פילדלפיה להוביל תמיכת עולם התורה ב... דונלד טראמפ (חדשות)

הגר"ש קמינצקי הורה לכל עולם התורה ובני הישיבות בארה"ב, להצביע עבור טראמפ לנשיאות. בשיחה עם "יתד נאמן" הוא מסביר כי הדבר שהכריע יותר מכל לתמוך בו היה בשל העובדה ש"בצד שכנגד לא התנהלו ביושר די הצורך".

הרב קמינצקי התבטא עוד כי "אנשים שאינם מתנהגים ביושר ובאמירת אמת אין ההצלחה מנת חלקם לאורך ימים". לעומת זאת, אצל המועמד הנבחר, "מלבד האנשים הקרובים שהינם קרובים באהדתם ליהדות ולעולם התורה בארצות הברית, התנהלותו תמיד היתה ביושר ובאמירת אמת וישנה חשיבות שאם אנו צריכים לנקוט עמדה שנעשה זאת גם אנו בדרך האמת בלבד".

ראש הישיבה הורה לכל שואליו וכמוהו יתר ראשי הישיבות וגדולי התורה ברחבי ארצות הברית להצביע עבור המועמד הרפובליקני, שכאמור, לבסוף הפתיע את העולם ונבחר למשרה הרמה.

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Honesty comments on the above

The irony has no words. You see, we can review what the Rosh Yeshiva has said. What is the Rosh Yeshiva's definition of dishonesty?

Does it mean promising to listen to Rav Dovid Feinstein, but in reality making a joke out of that? http://daattorah.blogspot.com/...
http://daattorah.blogspot.com/...
Then: 
I called Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky and asked him to confirm that he had told Tamar to separate from her second husband. He told me, "I never told anyone to separate." That is an exact quote.
Anyone can call him to verify it. http://daattorah.blogspot.com/...

Same the actual "heter" shopping trip.
1) http://daattorah.blogspot.com/...

2) http://daattorah.blogspot.com/...

3) Rabbi Greenblatt wrote that he completely relied on rabbi Kamenetzky for the details. (Can't find the link now.)

Wow. Hillary Clinton is bad because she surrounds herself with dishonest people. In fact, so bad that all precedent of Roshei Yeshiva not taking a public stand on presidential elections had to be broken, all because of Clinon surrounding herself with dishonesty.
On the other hand, as seen from the adultery fiasco, we are people of absolute honesty, um, yep, err, oops........
The irony has no words!

Why it's difficult to predict what Trump will actually do as president

CNN

Donald Trump's populist campaign didn't always square with his past statements.

And that makes his agenda as president anybody's guess.

That could give the businessman an edge in making legislative deals in a town unaccustomed to surprises. Or it could halt action in Washington completely if he finds himself at odds with both Republicans and Democrats.

Here's a look at key issues, in which, his campaign statements don't sync with opinions he expressed in the past:

Immigration

Trump's incendiary rhetoric aimed at undocumented Mexican immigrants and calls to build a massive border wall and deport those here illegally were the central pillar of his presidential campaign. But in the immediate years leading up to his 2016 campaign, Trump described himself as "down the middle" on the issue of illegal immigration, and spoke forcefully against deporting undocumented immigrants who had lived in the US for many years.

Speaking about undocumented immigrants on CNBC in June 2012, Trump said, "I also understand how, as an example, you have people in this country for 20 years, they've done a great job, they've done wonderfully, they've gone to school, they've gotten good marks, they're productive — now we're supposed to send them out of the country, I don't believe in that, Michelle, and you understand that. I don't believe in a lot things that are being said."

Eight months earlier, in an interview on "Fox and Friends," Trump had said he supported "amnesty" for some undocumented immigrants, saying, "how do you tell a family that's been here for 25 years to get out?"

And following Mitt Romney's 2012 defeat, Trump called Romney's position on self-deportation for undocumented immigrants "maniacal" and "mean-spirited." A month later, again on "Fox and Friends" in December 2012, he implored Republicans to take the lead on immigration reform or it would "never win another election."

Foreign policy

Trump's views on foreign policy, and specifically intervention abroad, are also difficult to pin down. He has claimed he opposed interventions in Iraq and Libya, and that his opposition to those conflicts are a sign of his foreign policy expertise. Many have taken his claims of opposition to mean Trump is non-interventionist.

