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. |
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Donald Trump and the end of history
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
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.
Friday, November 11, 2016
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"
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/...
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/...
1) 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!
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
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.
Thursday, November 10, 2016
One president, two Americas
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."
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Lech Lecha -Vayeirah - Love Your Kids and Believe in Them ! by Allan Katz
Guest post by Allan Katz
In our parasha , God recognizes Abraham's dedication to the people of the world and bringing them closer to God- Hashem by changing his name. God changes his name – from Abram to Abraham .This change represented his new status, as no longer only being the Father of Aram, but becoming the Father of a multitude of nations. Abraham served God through the characteristic trait of 'chesed', generosity, acts of hospitality and kindness, building caring communities of God fearing people. He ' touched their ' hearts and souls ' and the 'souls he made in Haran ' decided to join him on the journey where God would lead him. Abraham both loved and believed in the potential of people to change, no matter how evil were their ways. He prayed and pleaded on behalf of the people of Sodom who faced destruction. He believed a righteous community of 10 people could impact positively on a whole city whose inhabitants were wicked and evil. By being ' upright in his ways = ya'shar, he showed honor and respect to all people and at the same time 'hated evil'. People would change their ways if he could make a personal connection with them, show that he loved them and cared for them and then help them connect to God and His ways. Abraham's and the other fathers – Isaac and Jacob are called – y'sharim, the upright ones because of their personal interactions = halichot olam with people and for this reason the book of Genesis = Be'reishit is called Sefer ha'yashar – the book of the 'upright '.
In our parasha there are 2 incidents where Abraham is criticized for lacking faith in God. The first incident is the meeting between the king of Sodom and Abraham to deal with the spoils of the war – the booty and prisoners after Abraham's victory in the war between the kings of Canaan. The king of Sodom offers Abraham to take the booty-money and he, the king will get back his subjects. Abraham refuses the offer - he does not want any personal gain – both no booty-money and no prisoners. He does not want the King of Sodom to feel and say that it is he and not God that has made Abraham rich. Because Abraham refused to take the prisoners, he is criticized for preventing them from becoming converts and entering beneath the wings of the Shechinah = Divine presence.
The second incident is Abraham questioning and doubting God's promise that his descendants will inherit the land of Israel. He asked how can I know that my descendants will be worthy of inheriting the land of Israel? As a result, to fix and repair this minute flaw of faith at the 'root and source ' of the nation's faith, the descendants of Abraham would be exiled and be slaves in Egypt.
Abraham's lack of faith seems to be more about a lack of faith in people - the prisoners= subjects of the king of Sodom to connect to God and the descendants of Abraham to repent and do Teshuva and reconnect to God rather than a lack of faith in God. When one lacks faith in man one is limiting the potential belief in God in the world, declaring that God can only connect with certain and a limited amount of people. One also ignores the answer that God gave to Abraham - ' your descendants will be worthy of inheriting the land of Israel because I have given them sacrifices to help them repent and atone for their sins. In fact, the covenant - brit that God made with Abraham included sacrifices similar to ones offered on Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement. One is also lacking faith in God if one does not have faith in people - that God created people who have been made in his image that can do Teshuva and repent.
Abraham has proved to be the example and epitome of ' loving man and believing in mankind.' So what went wrong? The Dalai Lama has an insightful saying - people ' Love Money and Use People, instead they should Love People and Use Money. The King of Sodom offered Abraham a deal – take the money and I will take the people. Abraham replied that he did not love money or use people – so he refused, all personal gain - taking no money and no people. Instead he should have answered. I don't love money and don't use people – I love people and believe in their ability to do Teshuva – repent and connect with God. I, as the victor in this war am going to exercise my rights and keep the people so I can invest in them and contribute to their lives by bringing them close to God.
The exile and redemption from Egypt fixed and repaired this flaw. Although Moses initialy showed that he lacked a belief in the Israelites to be deserving of redemption, the redemption process restored a love for man and a belief that man could do Teshuva and repent ' even if they had reached the 49th level of impurity and contamination. It also enabled them also to accept and embrace those Egyptians who wanted to join the Israelites and so give them the opportunity to enter under the wings of the Shechinah- Divine presence and become close to God . The laws of loving converts, inviting non-Jewish residents to participate in the Temple service and the ' Hakhel ' ceremony are examples of ways to make amends and rectifying the minute mistakes and flaws in Abraham's behavior towards the prisoners of war.