But Trump did offer tepid support for the Iraq War on Howard Stern in 2002, and in writings and interviews before that, expressed how he wished President George H.W. Bush had "finished" the job in Iraq during the First Gulf War. Trump would turn against the Iraq War in 2004, and despite publicly calling for the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in the 2006, 2007 and 2008, Trump has throughout his campaign criticized President Barack Obama for withdrawing troops to quickly. [...]

Health care

On the issue of health care, President-elect Trump has vowed to repeal and replace Obamacare. A partial or full repeal is likely, but what a Trump administration would replace it with is less clear. Trump praised the Canadian single payer system — an anathema to conservative Republicans — as late as 2015 in the first GOP primary debate.

"As far as single payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland. It could have worked in a different age, which is the age you're talking about here," Trump said at the debate, before talking about his proposals for a private system.

In 1999, Trump forcefully argued for universal health care, telling CNN's Larry King, "If you can't take care of your sick in the country, forget it, it's all over. I mean, it's no good. So I'm very liberal when it comes to health care. I believe in universal health care. I believe in whatever it takes to make people well and better."

Taxes

With Republicans now controlling the executive and legislative branches of government, tax cuts are on the table. Trump's current plan has offered major tax cuts for individuals and businesses, but Trump in the past has shown a willingness to impose higher taxes on the wealthy.[...]

Trade

Trump has largely been consistent in his fierce opposition to what he has called unfair trade deals, but he has spoken about the forces of globalization in the past much differently than he does now.

In a 2013 op-ed for CNN, for instance, Trump wrote, "we will have to leave borders behind and go for global unity when it comes to financial stability."

Even in some of his recent books, Trump has seemingly admitted globalization is here to stay.

"Globalization has torn down the barriers that have formerly separated the national from the international markets and one result is that affluent foreigners have been drawn to real estate in the United States," Trump wrote in Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success, a book from Trump University.

"The important thing to consider is that more and more there is an interdependence of world economies," he adds. "No one can afford to be isolationist anymore.

I want to believe in the tooth fairy, killer clowns, Satanic abuse rings, the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt heter and that Donald Trump is the Saviour of America

update: An example of concerns which motivated my publishing of this post is an email I just received in response to this post. My unwillingness to accept that Donald Trump is the Saviour of America - is viewed as undermining my credibility that has been established by what I have published here - most of which is carefully documented. I find it unsettling that belief in Donald Trump as Saviour is the litmus test of a person's integrity and intellectual achievement. We are not talking about Donald Trump as a possibly competent president but as Saviour! 

This response is similar to those of the true believer's in Satanic Abuse Rings and Killer Clowns. It is similar to those who have criticized me because I don't believe that a Gadol is beyond my ability to criticize - no matter how strong the proof I have. We are not talking about belief in Moshiach but an imperative to have a very strong belief in a mortal being.

 A Warning

Rabbi, conflating the hope people have for Donald Trump, the President Elect of the United States with belief in ‘killer clowns, the tooth fairy Satanic abuse rings, and the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt heter’, damages your credibly vis-à-vis the Heter. With the Heter issue, you have been careful to distinguish between opinion and fact. As certain as you are that Trump is ‘insane’, unfit for the Presidency; your certitude is just an opinion. On a subtextual level, the above mentioned conflation relegates a Halachic certainly, i.e., the worthlessness of the Heter, to the realm of speculation. 

This was reinforced by Harry's comment

Rabbi Eidensohn

I trusted your facts and agreed with your conclusion. But every once in while when I see your position about certain other things and your unwillingness to budge even in the face of anything of merit that might be presented, it makes me doubt you, and also my own judgement on the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt heter, because I based my judgement on facts which I know only through you.. After all, the Torah world still considers RSK ה'מרא דאתרא' בארה"ב. So maybe I'm mistaken. I now feel that way specifically because I don't anymore feel that I can rely on your judgement or even your facts.

One president, two Americas

CNN

The transformation of Donald Trump begins Thursday.

The freewheeling, acerbic, often vulgar and offensive maverick of the campaign trail has 70 days to become a president.

Trump will begin the process with a remarkable meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House, an encounter between antagonists who never bothered to hide their visceral dislike for one another.

After his stunning election victory over Hillary Clinton, Trump also has a dizzying list of tasks to fulfill, and the White House meeting is only the start of his hectic agenda before Inauguration Day.