When it comes to our children and students we have to unconditionally love and accept them and believe that they have a place close to God and the ability to connect to God, holiness , the Torah and Mitzvoth. Too often kids get the feeling and impression that it is only the outstanding students, the ones that are well behaved, love to learn and have good concentration and thoughts when praying are the only ones that have a place near God and are able to connect to him. All kids need to feel that they are worthy of God's attention, love and connection. We have to emulate Abraham who believed that people don't need punishment but to experience the beauty of Judaism, feel accepted and appreciated and live in a caring community. Parents and teachers who focus on punishment have essentially given up on their kids and students. What these kids and students need is help and have concerned parents and teachers who care about meeting their needs for their emotional, religious development etc. The lesson of Abraham – love and believe in people means that people and especially children are less interested in how much we know but how much we care about them . If we believe in our children , we will love them and if we truly love them, we will believe in them.
Absorbing the Impossible by Maureen Dowd
I sat watching in astonishment. The one who couldn’t bear to show up to concede was not, as expected, Donald Trump, but Hillary Clinton.
I thought the hard-core support for Trump had dwindled down to a hardy band of loyalists: Rudy, Newt, Chris, Sarah, Kellyanne, Omarosa, the kids, Melania — the woman who told him “If you run, you’ll win” — Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, Jeff Sessions, Corey Lewandowski, Steve Bannon, Hope Hicks, David Bossie, Alex Jones, Bill Mitchell, Mike Pence and my brother, Kevin.
The Republican establishment couldn’t stand Trump. The Democratic establishment mocked him. The Republican nominee didn’t even really seem to have much of a campaign. He spent more on “Make America Great” hats than on polling. When I visited his campaign headquarters this summer, there were more pictures, paintings and cardboard cutouts of Trump around than Trump advisers. If you don’t count Newt Gingrich — and I don’t — only one major political historian, Allan Lichtman, had predicted that Trump would win.
But then the impossible happened. As Salena Zito had presciently written in The Atlantic: “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”
“As flawed a candidate as Trump was, he had his finger on the pulse,” Kevin said. “The polls were off because nobody wanted to admit that they were going to vote for him. But it’s a populist revolt and a lot of people believed in Trump’s message: too much regulation, too much government. The whole thing is a bunch of guys getting rich on Capitol Hill and not paying attention to the people who elected them. They stay in Congress a couple years, then move on to K Street and call on the same people who replaced them.”
Kevin had his moments where he wanted to desert Trump, who was not his first, second or third choice in the Republican primary. He was tempted to bail when Trump had his abominable fight with the Kahns, the gold-star family, after the Democratic primary.
My sister did desert Trump in the end, disgusted with his demeaning tweets about women and his inability to focus on issues rather than his own petulance. But she couldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton either, unable to condone the Clintons’ miasma of financial and ethical cheesiness. She did not understand why the president discouraged Joe Biden — someone she could have supported — from running.
Trump was like Rasputin, being declared dead time after time, but living on. The thought of another President Clinton kept Kevin on board, and yesterday he went to the polls in suburban Maryland and voted for Trump, as did his sons.
“Hillary was the status quo and one of the most flawed candidates in history,” he said. “This is a complete repudiation of President Obama, the man who pushed Hillary and deemed Trump a clown.”
It is unthinkable to imagine the most overtly racist candidate — and head of the offensive birther movement — driving in the limousine to the inauguration with the first African-American president. What would they discuss? How Trump plans to repeal Obamacare? How Trump will appoint Supreme Court justices that will transform America into a drastically more conservative landscape over the next 20 years? How Trump plans to undo the Iran deal? When will Trump begin deporting Hispanics? When will Attorney General Rudy Giuliani pardon Chris Christie and put Hillary in jail?
Hillary’s closing line in the campaign was that she was the only thing standing between her and the abyss. But to my conservative family, Hillary was the abyss while Donald was the baseball bat to smash Washington.[....]
When Trump beat 16 seasoned pols in the Republican primary, Kevin wrote, that should have sent a clear message that the public was fed up with political insiders, including Hillary, who “has been in the public eye for 25 years,” with an image “cast in concrete.”
I was in Europe the night before the Brexit vote and no one thought it could possibly pass. But I woke up the next day and it had. And last night in America, no one ever thought they would see a Times headline “Trump Triumphs” but at about 2:40 a.m. they did. While Democrats were calling it a national disaster and many women were freaking out, Trump came onstage at the Hilton looking subdued — and perhaps terrified? — with a calm and conciliatory speech about dreaming big and bold, about dealing fairly with everyone and avoiding hostility and conflict.
But, I asked my brother, would there be buyer’s remorse, as with Brexit?
Kevin was unconcerned, celebrating quietly at home through the wee hours because, as my colleague Binyamin Appelbaum tweeted: “After months of chatter about the implosion of the Republican Party, we are instead witnessing the obviation of the Democratic Party.”
“With Brexit, the markets went down and bounced right back,” Kevin mused at 3 a.m., sounding serene as Democrats keened and Hillary failed to show up at her party at the Javits Center. “Trump voters did the country a service. Anybody but Clinton.
“The Clintons remind me of the Universal horror movies where you thought the monster was dead and then the monster would show up in a bad sequel. I’m glad now that they’re finally gone.”
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
Anti-Semitism unleashed by Trump followers chills Jewish voters
Jewish Americans have never been ones to sit out an election, whether it comes to voting, political fundraising or dinner table punditry. But even for a community grown used to the political fray, the 2016 campaign was different.
The stakes are so high, the differences so stark, the language so overwrought that Trump vs. Clinton seems to overwhelm everything else.
But there is also a specific Jewish component to this election that some voters are sensing, one that has them reassessing their view of what it is to be Jewish in America.
Rabbi Daniel Bogard, 33, of Cincinnati, said he had never personally encountered anti-Semitism until this election cycle. He has now been called a Christ killer twice on social media — once each from the right and the left, when he was defending Israel.
“There’s been permission that’s been given to say these things we didn’t used to say,” said Bogard, who with his wife, Rabbi Karen Kriger Bogard, was installed recently as an associate rabbi at Adath Israel, a Conservative synagogue.
That has led him to radically alter a view he once held that the established Jewish community was too quick to charge others with anti-Semitism.[...]
Donald Trump, the Republican nominee who has made broadsides against Muslims, Hispanics and other minorities a part of his campaign — recklessly, say his critics; unintentionally, say his defenders — has drawn into the light racists and anti-Semites who once occupied the margins of American life.
In turn, that has coaxed out of the closet an otherness that some Jews, especially millennials, had never sensed or thought they would experience.
The Anti-Defamation League has warned about anti-Semitic imagery among Trump’s followers throughout the campaign, and implored the candidate to renounce the purveyors, with occasional success. Over the last couple of days, the Trump campaign released a closing television ad about an “international global power structure” that the ADL and other Jewish groups said trafficked in classic anti-Semitic themes.
Jordana Merran, 28, a foreign policy consultant in Washington, DC, said she had been blithe about warnings from her parents’ generation that Jews could again face the privations of what seemed a distant past.[...]
“We are still a minority in this country, and that position of comfort and being at home can’t be taken for granted,” she said. “Seeing that vitriol against Jews is so shocking and disheartening. It makes you wonder, ‘Are we lucky today? What does the future hold?’”
What the future holds is not a theoretical question to some voters raised on stories of their parents or grandparents fleeing persecution.
“My sister and her son didn’t have passports, but I pushed her to get them this summer,” said Suzanne Reisman, 40, a New York City-based writer who has been harassed by anti-Semites on Twitter. “My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. I hope it won’t come to it, but if we have to flee, we are ready.”[...]
But there are also Jewish pundits on the political right who are worrying about the darker forces being unleashed by Trump’s intentional or collateral appeal to anti-Semites.
Jews should not “ignore the rekindling of right-wing anti-Semitism simply because its next-of-kin — left-wing anti-Zionism — remains so potent on college campuses and in progressive political circles,” wrote Bret Stephens, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a critic of Trump. “The GOP’s conversion to being a powerfully pro-Israel and philo-Semitic party is a relatively recent development. No law dictates that it is destined to be a lasting one.”
For its part, the Trump campaign insists that the campaign is neither anti-Semitic nor trying to appeal to the racist far right, as a top aide said Sunday in response to ADL’s criticism of the “global power structure” ad.
“Mr. Trump’s message and all of the behavior that I have witnessed over the two decades that I have known him have consistently been pro-Jewish and pro-Israel and accusations otherwise are completely off-base,” Jason Greenblatt, the top attorney for the Trump Organization and the co-chair of the campaign’s Israel advisory committee said in a statement Sunday to CBS News. “The suggestion that the ad is anything else is completely false and uncalled for.”[...]
Some older Jews said they recognized the patterns from events they had seen fresh in their youths.
The tell for Norman Gelman, 87, a retired consultant on public policy who lives in Potomac, Maryland, was that “white supremacists and neo-Nazis quickly recognized [Trump] as their champion. His demeanor and his narcissism quickly reminded me of Mussolini.”
William Berkson, 72, a writer who lives in Reston, Virginia, said that if anything, Trump posed a greater danger than earlier demagogues because he had as a tool the instant delivery guaranteed by social media.
“Today, leaders can have even more of a catalytic effect on followers because of the magnifying power of social approval,” Berkson said. “When a leader says something is OK, millions of followers can reinforce one another with the same message on social media.”