First, the President-elect must make a stab at uniting the country, after a scorched-earth campaign in which he consciously tore at the nation's gender, racial and economic fault lines to build a movement to win power. He's practicing some unusual humility.

"I pledge to every citizen of our lands that I will be the president for the American people," Trump said in his victory speech Tuesday. "For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, for which there were a few people, I'm reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so we can work together and unify our great country."

But his challenges were on clear display Wednesday as protests broke out from Boston to Los Angeles.

Trump's meeting with Obama promises to be one of the most awkward encounters ever between a president and his successor. The President-elect's agenda is diametrically opposed to Obama, including the repeal of his signature health care law.

Trump built his political career and appeal to what eventually became his base with his crusade to prove that Obama was not a natural born citizen and was not therefore eligible for the presidency. Many Democrats found his antics racist and deeply offensive to the first African-American president.

Partly spurred by his contempt for Trump, Obama used the power of his office like no other president before him to make the case on the campaign trail that his potential successor was essentially un-American, unfit for the presidency and too risky to be trusted with the nuclear codes.

"The president made a forceful argument and he stands by that argument, but the time for making that argument has passed," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday. "The American people rendered their judgment, and President Obama doesn't get to choose his successor, the American people do, and they did."

Preserving the integrity of American democracy makes it incumbent on Obama to ensure the peaceful transition of power, despite his own deep reservations and antipathy toward his successor.

Trump is also under immediate pressure to build a relationship with Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, who have often viewed him with deep skepticism but are now crucial to his agenda .

Trump must build an administration that is ready to hit the ground running January 20. And perhaps his most daunting assignment is building a national security structure from scratch, and bringing his own sketchy foreign policy and national security credentials up to speed.

Every president who walks into the Oval Office faces an adjustment to the inhuman demands of the presidency. Obama is fond of saying that only problems that no one else can solve reach the President's desk.

But Trump is the only man ever to win the presidency with no political, diplomatic or military executive experience, so his learning curve to becoming the most powerful man in the world will be even steeper.

Trump is no longer on the campaign trail and is not therefore subject to the same pressures that a candidate faces. So in a sense, the transition allows him to reset and at least attempt to adopt a more presidential posture.

His task will be exacerbated by the fact that he appears on track to lose the popular vote to Clinton, even though he won the electoral college -- a factor that undercuts any claims of a mandate.

Clinton's 2008 campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, a CNN contributor, said Trump needs to make amends to Americans insulted by his conduct -- including African-Americans, women and Hispanics.

"I think he needs to start with an apology — honestly," she said on CNN's "The Lead." Given the President-elect's reluctance to admit he is wrong, that step at least seems unlikely.

Trump's new audience stretches beyond Washington and the United States. US allies were alarmed by Trump's victory, given his criticism of US alliances overseas and hazy knowledge of defense and nuclear doctrine.

Adversaries like Russia and China will already be gaming out how best they can take advantage of their inexperienced new counterpart in Washington.

While Trump has the advantage of a ready-made domestic program given Republican control of Congress, he has no such luxury when it comes to national security policy.

Trump's foreign policy team also lacks a diplomatic heavy hitter respected abroad: speculation is mounting that he will bring in someone who is a known quantity overseas as Secretary of State — someone like Sen. Bob Corker, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He has just over two months to staff the State Department, Pentagon, his White House National Security staff, install new leadership at the Intelligence Agencies and begin to install top diplomatic envoys overseas.

It would be a daunting task for any president. Trump is further handicapped by the fact that a huge chunk of the Republican national security establishment, alarmed by his volatile temperament and rudimentary knowledge, defected en masse to Clinton.

But the most fundamental question facing Trump may be his own temperament.

The idea that the President-elect was too erratic and volatile to be commander-in-chief was at the center of Clinton's campaign, and many Americans and foreigners alike worry that his inauguration will usher in a period full of danger and risks.[...]

The question is whether he will be the version of Trump who vowed to throw Clinton in jail or someone with a personality more becoming of a commander in chief.

"Is this the Donald Trump who wanted to ban all Muslims coming into America?" CNN contributor Matt Lewis, a conservative author, said on CNN Wednesday. "Or is this the Donald Trump that sounded a much more conciliatory last night?

He added: "I hope that he was sort of fronting a little bit to win the election and that he will actually govern in a more statesmanlike manner."