Micah Nathan, 43, a writer who lives in Newton, Massachusetts, said Trump was shocking only because he was saying plainly what Republicans had been insinuating through code for years on topics like immigration, the Muslim community and the threat from globalization.
“Trump didn’t create his base. He gave them a unified voice, minus the softening rules of public discourse,” Nathan said.[...]
Monday, November 7, 2016
Hillary Clinton - contrary to Trump supporters - has always been involved in helping others
There are three simple facts about Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy that should not be disputable — even by supporters of Donald Trump.
There are undisputed facts about Trump as well — that he has used bigoted words about Mexicans, questioned the integrity of a federal judge because of his Mexican heritage, mocked a disabled reporter, used misogynistic words while bragging on tape about conduct that is the functional equivalent of criminal sexual assault and recommended the spread of nuclear weapons — but these are for another column.
First, Hillary Clinton has spent her life involved in public service and has a public record and voting record that is progressive.
I first met Hillary at Yale when I was in my third year at Yale Law School in September 1969, and she was an incoming first-year student. I was standing in line to register for classes, and I turned around and saw her right behind me. I recognized her from her photo in a national news magazine that I had seen the night before about a highly regarded speech she had given at her Wellesley College commencement the previous June.
I introduced myself and asked her whether there was any advice I could offer her about Yale Law School — what courses to take, what professors were best, how to read cases and study, etc. Her response: “You could help me — where is the nearest legal services clinic that I could volunteer for?”
When I questioned whether she would have the time, she responded:
“The reason I came to law school is to help me do public service.”
Wow, I thought. This person is unusual — she is going places. The more I got to know her that year, the more I thought she would someday be president. I kid you not.
Hillary’s life’s work has been devoted to public service and helping others, especially helping children and healthcare policy — that is a fact. Through the years as first lady of Arkansas and in the White House, as well as her eight years in the U.S. Senate, her position on all the major issues has been as a progressive Democrat with a reputation of working well with Republicans.
Her one mistake — shared by 26 other progressive U.S. Democratic senators and many others — was supporting the Iraq War resolution in October 2003. She has since said she made a mistake - as she also said she made a mistake and apologized for using a server for her emails while Secretary of State. This contrasts with Trump, who never admits to a mistake even when he challenged the sincerity of a Gold Star Muslim mother.
Fact two is Hillary’s unquestioned superior experience and qualifications to be president. As President Obama said at the Democratic National Convention and has reiterated many times since then, there is no one who has ever — ever — been as qualified to be president of the United States in the history of our country, and he included himself and President Clinton on that list. Trump says his lack of experience in government and his experience as a businessman — including bankrupting four companies in two years — is an advantage.
Fact three is her compassion and empathy for those who are less fortunate than she. Hillary is a person who has spent her life helping children, the poor, those less fortunate, and those who are the object of discrimination suffering an absence of equal opportunity. In other words, she meets the definition of a moral leader eloquently defined by former Senator and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey:
“It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
That is the Hillary Clinton I have known for 47 years. That is the Hillary Clinton who I know — who I am certain — will make a great president of the United States.
How the FBI might have processed 650,000 emails in Clinton probe
Donald Trump and his aides are expressing skepticism at how quickly the FBI was able to review hundreds of thousands of emails in the latest probe in the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
The FBI revealed Sunday that it had found nothing new in the emails from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin that were found on the laptop belonging to her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner. In a letter to lawmakers on Capitol Hill,
During a rally Sunday, however, Trump said it’s not possible that the FBI was able to review so many emails in just nine days.
“You can’t review 650,000 new emails in eight days,” He continued. “You can’t do it, folks.”
A report from Wired, however, said that Trump is wrong and that the FBI can review that amount in just a week, if not sooner.
“This is not rocket science,” Jonathan Zdziarski, a forensics expert who’s consulted for law enforcement, told Wired. “Eight days is more than enough time to pull this off in a responsible way.”
The technology news outlet also interviewed an anonymous former FBI forensics experts who said the agent reviewed larger collections of data even faster than the current case.
“You can triage a dataset like this in a much shorter amount of time,” the agent told Wired, according to the report. “We’d routinely collect terabytes of data in a search. I’d know what was important before I left the guy’s house.”
The former agent also said that the FBI has tools that can sift out classified documents, which the agent said is similar to software used to detect plagiarism.
Both sources told Wired that investigations can filter out emails by targeting “to” and “from” as well as filtering out duplicates.
The review of the emails found in the new batch found that most were duplicates, CBS News confirmed Sunday.
“The Department of Justice and the FBI dedicated all necessary resources to conduct this review expeditiously,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement [...]
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